Chapter Two
Dimension: Earth
Date: Now
Nadia Silver scratched the healing scar on her rump where she’d cut out the thrall crystal before escaping the palace of Victoria the Valiant. As a pampered, protected, and utterly imprisoned dragon shifter in the stable of the governor, Nadia hadn’t seen much blood in her life. She still shuddered at the memory of removing the tiny crystal from her body with a penknife, but more from the sheer joy of it.
Her brother Aiden’s secret missive about the crystal site had been right.
The second the crystal had come out of her body, she’d been free. And she’d done what she’d dreamed of doing since the day she’d reached puberty and turned into a dragon.
She’d run.
And here she was.
Naked as a snake, Nadia twisted in front of the full-length mirror, trying to see the damage she’d wrought upon herself. Because she was calm, the magical lattice beneath her skin was the faintest tracery. Otherwise her pale buttock was marred by a red, puckered patch like a lightning bolt. Self-surgery did not come naturally to her.
But the scar made her look, as the locals said, ass bad. Or was it bad ass? She’d only been in this dimension for a week and had been trying desperately to shift her language and mannerisms to better fit in. The humans of Earth employed a very different vocabulary than the world in which she had been raised.
Her world had raised her to be a magical battery, the source of wizardly power but benefitting from none of it.
Needless to say, that wasn’t a life she or anyone rational would want, now, was it?
Today, her seventh day on Earth, she planned to visit the library. Freely. Without any permission, guards, or onlookers staring and whispering. She was going to read what she wanted and then she was going to a restaurant to eat what she wanted, with the money Aiden had left her. He had escaped the crystal implantation ceremony foisted upon Tarakonans who morphed into dragons. She hadn’t.
Until the penknife of independence. Now she was finally going to live her life.
Books. Food. Sightseeing. Adventures.
And sex, if she could find a willing partner. Dragons were not encouraged to become attached to a lover, for fear they might become distracted from fawning over their wizardly tyrants.
Pfaugh! Not even the thrall crystal had been able to force Nadia to fawn over that despot Victoria, who had loved to trot out her treasured silver, her source of prophetic power. She was done with being a sideshow—and a bludgeon in Victoria’s plan to vanquish all of Tarakona.
Nadia slipped into fresh undergarments and clothing appropriate to the hot, arid climate in Magic, New Mexico. The bathing facilities in Aiden’s small dwelling weren’t as sumptuous as the palace, but she hardly cared. She was in heaven.
Humming a jaunty tune about booties she’d heard on the radio, she gathered her books, left the house, locked the door, and stared across Aiden’s property. Sand, cacti, rocks, and glittering surfaces called solar panels dotted the landscape. His vehicle was beneath a detached carport, but she didn’t need it.
Dragons didn’t need cars. Especially not in Magic, which boasted any number of persons with special abilities, as well as, if she understood things correctly, beings from other planets. That was why Aiden lived here and why she now lived here.
Nadia trotted to the launch pad, set apart from anything she could knock over when she shifted. The only thing a Tarakonan dragon could do with her own power, sadly, was change into dragon form and back. The concealment spell on the town would confuse any tourists who happened to spot her flight. As long as she remained inside Magic’s borders, she was safe to be her true self.
Nadia took a deep, hot breath of desert air...and grew.
Shifting was like scratching an itch she hadn’t actually had. Her skin quivered all over, scales forming, tail sprouting and curling. The sun glinted off her silver hide, burning deliciously into her wings as she unfurled them. In dragon form, she quite enjoyed this climate.
She launched into the dry air toward the cloudless blue sky with no heinous wizard mounted on her back telling her where to go. Twirling, diving, and swooping, she arrowed toward the town. In Magic, she got to fly every day, and she reveled in it.
She soon reached the outskirts of the small town and air-shifted as she floated to the ground, landing hard on two human feet instead of four scaly ones. Took more energy, but what did she care about preserving it? All her magic was hers, and air-shifting was just plain fun.
A pair of dark-haired youths on a wheeled conveyance waved at her as they raced past. She marched the rest of the distance through the dust and rocks alongside the paved road until she reached the part of town with sidewalks and businesses. Walking became easier here.
Some townsfolk greeted her while others seemed intent upon their own quests. The best part? None stopped to goggle. Nobody cared that she bore the dragon lattice, and she was so excited to be prancing around without a guard, doing what she wanted, that her network was definitely visible—an energizing reminder she was free to be herself.
