Cuicatl

That night, as I slept, warm and safe and happy in the arms of the man I loved, I found my way back in time to my great, great grandmother.

I stood beside her where she sat in a massive, ornate stone chair. She wore bright gold jewelry around her throat and wrists, and little else, her long hair like a thick, raven river around her shoulders.

Beside her, I was delighted to see Agmund sitting tall and handsome beside Cuicatl where he belonged, with his cloak of bright feathers in place.

I had the oddest feeling that a great deal of time had passed since I was there last. I looked out at what the couple were watching. Definitely, a lot of time had passed. The stadium that had been in the early construction phase when I first met Quetzalcoatl and his wife was now in use, and already showed some signs of wear, so it had been in use for many years.

What looked like a few thousand people screamed and hollered and urged on their favorites, as the game played out below. Food sellers hawked their wares up and down the aisles. It wasn't all that different from a UT game at Texas stadium.

I grinned. In some ways, people just don’t change all that much, no matter what time period or part of the world they lived in.

I watched the game, contentedly for a while, in the shadow of Cuicatl’s massive stone throne. She hadn't noticed that I was there yet. I decided to just let her watch the game. I remembered Agmund saying that there was no higher purpose than to play, since without joy, what was the point of life? Let them have their fun. I’d say my hellos when the game was over.

The athletes wore nothing but tiny loincloths, showing off beautifully fit bodies, their thick black hair braided and bound out of the way. They ran and bounced the ball with every body part but their hands. It was sort of a combination of soccer and basketball from what I could tell. The high, vertical goal was barely bigger than the ball, though. It looked crazy hard to hit.

I saw two near misses that had the crowd gasping in unison. Then, finally, one unusually tall, beautifully built man practically ran up the barely tilted wall like it was flat ground, a teammate passed him the ball. I held my breath along with everyone else, and ... Bam! He smacked that ball with an elbow right through that crazy difficult goal.

The crowd went crazy jumping up and down and making so much noise, it washed over us in a wave.

With an ear-to-ear grin, I looked over at Cuicatl, expecting to see her cheering like the rest.

Her hand was over her mouth in an expression of absolute horror.

I blinked. My smile faded. Why was my great, great grandmother upset? Did she have some kind of huge bet on the other team winning?

I looked over at Agmund. He had a satisfied smile on his face, like nothing I’d ever seen before. That expression had a cat that ate the canary smugness that just didn’t seem to fit what I knew about my great, great grandfather.

My first thought was to ask either Cuicatl or Agmund what was going on, but some instinct held me back. Maybe if I just watched a little more, I’d understand.

The game went on for a bit longer, but no one even came close to scoring another goal. It was clear, when a man in a tall, feathered headdress walked out and dropped a huge red flower to signal the end of the game, exactly who had won.

The winning team didn’t seem nearly as jubilant as I would have expected. They all reached out reverently one by one to touch the tall man who had scored the goal. The losing team all at once, dropped to their knees and covered their faces in front of the man.

Wow. I've heard of worshiping sports heroes, but these guys really went all the way.

The tall hero of the day walked, head high, to the end of the stadium where the Aztec god and goddess sat with the best view of all. He climbed the steep steps to stand in front of us.

Cuicatl and Agmund both stood. The boisterous crowd went silent.

“Well done!” Agmund said. “It pleases me immensely that you all compete for this honor with such zeal!” He laughed, as if at some marvelous private joke.

I heard his voice echo back from the other side of the stadium. Agmund’s stadium design clearly included awesome acoustics. Everyone in the stadium could hear him.

The dragon in the feathered cloak walked forward and laid his hands on the man’s shoulders. Compared to the tall, Norwegian dragon, the Aztec champion looked a lot shorter than he did standing next to his teammates. “You have proven yourself most worthy of all this day!”

“Thank you, oh great one.” The handsome man’s chin trembled, and he blinked a few times, emotion threatening to overwhelm him. He knelt down, covered his eyes, then held his hands upward to Agmund. “For all of eternity, I will cherish this honor.”

Agmund chuckled darkly. “Of course you will.”

The man laid face up on the stone front of the dais in front of where the two stone thrones sat, in full view of the entire stadium.

Cuicatl knelt next to the champion, her face filled with sadness. “You will feel no pain. I promise you.” She shifted into scaly humanoid form. It was the first time I’d seen her in her humanoid form. Her vivid, shimmering purple wing feathers ran down her back and under her arms. They looked a lot like a feathered cloak. I could see where the feathered cloak style for royalty came from.

The gold necklace around her neck looked more like a collar on the larger form. The ornate design actually aimed spikes toward the shimmering iridescent purple scales on her neck, spikes that glowed softly. I’d seen that glow before somewhere.

It took me a moment to remember where. I’d seen it on the weapons that the Georgians used to try to kill Vlad, weapons that could pierce dragon scales.

With a twist in my guts, I recognized that necklace as a pretty, but very deadly, form of slave collar. If Cuicatl shifted to her massive panther/eagle battle form, those spikes would kill her. She could attain only two forms while wearing it, human and scaly humanoid, or what I tended to think of as normal, everyday dragon form.

I swallowed. And took another quiet step back into the shadows behind the thrones.

Agmund would never do that to Cuicatl.

That wasn't Agmund.

Cuicatl popped claws on one hand, and gently inserted one, like I would a hypodermic needle, into the crook of the ball game champion’s arm.

His body went limp, and his eyes, while still open, lost focus. The quiver in his chin that the stoic champion had been unable to control, relaxed. His beautifully toned body lay stretched out on the stone as if comfortably sunning himself.

Cuicatl put a hand on the champion’s shoulder. To those watching, it might look as if she was holding him down, but the courage of the champion made that unnecessary. She was simply offering him comfort.

The man who wasn't Agmund shifted to his normal humanoid dragon form.

He stepped forward with a fanged smile that made me wonder how I EVER could have mistaken that man for my jovial great, great grandfather. The dragon with Agmund’s face put one foot on either side of the champion’s legs and knelt down astride him.

His hand had the normal sharp, but venomless claws that all dragons, other than the Aztec Purples, had. He smashed his hand directly through the champion’s rib bones, and ripped free the man’s still beating heart.

I couldn't tear my eyes away from the champion’s face. He was alive and conscious for a few seconds, long enough to see the dragon that had ripped away his life stand and hold aloft his beating heart for the thunderously cheering crowd to see. Long enough to watch as the monster that had killed him took a bite from his heart.

The Agmund-faced beast ripped into the lump of still wiggling muscle with a dragon’s sharp teeth, relishing the gushing scarlet blood that dripped down his chin, like the juice of a delicious fruit.

My stomach heaved. I covered my mouth and fought the urge to vomit. I couldn't help but make a gagging sound. The sound of the crowd would have covered for me, if not for the perfect acoustics.

Cuicatl’s head whipped round. Her catlike eyes narrowed as she struggled to make out my shadowy form. “Daughter of my daughter,” she whispered. “You have been gone for a century. You should not have come back. I am ashamed for you to see what I have become. You gave me my freedom, but I was unable to keep it.”

“Who is that?” I asked her.

The blood-soaked monster that looked like Agmund turned around to face me, clearly having no trouble seeing me.

Cuicatl stood, and introduced us formally, her eyes on her toes. “This is Smoking Mirror, the Obsidian One, the dark reflection of the one I once loved. He is my husband now.”

“The dark mirror of the benevolent Quetzelcoatl,” I said softly, as all the dots connected in my brain. Agmund’s evil twin. Alrek? Had I invited this horror into my house? Had I just had Christmas dinner with this monster? Could Agmund have more than one twin brother? “Alrek?”

“Yes, I am Alrek.” He bowed, while licking the blood from his chin. “And you need no introduction, since my stupid wife has already given away who you are, daughter of our daughter. It seems that our mating WILL eventually produce offspring. Although I would prefer sons, if my children gain the ability to travel in time, as well as claws, then my line will prove truly powerful beyond all others. Welcome, future child of my line.”

I lifted my head and wrinkled my nose. “I’m no child of yours, for which I am very thankful. Agmund was my ancestor. What have you done with him?” I growled.

“I killed him, of course,” Alrek said with a satisfied smile on his blood-smeared face. “Stabbed him in the back as soon as he told me he’d fathered a child with claws that could paralyze or kill. The idiot actually seemed surprised to see my blade come out of his chest. Of course, I couldn't allow his children to have an ability that mine didn’t. That would make his line more powerful than mine.”

I blinked tears for the laughing god who asked that his worshipers release butterflies in his honor, not give him the beating hearts of their champions. Then, the anger hit. This monster was raping my great great grandmother regularly to try to make babies with claws. I popped out my own claws. “Release Cuicatl.”

