by Willa Okati
Jeans. Yeah, jeans were easy. No, wait, underwear first. The only thing left in her plastic box of undies was a pair of thigh-cut red panties and a dark crimson bra, leftovers from a time when she’d been a little more daring.
Gina peered at the things, wondering if she should put them on or do without. The thought of going au naturel appealed, but she knew her breasts needed the support. And speaking of which, they felt sore -- in a good way, sure, but still tender.
Slowly, as if in a trance, Gina slipped the undergarments on and then hopped into her jeans. She swayed as she searched the top shelf for something suitable to wear, testing the temperature of the air. Her apartment felt warm. Not stuffy and hot, but pleasant, like being on a beach in the early season.
Her hand reached for something else she hadn’t worn in a long time -- a baby-doll tee in a rich shade of scarlet. It didn’t fit with her image at all, and more than once in the past she’d wondered why she didn’t just throw the thing away.
Just then, though, it called to her with a siren song. Baffled, but willing to go with the flow, her mind still too foggy to fight against whatever had it clouded, she reached for the top and shrugged it on. Felt weird to have her belly exposed, but it wasn’t such a bad stomach for someone who never had time or money to hit the gym. She didn’t have anything to be ashamed about.
Now if she could just clear her head...
Gina wasn’t much of a coffee hound, and didn’t even know if she had any, but something strong and caffeinated sounded like a good idea. A nice steaming cup should whisk away her mental fog. If she took her time and sipped it, putting her brain to work, maybe the holes in her memory would close and she’d be able to get it back together.
As she moved, though, Gina noticed and was disturbed by the way the risqué clothes felt against her skin. Normally what she wore felt just like ordinary fabric, a thin shield against the elements, not really something she noticed one way or the other. They were just garments.
The tee moved against her breasts with a whisper-soft caress, making them respond by growing fuller and standing up taller, pushing her chest out. Even through the bra -- granted, it was a flimsy thing -- she could see and feel her nipples protruding like small gumdrops, tingling at the slightest sensation. The jeans molded to her skin like they were in love with her legs, clinging but flowing obediently as she walked.
With a start, Gina realized she felt sexy. And since when did that happen?
Coffee. She needed coffee.
In the harsh light of day, her kitchen looked worse than ever. Gina made a face at the cabinet drawers hanging halfway off their hinges, the dark red rust stains on her fridge, and the caked-on grime coating her sink’s faucet. She’d left a pot of standing water by one of her stove’s burners. What the...?
Gina frowned. Yet another gap in her memory, right smack in the middle of a wholly depressing sight. Her kitchen was just another example of why this wasn’t a fit place for anyone to live. Why did she stand it?
Oh, yeah. Money. Of which she had barely any.
Gina sighed as she took in the worn-out kitchen and tried to cast it in a good light. It wasn’t totally beyond all hope. Maybe she’d use the weekend to splurge on some cleaning supplies and scrub the place down. That would be good. A solid project to work on, a goal to be achieved. The hard labor should settle her mind back into its accustomed grooves.
In the meantime... coffee.
Gina made for her barely used percolator, long since shoved back against the wall and forgotten until then. It had been a Christmas gift from the agency, as she recalled. She’d used it once or twice since. But aside from the dust coating the surface, it seemed clean, and she remembered washing out the carafe after its last use.
Now all she needed were grounds and some water. Gina’s mind sharpened as she focused on the task, rooting through her cupboards until, after a few minutes’ almost fruitless search, she came up with a sample-sized brick of “Tahitian Vanilla.” Sounded kinda frou-frou, but it’d do. A knife from her drawer opened the vacuum on the coffee and released the scent of slightly fruity java.
Gina inhaled in pleasure as she picked up her carafe and headed for the sink to fill it with water. Yep, everything was going to get back to normal soon. She’d attack this day, despite its confusing start, the way she always did. She could handle herself. Things didn’t throw her, or wouldn’t for long. She’d figure them out.
