by K. C. Cross
“Helloooo!” a voice calls out through the woods.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
But Pell is smiling. Big. “Helloooo!” he calls back. “Over here.”
And then I forget about everything we’ve been talking about because who comes strutting down the smooth dirt path before us but Tomas?
And he’s not just a hot guy anymore.
He’s a hot dragon chimera.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - PELL
Tomas struts down the path like this is all no big deal, his grin as wide as ever, his eyes bright with mischief.
“Holy shit!” Pie trots over to him. “Where did you come from?” Then she looks him up and down. “Nice look. I love it!”
She would. Because she loves Tomas. Literally everyone else in the world who meets Tomas hates him. But not Pie. And he’s just flaunting himself showing up as a dragon chimera. I huff.
His legs are covered in silver-gray ammolite scales that flicker an iridescent red-orange when he moves. His hair is slicked back, but it curls up in front of his ears, giving him a charming, devilish look that even I can’t pull off. His chest is his normal skin color, but it glows much the way my horns do. I mean, everything about him says ‘I’m not human’ and yet Pie is… enthralled. She is looking at Tomas like she wants to lick him from head to toe.
“You’re not going to tell him to go put on pants?” I don’t mean to sneer those words, but I do. And I already know what she’s gonna say, so I should just shut up about it.
“His package isn’t hanging out like a lecherous satyr’s.”
“That’s because he’s a fucking blood dragon.”
“And all dragons can read a room. We have limits.” Tomas winks at Pie and she goes all melty and stupid over it, giggling and laughing. “Our packages are always tucked neatly away while not in use.”
I turn my back to them and roll my eyes.
“How did you even find us?” Pie asks him. “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for you if I was the one left behind. And where were you for the past few days? I’ve missed you, Tomas.”
I turn to face them again, but my eyes are still rolling back into my head with annoyance. “You barely know him. How can you miss him?”
Pie makes a face at me. It’s not communicating nice things. “When there’s only you, me, and him in the entire place, it’s not hard, Pell. If you went missing for days, I’d be happy when you came back too. There’s no need to be jealous.”
I glance at Tomas, waiting to see what he has to say about this. But he’s smart. He knows when to shut up. Pie is loving everything about him right now. He gets to show up looking like a cool dragon and not even have to explain it. Because Pie thinks this is a dream world or whatever. She’s clueless.
I want to out him. I want to tell her exactly who he is and why he’s here. But I get the feeling that Pie wouldn’t even care. Not in this moment, anyway. She’s trying to convince herself that I’m wrong. That I don’t know what I’m talking about. That her dream, or whatever, of us being children together is what’s real and my actual fucking knowledge and memories of what I know to be true is just bullshit.
So I shut up.
“Hey, do you know how to get out of here?” Pie is talking to Tomas, not me. “I’m ready to go.”
“I just got here,” Tomas complains. “I’ve been locked up in that fucking dungeon for days and now I’m finally free. We can’t just leave.”
“What dungeon?”
I expect Tomas to shy away from this question. In fact, I didn’t expect him to even admit to where he was. But he doesn’t. This chimera form must make him confident. “I’ll tell you later. I’m over it now. Let’s do something fun.”
“We already did,” I deadpan back.
Pie shoots me one of those looks. “He’s not talking about sex, Pell.”
“You two had sex?”
“Yep.” I’m bragging. And it’s not a good look. I get that. But I don’t care. “Twice.”
“Pell!” Pie is no longer annoyed. She’s angry. “Why are you being such an ass?”
“Twice?” Tomas’s tone doesn’t come off jealous or angry. It comes off… wistful.
And now I feel like a dick. So I actually apologize. “Sorry. I am being an ass. But Tomas, shit just happened, man. You missed it.”
“I know. I always miss the sex when we come up here. Why do I even bother?”
“No. Not the sex. Fuck the sex!”
“You have complaints with the sex?” Pie is shooting me a look of are-you-fucking-kidding-me?
