It would be a disaster.
He was screwed up enough without having to drag someone else along for the ride.
Besides…what if he was no good at it?
He’d been removed from the world for so long that he had no idea what would please a woman. What would make her happy. What would make her come back for more. Because he already knew that he and Rachel wouldn’t be a one time thing. He’d want to keep her for good. So he needed to make sure that she felt the same way. At this point, odds weren’t really in his favor as far as he could tell. Maybe, after he was cured, things could be different.
Speaking of…
His skin was beginning to tingle. His bones to ache. Chris recognized the signs and he gritted his teeth as he made his way stiffly back to camp. Rachel wasn’t yet asleep and there was an uncomfortable silence as he settled down beside her. He could see her face on the other side of the fire and he was momentarily lost in the reflection of the flames in her big brown eyes.
“Rachel-?” he began, but she turned over on her side and refused to acknowledge him. “I didn’t mean it,” he said. But he knew it was too little, too late. “I’m sorry,” he whispered low, feeling helpless but not sure how to fix it. How to make things right again.
“It’s fine,” she said coldly. “It doesn’t matter.”
They were both quiet and then she said, “I don’t blame you, you know. It’s not your fault.” But there was sadness in her that made it clear to him that it wasn’t alright. It wasn’t alright at all.
Chapter Twelve
She didn’t expect to find herself floating above her own body again. She would have panicked, but she could see her own eyelids flickering. She’d never seen her body do that before when the sleeping spell was still in effect. Maybe the fairy dust was wearing off. Either way, she was floating free again. It was almost comforting because it was normal. More so than anything else that had been happening so far.
She flipped in the air, an astronaut in zero gravity and looked over towards Chris. He was splayed out on his back, mouth open and one hand down his pants. Rachel sat down next to his head. Watching him closely as he slept. He was such a handsome bugger. It sort of made her angry. She wanted to hit him, but her hand brushed across his skin with more gentleness than she’d intended. She couldn’t feel him physically, but he radiated heat like a furnace. It seeped with her, touched her deep, and her mouth twisted in regret. What a waste.
“We would have been so great together,” she told him.
Her hand jerked back as his forehead lit up. A shining beacon beneath his skin. A drop of water landed on his cheek and she brushed it aside with her thumb. Her head fell back and she looked up at the dark night sky.
It was raining.
They had water.
“Well, hot damn.” She smiled. “You did it.”
***
They circled back the way they’d come.
Van Winkle had fallen back to sleep and Rachel kept her mouth shut and her fairy dust to herself as they passed by the old man and chose another path. The next few days passed without incident. They were polite enough with one another, but an intimacy had just begun to sprout between them and now their relationship lacked that ease. It was depressing, but there was no helping it. You couldn’t change the way a person felt, no matter how much you wish you could.
A week passed before she began hearing the chittering again. There was no way she could forget the first time she’d heard it, and her hands started to shake as she looked about and tried to catch a glimpse of the creature. Or creatures, if the amount of noise was any hint. Sometimes she would see them running from the corner of her eye. Darting behind her back, making the bushes rustle. She could never get a full on glimpse of them and it drove her crazy wondering where they were and what they wanted. Though at least being terrified on a nearly constant basis took her mind off of the new stiffness between her and Chris.
Things took a turn for the worst when she least expected it.
She and Chris were doing that thing where they tried very hard not to make physical contact with one another without making it obvious that that’s what they were doing. The ground was the first thing to heat up. She could feel it through the soles of her feet and she looked down in first confusion and then alarm. Chris must have felt it too because he stopped walking abruptly and turned to grab her. Growling filled the air and Rachel gasped as the sky darkened. Diedric dropped from the air, his wings crushing the walls beneath their size and weight. Chris pulled her aside and shoved her behind him. She stumbled and went down, crying out as her head struck the edge of a rock. Vision wavering, Rachel pressed a hand against the wound, her fingers growing wet as blood welled. Even with the dizziness, she could fully appreciate the size of the giant maw opening before her.
Then Chris was there, standing directly before her, arms outspread as if he could protect her from the world. Diedric took a huge breath, his eyes shining and the inner core hidden beneath his pale armor dimming momentarily as the flames built up in his throat.
“Chris!” she screamed.
“It’s ok,” he said calmly, “I know exactly what to do.”
His body began to shake, his skin darkening. From where she lay, Rachel could see the way the area around his face began to lighten. Since she was behind him, she couldn’t be sure if it was his eyes or the thing in his forehead that had lit up like performers at a gay pride parade. His head fell back, the muscles in his throat straining, body lifting up on his toes as he gathered power. His mouth opened and he roared. A crack like lightening split the air and Rachel flinched.
When she turned back, her eyes narrowed in irritation.
Chris the tree frog turned and croaked apologetically at her and she lunged for him. She scooped him up in her hands and rolled out of the way as dragon fire ripped into the ground where they’d been a moment before. She fell back, slamming into the maze wall and whimpering when thorns bit down the length of her spine. Her vision wavered, and her limbs felt weak, but she managed to climb to her feet once again, with Chris cradled gently against her chest. Diedric roared, and then turned on them again. Diedric had them cornered, and Rachel’s mind sort of split with itself. She dimly realized that her physical body had collapsed. She didn’t think when the flames came for them again. She simply moved, her arm sweeping forth.
