Crush

by Vivienne Savage

  Chapter 10

  Stone lanterns lined the beach on Itsukushima Island. Their subdued glow cast small pools of light against the sand, transforming each grain into a twinkling, miniature star. The famous floating Torii gate arose from the black waters, a ruby jewel beyond the shoreline.

  Watatsumi enjoyed his monthly stroll with his daughter. Their tradition had endured since her childhood when her mother, a water dragoness from the coast of China, grew tired of playing the role of a nurturer, and relinquished their cub to his care. She’d been what humans called a toddler, no higher than his knee.

  And he had loved her mother. Had loved her deeply, but water dragonesses swam free and wild as the typhoons, disinterested in bonding rituals and a prolonged relationship.

  So Toyotama swam out of their lives, and he’d raised their daughter to have the compassion her mother lacked. She developed empathy and a love for humans and all small things, but she was also shy. Painfully shy. Although he had hoped she and Astrid Drakenstone would bond one day, all efforts to coax Otohime to visit his friends across the ocean had failed.

  “It saddens me to see them starve. Why can we not feed them, Father?” she asked, her voice pulling him from his musings. He glanced at the four deer lying on the beach, huddled close together for warmth.

  “It is how they believe the problem must be addressed,” Watatsumi replied. In his heart, he agreed with her, but the deer on the island had grown dependent on human interference. With the ban in place, they would starve.

  “It’s an awful rule, and a cruel thing to do to any animal. A slow death by starvation is no way to treat them.”

  “Perhaps you should do something about it and speak to the humans who oversee the rules and laws,” he suggested, though he knew his suggestion was wasted breath.

  Otohime did not speak to humans, and only adopted her human form to travel alongside him. Their walks were the highlight of his month, and he’d hoped to continue their tradition for centuries.

  Some hopes, however, he knew could never come true.

  “Maybe I will,” she retorted, sensing the challenge in his words.

  “We both know that will never happen, my child.”

  “I may.”

  What would she do without him? he wondered. With exception to the hippocampi herd of Teotihuacan’s island, she’d made no friends over the centuries. She had no mate, not even a passing lover. Her entire life had been grief.

  He envied Saul’s ability to play the part of the overprotective father, guarding his daughter from all men she encountered, because he would give anything for Otohime to trust someone again. Or better yet, for someone to enter her life willing to earn her trust.

  But how could that happen when she’d devoted every breathing second to life beyond the waves?

  He frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Otohime asked. Her brows drew close together. “I didn’t mean to upset you with my complaints.”

  “Your complaints didn’t upset me,” he assured her. “I have other things on my mind. And a request for you, my dear.”

  She tilted her head. “Yes?”

  “Reconsider meeting Astrid Drakenstone. She is a kind young woman, and you have many things in common. She loves the animals of the land as much as you love those of the sea.”

  “California is dry,” she murmured. “And crowded.”

  “Please.”

  Otohime paused midstep and stopped to level her eyes at him. They filled with suspicion. “What are you not telling me?”

  “I hesitate to speak of it to even you, though I wish I could. It is a burden I must carry alone.”

  His daughter released an exasperated breath. “It is always the same thing with you, Father. Cryptic words and riddles. Mysteries. Would it kill you to speak straightforward?”

  No, he thought. It would kill someone else and set off a chain of uncontrollable events beyond their worst nightmares.

  It had to be him. If only he knew when his time would come.

  Watatsumi placed his hands on her shoulders. Like him, when she wore human clothing, she favored traditional Japanese garments. She owned hundreds, if not thousands of kimonos in his island home. This one was beautiful, swirls of silver like water against sapphire blue.

  A touch of magic swept past his defenses when they traveled inland away from the shore on their usual route through Momijidani Park. He caught a whiff of something foreign and strange in the air, mingled with the fresh ocean scent.

  “Something is wrong.”

  “I noticed it, too,” Otohime said. “Father, we should leave. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong here.”

