23
ROLAND
My flight was torture.
I didn't mind flying, not normally. So long as I had something to watch on the TV screen or on my phone I was a happy fucken camper. Shit, that's what I did to relax. Sitting and doing nothing.
But it was pure, concentrated agony sitting on a plane knowing Harriet was in danger. I felt overwhelmingly protective of her, which meant the distance between us was an unacceptable failure. The entire time I could sense the dragon ahead of me, a bundle of cocky mirth somewhere to the east. A meteor hurtling toward the woman I cared about. The woman who I was beginning to think I loved, as crazy as that as.
And my gryphon form?
It raged inside my body. It was furious at the events, and demanded to explode from my chest and fly the rest of the way there on its own wings. Anything to reach our mate faster. There was no thought, only primal impulse. A passion that had been fueled for eons.
But there were bars that kept it back, an unseen cage that prevented me from shapeshifting. I knew that as much as I knew anything. A new sixth sense I was aware of if I turned my attention inward. Ethan's stupid information was right: I couldn't shift until I'd had sex with Harriet again.
Which probably wasn't going to happen, all things considered. Even if I somehow reached her before the dragon, I couldn't very well say, "Hey there love, I know there's a murderous beast about to kill us but can you yank down your trousers and let me have a quickie?"
And that brought me to the other torture of the plane ride: I didn't have a plan.
How could I have one? Human against human, well, that was a fight for which I was made. That was my expertise. But against a literal dragon, flying and breathing fire with jaws the size of a Volkswagen Beetle? Fuck if I knew what to do.
And as long as the flight was, 16 hours wasn't enough time to figure it out.
Ethan had insisted I meet up with them in Oklahoma first, that we do whatever needed to be done as a group, but that was bloody stupid. There wasn't enough time to fly there, come up with a group plan, then help Harriet. I had a singular purpose, now. A drive which I'd been waiting for my entire life.
Protect my love. Protect my mate. Protect my Harriet.
The Johannesburg airport was chaos: frenzied passengers crowded around ticketing desks and television monitors. Clusters of people sat in the walkways, for there was nowhere else for them to go, and trying to move through the terminal was like getting to the front stage at a crowded concert.
I got in line at the shortest ticketing desk I saw, which wasn't saying much since it still took 2 precious hours to get halfway to the front. I tried texting and calling Harriet but my phone wouldn't work; soon I was cursing the useless piece of technology and wishing I had something to punch.
"All the circuits are jammed," said the man behind me in line. "Whole bloody country is upturned thanks to the volcano."
The woman behind him scoffed. "It's not Monte Muambe, friend. It's the plane crashes. Six of them."
"I heard it was eight!" said another woman.
"And what do you think is causing them, eh?" the original man said. "The volcano! The ash screws with the radar..."
"So all of this is caused by a volcano?" I asked.
"Right," the woman said, a phone to her ear. "I'm trying to book on Lufthansa and they're telling me they have no flights for three more days! And that's trying to go in the opposite direction!"
I let them argue and left the line. If all these people weren't going anywhere, I probably wouldn't have much more luck, no matter how much money I tried to throw at the ticketing desk.
The car rental line was easier, and I handed the man whatever identification, credit card, or other paperwork he asked for. I hardly heard anything he said until, "How many miles do you estimate using during your stay?"
"Fuck if I know."
He seemed put off by my vulgarity. "Sir, I only need an estimate..."
"How far from here to Mozambique?" I asked, thinking of the pulsing feeling in my head. "There and back."
"Oh, that's not too far, sir! 150 miles to the east. So should I put you down for 300 round trip, or...?"
I focused on my sixth sense. The dragon wasn't to the east; he was to the north. I grabbed the map off the rental car desk and flipped it until we were far enough zoomed out, then pointed to a small off-shoot of Mozambique near Malawi.
"There. I'm going there."
The man stared at me like he thought I was joking, then punched a number into his computer. "Better to drive than to fly, eh? With all the trouble..."
"Sure."
"Would you like to purchase insurance? For only..."
"Just give me the fucken keys, mate."
I stopped at the first convenience store I passed on the way from the airport to the highway. A cluster of kids that looked like trouble eyed me as I went inside, but I stared death back at them and they didn't bother me. I emptied the refrigerator of liters of water, carried them in my arms to the cashier, then went back for more. Ten pre-made turkey sandwiches. Two jumbo bags of potato crisps. A bottle of caffeine pills. The cashier stared at me but said nothing.
And then I got inside the jeep and drove.
And drove.
And drove.
The highway from Johannesburg to Pretoria was mostly urban, but once I was north of there on the N1 highway my view began to spread out with countryside. Hills rose up from the distant horizon, tan colored terrain dotted with splatters of green shrubs and short, squat trees. I drove through cities with African names like Mokopane and Polokwane, and Afrikaners names like Louis Trichardt and Breitbridge. The summer sun crawled across the sky, hung forever at its apex, then drifted down behind me. I drank water steadily, and popped caffeine pills, and ate soggy turkey sandwiches with one hand on the wheel and my eyes focused on the road ahead. I stopped to refill my petrol and empty my bladder, but nothing else.
I'm coming, dragon. I will not let you get to Harriet.
