Blood Kin

I stood at the top of a tall stone building with long steep stairs leading down into a land so green it practically glowed with life. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people walked on the ground and the lower steps of the building. They brought flowers, jade jewelry, and little wooden cages with brilliantly colored butterflies fluttering inside. They laid these gifts at the feet of the man who stood beside me.

He was nearly as tall as Fafnir, pale-skinned and blond, with a thick beard. He wore a shimmering iridescent green and red cloak of feathers, a tall leopard spotted hat, a brightly beaded leather loincloth, and lots of jade jewelry.

The tall man looked nothing like all the other people. They were shorter than my mother, dark-skinned with dark hair. They wore simple loincloths, paint, beads, and some feathers, but nothing like the magnificent feather cloak of the man beside me.

The man raised his arms and all around me, the people fell silent. Many knelt reverently. Others put their hands over their foreheads and bowed their heads.

The tall white man smiled down at them. He waved a hand. All the people with butterflies in cages, opened the doors of the little cages at once.

As hundreds of butterflies filled the air, the white man shifted, growing larger and larger, until he was as big as Fafnir in battle form.  Royal purple scales as brilliantly iridescent as the butterfly wings and the feathers flowed over the man’s flesh like a flower blooming. The dragon spread wings to catch the morning sunlight, the feathery cloak still draped around his great shoulders.

Brilliant purple scales the same color as my own were marked with tiger stripes of red and accents of black and gold. He was the most beautiful dragon I’d ever seen.

I stood beside him and all the people looked up at us. Their faces were beautific with reverent joy. Tears flowed down some of their faces. Love. They loved him, this magnificent purple dragon.

He looked down at them with the same joy. He loved them back. He looked over at me, standing beside him and held out one giant golden-clawed hand. “Fly with me, child of another time,” he said, and smiled into my eyes.

He could see me.

Hundreds of people stared up at us, and I realized I was stark naked.

Yikes!

I woke up with a start. Weird dream. I’ve had enough dreams of the past now to recognize one when I had it. But that was the first time I’d ever had a dream where anyone could see me, as me. I wasn’t just riding along in someone else’s head. I wondered if it was a true dream of the past, or just the result of the drugs they’d given me in the hospital.

They told me later I’d been asleep for two days. Didn’t seem that long. I felt reasonably okay when I woke up, just thirsty, and I had to pee like a racehorse.

Jack slept in a chair next to my bed. He looked adorable, black hair fallen across one eye.

I reached over to brush it away, but my arm came up short. There was a bag of red fluid dripping through an IV tube into my arm.

Liberty must have found someone to donate.

I peeled back the covers to look at my torso. Tape and a big gauze pad covered the unarmored spot on my flank where Bobcat got the worst digs in.

I dragged the IV stand as quietly as possible, so as not to wake Jack, over to the bathroom and took care of things. While I was in there, I peeled off the gauze and looked underneath. The wounds were closed. Bright pink welts showed where they had been.

I peeled more gauze off the left half of my face, and found something similar. It could be a very cool scar, except I generally didn’t scar. It would fade away in a few weeks. I peeled another gauze patch off my right shoulder. I didn’t even remember getting clawed there.

I heard voices outside, arguing. I didn’t want them to wake up Jack. I quietly wheeled my IV as far as it would go. The beepy heart rate and blood oxygen, etc. monitors were plugged into the wall, so I had to extend my arm out behind me to get enough slack to reach the door of the tiny hospital room. I opened the door a crack, and leaned out.  Floyd “Tex” Donovan was arguing with Mark “White Knight” Novak. Everyone I know seems to have at least two sets of names.

“… I can’t even believe you have the guts to show your face here,” Donovan whispered really loudly. Like he wanted to shout, but was trying to remember he was in a hospital. Some of Novak’s friends murdered a bunch of Donovan’s friends. Needless to say, there was no love lost there.

“You don’t have the right to keep me out,” Novak said. “I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

“She’s fine,” I whispered. “But her boyfriend is asleep, so she would appreciate it if you two could argue somewhere else.”

“Vlad the Black is here?” Novak asked.

I rolled my eyes. “Vlad is not my boyfriend. Jack is my boyfriend.”

“But I thought … Who is Jack?”

“Is there something you want, Novak, or are you just here to quiz me about my love life?”

His cheeks shaded a little pink, and he ducked his head. It reminded me of the way he acted when the Georgians dressed him down. Beaten. Ashamed. “I just … it doesn’t matter.” He turned and started to walk away.

Donovan nodded in satisfaction and sat back down on the chair by my door. He’d been doing the bodyguard thing, watching over me while I was out cold and defenseless. Which made sense, since, technically, he was my bodyguard.

“Novak, wait!” I whispered loudly. I leaned as far out the door as my tether would allow.

He stopped, hesitated for a moment, then turned around slowly, like he expected me to say something nasty.

“Did you donate blood for me?”

He nodded, and waited stoically for my snarky retort.

“Thanks,” I told him. “That’s the second time you saved my life. I was kind of a jerk about it the first time.”

He crooked one side of his mouth a little in something sort of like a smile. “I think you’re still ahead of me by one.”

“Well, stop sticking your butt in cracks you can’t get out of then,” I told him with a smile to let him know I was just giving him crap.

He smiled back a little. “Same to you.”

“Liberty’s been looking for you. The Protectors are short-handed.”

The smile disappeared. He shrugged. “They don’t need me.”

I sighed, and decided to get pissy with him again. He seemed to respond better to that. “Guess my grandmother was wrong about you. She thought you were a hero.”

He winced a little. That was a low blow, I admit. I was hoping it would get him fighting back, but it seemed more like I’d just confirmed what he already believed. “She was wrong. I’m just a freak.”

“Welcome to the club.” I sighed. I felt a little woozy and the breeze on my back end from the useless tie-in-the-back hospital gown was getting annoying. “At least, let Liberty know I didn’t kill you before you vanish back into your self-pity hole.”

“Why would she think …?”

“You’ll have to ask her that. I need to go lie down.”

Donovan stood up and supported my scaly, non IV connected arm. “I think you’ve outstayed your welcome, hero.” He spat the last word like a curse.

Novak nodded, and walked away.

I felt sorry for the guy. He’d found out that everything he believed in, lived his life by, sweated and bled for was a lie. But I was kind of pissed off at him at the same time. My grandmother was famous for not letting just any old schmo wield her sword. Excalibur was not a sword for people who couldn’t take a bad blow and get back up again.

There were a lot of people out there who needed a White Knight to save them. My grandmother, Lady Nyneve, the Lady of the Lake, believed that Mark Novak was that Knight.  From what I’d seen, she generally knew what she was doing. I’d just have to trust her.

Jack was awake when I looked back over my shoulder.

He winked at me, and wiggled his eyebrows.

Apparently, he’d gotten a really good view of the gap in the back of my hospital gown while I’d been leaned out the door.

If I could blush, my cheeks would have glowed like Rudolph’s nose.

D Dragon

Truth Among Friends

As it so happened, the way Liberty looked at me like some king of demon was the least of my problems. Once the fighting rage died away a little, I got really dizzy. I’d wrapped the lady’s off white linen curtains around me to cover my scales, but they rapidly stained dark red. Someone was losing a lot of blood. I should do something about that. I wondered vaguely what I’d done with my kit.

Liberty caught me as I staggered. She carried me out as the world went all swirly. I had a bad feeling I was going to see the inside of a hospital room again.

Bobcat tried to use Liberty’s distraction to limp quietly away.

She stuck a foot out and hooked his good ankle, tripping him onto his furry face. The cop cars caught up with us about then, pulling to sudden stops all around us.  One cop pulled right up onto the lady’s lawn and jumped out.

“Hi, Flynn,” I waved with my non-scaly arm, the rest of me thoroughly covered, in increasingly blood-soaked curtains. Bobcat’s claws must have nicked a good sized vein somewhere in my belly. Or, he could have damaged my liver considering the location of the claw slashes. I’m not sure my internal organs are in the same place as a normal’s but that’s where a liver would normally be. “Can you call Jack for me? I think I need to go to the hospital.”

“Same thing happened last time I worked with you, supe girl,” Flynn commented.

“This time I got the bad guy, though.”

“Looks like he got you worse.”

“I need transport to the nearest hospital, right now,” Liberty said, all field commander again. “Special teams has the perpetrator in custody.” She nodded over where the supe squad SWAT guys had put a metal muzzle on Bobcat. Metal bowling ball looking things went over his hands. They put them on his feet, too, and loaded him on something that looked like a motorized wheelchair had a love child with a moving dolly. Yeah, Bobcat was bagged and tagged.

Liberty got in the back of Flynn’s squad car, still carrying me. She held me like a big baby, wrapped in red-soaked swaddling. Flynn ran the siren and the flashy lights and drove damn near as crazy as Jack. The siren sounded different, though. Police, fire, and ambulance sirens each have their own song.

“Dee, I need you to answer the question.” Liberty shook me a little.

I didn’t remember her asking me a question. “What question?”

“What are you, Dee?”

“I’m just me, okay?” The hurt I felt when Liberty saw me all scary-looking came back. I turned my head away so she wouldn’t see me trying not to cry. “No matter what I look like, I’m still me.”

“I know you are, Dee. I’m a Protector. I’ve worked with Platinum Princess, Stone Golem, and the Human Shark.”

“That guy is freaky-looking, with all those huge teeth.”

