by Milana Jacks
In my beast form, a blue dragon, one of four dragon Creatures of Earth, I rested on top of my castle and surveyed the calm waters around me. As I’d done every single night for the past decade, I picked out a small area of the sea and attempted to ripple the water’s surface. This time, I chose a spot near the biggest iceberg and tried to use my “gift.” As always, nothing happened. I huffed out a breath.
The full moon lit the sea, making the numerous icebergs sparkle. I caught movement near the shore, my vision thirty times sharper in beast than in human form. Something shiny zipped between the icebergs. It didn’t touch the water, so it didn’t glide. It looked like it should be flying, but not this low unless it was trying to sneak its way into my island.
An intruder.
I flapped my wings and rose from the top of my castle, releasing a shriek to warn off the cyborg. It kept coming. Wind disturbed my stance, and I snapped my head back. Nentres emerged from behind me, his forked tongue tasting the wind. Nentres was a red dragon with a pair of horns swept back and away from his face to expose his red eyes, a beak-like snout, and rows of small horns on his cheeks and between his eyes. His body was slenderer than mine, but his wingspan made up the difference in size. He appeared larger. He spoke to me via a mind link we shared in our beast form. “You have a guest,” he said.
I saw the smirk on his dragon’s face. It translated into a show of top teeth, his bottom canines, much like mine, always on display. He huffed out a breath, an equivalent to laughter. Only yellow sulfur came out. No fire.
I lifted my upper lip. “I love guests.” I hated guests. Cyborgs especially. In fact, I rarely allowed them to come to the largest iceberg in the area, park their little Cy-mobiles, and state their purpose. Usually it was to trade goods or ask about the seas. Most cyborgs knew better than to ride into my domain uninvited. And before dinnertime.
“You think it’s a cyborg?” Nentres asked.
“Mm-hm. Probably, level one.”
“More meat on the bones.”
“Exactly.”
“What does it want?” We referred to each of the Cy aliens as it since they didn’t have sexual organs and thus lacked gender. Some looked like women or men, but they identified themselves as Cy. When they’d first made contact with NASA back some fifty years before the Ice Age began, they asked permission to park their ship in Earth’s orbit. Since their population at the time was less than ten percent of Earth’s population and they had stated they came in peace, the former world leaders granted them permission to stay in our sky. The Cy advanced our technology, and humans loved them. Indeed, the Cy race kept their peace promise.
When Yellowstone erupted, the Cy had offered to help. But there was nothing they could do. Mother Nature simply couldn’t be stopped. One after the other, volcanoes erupted all over the world, causing massive destruction to all living things in the initial kill zones—the areas around the volcanoes—and spreading ash all over the United States. The entire government fell apart. The economy crumbled, and we suffered a significant loss of human, animal, and plant life.
My three buddies and I lost our jobs. When we weren’t allowed to enlist in the military, young and eager, we volunteered to help out wherever relief agencies sent us. One night, a decade ago, in the barracks south of Las Vegas, a willowy, white, almost transparent woman came to us. She introduced herself as Mother Nature. We’d just finished off a few bottles of tequila and had begun to get some shut-eye after a particularly bad day, so we sort of ignored her. To be honest, when the woman came, I thought we’d seen the Virgin Mary until the woman “gifted” us each with a beast and control over the four elements. She asked us to restore the Earth to her natural state by combining our powers with that of a spirit.
Ten minutes later, she left. After she disappeared into thin air, we laughed, because believing what had happened was simply insane. The next morning, when I walked outside the barracks to take a piss, I proceeded to change into a blue motherfucking dragon with wings and a big ol’ horn on top of my forehead. Quickly, I realized the woman really had come to us. She had given me a beast. I still didn’t know what she meant by a spirit. Through research and some self-awareness, I eventually understood she’d gifted me with control of the water element.
Nentres joined me in the sky. He stayed respectfully behind, our understanding of the dragon beast’s territorial nature innate. I was the lord of my castle. This was my home, so I dealt with intruders. The flap of his wings right behind me also helped my flying speed, propelling me toward the Cy-mobile faster. The mobile flew straight for my castle at about one hundred miles an hour, but as we began circling it, it slowed down, then stopped to hover over the biggest iceberg.
Nentres communicated via our mind link. “Looks like a bi-seater. Never seen one of those.”
“It’s made for this habitat,” I said. “Older model. Probably a level-one cyborg driver.” The Cy donated the newest advanced cars to level-three and level-four cyborgs first. Level-one and level-two cyborgs couldn’t afford the models unless they came from a high-standing family with at least one level-four cyborg as the head of the family.
“How would you know what model it is?”
“The year is printed on the back.”
“Ah, so it is. What do we do with it?”
