Blood of the Dragon

by Jay D Pearson

  “I, uhm, I…” he stammered, ending the embrace while turning so red that even the top of his balding head burned.

  “It’s okay, Pops. You guys chat. I’ll go find Miguel.”

  He smiled broadly and patted my shoulder, reminding me of another reason I enjoyed coming over so much. When Eduardo grins like that, the world just feels right.

  I strolled down the hall to Miguel’s door, not bothering to knock.

  His room is a monument to nerdiness. I mean, all eight Harry Potter movie posters? His one sports poster is Arizona’s Super Bowl team from 2008, and that’s in a corner. The remaining wall space are mostly Mario posters except for a big framed picture in the middle of his entire extended family. Sixty-eight people with black hair and eyes. Two with red hair and green eyes (Miguel and Maeve, in case you didn’t know). All with genuine happy faces.

  I might pretend to hate large groups, but my extended family picture would be just three. I’d give my right arm to be the third redhead in Miguel’s poster.

  “Hey!” I said casually. He twisted, looking up from his computer (yes, he was doing homework) and pulling out his ear buds in one smooth move.

  “Hey,” he said back, grinning, although he didn’t get up to greet me until I crossed my arms.

  “Oops! Sorry,” he said, awkwardly pushing his chair back and striding over to give me an equally awkward hug. He’s still only kissed me one time. He is so cute!

  “So, uhm…whassup?” He stammered just like his dad. I couldn’t help but smile and pat his cheek.

  “I dunno. You texted me.”

  He sighed so heavily that his shoulders slumped like a cliff side crumbling into the ocean.

  “I brought my mom,” I said. “She’s keeping them in line. When’s your mom going to tell your dad the truth?”

  He shrugged. “He starts yelling, she cries, then yells back. Is that what your parents do?”

  I shook my head. “Until they finally told me I was adopted, you’d never know they liked each other. Now they’re hyper friendly, like that will magically fix things.” It was my turn to sigh. “What are we going to do with our parents, Miguel?”

  “Our parents? What are the police going to do to me when they find out I killed all those hobgoblins? What if they find out I can turn into a dragon?”

  I do not gawk. I hate the way people’s mouths hang open and look plain stupid when they gawk. I cross my arms or frown or something, but I never gawk.

  I gawked. I mean, how do you answer such ridiculous questions?

  “Miguel Martinez, what planet are you living on?”

  “Oh, uhm, right…Sorry.” At least he had the courtesy to turn three different shades of red. “It’s just that I’ve never killed anything before, Aileen.”

  I snorted and he turned a fourth shade of red.

  “Bugs?”

  “Well, yeah, I’ve squashed some, but they’re just bugs.”

  “And compared to you when you were a dragon, those hobgoblins were just bugs.”

  “But they looked so human like!”

  This time I did not gawk but crossed my arms and frowned. I’ve noticed a few of my better teachers do that, then remembered they raise their eyebrows as well, so I imitated them. Miguel cringed quite suitably. I made a mental note to try that on my parents the next time they behave ridiculously.

  “I suppose we should be talking about Hagr, shouldn’t we.” I nodded as he correctly made that a statement and not a question. He really is quite smart. He knows to take my sarcasm in the spirit it is meant, unlike most people. I think that’s why my teachers are all scared of me.

  “Are you really going to give him the Dragon Pearl?” I asked.

  “If he comes for it, yes.”

  My lips twisted. Not quite a frown, because I save that for disappointment.

  “What are you thinking, Aileen?”

  See why I like Miguel so much? He knows how to read my lips. My dad thinks every lip expression means I’m arguing with him.

  “I don’t think you should give it to him.”

  “Why? I made a promise.”

  “Under duress.”

  “He saved you and your mom! How can I break my word?”

  He had a point, but I don’t trust Hagr. My mom hates him. The little goblin used to be my parents’ servant a long time ago, when they all lived in Faery, but they had a pretty bad falling out, and my dad fired him. At least, that’s how my mom explained it. Then there’s how he talked about me today like I’m a thing or a prize. If I hadn’t been so scared of those hobgoblins, I would’ve really been pissed.