Alrek laughed, really laughed, a lot. Like the time when I told Agmund that Fafnir was a wise mentor. He laughed until he had to set down the heart and hold his sides. “Do you threaten me, fledgling?” he chuckled again, as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

It was insulting. I’d fought giant robots and flame-throwing super-villains. I could handle an elder dragon. Sure. Yeah.

Okay, not a chance. But I wasn't going to let him keep Cuicatl, the woman who looked and smelled like my mother, as his personal sex slave, and do nothing. “Yes,” I said softly. “I do threaten you. Take that collar off of her and Let. Her. Go.”

Cuicatl looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You must not defy him, child. He can kill you before you ever even have a chance to be born.”

Alrek casually back-handed my great, great grandmother in the face. “Silence, female. At least this one shows some spirit.”

Cuicatl fell backward onto the steep stone steps and rolled down a few steps, grunting with the pain.

Alrek’s burning red eyes narrowed on me. “How can you be my brother’s descendant? I killed his child.”

I swallowed. If I wasn't careful about what I said, I could get my little great-grandmother killed. “Maybe Agmund is not as dead as you think.” I’m a terrible liar. I never regretted that so much as now.

Alrek rolled his eyes. “I ate my brother’s heart, chopped him up into pieces and buried him in different parts of the jungle.”

“There are powerful magics that can bring a dragon back even from beyond death,” I said truthfully. “Merlin knows these magics.”

“The wizard who travels in time,” Alrek said, thoughtfully.

“Merlin’s power sent me back in time.” That was sort of true. “You have no idea what I am capable of.” That was true, too, thank goodness. “Now, set Cuicatl free.”

“Or what?” Alrek said, with a mischievous smile.

Cuicatl had crawled back up to the dais, but she stayed on her hands and knees, eyes on the stone floor in shame as I spat reckless defiance in the face of her captor.

“Or I will cripple you,” I said softly, thinking of Alrek’s limp. It’s possible that he got that limp here today. Likely even. I saved my great grandmother’s life last time I was here. I wasn't just coming back by chance. Something was drawing me back exactly when I was really needed. It had to have been Cuicatl who drew me back today. I didn’t know why she needed me so badly, but I would do whatever I could for her. “Today, you will be crippled for life, if you do not free Cuicatl.”

Faster than I could react, Alrek's right hand, coated in the still warm blood of the human champion, flew out and grabbed me by the throat. He lifted me right off my feet.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even gasp or choke or try to breathe. My mouth opened wide, trying for air, but nothing came. His grip all but crushed my neck.

“Merlin is a fool to send a fledgling back in time to try to change what has already been written. My line will destroy his one day, along with all the inferior dragon lines with only one power. That’s what he’s trying to prevent, isn't it? Once I have what I need from them, I will destroy all other clans. Only my descendants will continue. One day, all dragons will be Obsidian.”

I clawed desperately at the hand holding me, and was surprised when I actually scratched through the dark shimmering scales to draw blood. My claws were a combination of the unmatched strength of the Silver clan, and the powerful venom of the Aztec Purples. It was ironic really. I was exactly what this maniac was trying to build, a dragon with the powers of multiple clans combined.

His arm dropped limply by his side.

I dropped in a little heap, and tried to remember what air felt like through the burning in my throat. I coughed and coughed, and nearly threw up.

He looked alarmed for a second or two, then chuckled again. “This will heal in minutes. You don’t even know how to use the venom to full affect.”

I swiped toward his legs, weakly.

He stepped back a few feet, almost casually. He sighed. “I tire of this game. I thought, perhaps, you might prove a worthy opponent. But you forget, little fledgling. I have the blood of Eric the Red in my veins.” He started inhaling hugely, like a kid about to blow out birthday candles.

Oh, shit. Reds breathe fire.

I was sort of fire resistant, but only a full coat of silver scales like my grandmother had, charged with the power of lightning, could withstand a direct blast of Red dragon flame.

I curled in a tiny ball, and thought, Now would be a really good time to wake up.

But instead of a blowtorch blast, Alrek’s mouth let out a scream.

Cuicatl had bitten him hard on the ankle. She may have given up on fighting for herself, but she would never just watch that monster kill me and do nothing. Her fangs didn’t pierce, but she bit hard enough to make him hurt. She tried to claw him, too, but her claws were black, not silver, not hard enough to pierce his scales.

He kicked her in the face.

I heard her cheekbone snap, but she just shook her head and bit him again.

I leaped to help her, without bothering to get to my feet. My silver claws ripped a long gash in Alrek’s leg scales.

Rage. My great, great grandmother had told me the key to the intensity of the claw venom was rage. I hadn't been pissed off enough when I clawed Alrek’s hand to do any real damage. The horrible things he’d done hadn't really sunk in yet in my mind, so I wasn't angry enough.

Oh, but Cuicatl was. She had rage to spare.

She sank her claws into Alrek’s leg muscle through the slash I’d made, and ripped for all she was worth. Her yellow cat eyes blazed fierce, angry red in the center with berserk hatred for the man who had murdered her husband and her child, imprisoned her and raped her repeatedly. “You will not harm any more of my family!!”

Alrek fell.

Cuicatl ripped his leg open from knee to ankle. The venom from her claws made the flesh swell with huge blisters that oozed sluggish black blood with a foul smell. 

Alrek's eyes widened. His pupils expanded, the darkness rapidly swallowing his own red glow. For a moment, it looked like he might lose consciousness.

Then Alrek shook his head, roared, and shifted to battle form. A sinuous dragon’s body as long as a freight train car filled the dais. He curled clear around the stone thrones and surrounded us in his coils. He blinked his softball-sized reptilian eyes. They gained back their focus, and immediately honed in on the dragon who had hurt him.

The collar on Cuicatl’s neck trapped her in her far smaller, weaker humanoid form. She faced the massive dragon, with teeth as long as her forearm, head high with the feathered cloak of her wings giving her a noble aspect. “I do not fear you. I will never fear you again.”

“No, you won’t, you barbaric little whore.” Alrek’s one functional hand lashed out. He pierced through her chest scales with his claws and shattered her ribs with the unmatched power of an elder dragon, as easily as his humanoid dragon form had pierced the chest of the human champion.

He ripped Cuicatl’s beating heart from her body.

She smiled at him triumphantly as she collapsed to her knees. Blood bubbled through her mouth as she said with her last breath, “I carry your son in my belly.” She dropped limply to the stone beside the dead champion. Her lifeblood spread in a wide pool, mixing with the human’s.

“NOOOOO!!!” Alrek howled, as the dragon’s heart he held in his hand beat once more, then stopped forever, taking his dream of a powerful son with it.

“No!” I whispered, weeping for Cuicatl, my courageous great, great grandmother who had died a thousand years ago, fighting to protect me. Her desperation to be free had called me back to her.

Now, she was free.

The morning light of the modern world dragged me back to my own time, still weeping bitterly.

D Dragon

I Was Dragon-napped!

So much happened, I haven’t had a chance to write until now, but I know it always helps me make sense of things when I write them down. So, here goes.

When I woke up, I was tied to a chair and the guy with the curly hair and the broken nose had just slapped me. That’s what woke me up.

If I had still been a dragon, that chair would have been usable as vampire stakes, the ropes around my wrists would have been knitting yarn, and that guy would have had a black eye to go with his broken nose. As it was, all I could do was glare at him. It just wasn’t as satisfying.

I remembered what my great-great grandmother Cuicatl said, that I was just human because I wanted to be, and tried to change back. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused really hard on scales and wings, claws and fangs.

The curly-haired guy slapped me again.

Wow, that got old fast.

“Keep it up, jerk, and I’ll rip your heart out and eat it.” It had scared me into almost wetting myself when Cuicatl used that threat on me, but the thug just laughed. 

“Ooh, I’m shakin’,” he said, but he wasn’t, unfortunately.

I guess the threat had more impact coming from a room-sized dragon with six inch claws and fangs.

I tried to get my bearings, figure out where they’d taken me while I was unconscious, but between being slapped twice and whatever they’d drugged me with, my brain wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

The polo shirt wearing guy with the huge biceps, the really ugly Hispanic guy with the scarred face, and the woman with too much lipstick were all there, whispering to each other a little ways away in what appeared to be a large, empty warehouse.

I tried to listen in, caught something about “I thought he’d be here by now,” and “Don’t question the will of the Obsidian one.”

That really made my ears prick up. Cuicatl had called the monster who murdered her daughter and kidnapped her, Smoking Mirror or the Obsidian one. Bingo, I finally understood the connection between my ancestor and me, and why I kept getting pulled back to her time. She and I were fighting the same enemy.

How the heck was that possible, though? From what I could tell by searching Google and Wikipedia, Cuicatl and Quetzelcoatl had to have lived in Central America more than a thousand years ago, maybe more like 1500 years ago. How could Smoking Mirror be a threat to me now, today, in Texas?

