by Ruby Ryan
I hated him.
"Where are you taking me?" I poured as much animosity into my voice as possible, but he didn't seem to care.
"Somewhere," he rasped in a cigarette-scarred voice.
"Why not stop right here? Pull over on the side of the road and fight Ethan when he comes? You've already drawn him to you."
The dragon laughed, a low rumbling in his chest.
"Because we are going somewhere else. Some place safer."
I tried to imagine what might be safe for a dragon.
"Do you have a name?"
He snorted as if that was funny.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked a while later. "Why do you need to kill Ethan? Where did you come from?"
"You ask too many questions."
"If you answer them, maybe I'll shut up."
"You'll shut up if I strike you," he growled. I flinched, but no blow came. "We were born to fight one another. We have done so a thousand times, again and again across the eons. It is what we are."
I had no idea what that meant, but he didn't elaborate.
We drove while the sun climbed lazily into the sky. At some point we passed into Louisiana, driving through the casino-riddled town of Shreveport. Then we turned off I-30 and went south on smaller roads with fewer cars.
The dragon stopped at a gas station, and got out to pump gas. While the tank filled up he walked inside, leaving me alone.
I could flee. Nothing was physically stopping me from hopping out the truck and sprinting away. Or I could yell and scream for help, telling anyone and everyone around to call the cops. There were half a dozen cars here, including a man pumping gas next to our truck who looked like he would help if a woman fell at his feet crying.
But I knew what would happen if I did. I could see it clearly: the dragon would shapeshift, burning everything around him to get me back. The nice man pumping gas would be engulfed in the flames and burned alive. If he was lucky, he would asphyxiate first. The dragon would still have me, and innocent people would be dead, and it would be my fault.
So I sat, and stared straight ahead, and did nothing, and felt cowardly for it.
He returned with two gas station hot dogs and bottles of soda. He tossed the bag to me without a word.
"I'm vegan," I lied, trying to be difficult, a resistance in miniature.
He took his own hot dog and bit into it eagerly. "Sucks for you."
I gave in, because if I was going to be a damsel in distress I might as well not be a hungry one.
We drove south for two hours and six minutes. I knew the time exactly because I was keeping track in case I found a way to get to a phone or the internet or something. Three hours and forty-nine minutes east, then two hours and six minutes south. Two hours and seven minutes south. Two hours and eight minutes south. Time dragged on, waiting for whatever inevitability approached.
Finally he turned off the state highway onto what looked like an unpaved driveway. We followed that for another eight minutes, much slower than before. The Louisiana forest spread around us, tall thin pine trees that encroached on the road like reaching hands. Deeper we went, the only sound the rumble of the truck engine and the crunch of tires on dirt, until we were nowhere near civilization.
"How did you find me?" I said, because talking helped me ignore my rising dread.
"You ask that question as if surprised."
"Well I mean, yeah." I made myself look at him, even though my eyes wanted to recoil. "You have some strange bond with Ethan. He can feel you, and you can feel him."
"Our bond is the bond of enemies whose hate has tempered into a shapeless blade," he said poetically.
"Okay, sure. But why kidnap me as bait? Couldn't you skip the middle man and go right to fighting Ethan? It doesn't make any sense."
He snorted without looking at me. "Our Emerald bond is not so precise. I can feel the Emerald Gryphon with some semblance of proximity, but it is fleeting and vague. But you."
He glanced over for a moment.
"You were simple. You gave your information to the police in Fort Worth, which was overheard by a dozen witnesses. The police then contacted your place of employment to verify details, a temp agency. I contacted them, received your full name and address, and found which company you were contracted to."
Oh. I'd expected something a little more mystical.
"Besides that," he added, "I know the Emerald Gryphon. He prefers to fight in familiar territory. He will come, and he will try to save you, but he will be greatly disadvantaged."
"We'll see about that," I said, though there was little confidence in my voice.
The Louisiana trees opened up into a hidden clearing occupied by an old two-story house with faded white paint. The dragon parked on the side, then grabbed my arm and pulled me from the truck and then pushed me through the front door.
It was a plantation style home with an enormous entranceway and staircase, with a dining room on the left and a den on the right. A woman with jet-black hair and an impossible hourglass body rose from a chair in the latter, running forward to embrace the dragon, leaping into his arms and squeezing his torso with her legs.
"I thought you'd never come," she whispered.
"I said I would," he said simply.
She kissed him hard, a desperate lust as if she hadn't expected him to return at all. It went on and on until I began to feel uncomfortable. Just when I was about to clear my throat did the dragon gently lower her to the ground, though he had to pry the woman's lips off his.
She panted from their quick make-out session, and finally turned to me.
"She doesn't look like much."
"That's because she isn't," the dragon said, taking me by the arm and leading me into the den. He shoved me into a chair by the window and tied my arms begin my back. All the while his girlfriend watched with her arms crossed over breasts so large they had to be fake.
"Are you a dragon too?" I asked. "Or just a silly groupie?"
The woman looked at the dragon. "She's kind of a bitch."
Fuck you too, I thought.
