by Bob Dattolo
“Me either.” Angelica looked so confused, “I swear, except for the fact that you’re against sex right now, I’d think you two were a couple.”
“Umm, nope? None of that for me, thank you very much. Four years of being a pet and a fucktoy are enough for me. I’m more than willing to play the field by myself for now. It’s not like I’ve been able to do any healing over that garbage.”
“Just think? If you stick around for two more years, the least of your mental trauma will be the four years you were a fucktoy for a demented mass murderer.”
Ain’t that the freaking truth. Why the adults let this crap happen is beyond me. Yet they do. They have for more than a thousand years.
If only the norms knew about what we have to go through. As far as they’re concerned, our world is one of magic and adventure and money, even those of us that are weak. They don’t really have a clue about what we have to do to even survive into adulthood. When you have to spend three years starting at age 18 in an academy and your own classmates will plan to murder you for your power? Yeah, they won’t get that. Never ever.
Silence descended on the car as we drove, letting me fall back into my life. At least a little.
So much has changed in…nine years, I guess.
I was nine when I got my period for the first time. In mages or dragons, that means we can have our inducement ceremony. At least for the girls. We have the ceremony, and that opens up our access to our power. We lose our human eyes as they gain the solid color of our affinity. Red for fire, dark blue for water, things like that. We gain the stripes of color in our hair that lights up when we use our magic. For dragons, we gain our dragon half. They’re a part of us but not really us.
Not normally.
For the three girls in the car with me? Samantha’s a gold dragon. She has the telltale gold stripes and golden eyes. Parece is a steel dragon, sporting the silver-gray eyes and stripes of her affinity. Angelica is a bronze dragon, with the bronze stripes and eyes of hers.
Yet the girls in this car right now are the human part of them. Inside of them, behind a barrier, is the dragon part of them. That part of them is not the human part. They think differently. They act differently. They talk differently. When they come out, it’s very easy to tell that it’s not normal them. The human part drives the human body, the dragon part drives the dragon body. They can move between the two, but they normally play their roles.
For me? I don’t have that any longer. There’s no separation. We’re integrated.
All because my life is so messed up.
After my inducement ceremony, the guy that I believe is my father crushed the side of my face and knocked me down. I don’t know for a fact it was him, but I believe so. I can’t remember what my parents look like or what he looked like, which makes me think it was him.
Then my mother wrapped me with spells. Hurt me. And he pounded mortmagi into my eyes. My skull. Blinding me. Filling me with raw agony that stripped away my powers. With magical spells that stripped away what makes me me.
Then they beat me more before shoving me in a trunk, driving me somewhere, and throwing me into an alley by my hair.
I was only saved because a little old woman named Jean found me and nursed me back to health.
I was with her until I was 13.
At which point I learned that she had been ignoring letters from the apartment building owner telling her she had to break her 10-year lease and move out. She didn’t listen.
So, Reggie showed up. An earth dragon.
The formerly mentioned psychotic mass murderer.
He killed her and decided to keep me. I was free pussy and a stricken, so it’s not like it would be illegal.
I lost access to the dragon part of me when the mortmagi went in, but I could hear her periodically. Not that I knew she was a dragon. She never said. When it became clear that Reggie would fuck us no matter what we did, she offered to step in and take over. To handle it for me.
I accepted.
I spent more than four years behind the barrier watching as she ran my body. That first day, she knelt and offered him the back of her neck. She was basically turning us over to him. We were his. From that moment, we became his property. His to reward. To punish. To trade to his friends when they were horny.
And we did it. We did everything and anything he wanted. That they wanted.
It was what we traded to survive.
And it was a good trade. When I broke free, the cops arrived shortly afterwards due to the massive amount of magic being thrown around. Mine, to be exact, and they found a number of bodies in the house that I didn’t know about. The entire four plus years I was there, he’d bring men and women home and brutalize them to death. More than 300 over the four years. Hundreds more outside the home.
I was the only one that lasted.
All because she drove and offered to become his for his protection. He might have been a psycho, but he took care of what was his. And we were his. Body and soul.
All except for the buried part of me that worked and planned to break free at some point and murder him and everyone that I could recall by smell. Which is everyone that spent time with me more than once.
So…yeah, I broke free something like two and a half months ago. My mortmagi fell out. My eyes healed. My magic came back.
Which had me tossed into the academy. A place where people train their entire lives once they have magic, all so they don’t become chum in the water for the others. I walked in there with the last name Stricken as a former stricken, with the weird white hair and eyes to mark me as something other.
And yet I made it through the trial while so many others didn’t.
I can shift now. Thankfully. I have more control of my magic now. Thankfully. I may be weird, but I’m still me.
All because my dragon half stepped in to save us. She dealt with what they did to me. Then, when I wanted to break free? That last day when Levi’s parents were there? They’d visit at least once every six months while I was there. It wasn’t uncommon to not be able to walk for weeks after they left. They were that barbaric.