Curly Hair smacked me in the face again hard enough that I knew my cheek would be red for hours and involuntary tears started in my eyes. It kind of broke my train of thought. “What the heck, dude? You get your jollies popping women in the face?”

“Not women,” he said with a grin twisted by the plastic and tape on his nose. “Just you, bitch. Doctors said my nose will be crooked for life. If the Dark God hadn’t specifically told us not to, I’d bust you up good.”

“And if my hands weren’t tied, you’d have a few missing teeth, but we can’t all get what we want.” He smacked me again.

I growled, and started focusing again on being a dragon. I really, really wanted claws and super strength right then. I felt a little tingly weird in my skin. I thought maybe it was working. Then there was a shattering bangy overwhelming crash, kind of like a pickup being driven into the side of a metal building and taking down a fair amount of one wall.

The pickup was Donovan’s.

The thugs all whirled around, putting their backs to me to face the new threat.

Donovan stuck his pistol out the open driver’s window and shouted, “Everybody freeze!”

For a second, everybody did.

Then, Curly Hair crouched behind me so I was a human shield, and stuck a .45 in my ear. “Back off or the bitch dies!”

“Really? You’re pulling that old sock out of the drawer?” I said. Then I bashed the back of my head into his broken nose.

Blood gushed. He fell to his knees, moaning and crying, and mumbling something like, “Kill you, you bith, kill you, …” It was a little hard to understand him through the gushing blood and the hands, but I got the message when he blinked tears and aimed the .45 at my head with a wobbly hand.

Crap.

I did the only thing I really could do. I tipped the chair over on its side. I banged my elbow hard enough to lose some skin on the concrete, but the bullet missed me.

Donovan shot him. Three shots, center mass, very close grouping. Curly Hair no longer had to worry about what shape his nose was.

All hell broke loose around me.

The bad guys opened fire on Donovan’s pickup while running for the big hole in the wall, trying to escape.

White Knight jumped out of the back of the pickup in full armor. Bullets pinged off my grandmother’s impenetrable silver scales, making little sparks, as Knight chased the bad guys, and gal.

Knight caught the woman with the bright lipstick first. He just tripped her, took her gun and kept running. He caught Scar Face next.

Just when Big Biceps thought he’d made it out, Jack stepped out from beside the warehouse wall and hit him in the ribs with the taser. Big Biceps spasmed, jerked and went down, all that muscle turned against him. Jack kept the taser on him for a while, just to make sure he stayed down.

Donovan covered Lipstick with his gun, while backing toward me to untie me. She raised her hands, showing the black and yellow skull tattoo on her palm, but got to her feet and made a run for it when Donovan looked down at the ropes for a second.

She threw a clothesline punch at Jack as she ran past, but he ducked. He got her in the back with the taser and down she went. Two for Jack.

Only Scar Face still stood. He fought Knight like a demon, got a couple of really good hits in, but the armor took a lot of the sting out of them. Knight finally hit the guy, open handed, hard enough to launch him off his feet and into the metal wall.

He left a smear of blood on the sheet steel wall as he went down.

Knight checked Scar Face’s pulse to make sure he was still alive, but it was clear he wasn’t getting up any time soon.

I’d been rescued. In between feeling elated and grateful and kind of freaked out, I have to admit I felt a little miffed.

Donovan gave me a hand up. “You okay, boss?” He asked it as a real question, not just a standard thing to say.

“I’m good. I’ve just always been the dragon. I’m not so keen on this damsel in distress gig.”

Donovan nodded understanding. “I’d prefer you didn’t make it a habit.”

“Don’t worry.”

Donovan grinned. “I always worry. That’s my job.”

White Knight scooped me up in his arms and hugged the stuffings out of me.

“Knight,” I gasped. “Human … ribs…”

“Oh, sorry.” He let me breathe, and I gracefully pushed away from his well-muscled, sexy-scented shiny-armored seriously hot body. Not that I noticed or anything. “I just. I was so scared that we’d be too late, that they would have …”

Jack got there, face as frantic with worry as Knight’s voice.

I threw myself into Jack’s arms, and started sniffling. Embarrassing, but true. I’d been holding it together pretty well until then.

Jack stroked my hair and held me tight. “That’s why,” I whispered into his ear, and he squeezed me tighter.

“Are you okay, Dee?” Jack said softly while I got his collar wet.

“I’m okay. I was just scared that one of them might have hurt you. They didn’t do anything worse to me than a sunburned cheek.”

“I’ll kill the bastard who hit you,” Knight muttered through clenched teeth.

“Too late. Donovan beat you to it.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve and pulled myself together. I might be the damsel in need of rescuing this time, but damned if I was going to act like one.

Big Biceps groaned and looked like he might get up.

Donovan and Knight covered him and Lipstick until the cops got there. Jack stayed with me. I wouldn’t let him go for a while.

I knew Detective Long was going to have a field day with those guys.

He did, too, but it didn’t do us any good.

I’ll write more later.

D Dragon

Obsidian

I woke up on an uneven stone floor in pitch darkness. I couldn’t see a thing. Not one speck of light leaked in. The strong scent of damp stone, the complete lack of light, and the moldy, stale air gave me the impression I was somewhere deep underground. As I shifted, I was surprised to not feel any sort of ropes or anything. I wasn’t tied. I also felt the scrape of scales against the stone.

It felt like I was a dragon again. It felt really odd. I’d been human for months, except for that one time when I travelled back in time and saved my infant great grandmother. I extended the claws on my left hand and felt the click, like the click of a pen. Yup. Dragon.

I blinked tears. I wouldn’t be one of the guys anymore at the fire station. People would give me that look on the street. I’d have to wear clothes that covered me from head to toe even in the heat of summer, and cover my eyes in the day time. Damn it, I didn’t even get a chance to make love to Jack.

I’d been kidnapped, was locked in a stone room underground in total darkness, and I was crying because I’d gone back to being a freak. Sometimes I wonder about my sanity. And my priorities.

A hand touched my shoulder in the darkness. I yelped and about jumped out of my scales.

“I am sorry,” a familiar feminine voice said softly. “I did not mean to frighten you. I heard you weeping and meant to offer comfort.”

“Ma?”

The voice chuckled bitterly. “No, daughter of my daughter. I am still not your mother. I am no one’s mother now.”

“Great great grandmother?” But if Cuicatl was there, that meant I had travelled back in time. My body was still in the year 2012, probably unconscious from whatever chemical had been on that rag the bad guys stuffed in my face, but the essence of what made me me was a long, long way from home.

“Why were you weeping, child?”

“I thought I’d turned back into a dragon. I’ve been human since the first time I met you, but each time I come back here, I’m always a dragon. I didn’t realize I wasn’t in my own time.”

“This,” she touched my left shoulder, covered with thick metallic scales, “This is the truth of who you are. The body of a dragon changes with every mood and whim. The spirit is constant.”

“I don’t know about the mood and whim thing. I’ve been stuck as a human for months.”

“Then you have not truly wished to be anything but human.”

“It sucked when I was trying to dig Jack out of the rubble and when I got shut out of the bomb threat thing because I was a normal. Not to mention when those guys were trying to blow up the nuclear plant. I would have loved to have been a dragon again right then.” It would have been a lot harder for those goons to kidnap me, too.

“Perhaps. But your deepest desire is still to be like others. A dragon cannot lie to her body. It will respond only to what you truly feel, not to what you think you should feel.”

That was a little hard to accept. “I don’t think it’s that simple for me. I’ve wanted to be human my whole life, but I never became human until you touched me.”

“You believe I am the one who altered your body?”

“It happened when you kissed me. I keep wondering if I need you to change me back.”

My great-great grandmother was silent for a while. In the total darkness, it was like I was alone if she didn’t touch me or speak. I scooted closer to her so we sat side by side, leaning against the damp stone wall. I could feel the warmth of her smaller form beside me.

She put an arm around my shoulders. I scrunched down and leaned in so she could snuggle me like Ma does. I barely knew this woman but every instinct in me responded to her as if she were my own mother.

Her instincts seemed to react the same to me. “You wept when you thought your body had changed. I do not think I would change you back, even if such a thing were in my power.”

She stroked my hair while I thought about that. “You seem so much more real here in the darkness,” she murmured almost to herself. “Here, my eyes do not tell me you are insubstantial. I feel the warmth of your body and the texture of your scales. I smell the scent of the strange oils you cleanse your hair with. You are as real as my own children.” Her voice caught. “Except that you yet live.” She shuddered and her arms tightened around me.

I wrapped my arms around her waist to hug her, and felt a thick chain trailing down her back from a heavy collar around her throat. I’d been so busy wallowing in my own self-pity, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why my great-great grandmother was in a dank, lightless underground cell.