“He knows the genus and species of every butterfly and wildflower in Central Texas. His gardens are beautiful.” Liberty shook me a little again, like I’d started to doze off. Did I? Not sure. That ride is all a little fuzzy. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. I need to know if there’s anyone who might be able to donate for you.”

I chuckled a little. Some days it sucks to be an endangered species. I stopped because chuckling really hurt. My belly felt like it was stuck in the Human Shark’s mouth. My face itched, too. I touched my cheek and felt bone, though, so didn’t think scratching was a good move. “Maybe Vlad or Fafnir, but they’re the wrong clans. Knight would be my closest match, probably, but he’s gone, too.”

“White Knight could donate blood for you?” Liberty sounded surprised. “He’s like you?”

“We’re like 6^th cousins or something, same species and clan in any case.”

“Dee, I’ve got one more question.”

“Shoot. I’m not going anywhere.” My whole body felt like it was made of lead. It was an amazing effort to wave one hand in a “whatever” kind of gesture.

“Did you kill White Knight?”

I blinked. That was a weird thing to ask. It woke me up a little. “Kill him? You have no idea how much trouble I went to to SAVE his sorry ass.” Some vague part of my mind realized that Liberty was using my woozy condition to pump me for information, but I couldn’t muster the energy to care.

“Is that what happened at Vlad Tchovsky’s house two months ago? You saved White Knight?”

“Vlad would have shishkabobbed him. Never go after Vlad with a sword. He’ll feed it to you.”

Liberty smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She nodded to herself as if I’d confirmed her suspicions. “I was afraid Knight might go after Tchovsky after that confrontation on Mansfield Dam. Knight seemed to think it was his duty to kill him because Mr. Tchovsky called himself a dragon.”

I nodded. “Because he’s like me.”

Liberty blinked. “You’re a dragon! Of course. That explains a lot.” Then a tiny wrinkle appeared between her perfect golden eyebrows. “But you said Knight was …”

“Yeah. Knight’s a dragon, too. He just didn’t know it before. He does now, unless he’s a complete idiot, which I wouldn’t rule out.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Knight’s alive, then.”

“Why did you think I killed him?” I wondered vaguely. I shivered under the curtains. “And why would you work with me if you thought that?” And why didn’t Flynn turn on the heat? It was freezing in that car. The siren kept going far away and coming back in some weird Doppler effect. He needed to get that looked at.

“Knight’s never taken more than a day or two off in the 40 years that the Protectors have existed. I asked Eye in the Sky to find him. Nothing. He’s completely off the grid. When I got the report about the disturbance at Tchovsky’s place the same night he ‘went on sabbatical’ I thought you and Tchovsky had probably killed him together.” she shrugged. “I worked with you because I wasn’t going to treat you like you were guilty until I had proof. And, I just didn’t think you were the kind of person to do something like that, unless Knight forced you to, in self-defense or to protect your friend.”

“Innocent until proven guilty.” Of course, Liberty would be the one person to live that to the letter. I huddled against her warmth. And she could deal with my weirdness. As friends go, she was okay.

Too bad she couldn’t pull several units of Silver or Green clan dragon blood out of thin air.

I fell asleep, knowing I wouldn’t wake up. Even Liberty couldn’t save me.

D Dragon

Freak Like Me

I ran to the car that one of the world’s most famous and powerful superheroes had crashed into from 7 stories up.

Liberty had a nose bleed. She sat up on one elbow on the ruined metal roof with an imprint of her whole body in it, wiped her nose on her hand, and looked at it quizzically for a moment. “I didn’t know you could fly,” she said after a moment, like she was irritated with me.

“Yeah, I don’t advertise,” I said, relieved beyond words that she wasn’t badly hurt.

“I need to know things like that if we’re going to work together." She shoved her crown back into place. "I wouldn’t have made that risky a move if I’d known you weren’t about to be killed.”

“Oh.” I looked up at the tall building above me. Bobcat jumped across the little sliver of parking to the adjacent building. “Crap.” I blew it, and the bad guy was getting away.

Liberty held up a hand for a second, listened intently, then sighed. “He’s gotten past our perimeter. I wish I had a flyer who could follow him.” She blinked, and looked at me. “He’s headed northeast. That way!” she snapped, pointing.

I hesitated. She wanted me to take off in the middle of town in early evening when hundreds of people were out.

“If we don’t catch him tonight, more women will die," Liberty said.

That was the essence of it. It didn’t matter if someone saw me in the sky and realized I was a dragon. It didn’t matter if someone posted pics of me on the internet and the Georgians hunted me down later. What mattered was pretty young women with their whole lives ahead of them getting ripped to pieces by a psycho because I messed up.

My jacket and shirt were toast, so I tossed them aside. I leapt as hard as I could using my wings to get higher, grabbed onto a third story window ledge on the other communication building, the one that’s only four stories tall. I leapt again to the edge of the building, pulled myself up to the roof, and used it as a launching point to leap as high as I could into the air. With that much altitude to start with I was headed in the right direction with good speed in seconds.

The mic in my ear crackled with static, then I heard Liberty’s voice. “Do you see him yet?”

“No sign,” I said. I scanned like a hawk hunting a mouse, widening my search in desperation, and saw a flash of movement far ahead. “I see him! He’s already up to 30^th and Speedway. He’s heading into a neighborhood. Damn, that guy is fast!”

“I’m right behind you, Dee. Don’t lose him.” I could hear her breathing hard and realized she was running, following me as fast as her super-strong legs could carry her.

I flapped like a maniac until I felt like my arms were going to fall off, then dove again trading my altitude for more speed.

I saw him, jumping from roof to roof in a small neighborhood.

I saw him, but he didn’t see me. My wings were quiet as a whisper as I let the momentum I’d already built up be enough, and glided.

He sensed me somehow, at the very last second. He stood on the peak of a suburban house, about to jump to the next one, hesitated and turned around.

I hit him doing maybe thirty miles an hour.

“Mine!” I shouted in triumph. I flying tackled him off the roof of the unfortunately only one story house, riding the weight that was more than my wings could hold to the concrete of the street.

“Dee, no!” Liberty shouted in my ear. “Don’t engage him until I can get there to back you up!”

Too late, I thought, as I rolled in the street with a snarling, spitting, clawing demonic blond monster thing.

Those claws flew and slashed so fast that I couldn’t keep them off me. I raised my left arm up to cover my defenseless face. Without my jacket to conceal my vulnerabilities, the places that weren’t armored were all too obvious.

Bobcat found the bare section of my torso, just over my right hip. His claws ripped deep into flesh instead of scraping over scales.

He laughed as I screamed and bled.

I do not like being laughed at.

I growled in his face, overwhelmed with rage even more intense than the pain.

I got bigger. I didn’t exactly stop and analyze it right then. I was a bit busy fighting for my life, but I felt the shift in my body. My fangs popped out of their own accord, and I’d swear I had more and sharper teeth in my mouth, and it felt distorted, too. I have no doubt my eyes were as bright red as flashlights. My feet ripped through my shoes, the claws on them growing longer and sharper. I stopped trying to defend myself and returned the mad frenzy of claws.

I curled up, protecting my vulnerable torso with armored legs. I dug my feet into his belly and shoved, ripping flesh and fur as I launched him through someone’s rose trellis and into their living room window.

Without even stopping to think, I launched myself right after him.

Bloody gashes marred his furry belly where my foot claws had gotten him. He had a dozen small cuts from the window glass. The flickering light of a television set showed him snarling insane rage at me, bloody saliva dripping from his fangs.

I snarled my own rage right back and dove on him.

He rolled out of the way, and clawed at my armored back.

I twisted, grabbing for him, but he evaded.

He slashed my face, opening my cheek to the bone in three long gashes. My blood splattered onto some normal’s flower print couch.

Bobcat got to his feet, jumped, landed in the middle of my chest, and used me as a launching pad to hurl himself out the window again.

I tried to grab for him while I gasped for air, but only managed to scratch his ankle with the venomous claws of my left hand.

It was enough.

I saw him land in the large tree branch he’d been aiming for in the front yard, saw his foot, give under him, and saw him fall.

He tried to escape in a stumbling run, but Liberty tackled him. His claws didn’t do him any good against the queen of invulnerability.

She got super-cuffs on him in less than three seconds.

Then she looked up at me.

I stood in the darkness of the living room, the light of the television flickering over me, my wings half extended, wearing just my slashed blue jeans. Blood streamed from my ripped belly and my face and dripped from my clawed left hand.

I heard a noise behind me, footsteps.

I whirled to face the new threat. I snarled defiance.

A lady in pink bunny slippers and a blue velour robe dropped her cup of coffee on the floor and fainted.

I caught her before she hit the ground, laid her down gently, outside the spreading circle of the scalding hot spilled coffee. That was going to stain her rug, no doubt.

Liberty frog-marched Bobcat to the window. His right leg dragged like a dead thing. He looked woozy. Liberty’s hand might have been the only thing keeping him vertical.

Sirens closed on us from three sides.

Liberty looked at me crouched like a gargoyle over the lady in the bunny slippers. “What are you?”

I felt a flush of … I’m not sure what to call it. Embarrassment? Sort of. Shame? Not exactly.

The way Liberty, who I’d begun to think of as a friend, looked at me… It hurt. It hurt worse than the raw open wounds in my face and side.