As she walked, however, her bare foot encountered something that crinkled underneath her toes. She winced, afraid to look down lest she’d stepped on a bug -- when you lived in a dive, bugs happened. But better to know than to wonder...
She looked down -- and saw she’d managed to squash what looked exactly like a palm frond, fresh and green, curling up at the edges.
Palm frond.
Randall.
The shadow man. Dakarai.
The dragon.
Gina dropped her carafe, the glass shattering on the floor. She remembered. Oh, God.
She remembered it all.
* * * * *
Stepping out into the harsh noonday sun of a Saturday made Gina’s skin itch. Weekends were for hunkering down in her apartment, maybe with a tub of ice cream if she’d had the cash and remembered to stop by a store, watching TV, and deliberately not thinking about times when the weekends had been something to look forward to. Taking in the news reports with either relief that everything was normal, or easily explained by men in sober jackets who knew what they were talking about.
She hadn’t ventured outside on a Saturday in months. Hadn’t been outside in the middle of the day in over a year, preferring to take her lunches indoors at the temp jobs or not eating at all.
And she definitely hadn’t gone out wearing nothing but a flimsy, bright tee and a pair of worn, second-skin jeans, her hair down and waving around her cheeks. It didn’t feel right. The Gina she presented to the world was neat, cold, and professional, not casual or wanton.
Gina checked the address on the scrap of yellow paper she held in one hand, a half-page ad she’d torn from the phone book, and took a deep breath before setting out on what she hoped would be a short walk with little chance for anyone to gawk at her. The location of Dakarai’s Place was close enough to make her uneasy. Had the mage deliberately set up shop within spitting distance?
Creepy thought.
Gina’s inner musings were constantly interrupted by the people crowding the sidewalks. They weren’t paying her any attention, though. Gina found herself alone in the middle of a virtual war zone, staring around herself in amazement. Maybe it had always been this way and she just hadn’t noticed, but there was an undercurrent of anger and tension that made the air thick, sticky with more than humidity.
And speaking of which, wasn’t it awfully warm out for an area that had had icy rain just the day before? The people were dressed like the temperature was still wintry -- hats, scarves, coats, gloves. Weird. Really weird.
Was it the rising heat which had tempers running high? As Gina watched, she saw women blocking the pathway, squabbling in shrill voices over who had bumped into whom.
Men shouted and jabbed fingers at one another, bellowing about insults and threatening to take one another on.
A knot of children had started a free-for-all fight, shouting playground insults but knocking each other around like adults, who stood by and did nothing.
A senior citizen threatened a menacing teenager with the youth’s own skateboard.
It was chaos. Gina had always kept her head down, but the more she watched, the more she was certain this wasn’t normal. Something had snaked into these people and turned up their rage, tweaking minor annoyances into full-fledged attacks on their persons.
The dragon’s work?
Thinking about it made Gina feel nauseous, but there was no other explanation coming to her mind. The dragon was playing tricks.
And she was a George, or at least she had been once. It was up to her to fix this.
&nbs
p; Gina stopped for a moment to gather her bearings, taking hold of an iron railing close at hand to make sure she didn’t lose control again. The ferrous bar filled her with an odd feeling of strength, as if the power of the metal were flooding up through her arm into her body. She took another deep breath without meaning to, and energy burst through her system.
It gave her enough courage to close her eyes, then dare to focus on the vision of the dragon man as she’d last seen him sitting on his crumbling throne.
As if he’d been watching and waiting, he popped into life behind her mind’s eye. Gina felt the chill of the ruined temple and the roughness of the granite blocks beneath her feet.
The dragon man gazed down at her, no-color eyes filled with venom. “A child’s trick,” he hissed, his tongue flickering. “Cold iron is a true deterrent only for the fae. This lends you a little might, but it won’t last.”
Gina took a good, long look at the dragon, taking in every last detail from the length of his flowing pale hair to the talons on his fingers to the scaly blue patches on his skin. He radiated malice and power, but also control, as if he were in charge of everything in his world -- and outside of it.
