by Bob Dattolo
I’m kidding.
Obviously.
I don’t remember any fashion at all from before I was nine and then spent nine years blind. A huge chunk of that either as a naked fucktoy or minimally dressed. I can’t say that my time at the academy has really helped me develop a style that would help me get into a club. That’d be why the girls helped me pick things out. Yes, I managed to get a bunch of things that are more me, like basic shorts and jeans and t-shirts, but they did insist that I get more fashionable things and girly things.
As if I have a clue how to wear makeup.
They all spent some time with that, although not a ton, while I waited for one of them to help me pick out something appropriate. In the end, I had a short skirt that reminded me of our academy uniform skirt and then a sleeveless, stomach-baring top. I also had a new pair of sandals that looked like they’d go well. Their outfits played off of their affinity color, as did mine. I’m not entirely sure that was intentional, although I like how it worked.
The girls decided that my outfit didn’t call for a bra or underwear, so I left that behind at their direction. Yes, people will be able to tell that I don’t have a bra on, but I’m a dragon. I never really understood why I didn’t care if people saw me naked. Well, now I know. Dragons by their very nature aren’t shy in the slightest.
About anything.
Instead of taking her truck, the night site manager let us use the hotel’s limo. I wasn’t expecting that. To say the least. I’ve never been in one that I know of, so it was pretty cool to roll along and see the people outside the crazy tinted windows, all the while feeling the spells on the limo ready to protect us from a ton of crap.
I did not bring that up to the others. That’s something that I have memories of hiding from my parents. I know I could do it before my inducement ceremony, I just didn’t know what people were doing. I’ve yet to find any reference to anyone being able to feel magic. For others, the only way they know magic is being done is if the caster’s hair lights up or they see the outcome. Otherwise? A spell to hide noise just means they don’t hear something from an area. To them, a room would be empty. To me? I can feel it in place and tell what it does.
At least usually.
It’s harder if there are a ton of layers in place and I have to pick through them. As you’d imagine. Still, though, I don’t bring that up to people. If they know I can do it, then they’ll realize that I can feel when they cast spells. For now, I want that to be my own little secret. It’s helped me more times than I care to really relate, especially for such a short period of time of having magic.
It’s late enough that random people waved and called to the limo. Parece wanted to open the windows and wave, but Samantha talked her out of it. It sounds like there have been occasions where things have happened, and she wants to limit the number of times we have to talk to cops because we overreacted to someone treating us like shit or throwing a drink into the car.
Since that might result in someone being killed, I’m all for it.
I’m sure the idea of that being legal probably pops into your head. It’s honestly a sort of gray area. A lot can be considered a challenge in the supernatural world. Toss in us being dragons and the assorted and associated mental instability that goes along with it, and you can imagine that someone being slapped becomes a much larger deal.
When I say instability, don’t think deranged or something like that. Think more, oh, animalistic? Like with my reaction to Mike. Him questioning me caused this nearly irrational feeling in me that was a bitch to fight against. Seriously so. If someone literally came up and threw a drink through the window and hit me and got onto my new clothes? That dragony part of my head doesn’t give a shit that I can buy the outfit again. Or even wash it out. Or have them pay to do it. I’m more of a pacifist than the other three in the car with me, yet I’d be hard pressed not to murder them.
And not with love. Or kindness.
Possibly some crushing. Definitely some teeth. Maybe some magic.
Yeah, all because of a drink. Now, do I think that’s a reasonable response? Not really. I’ll admit to that. It’s just that to a dragon? An attack like that deserves a response. Thank God the cops and legal system mostly agree. We would have to attest under a truth spell about what took place. If we acted in good faith to our nature, then we get way more leniency than someone that lied. If you use the opportunity to bust some heads because you’re in a bitchy mood? Nope, no leniency. Say hello to prison. Possibly to becoming a stricken. Possibly to losing your magic or ability to shift. It can vary.
Frankly, having had mortmagi in? I’d prefer to have a thousand drinks thrown on me than do that again.