The statue outside the library, as usual, made several impertinent remarks about her appearance. Too bad he wasn’t available as a sexual partner, since he certainly seemed eager enough to comply. Inside the library, it was cool and scented of paper. She returned the books she’d read and made a bee-line for the science section.
Education beyond basic reading and writing was something most wizards didn’t allow their dragons to pursue. What did a dragon need to know besides how to bleed magic for some wizard and fight in dragon form?
And she, a silver dragon, hadn’t even been allowed to fight. Fighting was for common dragons. Reds, whites, irons, blacks, oranges. Certainly not silvers.
Nadia selected books about astrophysics and geography before she wandered into the fiction section. And there…she found a revelation.
Rows upon rows of books with hearts on the spines depicted love relationships in their pages. Men and women, men and men, women and women and men and men and women—everything she’d ever dreamed of, and more. This section in the library would remedy another area in which her education had been sadly lacking.
Romance and sex.
She selected some novels she hoped would enlighten her as to the ways of sexual pleasure and help her choose a bed partner. The wealth of literature in this world was absolutely glorious.
“Hello again. What will it be today?” the white-haired librarian asked as Nadia handed over the books and her library card. The woman, whose hair seemed to be white due to fashion and not age, scanned in a romance novel with a naked male torso on the cover. “This is an excellent story. Good choice.”
The librarian had been friendly and able to provide information, from the best restaurants to where to purchase clothing. Aiden had suggested she find his “Earth dad,” Rocky, if she needed help, but he was out of town, so she’d made do with the nice librarian. Moreover, Aiden was out of town, too, having snuck into Tarakona to see about closing the gateway they’d used to escape to Magic. It was a dimensional portal, created by a wizard with a crystal dragon, and if her brother could figure out how to seal it, or bribe someone to seal it, they’d be safe forever.
But since Aiden wasn’t here to ask questions…
“Is there an establishment in town where one may hire a pleasure partner?” Nadia asked the librarian.
“Honey, this isn’t Nevada.” The librarian peered over her pink-framed glasses at Nadia with curiosity. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Pleasure partnering was a respected profession in Tarakona. Perhaps Magic was too small to sustain a pleasure house. She wasn’t supposed to leave the town’s boundaries with Aiden gone, so that could present a challenge.
“You are astute.” The woman wasn’t one hundred percent human, according to Nadia’s keen senses, so she felt safe adding a detail. “I am from another dimension.”
“Please, call me Trish.” The librarian held out her hand, and Nadia matched her gesture. Usually dragons didn’t touch people, but she was on Earth now. The woman gave her a strong shake. “I have to ask. Are you Aiden Silver’s sister? You look so much alike.”
“Yes, I am Nadia Silver. We’re twins.” The other dragon in the vicinity, Sheriff Theo, knew about Aiden, but nobody would mistake them for twins. Then she frowned. “Does my being from another dimension mean that citizens of this planet cannot mate with me?”
The librarian grinned. “I imagine if all the parts are in working order, that won’t be a problem. But on Earth it’s pretty customary to mate because you like each other, not because you’re paid to.”
“I see.” Tarakonans did that, too, but all things considered, she had hoped to hire an experienced professional for her first time. She’d become acquainted with her own body, of course, which had been more successful than the self-surgery, but she’d been led to believe that mating wasn’t the same. Perhaps the books she’d checked out would shed light on this thorny topic. “I suppose I shall have to find someone who likes me.”
“Anyone in particular?” Trish asked. “Man, woman, something else?”
Nadia considered her fantasies and said, “A man. One who doesn’t mind that I’m from another dimension and can bite off his head when I’m a…” She stopped herself before blurting out that she could take dragon form. The people of Magic might be open-minded, but years of wishing she wasn’t a dragon couldn’t be overcome in a week.
Trish’s pretty brown eyes widened. “I see. Well, good luck with that.”
Nadia placed her books into the cloth bag. “Thank you. I hadn’t expected it to be this difficult.” She’d asked a few people about sex, but none had been amenable. Perhaps they hadn’t liked her.
Which made her worry that she wasn’t likeable. This was a new concern.
Nadia left the library puzzling over her unlikeability. Since she was the governor’s prize possession, few in the dragon stable had liked her, though the palace staff had been kind. They’d comforted her when Victoria had drained her dry of magic and the ague had set in. Before she’d become a dragon, her parents had loved her, and they had certainly loved the coinage they’d received after she and Aiden had morphed.
But had people liked her? She was outspoken and not always polite. If nobody liked her, would she be forever alone?