  “Return home to the manor and call Ēostre for help,” he said as a means of removing her from the situation.

  “Help? Help against what.”

  “That doesn’t concern you,” he said sternly. “Do as I asked.”

  “No. Not without you,” Otohime insisted. “If something is dangerous, you must come with me. You’re no longer the great water god to fix the problems of all humans, Father. If something is the matter, leave them to it.”

  “Do you loathe the humans so much that you would have me leave them to the unknown?” he asked her.

  She didn’t respond.

  “The one who hurt you, my daughter, is not worth this anger. One day you will love again. One day. It may even be another human.”

  “I will never trust another human.”

  “Time heals all wounds. Even the greatest pain of all.”

  The odor intensified, something darker and malevolent lingering in the area, falling over the island like death’s shroud.

  Her lips parted to respond, then a flash of light blinded him as their surroundings erupted into hell. Hidden fighters emerged from the trees in every direction. They’d been under a sort of magical concealment, something different from dragon’s magic and the usual witch. Darker. More insidious. It laid an unnatural aura of negation over the area, smothering his magic. While he had fought it before, he had hoped never to encounter it again.

  On top of their foul sorcery, the dragonslayers had laced the area with explosives. As the first detonated, he yanked his daughter against him and sheltered her from the blast with both his transforming body and his magic. The barrier shield manifested by his spell popped into creation in time to guard him against a high-power sniper round. It plinked against the magical barrier, then disintegrated into sparks.

  “Father, what’s happening?”

  “Dragonslayers,” he growled. “Dragonslayers are attacking the island!”

  Alarmed cries shouted out from the town behind them, and lights flickered on in otherwise darkened homes and shops. Amidst the horror, Watatsumi realized one thing: their attackers didn’t care about civilian casualties. The loss of a few humans to remove him meant nothing to them. There was fire all around.

  “Go!” he urged.

  “No, I won’t leave you! I won’t leave!”

  “You must! Remember everything I’ve taught you. Remember that I love you deeply, Otohime. Now go and find help!”

  His shield wavered, taxed by the onslaught of firepower. For as long as he held it in place, he couldn’t open a portal to teleport either of them to safety.

  Otohime remained, divided by her conscience and a desire to obey his command. She hadn’t yet attained her full size and was much smaller, her scales compact and glossy as sequins, but no armor against bullets. He’d never expected they would come for him while in the company of a second dragon, and if he’d known, he would have canceled their outing altogether.

  “I love you,” she uttered in a thick voice. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You must go and warn the others!” he roared to her. Her eyes grew large, and then she flinched as another mortar exploded beside them and tore the ground.

  The barrier shattered, tiny specks of magical material flitting away on the smoky wind. Otohime dove away from him and transformed. One moment, she was a
petite woman with Japanese features, and in the next, she had become the sinuous, lean line of a water dragoness.

  And a target for the snipers hiding in the bushes.

  As she rushed toward the northern shore, he threw himself between his assailants and his fleeing child. Another bullet bounced off of his tough side as he protected her exit from the storm of gunfire. Then a round from a high-power rifle penetrated his hide, ripping a roar of pain from his throat.

  How powerful had they become to smuggle their arms into Japan? Despite strict gun laws, the Anti-Dragon Movement and Knights of Merlin had infiltrated his beloved country. It made him sizzling mad.

  “Ignore the female and take down the target,” the leader called out. “She’s too fast.”

  The cunning slayers had been too wise to attack him by the shore where he would escape or use the water to his defense. Escape wasn’t yet impossible, but he spied his target crouched beside an uninhabited food vendor cart in the once-peaceful park.

  It wasn’t uncommon for the dragonslayers to outsource aid from other sorcerers, and this mage held a totem fashioned from the skull of an innocent dragon cub. Darkness brimmed from it, creating dissonance in the air that disrupted Watatsumi’s ability to cast spells.