  “He’s wicked, Miguel. Don’t you see that? He’ll use the Pearl to do something really evil.”

  “Maybe, but you don’t know what it’s doing to me.”

  This time when I frowned, my lips turned out. I don’t know why my dad doesn’t understand this. You’d think that someone who’s a thousand years old or whatever would know that if you frown and your lips curl in, that’s an angry frown, but if your lips turn out, that’s an ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying’ frown. Miguel knows the difference, however.

  “Ever since I brought it home, I’ve been having nightmares, Aileen. Bad ones, and they’re getting worse. If I look in the Pearl, I see them stomping around, raging and fuming. I bet Hagr can handle them better. Besides, I think their bad attitude is making things worse between my parents.”

  I almost gawked again, but slammed my jaw shut. He sort of made sense.

  “Can I see?” I asked. One of the useful things my dad’s taught me is curiosity is a gift, not a curse. Not that he ever said so outright, but he complains about the ignorance of others so much it became one of those osmosis-learning things. I figured I couldn’t help Miguel if I didn’t look.

  “You sure?” he asked. This time when I frowned, it was exactly what most people think a frown means. He shrugged, strode to his dresser, and yanked open the bottom drawer.

  I hadn’t seen the Dragon Pearl since Hagr shifted me and my mom out of the otherworld back to the Olympic Forest a few weeks ago. It was bigger than I remembered, a rough, circular pearlescent rock about the size of a human head. I spotted a slit the width of a broad knife like a scar, the only place where the surface was smooth. My parents knew very little about the pearl, only that Maeve had used it when a bunch of the faeries—including my parents—had been kicked out of Faery.

  That was still a weird thought. I’d been Finaarva and Månefè’s prisoner long enough I could imagine my dad being part of their gang at one point, but not my mom, especially not the way those two clearly despised her. Månefè had wanted to kill her, but Finaarva had insisted we would both have to be kept alive if they wanted to escape their own prison. I should’ve been scared that day, but I was just learning the truth about my parents, Miguel, and Maeve, not to mention that I was adopted by being stolen as a baby, so excuse me if I was simply rude to Finaarva and Månefè.

  Miguel proffered the Dragon Pearl to me with a finger pointing at the scar.

  “You can see them here, like a window. Just hold it to your face. I think it’s like a one-way cop window. At least, they never seem to notice when I’m watching them.”

  I’ll admit I reached for it with a bit of hesitation. I knew this thing was really old, as in ancient when Julius Caesar was emperor of Rome. It belonged in a museum in a glass cage where people could ooh and ahh. As I lifted it out of Miguel’s hands, I was surprised how light it was considering it looks like a big white rock, and hefted it twice, testing it.

  For several moments, I felt like a mayfly. If Miguel was right, this thing might even predate the first Chinese empire. It was like I held one of the pyramids of Egypt. Then I pressed my eyes to the scar.

  I was both shocked and mesmerized by the broad room I saw inside. Gray, rough-hewn walls like a cavern, yet shapes like beds or couches had formed, and a boulder rose table-like in the center. A red mist swirled slowly along the floor, crept up over the couches, and drif
ted up the walls. It seemed to be the only light source, like glowing blood, and slinging disorienting shadows so that I was uncertain about actual dimensions.

  Then I saw them. It was their eyes. I could never forget Finaarva’s cobalt-eyed pride or Månefè’s violet-eyed hate. They looked healthier, as if being removed from their former prison in the otherworld allowed their bodies and wings to regain their original state. They still lacked the sense of pristine beauty my parents exhibited when they removed their human masks, but I was certain they would be far more handsome than any human if they reached full strength.

