18
ETHAN
I dreamed of flying high above the Dallas skyline, soaring between the skyscrapers wonderfully fast.
Oh, it would be incredible to do that! Like a helicopter tour on steroids. And hell, forget Dallas. We could go anywhere, see anything. There were parts of Hawaii that were remote, like the waterfall from Jurassic Park. Pack a picnic, shift into a creature of claw and wing, and fly us over there.
Yeah. That sounded nice.
Nevermind the fact that I'd just burned all of my vacation hours. I had what, fourteen days of sick time? I never took a sick day; yesterday was literally the first in over two years. And as much of a hard ass as Mrs. Arnold was, she had a soft spot for me. If I told her I had the flu I could probably get away with that.
I ached for Jessica after she left.
It was a strange, incredible feeling. I wasn't the type of guy to get attached like this. I dated, and occasionally hit up Tinder, but nothing ever seemed to last more than a few weeks. I liked to be alone; I was an introvert, and recharged my batteries with quiet solitude. Beyond that, I got bored of women. And I always knew it within the first day or two, an impending expiration date that all the clocks were counting down to.
But not Jessica.
Forget that we had this weird supernatural bond through the totem. Jessica was awesome all by herself. Gorgeous body, fun personality. Smart as hell. I wanted to be around her every moment of the day. She'd been gone three minutes and it felt like three days. And I knew she felt the same way, knew it with the certainty of feeling her own emotions trickling into mine.
Like me, she didn't know what was going to happen. But she was excited to figure it out with me.
I stretched on Jessica's empty bed, inhaling her lingering smell.
Now if only we could get rid of the big fat problem.
I had a plan of what to do, but it was rough. Mostly it involved driving somewhere. Getting in the car and driving until we felt safe, whether north or east or west. Or south, if we wanted to go to Mexico, but America felt safer right now.
The cops and crowd had stopped the dragon from shifting. That was important. Either he needed to keep his shifting somewhat secretive, or he got stage fright in front of so many people. Somehow I doubted it was the latter. So did that mean city centers were safer? Places crowded with people at all times? If we drove to New York and parked ourselves down with two folding chairs in Times Square would we be immune from him?
My old work buddy was a doomsday prepper, I suddenly remembered. He owned forty acres in Oklahoma, booby trapped with explosives and land mines and machine guns for when "Big Government" finally came for him. That was another appealing option, if we could convince him we weren't brainwashed to infiltrate his facility.
Hell, I bet he even had a rocket launcher. I'd love to see one of those smash into a dragon, knocking it from the sky like a fly swatter.
But as good as that sounded, deep down in my gryphon self I knew it wasn't an option. I needed to kill the Emerald Dragon myself, as a gryphon, without modern weaponry. How I would do that was another question entirely, but there it was.
I could still feel his presence, somewhere vague and distant. Like if I turned around quick enough I'd spot him peeking in the window. I wished that feeling was more accurate, the way it had been right after he was about to shift in Fort Worth. It'd be awfully handy to be able to see him coming from a mile away. But the other side of that coin was we needed to be careful when we chose to shapeshift. We couldn't just do it whenever we wanted for fun, or it would draw him to us like moths to a candle.
As I stretched in bed, I remembered something else he'd said: brothers. Not just his, but mine. I had an older sister, but that's not what he meant. He made it seem like there were more of me.
Were there other totems out there, and other gryphons? It'd be awfully nice to have a posse instead of doing all this on my own. Because as comforting as it was to have Jessica here to share in the totally-fucked-up experience that this was, she was mostly a passenger along for the ride. If I had to fight the dragon she'd be a helpless spectator on the ground.
Still, having here there when the time came was the kind of comforting--
PAIN.
White-hot pain lanced through my entire body, violently arching my back and knocking away the sheets. I clenched my teeth and held back a scream, and then the pain was gone.
It came from my bond.
And as I sat up in bed panting, every nerve in my body trembling in the terrible afterglow of agony, I felt more coming through my bond with Jessica.
Shock, then anger, then fear.
Fear most of all, gushing into my brain like a fire hose. And as the dread rose up in my gut, I knew exactly why.
The Emerald Dragon was here.
I leaped out of bed and threw on my clothes, panicked motions which took twice as long than if I were calm. My focus narrowed. Jessica was going to work, then to get donuts. Two places to search. I had to get there quickly. Somehow, I had the awareness to grab her set of spare keys in case I needed to come back here. Thank God I'd moved my car from my apartment to here yesterday, or I probably would have tried to sprint the six miles to the office.
I never knew what the phrase "bat out of hell" meant until that morning, driving through downtown Dallas.
Four police cruisers were parked outside our building when I arrived, all of them with lights blazing in the morning twilight. I felt a familiar pulsing as I parked but ignored it, and sprinted into the building and took the elevator to the right floor. The entire office was ransacked. Cubicles and chairs overturned, paper everywhere. The cops were huddled around Mrs. Arnold's office at the end, one of whom broke away to head me off.
"Excuse me, sir?" she said.
"I work here," I said, striding forward. "Jessica? Jessica!"
I heard Mrs. Arnold's voice. The cop allowed me to come forward.
Mrs. Arnold sat in a chair in her office, a blanket wrapped around her body. One officer crouched next to her, and another stood to the side with a notepad.
"He just... came in here," she said, incredulous. "He asked me so many questions, but I didn't know anything. And when Jessica appeared..."
"Did he give any clues as to where he might have taken her?" the crouching officer asked. "A place he might have mentioned?"
"Nothing like that. He just took her. He was laughing, like a madman..."
I saw red.
Before I knew what was happening I was taking the stairwell, my rage too demanding to allow me to wait for the elevator.
He had Jessica.
The pulsing returned in the parking lot, familiar and insistent. It came from a car parked in the corner: Jessica's car, I realized. I rushed to it, hoping against hope that I might find her inside, that she would be lying down in the backseat and that this was all some cruel joke.
But as I neared the car, I realized what the pulsing was. I pulled the spare keys from my pocket, threw open the passenger door, and pulled down the glove compartment.
Jessica's fear seemed to spill out of the compartment, a rotten smell given off by the totem. I grabbed it to feel her, to seem closer to her, and strangely enough... I was.
I could feel Jessica traveling east, away from the city. In a car, I thought, not flying. Because the dragon would be saving himself for me.
Suddenly, I could feel him there too. His presence overwhelmed and blocked out Jessica's, full of steam and smoke. And I could hear him laughing, a constant sound of hysterics, the certainty that he had gotten the better of me.
Like hell he would.
I checked the gas in my car; the tank was mostly full. I started driving, keeping the totem in my right hand to guide my way. East we went, away from the city, following the beacon of feeling coming from the totem. Toward what felt like danger.
But I didn't care. Danger to my person meant nothing in that moment; all I could think about was Jessica, and the need to reach her. I was heading toward a trap, doing what the dragon wanted, but I didn't care at all.
I'm coming, I thought, the only thing my brain would accept. I'm coming, Jessica.