  Watatsumi narrowed his eyes and judged the distance between them. He didn’t require sorcery to kill. All he needed were his teeth.

  He leaped at the man holding the warlock’s idol and opened his jaws wide, releasing a torrential jet of water. He regretted the destruction of the park’s iconic stalls and the disruption to its natural greenery, but it was a necessary evil. Intense waves flushed several of their human shock troops away in a flood, and he hoped their heavy military gear drowned them all.

  As the current swept a soldier past him, Watatsumi ripped him from the water with his teeth and tore him in half. He fought his way through the gunfire, swinging his tail and crushing men beneath his weight. They had come in force, dozens of humans prepared to throw their lives away to kill him.

  If it hadn’t been him, it would have been Astrid.

  “Shit! Get the containment spell in place! We’re losing men out here!”

  “We’ve got his shields down!” another slayer called.

  Watatsumi reached into the depths of his memory.

  Kay. Though over a century had passed since they last crossed paths, Watatsumi couldn’t forget the voice. Or the appearance altered by the modern age. He spied the knight across the distance, flanked by two more faces etched in his memory. Bedivere and Gareth.

  Once, many centuries ago, he and Hermes had forged a temporary alliance with Bedivere, Kay, and Arthur to take down what legends knew as the Giant of Mont St. Michel. The true nature of the beast was more chilling than any fable, but history had a way of forgetting.

  Magic, ancient and long forgotten, pinned him in place. His eyes flared wide in the glowing vermillion light emanating from an artifact he had thought destroyed long ago.

  “You fools kept it. Do you truly believe anyone but its maker can wield it?”

  Gareth stepped forward with the weapon held aloft. Pain wracked and twisted Watatsumi’s body, a magical acid burning through his veins. He struggled to stay on his feet as the surviving soldiers of the platoon moved into formation around him with their rifles raised.

  “I can, and I have,” Gareth boasted. “I’ve conquered the cudgel, just as we’ll conquer the rest of your race. This world needs no dragon gods, and it certainly doesn’t need you.”

  “Arthur would never stand for this or what your order has become during his absence. You were once noble men.”

  While they had always sought dragons and killed them in honorable combat, the ones who fell to their swords had always been dangers to the populace, wild and feral, with no regard for lives beyond their own.

  “Enough toying with the beast,” Kay called over. “Kill him.”

  “With pleasure.”

  With his remaining strength, Watatsumi pushed through the magic binding and sprang forward, his muscles straining against the raw power ebbing from the cursed magical item.

  Realization dawned slowly for Gareth. The knight’s taunting smile transitioned to a panicked mask, then terror, and finally agony when Watatsumi’s teeth closed around his upper torso. Snapping his jaws over the man’s left shoulder resulted in a satisfying crunch, despite the blistering, electric arcs exploding in his maw.

  “Fall back!” Kay cried.

  “But the weapon,” Bedivere argued.

  “Leave the blasted thing. It’s lost to us now. At least the beast will go down with it.”

  With no loyalty to their brothers, the two leaders rushed into the wilderness. Bedivere followed behind Kay, covering their exit with gunfire while they sacrificed their human pawns. Nearly a dozen armed men had survived Watatsumi’s counterattack, and of those who remained, they all opened fire.

  Gareth lost control of the cudgel, releasing the unrestrained primordial energies. He screamed and pushed at Watatsumi’s snout with his remaining arm to little avail as the scalding force of magic swept over the area, incinerating all in its path. The knight’s dead weight pulled at his mouth, but his jaw had fused shut, teeth blackened and skin blistering.

  Knowing one’s fate did not make it any easier. As agony spread through his limbs, he took comfort in the knowledge that his daughter would live.

  Chapter 11

  During their early morning romp, Nate had revealed a new side of himself. A hungry, animalistic side thirsting for her. She’d been delighted, and despite the risk, she’d given in at the end.

