by K. G. Wilkie
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Preview of Family Inflamed
PS The Dragon Bites is available for sale now at most ebook distributors as well as kgwilkie.com, which is a great place to go to stay up to date on the latest releases in the Shadeworld series and all her other books.
Read below for a quick sneak peek at one of her other books.
Family Inflamed
You could say my family is a seething nest of snakes all wrapped up in ourselves and pitched so we are hurtling towards the sun. Obviously I’m not the problem. My Dad isn’t either. We’ve got just one problem in our lives, but she’s a big enough one that she can be a pack of carnivores all by herself.
It’s not supposed to be like that though. We are supposed to have a comfortable life. You are supposed to put in the work, and get the life out of it, and the work gets done.
We are supposed to have a house, a car or two, a yard, connections to other people and families in the neighborhood. Maybe a golden retriever or a fluffy cat scampering around the place, and when the kids are young the sound of happy giggling and playing and toys left around the house. And when the kids grow up some stress because grown ups are famous for finding teens difficult, but frequent moments of happiness and the family coming together interspersed with the apparently inevitable fighting.
A white picket fence kind of life. Living the storybook ideal.
I don’t really have that. I mean, sure, I’ve got a house and we actually have three cars because I got a car at the beginning of the year when I got my license. I know, I was a little late, my birthday was January and I didn’t pass the driving test until July and so I barely got the car in time for the new school year, but I didn’t get a chance to practice driving too much with my dad so it took awhile to build up my skills. And it’s a nice car, I picked out a medium blue Mini Cooper in the bizarrely over sized countryman model. My mom had a jaguar, and my dad had a Ford Expedition SUV. But it was more than cars and why my mom’s is twice as expensive as ours. It was more than a big house that had few luxury furnishings because we wanted to own less things so it was less of a hassle to replace them when they inevitably broke.
But I didn’t really want all of that. It was nice to have, for sure, but it wasn’t my goal. I just want a normal sort of life. A life where you can go through the week with three meals a day. A life where your Mom and Dad come home from work every single day and then you all get together to have a family dinner at the dining table. Or around the couch, I’m not too picky. A life where sometimes, on someone’s birthday or when you get really good grades, you can go out to a family restaurant as a treat and sit down and order dinner together, and everyone talks about how their day went and maybe the dad told dad jokes and the mom laughed along. What a thing that would be.
We didn’t have that. We had a nice life for ourselves, a townhouse we bought a few years ago but was still pretty new-ish, paid off within a year. We had a big back yard and a nice space in the suburbs- close to work but far from the noise of the downtowns. Our house was sparkly clean, our food was fresh and home made and local. It was probably even fair trade, but I didn’t really know. The three of us had gym passes and everything that was supposed to make us a healthy family.
But my mother was always going to the psychologist because she wasn’t healthy. No one really knew what was wrong with her. She’s been diagnosed with all kinds of mental and physical health disorders, but basically what constant new diagnoses mean when nothing has actually changed is that none of the professionals really know what’s wrong. I did though. I’m pretty sure the main thing that was wrong with my mother was her terrible personality, and any health issues she had just made it harder for her to hide what a terrible person she is. I should know. I’m a pretty decent and nice person and I’ve got the same whatever wrong with my mental health that she has.
She’s not decent or nice. I tried to tell my dad that all the time but he never really listens. He loves her, or he thinks that’s love, so he doesn’t want to hear about what a terrible person she is. He’ll come down the stairs for breakfast with bruises on his face and explain she’s really basically a decent person. I’ll take him over to the hospital to get his broken leg put into a cast and he’ll explain that none of it’s her fault. But none of the diagnoses have ever hinted that they’d cause her to not be aware of her actions. Whatever it is she has, we have, is not the reason why she enjoys making sure my dad never stays healthy for long.
I tried to tell him again today and he just shooed me out the door so he could pay the bill for our weekly Saturday date at the pancake place.
When we came back to the house and opened the garage door as usual until we heard funny noises, like someone with breathing problems was having an asthma attack. I felt worried and started to run towards the kitchen and the sounds, but my dad pulled me back and motioned for me to stay where I was, hidden behind a corner of the wall. I was going to argue with him when he put his finger to his lips, motioning for me to stay silent as well. I frowned at him but followed his directions. Mostly it was the look on his face, though, that pushed me to stay still and silent and just wait for him to check it out. It was like thunder clouds had zapped him so his eyebrows had slanted and dropped all the way down with a thick wrinkle in between them on his fore head and a tight slash where his smiling mouth normally was.
He moved forward on softly padding feet and stopped at the end of the hallway, peeking around the doorway to the kitchen. Then he barged in the open door to the source of the now snuffly noises gradually increasing volume and I decided it must be urgent and moved to run behind him. I stopped in the doorway then and just stared.
I was surprised to see my mom there on the floor floundering around and grunting while doing the naked tango. And I mean, she was really into it and didn’t even notice that we’d come in the house, but her lover looked at us and blushed. Then I realized who he was and yelled, “My god woman, you fucked your psychologist?!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Preview of PS The Dragon Fights
Look out for the next installment in the series coming soon! You can read a sneak peek of the second book in the Shadeworld series below.