“You’re doing this,” she said steadily. “I know why you’ve chosen me. I’m a George. The last one. The only person you’d have a reason to challenge. But why now? Why this place?”
The dragon snapped his sharp teeth at her. “Why not? It pleases me to upset the careful balance you have wrought. Now you have seen what I can do to you. I choose to play with the other mortals who surround you to amuse myself, and to give you another taste of my power. Stand up and fight, Georgina, if you can.” He tapped his talons against those vicious white teeth, chuckling in dark amusement. “While my patience lasts, I will play with you. But be sure of this: Sooner or later, there will be a reckoning.”
He snapped his fingers. “Now, begone.”
Gina’s eyes popped open. Her arm tingled all the way down to her palm where it clutched the iron railing, full of pins and needles as if it had fallen asleep and was just now coming back to life.
Oh, yeah. Gina could see the world around her. She could put a name to every color, count the bars on her railing, feel the growing warmth of the air, and smell the pungent sweat rolling down everyone’s foreheads or growing in wet patches beneath their arms. She wasn’t crazy.
But she wasn’t normal, either.
She was, no matter how hard she’d tried to escape it, extraordinary. From the first George, the Saint who slew the dragon and saved Britannia, down through the ages, her family had gone up against the beasts.
Until her.
For a long time, she’d thought her disguise had worked, but maybe this dragon had just been biding its time. But no matter how surreal he seemed, no matter how he attacked, he existed -- and he was out to cause as much trouble as possible.
She had to do something about this.
The slip of yellow paper torn from her phone book was still clutched in her other fist. Gina uncrumpled it to look at the cheap, two-color printing: “Dakarai’s Place -- Magical Supplies, Spiritual Advisors, Star Charts.”
Dakarai. There couldn’t be two men with such a wild name, and the one that it belonged to had come to her -- along with Randall. Gina wasn’t crazy, and so it had to have happened.
They’d told her to come to them, so she would.
Instinct told Gina to stop at every altercation she came across, pull apart the irate parties and stop the fights, but she knew once she was gone, the minor brawls would just start up again. She put her head down and plowed through, ignoring the insults and the comments honed to jerk at her temper.
They were symptoms; the dragon was the disease.
Even if the shop was too close for comfort, at least Gina didn’t have to take the elevated train, something she found herself definitely grateful for. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like in those cars, everyone packed together so tightly, tempers flaring out of control. The drivers reckless as they fumed over their schedules, irrational passengers, and the uniforms they wore.
She kept on walking.
Fight after fight went on as Gina made her steady way through the long city blocks, taking a right here and a left there. When she hit the street where Dakarai’s Place was located, she looked up to see if she could spot the shop... and blinked in surprise.
This block was calm. Busy, to be sure, but people breezed past one another with barely the time of day exchanged, much less fists coming out or perceived slights setting strangers at odds. Even the traffic, which had been choppy on the previous streets, flowed smoothly here.
Gina’s spine tingled slightly with the hum she recognized as magic. Again, she wasn’t crazy. She’d felt this in her youth, when magicians were more than men in top hats on stages. From what she could remember to assess this neighborhood with, this peaceful area was the result of a powerful enchantment that spread out like a force field, keeping everything inside its span on an even keel.
Someone with such serious mojo could travel through the astral plane and save the life of a woman at a dragon’s mercy.
Dakarai.
And Randall, however he’d become involved with all of this. Gina sensed a slight breeze kissing her skin, making her shiver with awareness of herself, tickling at her nerve endings and making her feel alive, energetic... sexy. Confident.
They had to be near.
Gina swept her glance to and fro until she spotted a stairwell leading below street level, with a sign mounted above it that said, in simple brass letters, “Dakarai’s Place.” An arrow pointed down the steps. They didn’t look well-traveled, still littered with remnants of last autumn’s leaves, but this was the place, all right.