"The gryphons have poor taste indeed," the dragon agreed, finishing his work on my wrists. They were tied too tightly to the chair for me to move more than a few millimeters. "I did not succeed."
"Oh no, baby," the woman said reassuringly. "What happened?"
"There was a crowd. We could not do battle as I would have wished." He ruffled my hair as if I were a toddler, shoving my head roughly at the end. "But that is why we have her. Soon he will come."
The woman's grin held a lifetime of malice.
The dragon opened his mouth again, but then whipped his head around. "What is that doing here?"
The other woman and I followed his gaze to an old wooden chest placed in the corner, with a huge antique padlock on the front. "Baby, you said not to let it out of my sight..."
"Only while you were there! I never told you to bring it with you to this place! Where he will soon be!"
She put her hands on her hips. "What was I supposed to do, leave it in the hotel room on Bourbon Street?"
I could feel the dragon's fury rising like a fire, the heat beginning to scald my face and skin. But the woman stood strong, every bit as stubborn or determined or whatever as he.
The fire dimmed, and he visibly gathered himself.
"No matter." He strode toward the window, peering out as if he could see something in the distance. "My brothers slowly awaken. I can feel Sapphire stirring, somewhere to the west, by the mountains. They too will kill their gryphons, and then we can finally end this world."
"End this world," I muttered. "I went through an emo phase when I was a teenager too. Though with fewer cheesy tattoos."
They both looked at me as if they'd forgotten I was there. I waited for his fury, but instead that same insane laughter came bubbling out of his chest. She laughed with him, mocking me with their voices.
"Your gryphon has been shapeshifting for what? Three days?" He snorted to let me know w
hat he thought of that. "I have a week's head start on him, knocking the rust off and practicing for battle. Tell me, girl: do you honestly believe he can defeat me? Truly, deep within your heart?"
I began to tell him that of course I believed that, but the words stuck to my tongue. Ethan and I were still figuring everything out, shifting and flying and everything else. We were in the dark, especially compared to this guy, this fucking dragon.
The dragon could see my confidence waning, and he laughed harder for it.
20
ETHAN
As I traveled east toward the beacon of love that I knew was Jessica, I couldn't help but feel like I was approaching my doom.
I knew it was a trap. That was the only reason to kidnap Jessica and take her somewhere: to lure me to him. I could feel the way the dragon was taunting me, and it made me want to fight him even more.
Even though I knew all of this, I was powerless to stop myself.
Nothing mattered except protecting Jessica. Rescuing her. Being with her.
A terrifying thought came to me: what if he killed her? He didn't need her alive: killing her would draw me to him even quicker, blinded by rage and revenge. He could kill her right now, and I wouldn't be able to stop him.
The thought left me paralyzed for the next hour of the drive.
I wasn't sure where I was going. East on I-30 for a while, until passing into Louisiana. As long as I'd been living in Dallas I'd never driven out this way; everything looked foreign. Especially once my instincts told me to exit the interstate and drive south along small back roads in the middle of nowhere. Even the gas stations looked different.
It filled me with unease, and I wasn't sure if it was my own emotion or the gryphon's deep inside of me. It wanted to fight, I knew, but it was wary of the surroundings. Like the dragon might spring out at any moment and roast me alive in the car.
But still I drove, following the pulsing light in the far distance, slowly growing closer.
That was the only thing that gave me any hope: the fact that I was gaining on them, no matter how slow. That meant Jessica was alive. And if she was alive, then I had a chance.
I didn't know what I was going to do. I couldn't shift into a gryphon unless Jessica triggered it with the totem. I'd tried pushing it several times already so I could fly the rest of the way there (ignoring the obvious danger of doing so from the inside of a moving car), but of course it didn't work. Jessica was the only one who could control my transformation.
Somehow I doubted the dragon would let me get close enough to Jessica to let her press the button. Even if I asked nicely.
So the order of events in my imagination went like this: show up wherever the dragon was waiting. Exchange some taunts. Then he would turn into a dragon and sear me like a barbecue steak.
Yet I drove on. If I was going to die for Jessica, then so be it. I had to make the attempt.
I realized I was drawing much closer than before; it felt like Jessica and the dragon had stopped somewhere, only a few miles ahead. I began to hope he was stopping for gas, or food, and changed my plan of attack accordingly, but all of that fell away when I followed the signal to a private road leading into a tangle of green forest.
The car bumped along, Jessica growing so close I could almost taste her on my lips.
A dilapidated house stood in the middle of a clearing. Parked next to it was a beat up compact car, and an enormous lime green pick-up truck, shiny with new wax, a metaphor for penile compensation if ever I'd seen one. But there was no mirth in my mind as I parked my own car a safe distance from the house. This was the place.
This was where Jessica was.
I stuffed the gryphon totem into my jeans pocket and got out of the car. The air stank like smoke and death, as if an unseen pile of carcasses and bones were filling the air with rot. Flies buzzed around my head and through the air, feasting on the stench I knew to be the dragon's. It wasn't just knowledge: it was memory, from the gryphon deep inside my chest. It knew this smell from an ancient time, from battles and victories and defeats long ago.
