by Trisha Telep
They flew back the way they had come. Back to the mountain cave. And when they landed, she slipped to the ground.
The dragon backed away from her, transforming once more so that the man she had come to know was standing before her, his face hard and set.
“You saved them and they tried to kill you,” she cried out.
“They fear me.”
“You knew what would happen,” she accused.
“Not for certain. But it was my guess.”
“And you wanted me to see.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So you will go back where you belong.”
“How can I?”
“I can give you proof that you brought the monster that saved them.”
“What proof?”
“You can carry back scales from the dragon.”
She didn’t hesitate in her answer. “I don’t want to carry anything back. I want to stay here.”
“You are human and I am not. There can be nothing more between us.”
She felt his words like physical blows. But she stood her ground. “You would send me back to my father?”
“Yes.”
“No. I do not belong with him. He has never cared for me or my happiness. He only wants to use me for his own good.”
“Yet you came here to save him.”
“I came to stop the suffering of his people. In a few years, my brother, Kerwin, will be the ruler, and he will be a good king. But I do not want to go back to Balacord.”
“Then I will take you to the other side of the mountain and buy you a husband.”
His voice dismissed her but she ran to him and clasped her arms around his waist. “Let me stay with you. I feel closer to you than any man I have ever met.”
He was so much stronger than she. He could have wrenched himself away, but he stayed in her embrace. His voice was low and sad when he answered. “You cannot.”
“Why?”
“I am old. Hundreds of years old. I am not human. And I live on blood.”
“I do not care about that.”
“You will grow lonely in this place.”
She raised her head and met his gaze. “I will not grow lonely. I will have you to teach me all the things you know and all the things I have longed to learn.” She let her joy shine in her voice. “We will argue about politics and religion and philosophy the way educated men do. And we will discover new things in science together.”
For a moment she saw the joy echoed in his eyes. But it quickly faded. “You are human. And you will grow old and die.”
She gave him a cocky grin that welled up from the depths of her soul. “And you are magic. You will keep me young.”
“You have too much faith in my magic.”
“We’ll see. We can figure it out. Together. And if my life is shorter than yours, I will be content. For it will be the life I have chosen for myself. A life of freedom, not the narrow existence my father planned for me.”
His voice was gritty as he asked. “Where did you get such wisdom?”
“From the place inside myself where I spent most of my time, because that was the only escape for me. Until now.”
He starred at her in wonder. “You are so different from the other virgins they brought here. They were frightened. And shallow. They had no thirst for knowledge. They only craved safety and comfort.”
“I’m older than they were. I am a king’s daughter. And I have been punished many times for being . . . different.”
“Thank the gods you are.”
She clasped the back of his head and brought his mouth down to hers for a long, hungry kiss. She felt his response. Felt her desire leap to meet his. And she felt the armour she was wearing vanish.
By magic.
He began to kiss her as he ran his hands over her body. And all the passion she had held in check burst forth.
They staggered together into the cave and managed to make it as far as a thick carpet before they fell in a tangle of arms and legs, kissing and stroking, and driving each other to the peak of need.
Then he was inside her, staring down at her in wonder moving in a rhythm that fuelled her desire, building the intensity to a level neither one of them could sustain for long.
They spun off into space together. And when his teeth pierced the flesh of her neck, climax rolled through her, through them.
He was still inside her when he lifted his head. “I took only a little of your blood. Just enough.”
She reached to stroke his damp face. “And I gave it gladly. Out of love.”
She saw a flash of disbelief on his face. “Love?”
“Oh yes.”
“You don’t know what I am.”
“Of course I do. You went to great pains to show me the worst that you could think of.” She smiled up at him, touching his lips, where a small red drop glistened. “But I saw more than you intended. Much more. Your power is so much greater than my father’s, yet you use it wisely. He is a petty ruler. But you are truly noble.”
His face registered his shock. “How can you call me that?”
“Because it’s true. That and more. Your wisdom stretches beyond the reach of any man. You have sacrificed much, but you do not always know what is best for yourself. I pray that I can teach you.”
With that, she clasped him tightly, knowing it would take time for him to accept everything she offered.
But they had time. And she hugged that knowledge to herself, even as she clasped him.
Her monster, Her devil. Her dragon. Her teacher. And her lover.
The Midday Mangler Meets his Match
Rachel Vincent
“. . . and we’ve got your weather report coming up in a minute, so stay tuned for a list of area schools expected to be closed this evening. But first, the morning headlines . . ."
I groaned and glared uselessly at the television, looking up from my history book. I didn’t want current events. I just wanted to know whether or not school had been cancelled, because if it had, I’d have a reprieve from the first chapter on Global Conflict the Second.
On screen, a flawlessly composed and impeccably dressed woman sat at a desk behind an open laptop, her eyes on the camera, the pristine points of her fangs pressed into a plump lower lip.
“Early last night, area police found the charred remains of another child, the latest target of the Midday Mangler, in the parking lot of the Gateview Mall. Like previous victims, she had been drained, then bound and left exposed to a deadly dose of morning sunlight. There’s been no official word on the child’s identity, but inside sources say the body is almost certainly that of nine-year-old Phoebe Hayes, who was reported missing after school two nights ago.”