Hell, the day before our trial almost everyone in our class lined up to piss on me. I didn’t even know it was taking place. Right? Yeah, I was a bit mentally fucked due to the person messing with me. I lost part of Monday and pretty much all of Tuesday, only coming out of it Wednesday morning when Parece carried me into the shower. I had piss crust on me. My clothes. My face. In my mouth. It doesn’t help that I stopped using the toilet and just crapped in my pants at some point on Monday.
I don’t remember that either.
Wait, what the hell? Why am I thinking that?
My plan to get back on track derailed as the car stopped and the door was pulled open by the driver. Samantha was out first, then I slid out next because I was closest. No part of me was expecting to be at the front of a crazy line of people dressed to the nines. I can see a ton of people in line with stripes in their hair, but only some of them have the telltale mage eyes. Something tells me that those with sunglasses on this late at night do not have the eyes either. And those that do? I can’t tell from here, but they may be contacts. I’m tempted to go sniff them to tell for sure.
Parece and Angelica joined us, with Angelica looking up at the place, “Oh my, Affinity? Can we really get in here?”
Samantha smiled back at us, “We can. C’mon. Ignore the line.”
The limo drove disappeared as we started walking, with me falling towards the back of the group.
It’s funny to me how often it’s like this. Our dragons have very specific personalities. Samantha is aggressively dominant. Parece is a natural second. She doesn’t want to be in charge unless she has to be. She’d much prefer connecting with someone more dominant and making a stronger team. They’re friends with benefits, which plays into Samantha’s drive, too. She loves that she can trust Parece not to fight her for the top position and has a thing for girls since they won’t try to get her pregnant and dominate her as often.
Angelica is also dominant from what I’ve been seeing, but she’s way more secretive. She wants to stay in the background and watch. She’s willing to let others have their time in the spotlight and leading.
Me? I’m the coordinator in our group. I want everyone to connect and be stronger together. That being said? I think I’m actually more dominant than Samantha is. I’m just willing to let her do her thing as long as she doesn’t do anything to hurt me. Once I feel the demands are on me? Then all bets are off.
So, in situations like this? Especially since we’re on her turf, so to speak? This is the normal spot for me in my mind. Samantha in front. Parece and Angelica behind her. Me behind them. Sort of a small diamond formation, without it being that much of a real thing. Heck, I’m just as okay being in front, it’s just that this allows me more leeway.
Loud voices reached us from the line.
“Get the fuck to the back of the line, poseurs!” One girl with stripes in her hair is positively spitting venom right now. She has dragon eyes, but no scent that I can pick up. She’s the poseur.
“You ain’t getting in! bunch of fake dragon liars!” A guy this time.
There’s another chorus of random bitches, a few whores.
Our little group stops by the ropes, where four positively ginormous guys are waiting. Since Samantha’s 6’4” and built like a brick shithouse’s bully’s bully an
d these guys are larger than her, you damn well know they’re big.
By my count, two are human, one could be a mage, but the last one’s definitely a dragon. Built big, he doesn’t feel powerful to me, which is a strange feeling. Honestly, I think he’s just not dominant, and that’s why he’s coming across as weak. Submissive. Submissive and weak are not the same thing. Not really.
The dragon comes to the rope as Samantha stops, sniffing and looking across us, “What can I do for you ladies? You looking to get in?”
“We are? Is Keenan in tonight?”
He tilted his head, “He is. Do you know him?”
“Know? No. We’ve met. I’m Samantha Rodriguez. I own the penthouse in Port Sur? We were hoping to come in for some dancing. Drinks.”
He sniffed again, slowly nodding, “We can do that.” His next comment was lost on me as something wet hit me from the side.
As I turned back, a thick guy in the crowd had blue stripes in his hair. Dark blue. He’s built somewhat like a water mage and has the eyes, but he doesn’t smell like he’s a mage. He smells like a norm.
