Before I could successfully navigate which way to go, I was confronted with another jeans-and-leather-clad guy. He was about the same age as Brock and the other goon, but there was something decidedly more sinister to his look. For one thing, he had a tattoo on his exposed upper chest, and it wasn’t a cute tattoo. It depicted a black rabbit with a dagger through its throat. Not the kind of image that I needed that moment.
“How many of you are there?!” I asked him rhetorically, turning on my heel to run, even though I knew that the other end of the alley was a dead end.
As if to answer my question, four other similar-looking jerks appeared from various shadowy doorways and from behind the dumpster in front of me, nestled next to the condo building. They all proceeded to growl at me, especially after the first guy stared at me and whistled a cue to them. Even though I knew it was pointless, I took off running towards the far end of the alley, hoping that I could maybe shimmy over the wall or something like that. I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly in that moment.
When I reached the end, it was immediately obvious that there was no chance of anything like that. I was cornered. The other dragon shifters stood down and let their leader take charge. He stepped forward and produced a switchblade from his back pocket. They certainly were acting like a typical gang right now. These guys can’t be in the same gang as the other guys, I realized then, probably too late for it to matter.
“Please!” I yelled then, hoping to maybe parlay for my life. If these guys weren’t on the same team as the ritzy guy up in the condo, then maybe they didn’t want the same thing. Maybe they didn’t want me.
But that was stupid. This shifter clearly wanted me.
He wanted to kill me.
Moving closer, he moved the knife back and forth as if he was drawing a practice line for where he would cut. My back was pressed against the cool stone wall. I cursed myself for choosing to go this way and not at least trying to run past these guys. I let out the loudest scream I could possibly scream. After running and going through so much hell already, I surprised myself by how much voice I still had left. My scream didn’t scare the guy with the blade, but it gave me attention otherwise. Sure enough, Brock and his fellow shifter from upstairs came out of the building. As they came rushing down the fire escape, they shifted their human skin and became two enormous dragons before my eyes. It was a bit like a rash crawling over their body, except it was a rash made of scales. As their skin changed, so did their bodies. They sprouted wings on their backs and long, whipping tails with colored spikes that matched their eyes. Brock was now a giant brick red dragon, with eyes that glowed a fiery red and gold. His cohort was a midnight dragon with glowing, pale blue eyes. They grew so much in size that the fire escape groaned and threatened to collapse beneath their weight. Just as I was preparing myself to watch the stairs fall, the two dragons took off into the air from the rickety metal staircase, soaring the rest of the way towards me and this vicious gang of brutes, landing on the ground and snapping at the men in front of me.
As much as I hated to admit it, I was grateful for their presence now.
The blue-gray dragon focused his attention on fighting and scaring away the the rest of the bad guys, while Brock took hold of the blade-wielding leader with one massive, black-clawed hand and proceeded to squeeze until the switchblade fell from his hand, and his attention was one hundred percent diverted from me.
I hurriedly kicked the knife away. I ran back towards the fire escape and climbed up a level, so I could get away from all of the fighting and the danger of being accidentally crushed by the beasts. I was too afraid and confused to leave. I wanted to make sure that my saviors made it out alive, even though I didn’t see how the minuscule men could stand up against a pair of scaly, fire-breathing dragons.
The fighting continued unabated as I watched. The thug who’d had the switchblade struggled in Brock’s grip and then he too began to transform into a light green dragon. It was too late for him, though, because it was two on one, and Garen’s dragons were somehow bigger and stronger than this other gang. The others in the group didn’t even bother shifting but instead scampered off down the alley. The other gang’s leader had clearly lost, and he proved as much by taking flight and flying up and away from Brock. But not before threatening the three of us, pointing a clawed finger directly at me. “We’ll be back for her,” he growled in a low, rumbling voice, smoke billowing out of his nostrils. “You may think she’s yours, but she’s DEAD.”