“No. That’s not what I meant. I mean”—I nod my head to Tomas—“he… never mind. Tomas, I found a lost memory.”
“Oh, that. Yep. Pell and I were childhood friends, Tomas. Can you believe it?”
Tomas looks at me with one raised eyebrow.
I wave my hand in the air, trying to erase Pie’s statement. “Ignore her. She has no idea what she’s talking about.”
“And now we’re back to this? I’m the stupid one. I’m the clueless one. I have no idea what I’m talking about?”
Tomas puts up his hands. “Hey. Can we not? Like… just for a little bit? I just came off three dungeon days and we’re here in a magical forest—”
“Told you it was magical,” Pie says.
“It’s not magical. It’s a fucking memory. Tell her, Tomas.”
Tomas just looks between us and then says, “How about we move on? Hmm?”
“Do you know the way out?” Pie asks. “I would like to move on too.”
Tomas bows low, waving a hand down the pathway. “This way, my lady.”
I mumble, “Fuck’s sake,” under my breath as we all tread the path. I’m ready to get out of here too—it feels like a very long trip.
Pie and I were not children together. That never happened. That’s not what I saw in the forest room. Anything is possible, but Pie is of the bloodline. So she has to be an eros. And sure, there were a lot of different combinations of monsters back in the day—pretty much every combination possible. With the exception of one. The eros. They were the only pure bloodline left. They were never crossed with anything.
And anyway, I spent my childhood with Tarq. He’s the kid I ran with in the forest, not her.
Tomas and Pie are walking hand in hand. They lean in to each other, like they are gossiping. And who could they be gossiping about? I’m the only person they have in common, so not a hard deduction.
I let that go. Mostly because I have a nice view and I’m a little fixated on Pie’s shape. If she was in human form, I’d be checking out her ass. But as a chimera, her ass is furry. Not shaggy furry, but velvet smooth, the way it is between her legs. I don’t think she realizes that yet, because it’s a lot like a human butt, but it’s got the very light velvety fur over it. It’s cute as fuck, don’t get me wrong. But wood nymph chimera girls are all about the legs and the horns.
And Pie’s are striking on both accounts.
Her horns are gazelle-like. They curve up and twist back, alternating between a light tan and a deep brown. They are more delicate than mine—sharper on the ends and not as thick. And of course, they don’t glow with the heat of hellfire, like mine can under the right circumstances. But they fit her. Perfectly. Because her body is thin and lithe, just like her horns.
Her legs are so damn long, I’m amazed she learned to walk in them so quickly. She bounces with every step, like at any moment she might just spring up and disappear into the canopy of leaves. The fur on her legs is not as shaggy as my own, but it’s very soft and fine. I know. I touched it.
It’s weird that there is all this animosity between us right now when just a little while ago we were in the throes of passion. I was inside her. She was biting my shoulder and moaning into my ear with pleasure.
And now she’s hanging onto Tomas.
I am not jealous of Tomas. I feel sorry for Tomas. If she wants to shower him with personal attention, I’m OK with that. He’s h
ad a rough time and I would be a huge asshole if I was jealous of this little bit of affection she’s showing him.
Because once she finds out what he really is, she won’t be acting like this, that’s for sure.
Pie seems like a nice girl. She is, at the very least, considerate of people. So she would not shun Tomas on purpose. But it’s inevitable. She won’t be able to help it.
“Finally!” Pie squeals and bounds off towards the door that has appeared in the trunk of an unnaturally large white-bark tree. She doesn’t open it. She waits. She’s had fun in here, that’s obvious. But she’s still not sure how it all works, so this waiting is her being careful.
I like careful Pie.
I don’t think she’s very careful in her real life or she wouldn’t have ended up as the slave caretaker of a cursed monster. So this is a good sign that she’s taking things seriously now.
Tomas pauses at the door too, both of them waiting for me to catch up.
“Ready?” I ask. They both nod, Pie’s being more enthusiastic than Tomas’s. This makes me wonder if she’s enjoyed herself here in the hallway rooms. Rather, did she enjoy herself with me?
