19
ROLAND
DING DING. The sound of the door opening with a new customer. I turned to glance behind me and saw his shape move across the aisles, stopping on the one I was in.
I almost didn't recognize the dragon boy: he wore jeans with holes in them instead of boxing shorts, and a denim jacket covered in orange and red flames. He stood very still while he stared at me with his single bloody eye.
I turned to face him, and we regarded each other for a long moment.
"Mate, you look like you fell right out of 1985. I don't think denim jackets have come back around yet." I shrugged my shoulders. "Though maybe you're a trend setter."
He flinched and swatted at a fly buzzing around his ear, smashing it against his cheek on the second swing. "Fucking bugs!" He wiped his hand on his jacket and returned his eyes to me.
"You were my guy," he said, voice deep and pleased.
"I didn't know what that meant then, and I still don't know what it means now. But--" I held up a finger, "--if you're here to buy me a drink the way you were supposed to after our fight, then I'll take any Irish whiskey. So long as it's over $100. I've got an expensive taste, yeah?"
A smile spread across his face, and not because of my joke.
The dragon flexed his fingers and took a slow step forward. His boots clicked heavily on the tile floor as he approached, and I could see his intentions in his eyes.
"I've been keen for a rematch," I said as I rolled my shoulders, loosening up, "but I didn't expect it here. There's a perfectly good--"
He lunged forward and swung wide with his left fist, hissing through the air in front of my face as I stepped back. It threw him off balance and I would have had a perfect opening for a counter had I been ready, but by the time I realized we were really going to do this here he'd recovered.
"Stop it!" the cashier yelled, waving his arms. "No fighting in my store!"
The dragon snarled and advanced on me, fists in front of his meaty face. I faked two test jabs at his gut, neither of which he reacted to, and then on the third I sent a real punch there--but that time he was ready, pulling back and hammering one fist down into my wrist. I danced backwards, wincing at the pain.
"Mate..." I said, but there was no stopping my assailant now.
He tried a one-two combo and followed it up with a murderous uppercut; I deflected the first two and dodged the third, sensing the weight of his fist and arm, the power of each of the blows should he land one. He was slowly backing me up, cornering me against the back wall of the liquor store. If I had room to maneuver I could take him, but here I had no chance.
I opened my mouth to tell the cashier to call the cops, but it looked like he was already doing that.
The dragon twisted his entire body in a roundhouse punch, and when I tried to dodge it my shoulders met the back wall of shelves. His fist was a sledgehammer crashing into my arm, knocking me sideways like a pile of firewood. I sprawled on the ground and rose, my entire left arm simultaneously numb and on fire. I tried to lift it protectively but couldn't raise it to eye-level.
Before the dragon could descend on me, I grabbed a bottle of cheap vodka from the bottom shelf. Gripping it by the neck, I swung it with every ounce of my strength.
Smashing a bottle wasn't easy. Not like the movies. Usually the glass didn't so much as crack, and bounced off hard surfaces. Especially thick liquor bottles.
I swung the bottle like a club, expecting it to knock the dragon back, but when it struck his arm it shattered.
Glass and clear liquor exploded in the air and flew in all directions. That surprised me, but it shocked the dragon too, who turned away from the liquor splattering in his face. He stumbled backwards a few steps and wiped at his eyes, face scrunched with pain.
I could've run. There was a moment when the way was clear, a path down the aisle and to the door and out into the free air. But I'd been wanting this rematch for a week, had dreamed about it at night and in the day. Paired with my rising fury at him jumping me in a fucken liquor store? There was no way I could run now. Not with him right in front of me, doubled over with his fingers in his eyes.
I took a long step forward, pulled back my leg, and swung it like I was kicking a corner kick. My shoe caught him straight in the cheek, straightening him from his hunch and sending him backwards into the row of shelves in the aisle. Bottles cascaded down as he broke the shelving, some shattering on the ground but most simply bouncing and rolling away with the sound of glass on tile. He fell onto his side, hand slipping in the liquid and glass, and he pulled back his hand and roared with pain. Blood ran down his palm and wrist from where a shard of glass had lodged itself into his palm.
