by Alix Labelle
“No—” he started, but just as this thing, this… dragon, dipped its head low, he turned and leapt away.
Margot screeched as it slid its head under the net, the scales on top of his head scratching against her torso. Another deep, guttural roar filled the cave. Margot’s jaw swung open, an ear-splitting scream slipping from her lips, just as she watched the mouth of the cave fill with fire.
Chapter Two
Anya sat on a throne just below King Orion. She flipped her bleached blond hair over her shoulder as she met his fiery anger with her own cautious stare. The dragon king huffed hot smoke, his bushy eyebrows jammed together, forming a hairy wall above his sharp, sapphire gaze. She watched his strong jaw move ever so slightly back and forth as he ground his teeth in frustration.
Anya pursed her thick, red lips. “Orion. Calm yourself.”
Orion dismissed her, shifting his gaze away just as his guards pulled the stone doors open. There, standing just behind the threshold was Cohen, the dragon man who was supposed to be responsible for the security of the tomb and the mouth of Orion’s covert palace.
He had obviously failed.
Anya watched Orion stare at the dragon in his tall, human form. “You have allowed a human to see your true form.” His booming voice filled the room. Anya could feel a tingling in between her legs at the sound of it.
Cohen bowed his head, his long hair falling to either side of his face.
“Look at me,” Orion ordered as he stood and stepped down from his throne.
Anya slipped to the edge of her seat, waiting in anticipation of what she knew he would do next.
“I’m sorry, I—”
Orion lifted a hand. “Never mind your petty emotions.”
Cohen clamped his jaw shut.
“Where is the woman?”
“A holding cell, my king,” Cohen said, bowing his head again.
Orion gripped his chin, forcing Cohen to look at him. “I am immensely disappointed.”
Cohen’s violet eyes flashed wide. Anya could tell from the lone tear streaming down his face that he knew exactly what would happen next.
Orion did not disappoint. He wrapped his hand around Cohen’s neck and lifted him off of the ground.
Anya leaned forward, wincing at the resistance from her hard corset as she watched the execution take place. Cohen’s feet wriggled as his face changed from a light pale hue to a slightly pinker shade. He grabbed Orion’s arm with both of his hands, his survival instincts kicking in as he scratched and clawed at the king’s tough, dark skin. Orion let out a dark chuckle as he tilted his head back. He opened his mouth, taking in buckets of air.
Anya noted how his chest rose, inflating with oxygen, before he turned on Cohen. He pressed his mouth against Cohen’s quivering lips and blew as hard as he could. She squinted at the ray of blue flame that streamed out of his mouth, completely obliterating Cohen until he slipped between Orion’s fingers, reduced to nothing more than ash and smoke.
Orion gestured at one of the guards to take care of the mess before returning to his seat.
Anya barely waited for him to get comfortable. “The human male is no problem. No one will believe him if he told what he saw.”
Orion gave a curt nod. “I know. It is the woman that concerns me.”
“You couldn’t have killed her. That would have invited human inquiry.”
Orion rubbed his thumb against each of his fingers as he thought through the predicament. “Kidnapping her was hardly a better option.”
Anya’s glowered at him, an idea coming to mind. “What if you made her a vessel?”
Orion averted his gaze. “I have no interest in making a vessel.”
Anya bit her lip. This was going to be much harder than she thought. “But you need an heir.”
“Not right this minute.”
“Then when?” Anya stood up, rounding his throne to face him. “We have been looking for a way to produce one for centuries. It must be fate that she landed right in your lap.”
Orion shook his head.
Anya pursed her lips, throwing her hands up on frustration. “You have an able-bodied woman in your palace. Either kill her or make a surrogate of her, but I will not tolerate this indecision from you.”
When Orion did not immediately return her gaze, she bent over so that she was at his eye level, grasping his chin and forcing him to look at her. “You are becoming weak. Your existence will soon meet its end. Make. Me. An. Heir.”
Orion took in a sharp breath, grasping her small neck with his large hand. “I do not take orders from anyone, especially you.”
His image had begun to blur in Anya’s eyes before he finally let her go.
Chapter Three
It took Ezra two hours of harsh terrain and dirt roads to make it to the US embassy in Luanda, Angola. After hours on hold and a short conversation with an infuriatingly nonchalant official, Ezra had deduced that the only way to get anything done would be to contact them in person. Now, he was fidgeting in his chair on the other side of the desk of a female agent with a tag on her left breast that read, “Demba, A.”
She closed the folder from which she had been reading, then folded her hands on top of it. “So, let me get this straight,” she said.
Ezra leaned in, as if that would somehow make her accent much more understandable.
“You were hiking in restricted territory with a colleague when she was trapped, by what looked like…” She re-opened the folder, her dark eyes scanning the page for something, before adding, “A human dragon.”
Ezra pursed his lips. It wasn’t until he was sitting right across from a government official, listening to her repeat his recount of events in that condescendingly dry voice of hers that he realized that by telling the whole truth, he had made it impossible for them to take him seriously. He wrung his hands together, biting his lips and swaying back and forth in his chair. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe but—”
“It’s damn impossible to believe.” She leaned back in her chair, her eyes never leaving his face.