The wall of air hit the dragon fire and sent it spiraling to one side, setting off a fire along a nearby section of wall. The dragon fire came again, and now she was pressing the air together, swooping it up and forward. A tornado of fire that spun back against Diedric in a wall of heat. The world shifted as her energy left her in a rush, adrenaline dying a quick death. She fell back into her body, sinking like a stone. She had one last moment to try and struggle to stay awake, but lost the fight almost immediately. Rachel collapsed back, dead to the world.
Meanwhile, Chris had been struggling to pull the pouch from her pocket with his mouth. The momentum as she fell to one side managed to shake the pouch loose. As the pouch fell, the mouth opened and upended completely, so that he was bathed in the stuff. If he’d been thinking happy thoughts, Peter Pan would have taken him to Neverland. As it was, he didn’t so much as fly, as he burst with power. His body twisted and changed so quickly, that it was agony to breathe. He came to his human self on all fours, just as Diedric lunged for them, jeweled canines glinting in the sun. Chris felt his mind go blank and hot and then the world exploded.
***
Diedric collapsed screaming. His armored scales were melding together from the rebound of heat. Dragon fire, especially his own, wasn’t supposed to affect his kind, but when the flames had enwrapped the man/frog standing in front of him, something had changed. The flames had gone white and rebounded on to him. He hadn’t moved because he hadn’t seen the fire as a threat. But as soon as it had touched him, he felt his insides recoil. His inner flame wrapped around his heart as it worked to protect him. Then his scales began to melt, dripping onto the gr
ound and hardening again on contact. He dropped to the ground as he tried to extinguish the fire, but he bucked in agony as the white flames grew. They filled every crack, every crevice, crawling within his body and swallowing him down. He screamed, tail lashing viciously as pain deadened his mind.
Diedric shifted by instinct. His hands scrambled at his face as the skin about his eyes and mouth melted together, skin sloughing off as the white heat trapped inside of his body burned him from the inside out. He dropped to his knees, and then face forward, body bucking uncontrollably. It was a relief when the flames finally died down. But the damage had already been done and Diedric gave in to unconsciousness.
***
Chris had never envisioned himself running through a maze butt-ass naked. He hadn’t had time to grab the clothes he’d been wearing and they’d lost their pack somewhere along the way. Diedric had no longer been a threat, but as soon as the dragon had fallen, a sea of creatures began to crawl from out of the woodwork. They were strange, monstrous. Fire ran down their spines and tails. It filled the air with every breath they took. Their gazes had been trained on him and Chris had scooped Rachel into his arms as they swarmed towards them. He’d managed to dodge out of the way of the first one. But that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It sailed past him, moving too fast to stop. It struck the wall with full force, skewering itself on the thorns. It wiggled and screamed, more enraged than pained. As soon as its blood began to flow, Chris heard a sizzle. Then a pop. The blood of the creature lit like the fuse on a firework and set off a bomb blast that sent him off his feet.
Hurting them was out, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could outrun them. He’d shifted twice in as many minutes and the strain was beginning to wear on him. His arms were straining, the muscles in his legs felt like Jell-O, but he picked up speed. He hoped desperately to find something, anything, to help them. He nearly missed it. The hole in the hedge. He slid to a stop, slipping into the hole and reaching back to drag Rachel along with him by the arms. He could hear the creatures snapping their teeth after her so he increased the speed of his backwards crawl. His hands tightened around Rachel’s wrists. His head was feeling hot again. Heavy. There was a pounding in his brain, just like before, and he could barely focus.
Resistance met him as his back end met the end of the tunnel. Looking back, he saw the glowing eyes of the beasts swarming in the tunnel. Coming closer, their flaming breath drove up the temperature until he felt as if his skin would melt off. He kept moving back until his spine came up against the curved closed edge of the tunnel. He pulled Rachel up against him, wrapping his arm around her waist. Her head lolled against his shoulder and he gritted his teeth and slammed himself back again and again, his feet kicking out at the fiery little beasts that snapped their jaws at him. He needed to push through the vines. He had to get them to the other side. To safety. So he shoved and pushed, driving himself back until the vines screamed and cracked, snapping beneath his weight and power. He and Rachel tumbled through the other side in a tangle of limbs.
When they finally stopped rolling, Chris lay on his back, stunned but alive. The noise of those creatures had cut off and he looked back up the hill they’d tumbled down to see their gazes disappearing back into the shadows as they retreated. Something tapped softly against his temple and he looked to the side, confused when he realized that he was staring at a small white ball.
“What the-?”
“Hey mommy? Why is that man naked?”
“Come away from there, baby.”
“Oh my god!”
“What the hell are they doing?”
“Wow. Having sex on the green. Real classy.”
Chris sat up, his eyes widening a little bit more with every person whose eye he caught. His gaze fell on the sign over the field and he felt his face flush red with embarrassment.