"Not so tough now, are ya?" I stepped forward, careful to avoid the broken glass. I wasn't the kind of man to hit someone while they were down, but tonight I was going to make an exception. "You picked the wrong Irishman to fuck with, ya did."
I clenched my fist and prepared to strike, but before I could the dragon grabbed a handle of gin with his good hand and backhanded it toward me. I twisted away but it still caught me on the temple like a wrecking ball. Half my vision flashed white for an instant, and I felt myself bump into a shelf of bottles. I grabbed the shelf for support and blinked rapidly, doing my best not to fall. A wave of dizziness came over me, and the lights in the ceiling swayed like we were on a boat.
Somewhere very far away, the store cashier screamed at us. I tried to hone in on where the voice was coming from but it was all I could do just to avoid vomiting.
My only warning was the rush of movement. The dragon roared as he bulled into me, tackling me around the waist and sending us both ten feet backwards into the back wall. I struck the shelves and wall with enough force to knock the air from my lungs, and I winced as bottles fell from above. I swung blind and managed to catch to catch him across the jaw, which probably hurt me as much as him but I didn't care, because I was on the ground and he had the advantage. I kicked up but missed his crotch, then grabbed a bottle from my left and swung it sideways into his knee.
He shrieked with pain and crumpled to the ground, his face a mask of pain, then fury. He clutched at his knee, and I could see the shape of the cashier running in the opposite direction, toward a back door. I tried to get up, but everything was still swaying in my vision. The lights were a pinch too bright. I was concussed for sure. But I needed to fight it.
I pulled back my leg and kicked as hard as I could, smashing the dragon in the nose, feeling the cartilage crunching with sick satisfaction. I pulled back to do it again, and again, as many times as I could, but the dragon was rolling away from me and I still didn't have the stretch to get up.
And then the dragon crawled toward me, easily avoiding the two halfhearted jabs I sent his way, and he pulled back his good hand and pistoned it into my gut. Pain exploded throughout my torso. My diaphragm was paralyzed, too numb to expand and contract. I gasped as I tried to breathe, to allow even the tiniest trickle of oxygen into my lungs, but even that much effort was beyond me.
The dragon knelt in front of me with blood dribbling down his mouth and murder in his eyes.
"You're my gryphon alright," he drawled in that terrible Southie accent. "It will be a pleasure to kill you." Rather than attacking me, his hand felt along my hips, then reached inside each of my coat pockets. He blinked in surprise.
"But..."
I reached around me, found an intact bottle, and swung it at his head. He caught my forearm, stopping me with ease.
His eyes widened with realization.
"You don't have it, do you?"
I wanted to spit in his face, but my mouth was too dry.
The dragon shook his head and rumbled with laughter. "You stupid fucking..."
"Why..." I gasped, finally able to breathe, "do you want... to kill... me?"
He rose on shaky feet, buckling under his wounded knee but managing to stay standing. He bent over to spit blood out on the ground, leaving a strand of spittle across his ugly mouth.
"I don't want to kill you," he admitted. "Not like this. Then the totem will choose another body, and I'll be fighting the ruby gryphon all over again in some other fucking liquor store."
The words would have been gibberish to me even if I weren't concussed.
But then a smile broke out on his face, ghastly with blood covering his pale teeth. "But that's alright," he said, pointing at the wall. I got the impression he was pointing at something far away, like the distant horizon. Somewhere to the south. "Because if you've split up with the totem, then my job is easy. For once, all of this will be easy, and my brothers and I shall defeat you for the first and final time."
He rumbled with that terrible laughter again, and turned to leave.
"STOP!" the cashier commanded. He stood in the middle of the aisle with a shotgun aimed at the dragon. "The cops are on the way. Get out."
The dragon chuckled. "Well now, do you want me to stop, or do you want me to get out? I can't do both."