He flapped his leathery wings and flew away, surely earning a lot of attention on the way. There was no way that all of that had gone down without people in the neighborhood noticing. How in the hell do these shifters even live here in the city? I knew the answer, though. Authorities were afraid of them and powerless to do anything to be rid of them. The dragons were here to stay.
Brock and the other shifter wasted no time. They changed back into their human forms and climbed back onto the fire escape, straightening their leather jackets and making sure they looked presentable again so the boss wouldn’t be alerted to a problem. They then each grabbed me by the upper arms, walking with me between them.
“Don’t try that again,” the blue-gray guy warned in a hiss. They gruffly pulled me back up the stairs with them and back into the condo where their boss lived. “We warned you not to try to run away. There’s a target on you and anywhere you go, they will be waiting. To kill you. Stupid girl.” He said this last part under his breath, but still made sure that I heard him.
I was too shaken by what I’d just witnessed to argue or protest. I’d heard lots of stories about the dragon shifters, but I’d never witnessed anything like that in person before. The only time I’d really seen events like that had been online. Dragon fights were quite popular amongst viewers on YouTube. I didn’t wish I’d filmed it though. I wished I hadn’t lived it. It’d been my fault. If only I hadn’t turned the wrong way…
“Mr. Karn will be back any minute, and you’re not ready for the bed yet,” Brock said reproachfully, shaking his head a little as he looked me over. “In fact, you’re even filthier than you were when I found you.”
The other man focused his attention on my birthmark, though. He wasn’t concerned with what the rest of me looked like. It’s not as if it’s going to move, I thought, puzzled by his relieved expression when he saw it still there a few inches above my elbow. “Let’s just give her a bath and tidy her up,” he said. “He’s pleased with her, so it will be okay. At least the Unbelievers didn’t kill her or leave any marks, eh?” He pushed my chin up with a long finger and examined my face and neck for any cuts or scratches.
“Yes,” Brock agreed. “A bath is a good idea. Come, girl.” He pulled me by the arm down the hallway, back towards the bedroom. Before we reached Garen’s chamber, though, he peeled off and led me instead into the bathroom. It was opulent like everything else in this place. I almost felt sorry for making the tile dirty as I stepped inside with my sneakers, dirty from the mean streets of the city. My white shirt stuckto my chest and back now because of all the sweat. Running for my life hadn’t helped with that. And my raven hair was completely matted to my back and neck.
I didn’t even want to look at my reflection, but I was forced to as I stood there on the cool, white tile floor with the bathroom’s vanity to my front left, and the claw foot tub to my right. Brock didn’t even bother closing the door to the room as he leaned down and forced the blue and white Chucks from my feet and peeled my white-gray socks off next. He looked up at me, horrified.
“I didn’t get a chance to shower before you kidnapped me,” I blurted without thinking.
He rose back up and threatened to hit me with the back of his hand, swinging it out but then letting it fall before he actually made contact with my face. “See that you keep quiet,” he said instead, looking at me with daggers for eyes. His eyes glowed even redder when he was angry.
“Undress the rest of the way,” the other dragon shifter said nonchalantly, keepi
ng watch from the doorway. “I’m going to go wait at the door for our Master, in case I need to offer an explanation for this delay.”
He went away and I was left there with Brock. Feeling sick to my stomach, I stripped naked in front of his gaze. He didn’t have the decency to look away, though he seemed completely disinterested in what he saw. Going over to the bathtub, he turned the faucet and let the water fill up. I could sense by the steam in the room that he was making it nice and hot for me. I hoped I wasn’t going to burn off my skin by just taking a bath…
“Are any of you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” I asked finally, as I climbed into the tub and sank down into a lying position. The water blessedly felt okay; he’d used enough of the cold tap to make it bearable. “What did he mean when he said I was the one? How am I going to change anything? I haven’t even graduated yet.”