My rage skyrocketed instantly, “Did you just spit on me?” There’s spit on my shirt from where it dripped from my face.
“Get the fuck out of here, you lying piece of trash! Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding with white stripes? Get the fuck back in line!”
Loud calls from the others started mimicking him about the stripes in my hair. My eyes.
“Oh my fucking Christ, stop her!” Someone grabbed my arm, but I yanked it away as I stepped closer to him.
“You think my hair is a lie?”
He spit again, with the guy behind him doing the same thing. Both hit me.
That’s the point that I kinda snapped.
I can hide the glow in my hair when I want to, which actually helps with doing magic. Almost no one knows about it, and I’m not about to tell them. Think about it like the old incandescent lightbulbs? Hot as fuck, right? They used a ton of power to generate a certain amount of light. LEDs are cool to the touch pretty much. They use a ton less power to put out the same level of light. If you can hide the glow in your hair, you now have a ton more magic being routed to the spell you’re working on.
For me? I didn’t want to hide it. I very, very much wanted them to know that they fucked with the wrong girl.
My hair lit up like the sun, illuminating the entire street around us as my magic grabbed both guys that spit on me. Instead of murdering them, I lifted them with the spell and rammed them into the wall behind them, pinning them up about ten feet high as my magic methodically stripped them and then began whipping them, creating nasty red lashes that rose as welts nearly immediately.
They screamed.
The line screamed.
The guys near the rope screamed.
Angelica, on the other hand, grabbed my face and made me focus on her, “Put them the fuck down!”
More magic went out and they screamed more as every hair on their bodies was plucked out in rapid succession.
“Dammit, put them down!” The desperation in her voice hit me hard, and I fought through the rage.
I so don’t want to put them down. At all.
More magic flowed out and the spit was removed from me and my clothes as I thought through possibilities, finally settling on something that seemed like a bit of fun.
My magic released them, and they hit the ground in a crumpled heap, huddling over and holding themselves as they cried. Such huge guys, crying from being whipped. That sounds about right, at least considering how bad the marks are.
The people around them scattered as I moved up and bent over a little. The bouncers are hovering there like they want to stop me, but only one of them has any chance of doing that. “If I run into you again and you don’t immediately apologize? I will crush your spine and make it so you have to blow through a fucking tube to get anywhere for the rest of your life. Moan and cry and hold yourself if you believe me. If you think to come after me again? I haven’t even shown you vicious yet. If that happens? I will consume you.” I clacked my teeth together, “You may never have seen a dragon like me, but I’m the very real deal.”
Samantha yanked my arm, pulling me through the gap in the ropes, “Get the fuck inside! Dammit! What the fuck!”
We disappeared inside, leaving the horrified people behind us and the bouncers talking to the police that were already arriving. Good, they have it on video. That should stop them from wanting to talk to me.
Samantha pulled us to the side of the door and turned me to face her, “What the fuck? Did you really just do that to him? Them?”
It was serious work to pull back, “How about this? Let me talk to your dragon.”
She didn’t respond before her posture changed, and I knew it was her dragon driving now.
“Thank you. Now, you tell me how you would have reacted? There were like a dozen people in line calling me names. Commenting on my hair and eyes. Saying I was a liar. Things like that. Then the first guy? The one pretending to have power? He spit on me. Then he and the other guy did. How would you react to that challenge to your position?”
She blinked slowly, “I would have taken them from the line to somewhere dark and killed them. Possibly slowly.”
Angelica and Parece groaned at hearing that.
“Right. I whipped them. They’re hurting fuckers from that, but they’ll recover. I didn’t even break their skin. It’s the other part that should be fun.”
She cocked her head, “Other part? What else did you do to them?”
“Well, the whipping was for part of it. The other part? I hit them with a spell to fuck up their inner ear for a bit. Basically giving them vertigo for…maybe a week. Possibly as little as three days unless they have medication that can help. I’m just not sure they do.”
She shivered, then popped back to being herself again, “What the fuck? How do you even know spells to whip someone? Cause vertigo?”