What? I’d heard about the other bodies, of course. We all had. But Gateview Mall was only ten minutes away. The Midday Mangler had been practically in my backyard.
“This makes the fourth disappearance and grisly murder of a child in the last month, and the first in the metropolitan area. Police are urging parents to supervise their children closely and check in with them often. And, of course, if you see anything suspicious, call the police immediately.”
The school closing forgotten. I hit the power button on the remote in disgust. What kind of sick fuck would feed from another person, much less a child? And leave their bodies to fry in the sun? That just added insult to injury, and robbed the poor parents of one last glimpse of their child resting in peace.
And really: the ‘Midday Mangler’? The national media had obviously run out of good serial-killer nicknames (which worried me almost as much as the fact that they needed them).
“Ewww, sick!” a high-pitched voice cried from the back of the house. I looked up from my work again, worried for a moment that Luci had heard the news report. “She bit the little girl?!” My sister giggled and I relaxed.
She hadn’t heard.
“Yeah, because the kind old woman was really an evil witch,” Oscar said, his still-chan
ging voice deepening with the drama of the story. “What’d you think she was going to do? Pat the kids on the head and send them on their way?”
I dropped my book on the couch and stood, my homework momentarily forgotten. When Oscar and I were little, our mother had told us that same story over and over. It was our favourite. Especially the part where the little girl shoved the witch out of the door into the blazing sunlight, where she was scorched to a crisp, black shell. Then the girl freed her brother and they waited out the deadly sun until dusk, when they could escape into the safety of the dark woods.
Lucinda giggled again, and Oscar continued as I snuck down the hall, my bare feet silent on the carpet. “Now do you want to hear the rest of it, or are you gonna talk all morning?”
“OK, I’m done!” she cried. “Tell me the rest.”
I peeked around the door frame to see Luci sitting up in bed, her purple-print comforter pulled up to her waist, white curls brushing the shoulders of a frilly yellow nightgown. The bedside lamp threw dim light over her, shining on pale-blue eyes, glinting on the points of her tiny, sharp incisors bared in delight.
Over her shoulder, a thin beam of sunlight shone through a hairline seam in the plush, purple-upholstered shutters covering her window, where moonlight had streamed an hour earlier.
Oscar sat in a ladder-back chair by her bed, reading the familiar lines of the fairy tale from a worn, leather-bound book that had seen its best days before our parents were even born. “The old witch held Gretchen immobile, her lips locked on the little girl’s throat, her fangs piercing thin, fragile skin. She sucked hard, pulling blood from Gretchen’s body again and again, filling herself with it until the girl began to weaken and finally fell to the ground, motionless. Her eyes closed, her heart was still.”
I frowned as Oscar ran one pale hand through his stiff blond spikes. I didn’t remember Gretchen collapsing.
“When the little girl was dead the witch turned to her brother, who still sat in the cage, staring at his sister’s lifeless body in horror. Handel knew he was next.”
Luci’s eyes widened, and her lower lip quivered.
My jaw clenched in aggravation. I stomped into the bedroom and snatched the book from my brother, smacking the back of his head with my free hand. “Don’t ad-lib with her, you moron!” I scowled as he whirled on me, irritation bringing a drastic flush to his enviably pale cheeks. “She’s six years old! Give her the children’s version and save your horror stories for your idiot friends,” I snapped.
“It’s not a story Kez.” Oscar’s pale-green eyes blazed with conviction. “It’s a morality tale, and the message is ‘don’t take candy from strangers’, How is she supposed to learn anything if the story doesn’t illustrate the possible consequences?”
He reached for the book, but I stepped back. “First of all, it’s not your job to educate her. But beyond that, appropriate consequences for a first-grader do not include cannibalism and death. Leave the lessons to her teacher and go finish your own homework before I tell Mom you went all gruesome on Luci again.”
Oscar scowled, but plodded into the hall without argument. Mom was still mad at him for the D he’d pulled in maths. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work – he’d skipped both second and fifth grade, and was now the youngest freshman in the school by nearly two years – but that he had no interest in sitting behind a desk all morning. And until he figured out how to get an A without doing homework, he couldn’t afford to piss her off further.
“And you . . .” I smiled and settled onto the edge of Luci’s bed, plucking a pink bear from the pile stacked against the headboard, his plush fangs stark white and glittery. “It’s past your bedtime, and you’re keeping Petals up.”
“Did that really happen?” Luci scooted down under the covers as I pulled them up to her chest.
“Did what really happen?”
“Did the witch really bite Handel and Gretchen and suck their blood?”
“Of course not.” I lifted one corner of the blanket and tucked Petals in beside her, his rounded, white-on-pink ear nestled in a tangle of her sweet smelling curls. “Handel and Gretchen aren’t real. It’s just a story, and Oscar told it all wrong. In the version Mom told us, Gretchen kills the evil witch and saves her brother. And they both live happily ever after.”