Brock looked at me impatiently, roughly scrubbing my upper arms and chest with a white sponge. “You think we care about your foolish schooling?” he asked me. “You can’t learn anything there that matters. What matters is this.” He held up my forearm and showed me the blue-and-purple birthmark there, as if I could ever forget what it looked like. “The prophecy says that the woman with this mark will save the world.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed in his face. “What? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. It’s just a birthmark.” I stopped myself from calling him ‘dude.’ After witnessing him kick some major ass in order to save me, I didn’t want to call him something like that. It just felt wrong. “It doesn’t mean anything. I’ve always had it and I’ve never been or done anything special.”
Sure, I’d been accepted to Columbia, but that wasn’t exactly world-changing, let alone world-saving. I didn’t think I mattered in the grand scheme of things, and these shifters were just talking nonsense now.
Brock didn’t try to argue, which just furthered my belief that he was bullshitting me. He simply shrugged and continued scrubbing the dirt and sweat off of me. Once he was done with that, he shampooed my hair with light green stuff from bottles with no labels. It smelled nice, though. A little bit like oatmeal, like the kind of shampoo that was used on dogs. A weird choice for a human’s bath, but it didn’t matter to me. Nothing can be as weird as thinking my birthmark means I’m going to save the world, I thought, mimicking the way they said it in a mocking tone in my head.
I was still concerned with this whole ‘bedding’ thing. I didn’t want to ask what that meant. I had an idea, and I also knew that it had to be accurate. No man talked about bedding when discussing a woman and meant sleeping peacefully or anything like that. I knew that I was about to literally be fucked. Garen’s servants or whatever were being very nice by cleaning me up and pampering me, but we all knew what was coming. I was horrified that they could be so calm about it. Was this a common occurrence for these people? They weren’t even people. Calling them people was an insult to my own race.
As soon as I was completely bathed and clean, Brock went over to the bathroom’s linen closet and brought out a white terrycloth robe. He opened it and held it for me to step into. I stood up in the tub, letting the water slide down me, and shivered. “No towel?” I asked him.
“No time,” he replied, eyeing me and then looking down at the mark on my arm.
I carefully stepped out of the tub and into the offered robe. I tied it tightly around my waist and rubbed it over my wet skin in an effort to both warm and dry myself. “You guys don’t need to keep checking it,” I told him. “It’s not going to wash off.”
“We keep checking it because it’s important,” Brock hissed at me, grabbing me by the same arm he’d just been staring at. “Because of this mark, dragons will either worship you or they’ll kill you. Don’t you understand that? We never thought that’d we’d live to see this in our lifetimes, and now that you're really here, we’re not letting you out of our sight.”
I gulped at that. Some dragons were going to want to literally kill me over a stupid birthmark? I didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “So I’m supposed to just go along with whatever you guys say because you’re the ‘good’ dragons?”
Brock nodded. “More or less,” he said, handing me a black brush from the vanity. “Brush your hair. You need to look your best for the Master.”
“I don’t understand that either,” I said, but did what I was told, brushing the tangles and knots from my thick mass of black hair. My hair was usually a little curly, but after baths the curls made brushing it nearly impossible. It was generally better for me to brush it once it was dry. I didn’t think a dragon cared about the finer points of human hair, however. “What is all this about the Master? Who is this Garen guy? Besides a suit aficionado.”
Brock winced as if I’d just said the worst thing I could possibly say about his mother. “The Master is exactly what it sounds like. He is our leader, the one who was chosen to rule over the rest of our Believer faction. That is to say, the ones who believe the prophecy. Garen is in charge, and before him it was his father, and his father before him, and so on. He’s the strongest among us.”
Well, so far as I’ve seen, he’s at least the tallest. I couldn’t say that he’d seemed especially threatening or scary towards me, but maybe that was because he saw me as some kind of ‘chosen one’ instead of some kind of food. “Oh,” I said, realizing that there was some kind of power that went along with my newfound position, then. If the leader of this dragon gang wanted to be with me, then clearly I would be taken seriously and treated with respect.
