Celtic Dragons

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Caroline…I thought you were only in town for one night?”

  “My trip got extended. I leave in the morning, and I’m hoping that you’re feeling better, because I’m not wearing anything underneath this…”

  Siobhan was taking a sip just as that little revelation was made, and she choked a little bit, covering her mouth to keep the wine from spilling out.

  “What was that?” the woman asked, her voice edging toward shrill.

  “Caroline—”

  It was too late for Julian to stop the woman from pushing into the room, and Siobhan suddenly found herself face-to-face with an elegant-looking brunette, standing in a trench coat that hit her just above the knee and apparently had a lot to reveal underneath.

  Siobhan smiled, lifting her glass of wine to the woman. “Hello. I’m Siobhan.”

  Caroline didn’t respond to her, instead turning on Julian, her arms crossed over her chest. “Are you serious right now? You’re seeing someone? Really? And her?”

  “Caroline—”

  “Did you tell her that you had dinner with me last night? Did you tell her that we’ve met up for years whenever I’m in town? Did you tell her that you kissed me goodnight last night? Did you?”

  Siobhan raised her hand. “I’ll answer that. No, he did not.”

  Julian cut her a look. “Siobhan, really. Don’t help, please. Caroline—Siobhan and I are not seeing each other. We’re working on a project together. We’re not dating. And if we were, by the way, it would not be your business because we are not a couple. You said it yourself—we meet up. We’re not committed. I don’t ask what you do back in California on the very, very, very many nights that you’re there and not here. In fact, last night was the first time I’ve seen you in almost nine months. So you don’t really have a right to be upset…”

  “Oh, I don’t have a right,” Caroline repeated. “You’re such a typical man. All these years and they mean nothing to you? You let me show up here, like this, with no respect for my feelings.” She jerked her arms over her chest, her chin jutting upward. “I can’t believe this, Julian. Are you happy now?”

  Siobhan watched calmly as the woman continued to lecture Julian, his expression growing darker and darker. Seconds before he exploded, she called it, shifting in her seat to get a better view.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Caroline,” Julian snapped. “I didn’t ask you to come here tonight, half naked. I didn’t even know you were in town. Stop playing the victim, because this is not my fault, and if you weren’t being such a child about it, it wouldn’t even be a problem. I’m sorry you’re embarrassed, but that’s the risk you take when you show up unannounced and naked under a trench coat.”

  “I have never been so—Oh my God!”

  Siobhan had been looking at Caroline for her reaction and didn’t notice what was happening to Julian until Caroline’s face went white. Following Caroline’s horrified gaze, Siobhan watched as Julian’s eyes rolled back in his head and he lost the use of his legs. She leapt out of her chair, catching him as he started to stumble and laying him out on the beige carpet that covered his living room floor.

  He wasn’t spasming or shaking—he looked like he had simply fallen asleep instantly with his eyes open. She knew he was having a vision, and she wished with all of her might that her own powers included seeing into someone’s mind.

  “What happened? What’s wrong with him?”

  Caroline was standing over them, her hands dramatically clasped to her mouth as she stared, bug-eyed, down at Julian.

  “You know, I can see up your trench coat,” Siobhan said, looking up at the woman with no small amount of disdain. She had no time for such dramatic, self-obsessed people, particularly when they were women who gave all women a bad name.

  Flushing, Caroline stepped back, shielding herself better. “What’s wrong with him?” she repeated. “Why aren’t you worried?”

  “Because he’s perfectly fine,” Siobhan said, sitting down in a more comfortable position on the floor and drawing her knees up to her chest to watch over Julian while he endured whatever horrible scene was now playing in his mind. “He’s not hurt. He’ll come out of it in a minute.”

  “But why? What is it?”

  Siobhan glanced up at the woman. “Look, go pour yourself a glass of wine and stuff a butternut squash ravioli in your mouth. You’ll feel better and talk less. Which will make me feel better.”

  “Excuse me!” Caroline said archly. “There’s no need to be rude. I’m the victim here, aren’t I?”

  “My guess is that you’re always the victim, regardless. At least in your own head. But for my money, I’m gonna go with the victim being the one lying unconscious on the floor after being screeched at by a naked woman.”

  “You know, you’re the kind of woman that men will never stay with,” Caroline said, her tone betraying her purposeful cruelty. “They think it’s fun, at first, to be with this aggressive, macho, hang-with-the-guys kind of woman, and then they realize that they miss all the good stuff about what a woman should be. The charm, the elegance, the femininity. They’ll miss those things, and then they’ll find a woman who exudes all of that, and they’ll leave you for her, because if a man wanted someone like you, then he might as well date a man with boobs.”

  Siobhan stared calmly at Caroline as she talked, her face betraying no hint of the insecurities that Caroline was triggering with every single word. Everything that came out of Caroline’s mouth, Siobhan had considered before, and Julian, lying there between them, was clear proof that men didn’t want what Siobhan had to offer. He had been so put off by her that he couldn’t even work with her on the case at least until tonight.