  Finaarva loomed as tall as I remembered. He must have been a giant among the faeries. His blond locks spiked upward above his elvish ears before tumbling down his back, flowing like a river of gold. He strutted back and forth across the room’s center, his barrel chest extended and his arms thick with corded muscles. His black-tipped orange wings, speckled with yellow and white dots, spread out wide, then contracted, over and over as if wanting to fly. I would have laughed at his peacock swagger had I not remembered his maniacal cackle.

  Månefè could not appear more different. A head shorter than Finaarva, he pranced with a cat’s effeminate grace along the edges of the walls, although whenever he extended his lilac wings, he reminded me more of a bat. His skin is so white it’s almost translucent, yet the hatred burning in his violet eyes casts expressions so dark his features seem etched in deep shadows.

  Their clothes were all that stood between them and kingly displays. Their silk garments and fine linen capes were as tattered and faded as I remembered, and since being caged within the Dragon Pearl, appeared as mangy as a wild dog after a rough winter.

  Finaarva was clearly ranting about something, gesticulating wildly with clenched fists and sharp elbows. I shivered. His cobalt eyes blazed with the same feral fanaticism I’d seen in videos of Hitler. Månefè, on the other hand, would turn and snarl every third or fourth sentence. I could not tell if madness was boiling out of his hatred, or if he simply disagreed with something Finaarva had said. Not that it mattered.

  I pulled my face away and looked sadly at Miguel.

  “No wonder you’re having nightmares,” I said as soothingly as possible.

  “Now you see why I’ve got to get them out of here?” he asked.

  I shook my head vigorously. “No, Miguel! Can’t you see what will happen if Hagr has them? Don’t you think he’ll try to free them?”

  He frowned. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Wouldn’t he? He thinks he’s a king! I’m betting he’d do almost anything, even free those two if he can figure a way to bind them so they have to serve him.”

  I thought for sure he’d give me a lost puppy dog look, but instead, his lips curled in, forming a determined frown, and his voice dropped to a whisper.

  “I can’t do it, Aileen. I’m not strong enough for so much evil.”

  That I understood. Glancing at the large round stone, I held it up one more time, peering again through the scar that had created the window. Finaarva’s tirade had ended, and he stood, hands on hips, staring at the floor as he clearly deliberated about something while Månefè fumed, spit flying from his lips.

  Then Månefè threw his head back, his mouth open as if howling, and Finaarva tensed, although his blue eyes still studied the ground. Suddenly, those arrogant eyes snapped up and locked onto mine. Sharp pain shot through me and I screamed, dropping the Dragon Pearl onto the carpet with a loud thud. It did not roll, but simply wobbled, the scar facing me. It seemed to widen and spread until those two cold, azure eyes filled my vision and agony pumped through every vein.

  I shrieked again and fell, curling into a fetal position and squeezing my eyes shut. I just wanted the pain to stop, but even with my eyes closed, Finaarva’s eyes filled my vision.

  Miguel was shouting and footsteps were racing, but my torment would not end. I spasmed, my arms and legs jerking out of control. The pain coalesced, a railroad spike hammering into my brain, and I knew I was crying uncontrollably. It was becoming a presence, something alien to me, trying to take control. Hands grabbed my limbs. I tried to scream my mother’s name, but my throat burned as if being torn apart.

  Then there was another presence. Hatred fought pride, two voices roaring at each other more than at me. From far away, a third voice called, soft and gentle.

  “Aileen…”

  I latched onto the third voice, clinging desperately. I felt as if one fingernail was all that kept me from plummeting down a thousand-foot cliff. As the other two voices battled, the third voice snuck closer and closer, sneaking a life line to me, but I would have to let go to reach it. Terror shook me. I did not know if I could grab it in time.

  “Aileen,” the third voice called again, and my mind filled with visions of home and safety. I wanted it so badly, but could I make the leap?

  The other two voices quieted and seemed to unite. The blue eyes seethed with anger, drawing closer, and the pain reignited. I screamed once more, unable to hold on any longer, and fell.

  Watch for publication of Heart of the Dragon later in 2019 exclusively on Amazon Kindle!