I certainly had fun, and I would hate for it to be one-sided.
But this is not the time for that conversation, so I grab the door handle and pull it open.
Pie is pressing up against my back, almost using me as a shield as she peeks around my shoulder to get a look.
“Hmm.” Tomas and I both say this at the same time.
“What?” Pie asks. “What’s the problem?”
“Typically, dark hallways are a sign,” I say.
“A sign of what?”
“Fuckery,” Tomas responds.
Pie steps out from behind me and then all three of us are shoulder to shoulder. “What fuckery? I’m gonna need details. Is it bad? I don’t get it.”
“It’s not bad,” I say.
“It’s just… fuckery,” Tomas repeats.
“It means the hallway gods are playing with us.”
Pie steps forward, peering into the darkness. “Well, how do you know? I can’t see any fuckery.”
“Exactly,” Tomas huffs. “It’s gonna be like a little maze in there. You go around a few hallways, and come out into a room. And then bam. You’re inside the fuckery.”
“But what kind?” Pie is starting to lose patience with this explanation, but what Tomas said was accurate. “Are people gonna chase us? Kill us? What’s gonna happen?”
“None of that.” I chuckle. “It’s just…” She shoots me a look that says, If you people say ‘fuckery’ one more time I will lose it, so I just spit it out. “It’s gonna want something from us.”
“And there will be no way out,” Tomas adds. “Not until you give in and do what the hallway gods want.”
“What will they want?”
Both Tomas and I shrug. Then I say, “We won’t know until we get in there.”
“So you two are saying we should not go in?”
“We have to go in. It’s the door,” Tomas explains. “There won’t be another one. It’s move forward and find our way out, or stay here and hope the powers that be get bored with us.”
“Hm.” Pie is thinking. Then she shrugs. “To hell with it. Bring on the fuckery.” And she passes through the door.
Tomas and I both shoot each other a look. He and I have not been in the hallways together in… hell, over a thousand years, at least. And if there was ever a time when we were stuck inside a fuckery room together, I certainly don’t remember it.
He follows Pie in without comment and I follow him.
The door behind me disappears the moment I step through it. And then the hallway I’m in brightens a little, just enough to see where I’m going. Tomas is not that far in front of me. I catch a glimpse of Pie just as she rounds a corner, then disappears.
She calls out, “Holy shit. What is this?”
Tomas and I catch up with Pie and stare down at the contraption in the middle of the room we end up in. It’s not a large room. Maybe twenty feet by twenty. There’s a large window with billowing sheer curtains on one end, but no door. And the minute I step out, the hallway behind me disappears.
“That’s a hookah,” Tomas says, pointing at the contraption. And he’s smiling. “I’ve seen these before. This is gonna be fun, I think.”
Pie looks confused as she stares down at it. “What do we do? Smoke? Then what?”
The hookah is massive. Almost as tall as Pie. It’s made of glass and ceramic painted in traditional designs. There are three hoses spaced equidistant around the central bowl, one mouthtip for each of us.
“Fuck, yeah.” Tomas is smiling big as he plops down on one of the three massive velvet pillows positioned in front of each hose. “I’m gonna smoke the fuck out of this thing. Give it a light, Pie.”
Pie looks at him like he’s already high. “Light it with what?”
“I dunno.” Tomas is already inspecting his hose. “Look around.”
Pie begins searching for matches, but I walk over to the window and throw the curtains aside. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Why? Where are we?” Tomas is only half interested.
“Looks like Morocco.”
Tomas chuckles. “I love hallway Morocco.”
“Have you ever been here?” I ask Tomas.
“Nope.”
Pie has found a box of wooden matches. She lights one and stands over the hookah bowl, touching it to whatever’s inside it.
Tomas is already pulling in smoke.
I’m appalled. “You don’t even know what that is in there. It could be anything.”
Tomas coughs as he blows out smoke. “Who cares what it is?” Then he takes another pull on the hose.
