Nentres

The morning after Mother Nature had visited my dragon brothers and me, I remember waking up to a shriek coming from outside. It sounded like someone was torturing an eagle. As groggy as I’d felt from drinking tequila all night, I’d stumbled outside and checked out the noise. A huge blue bird circled above the camp. I squinted against the sun, trying to identify the bird, thinking I’d discovered a new avian species. As the bird descended, it got bigger and bigger, and I thought I’d been staring at a giant bat.

At that point, Knight, the keeper of the East now, then just a regular guy like me, had come to stand next to me. We stood there like two drunk idiots and stared at what could only be described as a flying T-Rex.

We two and the entire camp stared as the prehistoric creature descended, landed, and turned into a man we all knew as Connor Montgomery, aka Lance, the keeper of the West. Back then, Lance’s beast hadn’t covered his human body, so he strolled in his human form and stood before us, eyes like saucers.

Let the record show I wasn’t the kind of guy who measured cocks with other guys, but I had fucking stared at his package. Them two cocks standing up like swords couldn’t be ignored.

“Man…” I pointed at his middle. “How?”

“You’re asking about his dicks,” Knight said to me. “For reals? Right now, that’s the part that caught your attention? Not the part where the possibility of what we saw last night is happening this morning. You know what? Never mind. At least I know I’m as crazy as all of you.”

We walked back inside, leaving the stunned people out there.

“Pack it up…dragon brothers,” Knight said and kicked Arthur’s bed to wake him. “We gotta get the fuck out of here. They’re gonna come in here with pitchforks and torches.”

“Connor, man, how are you?” I asked my buddy.

“I don’t know.”

And we were out of there in minutes, ending up in the Nevada desert, where we made a pact, the kind boys make in tree houses. It said we will take this dragon thing seriously, we will do what Mother Nature asked or die trying. We will also always cover each other’s backs, because if we didn’t, nobody else would. People would hunt and kill what they didn’t know, and they didn’t know dragons. So we elected to stake our claims. Four of us and four poles made sense. I got the sweet South with the warm breeze and calm waters. Then the Ice Age hit.

But back to Lance’s package. I found out Mother Nature had indeed gifted me with my own set of cocks. And I’d never been more grateful to her than the moment my spirit counted her blessings while I fucked her. Needless to say, I woke up this morning as happy as Miss Betty with her new lawn boy.

I believed I had Amy falling for me. It had taken more than a few days, certainly more effort than I imagined I’d have to put into making our relationship work. As I showered—scooping water from the bucket and pouring it over my body while sitting on the tile inside the shower—I whistled. To top off my birthday—never mind that it had been yesterday—Amy had gotten up in the middle of the night to go and “see about some cakes.” Yup, she was into me.

And now all I needed was to go on outside and breathe some fire. I was fixin’ to join Amy, eat some cakes, and bring her back up here to give her a morning ride either on my cocks or the dragon.

I couldn’t wait to see her. Once dressed, I jogged down the stairs and reached the main store Eddy treated as a lobby now. Plenty of people here. I nodded and strolled though the holes in the walls connecting all the stores and making it into one big place. I made my way toward the end of the building to the all-day breakfast place where I’d met Eddy the other day. If there was a cake to be made anywhere around here, Amy would find ovens in this place.

Seeing as I got to the restaurant early in the morning, I expected two things. One, Amy waiting for me here, and two, lots of people sitting around the tables and eating food. I found a large bowl of boiled wheat on a table, a ladle hanging from the edge of the table and dripping goo on the floor, but I didn’t find my spirit or many other people.

My gut churned, but not because I wasn’t gonna eat boiled wheat, but because some sort of strange awareness coursed through me. It was a living thing, as if something had infected my blood, and now it raced through me, spreading everywhere. I bolted outside and stood in the middle of the street. “Amy!” I bellowed from the top of my lungs.

Nothing.

“Amyyyy!”

I ran back into the restaurant and grabbed the first person I found, a middle-aged man, his face painted with black stripes. “Have you seen Amy?”

“Nah, man. We’re looking for Beatrice.”

“What?”

“We’re looking for the little girl, Beatrice.” He tugged, and I released him.

I stood there, the terrible feeling choking me. I hitched breaths, my dragon wanting to burst out of my chest. Fear. It was fear.

Amy had left me, but what’s more, she’d headed out on her own through the streets of New Orleans and beyond. I balled my hands into fists, and while I stood there trying to control the beast that wanted to burn the place and everyone in it, Eddy came over.

He wore his navy SEAL uniform. Grenades hung over his chest and hips, and he shouldered a bazooka. He marched past me, and his gang followed. The older women and kids stayed behind and cried.

Eddy was going to war.

Amy had left me.

This was the worst day of my life.

I followed Eddy and put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Hold your horses. Have you seen Amy?”

Eddy snorted. “No, but I haven’t seen Beatrice either, and neither has her mother, who put the girl in bed last night, then went to sleep on the couch in the same room.”

I frowned, not understanding.

Eddy shook his head. “You didn’t believe me then and you won’t believe me now.”

“You think the aliens kidnapped them,” I concluded. “You realize they have a habitat full of humans.”

“Fuck you.” Eddy marched, Lord knows where. To start a war with cyborgs maybe, because his entire camp got up in arms. They walked about half a mile. Uncertain of what to do, I stayed. The people at the mansion had no idea a war was about to start. Amy had left me, and we’d scheduled a ball she must attend the day after tomorrow. Or else? What would happen if Amy didn’t attend the ball?

As I thought it, scales erupted over my skin. I screamed in pain and fell to my knees, frantically touching my face. Scales covered me, my fingernails turned into black claws, one leg turning into a dragon’s leg. He was possessing me, pushing his will onto me, and he would take over. I didn’t think this was a good thing. The last time the beast had taken over a man, he’d caused an apocalypse. But I also couldn’t ignore his urge to seek out his spirit. She meant everything to us.

Even if she’d left me, I’d have to bring her back. That much was clear.

I swallowed and breathed deep, fought to stay in human form.

Eddy’s boots came into my vision, and I looked up. “Beatrice was my best friend’s daughter. She’s seven, and he’s dead. So I look out for her as I promised him I would.”

“Good luck.” I had my own problems.

“They’ll take everyone. Then what?”

My head might explode, dragon teeth pushing forward, rearranging my bones. I bent over in pain, my whole body cracking.

Eddy crouched before me and grabbed the back of my neck. “Listen to me, Jonatan. I had your door guarded all night long. My men took shifts. I had the front door, the hotel, the street, and this entire fucking town guarded. Nobody left their posts, but people are gone. I got witnesses saying the Cy are taking my people. What the hell would you make of it?”

“I’m having…” I swallowed past the lump formed in my throat. “Internal struggles right now.”

“Help me out, man. Help me get that kid back.”

“I need Amy like I need to breathe. And she’s gone. I gotta look for her.”

“She was taken!”

Taken, taken, taken, echoed in my head. Something must’ve showed on my face, because Eddy backed up a few steps.

“Where?” I muttered in a voice not my own.

“We’re marching on the habitat.”