I felt my body shrink back to its normal size and shape. I grabbed the bunny-slippered lady’s living room curtains to wrap myself up in. I covered myself, not out of fear of discovery, but because I didn’t want anyone looking at me like that.

Bobcat looked at me, too, but all I saw in his dazed yellow eyes was a perfectly normal hate. In that moment, I had more kinship with Bobcat than with Liberty.

“Like I told Bob, I’m a freak like him.”

D Dragon

Bait in a Cat Trap

Writing in your diary may not be what most people do when playing bait in a trap for a homicidal maniac, but then most people wouldn’t have volunteered to be the bait in the first place. I’m supposed to be pretending to be a UT student. I could have brought my laptop and surfed the net or something, but I was afraid it would get damaged if the proverbial feces hit the spinning blades. When Jack had to be bait in a trap, he just skipped bathing for a while and we ran over his worst clothes with my Jeep a few times. I went to a used book store, got a textbook on Organic Chemistry, and brought my diary to write in, so it looked like I was taking notes.

I took Chemistry in college, but that was nearly half a century ago. It looks like things have progressed a lot, or maybe I’ve just forgotten a lot. I may have to go back to school. It’s not like I’m going to go get a job as a lab assistant or anything, but it sure would be nice to be able to analyze my own venom. I still have no clue what the venom from my claws does exactly. I can’t very well randomly start scratching people to find out. Those claws saved my bacon from Domina Death when she nearly killed me, so, if bad comes to worst, maybe I’ll see how the big bad Bobcat likes being the claw-ee for a change.

All the girls Bobcat attacked over the last few weeks were outdoors when he found them. His last victim was on her way to her dorm from the Communications buildings across the street. I staked out a comfy grassy spot, and settled in to “study” in the dorm courtyard about five in the evening of the day after the police tape was removed. The students had all been encouraged to spend the evening on the other side of campus via text message.

It seemed a bit obvious to me, but Liberty had done the homework. She said Bobcat wasn’t real high on the IQ scale. Liberty believed he was likely to bite on what to me seemed like a particularly obvious trap. Apparently, Bob, was a product of a cat-human gene splicing experiment by Doctor White, the same guy who made the spider device that stole nearly a century of my life. Liberty said Bobcat thought more like a predator than a man in some ways. He was likely to come back to a place if he’d found easy prey there before.

I bowed to superior experience. Liberty’s only in her mid thirties, but she’s been superheroing since she was in a training bra. I’m the novice in this world.

Liberty’s voice whispered in my ear bud, “Any sign?”

“Nada,” I whispered back, holding the Chemistry book up and squinting, so it looked like I was puzzling out a particularly complex concept.

“Are you certain, Dee?”

The way she said it made me tense between my shoulder blades. I’d been here for hours. The sun was setting. I’d just taken off my protective sunglasses now that the light was more bearable to my overly sensitive dragon eyes. And this was the first time Liberty had broken radio silence since we tested out the comm gear. “Why?” I whispered. You have to be quiet if you’re going to catch a bad guy with ears as big as my hands.

“Listen.”

I did, but there was nothing unusual even with my own super-duper dragon hearing, just cars, people chatting a block over on the drag, and the wind in the trees. “I don’t hear anything,” I barely whispered.

“The grackles stopped.”

I was so used to the standard evening racket of flocks of roosting black birds, like every Austinite, that I had completely ignored the hundreds of birds in the trees around me, except to make sure none were sitting over me, ready to add their own personal touch to my hair or books.

The racket I’d been ignoring wasn’t there anymore. Hundreds of birds sat in the trees around me and did not make a chorus of sounds like rusty metal hinges. They were completely silent.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Something heavy hit me on the back of the head, slamming my face down into the open Chemistry book. My nose left a splash of blood on the page.

The birds took off all at once in a flurry of black wings.

I blinked tears and tried to get up.

A huge hairy arm hooked around my waist, yanked me backward, and slammed me to the ground.

“Son of a …” I kicked up, but only hit air. The hairy cat-man dodged sideways and slapped me in the face, an open-handed, no claws casual slap that still rattled my teeth.

I tried to punch him, but my hand swished through empty air where his face had been a moment before. He hit me harder this time, a closed fist punch that crunched into my temple.

When I came to, I was upside down, in a fireman’s carry, a bony shoulder digging into my armored belly, looking at a plumber’s crack covered in blond fur. Beyond that less than inspiring sight was a whole lot of air, about five stories worth. The ground was far enough away that I figured puking right now wouldn’t really affect much.

So, I did.

It made my mouth taste sour, did nothing for the pounding in my head, but my stomach settled a little.

Voices were yelling in my head. “He’s got her. He’s on the move!” “Where the hell did he go?” “Have you ever seen anything move that fast?” “I see him!” “Oh, my god, he’s climbing the building with her like King Kong.”

“Cordon off the block,” came Liberty’s voice. “Don’t bother with warnings. If you get a clean shot at him with a trank gun, just fire. Confirm your target, though. Don’t hit Dee. Team 2 cover the elevator and front door. He might try to come down through the building.”

That was Liberty. She looked like a Hollywood starlet, sounded like a public service announcement when the cameras were on, and in casual situations, she chatted with me about life like any BFF, but in situations like this, she sounded like a front line general commanding troops.

The world spun and shifted under me while Bobcat punched his claws into the dark rust-colored metal of the communication building where Austin City Limits gets filmed. He pulled himself and me both onto the roof.  I got an upside down view of a gigantic radar dish and several smaller ones on an elaborate metal framework.

I thought about struggling, but didn’t really want to get free seven stories up over concrete sidewalks with my wings folded under a jacket. I waited until we were fully on something flat and solid. When I tried to make my move, I moved more sluggishly than I expected. I elbowed him in the back, but it wasn’t a solid blow.

Bobcat threw me down onto the gravel, which actually didn’t hurt much now that I’m mostly armored, aside from the swimminess that it increased in my head. He pounced on my chest. He extended shiny black hooked claws four inches long from the back of his hand. He laid them over my face, one claw right over my eye. “I hear them, bitch, but they won’t get here in time to save you.”

He could hear the voices in my ear mike.

“It doesn’t matter if you can hear them,” I said. “You won’t be able to get away this time.”

Liberty snapped, “Switch channels to 224.” She sounded a little breathy, like she was running or doing something strenuous. The chatter in my ear all went silent.

I no longer knew what Liberty or the SWAT team were doing, but now, neither did the bad guy with the big claws sitting on my chest.

Bobcat leaned in close to my face and licked my cheek. Gross. His claw tips just drawing blood in the skin of my face made moving seem like a really bad idea. “Pretty, pretty coed looking down on me. I bet you wish you’d never made fun of freaks, now, popular girl. Say you’re sorry, and maybe I won’t mess up your pretty face.”

I laughed. I know, not the normal thing to do when someone’s about to rip your face off, but the idea of me as the pretty, popular girl, making fun of a freaky kid, was about as bass ackward as you could get. “You’re picking on a fellow freak, Bob. Take a look at my left hand.”

“Whuh?” Bobcat said. He pulled the claws away from my face as I held up my left hand, covered in the usual black leather glove.

I popped my claws through the leather. They’re only a couple inches long and silver, not black, but the similarity between the two of us was crystal clear.

While his less than brilliant mind pondered that, I took a swipe at his face with my shiny new claws. No telling what they’d do to him, but considering what he’d been about to do to me, I wasn’t real concerned.

He moved faster than a freakin rattlesnake. He caught my arm in mid-swing, but not with quite enough force to stop it. He twisted, snarling, with my arm in his grip to keep my claws away from his furry flesh.

I used the momentum to roll over, get on top of him instead of the other way round. We rolled over in the gravel, a couple times, but I seemed to be a little stronger than him. I kept the top position. I punched at him, but couldn’t get in a solid hit the way he kept twisting and moving. He slashed at me, but all he did was put slashes in my jacket and t-shirt. The needle sharp tips of his claws screeched across my scales making us both wince.

He tried to bite me on the shoulder. Fortunately, it was my left shoulder.

Crunch.

His teeth made a sound on my scales like someone scraping their teeth on their fork. I hate that.

“OWRRR!!” he griped.

“Heh heh. This morsel’s got a hard crunchy shell, furr boy.” I’m not sure why I thought making fun of the psychotic serial killer was a good idea. It just slipped out.

His face turned ugly, even uglier than before, I mean. His flat nose wrinkled, and his yellow eyes narrowed to slits. His legs curled up into me and he raked my belly with his claws as he shoved, hard.

Another chalkboard screech, and he’d hurled me off of him. I’ve got very well-armored abs, so no harm there.

I tumbled in the air, crashed through a small radar dish, (ow) and saw the low safety wall around the seven story building as it flew by. YIKES!

I scrambled for the edge and managed to scrape the metal with one hand, then hook on with two claws on the other. I’m not one to worry much about heights normally, but hanging eight stories above a parking lot by two fingernails almost made me wet myself.

“Who’s laughing now, bitch?” Bobcat started prying my fingers loose of the metal wall.

Liberty yelled from up on the roof, “Leave her alone!” Not sure when she got there, or from where.

“Make me,” he growled at her and lifted one of my two fingers. It took his whole hand to do it, but I only had one finger left. I’d gotten my brain together enough to realize if I lost my grip, I could just pop my wings out and glide.

I stopped being scared and got pissed off. This guy was making me look bad in front of Liberty. “I’ll make you,” I growled.