The guards at the border entering into Zimbabwe were curious about my plans, and why I was traveling at night, but I kept my answers vague and didn't have anything unusual in my car (though they shook my bottle of caffeine pills skeptically), so they let me pass through unimpeded.
My cell phone carrier had no service here, which meant I couldn't communicate with Harriet. Worse: it meant I had no fucken idea where I was going. Or how far I had left to travel. I didn't even have a map, but I didn't need one, not with the steady rumbling of the dragon's laughter in my mind to guide me. It taunted me, urging me to press harder on the accelerator and go faster, safety be damned.
I drove for as far as I could, struggling to keep my chin off my chest as I tried to focus on the narrow view in front of my headlights, the road extending endlessly.
Finally I couldn't safely drive any farther without crashing, so I parked on the side of the road and slept until the sun woke me like a gentle friend. I took my morning piss in the bushes next to the road, poured some water over my head and downed two more caffeine pills, and then I was traveling again.
The dragon's sensation in my head was more frustrated today. I could not place why, but I knew the feeling clearly. That was a good sign; if the dragon was frustrated, then things were good. He hadn't found Harriet.
Zimbabwe went on forever. I stopped for petrol at a dilapidated station and asked the attendant how much farther to Mozambique; and he only shrugged and said, "Far."
Time stopped making sense. There was only me, the road stretching ahead to the horizon, and the angry ball of emotion somewhere to the north.
Later, the countryside receded and the space between buildings shrank, and then I was driving through Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The hairs on my arm and neck stood on end; I could sense Harriet here! Even inside my air conditioned car the scent of her lingered like perfume.
I almost stopped. Part of me demanded to; it wanted me to jump out of the jeep and sprint on foot until I found her. But her scent was also faded, like she was no longer here. Like I'd just missed her.
And I could feel myself drawing closer to the terrible beast for whom this journey predicated. The dragon was now more east than north, and the road out of Harare curved in that direction. I would reach him today, I knew.
I would kill him today.
I didn't know how. I didn't know if I even could. But I knew I would try, even if I died in the attempt.
I will do it for you, Harriet.
Storm clouds appeared in the distance, slowly replacing the beautiful blue sky. And as they spread above me I realized they weren't clouds at all. A plume of smoke rose in the distance, a tornado of ash and dust. The volcano, Monte something. I didn't remember the name. It didn't matter.
I knew the volcano portended the dragon.
His emotions were acute here, vicious angry thoughts like jagged lightning. Carnage and murder and blood and fire and flesh torn with his teeth, the thoughts bombarded me against my will, the dragon's searching eyes gazing out over the terrain. Searching for Harriet.
Searching for the totem.
For the next hour, my eyes scanned the dark sky, waiting for my nemesis to appear and dive upon me. His fury mixed with my own and I found myself as eager to battle him as he was to find the totem, the duality of our natures in synchronicity. He was the Ruby Dragon, if what Ethan had said was right. And I was the Ruby Gryphon.
I hadn't known what that meant until now.
We were ancient enemies, in the same way the volcano in the distance was ancient, a millennia of battles and victories and losses eroding us until our souls were smooth. Now that I was here, the gryphon inside of me almost calmed. Like it was satisfied that I'd brought us here.
If we were destined to battle, the way I knew we had battled before, then I supposed that made sense.
And then the volcano wasn't the only thing spewing dark smoke into the sky. Ahead of me rose individual tendrils of black smoke, with flickering fires that were their sources. I neared the closest one and saw it was the wreckage of a plane, with a wide fuselage like a cargo plane and brown boxes strewn across the African plain.
The dragon did this, I knew.
Suddenly the dragon's fury ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife. It was replaced with curiosity, an intense focus I couldn't quite place.
And then joy.
The dragon burst from the dark ash clouds in the distance. I knew it immediately; my eyes were drawn to him as if he were a supernova, though he was so far away he appeared as only a tiny speck against the clouds. My eyes widened at the sight; after all the emotions and senses, fighting with him in the ring, feeling him inside my head and hearing Ethan explain it, seeing him here abruptly made it all real.
There were dragons in this world, and one was right in front of me.
Pleasure came off of his presence like waves. Pleasure at having me here, at having something to fight. A sick pleasure that turned my stomach; a greasy film over day-old food.
But that didn't make sense, a voice inside my head said. He'd beaten the shit out of me in the liquor store, and said he didn't want to kill me because then the totem would choose another host. So what did it matter if he fought me here? Why would that give him joy? Unless he was frustrated by his search and simply wanted to battle. But...
I blinked, and sensed it.
Not just it, but her. The totem and Harriet, somewhere to the right. I rolled down my window and stuck my head out, looking far behind me.
There.
A plane flying below the clouds, low enough that I could make out the six windows on the exterior that marked it a smaller plane. Instantly I knew Harriet was on that plane, with the totem that was so precious to us.
All of it made sense, then. The wreckage of the planes all around, knocked out of the sky by my foe. The dragon's terrible frustration, then inexplicable joy.
Somehow, he'd known the totem would come here. And now it had.
"No!" I screamed out my window as if Harriet could hear me. "What are you doing? NO!"
Throwing aside all caution, I jerked the wheel hard. The jeep flew off the road, ramped down and up over the ditch running alongside, and then I was flying across the open plain.
Above me, the dragon and Harriet's plane flew toward one another.