Ezra felt like he was under a microscope, and wouldn’t have put it past this Demba to assume that he was just on some sort of drug. “It happened.”
Demba nodded. “And how do you know this was a, uhm, human dragon and not just some sort of trick of the eye?”
Ezra huffed a quick breath. “I saw it. It breathed fire…” He could see the whole thing behind his eyes as if it were happening just as he spoke. “And then it, for lack of a better word, it morphed into a human… and it chased me.”
Demba nodded. “Uh-huh. And how did you outrun this fantastical human-dragon?”
“I didn’t. I just jumped over the edge of the landing-thing and started tumbling,” he said, wincing at the memory of the creation of the cuts and bruises that covered his body. “When I got to the bottom of that… that hill and stood up, he wasn’t following me anymore.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall, tan. His skin looked like it was glistening in the sunlight. Like he was covered in golden glitter or something.” When Ezra looked back up at Demba, he found her raising skeptical brow.
Demba nodded, standing up and pushing her chair underneath the desk. “So then tell me, because I’m a little confused. Tell me just how you can care enough about your little colleague to trek all the way down here, but not enough to stay by her side in that cave. Why did you run?”
The short answer to this was just that she had told him to. Ezra took nearly everything she said as truth. She knew the natives and their legends a billion times better than he did, and he had always regarded her as much more worldly than him. “I was afraid of what would happen, so I made a decision. Now I’m here asking you for help, because that is the only way I know how to help her now.”
Demba crossed her arms. “Now, the natives, the villages, the land is a very delicate thing. I have no interest in invading a village because you claim to have seen a dragon.”
Ezra jump
ed to his feet. “But she’s missing! How can you question my story when that fact is proof?”
Demba gave a slow nod. “Then, if she’s missing, we will launch a search.”
“What does that even mean?” Ezra asked.
“You need to take me to your lodgings.”
He scoffed. This was a complete waste of time, but if this was what she required in order to provide her aide, then what choice did he have?
***
“Here we are.” Ezra pushed open the flimsy wooden front door of the two room house he had shared with Margot since they’d built it together in their first weeks as volunteers. As he led Demba through their small front hallway, through the cluttered front room and into the back room that housed the two twin beds they slept in, he heard the sound of someone sloshing around in water.
“Do you have a third roommate?’ Demba asked.
Ezra shook his head, but as he stepped through the opening that led to their bedroom he saw what was undeniably Margot herself, sitting in the bathtub, running a soapy sponge over her naked body.
“Oh!” Demba exclaimed. “Apologies!”
“Hello?” Margot called, dropping the sponge into the tub.
Demba and Ezra stepped back through the opening, leaning against the wall of the first room. “I thought you said you last saw her caught up in a net.”
Ezra pursed his lips. “I did.” He shook his head. None of this made any sense.
“Ezra?” Margot called as she stepped out into the front room, her wet body wrapped in the sheet she had pulled off of her bed.
Ezra cocked his head to one side. Why wouldn’t she get a towel?
Demba leaned into her. “Sorry, he just reported you missing and…” She stopped, peering into her eyes.
Ezra followed her gaze. Odd. The woman he remembered had brown, almond-colored eyes, not the deep, ruby red ones he was staring into.
“Do you wear contacts?” Demba asked.
Ezra shook his head hastily. “No—”
“Yes!” Margot replied with an eerily bright smile.
Ezra gazed at her, his eyes searching her body for an answer to the question that burned through his mind. How did she get free? Why didn’t she tell him the minute it happened? Why did she look so unscathed? He gulped. “Demba, can I speak to you?”
Demba looked at him, but just as she was about to shake her head, he pulled her back into the bedroom. “That isn’t her,” he said, before Margot could follow.
Demba laughed. “All right. I have entertained you for long enough. I need to get back to my desk.”
“But didn’t you see her eyes?”
Demba shrugged, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’re making something out of absolutely nothing. Now, I have to go.”
And with that, she bade “Margot” goodbye and went outside of the house to call herself a car.
Chapter Four
The pain came first. It was a burning sensation that started at the heart of Margot’s body and travelled the full extent of her extremities. Her muscles cried out for mercy, while her blood, running thin and hot in her veins failed to provide them any kind of nutrients. She felt like a pile of disconnected body parts.
When her eyes snapped open, nothing but darkness greeted her. She slammed her hands against the ground around her, but when she felt nothing but wet stone, she sat up. Her abdomen, burned in protest right before her head knocked against what she now realized was an incredibly low roof. “Fuck,” she hissed as she sat there immobilized by the ache in her head. With a deep breath, she rolled over onto her stomach, knowing that wherever it was they had put her, it must have had an entrance somewhere.
So she began to army crawl all around her, her movements lacking direction. She slammed against wall after wall, the ache in her bones growing to an unbearable degree as panic bubbled in the pit of her stomach and tugged at the back of her mind. Her muscles shook and her gut seemed to be slipping farther and farther between her legs with every passing moment she spent hitting hard damp walls. “No,” she said, slapping the wall in front of her. She twisted herself until her back pressed against it and wrapped her legs in her arms, her chin resting on her knees.