I swung up my other hand, trying to grab his wrist where he was prying at my finger.

He dodged back, and laughed at me. “Pretty, but dumb,” he said. “You can’t catch me. You’re too slow.”

“I’m not,” Liberty said, and did a diving tackle.

I got a good look at the last part of that dive as Bobcat sidestepped and shoved like a matador with a bull.

Liberty went sailing over me, head first down into the parking lot.

“NO!” I yelled and tried to grab for her. I let go of my grip on the roof, pushed off, but physics wasn’t on my side. Liberty was going down first, and I didn’t have time to catch her.

I popped my wings out as the parking lot tried to hit me in the face. My shirt and jacket were both shredded, but I back-winged hard and kept the landing from doing more than slamming me to my armored knees. Before I hit pavement, Liberty hit car.

Liberty shifted to a skydiver’s flat pose in the air, so she hit on her whole front, rather than on her head, on the roof of a parked car. Glass shattered and the car roof smashed in like it had been hit with a wrecking ball.

I’ll write more in my diary later. Right now, I want to sleep for like, a week.

D Dragon

Bobcat

I looked down at a dead girl, body slashed from right shoulder to left hip by four deep gouges. Bobcat.

A few weeks before, the corporate sponsored All American Alliance hero Amazing Ashley had accidentally freed a clawed serial killer in Austin, and nearly killed me trying to recapture him. I recovered with no permanent damage, but Bobcat got away. Now, a super-strong criminally insane cat-man with four inch razor sharp claws was loose in my city.

Yeah, I guess Austin was my city now.

I’d made a stand here against the Order of St. George, the religious fanatics who murdered my dad, and who wanted to murder all dragons. I’d spent most of my life running and hiding from them. Now, I wasn’t running anymore. I still kept my scales and wings hidden, though. I wasn’t going to live in paranoid fear anymore, but I wasn’t going to be stupid about it either.

Liberty, the leader of the local chapter of the US government sponsored hero group, The Protectors, had put out an APB with the local Austin police for Bobcat. The Austin area hero community had been on the lookout for him as well. You’d think a huge cat-guy with pointed, fur-tufted ears would stand out in a crowd.

Not so much, really. It’s Austin after all. Home of the weird.

On the UT campus, I’d seen a girl with six inch long elf ears in a chain mail bikini just yesterday, accompanied by a guy who looked like a Klingon, complete with wrinkly forehead and a bat’leth. There weren’t any sci fi conventions in town or anything, just a normal Saturday on campus. Add that to the high number of supes drawn to the area and you got a lot of folks who wouldn’t blend anywhere else blending just fine here.

So, Bobcat was still free. And just past sunset on what had been a 75 degree, sunshiney Sunday in January, some nice young Co-ed ended up as a statistic. She’d still been breathing when the cops called the ambulance.

Jack and I, as usual with Jack driving, got there in record time, but it wasn’t quite fast enough.

Jack brushed the dead girl’s dark hair back from her face with a gentle hand and felt for a full minute, hoping against sense for even the flutter of a pulse. Jack’s my boyfriend, my partner, and the bravest man I know.

She’d been pretty, the dead girl.

“Bobcat,” I said.

Jack looked at me and nodded. His lips tightened in frustration. He drove our ambulance like Mario Andretti, but it wasn’t quite fast enough this time. This was the third pretty young dark-haired girl with claw slashes we’d seen this week. Between his driving and my healing venom, we’d been able to save the other two.

I touched his face, tracing the line of his high cheekbones. He had soft Asian features that normally wore a crooked smile that charmed the world and made him look even younger than his twenty-seven years. I could see in his dark eyes now that he was kicking himself for not getting here faster.

He leaned into my hand for a moment, accepting the comfort.

Officer Flynn made notes on a pad. “That makes six victims. The captain’s on all our asses to find him. I called the detectives right after I called you guys. Long’s on his way.”

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and speed dialed the second most powerful superhero in the country. It used to make me feel important that Liberty knew me. It still did, I guess, but now, I felt more that she was a friend who wanted to stop this lunatic as much as I did. We both felt partially responsible for letting him get away since we’d both failed to stop him.  I put the call on speaker so Jack and Flynn could hear. “Liberty, we found another Bobcat victim. Another college age woman with dark hair. This one didn’t make it.”

I heard a sad sigh. “Where?”

“North side of UT campus, near Eastwood Park.”

“Could he still be nearby?”

“She was still breathing three minutes ago.” I looked around and tried to think like an insane cat-man. I’d seen him bound from roof to roof to put the best parkour practitioner to shame. “Honestly, he could be anywhere by now.”

Liberty’s voice fell with disappointment. “We’ve got to get ahead of him, Dee. Every day he’s free, we lose lives.”

“He’s hit campus twice, both right around sundown. These girls he’s after look a lot like me. I’m up for playing bait.”

 “That’s a very brave offer,” Liberty told me. “Unfortunately, he has an embarrassment of choice. You would be one among hundreds of potential victims.”

“Maybe not,” Jack said. “What if we could clear the campus somehow, get all the real students out of sight?”

It seemed like a good idea, but there was a catch. “Bobcat has super-hearing. Anything the students talk about, he’s likely to overhear.”

Flynn said, “The campus police set up a Twitter handle and voluntary cell phone sign-up list for all students and professors. It’s becoming common practice after a few shooters have gone postal on college campuses. We can send out a signal that essentially says, ‘A killer is loose. Stay indoors from sundown to two hours after. Spread the word digitally, but don’t say anything out loud.’”

“That might work,” Liberty said. “Dee would need formidable backup, but they also would have to be nearly silent. I will, of course, lend my own aid, but the other Protectors are all on assignment elsewhere. We’re short-handed without White Knight. Officer, we will need some help from the supe squad.” That’s the nickname for the SWAT team that handles super-powered criminals, usually after a superhero has already subdued them.

Jack looked down at the dead girl. She had light cinnamon brown skin, a prominent nose, thick dark hair past her shoulders and slightly Hispanic features. She did look a lot like me, actually. Except that she was dead from bloody claw slashes. Jack swallowed. He didn’t bother to try to talk me out of it. Jack knew me too well. “Be careful, Dee.”

I would have said something flip, like, ‘Aren’t I always?’ Or ‘You know me,’ but the trouble was, he did know me. Careful is not really something I’m good at. “I’ll try.”

D Dragon

Home is Not a Place for Pit Traps

Mournful howls filled the halls of the mansion.

Vlad sent movers to my apartment over the weekend after Christmas. I think he was making a preemptive strike, in case I decided not to take him up on his offer to let me semi-permanently house sit for him. I came home from an afternoon shift on Friday to find all my stuff already gone. When I arrived at the mansion, my things had been installed in the master bedroom as if I’d put them there myself. My clothes were in drawers or hanging in the closet. My laptop was charging on a spiffy desk with an external monitor the size of a billboard. Even my posters were already on the wall.

Hard to argue with a fait accompli.

“Donovan!” I shouted. “I told you to disable all those traps.” Floyd Donovan was the actual, real name of the security guy who wore cowboy boots who I had been calling Tex before. He sort of works for me now. Vlad pays his salary, but I’m the one he’s supposed to be guarding, and taking orders from. The two sometimes appear to be mutually exclusive.

Donovan’s long-legged strides were a little slower than normal. He’d just gotten out of the hospital two days before. “I disabled all the lethal ones, maam.”

Another wailing howl echoed through the walls.

I stepped into the hot tub area, but the sight of Brad in a Speedo was enough to make me wish I hadn’t. “Um, Brad, Ma’s making snacks. Let her know if you have any specific requests.”

“Thanks, Dee.”

I did an about face with Donovan sticking right on my heels. In an effort to escape from blinding amounts of back hair, I headed for a different entrance to the corridor that surrounds this giant house, the one where all the secret doors go. And the traps, can’t forget the traps. “I really don’t need or want traps where I live.” I pushed down on two of the eight arms on a little statue of Kali on one of the many shelves full of odd things that Vlad had left behind. A section of the wall clicked open. “What if Ma fell into one of those things? She’s 87 years old. She could break a hip or something. I told you to disable all the traps.”

“Actually, you said, ‘Get rid of the acid and spikes and stuff. I don’t want anyone accidentally getting killed.’ So, I disabled all the lethal traps as ordered, maam.”

Of all the security guys in the world, I inherited a cowboy with an eidetic memory. “Well, now I’m saying all of them. Disable all traps in this house. Is that clear enough?”

“The traps are an effective deterrent for anyone not familiar with the layout. A would-be burglar was caught in one just last year.”

You notice he didn’t say, ‘yes, maam, I’ll disable the traps.’ He’s a very honest man, Donovan, but you have to pay close attention. He’s very literal.

“I would feel sorry for any burglar who tried to rob this house. If Jack didn’t taze him, Brad would toss him through one of the concrete walls. And Ma would make him feel horribly guilty for ever having chosen a life of crime.” I gestured at a corner with the dark plastic eye of a concealed camera. “And if any burglar made it this far, he’d have to have mastered invisibility.”

Donovan’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t have the outer corridors monitored then.”

I held up a hand. “I’m not implying that you aren’t doing a good job. I just don’t have the level of paranoia that Vlad had.”

Donovan nodded. “Mr. Tchovsky told me that you took huge risks, and that protecting you was a challenge.”