“I had that old grimoire that was fucked in my closet? It had a bunch of cool spells in it.”
She took a deep breath, eyes closed, then shook her head, “Dammit. Okay, c’mon, let’s go find Keenan if he’s here. He’ll want to know what happened.”
“He powerful?” Parece asked before I could.
“Mid to a bit higher? Well protected. Air dragon. He’s known my parents for the longest time, although they don’t really travel in the same circles all that much.”
We started moving through the dark foyer area.
“Anything we need to know about him?” My turn to ask.
“Know? Not really? Just don’t treat him like shit? Otherwise, we should be okay.”
Okay, she missed what I said about the grimoire. I don’t want them to know that the spells in a grimoire are really just indications of what people have done before. You can create any spell you want if you build it well enough. It’s just that people firmly believe that you can’t do that. I have a feeling magic is way more versatile than people think.
My thinking hiccupped as we passed from the foyer to the club itself. Angelica and Parece hissed with obvious pleasure at the same time I did. I was so not expecting to have that reaction.
“Welcome to Affinity!” Samantha sounds so proud. She was probably expecting our reaction or something close to it.
Parece turned in a circle, “What the fuck? This is gorgeous!”
“Right?” Samantha started walking again, “As you can see? Each section of the club is decorated and designed to mimic an affinity. You like it?”
“This is freaking amazing!” My voice sounds so dreamy, I can’t even start to help it. It really is so freaking cool in here.
The six affinities are represented here in huge sections of the space. Red decorations, seating, and lighting in the fire section, along with flame décor to die for. Another in darker blue for water, with the same water motif going on that fire has. Ice is very light blue, and the decorations look like ice. It even has light blue lig
hting, which makes me realize I missed the darker lighting for the water section. Air is light gray and looks airy, which is hard as fuck to do. Gauzy curtains flowing in a hidden breeze along the walls. That sort of thing. Then earth. Steady. Solid. All in shades of brown, but with stone built in as well. Then the final is metal. Metal is a silver color, at least normally, except when you get to dragons. Dragons have three subsets of metal, being steel, bronze, and then gold. Steel is a silver gray, with the other two matching the color of the metal. For the metal section, the overall color scheme is silver, but there are dragon metal colors in various places that really pull it all together.
Angelica smiled wider with every step we took, “I swear, this place is freaking spectacular. I looove the metal section.” The other two laughed with me. I like it too. Then again, I like it all.
Chapter 6
Samantha led us through the throngs of dancing and happy people. My nose is stuffed with the scents of people busy having fun. Alcohol is flowing freely, and that’s one of the stronger scents. Behind that comes mixed scents of dragons and mages out there. I’m seeing just a huge swath of people with dyed stripes in their hair that I can tell are straight humans. Must be the style in the area, or something, because I don’t ever recall seeing anything about that in the past few months of being able to see.
Outside of those scents? Wow, humans would be in awe and grossed out at the same time. We had a conversation about this with two of Angelica’s allies. They were supposed to be mine too, but that got seriously iffy there at the end like I mentioned. In this group I can smell sweat, outright BO, bad breath, farts, feet, ball sweat, vag, blood, more pee than you can imagine, poop, deodorant, toothpaste, hair product, skin creams, cologne, perfume, pets, and drugs.
Plus some others that I have to parse through to figure out what they are.
Humans and mages can’t smell all of that, although mages can do a spell to give them our level of senses that way. I’m not sure they would. Kynal and Gage were appalled that we could smell their balls and simply didn’t understand what we meant. We smell it from everyone. Literally the only time you wouldn’t is if the person just got out of the shower. None of that bothers us. It’s just part of someone’s scent to us. Neither good nor bad, although we can tell if somethings smells bad. Even with the poop and pee smell? Wait, I smell vomit too. Wonderful. Fine, even with those three? I’m more annoyed by the perfume and body spray. The rest is just people, and it doesn’t bother us.