I was willing to die as long as I died at my decision. She helped me get from the other side of the barrier to the same side, and we integrated. Somehow.
Now I can understand how and why she did some things that I never got. I can see my original thinking, her thinking, then the weird combined thing that I have normally.
The others in the car don’t have that. No dragon that we know of has ever been integrated. It’s something all dragons talk about. Dream of. It’s this thing on the horizon, a wonderful possibility, yet completely unattainable.
Until me.
Not only do I have fantastical magic that is a pipedream, but my brain is also connected in a way that every dragon apparently dreams of.
That’s why the researchers don’t want me to die in the academy. If I die, then maybe they lose the chance to study me more and figure out how to integrate themselves.
Ugh…so much pressure. I’d much prefer going to normal college. Maybe taking some simple courses. Hell, taking any courses. Instead, we have magic class after magic class and then some paltry bit of normal learning thrown in.
Which is a joke.
So…anyway. That’s what has changed in my life. I was whoever I was before this, then I was turned into a stricken by my parents. Saved by a little old woman. Turned into a pet for a psycho. Now I’m free. I’m on break between year one and year two at the academy and I’m in a truck heading from Montana to LA with three other girls. We’re not quite friends, but we sort of are.
All in all? Things are looking up; I just wish there was never a reason to be down to begin with.
Chapter 3
The girls let me drive part of the way to LA, which is pretty cool. When I say the researchers got me my license, I mean they got it for me. I didn’t take a test. Nothing. My permit was driving for five hours just as we passed out of Montana on the way to California.
> I know, right?
The good thing is that the girls thought it was pretty funny to have to teach me what I needed to do and really took the time to work at it with me before we hit the highway.
Honestly, part of us being okay with doing this is that it’d take a decently bad accident for us to die. Shifters heal a ton. They can’t shift quickly enough to stop from being hurt in an accident, but I can. Then again, all three of them are crazy long in comparison to me and come in at several tons of scaled monstrosity, so you can see why it’d take longer for them to shift.
Me? I may be 5’2” normally, but my dragon form is only a bit over 7 feet tall. I basically look like a human and dragon hybrid, with wings and a tail added to things.
So, yeah, we can withstand a decent accident compared to a human. Tear something off, and it’s gone, but crush bones? I can heal that in a minute or two with some additional power, while it might take them a week if it’s bad enough. Unless they shift. If they can do that, then they’ll heal faster.
Too bad healing magic is iffy at best. They have zero clues why I can heal myself so well.
I’m not bitching about it. It literally saved my life again and again in the past two plus months.
We expected the trip to LA to take a solid 24 hours, yet with the slowdown for them to teach me some simple things like parking and backing up then stopping for food, it took closer to 30 hours before Samantha let us know that we were pretty much there.
I stared out the window at the never-ending traffic, “Seriously? Who the hell lives like this? What are there, six lanes on this side of the highway? No wonder you didn’t want me to drive on this part of the trip.”
Samantha was back driving again, just with me in the front seat next to her. “Welcome to Los Angeles. This is how things are here. It’s better at off times. We just happened to hit at a bad, bad time.”
“Can we use magic to get things moving?” Parece sounds completely earnest back there.
“Umm, no? Not unless you want someone to show up and put a bullet in your head?”
“Bullet what now?” Angelica perked up, stretching as she yawned. We’ve been trading off sleeping, which was neat to experience for me. Without my memories intact and with having spent most of nine years pretty much locked away, there are a ton of normal things that I’ve never really experienced. That I know of.
Samantha waved across the traffic, “This is LA traffic. They have some crazy laws out here about using magic on the roadways. The only spells that can be used on the road have to be done by the Department of Transportation. Anyone caught doing them on their own? It’s not quite instant death, but that comes on quickly.”
“What the hell? Why?” Our sleepy passenger sounds as confused as I feel.
“It’s simple. Look at this. Traffic is like this for a decent chunk of the day around rush hours in the morning and at night, like now. People have tried to use magic again and again to help themselves. To make things go quicker. They go wrong nearly one hundred percent of the time.”
“Like what?”
Our driver shrugged, “Wow, umm, when I was little? Someone had a spell running that would make people ahead of them pull over so they could basically pass? Damn, something like 90 people died when they forced a gas truck over, and it drove into two buses. The guy was killed on television for it. It’s too easy to do a simple spell that makes people move faster, only to find that there was a flat tire and the person gets out, only to get run over by all of the cars hit by the spell. The punishment here is pretty severe. Money, if you didn’t hurt or kill anyone. A ton of it, though. Then it goes up from there. If people die? Say hello to being killed. If you’re lucky, you get stricken.”
“Fuck, that’s lucky?” My question this time.
“Yeah. Some of the things that they’ve done as punishment? Wow, so bad. People have killed themselves rather than get punished.”
“Note to self? Don’t put any spells on any other cars. Or the road.”