I made a face. “Vlad is entitled to his opinion. But I’m not going to live in an armed fortress.” I gestured at the pitiful sight that greeted us as we reached the source of the howling.

Rocky was an Australian shepherd mix mutt. His owner’s house had burned down and the guy hadn’t been able to keep Rocky, even after we reunited them. Then, after Jack adopted Rocky, Jack’s apartment burned down. At least the dog’s name wasn’t Lucky. That would be a bit too much irony.

Rocky whined, and looked up with sad doggy eyes, one brown, one blue, from an eight foot deep square pit that spanned the width of the corridor. I strongly suspect that Vlad, who designed this house, was a D & D player. I regretted never having the chance to find out. Playing D & D with Dracula would have been awesome.

I looked at into Rocky’s sad, mottled blue face, and looked at Donovan pointedly.

He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll disable all the traps.”

“Thank you.”

I jumped down into the pit, picked up the dog and jumped back out. I can jump about 2 stories. Eight feet is a tiny hop. The trick was not to overshoot and hit my head on the very solid concrete ceiling. That, and to avoid the happy slobbering dog tongue thank-you’s that Rocky lavished me with. He wagged so hard his whole back end went sideways.

“I don’t know how he got in here,” Donovan said.

“He has a talent for finding trouble.” As soon as his four paws were on flat floor, Rocky took off at top speed. He hit a trigger stone and a small bit of wall rotated, neatly depositing him in the living room. “Well, that answers that question. I didn’t even know about that door.”

“It can only be opened from this side,” Donovan pointed out.

“Well, then, the mystery remains.” I grinned as I stepped on the trigger stone, rotating myself and my own personal bodyguard into the living room. This house was seriously cool.

Jack grinned back at me with shared admiration for the cool factor, while carefully petting a delighted Rocky at arm’s length. Cam, the cat, growled a warning and raised a clawed orange paw just in case the dog violated her personal space. I wondered sometimes if Jack had a powerful electromagnet that turned on the second he sat down anywhere, instantly causing the cat to shoot through the air and attach herself to his lap.

Jack sat at the head of a long oak table in the dining room area with books, a folding cardboard screen and multi-sided dice scattered in front of him.

Tamara, the short lady firefighter with the blue streak in her hair sat next to him, and contributed to the essential task of scritching Rocky’s ears. She also slipped him a bite of chicken when Jack wasn’t looking. Jack fed his dog nothing but what amounted to doggie health food. Tamara and I conspired to sneak Rocky tasty tidbits at every opportunity.

Rocky was entirely cool with the arrangement.

Three other chairs, with Player’s Handbooks, character sheets and little lead statues of warriors, mages and thieves sat empty.

A much larger lead figure of a brilliant red, scaly, winged monster sat in the middle of the table on a laminated sheet covered in hexagonal lines like a honeycomb. “Come on, guys. We’ve just reached the lair of the beast. You need to roll initiative or be roasted before you can act.”

“A dragon? You didn’t seriously just put us up against a red dragon? My new character’s only third level,” I griped. “Besides, that’s terrible stereotyping. How do you think Fafnir would feel?”

Jack just smiled the smug unrepentant smile of a game master who can do whatever the heck he wants because he’s the game master.

“Damson, help!” Ma yelled from the kitchen area. My nose twitched with the smell of something burning.

Donovan shrugged and sat down in his spot at the table. “Officially, I’m still on medical leave.”

I think maybe the big bad security guy was afraid of my mother. Smart man.

I stepped around the long granite counter, snitching a fried chicken leg off a big platter as I did. Ma’s idea of game snacks went way beyond pizza and Mountain Dew. There was enough food already piled on that counter to feed twenty people, or us five and Brad, whichever.

“Ma, what the heck are you doing?” I said around a mouthful of absolutely heavenly fried chicken.

Ma waved a towel in the general direction of a small, folded paper bag sitting in a frying pan on the stove with smoke curling up from the underside. This had the effect of causing the paper to burst into active flame.

Ma flinched back out of range as tiny explosions punctuated the fire.

The smoke alarm went off with ear bleeding intensity, at least for me.

I ignored the agony in my brain and got between my mother and the tiny ricocheting flaming missiles. I picked up the frying pan, put it in the sink, and turned the water on. This created a cloud of awful smelling steam, but also put out the fire and stopped the little explosions.

“Donovan! Turn off that …” I finished screaming the sentence in total silence. “noise!”

 “I’ll reset the alarm as soon as the smoke dissipates,” the lanky man in cowboy boots said.

“And open the …” I didn’t bother to finish.

Tamara was already operating the controls on the wall that opened up the observatory and the dormer windows and turned on a big fan that sucked air up through the center of the house and out through the observatory. “No setting the house on fire,” she said. “I’m off this week.”

“Ma, what the heck? That’s microwave popcorn.”

Ma put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “I just don’t see the point of those … things.” She waved a tiny contemptuous hand at the large, modern microwave mounted on the wall. “I’ve always made popcorn just fine on the stove.”

Ma was still adapting to having people to feed who ate more than just animal products. I suspect she hadn’t made popcorn since Truman was in office.

“But not in the bag.”

“The instructions said to leave it in the bag,” Ma pointed out.

“In the microwave, yeah.” I snagged an un-incinerated popcorn bag and demonstrated putting it in the microwave and pushing the appropriate buttons. “Keep an eye on it and when the popping slows down, turn it off. Otherwise it’ll burn.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Ma said with a twinkle in her dark eyes. “Burning popcorn smells terrible.”

I chuckled as I went back to the gaming table, munching on the chicken leg I’d managed to hang onto during the crisis. It tasted kind of funny when combined with the overwhelming smell of burnt popcorn, but the fan was sucking the smelly smoke away at a pretty good pace. I snagged a paper towel for hand cleaning, so I wouldn’t get grease on my character sheet.

Donovan was already at the table rolling a D6 for party initiative.

We got it, or my little third level thief would have been barbecued hobbit. I know, no hobbits in D & D anymore, but I’m a Tolkien fan, and I’ve been playing this game since it came in a box. “I sneak around behind the dragon,” I said.

“Roll for success at moving silently and hiding in shadows,” Jack said.

While I rolled pairs of 10 sided dice and prayed to whatever god is in charge of getting good percentage rolls, the rest of the party stated their actions.

“I activate my ring of fire resistance and draw my two-handed sword,” Tamara said, sliding her figure of a mighty-thewed Conan type into place directly in front of the dragon statue.

“I draw my mace and pray to Pelor for strength to face the foe,” Donovan said, and slid a plate mail armored figure onto the play space. A paladin suited him.

“Ms. Emerson, what action would you like to take before the dragon notices you?” Jack asked Ma politely, as she carefully watched the popping popcorn.

She held up a hand until the popping slowed down, not wanting to be distracted at a crucial moment and renew the dissipating stench. She turned off the microwave, pulled the hot bag out gingerly, still popping occasionally, and set it on the counter. Finally, she faced Jack, brows furrowed. “I think Damson is right. It’s entirely inappropriate for the main monster to be a dragon, especially in this family. Dragons are not monsters.”

“Yes, maam, I know,” Jack said. “But it’s just pretend.”

Ma put a hand on her hip. “Fictional portrayal of dragons as destructive monsters perpetuates the myth. I won’t tolerate it in this house, Jack Nguyen.”

Uh, oh. She called him by his full name.

Then, she clinched it. She gave him the look. Ma was slender and not terribly tall. Her shoulders, a little stooped with age, made her seem even smaller. Her once raven black waist length hair had gone iron gray, but still hung in a thick braid down her back. Her wise dark eyes were usually all but lost in smile wrinkles, but when she gave that look, those eyes turned into black mirrors of your darkest hidden guilt. She seemed to tower over you as you shrank in shame.

That look was probably why Donovan was afraid of her.

Jack swallowed. My Jack, who fearlessly faces street gangs, drunken super-trolls, and 16 mile fires paled a little. “Yes, maam,” he said. He pulled the big dragon statue off the middle of the table and put it back in the backpack by his feet. He had obviously gone to some trouble to buy and paint the dragon statue just for the finale of this game. I felt a little bad about it, but really, Ma was right.

Cam hung on with claws dug into Jack’s jeans as his lap tilted 45 degrees.

Jack rummaged in his bag and came up with the plastic dinosaur that he used to represent most large enemies. “You see a huge eight-legged lizard-like reptile with glowing eyes and a horn on its nose like a rhino.”

Tamara and I groaned. Well, that’s certainly a monster.

“What?” Donovan asked. He was still fairly new to the game, although he seemed to be taking to it.

“Basilisk. Just don’t look it in the eyes,” Tamara commented.

“Actually,” Jack corrected, “This is a greater basilisk. It’s about 30 feet long.”

“We are so dead,” I said, and then I noticed I’d failed my sneaking roll. “I could roll again? It’s not a dragon anymore.”

Jack gave me his own version of the look, and I shut up.

Ma sat down with a large bowl of popcorn for sharing. “I cast a spell of invisibility,” she said, and slid her robed figure with the tall staff out, just behind the paladin. Ma had been playing nearly as long as I had, although she wasn’t as into the game as I was. She tested the popcorn with her tongue as if unsure if it was edible, before munching a bite thoughtfully.