She descended the stairs, careful her sneakers didn’t skid on anything. There was no railing to hold on to, but Gina felt almost buoyed up, as if whatever protected this block would keep her safe from falling.
At the bottom, a small storefront window held a dusty array of candles and a hokey-looking spell book arranged on faded red velvet. The store appeared dim, as if it were closed, no lights on and no one home.
Gina knew better. She could feel the presence of the magician inside. Made her nervous, made her want to run back upstairs, but she couldn’t pretend everything was all right. Not any longer.
“Hello?” she called, turning the shop’s doorknob and pushing it open. Scarred wood grated over the sill, making a screeching noise. Hinges that hadn’t seen much use added their own complaint. “Hello?”
No answer.
Shutting the door behind her, Gina took a look around to get her bearings. Inside, the place was cramped and crowded with shelf after shelf of jars holding herbs she couldn’t possibly identify, their smells rising up into a wild, tangled aroma. Competing with the fragrance was the mustiness of old leather books stuffed into rows of cases, some looking as if they’d barely been touched and others falling apart at their spines.
This wasn’t the kind of place where you could buy a Chinese finger puzzle. This was a real magic shop.
Somewhere a wise person would tread lightly.
Gina took short, careful steps, feeling her way through the gloom. “Hello?” she called out again, wishing someone would answer her. But no luck. Her footfalls, sneakers scuffing against the scratched-up floors, made the only sound besides her breathing.
Or was that the sole noise, after all...?
As she moved closer to the far side of the shop, Gina began hearing the smallest of sounds. Words she couldn’t make out. A grunt. A groan. The slap of hands coming down on a hard surface.
Was Dakarai hiding himself? Had he gotten in trouble? Gina tensed, preparing herself for the worst. What she’d be able to do to help him, she didn’t know, but she owed the magician.
Getting closer, now. The noises were growing louder.
Gina frowned. They didn’t exactly sound like someone in pain. In fact, they reminded her a lot of...
She passed the final b
ookcase and looked back into the gloom of the shop’s far corner. The air there was hazy, as if someone had put up an opaque shield. If she concentrated, though, she could sort of... push... her way through, the milkiness of the air dissipating to give her a clear view.
Her eyes popped open and her lips parted. The magician was definitely not in trouble, not unless you counted the fact he seemed to be fast approaching la petite mort. Dakarai was as she remembered him, long and lean of face and curly of hair, but now he was flushed red with exertion and those narrow artist’s fingers were tightly gripping the hips of a man bent over a desk in front of him. As Gina stared, she saw Dakarai’s stiff, swollen cock plunging in and out of the man he was fucking.
Gina ducked back behind the bookcase, shuddering despite herself. Oh, God. She’d never even imagined... but the sight of those two! Taking a careful peek around despite feeling like a voyeur, she fixed her gaze on the pair and couldn’t take it away.
“Oh, yeah. God, yes. Tight. So tight.” The magician’s voice had roughened from its tenor into a low growl. His hips moved in a relentless rhythm, plowing back and forth. “You and me, baby.”
Dakarai’s lover said something Gina couldn’t make out.
Dakarai nodded, curls tossing over his face. “I know. Almost. Come for me now, though. Hell, yeah.” He reached down and hauled the man up a little, reaching beneath his partner’s belly to grasp hold of his thick, angry red cock. He began to move his fist up and down, the slick sounds of flesh slapping against flesh filling the air.
He was panting, his harsh breaths mingling with the muted cries and sobs of the man beneath him. “Gonna blow,” he warned. “You ready for me? Ride with me.” The strokes of his fist quickened. “Together, Randall. For me.”
Randall? Gina stared. The crotch of her jeans had grown damp and her clit throbbed -- nothing like when she’d been caught in the dragon’s spell -- but she was as sexually excited as she’d been in years. Randall, her big strong Randall, taking it up the ass from another man?
It was an unbelievable turn-on. From her puckering breasts to the ache in her pussy, Gina’s body was springing to life as she watched. The men were losing their pattern now, jerking back and forth out of control.