  Inwardly, she was a mess of confused feelings. Outwardly, she was bored and disdainful. “Okay, sweetie pie. I’m not the one standing there with my business on display and nobody who wants to make a deal. Why don’t you just let yourself out? I’ll make sure Julian knows he has your love and warm wishes when he wakes up.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone with him,” Caroline sniffed. “You clearly don’t care about him at all, and even though he’s devastated me tonight, I still care for him.” She sniffed again, dabbing a finger at her nose. “Of course I do. I always have.”

  “Okay, well, get on that ravioli situation then,” Siobhan said, returning her attention to Julian. She surveyed his expression for any hint of what was happening in his head, but there wasn’t so much of a flicker of a cheek muscle to go on. Reaching her hand out, Siobhan patted his face once, then once again, but harder. All she felt was the roughness of five o’clock shadow in contrast with smooth, soft skin.

  She sighed, knowing there was no sense in trying to bring him out of his trance, no matter how much she was dying to know what he was seeing. So she instead took the time to survey him up close, noting everything from his shapely ears to the breadth of his shoulders, to the narrowness of his hips. He was a well-built man, and it was clear that he was serious when he said he worked out like a maniac. That was evident in the way his shirt clung to the ridges of his abs and the defined lines of his pectorals. His biceps just peeked out from under the sleeves of his T-shirt, and Siobhan was reaching out a hand to cover one when Julian’s eyes flew open and he gasped, staring at the ceiling.

  “Hey,” she said, letting her hand fall onto his arm. “You’re fine. You’re in your apartment, lying on the floor. You’re not hurt. I’m here, and surprise! Caroline still is too.”

  Julian blinked slowly, then turned his head to look at her. For a long moment, their eyes met, holding. Siobhan told herself that she was searching for something in his gaze that would tell her where he had been, but the truth was that the dark pools of his irises were mesmerizing when he was so close, and she didn’t want to look away.

  “Ahem,” Caroline said, the sound exaggerated. “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I don’t,” Siobhan volunteered. “You, Julian?”

  With a slight smile, he
shook his head. “Nope.”

  Caroline let out a sound of indignation. “This is beyond—”

  “Caroline, you can leave now,” Julian said, still looking at Siobhan. “And you can lose my number. Please go.”

  “But, Julian—”

  Siobhan got to her feet and moved toward the interloping woman, placing her hand on the small of her back. “Okie dokie, then. Time to go bye-bye. Say bye-bye, Caroline. Wave.”

  “Why are you talking to me like that?”

  “This is how I talk to children,” Siobhan said, moving her toward the door. “Enjoy your meetings tomorrow! Remember to wear underwear this time, and try not to throw a temper tantrum if you don’t get what you want.”

  Caroline jerked away from Siobhan, starting to turn toward Julian again, but Siobhan took her arm firmly and pushed her out the door, her smile tight.

  “I said bye-bye now.” She waved to her. “Toodles.”

  “He’ll never love you the way he loved me!”

  Siobhan pushed the door closed and locked it. “God, I hope not.” Turning back toward Julian, she held up a finger, a thoughtful expression on her face. “What do you want to deal with first? The psycho woman you’re sleeping with or the psychic vision you just had?”

  “I think the psychic vision makes more sense to me,” Julian muttered, getting to his feet slowly and walking back over to the table. He poured himself another glass of wine. “God, do I need this.”

  Siobhan managed to wait until he’d finished the whole glass before she pressed him. “Okay, tell me everything. What happened? What did you see?”

  He cast a glance over at her as he poured himself another glass of wine. “Enough for me to know that I’m supposed to be helping her. I have to help her.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Julian

  There was no time in his life or space in his brain for him to deal with what had just happened with Caroline. Truth be told, he wasn’t disappointed at all that she was out of his life now, for good. She had been a friend once, and someone who he had kept up with over the years, and there had been a time when he looked forward to seeing her. But that time had ended long ago, and he had known after leaving her in the parking lot last night with a parting kiss that whatever had once been between them was no longer there.

  He felt badly for her that she had humiliated herself, but it had been her fault entirely—from showing up to throwing a complete fit once she’d realized the situation.

  Julian wasn’t going to worry about her any further, and if she ever did contact him again, he would put his foot down without hesitation.

  There were more important things in life to worry about than his feelings, and the vision he’d had just moments ago had made that perfectly clear. Siobhan was clearly itching to hear about the vision, and Julian accommodated her, sitting down on the couch with a glass of wine still in his hands and closing his eyes as he relived the vision, relaying it to her in as much detail as he could manage.

  He was at the warehouse again, but the woman—Melanie—wasn’t there. It was just the man, the one whose face he had never truly seen. The one whose balding head reflected light and whose horn-rimmed glasses hinted at eerie inner darkness. He was there at night, by himself, rooting around in the boxes, moving them from place to place, and always muttering—muttering to himself.

  Not all of the words were audible, but Julian could hear most of what the man was saying.

  “Oh, you want me to show you. Oh, I’ll show you. I’ll show you, show you, show you. Yes, I will. I will, I will, I will—I WILL!”

  Following the shout at the end, the words got quieter and Julian missed some of them before picking up the thread again.