That thought burdened her most dreadfully as she found a seat at a small table in a tavern called Kokopelli Brewpub and Bar. This time of day, only the lunch crowd milled around, with no band on the stage and no revelers on the dance floor. Her waitress was a tall, dark-skinned lady with ornate hair, and she smelled human. Ish. Perhaps a touch of supernatural, like the librarian.
“What can I get ya?” the waitress asked, setting down chips and salsa. Her nametag, which had the bar’s logo of a dancing flute player on it, said Flo.
“Good afternoon, Mistress Flo. I’ll have one of these,” she said, pointing at the menu without really reading it, “and two of these.” Dragons had very high metabolisms if they shifted on a regular basis.
Magic had a lot of restaurants to choose from because of the tourism, and whatever they brought her was bound to be interesting. If she was lucky, it might be something she’d never tasted in her whole life. The other day, she had been served fried cactus. Who knew such prickly plants were edible? It had gone down delightfully with a cold bottle of beer.
A single cold bottle of beer.
“Please bring me some intoxicating beverages,” she added. “Do you have anything on special?”
The waitress eyed her as if assessing whether or not her choices were wise. But Nadia didn’t want to be wise. Since she wasn’t going to find a sex partner until she figured out how to be likeable, she might as well try something else new. As such, she wanted two intoxicating beverages, or more, despite Aiden warning her to stick with one.
“The daily drink special is margaritas, sugar. Can I see your ID?”
“Of course.” She pulled out the small plastic card Aiden had given her to carry in her wallet with the money.
The waitress checked it and nodded, her intricate coiffure bobbing forward. A large pink blossom was stuck in the tower of black hair on one side. “Never would have pictured you as mid-thirties. You look twenty, tops.”
“Is that good or bad?” Perhaps older people in this world were more likeable. Children and teenagers could be taxing, after all.
“Good, honey, especially in this climate. You watch yourself with skin like that, or you’ll shrivel up like a walnut. I mean, unless you got special genes like so many of us do around here.” The waitress gathered up the menu. Was that a…snake in her hair? How charming. “You like your margaritas on the rocks or frozen?”
She didn’t even eat rocks in dragon form, so she replied, “Frozen.”
“I’ll be right back with your nopales and a margarita.”
Once the waitress left, Nadia stuck her nose in the romance novels and began reading. She didn’t come up for air until she’d reached several conclusions.
One, romance was more challenging than simply locating an unattached man and asking him to bed.
Two, she had been going about selecting partners all wrong anyway.
It didn’t matter so much if they liked her, because in these books the lovers spent a lot of their time arguing before their happy ending. But it did matter that her body informed her in no uncertain terms that he was the one.
Nearly finished with her speed reading and her splendid lunch of two green chili burgers, fried cactus, enchiladas, mixed vegetables, chicken fingers, chips, salsa, and margaritas, she assessed the lunch crowd in the Kokopelli. Not as busy as some of the other diners—this seemed to be more of a nighttime business. Several people who smelled of wolf sat in a booth, quietly discussing politics. An old woman and man flipped through photos on an electronic device. A younger person of indeterminate gender ate peanuts and tossed the shells into a small silver bucket while an older man attempted to lecture them about responsibility. Three ladies chatted with the bartender in a familiar fashion, as if they were related to him.
She did not think it would be proper to approach any of the lunch goers about becoming her lover. The novels had enlightened her on that front. Besides, she didn’t find any of them kissable, and her body wasn’t shouting lusty things at her. If the novels were to be believed, though she knew fiction was exaggerated, when she caught sight of a likely partner, her loins would dampen and throb, her nipples would harden, and she would grow short of breath.
None of the people in this bar dampened her loins. The novels assured her that when she saw the one, she would want to taste him the same way she tasted the new foods on the Earth menus. Speaking of which, the margaritas—she was on her fourth—were stunningly delicious. So cold and sweet and icy and green. She hadn’t known green had a flavor, but it did.
In the palace, dragons were never, ever allowed intoxicants. It contaminated their magic. Made it unreliable until they sweated it out.
Ha! Well, she was mighty contaminated now. Take that, wizards. If Victoria were here, Nadia would…she would… Something. She would do something contaminated and impure that would hopefully leave Victoria gravely wounded.
She really needed to learn to fight. And cuss.
And have sex.
If only her loins would throb instead of her vision, which swam a little when she swiveled her head. Then she would know.