Pirate’s Cove
He was unsurprised to see the cop stepping through the crowd, though he wished the guy would have cuffed his hands in front so he could have at least covered up his dangly bits as he was led to the squad car.
Chapter Thirteen
“You have no identification.”
“No.”
“No name.”
“I like to keep that sort of thing to myself.”
“No clothes.”
“They’re severely overrated.”
The cop sitting across the interrogation table from him scowled.
“And now you’re trying to tell me that I have to release you and give you back your unconscious girlfriend before midnight or you’ll turn into a frog?” He cocked his head to one side and began tapping his pen on the table in growing agitation. “Did I get all of that right?”
“For the most part,” he said, “you forgot that you’ll also need to quarantine the windmill on the sixteenth hole or the fire gremlins will get loose and eat us all.”
Officer Nelson blinked. Then he very deliberately set his pen down and smiled.
“You know what?” he said apologetically. “I don’t think I’m the right person to talk to about all this. I’ll be right back.” Officer Nelson stood abruptly and left the interrogation room. The door had barely shut all the way before the other cops in the halls burst out laughing. Chris sighed. That was the third time that had happened. At least they had finally given him some clothes. He’d hate to feel even more humiliated than he already did.
A few minutes later the door opened again and Chris turned, expecting another police officer. Instead a woman dressed in a pantsuit slipped inside of the room, smiling kindly at him before pulling up a seat.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Samantha Jacobs. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You a psychiatrist?” he asked blandly, leaning back in his seat, knees spreading as he planted his feet more solidly on the ground. She smiled, her eyes tracking his movements and mentally filing them away.
“What makes you think that?”
He inclined his head to indicate her clothing and demeanor.
“The odds are pretty good aren’t they? You’re wearing pinstripes and heels in an interrogation room and I haven’t asked for a lawyer,” he pointed out. “Since everyone thinks I’m a nut-job and a pervert, it only makes sense for them to call in a shrink.”
“Is that how you see yourself?” she asked, leaning forward to fold her fingers together on the table. “As a nut-job and pervert?”
Christopher felt his eyes narrow.
He could respond in a number of ways, but she’d probably just twist things around or ask a question in the form of a question. He wasn’t especially in the mood for mind games.
“How is Rachel?” he asked instead. “Is she alright?”
“Is there any reason she wouldn’t be?”
That was code for: Did you do anything to her?
He scowled.
“Did she wake up?” he asked through gritted teeth and was relieved when Samantha nodded her head.
“She woke up a few minutes ago,” she said. “She seemed…relieved.”
There was an accusation in Samantha’s voice that made him want to groan. Sure, that made sense. Blame the guy with no clothes.
“The last few days have been stressful,” he told Samantha and she smiled slightly.
“I can imagine.”
“No,” he told her. “You can’t.”
“Then why don’t you explain it to me? Help me understand what happened.”
His lips tightened stubbornly and he turned away.
“We can start with something simple,” she tried hopefully. “How about you tell me your name?”
His silence turned frigid and Samantha drew back in obvious consternation. Before he could say anything else they both turned towards the door as voices lifted in obvious argument.
“…out of my way!”
“Ma’am. You can’t-”
“That’s Ms. Ma’am to you,” the voice said snootily and Chris closed his eyes. Hoping feverishly that if he just concentrated hard e
nough the floor would open up and swallow him whole before the woman outside stepped into the room. No such luck though, because Maleficent burst inside of the room almost immediately. While she was dressed like a naughty schoolteacher, at least she’d refrained from magicking herself inside. If you ignored the sparkling skin and ethereal beauty, she’d almost look human.
She wore a pair of fake nerd glasses. Her fishnet thigh highs were held in place by a simple lace garter and she wore no shirt beneath the pinstriped button up vest that strained around her breasts. Her skirt was too short, her hair was too messy, and there was a red boobie tassel sticking out of the top of the briefcase she carried. Despite all of the reasons that should have discredited her however, the policemen in the hallway didn’t try to stop her as she marched into the room to stand beside Chris’s chair.
Samantha raised a brow.
“I’m sorry, but you are-?”
“Mal the Magnificent,” she said haughtily, as if it should have been obvious. She slammed her briefcase on the desk and with one fist on her hip and one on the table, leaned forward to glare at Samantha over the tops of her glasses. “And I’m afraid that my client won’t be answering anymore of your questions.” She glared at him from the corner of her eye. “Why he thought it alright to speak to you at all without legal representation is beyond me.”
Chris remembered throwing a baseball through a neighbor’s window once when he was nine. It was right after Danielle had married his father, and he’d remembered the embarrassment that had washed over him as Danielle Greyson had dragged him by the ear to said neighbors front door to apologize. It wouldn’t have been nearly awful, except that the family had been black and the wait staff had been white. A little fact that Danielle had stoutly ignored as she apologized profusely to the “man of the house” for her son’s negligence. Assuring him that coloreds were good workers as long as you kept an eye on them, so there was no reason why his broken window couldn’t be as good as new in no time at all.
Fairest 02 - The Frog Prince Page 9
