19
JESSICA
I'm coming.
I felt the emotion from Ethan as if he'd whispered it in my ear, as if he were there with me in the dragon's truck. And although it was momentarily comforting, it quickly filled me with dread.
No, I tried to say back. Don't come. He wants you to.
But I couldn't stop him. I could feel him following, a steady beacon of warmth tingling in the back of my head.
Overwhelming that was pain. Pain which grew the farther we drove, an increasing pressure in my ears and head as we increased our distance from the totem. I clenched my eyes shut and waited for the pressure to end, my bond with the totem to be severed like a rubber band stretched too far, but it never did. Soon I was in constant agony, so strong it was difficult to think.
I glanced at him. The Emerald Dragon wore the same dress clothes as the other night, a pale green button-down tucked into black dress pants. His sleeves weren't unrolled now, and I could see the edge of a flame tattoo peeking out on his right hand on the steering wheel. His eyes were as green as Ethan's but behind a harder face, with eyebrows as sharp as talons. He was the kind of bad boy women probably gushed over.
I hated him.
"Where are you taking me?" I poured as much animosity into my voice as possible, but he didn't seem to care.
"Somewhere," he rasped in a cigarette-scarred voice.
"Why not stop right here? Pull over on the side of the road and fight Ethan when he comes? You've already drawn him to you."
The dragon laughed, a low rumbling in his chest.
"Because we are going somewhere else. Some place safer."
I tried to imagine what might be safe for a dragon.
"Do you have a name?"
He snorted as if that was funny.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked a while later. "Why do you need to kill Ethan? Where did you come from?"
"You ask too many questions."
"If you answer them, maybe I'll shut up."
"You'll shut up if I strike you," he growled. I flinched, but no blow came. "We were born to fight one another. We have done so a thousand times, again and again across the eons. It is what we are."
I had no idea what that meant, but he didn't elaborate.
We drove while the sun climbed lazily into the sky. At some point we passed into Louisiana, driving through the casino-riddled town of Shreveport. Then we turned off I-30 and went south on smaller roads with fewer cars.
The dragon stopped at a gas station, and got out to pump gas. While the tank filled up he walked inside, leaving me alone.
I could flee. Nothing was physically stopping me from hopping out the truck and sprinting away. Or I could yell and scream for help, telling anyone and everyone around to call the cops. There were half a dozen cars here, including a man pumping gas next to our truck who looked like he would help if a woman fell at his feet crying.
But I knew what would happen if I did. I could see it clearly: the dragon would shapeshift, burning everything around him to get me back. The nice man pumping gas would be engulfed in the flames and burned alive. If he was lucky, he would asphyxiate first. The dragon would still have me, and innocent people would be dead, and it would be my fault.
So I sat, and stared straight ahead, and did nothing, and felt cowardly for it.
He returned with two gas station hot dogs and bottles of soda. He tossed the bag to me without a word.
"I'm vegan," I lied, trying to be difficult, a resistance in miniature.
He took his own hot dog and bit into it eagerly. "Sucks for you."
I gave in, because if I was going to be a damsel in distress I might as well not be a hungry one.
We drove south for two hours and six minutes. I knew the time exactly because I was keeping track in case I found a way to get to a phone or the internet or something. Three hours and forty-nine minutes east, then two hours and six minutes south. Two hours and seven minutes south. Two hours and eight minutes south. Time dragged on, waiting for whatever inevitability approached.
Finally he turned off the state highway onto what looked like an unpaved driveway. We followed that for another eight minutes, much slower than before. The Louisiana forest spread around us, tall thin pine trees that encroached on the road like reaching hands. Deeper we went, the only sound the rumble of the truck engine and the crunch of tires on dirt, until we were nowhere near civilization.
"How did you find me?" I said, because talking helped me ignore my rising dread.
"You ask that question as if surprised."
"Well I mean, yeah." I made myself look at him, even though my eyes wanted to recoil. "You have some strange bond with Ethan. He can feel you, and you can feel him."
"Our bond is the bond of enemies whose hate has tempered into a shapeless blade," he said poetically.