But Luci wouldn’t be placated by my happy ending. “Oscar says people used to bite all the time. That was how we used to feed ourselves, instead of cutting meat with a knife and fork and drinking blood from a carton.”
“Well Oscar’s full of crap. And you can quote me on that.”
Luci grinned. “So we never drank blood from each other? Then why do we have fangs?”
Damn it, Oscar! He was always telling her half-truths and leaving me to sort the facts from the bullshit. Medieval use and abuse of fangs was not something I wanted to explain to a first-grader.
“OK, here’s the deal on fangs, but listen up, ‘cause I’m only going to say this once. OK?”
She nodded solemnly, wrapping one small arm around Petals.
“Do you know what vestigial organs are?”
Luci shook her head.
Of course not, I thought. She’s six. “Vestigial organs are the parts of our bodies we used to need a long time ago. But we’ve evolved over time and now we no longer need them. Like wings on a bird that can’t fly. Or like your tailbone, which doesn’t really do anything because people no longer have tails. Our fangs are like that.”
Her grip on Petals tightened. “So we used to use them to drink blood?”
“Well, yes. A long time ago.”
Her eyes widened again, and her pale brows dipped in concern. “Did people eat kids?”
“No! Feeding from other people – including children – has never been OK. Even when we all lived in caves. We ate animals then, just like we do now. Only back then we didn’t have refrigerators to keep the blood and meat from going bad, so we had to drink and eat straight from the source. But there was no evil witch who drank from children. That’s just Oscar’s version of a story Mom used to tell us.”
“Why didn’t Mom tell me that story?” Luci asked, and I stifled a groan. She had a knack for asking the hard questions.
Because since dad left, she’s working two jobs and barely has time to sleep, much less tell stories. But I couldn’t say that.
“Because she’s really busy right now. But I’ll tell you a story any time you want.”
Her eyes brightened a little at that, and she hugged Petals closer to her chest.
“You ready to sleep now?” I asked. Luci nodded, and I tucked the covers in tight around her. With a twist of her lamp switch, the room went dark, but for that slim crack of light from the window, nowhere near enough to hurt her.
I was almost to the door when she whispered. “I love you, Kez.”
“Love you too, Luce.” I left the door open an inch, then trudged into the living room where Oscar sat on the couch in front of the television, not doing his homework.
“What’s this?” I dropped onto the cushion next to him and kicked his feet off the cluttered coffee table.
“Bloodclot. Live.” On screen, a tall, thin man screamed at the crowd through lips painted a gruesome shade of red, reminiscent of drying blood. His make-up-whitened skin was crowned by a shocking thatch of long, jet-black hair. “Ruben Bensch is a demon on the guitar. I’m gonna get my hair darkened just like his.”
I snorted. “You’re dreaming. Mom will never go for that.” And even if she did, dying his hair black wouldn’t help Oscar’s social life. Considering his larger-than-average brain and his smaller-than-average build, it would take a miracle for him to fit in. Black hair was no miracle.
“She will if I get an A in maths.”
“Like I said . . .”
Oscar kicked my ankle, but before I could retaliate, the front door opened. I twisted on the couch, squinting against the assault of harsh daylight as our mother rushed through the door. The sun was bright and made
my eyes water, but thanks to the covered porch (built so Luci – the most sensitive of us to sunlight – wouldn’t be burned even if she was still awake at eight in the morning), no direct rays blazed inside.
Mom shut the door and stomped snow from her boots onto the mat. “Sorry I’m late again, guys.” She flipped the blue-velvet hood back from her head, untied the strings, then pulled her cape off and hung it on a hook to the left of the door. “Is Luci in bed?”
“Yeah, but she’s probably still awake if you want to go say good morning.”
“Thanks.” Mom kicked her boots off and tugged her blouse down over a recently thickening middle. She set her purse on the end table next to Oscar, then headed towards Luci’s room.
She was back in minutes, plopping down on the couch between us.
“Hey, Mom, if I got an A in maths this semester, can I get my hair dyed like Ruben Bensch?” Oscar pointed at the television, where Bensch was now yelling in painful disharmony with the rest of the band.
“Absolutely not.” Mom stared at the screen in mild disgust. “That’s unnatural. You’d scare the shit out of Luci.”
“Too late,” I said, grinning as Oscar scowled. “He’s already improvised a new ending to ‘Handel and Gretchen’.”
Mom frowned at him. “No more not-so-happy endings, Oscar. Not while that real-life monster is still on the loose.”
And this time I didn’t think it was just Luci who was scared.
My alarm went of at 6 p.m., as usual, and I started to smack the snooze button. But then I remembered Mom had to work early again – on weekdays she answered phones and fetched luke-warm white cells for an attorney downtown – and I would need to wake Oscar up and get Luci ready for school. So I rolled over and glanced at the sliver of light shining through the crack in my shutters.
It dimmed a little more each second. Dusk was well underway, and by the time I’d showered it would probably be safe to open the shutters and wake Luci with a healthy dose of moonlight.