A lump lodged itself in her throat as hot, silent tears streamed down her face. Her breath came in shallow wisps, and she repeatedly slammed her chin against her knees because she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out a way out of this. Her tears grew stronger until her legs had collapsed in front of her and she heaved sob after sob, her entire body lurching forward. Her mind wandered wildly to the small beach house in Cape Town where she spent her childhood. She remembered the ocean waves caressing her ankles, the warm, salty wind kissing her face…
She remembered her mother’s tired smile; her voice calling her inside for piano lessons. The smell of Sorghum pap and beef stew filled her nose as if she were a sixteen-year old studying at her mother’s kitchen counter and not in the literal middle of nowhere as an adult. She could feel the heavy rock of an expensive engagement ring on her left hand… then that light feeling you could only feel when you part with something that was supposed to be your better half.
Margot cried even hard at all of these memories, the thought of Ezra only making her more frustrated with herself. Why had she ignored him all of this time? What, exactly, was she waiting for?
And so she sat there for minutes, or hours or days or years regretting every single decision she had ever made. It seemed that this would go on for an eternity that she would wither and die in that very position, when she saw a movement to her far right. She turned, her heart skipping a beat. It looked like there was a small hole, barely large enough for her to fit through. It was the only opening of her entire “cage”, and the warm, candlelight spilling through it told her that who or whatever had been previously guarding it had just stepped away for whatever reason.
Fueled with a new hope, she crawled towards it as fast as she could, but as soon as she stuck her right leg through the opening, something like a hand gripped her ankle. She wriggled her foot back and forth, trying to get it off, when she could feel it growing warmer and warmer. Her jaw swung open, a scream leaping out of it as the hand seared her skin. White hot pain shot up her entire leg as whatever it was finally let her go.
She pressed herself against the wall as far away from that opening as she could get, her one and only attempt at escape completely thwarted.
Chapter Five
Ezra had tossed and turned the entire night. Every time he looked over at the Margot’s bed, he saw that woman lying there still… Far too still. She didn’t sniffle in her sleep the way that Margot always did, nor did her delicate chest rise and fall with her every breath. Every doubt Ezra had had about her in the waking hours under the burn of the sun, they had all been amplified by the sight of this fake human pretending to be her. As the sun rose, he found that he couldn't stand it anymore. His insides ate at him at the thought that the real Margot could still be out there somewhere, suffering. He wondered if she so much as had a bed to sleep on while he lounged around, tossing and turning in his.
As the sun rose, he couldn’t wait anymore. Although it made absolutely no real sense how this woman could look and sound like Marge and, at the same time, not be her, he knew that he was right. He also knew that he had to find her. So he got out of bed, tiptoed into the front room, and began to pack his hiking pack. He figured, since he had no idea where she could be, he would start back at that cave. It was only as he threw his backpack on and bent over to hook in the front straps that he heard a noise behind him.
“Ezra?” It was Margot’s sleepy voice.
Ezra bit his lip as he stood up straight and turned to face her. His heart skipped a beat when, as she stood there before him, leaning on the edge of the opening that led to their room and rubbing her eyes, she actually looked like the real Margot. He nearly opened his mouth to say something he might say to her… but then she moved her hands away, exposing her brilliantly red eyes. He narrowed his eye
s at the way her skin glistened in the sunlight.
“I’m going to find my friend,” he said, turning and making his way to the door. He had reached out to grab the door handle when he heard a hollow, scratching sound coming from behind him. He turned to find the woman with her head bent impossibly far back, her mouth stretched so wide that the skin that made up her lips were a dull, gray color.
“Wha—”
But before he could even finish that question, she snapped her head back into place, while, in the same motion, a breath of fire blazed through the archway.
Ezra darted to the right, narrowly escaping it. He shoved his hand into the pocket of his cargo pants for the knife he would never forget again and didn’t hesitate to throw it at her. She lifted her hand, catching it right out of the air. Her skin broke in contact of the blade, but she turned it around and threw it at him anyway.
Ezra turned, ducking out of the way and diving through the front door, but just as he made it over the threshold, the knife contacted with the back of his right shin. His jaw swung open, a grunt of pain slipping from between his lips and filling the morning air. He took in shallow breath after shallow breath, squeezing his thigh and trying to ignore the sharp pain that shot up his leg. He looked up to find Margot standing in the doorway with what looked like fangs peeking through her lips.
Ezra puffed his chest, readying himself for another attack, when he heard the sound of their next-door neighbor opening his door. There were far too many people around. Margot glowered at him, her sharp stare piercing a hole in him, but she could not go after him, not in this populated village.
As soon as Ezra realized this, he turned, running as fast as he could.
***
“She has been informed of the plan,” Anya explained as she watched their servants prepare the throne room for the ceremony.
The king gave a curt nod.
Anya approached him from behind, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m so happy you agreed to this,” she whispered.