After a moment, her voice shaky, she asked, “Did you truly save my baby girl?”

“I got her to your sister before I was pulled back to my own time. She should be okay.” If my baby great-grandmother wasn’t okay, I probably would be a ghost, or nothing at all.

“Thank you, child. My sister’s husband has three fierce and loyal brothers. The Obsidian one will not dare to attack them. My child is safe, and my sister will raise her as if my baby were her own.” She squeezed me a little. “Alone for so long in the darkness, I despaired. I believed my little one dead just like her sister, and that you were an illusion I dreamt in desperation. It seems you have come again, when I most desperately need you.”

“I’m real.” I thought about the fact that I technically wouldn’t be born for centuries. “Well, I will be real, eventually.”

We sat quietly for a while, just enjoying the warmth of each other’s company. I wondered if my great-great grandmother might still be alive in my day. Dragons lived a long time. Maybe I could look her up. Yeah, like in the dragon yellow pages, or I could just Google Cuicatl and see how many hits I got.

I heard a noise, footsteps, muffled male voices. A trace of faint orange light that seemed far brighter than it probably was flickered around the cracks of what I could now see was a thick stone door.

The cell we were in was an eight foot featureless stone cube of space. It looked like it might have been carved right into bedrock, rather than built.

“Smoking Mirror comes for me, daughter of my daughter,” Cuicatl whispered. “It will not be safe for you here. Go back to your own time.”

“I don’t really have much control over it. I seem to just come when I need something from you, or you need something from me.”

“The only thing I need is for the Obsidian one to die an agonizing death.” Cuicatl’s eyes glowed red in the darkness.

“Well, if he can’t see me, maybe I can …”

“No, child,” Cuicatl interrupted me, her hands squeezed my arms hard. “You stay far away from him. I would not see him harm another of my family.”

“Where the heck is Agmund? I thought he would have sent this jerk packing by now.”

“I do not know what has happened to my husband. I fear the worst.”

The footsteps approached the door. Stone ground against stone as it ponderously swung open.

I stepped to one side of the door and flattened against the wall, so they wouldn’t see me, not thinking about the fact that I was already invisible to nearly everyone in this time.

Three men came in wearing loin cloths and a bright yellow stripe of paint across the upper half of their dark faces. Their eyes were wide and frightened. They reminded me a little of the tattoos that the men in my time wore who kept blowing up pieces of my city. Black skulls with staring eyes and yellow paint stripes across the forehead and cheeks.

While one held a torch, the other two men restrained Cuicatl. One pushed her to the wall by her collar with a 6 foot long forked pole. He twisted and the pole latched onto the collar at her throat. The other warily circled her as far as he could in the confined space and unhooked the long chain from the wall.

The man with the torch led the way out the door and up a flight of narrow stone steps. The pole man followed with Cuicatl walking behind him at the end of the pole. She had no claws in her human form and the collar was too small for her to shift into battle form without strangling herself, but these guys weren’t taking any chances. I’d seen her kill a couple of them with her bare hands the last time I was here, with one arm full of baby. It made sense for them to be careful.

The last man picked up the rear carrying the long chain that had held her to the wall. He held tightly with both hands to the center of the chain about four feet behind Cuicatl, letting the last four feet dangle down loosely.

I crept behind him. None of them gave any indication that they saw me. The only light came from the torch bearer at the front of the line. At the back, the man I followed probably could barely see the stairs he put his feet on.

I wrapped the loose end of the chain around his throat as quickly as I could. I lifted him off his feet with my other arm and carried him up the stairs at a steady pace. He frantically squirmed and fought in my arms, unable to make a sound with the chain around his throat.

He was wiry strong, but I was back to the strength level that meant I didn’t need a jack to change a tire on my Jeep. He didn’t stand a chance.

When his eyes rolled up in his head and he went limp, I unwound the chain from his throat, dropped him quietly on the steps and kept walking. He wasn’t dead, but I only cared a little bit.

I wound up the chain carefully, and handed it to Cuicatl as I passed her. Her eyes got big. She put a hand on my arm. She couldn’t see me clearly, but she knew what I’d done. She shook her head frantically at me, trying to stop me from doing something that might put me in harm’s way.

I squeezed her arm back, reassuringly I hoped, and ignored the warning.

The narrow stairs turned sharply enough that the pole guy had a hard time getting around the corner. The torch guy got a little bit ahead of him. I whacked the pole guy on the back of the head. He went down immediately, but the pole clattered before I could stop it.

The torch guy looked back, saw his friend down and Cuicatl standing over him with the chains in her hand, and ran up the stairs like a monkey with his tail on fire.

Damn.

I started to chase the guy, but he was way faster than me.

“Damson!” Cuicatl whisper shouted.

I came back down. “What?”

“You must get away from me. Smoking Mirror will be able to see you. You must not be here when that one fetches him.”

“I think you must not be here either. Let’s get this collar off you.”

I twisted the pole to unlock it from her collar. There was no lock on the collar itself. From what I could tell, it had been made around her neck. That must have been incredibly unpleasant.

I crumpled the metal into a crease, which made it almost tight enough to choke Cuicatl. She didn’t so much as flinch, just waited for me to do what I was going to do. I bent it back out and crimped it again, over and over, weakening the metal. It didn’t take that long, but it felt like bad guys were going to pour down that stone staircase at any second.

Maybe we should have just gotten out of there and removed the collar and chain later.

Finally, the fatigued metal cracked. I grabbed it with both hands and pulled as hard as I could. I got it open enough that Cuicatl could slip her neck free.

She spat on the thing as soon as it dropped to the stone. Then she grinned fiercely in the general direction of my face. We ran up those stairs as fast as two sets of bare dragon feet could run.

We came out into a maze of carved stone corridors filled with men and spears.

“Get behind me, child,” Cuicatl said. The tone of her voice made me think I shouldn’t argue with her just then.

She shifted into battle form, filling the corridor with feathery scaly angry beast.

I couldn’t see very well around the snarling creature in front of me, but there were a lot of screams and blood. She kept running up the slanting corridor on all fours at nearly full speed, killing men as she ran.

I was really glad she was on my side.

We turned a corner and ran out into open air. The ground dropped out from under my feet into one of those steep stair-steps leading down.

Cuicatl launched herself into the air.

I squeaked as I tumbled ass over teakettle. There are times when being naturally armored is a really, really good thing.

The men who were trying to stop us chunked spears at Cuicatl but she had launched with pretty good speed. She could have gotten away clean.

She turned on a wing tip and came back, for me.

Her huge eagle’s wings swooped over me, dodging thrown spears as she flew down the steep face of a step pyramid. Her feet reached toward me, but she couldn’t see me clearly, so they grabbed air next to me.

I grabbed onto her ankle. She dragged me for a few steps flapping furiously, then we made it into the humid night air.

Once we’d gained some altitude, I let go.

“Damson!” she shouted, afraid I had fallen.

“I’m all right. I can fly on my own wings. The steps just caught me by surprise.”

Spears no longer followed us. We left the village rapidly behind and flew over a canopy of trees.

“Thank you, child. For my freedom and for the life of my baby. I owe much to a woman not yet born.”

I felt the awe shucks urge and changed the subject. “Why did Smoking Mirror have you captive anyway? What does he want from you?”

“My claws.”

“Huh?”

“The Obsidian one has the blood of many dragons in his veins. This has given him great power. He seeks to mix his blood with the blood of the ancient kings of this land, my fathers. He wants me to give him a son with venomous claws like mine.”

“I have claws like yours. What does the venom do?”

“Do you not know, child?”

“It seems to numb and maybe paralyze folks, but I don’t know the extent of it.”

“The claws will paralyze, yes. The deeper your rage and the greater the venom dose given, the longer and more extensive the paralysis will be. If you use your claws lightly when calm, they can give surcease from pain and sensation. It can be a mercy to an injured friend. If you use them in a killing rage, a deep wound from your claws will slowly kill. The paralysis will spread from the wound until even your enemy’s heart will freeze.”

“Wow. I guess it’s lucky I only scratched Domina Death and Bobcat. I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“You have a gentle heart, daughter of my daughter. If I could kill Smoking Mirror, …”

Her voice vanished in mid-sentence as I felt a slap on my face.

“Hey, cut it out.” I tried to reach up and swat away the hand, but mine were tied behind my back.

Oh, crap. Fire alarm. I’ll have to write the rest later.

D Dragon

Charity at Gun Point

I spent a fair amount of last Saturday begging on a street corner. Not really what I thought I’d be doing when I became a firefighter, but it was for the Breast Cancer Resource Center.  It’s a great charity that helps women who have breast cancer with things insurance companies never think about, like a babysitter for their kids while they have chemo treatments, or things as simple as a special pillow so they can sleep more comfortably. If I had to stand on a corner holding a rubber boot to support them, then I’d stand around holding a boot.