Brad showed up wearing a t-shirt, gym shorts and a towel over his shoulder, hair still dripping wet from the hot tub. He heaped chicken, raw veggies and chips and dip onto a plate while asking what burned. He grabbed a handful of popcorn that emptied half the bowl before sitting down beside Tamara. “I thought you’d be done with this game by now. Are you guys still slaying imaginary dragons?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

Everyone in the room gave Brad a look.

Brad froze with popcorn halfway to his mouth. “What did I say?” Brad was the one person there who had no idea that I was a dragon.

Even Tamara had figured it out, although I’m not sure how.

Ma giggled like a teenager, and the tension went out of the room like a balloon stabbed with a pin. “Nothing, dear,” she said to a very confused Brad. She patted his huge hand. “Enjoy the popcorn.”

The basilisk turned me into a furry-footed statue in the first round.

I ate chicken and heckled until the rest of my team managed to kill the basilisk. There were a fair number of wounds, but Donovan’s paladin and a few potions were able to heal the worst of them. You can’t heal a statue, though.

I’d have to roll up a new character again. This was the third character I’d gotten killed in the last six months.

Ma’s character pulled out a scroll and she winked at me. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.” It was a Stone-to-Flesh spell, which turned the little hobbit statue back into my mini thief.

I gave her a big hug. “My hero.”

D Dragon

Old Wars, New Allegiances

In the absence of any brilliant insights, I went the way Vlad’s head of security said he’d gone, toward the back left corner of the house with the elevator. The only way to get to the elevator was through a corridor with an entrance hidden behind the warm two story waterfall that lands in the hot tub. Yeah, it’s that kind of house. There was even a passage behind the waterfall itself, but you had to get in the water to reach it. I knew another way that would be faster.

I still tried to be relatively quiet, but with the bad guys 2 minutes ahead of me, that meant I ran as fast as I could on tiptoes.

Pushing on the top left corner of a floor length mirror in the dressing room next to the hot tub popped the latch. The mirror swung open. I slipped behind the wall. The bricks on the right side of the narrow corridor were damp and I could hear the sound of the waterfall on the other side.

When Vlad gave me the house tour, he showed me the corridors around the perimeter of his house in particular detail. Most of the entrances and exitways for the secret doors were off the outer corridors. And they were riddled with traps, some deadly, some merely dangerous. All of them would slow me down, so I picked a path that only had one trap to avoid.

A nostril-searing stench of sulfur and a smoking pile of silver scales riddled with holes showed me that I’d made the right choice of direction. The Georgians had definitely come this way. White Knight’s coif, gloves, shield and scale mail shirt lay in a pile, still sizzling from the concentrated acid that this trap rained down on intruders. I stepped over the trigger stone and around the pile of smoldering scales to the small lever embedded in the wall. I pulled it and a section of the bricks tilted, diverting the waterfall into the corridor. The flood of warm water washed the remaining acid down the drain at the end of the hall.

I scooped up the abandoned armor, unwilling to leave behind something my grandmother sacrificed her life to create. The holes started healing themselves as soon as I picked it up. I tucked the gauntlets in my waistband and the mail shirt over my arm. As I ran, I automatically hooked my left arm in the strap of the shield and gripped it in my strong, scaly hand as if I’d been using one my whole life. The two foot long crooked knife in my right hand felt very natural as well, if a bit short. I had to repress an urge to put the rest of the armor on.

“Hush, Grandmother. I’m not your wielder. Novak is.”

I heard a warm chuckle in my mind.

I wondered why Novak never seemed to hear Lady Nyneve like I did when I touched the armor.

An image appeared in my mind, a memory, of Merlin’s visions flashing through a crystal, channeled through Nyneve’s mind. I am Merlin’s granddaughter, and I’d already been having visions of things from long ago. Through Merlin, I had abilities and a link to Nyneve that Novak didn’t.

It made me smile a little, to feel my grandmother’s spirit communicating with me, as if she embraced me in greeting. But the smile faded fast as I looked at the elevator. I still couldn’t believe that Vlad would make a run for it. He didn’t want to leave town with Georgians here. He thought if he took them out of the picture, he would make me safe. If he left, he would be leaving me to the wolves. So, did he go up to the parapet walkway, or did he go down to the basement, or further down to the tunnel that leads to the boat dock.

I got a questioning feeling in my mind. Curiosity. Confusion.

“I’m trying to save Vlad,” I said out loud. It felt odd, talking to the shield and armor draped over my arm, but I knew my grandmother’s spirit was bound to the armor, and while she was telepathic, I’m not. I formed a picture of Vlad in my mind anyway, just in case she was poking around in there.

A feeling of rage made me want to hit something really hard.

“No, grandmother, you don’t understand. Your war is long over. Vlad isn’t the enemy. Vlad saved my life lots of times, and dad’s.” I pictured Vlad swooping in to save me from machine-gun toting goons, arrowing out of the sky to protect me from giant robots, saving me as I fell off a cliff when I hadn’t yet learned how to fly. “Vlad’s sort of in love with me. And I owe him.”

Confusion from the armor. An image of White Knight scaling the cliff behind Vlad’s house and sneaking in through the swim-through in the pool appeared in my head.

Novak came here with a clear image in his mind, killing Vlad, but he came in through the back. He had nothing to do with the carnage in Vlad’s living room.

“Yeah, Novak’s been brainwashed. He thinks all dragons are evil and he has to kill them.”

The startled bark of laughter in my mind was so clear, I almost turned to look behind me.

“Yeah, I know. That’s ridiculous. You and I both know Novak is a dragon, but Novak doesn’t know it. The Georgians got to him when he was just an orphaned kid and brainwashed him.”

Confusion again. The Order of St. George didn’t exist in Lady Nyneve’s time.

I couldn’t help it. Just for a moment, the image that haunted all my worst nightmares, the skinned headless body of my father with vultures picking at his flesh, appeared in my mind. “They killed dad. They want to kill all dragons.”

Rage and pain, awful tearing grief that made my throat close and my eyes burn. Lady Nyneve couldn’t have known until now what happened to her youngest son.

I hugged the chainmail not even thinking about how weird that was. Her grief and mine were the same. They killed my dad. They killed her son.  “They’ve killed nearly all of us, grandmother. And they’re using Novak to kill the few of us that are left. He tried to kill Fafnir, now he’s trying to kill Vlad. I’ve got to stop him, but I don’t want to hurt him any more than you do. Can you just give me a clue as to which way Vlad and Novak went?”

I could feel iron resolve, a controlled killing anger. Lady Nyneve was seriously pissed off. I was glad that now her anger was aimed in the right direction. Up, she whispered in my mind.

I pushed the up button on the elevator, and heard it hum downward to me.

The few seconds it took to get up to the walkway seemed to take forever. I felt a strong urge to put the armor on again. This time I didn’t fight it. I slipped on the gauntlets and pulled the mail shirt over my head. I wasn’t sure what Nyneve had in mind, but my grandmother had been in a lot more battles than I had. The coif, I left tucked in my waistband. It just didn’t feel right to wear it. White Knight was Novak’s hero identity, not mine.

So, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and scale mail shirt, carrying Novak’s shield, with the hated image of St. George slaying a dragon dissolved off of it by acid, and carrying a crooked, blood-splattered murder weapon, I stepped off the elevator into an empty tower room, roughly hexagonal with a suit of plate armor decorating one shadowy corner. I stepped out onto the windy, rain-soaked walkway with the crenellated parapet and into the combat zone.

One Georgian aimed a crossbow from the far side of the walkway, half hidden in the arched doorway of the opposite hexagonal tower. His arrows glowed green at the tips. The wind and Novak in the way both made his aim tricky. He fired another bolt as I watched.

Vlad fought in dragon form with a sword as long as I was tall in one hand, his back to me watching both the Georgian with the crossbow and White Knight. Vlad flicked the bolt the Georgian fired at him away with his sword without visibly changing his rhythm of attack against Knight. One bolt must have made it through his defenses at some point though. The feathered end stuck out of his left shoulder, right through his bulletproof scales.

White Knight faced Vlad, Excalibur in both hands, wearing nothing from the waist up. Three bloody cuts showed that Vlad had made it past his guard a few times already, and masses of scars all over his torso as severe as any burn victim showed that it was far from the first time he’d been injured. I realized with horror what those scars were from. Novak’s scales were coming in, and they’d been cut from his skin.

Knight looked way overmatched. His sword strokes held a hint of desperation while Vlad’s flowed with seemingly effortless grace. Knight barely parried Vlad’s huge sword more than once. As I watched, Vlad did a disengage and twist move that he’d used on me in practice with inevitable results. I cringed as Excalibur flew out of Novak’s hand.

The sword did a curious twist as it flew through the air. I would swear its path curved to land near my feet. Probably just a chance gust of wind.

I dropped the crooked knife, and picked up the far superior sword. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but it was clearly the better weapon.

With Knight unarmed, Vlad pressed his advantage. The huge black sword swung horizontally towards Mark Novak’s head. The shirtless White Knight threw himself back as the blade tip swished past his throat. The desperate dodge threw him off balance. He slipped on the wet stones and fell on his butt.

“Stop!” I shouted, and my voice projected far louder than I expected it to. A flash of lightning crackled from cloud to cloud illuminating everything like a flash bulb, and a clap of thunder punctuated my sentence.

 Vlad froze, sword poised over Novak’s heart.

“This man is not the enemy, prince of the Black. Spare his life,” I heard the voice coming out of my lips, but it wasn’t entirely mine. Lady Nyneve was doing some of the driving in my body, and I let her. We had the same goals now.