  “You say I’m not, but I am, am, am. Yes, I am, am, am, you little slut whore. You nasty, nasty, nasty, NASTY little slut. You don’t believe me! You don’t! Oh, I’ll show you. I’ll show you right here and now. Yes, I will. I’ll show you so good, and you’ll never forget. Why should they get you? Why should THEY GET YOU?”

  The man was picking up boxes and throwing them down, seeming to have no concern for the contents as he hunted for whatever he had stored behind them. It took him several minutes, complete with nonsensical muttering, but he finally moved all of the boxes out of his way, fishing out a black box that held a padlock that was taller than the lock itself.

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho,” the man sung. “It’s mine, all mine, all mine! And soon you’ll know. Soon you will know just how it feels—how does it feel, Melanie? HOW DOES IT FEEL?”

  Julian, unable to move closer or even tell where he was oriented in the room, watched as the man opened the box. From the angle he was at, he couldn’t see inside the box, and he was stuck, helpless to learn more.

  But then a movement caught his eye at the one small window that was the only opening between the warehouse and the rest of the world. He could just see out the window, and as he watched, waiting for the movement again, the head of a large, golden dragon appeared—

  “A dragon?” Siobhan’s shocked voice interrupted Julian’s reverie, bringing him out of the vision that he was narrating as he played it back in his head. “Did you just say you saw a dragon?”

  “Yes,” Julian said, understanding her surprise. Thus far, his visions had been firmly rooted in reality—or at least what was possible within reality. The appearance of the dragon at the very end of his vision had thrown him for a loop as well, and while he still felt as though what he was seeing was very real, it made him question how much he could trust the visions. “Isn’t that strange? Do you think it undermines what I’m seeing?”

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “It was so random, but so real, just like the rest. I don’t know how to quantify it in my head, or why my brain would suddenly throw a dragon in the midst of things. I don’t understand it at all, but there it is.”

  Siobhan didn’t respond at first, and he wondered if perhaps she thought he was crazy now. Before, she had believed him, but this seemed to have been a shock to her system that she didn’t know how to process.

  “Say something,” he urged. “I don’t know what to do with any of this.”

  She cleared her throat, getting up and going over to the table to grab more bread, which she summarily shoved into her mouth. Only after managing to swallow the large carbohydrate-laden distraction did she finally answer him.

  “I don’t think it undermines the reality of what you’re seeing. I think it was just…an image that got thrown in there somehow.”

  He couldn’t imagine how, but he was still relieved to hear her say that she didn’t think he was out of his mind. “The rest of it though. Put the dragon aside. The rest of it …I think this man is Melanie’s child.”

  Siobhan nodded. “I had the same thought. Something about the way he said, ‘Why should they get you?’ It just clicked with me.”

  “Me too,” he agreed. “I just got that feeling from him, and it made me look at him again.”

  “His age.”

  “Yes,” Julian said, leaning back against the couch and propping one leg up along the cushion line. His socked foot came very close to Siobhan’s leg, and he looked at it for a moment, feeling that sense of desire again before he forced himself to focus. “Because I kept seeing the light glaring off his head, I assumed he was older. But when I really looked at his face for the first time, I could see that he wasn’t. He could easily be in his twenties. He’s just balding early.”

  “It’s a curse.”

  “The least of his problems.”

  Siobhan gave a quick laugh. “No kidding. So it’s personal for him because this is his mom and maybe she abandoned him. Or gave him up for adoption. Maybe Melanie has a darker past than we realized and this new suburban life is a second stage of her life.”

  “Should be easy to verify, right?”

  “I’ll see what I can come up with for birth records, but you never know. She could have had him in a field somewhere.”

 
“You think there are a lot of births happening in fields these days?” he asked, tilting his head. “I’m guessing there aren’t. At least not in the Boston metropolitan area.”

  “You know what I mean,” she asserted, getting up and walking back over to the table. “The food is cold.”

  “Are you still hungry?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Actually, yeah. Your girlfriend really spoiled my dinner.”

  Julian winced, letting his head drop back as he accepted that they were moving on from psychic visions to psychotic relationships. “Not my girlfriend. You knew that already though. I’m sorry she showed up here like that and you had to get in the middle of it all. I had no idea she was even still in town.”

  “Oh, I thought it was hilarious,” Siobhan said, taking a seat at the table again and helping herself to the cold remnants of their dinner. “Seriously. I thought it was nice of you to make me dinner, but if I had known there was dinner and a show, I would have started preparing myself to put out.”

  Despite the disaster of an evening, Julian smiled as he stared up at the ceiling. “Well, in that case—considering I didn’t get any last night, go ahead and prep. You make a good point. I really have given you a treat tonight.”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she said. “I don’t have a choice.”

  He looked up at her, and she was smiling around a forkful of ravioli, her eyes playful. She wasn’t serious, although his body hadn’t gotten the message, and was reacting very much as though she was. Julian realized that, somehow, despite how angsty their initial relationship had been, with a little distance and a new attitude, he found her quite enjoyable to be around. She said shocking things sometimes, and she was definitely one to put him in his place or give him hell without apology.

  But she was funny. And she was…cool. It seemed like such a trivial word, but that’s what she was. She was a cool chick.