Being an EMT for the fire department means I get 48 hours off after each 24 hours on duty. It’s an odd schedule, but I’m used to odd schedules. With all that free time in big blocks, I can see why Novak chose this as his other job. It’s the perfect job for a superhero. I can’t fight crime anymore, but Liberty always says giving to charity makes everyone a hero. So, I’ve been using the extra time to volunteer for a local charity Halloween event that also benefits BCRC. "Helping to put the Boo into Boobies" I got a t-shirt that said that right across the chest. Made me chuckle.

I was actually doing the boot holding thing on duty. The whole department was out. We had our trucks parked in a shopping mall on the corner, and radios on, so if an emergency call came in, we could still do our jobs. Novak, Jack, Tamara and I were on the four sides of the busy intersection of 183 and I35 in North Austin.

Donovan’s pickup was parked under the overpass on the concrete shoulder. It annoyed me that he kept following me around, but he just sat in his cab with the windows down, enjoying the pleasant fall weather and the latest John Ringo novel. I couldn’t get rid of him, but at least he knew how to stay unobtrusive.

I really used to think me having a bodyguard was silly. Not so much anymore.

A big forest green Dodge van pulled up to the red light. The driver, a Mexican woman in her early thirties wearing bright red lipstick, waved me over with a twenty in her hand.

As I got right up to the window, the driver smiled, pulled out a .45 and stuck it in my face.

“Are you kidding me?” I got really indignant. I think maybe I channeled my mother for a few seconds. “You should be ashamed of yourself. There’s like $200 in this boot, and it’s slated to help some poor woman who's fighting for her life. If you can afford gas for this hulk, then you sure as heck don’t need this money more than the charity does.”

The woman looked at the boot with distaste. “Leave it. Get in the van or I’ll blow your head off.”

A side door opened. A guy with huge biceps and a familiar tattoo pointed another gun at me. He grabbed the front of my uniform shirt and dragged me toward the van. 

I dug in my heels and threw the boot at him. I'd rather get shot right there than get into a vehicle with those guys. I tried an arm up, twist move that Tamara had taught me to escape choke holds, but the big guy lifted me off my feet before I got going.

An all too familiar white guy with curly hair, a broken nose, and the same tattoo reached toward me from the back of the van, with a folded white cloth in his hand.

I pushed the button on the radio on my shoulder. “Crap. I’m being kidnapped. The guys from the nuclear plant!”

Big Biceps kept me from wriggling away while Curly Hair shoved the cloth in my face.

I took a little nap after that.

D Dragon

Bomb Dogs and Biology

We got a call that there was a bomb threat at UT yesterday. Some guy called the campus cops, said he was with Al Qaeda and 90 bombs were planted on campus. Our unit got called along with three other fire trucks, the supe squad, ten bomb sniffing K-9 units, and Detective Long.

Liberty, Jupiter Joe and Alrek, the dragon who looked just like Agmund, my great-great grandfather, also came.

We parked our fire truck by the biology ponds, on Inner Campus Drive, right in front of the clock tower in the center of campus. I love that spot. Under normal circumstances, the pigeons and the squirrels are so tame as to be practically pets. I’ve gotten them to eat out of my hands and let me touch them at quiet moments in the past when this campus had been my home.

Now, the birds were all scattered from the tension and noise of the huge unfamiliar vehicles. One squirrel griped at us from the branches of a huge spreading oak. But the glassy ponds with their blooming water lilies and turtles sunning on rocks still managed somehow to look peaceful. It made me smile a little until I saw another vehicle pull in behind us and park off to the side.

Donovan followed the fire truck, in his pickup. His long strides closed the distance rapidly.

“I’m supposed to be rescuing people and putting out fires. I don’t really need a bodyguard,” I told him.

Donovan shrugged. “If you don’t, I don’t know anyone in the world who does. You’ve still got a black eye from the last time you snuck out without telling me.”

“I didn’t sneak out.”

“No, of course not. You just left an hour before you usually get out of bed, without informing anyone, including your bodyguard, that you were changing your routine.” He glared at me.

I ignored him.

It sort of defined our relationship.

The entire campus was evacuated. Everyone was afraid that it was the same guy who blew the highway, the hospital and the Erwin center. I kept waiting for the muffled thump of bombs and for the stately old buildings around me to start collapsing.

Detective Long called me over to the clump of superheroes and cops and asked me if I had any personal relationship to UT. Novak came over with me.

“I went to school here,” I told Donovan, “but that was forty years ago. I doubt anyone remembers but me.”

The detective grinned slightly. “I forget how old you are sometimes.”

“You think it’s ‘Him’” I did air quotes with my fingers. “The yellow striped skull guy?”

The tall, broad-shouldered detective straightened his vivid maroon tie and shook his head. “He’s never given us a warning before. He seems to prefer for the people to be IN the buildings when he blows them up.”

I shuddered. Not a cheery thought, but accurate.

I wondered why Jupiter Joe and Alrek showed up with Liberty.

“I’m surprised you’re even still in town, Joe, since the triple-A sent you to recruit me and I’m no longer a supe.”

Jupiter Joe tipped his hat. “I believe, as Liberty does, that your powers will return, Dee. But my superiors do not have that level of patience. I told them I was trying to recruit a dragon instead.”

I looked at Alrek, eyebrows raised. “You thinking of becoming a superhero?”

Alrek chuckled as if that idea was pretty funny. “Joe is using me as an excuse to remain in Texas. I believe he is in no hurry to return to the Alliance headquarters in Chicago.”

Joe grinned, and shrugged, not denying it.

“What brings you to Austin, Alrek?” I asked him. I’d been pretty freaked out when the Erwin Center came down around my ears, and hadn’t really had a chance to talk to him since.

“I saw a news film of a dragon who was sighted here, a large Red with black markings. I think, perhaps, he is an old acquaintance. I had hoped to find him.”

“You and Fafnir are friends?”

He smiled, showing teeth. “I knew Prince Fafnir a very long time ago when he was no older than you are, young Damson. Is he a friend of yours, your mate, perhaps?”

I snorted. “Jack is my boyfriend. Fafnir is more like my mentor. He’s a little old for me.”

“Jack.” Alrek blinked, his golden-bearded Nordic face a wash of shock. “The small dark-haired human we saved from the bombed performance hall?” He looked over at Jack, who stood way too close to Tamara, chit-chatting and laughing while they waited to have something useful to do.

“He’s a dragon lord. His family were emperors, with dragon ancestry a few generations back.” I’m not sure why I felt the need to defend Jack, but I did. Alrek had such a sound of disbelief in his voice when he found out my boyfriend was human.

“He is a son of direct royal lineage then.” Alek nodded as if something made sense to him.

I was about to object that his lineage didn’t have a heck of a lot to do with anything when frantic barking made all of us look up. Apparently, one of the bomb detection dogs had detected something.

A uniformed officer waved at us from the front door of the biology building.

Actually, he was probably waving at either the police detective or the two costumed superheroes standing next to me, but Novak and I ran with them and no one objected.

Donovan ran a little behind us, watching our backs, because that’s what Donovan does.

I noticed that Alrek limped when he ran, but didn’t have a chance to ask him about it.

We had a little argument at the door to the building.

“Stay here, Dee,” Novak said. “Let us handle it.” When he said us, he nodded toward Liberty and Joe, and somehow also included Alrek.

I realized something. Two Protectors, a nationally famous Alliance hero, and an elder dragon stood next to me. In this group, I wasn’t one of the gang anymore. Being normal meant I was the one who was different. I was a civilian to be protected.

I was about to get in Novak’s face when Liberty put a gentle hand on my arm. “Just until you get your powers back, Dee. It would be best if you tried not to go into any more buildings that are likely to have bombs in them.”

Donovan nodded agreement. “It would make my job considerably easier.”

It was a conspiracy.

“But Detective Long isn’t a supe, and he’s going in.” I objected.

The detective patted me on the back. “Don’t pout. When you learn how to defuse bombs, we’ll let you come in, too.”

He chuckled and they all ran into the building, leaving me and Donovan on the front steps.

“I wasn’t pouting,” I told Donovan.

Donovan didn’t crack so much as a hint of a smile. “Of course not, boss.”

It turned out it was a false alarm. The dogs were trained to identify certain chemicals, like sodium nitrate and potassium chlorate, since they can be used in explosive compounds. In the biology building, those chemicals were just stored in jars in the biochem lab along with bunches of other chemicals.

The whole bomb threat turned out to be entirely a false alarm.

It was probably just some student who desperately wanted to get out of an exam who called in the threat.

So, there was no real danger, this time.