I was still reacting to the weight of the man's words. That he and his brothers would defeat me, more than just me, and even though I didn't really know what he meant I knew it was the truth. This man was evil. Not just bad, the way a douchebag who jumps a man in a liquor store is bad, but truly evil with blackness in his heart. Whatever he intended, it had implications far worse than what had happened here.
"Shoot him," I gasped.
Both the dragon and the cashier looked at me.
"Shoot him!" I repeated, more gusto in my words. "You have to shoot him!"
The dragon turned to face the cashier. The gun trembled in his hands; he was hardly more than a kid, probably a student at one of the smart kid schools around here. Probably had never even held a gun. The dragon cocked his head at him and took a single casual step forward, testing him.
"You're not gunna shoot me," he drawled.
"I..." the kid stammered. "I..."
The dragon stepped up until the barrel of the shotgun pressed against his chest. The cashier tried to pull it back but the dragon snatched forward and grabbed it, holding it against his own chest.
"Do it," he said. "I have been taken from this world more times than memory can recall. For millennia we have been born and fought and died, always the death, yet always we return. Our battle is endless, boy. It will always be endless." He turned to look at me, the gun still pressed against his sternum. "Until we finally win."
He held my gaze a moment, then pushed the gun out of the way and strode past the cashier. The front door dinged again as he disappeared into the night.
*
The cashier watched the dragon disappear, then stared at the door after he was gone.
"Excuse me," I said, wincing as I pushed to my feet. "You wouldn't happen to have a bottle of Dubliner 20 in stock, eh? I prefer my whiskeys to be old enough to fuck."
He whirled toward me. "GET OUT!" he screamed, voice a noticeable degree more confident now that the dragon was gone. I raised my hands slowly, one of which was still too numb to go above my shoulder.
"Mate, I may have one hell of a concussion but I seem to remember him getting the jump on me. I'm the victim here."
"You destroyed half the store!" he gestured to the bottles broken and scattered on the ground, and the aisle that was collapsed.
"Again, I was just minding my own business..."
"The cops are on their way," the cashier said with his chin in the air. "Feel free to stick around and explain to them how a fighter from Boris's illegal den is the innocent victim here. I bet they'll be real sympathetic."
Bloody hell. It wouldn't do for them to connect the dots that the dragon and I were both underground bare-knuckle boxers.
"All I wanted was a fucken drink," I muttered as I took a wide arc around the shotgun-holding kid and back out into the street.
A crowd of preppy Harvard guys had gathered outside and pointed when I came out, so I turned in the other direction and limped down the street. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off all the pain my brain had been avoiding came back with a vengeance: the bruised knuckles of my right hand, the throbbing pain in my temple, the hollow ache in my gut that still tinged each breath with fresh pain. My vision was still a little blurry--which couldn't have been a good sign--but the longer I walked the more that started to fade.
The dragon had said a lot of things, and most of it didn't make sense. But one thing that did ring true: the totem.
It wasn't the word I'd used for it, but the moment the word was out of his mouth I knew he meant the ruby gryphon carving. That's what he was after, though I had no bloody idea why. Thinking about it, I could almost sense the totem far ahead of me. To the south. That's probably where it was, with Harriet flying out of Atlanta. Or was it my imagination that I could sense it?
But the dragon douche had known. Somehow.
And if he was going after the totem, it meant Harriet was in danger.
Passion flared up in my chest like a bonfire. I realized I was clenching my fist so tight my nails dug into my palms painfully, and it took more than a little willpower to force myself to stop. Harriet and the gryphon totem were in danger.
My mate was in danger.
I had to protect her. And not just because of how I felt about her: because it was my job. My duty. Nothing in the world mattered as much as keeping Harriet, and the totem I'd given her, safe.
I pulled out my phone to look up plane tickets when it vibrated from an incoming call.
CALLER: ETHAN MASTERSON.
I would have ignored it, but I was angry and frustrated and the phone was already in my hand, so I slid the connector to receive the call.
"Ethan, I've had one hell of a fucken night, so this had better be important."
It was.