PS The Dragon Fights
At that point Alyss doubled over in pain. She clawed at her head, suddenly consumed by some overwhelming power. Threads started to spray out of her pores, wrapping and twisting themselves around her. She screamed, filled with the sensation of being torn apart and restrained all at once. “Stop it!” She screamed at him. “Stop this! I`ll die,” she shrieked. His hands fluttered around her, trying to rip the threads out of her skin, but the few times he succeeded she screamed even more loudly. He ended up just standing there helplessly, staring as some strange power over took her.
“It`s not me,” Aeron protested. He tried to cast spells, do anything he could to make it stop, but finally gave up when all his efforts proved to be hopeless and just stared at her writhing in pain, feeling miserable for her, but helpless to change anything.
She shrieked in pain. The threads were now coming out thick and fast, and it looked like she was covered in a monstrous arachnid`s web. She shrieked again, this time in terror, desperately clawing off great swaths of the stuff. Her fear fueled adrenaline was such that she was able to ignore the pain it caused in pursuit of maintain her freedom from the gruesome stuff.
Still it came even faster now, and her arms were quickly bound by the stuff. She gave one last scream, but was quickly muffled as it gagged her mouth. Hysterical sobbing was the last he heard on the outside frantically wringing his hands on the other side of the webbing. And then she was completely caught up in the thick cocoon. He caught her then as she face planted the floor, her legs losing the ability to ensure her balance. He whispered to her then, soothing words coming so sweetly from that poisoned mouth.
The strands cocooning her hardened quickly, glossy and crystalline strands shining like candy floss. He tapped it and it rang out like a turtle`s shell.
He slapped at it to try to free her and as it hardened the sound deepened like a giant bell. Slowly each of the individual strands melted together into one smooth shell. He looked around frantically, but of course no one was available in the room to lend him their aid.
He hoisted her up in his arms, discomforted once again by the weight and awkward shape she now had. He ran through the halls, calling out frantically for help. But all of the rooms he passed were conspicuously empty and sparse. Not a soul was to be found in all of his desperation.
He ran, more and more. Somehow he ended up at the council room, still rather crowded with the representatives present at the earlier meeting. He steadied her with an arm so she was propped up like a life size doll. “Everyone,” he yelled frantically. “Can anyone tell me what is wrong with this girl,” he pleaded. All conversation stopped, everyone staring at their oddly discomfited prince.
The fairy warrior stepped forward. The man poked and prodded, knocking on the shell and scraping at it with his claw length nails. Aeron flinched Alyss away from the other man`s inspection initially, but he eventually consented. He was desperate for any help he could get, no matter how dangerous the claws looked placed on his special person.
The fey man dusted his hands, standing up from his inspector`s crouch. “This is perfectly normal,” he said reassuringly. “This is the puberty stage of our kind,” he smiled.
Aeron looked at him aghast. “Your people have such a long life span, and yet she is going through puberty at a mere fifty years old?,” he asked incredulously.
“She`s that old,” Jackie asked with the same level of shock. “I thought she was fifteen or something.”
“Yes, yes,” Aeron said impatiently. He waved Jackie`s confusion away as an insignificant matter. “Of course she is, but she is bound to live for thousands of years in keeping with the life spans of her kind, so of course fifty years is just her first bud of youth.”
The room rattled, then almost burst as an ever increasing cavalcade of fairy and fey warriors marched into the meeting room. The fey queen stood at the helm of her subjects, twilight cloak dotted with tiny bits of star fire sweeping into the room. The fey warrior already present in the room quickly bowed down to her, and she nodded her head in greeting to him.
She swept through the quickly parted crowd, heading straight for Aeron. He looked at her, holding onto Alyssa`s still form protectively. She swept aside her cloak then, standing squarely in front of him. She gave him the up and down, her slight smile proclaiming that she liked what she saw there. “I`ll return her once she has finished this stage and her training,” she promised.
“No,” he proclaimed. “You abandoned her, left her at the mercy of those humans. Left her in the care of those heartless golem ‘parents’,” he growled. “You`ve shown you can`t take care of her properly. You can`t have her back!” he spat.
Another woman walked forward. Her hair was silver, falling down her back in shining waves, crowned with a diadem shaped out of gold to resemble the leaves of Autumn. She stepped forward and put her hand softly on Aeron`s arm. Comfortingly.
“We did it to protect her,” she said. Her voice carried all of the sorrows and energy of a crisp Fall day. “We must continue to protect her now. Her location has been discovered, and they will come after her next,” she said. The twilight cloaked queen shifted uncomfortably at this admittance of their weakness in this situation, of their failures to protect the daughter of their people reliably.
Aeron grimaced, but he slackened his grip on the cocoon. The twilight queen swooped in to grab the girl up, looking at him with distrusting eyes. It was clear she thought he would snatch the girl up again if given the chance. Indeed, it already looked like he was reconsidering his decision to hand her over.
“It`s for the best,” Jackie said, stepping forward. She placed a gentle hand on the arm the Autumn queen had released. He nodded, stepping back.
“We will come back to see you soon,” the Autumn queen said. She looked around at the other stunned faces in the room. “It seems that events are finally moving, so we are fated to meet once more and deal with the traitors,” she said. The fey warrior walked forward to join his fellows at the slightest of gestures from one of them, looking back regretfully at the others gathered there. Then, with a swish of cloaks, all of them were gone from the room.
In their wake the palace shuddered.