If it wasn’t for the whole sexual matter, I might’ve been completely on board.
But until I heard the same information from someone other than Rebel Without A Clue here, I still had my doubts. It seemed far more likely that these dragon shifters were wasting their time and mine. Why should I believe them?
Satisfied that I’d calmed down and started to understand the situation, Brock took me by the arm, gentler this time – likely because he didn’t want to cause any unsightly bruising now that the Master wanted me in bed with him – and led me out of the bathroom. I could see the other dragon shifter standing sentry by the front door. He was actually leaning against the wall, looking down at his iPhone, but clearly waiting for the big bad boss to return.
“Ash,” Brock hissed loudly at him, pausing in the hallway with me. “Don’t let him into the room without my go-ahead.”
I smirked slightly. Ash. Now there’s a stupid name for a dragon. Nice going, Mama Dragon.
Then I gulped. What if Galen Karn wanted to make me a Mama Dragon? Oh Jesus Christ.
It made complete sense, as horrible as it was. Why else would he be so concerned about bedding me? I realized that Garen didn’t just want to get his rocks off with me because he thought I was pretty or had a magical, prophetic arm. He wanted to fuck me because he wanted to impregnate me. That was the power! It had to be.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” I muttered, feeling woozy as Brock held me there, shouting snippy things back and forth with his co-minion.
He turned to look at me and, to my surprise, he took me seriously. “Oh no, hold on, girl. Let’s get you into bed.”
That didn’t exactly help, as that was the thing I was sick about, but what did it matter? He picked me up and deftly carried me to the large, white bed in the center of the perfect, immaculate room. I wasn’t even shocked to see so much white anymore. I wonder if they keep it so white because they like being able to really see the fresh blood that they’ve shed? “I have a name, you know,” I said to Brock as he lowered me gently onto the soft, fluffy mattress that was topped with even softer and fluffier blankets and pillows. “I told it to you back when we were coming up here the first time.”
“I know, Tatyana,” he said.
I swallowed hard and sat up so I could examine him. That had been a trick. I’d never told him my name. I didn’t think that he or his friend had looked me up online. My paranoia was now at an all-time high.
Witho
ut saying anything else, he walked out the bedroom doorway and closed the door behind him. I could hear the sound of a key in the lock before his footsteps walked away down the hall.
Of course, I thought miserably. Of course he’s locked me in here. I thought about my cell phone, sitting in the pocket of my shorts on the bathroom floor, if it hadn’t fallen out during one of my several escape attempts.
I was royally screwed.
Chapter 3: The Bedding
I sat there in that cloud-like bed for what felt like hours. The wait only made me feel more scared and anxious about what was to come. Finally, I could hear the front door of the condo open and the three men talking – the guy called Garen or Master had the loudest, deepest voice – and it wasn’t long before there were footsteps coming towards the bedroom. A key was placed into the lock and then the door was opened. Brock stood there, looking at me with a look that could only be described as a warning. Then, he stepped aside and allowed his boss to enter the room.
Garen was so tall that he had to duck in order to get through the doorway. He was slender, with broad shoulders and clear muscles that I could make out under his white dress shirt. I guessed that a better word for him was sleek. Like a very expensive and high-tech car or something. I didn’t have a lot of experience with handsome men like him. It wasn’t like I’d had a lot of boyfriends in school. And even if I had, none of them were Garen’s age and definitely not the same type as him.
Brock closed the door so it was just the leader of the dragon faction and me. I leaned back into the pillows a little and moved my white robe to make sure it was completely covering my chest and my crotch, even though I knew that it wasn’t really going to matter. He was going to see whatever he wanted of me. Garen walked slowly towards the bed, looking down at me with his glowing green eyes. I didn’t know what to make of his expression except that it was menacing, even as he smiled, because his teeth were so sharp-looking. He was a dragon who didn’t fit into his human skin as well as he probably should’ve.
Abducted By The Dragons: The Complete Series Page 2