I kept thinking that if it had been the real deal, I’d have been standing outside waiting and hoping, not in the middle of things helping. I’d spent far too much of my life already, waiting and watching instead of doing.

Sometimes being normal sucked royally.

D Dragon

Nuclear Meltdown

This was my first week as an official firefighter, and I didn’t fight one single fire. We fought a lot more fires in the academy. Car fires, tall building fires, oil fires, weird chemical fires, brush fires. Now, I feel like I’m back working for the hospital. We just have a much bigger vehicle to answer emergency calls. They won’t let Jack drive yet, because we’re rookies, but Sam Martinez, the guy who does drive, is a kindred spirit with Jack.  There isn’t an ambulance driver in town that’s going to beat us to an emergency call.

I’m just glad I made it. We almost didn’t become firefighters.

I almost didn’t anyway. Jack was fine.

I had two demerits, and only two days to go. All I had to do was make it through those last two days without getting another demerit. Thursday morning, I took my Jeep, and left a little early, rather than ride to work with Jack in his Toyota. I wanted to stop and get him a graduation present. I didn’t tell Jack that, of course.

I got him a new watch, the old-fashioned kind that doesn’t need batteries and winds itself when you move your arm. I’d already ordered it on line. I just needed to pick it up from the jeweler. I had “That’s why” engraved on the back. I figured that way, even if I forgot to say it, or we were apart for a while, all he’d have to do was look at the watch and I’d still keep my promise.

With my luck, I half expected the jewelry store to get robbed while I was there, which made me maybe a little more paranoid than usual. It was really early. The sun wasn’t quite up yet. I wanted to be there the minute the jewelry store opened, get the watch, and get to the academy with time to spare. No way was I taking a chance on getting that last demerit with only two days to go.

I used the old section of 1325 as a shortcut to avoid the new toll road, like I usually do. I only take the toll if I’m in a huge rush. That took me past the University of Texas science center where they have that little mini nuclear reactor that they use for research. It’s a pretty non-descript boxy building, surrounded mostly by a big open field, and a tall chain link fence. It’s not really what anyone thinks of when they think of a nuclear reactor. People drive by that little section of campus every day for years and never realize there’s a nuclear plant there. UT used to offer tours to students. That's the only reason I knew it was there.

I saw three cars parked by the side of the road and thought that was a little odd.

That was when I noticed something that really worried me. A stylized cloaked figure with a big scythe was spray painted on a telephone pole near one of the cars. It was the symbol of the Death Dealers, but they generally didn’t bother leaving any kind of calling card. Dead people sliced up, missing eyes, ears, and other body parts were generally enough to identify where they’d been.

I knew immediately what I’d just seen. Whoever had been blowing up pieces of my city and blaming it on other known villains was about to blow the nuclear reactor. It didn’t even occur to me to think I might be jumping to conclusions. I’d seen the devastation of the last three blasts. If that wasn’t what was happening, then I’d be a little red-faced, but if it was, I had to do something.

I passed the cars, until I was out of sight around a corner, found a wide spot on the shoulder and parked right behind a big black pickup that looked very familiar.

What the heck was Brad doing out here in the wee hours before dawn? I realized I’d parked right behind him. Crap. He’d probably seen the same thing I had, and done the same crazy thing I was about to do.

I took the time to call Detective Long’s direct line. It’s kind of cool having a police detective on speed dial. Unfortunately, I got his voice mail.

“It’s Dee. Our bad guys are at the UT nuke plant. Get here fast.” I whispered into the phone. Not sure why I was whispering. It just seemed like the thing to do. I called Liberty next, but her voice mail said she was in Washington DC until Monday. Wonderful. TakeDown’s number also got voice mail, and I thought that guy never slept. I dialed White Knight in desperation, but apparently at this time in the morning, no one answered their cell phone.

I badly needed someone with superpowers, or a badge, or both. I didn’t have either, but I couldn’t just do nothing.

Brad’s big truck made it clear that he was here. He wasn’t a superhero, but he had some pretty intense supe abilities. Having spent some time with Liberty and White Knight and Jupiter Joe, I now clearly understood the difference.

I didn’t really have a plan, but if I could find Brad, the two of us might be able to do something.

I dialed 911 and left the phone in the car. I figured if they didn’t hear anything, they’d trace the GPS in the phone and send someone. I didn’t want to stay long enough to explain. If that plant blew, it could do incredible damage to my city.

At least, this target didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. It was just a nasty way to hurt as many people in the area as possible. It was a relief in a way. I was just being paranoid before. Whoever the bad guy was, he wasn’t targeting me in particular, just my city in general.

I crept along, just outside the chain link fence that surrounded the plant. The weeds were knee high, and seemed to be largely made up of thistle that kept catching on my pants, but at least the thick grass didn’t make much noise as I moved through it. The grass was mowed inside the fence. No place to hide in there.

I spotted a guy from a fair distance in non-descript jeans and t-shirt painting a few poles. He wasn’t really who I was worried about. I wondered where the guys planting the bombs were. I also wondered where the cameras were. I spotted a few hung from the power lines. They were small, inconspicuous, and wireless. No telling where their signals were being sent to.

Det Long told me he’d chased that angle. Whoever set the cameras up had a first class computer hacker on their side. The signals bounced through so many proxies, the final destination might have been in Beijing. I didn’t care where the signal went right then. I was just worried about who might spot me with those things and warn the bad guys.

I tried to avoid them, but really, I had no way to tell if I succeeded.

The cut and bent back chain link fence section near the guy with the spray can told me exactly where the guys with the bombs had gone.

I backtracked to my Jeep, pulled it right up next to the fence, and climbed on the roof. The barbed wire at the top of the fence was nasty. I still had the old leather jacket I used to use as superhero garb in the back. Throwing that over the barbed wire gave me a safer way over.

I was probably also in full view of whatever security the plant itself had, but that didn’t bug me in the least. If they saw me and it put them on alert, so much the better. But I suspected the security had been neutralized in some way by the bad guys.

Sure enough, as I got closer to the building, I saw standard security cameras in the eaves. The telltale red LED lights that should have been glowing on each one were dark.

I’d nearly turned my ankle a couple of times getting across the field. I missed my dragon vision.

A metal side door with a substantial-looking lock stood ajar a few inches.

I peered inside, glad the lights were on.

No sign of bad guys, just a stairwell with down as the only option, and a door opposite. I tried the door, but it was locked. The bad guys must have gone down.

I tip-toed down the metal stairs, glad I was wearing my Sketchers. The stairs led down to an open metal mesh walkway. The whole area was essentially a huge open room with metal mesh walkways all around and a deep swimming pool in the center. Down in the bottom of the pool, I could actually see the bright glow of the mini nuclear reactor.

I’d gotten the tour before, so I wasn’t shocked or anything, but it was still pretty awesome looking through a few feet of clear water straight into the glowing heart of a nuclear fire.

I could see guys setting little devices with wires around the edge of the swimming pool. There were two guys, one practically under me, the other on the other side of the pool. The one under me was a black guy with a baseball cap turned backward, probably not much past a teenager. The guy on the other end of the pool was white with dark hair spiked up on top and a navy blue polo. Even from here I could tell that guy was big. His biceps strained his shirt sleeves.

I couldn’t see behind the room-sized concrete housing for the cooling and fueling mechanisms on one end of the pool.  There was another section of building around the corner where the monitoring station was. I couldn’t see in there either, although there was a window up a level that looked down. Anyone in there could probably see me.

So, there could be more bad guys. And they could already know I was there. If not, the moment I did anything, they would know.

Well, no point in being subtle then.

I jumped off the metal walkway, landed right behind the black guy with the cap. He was crouched down on the edge of the pool that kept the reactor from overheating messing with a nasty little device. I considered just knocking him into the pool for a second. He’d probably get enough of a radiation dose to kill him eventually, but in the meantime, he’d just be wet and really mad. And I didn’t see any guns, but I’d have been stunned if those guys weren’t armed. He could shoot me from the pool and I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

So, instead, I did my best hammer fist strike to the back of his neck, putting my full body weight into it like Tamara had taught me. It didn’t take him out, but it dropped him to hands and knees. I drew back and kicked him in the face. That took him out.

He lay on his back, eyes rolled back in his head, and didn’t look inclined to move again for a while.

I ran as fast as I could around the edge of the pool.

The other guy looked up from what he was doing just before I rounded the corner. His brows crinkled a second like he wondered who I was.

I closed half the distance between us.

He glanced over where his buddy was sprawled unmoving on the concrete.

I was six feet away, running full out.

His eyes widened as he reached behind his back, lifting the edge of his polo shirt with his other hand.

I hit him with a full body tackle just as he got the gun out of the back of his waistband and started to bring it around. The gun went clattering out of his hand, slid along the concrete, and splashed over the edge into the pool of heavy water.