She nodded at my response, “You got that right. You’re allowed to do simple things to your own car. If you can do a protection thing. Maybe brighter headlights. But if those headlights blind people and it’s tied back to the addition of what you did? Boom, baby, now you’re in trouble.”
“Sooo, yeah. No spells. Okay, if this is LA traffic, where are we headed?” Parece slid forward so that she was leaning in between the seats a little.
“We have a couple things that we can do? It depends on where you want to stay? I have a place in Beverly Hills? Then down more in the center of LA, near some amazing clubs? I also have a quieter place about an hour north of here as the dragon flies. We can do either? Or get a hotel? I’m okay with any of those.”
The other two didn’t respond, so I did, “Umm, okay, I’m confused. You have a place in Beverly Hills, in LA itself, and then an hour north?”
“Umm, yeah?”
“You do? As in you? Samantha?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Not your parents?!?”
“No? I’m confused, what aren’t you getting?”
Angelica stretched again, “I think it’s the money thing and the fact that you own property and are only 18.”
Samantha’s eyes lit up, “Oh, right. Yeah, I do. You have to remember, all three of us come from money. A ton of it. Our parents are pretty powerful, so the money flows. We all have our share. For me? I started buying investment places a few years ago, these are the ones that aren’t rented.”
“Fuck. Okay, that’s…is that why none of you were shocked that the researchers handed us a million each to stay for three days for the testing?”
“Right.” Parece patted my shoulder, “We get that it’s huge to you, but to us? We grew up with parents making millions and millions a year. Being in the newspaper at times. Magazines.”
Huh, “Okay, that’s so weird. Makes me wonder if I ever had any pictures of your parents.”
Confused looks from the girls.
“I never mentioned my book?”
“Nooo? What book?” Samantha managed to change lanes, shoving our huge truck into a space that was easily eight feet too short for it. No idea how she did it.
“It’s one of the last memories that I have? Somewhat? I was in my room, not that I can remember my room. I know I had this big board with a ton of mage pictures on it. I had a hidden notebook in the back of a desk drawer that I took out. It had dragon pictures in it. I remember looking at it, waiting for my parents to call me down for the ceremony. The only one that sticks with me is a fire dragon perched on top of a huge building that was on fire. She was sucking up the flames, basically. She had put it out when three fire mages failed to stop the flames.”
Parece patted me again, “I think I remember something about that. You had a book of dragons, though? Why?”
“Umm, I’m not entirely sure, but I know my parents hated dragons with a passion. That has to be why it was hidden. I don’t know why I had it other than thinking they looked cool. I mean…fuck, dragons, right?” Laughter from them. “What’s not to like? Armored and horns and wings and magic on top of it?”
“We are pretty sweet like that.” Samantha got laughs of her own. “That’s so funny. You had a hidden book of dragons and ended up being one. Makes me wonder if you somehow knew you were different.”
“Yeah, no clue. I know I thought I might have been insane due to the voice that was talking to me, it’s just that I had the book from long before that.”
“You lucky integrated bitch!” Angelica leaned forward as well. “As for a place to go? Do we want to vote for it? I know you two up there are crazy dominant, do you want to arm wrestle for it or something like that?”
Samantha eyed me, squinting. That got me to shrug, “I don’t know anything about this area, so I’m okay either way. I may be dominant as all hell, but for something like this? I told you guys, I’m more than willing to share and have people get their time. It’s more about how things impact me. You want to lor
d it over someone else? I’m okay with that. Lording it over me doesn’t work well unless I allow it.”
Samantha’s tension started easing up. It’s amazing how animalistic we are at times. “For the places? Maybe it depends on how long we want to stay? The place an hour from here is amazing. On the water. Not a ton to do there other than hang out and relax. The place in Beverly Hills is gorgeous, but it’s a bit pretentious. Not too badly, though. We’re dragons, so it’s not like people will treat us like shit even though we’re young. We can get into and out of LA and other areas easily enough. The other one, though? It’s the top floor of a hotel. Has a place we could launch from if we wanted to fly around.”
The other girls’ eyes lit up at that.
“Umm, you know I can’t really fly, right?”
“Yup, but we can teach you. It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s like driving. Just easier. Two or three hours, and you’ll know enough to get by without a problem. The other benefit of it is that it’s closer to things. We can get out and walk. Go to clubs. Stores. Shops. Rodeo Drive isn’t too far away. Other places. It’s much more our age, if that makes any sense. We can do the same things from the place in Beverly Hills or even the other one, but this way we’d be smack dab in the middle of it?”
We shared a quiet moment together, then the three of us nodded at the same time a second before Angelica responded with, “LA.”
“Good choice.”
I’d love to say that she took the next turn and we arrived. That would be a lie.
Such a lie.
Let me say this about LA traffic; fuck LA traffic. How you people can live here is beyond me. There must be some sort of gene that people have here that stops them from murdering every single person they see because of it.
I don’t have it.
Parece was massaging my shoulders from the back seat as we arrived at a huge hotel. “You feeling any better?”