  Her mother would have called it irresponsible, but Chloe wasn’t the best person to judge someone else for having unprotected sex. Neither was her father for that matter. Careless sex was how they conceived Astrid, after all.

  Awakening before Nate, she spent a half hour curled against him in bed, listening to his steady breaths, and the strong beat of his heart. What would it be like to have his child one day?

  Would he want one? She thought so after listening to his stories of playing ball with the underprivileged kids in his mother’s area. He enjoyed mentoring, but it didn’t mean he’d want to be saddled with his own kid.

  Astrid plucked her cell phone from the bed and glanced at the screen. Dead. After plugging it into the charger, she shuffled to the shower to wash the dried sweat off her skin. Nate had been a tireless bundle of insatiable energy, making love to her in a host of new positions. Still, he’d never taken her on her hands and knees, and the bestial part of her soul craved it.

  Afterward, she wrapped herself in a fluffy terrycloth robe and slid a pair of raspberry scones into the oven, hoping the sweet scent would awaken him.

  It did.

  “Morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Morning, sunshine.” Nate wrapped his arms around her from behind and nuzzled her neck. “Smells delicious.”

  “Me or the scones?”

  “Mmm, both.”

  He nipped her ear then stepped away to pour himself some orange juice from the fridge.

  “So, want to tell me what this was all about? Not that I’m complaining, mind you, but I thought you were worn out from your ship time.”

  “After I shower and brush my teeth. Promise.”

  He kept a toothbrush over at her place now, practically living with her most days. Charlie had teased and asked how long it would be before her boyfriend kept his spare dress whites and uniforms at her apartment, too.

  He kissed the side of her neck again then retreated for his morning routine.

  It was as if her worries had been for nothing. Or maybe Yasmin’s reading had been spot on.

  The jarring notes of an incoming call pulled her from her cheery thoughts. She snatched up her phone and hit accept.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s up?”

  Her mother’s voice filled the line, thick and choked with tears amidst hyperventilating breaths. “Astrid, we need you to come home. We need you home right now. Ēostre is going
to open a portal for you as soon as she and Max get here.”

  “Mom?” Her heart slammed against her ribcage. Each beat seemed closer to bursting from her chest. “Mom, what happened? What’s wrong? Is it Dad?” Please don’t let it be Daddy, please!

  “The dragonslayers killed Watatsumi.”

  “What?”

  “Watatsumi is dead,” her mother repeated. “Pack your bags. Your father and I want you to come home until we can figure out what to do with the slayers.”

  “When?” she croaked. Her knees wobbled so she sat down, hard, on the edge of the couch.

  “A few hours ago. Otohime only contacted us moments ago. She’s scared, Astrid. She’s so scared. She hid for hours in the ocean, afraid they would find her.”

  “No, no, noooo,” she wailed. “This can’t be happening. It can’t be real.” Not her uncle. Not her beloved uncle.

  Nate gave her a concerned look from across the room. “Astrid?” He crossed to her in a few strides and supported her with his arms when her world began to spin.

  “How’s Daddy? Is he okay?”

  “He’s in his hoard. I… I don’t think he wants me to see him crying again.”

  “I don’t… I can’t…” Tears welled over and tracked down Astrid’s cheeks.

  “Your grandmother and grandfather are on the way from Washington. I’ll phone back once they’re ready to send the portal. I need… I need to check on your father. Don’t go outside. Don’t answer your door for anyone.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Numbed, she pressed the little red button and dropped the phone on the table to sob.

  “I have to go. I have… They killed Watatsumi, the slayers. It’s not safe for me here. It’s not safe for you if they come after me.”

  His eyes widened. “What? Are you sure?”

  “My mom wants me to come back home now until they figure out what to do. Watatsumi’s daughter told them dragonslayers killed him. It must have been while we were sleeping.”

  “Astrid—“

  “I’ll just bring you with me to the estate. Grandma can send you back to your base or apartment from there, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do, Nate. I’m scared.”