So, he wasn’t going to shoot me.

He was, however, twice my weight with biceps as big as my thighs. He wrestled me over onto my back, grabbed me around the throat with both hands, and squeezed.

Not good. But not as bad as it could have been. Tamara spent a fair amount of each class on what she called ground fighting, ways to defend yourself even flat on your back. Breaking choke holds was basic level. I tucked one foot up under my butt, trapped the big guy’s leg with the other, and bucked hard, while yanking the guy’s hands outward.

He flipped over until I was on top. I shoved his hands down with my full body weight on top of them, and added a hard knee to his groin to discourage him. No matter how big a guy is, a knee to the groin gets attention. 

That knee made him cough and curl up. I followed it with adrenaline fueled punches to his face, belly and groin again. I’d never gone up against an opponent who was stronger than me in a real fight before, except that one time when I punched Brad with everything I had. He accused me of tickling him.

I punched and kicked and elbowed until the guy was curled into a little ball, arms over his head, begging me to stop.

I might have taken it a bit far, honestly, but I was seriously scared. If I failed, not only would the guy kill me, but he might kill my whole city.

I had my feet back under me by the time it was clear that this bomber wasn’t going to kill me or anyone else today. I was starting to feel a little relieved. I’d done it. I’d stopped them.

That was when I felt the gun barrel against the back of my head.

“Don’t move, bitch.”

I froze. Tamara had showed me a few moves that would disarm someone who had a gun touching me. One of them fit this scenario exactly. But all gun defense moves were incredibly risky, only to be used in extreme circumstances.

Preventing a nuclear explosion and meltdown in a city with a million people seemed pretty extreme to me.

“Did you think you could stop u..”

The guy never finished the sentence. While he was talking, I twisted to the side, leaned back, and swung my arm up and around.

His arm ended up tucked under mine, the gun safely aimed away from me. He had a tattoo on his forearm of a black skull with large staring eyes and a thick stripe of yellow across the upper half of the face, like a superhero mask.

I hit him in the nose as hard as I could with an elbow. I felt bone crunch. It was a good hit.

Something harder than flesh slammed into the back of my head.

What my training hadn’t covered was if the guy with the gun had a buddy I didn’t know about, with another gun.

I dropped to one knee, blinking to try to get the world back in focus.

My grip on the first guy’s gun arm loosened.

The two men stood over me, both of their guns pointed at my head, but not close enough for me to do anything about it.

I managed to get their faces in focus. One guy had curly, bushy dark hair and a spectacularly bloody nose. He looked really pissed off. The other was older and shorter with Hispanic dark skin and a scarred face that looked like fifty miles of bad road. Danny Trejo would look pretty next to this guy. His thick-veined arms had the same black skull with a yellow stripe tattoo.

In the frantic fight with the man with the big biceps, I’d barely noticed it, but he had the same tattoo.

I hadn’t seen it, but I’d be willing to bet money that the black kid in the cap had one too.

That was some brilliant detective work there, which wasn’t going to do me a bit of good with a bullet hole in my skull.

“You can’t stop Him, stupid bitch. He rules over all the ages of man.” That was the curly-haired guy with the bloody nose.

The “Him” was definitely capitalized. You could hear it in the way he said it.

I looked up, and fought to keep my face from showing my surprise and relief. There was someone tip-toeing up behind the two bad guys with the guns pointed at my face. Someone huge, hairy, ugly, and wearing a Crippen Steel gimme cap. Brad Spiers would never be mistaken for Brad Pitt, but right then, he looked just as gorgeous to me. Brad can move surprisingly quietly for such a big guy.

I wasn’t sure if Brad was bullet proof, but I knew that no punch these guys could throw would so much as phase him.

I said, “Well, whoever “He” is, he clearly needs to hire better help. Three out of four of you got taken out by one lone unarmed girl. You guys are the lamest henchmen ever.” If I kept their attention on me, Brad could get to them without getting shot.

Unfortunately, their attention came in the form of a cowboy boot to my temple from the ugly Hispanic guy.

I kind of took a little nap there for a few seconds. I vaguely remember some shouting and a scuffle.

Next thing I clearly remember was Brad carrying me out of the building.

Then there were some sirens and some flashy lights.

Cops pointed guns at us, but I waved at Detective Long and they stopped.

Apparently, he got my message.

He insisted that I go to a hospital, something about a concussion. That meant that I didn’t make it to my second to the last day of firefighter training.

After ten weeks of hell, I failed two days short of the goal.

I protested, but the fact that I wanted to puke every time I sat up, and I kept seeing two of everything made it pretty much impossible for me to convince anyone I was fine and needed to get to the academy.

Detective Long threatened to arrest me if I didn’t go to a hospital.

They discharged me later that same day.

Jack and Ma took turns staying up all night with me, waking me up every few hours, which was a truly miserable way to spend a night, I have to say.

The kicker of it was, all the bad guys were gone when the cops went into the building. The bomb squad disarmed the bombs, so the nuclear reactor didn’t blow up or melt down, but the bad guys got away.

I told Detective Long about the striped skull tattoos, and the bad guys referring to “Him.”

It was a little more than we knew before, at least.

I also told him that I was relieved that this attack didn’t have anything to do with me, personally. So, that shot my paranoid theory about the bomber targeting me.

Detective Long nodded like he agreed, then said, “So, why were you there?”

“I just happened to be driving by. The jeweler where I picked up the present I ordered for Jack is just up the street.”

“Did you order that present on line? Like you ordered your concert tickets?”

I felt really stupid. “Yeah. I did.”

“We’ve already established that whoever we’re up against, he’s got an exceptionally skilled hacker working with him.”

“Crap.”

Detective Long nodded. “Watch your back, Dee.”

He sent a police escort with me to the hospital. Officer Flynn stood outside my room the whole time they did CAT scans and such on me at the hospital. When I got home, Flynn briefed Donovan.

I haven’t been able to go anywhere since then without an unmarked police car and Donovan’s Ford crew cab F250 both shadowing me.

I rode in Friday with Jack. I’d blown it, but I still wanted to see Jack graduate from the academy.

When I got there, I got a bit of a surprise. The mayor gave me a firefighter’s medal of valor.

Dave laughed when I told him I thought my last demerit meant I was out. He told me that saving the city from a nuclear meltdown was the best excuse for missing a day he’d ever heard. Under the circumstances, my demerit was excused.

D. Dragon

Smoking Mirror

Panic was in the air. I don’t mean that in some figurative sense. I could smell the overwhelming scent of human fear. It permeated everything. And blood. I smelled blood.

I was in an odd sort of bedroom, with beautiful, elaborate carvings on the wall and brightly woven blankets. I lifted the hanging blanket from the doorway to peek outside. A small, dark woman slammed her elbow into a man’s face, smashing bone. The man, with fierce-looking yellow paint across his brown-skinned face dropped dead next to three others.

The small, dark-haired woman who had killed them ran into the room and slammed right into me.

She fell. The baby she carried tied and bundled in a bright blanket flew from her arms.

“No!” she shouted.

I dove like a volleyball player and made a desperate catch.

The kid burbled up at me with a grin that only had a few teeth in it, including one fang. The baby’s huge eyes were dark blue in a light-brown-skinned chubby face. The thick hair on the tiny head was bright purple.

I cuddled the dragon baby close and turned back to hand the little bundle back to the woman who fell.

I turned around, but the woman was gone. In her place was a creature that filled the room. Sleek and deadly like a panther the size of a Clydesdale, the creature growled low, showing fangs as long as my hand.  It stood on its hind legs. Deep purple scales rippled as the beast half spread wings that folded like a dragon’s, but were feathered like an eagle’s.

The creature extended both arms toward me as I backed into a corner of the room, hugging the toddler dragon close.

“Give her to me!” the creature growled. It must have been a dragon of some kind, but different from any dragon I’d ever seen. One hand popped out long black needle-tipped claws. The other held out to me palm up. “Give her over willingly, or I will take her from your limp, useless body, and rip your heart out while you watch.”

“I won’t let you hurt her,” I said with a bravery I’m not sure I was really feeling. I kept frantically looking for a way out. The only door was behind the strange, feathery dragon. The walls were carved stone. I had no idea how I’d gotten into the room, much less how to get out.

The creature hesitated. Its great cat-like head with back swept ears, that I now realized were pointed head scales, leaned down until it was nearly nose-to-nose with me. Its vivid yellow cat eyes squinted as if struggling to see me. “Daughter of my daughter?” It asked.

“Great great grandmother?” I asked back.

The dragon let out a sigh of relief and sheathed her claws. She was Cuicatl, wife of Quetzelcoatl, also known as Agmund Drage. Which meant that the baby in my arms was probably my great grandmother.