Vlad looked at me oddly. “Who are you? What have you done to Damson?”

“It’s me, Vlad,” I said, making sure that only my voice came out. “The Lady of the Lake and I are kind of sharing body time, but I’m still here. We’re both asking you. I know you’ve got good reason, but Knight is good people when he’s not trying to kill dragons.”

“It matters little to me if he is kind to children and small dogs. He has invaded my home, murdered my employees, and tried to take my head.” He raised his sword again to finish Novak off.

Novak, armorless and on his back on the wet stone, had no defense left but his voice. He used it to piss off Vlad even more. “Lying serpent,” he hissed at Vlad. “Don’t bother begging for my life, Dee. Dragons have no compassion, no honor, and they kill without mercy. ”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, idiot. You’re not helping.”

My grandmother took over again. “Black prince, you owe me a life debt.” In my mind, I saw Vlad arrowing out of the sky and breaking Nyneve’s little sister’s neck. “Do you acknowledge this is true?”

Vlad hesitated.  “Soldiers kill in war, Lady Nyneve. My kin died on the same field of battle at your hands.”

Nyneve nodded into a slight graceful bow that I never could have managed. I noticed a sort of double image of my own arms as I moved. A semi-transparent taller, more slender Lady Nyneve form superimposed over me. “I acknowledge that debt. I agreed to help young Damson save your life. That can pay my debt to you, if you accept it.”

“You’re offering to clear the life debts between us, to end a war that all but you and I have forgotten?” Vlad asked with a hint of a smile. “In return for the life of a Georgian?” His smile twisted into a sneer of contempt. “Why?”

“This knight is my nephew’s great grandson. He is my kin, and he has wielded Excalibur with honor for more than half a century.” Nyneve took a step closer. “With this one act of mercy, the enmity between our clans can finally end.”

Vlad hesitated. He looked down at Novak, helpless on the stones, the tip of the huge black sword hovering over his heart. “You didn’t kill my people?”

Novak’s lips tightened in offense. “I’m no murderer.”

“He didn’t, Vlad,” I told him. “Knight came in the back, alone.”

Vlad growled in anger, but the tip of his blade pulled back a few inches from Novak’s bare chest. “He’ll just try to hunt me down and kill me again if I let him live.” He looked at me significantly, “And he’ll kill other dragons if he gets the chance.” Lady Nyneve didn’t have to be a telepath to get that.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Just do it for me. And for …” I hesitated, conscious of the Georgian with the crossbow, listening, and watching for an opening. “Sir Robert.”

Vlad raised his eyebrows in question.

“You and he could never be friends because of the old grudges between Black and Green and Silver,” I said. “I know how much that bothers you. Spare just this one man, and the old grudges are wiped clean, in my mind and hers.”

Vlad sighed. “For you my love, for Sir Robert, and for Lady Nyneve, an honorable enemy from a forgotten war.” He bowed slightly to the ghost I wore and stepped back, allowing White Knight to get to his feet.

Novak leaned on the parapet. A fair amount of blood mixed with rain flowed down his scarred chest and arms from earlier cuts. His face showed disbelief bordering on outright shock. “I don’t understand.”

“I give you your life, Georgian scum,” Vlad told him. “But threaten me or those under my protection again, and we will dance once more.” He flourished that giant sword like a fencing foil.

I so don’t ever want to get into a swordfight with Vlad. “So much for dragons not having any mercy or honor,” I said to Novak.

For once, he didn’t have a comeback. I handed Excalibur to Novak who wasn’t looking too hot.

He accepted it, but stared at the shiny silver blade as if he’d never seen it before.

I heard an odd metallic creak behind me, a slight scrape of metal, and saw Vlad’s eyes go wide.

It should have been enough warning, but with me and my grandmother both trying to take control of my body at the same time, and both trying to react in different ways, I froze for a second.

By the time I’d sorted out who was in charge for the moment, that nasty crooked knife was at my throat and a plate mail armored arm held my waist.

There were two Georgians left, in addition to White Knight, and I’d only seen the one. That suit of armor in the tower wasn’t just a decoration.

Vlad growled low and actually got a little bigger. I had a feeling the guy that grabbed me was about to be in a world of hurt.

The Georgian with the crossbow took that moment of distraction combined with a lull in the wind, to fire a shot at Vlad’s unprotected back. The bolt went straight through and the tip stuck out of his chest a few inches, about dead center of where Vlad’s right lung should be.

Novak looked as startled as I was by the sudden turn of events.

Vlad coughed blood and dropped to one knee, the tip of his sword dipping to the stones.

“Finish it,” a male voice growled by my right ear, echoey inside the full face helmet.

Knight hesitated. “He just spared my life. That’s the second time a dragon has shown me mercy.”

“Do what you came here to do, Novak. Or are you afraid to face him again after he kicked your ass?”

Knight’s jaws tightened hard.

“Don’t do it, Knight. These people have lied to you, about Vlad, about dragons, about a lot of things. And they murdered all of Vlad’s security people.”

“Shut up, bitch, or I’ll slit your throat,” the arm around my waist tightened painfully, and the ugly knife dug into the very human flesh just under my jaw. A trickle of blood flowed into my turtleneck shirt.

I fought, but the armor, or maybe the man himself, was stronger than me. I regretted putting on the silver gauntlets. I couldn’t use my claws through them. They probably wouldn’t have gone through the plate armor anyway.

The Georgian with the crossbow got another bolt loaded while Knight hesitated and I struggled with the guy in the plate mail.

“I’ll do it,” the crossbowman said. He walked up to point blank range behind Vlad and pointed the crossbow at the back of Vlad’s head. He leaned against one of the crenellations on the outer wall to steady his aim.

“NO!!” I shouted, and not really knowing why, I moved my hand across my body as if shoeing a fly away. Lady Nyneve’s semi-transparent hand moved with mine like an after image on a blurred film.

A powerful gust of wind hit the Georgian. It ripped the crossbow out of his hand. He tried to catch it, overbalanced, and screamed for a second or two before hitting the ground head first three stories down.

“You’ll die for that, bitch,” the Georgian with a knife to my throat said.

I elbowed him in the ribs as hard as I could with my stronger left hand, almost forgetting that it had a shield with a point at the bottom strapped to it. The point didn’t pierce the plate mail which was clearly special in some way, but it did dent the breastplate pretty good and make an impression on the guy inside.

 He gahwhoofed air out and his grip on my waist lost some of its strength. The knife at my throat cut into my jawline a little, but not across my windpipe and arteries.

I got my right arm in between his wrist and my throat. No more blades in my throat. Thanks.

“You’ll die for that insolence, sirrah,” I heard Nyneve say with my voice. I felt the crackle. All the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. I had just enough time to think, oh shit.

A lightning bolt hit dead center on the plate mail helmet. Whatever special properties that armor had, it wasn’t up to handling a direct lightning strike. I smelled burnt flesh. The guy who held me spasmed hard. Fortunately, he dropped the blade while convulsing and dying.

I really hate electricity. I lay on the wet stones for a few seconds after my own convulsions stopped, listening to every nerve ending in my body screaming at me.

Ow.

I felt an apology from the armor I still wore. Lady Nyneve didn’t know I wasn’t immune to electricity like she had been.

“S’okay, grandmother. At least, I’m alive.”

Which was more than I could say about plate male guy. A black hole the size of a softball in the top of his helmet, and the smoke coming out of every seam in the armor made it pretty clear that he wasn’t getting back up. He smelled like a barbecue pit.

I rolled over and found two solicitous faces looking down at me. Vlad, who still had two crossbow bolts sticking out of him, and Knight, who was still bleeding pretty freely himself.

“Aren’t we a set,” I mumbled when I could talk without drooling on myself.

Vlad coughed a little wetly and gave me that dimple that meant he was fighting not to smile. “The Georgians are defeated, it seems. All but the one you talked me into not killing.” He sat on the stones, leaned back wearily against the parapet and sneered at Novak.

Novak picked up his sword and put it to Vlad’s throat. Vlad just watched him do it. He didn’t have enough strength left to fight White Knight.

“Don’t be stupid, Novak. Put the sword down,” I said.

“I’m the last of my order, the only one left to fulfill the sacred trust. It’s up to me alone to rid this world of the dragon scourge.”

“Bullshit,” I said. I scraped up enough energy to stand and face him. I shoved the sword to one side with my gauntleted hand and stood between him and Vlad. It wasn’t hard. Knight wasn’t exactly at his best. “You still don’t get it, do you? You’re not the hero here. You’re the bad guy.”

Novak blinked.

“You’re a Protector. What would you do to someone who invaded someone’s home with a gang and killed everyone inside?”

“Arrest them,” he said, then stopped. “But that’s not …”

“Yes, it is. There are a dozen dead bodies downstairs to prove it.”

He hesitated, then his jaw firmed. “That doesn’t change the fact that dragons are an evil that must be wiped out. I can’t fail now.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. I had a headache so big, even Nyneve probably felt it. And she’d been dead for centuries. “What do you call someone, born with exceptional abilities who uses them in the service of his country, to bring murderers, thieves, and rapists to justice?”

“I’m not really very comfortable being called a superhero, but …”

“I’m not talking about you, dumbass. I’m talking about Vlad.”

