20
ETHAN
As I traveled east toward the beacon of love that I knew was Jessica, I couldn't help but feel like I was approaching my doom.
I knew it was a trap. That was the only reason to kidnap Jessica and take her somewhere: to lure me to him. I could feel the way the dragon was taunting me, and it made me want to fight him even more.
Even though I knew all of this, I was powerless to stop myself.
Nothing mattered except protecting Jessica. Rescuing her. Being with her.
A terrifying thought came to me: what if he killed her? He didn't need her alive: killing her would draw me to him even quicker, blinded by rage and revenge. He could kill her right now, and I wouldn't be able to stop him.
The thought left me paralyzed for the next hour of the drive.
I wasn't sure where I was going. East on I-30 for a while, until passing into Louisiana. As long as I'd been living in Dallas I'd never driven out this way; everything looked foreign. Especially once my instincts told me to exit the interstate and drive south along small back roads in the middle of nowhere. Even the gas stations looked different.
It filled me with unease, and I wasn't sure if it was my own emotion or the gryphon's deep inside of me. It wanted to fight, I knew, but it was wary of the surroundings. Like the dragon might spring out at any moment and roast me alive in the car.
But still I drove, following the pulsing light in the far distance, slowly growing closer.
That was the only thing that gave me any hope: the fact that I was gaining on them, no matter how slow. That meant Jessica was alive. And if she was alive, then I had a chance.
I didn't know what I was going to do. I couldn't shift into a gryphon unless Jessica triggered it with the totem. I'd tried pushing it several times already so I could fly the rest of the way there (ignoring the obvious danger of doing so from the inside of a moving car), but of course it didn't work. Jessica was the only one who could control my transformation.
Somehow I doubted the dragon would let me get close enough to Jessica to let her press the button. Even if I asked nicely.
So the order of events in my imagination went like this: show up wherever the dragon was waiting. Exchange some taunts. Then he would turn into a dragon and sear me like a barbecue steak.
Yet I drove on. If I was going to die for Jessica, then so be it. I had to make the attempt.
I realized I was drawing much closer than before; it felt like Jessica and the dragon had stopped somewhere, only a few miles ahead. I began to hope he was stopping for gas, or food, and changed my plan of attack accordingly, but all of that fell away when I followed the signal to a private road leading into a tangle of green forest.
The car bumped along, Jessica growing so close I could almost taste her on my lips.
A dilapidated house stood in the middle of a clearing. Parked next to it was a beat up compact car, and an enormous lime green pick-up truck, shiny with new wax, a metaphor for penile compensation if ever I'd seen one. But there was no mirth in my mind as I parked my own car a safe distance from the house. This was the place.
This was where Jessica was.
I stuffed the gryphon totem into my jeans pocket and got out of the car. The air stank like smoke and death, as if an unseen pile of carcasses and bones were filling the air with rot. Flies buzzed around my head and through the air, feasting on the stench I knew to be the dragon's. It wasn't just knowledge: it was memory, from the gryphon deep inside my chest. It knew this smell from an ancient time, from battles and victories and defeats long ago.
For a heartbeat I considered attempting stealth, circling the house in the woods and coming up from another angle, but then I could feel the dragon's eyes on me, surprise and excitement and barely-restrained ardor all at once. I strode forward until I was at the edge of the clearing, and then the front door opened.
EMERALD.
A cluster of crows took flight as if the telepathic sound had disturbed them. His voice felt less threatening than before. More casual, or resigned to this conclusion. The Emerald Dragon strode down the porch on slow, patient legs, never taking his eyes from me.
He stopped a short distance away, and we regarded one another across the space as we had done countless times before.
"I have a deal for you," I found myself saying.
"A deal," he rasped, out loud this time. "Deals are for people in positions of power. Deals require leverage."
I ignored him and took a deep breath. "I'll trade you the gryphon totem for Jessica." The totem pulsed in my pocket angrily. "You want it. I can feel it in you now. I've hidden it somewhere safe, and if you let Jessica go now I'll tell you where it is."
The dragon's sneer held infinite contempt. "Across the ages I've learned not to trust you. Yet even if I could, such a trade is impossible. You reveal much of your ignorance by even suggesting it."
I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it was the truth. He wouldn't make that trade.
"Then I have a second proposal." I took one step forward, but no more. "Let Jessica go free, right now. Give her my car keys and let her drive away. Do that," I said, pausing for emphasis, "and I'll turn myself in to you."
"NO!"
Jessica screamed her disapproval from inside the house. I saw movement at the window on the right side, one or two people there. Jessica abruptly cut off, as if someone had slapped a hand over her mouth.
Or cut her throat, a negative part of my brain said, but I could feel her through the pulsing of the totem so I knew it wasn't true.
The dragon considered the window, then turned his grin back on me. "Somehow I do not think that trade will work."
He held up a long finger.
"However. Since you are so ignorant, allow me to explain the futility of your situation. You and your feathered brethren are limited to transforming only at your mate's command. We dragons have no such restrictions. Rather than fill your body with flames here and now, I will permit you to surrender peacefully. In return, I promise to make your death swift and painless." He spread his hands. "I doubt the other dragons will offer such mercy to your brothers."
A part of me wanted to. It was a small chance, but maybe, just maybe, he would let Jessica go if I did. And maybe she would drive away from this terrible place. And maybe she would live her life without me.
But I could feel that it wasn't true, that she would do anything for me just as I would do anything for her. And the gryphon in me raged against my chest, demanding to be let free, full of bloodlust now that the dragon was within sight.
I had to fight him. There was no other way.
The dragon knew immediately. He nodded at my internal thought as if I'd telegraphed it to the world, and stood up very straight.
"But I do not need my dragon form either," he said, unbuttoning his pale green shirt. "I can defeat you in this body, preserving the secrecy of this place."
He untucked his shirt to reach the final button, then let the whole thing slide off his back. Tattoos covered every inch of his body from navel to neck, flames and smoke in brilliant shades of orange and red and black. The brightest flames ran along his arms, and as he stretched his hands above him the fire wrought in ink danced as if it were real.
I rolled my shoulders to give myself something to do, getting the blood flowing. I'd taken some kick-boxing classes back in college, but that was a decade ago. I tried two quick test-jabs in the air, and even that simple motion felt foreign.
But I had to save Jessica, and there was no other option.
"I'm ready."
"Surely not," the dragon said, approaching.