But she couldn’t recall one single loin throb in her entire, isolated life. The waitress was the most interesting person the bar, but she was busy, and Nadia didn’t think she would appreciate being importuned by one of her customers. In fact, Nadia didn’t particularly want to kiss the waitress. She just wanted to ask about the snakes in her hair and, after that, everything about everything in this dimension.
Flo brought Nadia her check and gathered up the many empty plates. “Was everything good?”
“Wonderful,” Nadia assured her. “My compliments to the chef.” Her tongue felt thick and her body floaty. Like she was in dragon form, in the air, but here she was, in a chair. Turning into a veritable poet. Nadia smiled up at the waitress and proffered an empty mug. “Another one of these?”
“I think you’ve had enough,” Flo said, hand on her hip. “Where are you putting it all? You’re not exactly a giant. I mean, we get trolls and giants from time to time, and you don’t look anything like ‘em.”
“I have…hiccup…a high metabolism.” She covered her lips politely with her hand. “Excuse me.”
“Shifter?” Flo guessed.
“Dragon shifter,” Nadia found herself saying. “Oops! I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Don’t get many of those around here. I take it you know the history of this town?”
She blinked owlishly at Flo. Two snakes stuck their heads quizzically from Flo’s luxuriant hair as if curious about Nadia. “My brother told me the natives of this land made a pact with other special beings to share and guard this location centuries ago. People who are different can come here and be safe.”
“That’s a good summary.”
“I wish I’d found this land when Aiden did.” Nadia swallowed down the anger that had ridden her every day since she’d morphed into a dragon. Not at Aiden, but at the wizards who’d ruined her life. Wizards! Curse them all. “I was not safe, Flo. I was not safe at all.”
She tried to put her elbow on the table and missed, jolting herself nearly out of her chair.
“You won’t be safe if you’re planning to drive, either.” Flo tsked like the castle housekeeper when Nadia had the ague. The miserable, miserable ague that had stricken her like ten tons of brick whenever Victoria had drained her of magic, casting prophecies and conquering people and…
Flo was still talking, though, and Nadia tried to pay attention. “Let me call you a cab, kiddo. The gnomes have a taxi service.”
“I’m not a kiddo. As you said, I’m over thirty.” Nadia extracted more money than necessary from her wallet and handed it to the waitress. “Your offer is kind, truly, but I am quite all right to fly.”
She packed her books into their cloth bag, admiring the torsos of the men on the covers as she did so. Perhaps, one day, she would caress a real torso. Then she rose. Unsteadily. Whoops! “Is this area earthquake prone?”
“Not really, though when Topper and the witches open a portal from Glacien, it can really seem like it. You be careful getting home.” Flo didn’t seem convinced that Nadia was safe to fly, but this was Magic, New Mexico. Everyone was safe inside these boundaries.
“I bid you and your sweet serpents adieu, Mistress Flo.” Nadia executed a sloppy genuflection and exited the bar with her books, into the harsh light of afternoon in the desert.
With a very full stomach, a very contaminated magic network, and a bag of books that seemed to grow heavier with each step, Nadia trudged to her landing zone. It wasn’t smart to shift in the middle of this little town. With its little streets, and little people, and little buildings. Cars passed on the street, spitting little pieces of sand all over her. She sneezed so hard that she nearly fell over.
At last she reached the outskirts of town. Sand had gotten into her shoes, except perhaps it wasn’t sand. Perhaps it was pebbles, because it seemed to be bruising her arches. Her skin felt as if it had dried into the walnut husk Flo had warned her about. Sweat trickled down her back, and her half-healed scar from the thrall crystal began to sting.
Every step she took, it stung more. It rubbed against her undergarments. It chafed and it hurt.
It really hurt.
Her loins did not throb, but her arse cheek did.
She’d had to dig, with a knife, into her own body, to remove an evil crystal that should never have been implanted in the first place. It had trapped her, subjected her to whatever a wizard wanted to dole out. She had never had sex, she had never had alcohol, she had never had fun, she had never had freedom. She had never lived.
And suddenly Nadia became very, very angry.
She stomped along, seething. It was too hot. Her arse hurt. Her feet hurt. Sweat hazed her vision. She should never have had been exploited so cruelly. No dragon should. Where was Aiden, anyway? Had he succeeded with the portal? Had the wizards nabbed him?
Wizards were evil. They all deserved…bad things. Bad, nasty things.
If she never saw another wizard again in her whole life, it would be too soon.
Fuming and enraged and thoroughly contaminated, Nadia did not notice the large person in her path until she stormed right into him, sending them both tumbling down the sandy, rocky, prickly embankment into the desert.