“Forgive me, child. I thought you were some sort of servant of the Smoking Mirror,” my ancestor said.

“What the heck is the Smoking Mirror?”

“Smoking Mirror is a powerful dragon. He has come while my husband is far away, with fierce soldiers who slaughtered our defenders. He demanded my daughter as sacrifice, to be skinned alive in honor of his conquest of the city. He will slay a child of the village every hour that my daughter does not volunteer to die.”

“But, why? What could that possibly gain him?”

“He wishes to claim me as his mate. I am the bride of this city. He who rules the city, I must take as husband.” My ancestor looked simultaneously disgusted and ashamed. “The dark Obsidian one seeks to slay my sole living child by my beloved true husband.”

“Agmund is going to kick this Smoking Mirror’s ass when he gets back.”

Her cat eyes narrowed and glowed with a wicked inner light. “I too believe it will be so, but he will be too late to save my daughter.” Tears as big as my fist ran down the dark scales of her face.

“I’m so sorry. What can I do to help?”

“No one can help my eldest daughter. She will give herself up within the hour. She cannot abide for an innocent to take her place in death.” The dragon sniffed and wiped the tear from her face with her bent wrist in a very cat-like way. “She will die as a true servant of the earth, giving her life to save others.” She said that with pride overshadowing the sadness.

She reached out to the tiny toddler in my arms, stroked her chubby little face with a deep plum-colored giant fingertip. “Smoking Mirror does not know that I have another daughter. I sought to hide her, but it is hopeless. The dark one will find me. I have a sister in a nearby village who could claim her and care for her until my husband returns, but if I try to leave the city, the dark one will know.” She gripped my arm and stared earnestly into the general area of my face. “Can you take my child to safety daughter of my daughter?”

“Of course I’ll help. But I don’t understand how this is possible. I shouldn’t be able to affect things that happened more than a thousand years ago.” The kid grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled, trying to stuff it into her mouth. As I gently freed it, I had a weird thought. “I was drawn to this time to Agmund, so he has to be my ancestor. If this is your only remaining child with Agmund, this little girl couldn’t have died. She must have survived somehow.”

“The future is never set, young one. It changes with each action and choice that we make. If my little one is mother of your mother, and she dies, …” She trailed off. The implication was obvious.

“Then I might never be born.” I had to save the kid, or I wouldn’t exist. But if I didn’t already exist, then how could I save her?

“All the more reason to get her to safety quickly.” Cuicatl looked over her shoulder at the stone archway into the chamber. A hanging blanket blocked the view, but the sound of heavy feet was close enough that I could hear it as well as she could.

She lifted one of the woven hangings on a side wall, and pushed with dragon strength on a section of the stone. It shifted inward to show a dark, narrow stone passage, half blocked with cobwebs. “Go quickly. The passage comes out near the path to my sister’s village. Travel forward until you find the path. Then turn toward the rising sun. Walk for a day and a night and you will find my sister’s village.”

There was more commotion outside the door. Men's voices, angry, although I couldn't yet make out words. “Hurry, child.”

As I hunched down the low triangular corridor, pushing aside icky spiderwebs, some of them still inhabited. I heard the stone door grind back into place behind me. Just before it shut completely, I heard Cuicatl’s voice, “Thank you daughter of my daughter. I will not forget what you have done.”

Closing the door left the dank narrow corridor in near total darkness. There were occasional cracks in between the stones that sent shafts of light inward. They came at regular intervals as if planned for lighting. I could hear men shouting and smell fear and blood coming down from above. I found the light adequate to see by, although not enough to always spot the cobwebs before they touched my face.

Ugh.

At least once, a spider crawled across my cheek as my face invaded his web.

I did not scream.

Only because I was terrified that Smoking Mirror’s men would hear me and come after the baby cooing in my arms.  I did smack my head against the low ceiling getting the many legged critter off me, then stomped it really hard, and then stomped it several more times for good measure. Damn thing was the size of a rat. I could have put a saddle on it and rode it.

That was when I finally noticed something that should have been obvious. My feet had scales and an extra toe. I'd been deciphering my world largely by scent. It was far too dark in that corridor for a human to see anything, yet I could see fine.  I looked at my left hand. Scaly. My claws popped out when I flexed them. I was a dragon again.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but it was worth noting.

I reached the end of the stone passage and pushed aside a boulder that blocked the exit. Thick jungle canopy overhead meant that the light was only a little blinding. The baby fussed a little as I brought her out. I shielded her face with the hand woven blanket.

I kept walking as straight ahead as I could around the bases of the tall trees. I didn’t hear any sounds of men anymore. The passage must have taken my baby great grandmother and me well outside Cuicatl’s city.

I heard lots of other weird sounds, probably birds or monkeys or who the heck knows what. It’s not like I’d ever heard the sounds of a South American jungle anywhere, except maybe on the Discovery Channel.

I crossed the path and had to double back. I didn’t realize it was a path at first. It was just a strip of beaten flat ground on the jungle floor, no wider than two feet, that meandered between the trees.

I turned around in a circle, trying to figure out which way the sun came up. It was getting later so the sun was lower than before. I put my back to it and walked the other way.

Suddenly, I heard something that didn’t fit, but that was very familiar. My alarm clock.

I felt my grip on the baby in my arms fading. “NO!” I couldn’t wake up, not until I got the baby to safety. If I vanished now, she would be left in the middle of the jungle for anyone from a hungry jaguar to one of Smoking Mirror’s men to find her.

I ignored the insistent sound and started running down the path as fast as I could.

Cuicatl had said walk for a day and a night to get to the village. There was no way I could stay asleep that long. I shifted the kid to one foot, gripped her carefully, unfolded my wings in a wide spot between trees and leapt for the air.

Easier said than done. I couldn’t flap properly. There wasn’t enough room. I half jumped, half climbed to the treetops and finally launched into open air, squinting against the blinding light of the evening sun. I flapped as hard as I could. I had to fly faster than I ever had.

The insistent beeping pulled at my mind. I felt myself fading more than once. When I vaguely felt Jack’s cat licking me, I actually dropped the baby. My feet just faded to the point where she fell through them. I had to scramble to catch her before she impacted the trees.

I couldn’t wake up. No matter what. I had to stay asleep.

This was real. This wasn’t a dream.

My experiences with my grandmother and father in Camelot had taught me that my dreams really were a form of mental time travel, that only happened when I was asleep.

If I woke up, the baby would fall to her death, and then what? Maybe I would wake up only to find that I was now a ghost in my own time.

I had no idea what would happen if I failed to save my own great grandmother from death, but even if that wasn’t an issue, I wasn’t about to drop a helpless baby from a considerable height into a wild jungle full of men who wanted to kill her.

I flew as fast as I could, grateful for the physical training in human form that had made me stronger than I had ever been. Finally, in the distance, I saw the peak of a stone pyramid-shaped building sticking out of a clearing in the trees.

“Almost there, little grandmother. Almost there.”

A massive shape rose up from that pyramid to confront me. The shape was like a huge bird of prey against the too bright sky.

As it got closer, I recognized the shape of one of the panther/eagle-like local dragons.

“What are you, shadow? Leave my city. We do not traffic with ghosts.”

“Not a lost shadow of one dead, a memory of one yet to be born,” I said, repeating what Agmund had said as best I could. “Are you Cuicatl’s sister?”

“I am. Who asks?”

“Her great, great granddaughter, and her daughter.” I could feel someone shaking me violently. I was starting to fade and I couldn’t fight it this time. “Catch!” I yelled, and tossed the little bundle of baby toward her aunt.

Just as the jungle world faded away, I saw the dragon catch the baby in gentle-clawed feet.

Then I woke to Jack shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. “Okay, okay. I’m up.”

“What’s wrong with you, Dee. We’re half an hour late already.”

“Oh, crap! We’ll get a demerit!”

“Forget that. What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you wake up? It was like you were in a coma or something.”

“No, just time travelling. I had to save my great grandmother from being a human sacrifice to an evil Aztec conqueror or I might have ceased to exist."

Jack blinked. He sat there for a few seconds speechless, then sighed. “With anyone else, I’d say it was time to call the guys in the white coats. With you …” He shook his head. “Just get dressed. We don’t want to be any later than we already are.”

I sat up and realized, I was covered in skin, not scales. In the dream, I’d been back to my old self, all dragony. But here, I was still human.

I felt a tug of painful disappointment mixed with relief. Somewhere down deep, I was still conflicted. I desperately wanted my dragon self back so I could help when people were hurt, and fight the good fight. But I also really wanted to be normal. It was kind of great to just be one of the guys at the firefighter’s academy.

So, that’s where I’m at. Only one week of firefighter training to go, but two out of three demerits down. I just have to make it one more week. How hard can that be?

D. Dragon