“What? But he’s a dragon. Dragon’s don’t …”

“Yeah, he’s a dragon, and yeah, he did. You saw him after he helped to save the city. You’ve heard me and TakeDown both tell you he saved our lives. You know he did. You were just too busy listening to lying murderers wearing fancy crosses to listen.”

“But, they’re … we’re on a holy mission and …”

“What do you call people who invade a village while the men are away to war defending against an invading army, and murder everyone in the village including babies in cradles?”

“I would call them monsters, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Vlad’s sons were seven years old when Georgians murdered them and everyone else in their village. Is that who you are, Novak? Are you one of them? A monster?”

He swallowed. “They were dragons.”

I nodded. “Yeah, Vlad’s wife and tiny sons were dragons.  Seven year old children who had never hurt anyone, but they were dragons. There were a few other dragons in the village, too. The rest of the villagers were just people, like the bodies downstairs. Just people who got in their way.”

“Is that you, Novak? Are you a Georgian? Are you someone who’s willing to slaughter an entire village, so that you can get to a mother and her two tiny sons so you can kill them in cold blood while their father is away defending his country?”

Novak swallowed again. “That’s not true. The Order of St. George is an ancient, honorable …”

I stepped aside to let Novak look down into Vlad’s eyes.

Vlad had shifted to human form. He did that, I noticed, when he was badly injured, as if holding dragon form required energy. Strange.

Novak stumbled to a stop, looking down at Vlad’s face, filled with old grief, eyes glowing red with impotent anger. The truth of that old pain was written all over the Black dragon’s face.

Novak, tightened his stubborn jaw again and I realized what I’d known before, words were never going to be enough to shake the bone deep conditioning he’d been given since his was a kid that dragons were the heart of evil.

I bid a silent fond farewell to Lady Nyneve. I set the shield aside, peeled off the gauntlets, both of them, and stripped the scale shirt off over my head. My turtleneck shirt followed it.

I stood there naked from the waist up, purple, sliver and green scales exposed. The rain had stopped and the wind died down to stillness. The clouds had begun to dissipate as well, giving those bright stars the weatherman promised a chance to shine. It was Nyneve’s anger that brought the storm, and she wasn’t angry anymore.

I grabbed the blade of Excalibur fearlessly with the normal human flesh of my right hand. I knew that sword would never cut me. But Novak didn’t know that.

I put the tip of the blade over my heart. “You’re the last of the Georgian order. You need to kill all dragons in order to fulfill your charter. Fine. Start with me.”

“Damson, no!” Vlad hissed from behind me. “It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve saved his life. He’s a Georgian. He will kill you.” Vlad tried to struggle to his feet to defend me, but he only made it to one knee. “Please!” he begged Novak. Vlad had already lost so much to the Georgians. “I spared your life. Please, let her go.”

Novak looked from Vlad’s tortured face to mine, to the sword tip against my scaly chest. It wasn’t just words anymore.

“What are you waiting for, Knight?” I taunted Novak. “You’re a Georgian. I’m a dragon. What’s the problem?”

Novak’s eyes welled with tears. The blade tip shook.

I didn’t let up. “You are a Georgian dragon-killer, aren’t you? Like the ones who killed my father when I was only twelve. Like the ones who killed Vlad’s wife and children. Like the ones who killed everyone in this house other than us. You’re like them, aren’t you?”

“No.” Novak whispered finally.

“I am a dragon, Novak. It’s your duty as a Georgian to kill me. Right now.” I pulled the blade with my bare hand toward my chest and Novak yanked it away.

“NO!”

“Are you a Georgian or not?” I asked.

“No,” he whispered and sank to his knees. A tear broke free and ran down his face. He dropped Excalibur from limp fingers. I’d broken him. He’d been a Georgian since he was a child. It was his whole identity. He didn’t know how to be anything else. If I left him like this, he’d be lost and he might never find himself again.

I knelt down in front of him. I picked up one of his limp hands and stroked my thumb on the long scar on the underside of his wrist. That scar continued all the way down his side to his waist line and there was another one just like it on the other side, although it was buried beneath masses of other scars. That line of scar tissue made me incredibly sad for him.

I slipped one of the silver gauntlets onto his hand. Nyneve’s scales molded lovingly to her chosen wielder.

“I don’t have the right,” Novak protested.

I put the other gauntlet on his other hand. “My grandmother, Lady Nyneve, the Pendragon of the Silver clan of dragons, also known as the Lady of the Lake, gave up her life for this armor and these weapons to be created. They were forged from her very scales, claws and spikes, with her spirit bound inside them, by my grandfather, Merlin, wizard of the Green clan, with the aid of Prince Fafnir of the Red.”

Novak blinked another tear away. He watched me like a drowning man watches someone throw a life preserver. He said nothing as I slid the mail shirt over his head, but he lifted his arms and shrugged into the armor with a practiced motion.

“Lady Nyneve was a peerless warrior, the fiercest defender of the land in her time. Her nephew Sir Gawain, the Green Knight, was your great-grandfather, and he was King Arthur’s right hand, his bodyguard, and his closest friend.” I put the shield on his left arm, the front surface of it shiny silver like a mirror, blank of any decoration. “Sir Gawain was Arthur’s shield, as you have been a shield to many who could not defend themselves.”

I picked up Excalibur by the hilt this time. “This is Excalibur, the sword made from the very claws of the guardian of Britain. Only those the Lady of the Lake finds worthy may wield it.”

I stood in front of him, and tapped him on each shoulder with it, then presented him the hilt across my arm. I’ve seen my share of medieval movies, and I read Ivanhoe. I had the general idea.

“Stand, White Knight, no longer a member of the Order of St. George. Now, a true defender of the innocent, no matter what their race.”

He stood uncertainly. After a moment, he pushed back his shoulders and stood taller, chin up. I felt Nyneve flooding him with encouragement, doing her best to let him feel her pride in him.

Flashing red and blue lights reflected from in front of the house. The police had arrived. I walked Knight over to a back section of the wall directly above the pool.

Novak said, “I don’t know how I could have believed such blatant lies for so long.”

I shrugged. “They got you when you were young and impressionable, gave you the only family you’d ever known.”

“And took away yours, and Vlad’s.”

My jaw tightened. “Yeah.”

“Tell him I’m sorry.”

“I think he got that. You’d better go. The police are coming, and it would be a lot better if you weren’t associated with the slaughter downstairs.”

“I should face up to my mistakes.”

“Don’t be an idiot. The Georgians did this. You’re not one of them anymore. Go home.”

Novak smiled slightly at that, and did something completely unexpected.

He kissed me.

He smelled of cardamom, or some nameless exotic spice I’d only smelled before on Vlad. It was like they used the same intoxicating cologne. Dragon chemistry.

I picked him up bodily and tossed him over the parapet. He did hit the pool at least. I’m not sure I would have cared at that moment if he didn’t.

Damn it. My love life is complicated enough, thank you very much.

I went back and sat next to Vlad.

Vlad said, “He still hasn’t figured it out, has he?”

I shook my head. “It’ll hit him eventually, once he’s past some of the other shocks.” After a few seconds, I said, “They cut off his wings.” It was the one thing that bothered me most about Novak’s sad past.

“Poor bastard,” Vlad said.

For a moment, we shared the memory of flying wingtip to wingtip over a glassy lake in the starlight. I was holding his hand when TakeDown found us, with Tex, the security guy in cowboy boots leaning on him.

Tex owned up to killing one of the house invaders, the one who gutted him, and the ballistics tests eventually showed that Vlad’s secretary got one of the others. Both clear cases of self-defense, not that it mattered to the secretary.

Vlad and I had to give statements and all that, but it was pretty clear that Vlad was one of the victims, and TakeDown and I were the heroes trying to save the day and arriving a bit too late.  I had trouble explaining how the two bad guys had died up on the walkway. I told the cops that one of them fell off, and the other was hit by lightning that got me, too. True enough.

Neither Vlad nor I mentioned White Knight. Officially, he was never there.

Det. Long poked holes in our story without breaking a sweat, but Vlad’s lawyer didn’t give him a chance to dig any deeper.

Once the docs got the crossbow bolts pulled out of Vlad, I kissed him, not just a little kiss to cover me giving him healing venom, but an intense, passionate, curl your toes kind of kiss. He earned it.

He knew it didn’t change me choosing Jack over him, though.

We discussed the fact that there didn’t appear to be any Georgians anymore, and it might be safe to be a little more open about the whole dragon thing. But Vlad thought that was true before, and then they killed my dad. So, I’ll keep my scales covered.

Vlad moved away the next week, just before Christmas. I don’t even know where. He wouldn’t tell me. He said that since he was known to be a dragon now, if there were any Georgians left, it would be safer for me not to be too closely associated with him.

White Knight disappeared, too, just vanished.

I called Liberty. She told me he’d left a note requesting a sabbatical, and left. No one knew where.

Before Vlad left, I made the mistake of telling him that Ma, Jack, Brad the troll, Cam the cat, and Rocky the dog were all sharing my 2 bedroom apartment with me, and that I was having trouble paying rent lately, much less the double pet deposit my landlady demanded.

Vlad said he didn’t need his place anymore, and he didn’t need money, so selling it was pointless. He asked me to house sit for him, indefinitely.

So I sort of inherited a castle.

And Tex, the security guy in the cowboy boots. Vlad left him with me, too. He said I could use someone to watch my back, and the guy needed the job.

Guess I’ll have to find out what his real name is.

D Dragon