"Okay, sure. But why kidnap me as bait? Couldn't you skip the middle man and go right to fighting Ethan? It doesn't make any sense."
He snorted without looking at me. "Our Emerald bond is not so precise. I can feel the Emerald Gryphon with some semblance of proximity, but it is fleeting and vague. But you."
He glanced over for a moment.
"You were simple. You gave your information to the police in Fort Worth, which was overheard by a dozen witnesses. The police then contacted your place of employment to verify details, a temp agency. I contacted them, received your full name and address, and found which company you were contracted to."
Oh. I'd expected something a little more mystical.
"Besides that," he added, "I know the Emerald Gryphon. He prefers to fight in familiar territory. He will come, and he will try to save you, but he will be greatly disadvantaged."
"We'll see about that," I said, though there was little confidence in my voice.
The Louisiana trees opened up into a hidden clearing occupied by an old two-story house with faded white paint. The dragon parked on the side, then grabbed my arm and pulled me from the truck and then pushed me through the front door.
It was a plantation style home with an enormous entranceway and staircase, with a dining room on the left and a den on the right. A woman with jet-black hair and an impossible hourglass body rose from a chair in the latter, running forward to embrace the dragon, leaping into his arms and squeezing his torso with her legs.
"I thought you'd never come," she whispered.
"I said I would," he said simply.
She kissed him hard, a desperate lust as if she hadn't expected him to return at all. It went on and on until I began to feel uncomfortable. Just when I was about to clear my throat did the dragon gently lower her to the ground, though he had to pry the woman's lips off his.
She panted from their quick make-out session, and finally turned to me.
"She doesn't look like much."
"That's because she isn't," the dragon said, taking me by the arm and leading me into the den. He shoved me into a chair by the window and tied my arms begin my back. All the while his girlfriend watched with her arms crossed over breasts so large they had to be fake.
"Are you a dragon too?" I asked. "Or just a silly groupie?"
The woman looked at the dragon. "She's kind of a bitch."
Fuck you too, I thought.
"The gryphons have poor taste indeed," the dragon agreed, finishing his work on my wrists. They were tied too tightly to the chair for me to move more than a few millimeters. "I did not succeed."
"Oh no, baby," the woman said reassuringly. "What happened?"
"There was a crowd. We could not do battle as I would have wished." He ruffled my hair as if I were a toddler, shoving my head roughly at the end. "But that is why we have her. Soon he will come."
The woman's grin held a lifetime of malice.
The dragon opened his mouth again, but then whipped his head around. "What is that doing here?"
The other woman and I followed his gaze to an old wooden chest placed in the corner, with a huge antique padlock on the front. "Baby, you said not to let it out of my sight..."
"Only while you were there! I never told you to bring it with you to this place! Where he will soon be!"
She put her hands on her hips. "What was I supposed to do, leave it in the hotel room on Bourbon Street?"
I could feel the dragon's fury rising like a fire, the heat beginning to scald my face and skin. But the woman stood strong, every bit as stubborn or determined or whatever as he.
The fire dimmed, and he visibly gathered himself.
"No matter." He strode toward the window, peering out as if he could see something in the distance. "My brothers slowly awaken. I can feel Sapphire stirring, somewhere to the west, by the mountains. They too will kill their gryphons, and then we can finally end this world."
"End this world," I muttered. "I went through an emo phase when I was a teenager too. Though with fewer cheesy tattoos."
They both looked at me as if they'd forgotten I was there. I waited for his fury, but instead that same insane laughter came bubbling out of his chest. She laughed with him, mocking me with their voices.
"Your gryphon has been shapeshifting for what? Three days?" He snorted to let me know what he thought of that. "I have a week's head start on him, knocking the rust off and practicing for battle. Tell me, girl: do you honestly believe he can defeat me? Truly, deep within your heart?"
I began to tell him that of course I believed that, but the words stuck to my tongue. Ethan and I were still figuring everything out, shifting and flying and everything else. We were in the dark, especially compared to this guy, this fucking dragon.
The dragon could see my confidence waning, and he laughed harder for it.