For a heartbeat I considered attempting stealth, circling the house in the woods and coming up from another angle, but then I could feel the dragon's eyes on me, surprise and excitement and barely-restrained ardor all at once. I strode forward until I was at the edge of the clearing, and then the front door opened.
EMERALD.
A cluster of crows took flight as if the telepathic sound had disturbed them. His voice felt less threatening than before. More casual, or resigned to this conclusion. The Emerald Dragon strode down the porch on slow, patient legs, never taking his eyes from me.
He stopped a short distance away, and we regarded one another across the space as we had done countless times before.
"I have a deal for you," I found myself saying.
"A deal," he rasped, out loud this time. "Deals are for people in positions of power. Deals require leverage."
I ignored him and took a deep breath. "I'll trade you the gryphon totem for Jessica." The totem pulsed in my pocket angrily. "You want it. I can feel it in you now. I've hidden it somewhere safe, and if you let Jessica go now I'll tell you where it is."
The dragon's sneer held infinite contempt. "Across the ages I've learned not to trust you. Yet even if I could, such a trade is impossible. You reveal much of your ignorance by even suggesting it."
I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it was the truth. He wouldn't make that trade.
"Then I have a second proposal." I took one step forward, but no more. "Let Jessica go free, right now. Give her my car keys and let her drive away. Do that," I said, pausing for emphasis, "and I'll turn myself in to you."
"NO!"
Jessica screamed her disapproval from inside the house. I saw movement at the window on the right side, one or two people there. Jessica abruptly cut off, as if someone had slapped a hand over her mouth.
Or cut her throat, a negative part of my brain said, but I could feel her through the pulsing of the totem so I knew it wasn't true.
The dragon considered the window, then turned his grin back on me. "Somehow I do not think that trade will work."
He held up a long finger.
"However. Since you are so ignorant, allow me to explain the futility of your situation. You and your feathered brethren are limited to transforming only at your mate's command. We dragons have no such restrictions. Rather than fill your body with flames here and now, I will permit you to surrender peacefully. In return, I promise to make your death swift and painless." He spread his hands. "I doubt the other dragons will offer such mercy to your brothers."
A part of me wanted to. It was a small chance, but maybe, just maybe, he would let Jessica go if I did. And maybe she would drive away from this terrible place. And maybe she would live her life without me.
But I could feel that it wasn't true, that she would do anything for me just as I would do anything for her. And the gryphon in me raged against my chest, demanding to be let free, full of bloodlust now that the dragon was within sight.
I had to fight him. There was no other way.
The dragon knew immediately. He nodded at my internal thought as if I'd telegraphed it to the world, and stood up very straight.
"But I do not need my dragon form either," he said, unbuttoning his pale green shirt. "I can defeat you in this body, preserving the secrecy of this place."
He untucked his shirt to reach the final button, then let the whole thing slide off his back. Tattoos covered every inch of his body from navel to neck, flames and smoke in brilliant shades of orange and red and black. The brightest flames ran along his arms, and as he stretched his hands above him the fire wrought in ink danced as if it were real.
I rolled my shoulders to give myself something to do, getting the blood flowing. I'd taken some kick-boxing classes back in college, but that was a decade ago. I tried two quick test-jabs in the air, and even that simple motion felt foreign.
But I had to save Jes
sica, and there was no other option.
"I'm ready."
"Surely not," the dragon said, approaching.
21
JESSICA
I could feel the totem.
It was there, drawing closer with every second. The pressure in my head diminished, and I sighed at the blessing.
The dragon felt it too. His eyes widened and he announced, "The Emerald Gryphon approaches." He kissed his girlfriend once more, then left out the front door.
She turned to me, face twisting with disgust. "He's gunna kill him, and you're gunna watch."
"You're right," I said. "And after he's dead, if you're nice, Ethan and I will let you go free."
"That's not what I meant, cunt," she said, going to the window in the other room to observe the two men.
I sat very still as I watched her go.
When she was in the other room, mostly hidden by the window frame, I reached for my apple watch.
The metal hair clip was there in the band. With my wrists tied I could barely reach it with my other hand. My fingers tightened on the end, and slowly I began pulling it out. It was a motion that was as familiar to me as brushing my teeth, the nervous tick I'd had for years, but I couldn't see what I was doing, and the stakes were higher if I dropped it by accident here. I wouldn't get another chance.
The hair clip came free from the band.
"I have a deal for you."
I turned toward Ethan's voice. He stood at the end of the clearing, looking strong and determined. A flare of hope went up in my chest; he was here to save me, and he wouldn't lose.
But as he spoke, and told the dragon what his deal was, my heart dropped.
"NO!" I screamed, unable to hold it in. "ETHAN, NO! DON'T DO IT!"
The dragon bitch was on me within seconds.
SLAP.
Her palm flew across my cheek, knocking my head sideways. I saw floaters in my vision for a second, and then my cheek was on fire.
"This'll shut you up." She shoved something dank and foul into my mouth, a cloth or rag or something, balling as much inside as she could. Duct tape screeched as she pulled away a length and covered my mouth.