Pie is still standing in the middle of the room. But she’s not looking at me, or Tomas, or even the hookah. She’s looking at the floor.
I look down too. There’s a pretty intricate design made out of inlaid wood.
“What does it mean?” Pie asks.
It’s a circle. And it’s partitioned off into twelve parts. Like a zodiac wheel. But there are no zodiac signs inside. Instead, there are letters in an unfamiliar language. I don’t answer her because I don’t know. But the pictures are easy to read.
“Look.” Pie points to the section Tomas is sitting in. “He’s on that pillow, and in that section there’s a dragon.” She considers this. “House. It’s a house. Like the zodiac. So that’s the House of Dragons.”
Tomas and I both look up at her at the same time. “What?”
“Dragons.” She bends down and traces her finger along the line of markings. “This says ‘House of Dragons.’” Her eyes dart to the next pillow, which is three sections to Tomas’s right. “And that one is the House of Bucks.” I walk around the hookah and bend down next to Pie. “This is where you sit, Pell.”
“How do you figure?”
She shrugs. “You’re Bucks and this is your seat.” She scoots over, making me step aside, and then stops at the third pillow. “Because this one says ‘House of Moths.’ And that’s definitely me.” She makes a face when she looks up at me. “Moths are gross. Why do I have to be a moth?”
“Beautiful wood nymph.” Tomas is still choking on his smoke. The entire room now smells like a mossy wood. Kinda like the place we just left. Damp, and earthy, and humid.
“What?” She’s annoyed with him.
“That’s you.” He points at her. “The beautiful wood nymph is a kind of moth. They’re pretty.”
This makes her even more annoyed with him. “I know that. They were coming out of my hand in that last room.”
“Pie, we didn’t grow up together,” I say. “I don’t know what you saw in that dream or whatever it was, but that’s all it was. A dream.”
She crawls on top of her pillow and grabs her hose, then draws in smoke without answering me.
Whatever.
I sit down on my pillow and take my hose too. I’m not muc
h of a smoker. I drink a little if there’s a reason—like this day in the hallways—but after two thousand years, partying mostly bores me. So I’m not expecting much when I inhale.
But holy shit. I am so wrong. The smoke I inhale is sweet. Not earthy, like the stuff that comes out after. And when I blow it out, my head swims. But not in a dizzying way. It’s more like… clouds. Like wandering through a mist. But not a dark foreboding mist, like the one outside the sanctuary if you try to leave without permission. More like a rainbow.
Tomas is laughing at Pie as she chokes on her smoke and I’m already taking another hit.
I’m not a hundred percent sure what happens next, but all I hear is laughter. Time has passed. I know this because the room is darker now. There are torches on the wall. Lit torches. But none of us did the lighting.
“Oh, my God,” Pie says, getting up from her pillow and crossing the room. Have we been sitting here all day? I can’t remember. “Oh, my God,” Pie says again. She’s peering over her shoulder at us. “Look! It’s a truth or dare machine!” She bends over to pick it up.
Tomas falls over sideways, laughing.
“A what?” There’s smoke in my mouth and it comes out with my words. Then I’m laughing too.
Pie takes her place back on her pillow, holding the heavy cast-iron contraption in her lap and staring down at it fondly. Her eyes are bright with mischief when she looks at me. “They had these at every table at the Penny Arcade Brewery in York. Right after I turned eighteen, I was homeless. I was pretending to be a student at York College that year.” She pauses to smile. “That was fun. I lasted almost four months in the dorm before the RA finally figured out I was living in a top-floor attic everyone had forgotten about. And I sorta dated this guy.” She actually sighs. “For a night.” Then she and Tomas are laughing again.
“Anyway,” I say, annoyed by her college story. “The machine?”
She looks down it in surprise, like she forgot it was in her lap. “Right. Truth or dare! Best. Game. Ever. And that’s not the hookah speaking. It’s just as fun with shots.”
Tomas is still sideways on the ground clutching his stomach as he cackles.