I had no use for cars, cyborgs, or Cy anything on my property, and the habitat people as well as the aliens up on the ship knew it. My island sheltered humans and a wolf pack, another Creature of Earth nobody knew existed. Dragons were hard to hide, but the smaller beasts? Not so much. Most humans on the island were outlaws, people who stole or smuggled food, people who had trouble accepting Cy implants or who straight out refused to become cyborgs. The wolf pack was a secret pack of men and women who’d been gifted with wolf beasts, and nobody needed to know about them.
Truth be told, the Cy and the cyborgs had never wronged me. They’d left me alone, and we coexisted in our unspoken truce. But, for no particular reason, they rubbed me the wrong way. All the mechanical parts replacing skin on their bodies made my scales itch.
So when the car parked on the iceberg, I pissed on it.
It could stay there for all I cared.
Nentres and I spun around and flew back into my castle.
3
Selena
One of the two dragons, the blue one, pissed on me. Had I known he’d decided to urinate on my car, I wouldn’t have opened my roof and stuck my hand out to wave. However, I had opened my roof and waved, only to have urine pour all over me. Though I wanted to stay inside my car, I couldn’t, because I needed the dragon male to receive me, and as he wouldn’t receive a cyborg, I needed to show him some skin. As for the urine inside the car, eventually the vehicle would activate the self-cleaning sequence, so it would be fine. Me, on the other hand? Not so much. I needed a warm shower.
The watch in the car read nine at night. I left the car and sat on the iceberg. Brrrr. Despite my thermal jacket, sitting on the iceberg made the freezing cold seep into my bones. Instantly, my ass got numb, and I pulled up my knees to my chest and rocked. The temperature dropped a few more degrees, and my teeth began chattering, my fingers cramping, and I could barely feel my toes. I’d freeze out here, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t go back now; I was almost at the castle, maybe half a mile to go. I would have used the car to close the distance, but I feared the dragons would attack. Pissing on the car meant they didn’t want me here.
Well, too bad for them.
So now I sat here alone on an iceberg in the middle of the water, a mile away from the coast, freezing my ass off—literally—and with piss in my hair. The urine didn’t smell awful, but still, it was awful. My life couldn’t get any worse. At that thought, I remembered that, yes, it could get worse. If I went back, I’d marry the man who had almost raped me. I imagined Diego wouldn’t make a great husband, and it would only be a matter of time until I jumped from a high-rise just like my mom.
Next to me, Nano robot stirred and beeped, proba
bly scanning the area or maybe the car to assess the damage. I didn’t know for sure. The robot did its own work. Most times, it knew what to do without anyone having to command it.
The water rippled.
A pair of blue eyes with narrow black pupils framed in yellow on a head the size of a megatron advertisement screen emerged from under the water. Silent and deadly, the dragon glided toward me. A horn stuck out of its head, and a pair of…of frilled ears framed his face. His long, sharp teeth showed even when his mouth was closed. And thank God for the closed mouth, because if I saw all his teeth, I’d pee myself.
When the long muzzle inched toward me, I scooted back and put my hands up. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
He didn’t reply.
Instead, he inched closer and sniffed my leg.
I whimpered, my heart beating a mile a minute. If my teeth didn’t chatter from the cold, they chattered from fear. God, I came up with the dumbest shit. The bakery shop first. I couldn’t bake. The jewelry shop next. That caught fire. This was the worst idea ever. E.V.E.R. Even marrying Diego sounded better than becoming a meal.
The dragon moved his giant head, flapping the frilled skin on his ears as he sniffed around my car. Nano beeped.
The skin around the dragon’s ears flared, and he peeled back his upper lip.
Warmth tickled down my thighs.
I closed my eyes, mortified on all counts. I had peed myself. I couldn’t contain my fear. Never had I seen anything more frightening in my life than an angry dragon with flaring, scaly blue skin framing his face and teeth the size of my forearm.
“Okay, creature,” I said through my teeth. I was trying to talk, but, boy, I barely sounded like me. “A bad idea coming here.”
“Two hours to dinnertime!” someone shouted.
I snapped my eyes open to see a woman with a lantern standing at the entrance of the castle. She held it up. “My lord, what is that out there?”
The dragon slid back into the water and blinked, his eyelids closing and opening sideways. He grunted and put his muzzle on the iceberg. The iceberg tilted, moving me toward him, while I fought to stay away. I gripped the edge, climbed, and sat there. An inch more and I’d slide into the water, freeze, and sink to the bottom. Crazy dragon eyes on me, he nudged my thigh with his wet nose.
He probably wanted me to leave. Likely he didn’t want to eat me, or he would’ve already. Unless it was like a domestic cat that played with a mouse before eating it… I didn’t have any experience with domestic animals. This one couldn’t possibly be domestic, and it clearly wanted me to leave. “I can’t move right now,” I told him. “I’m sorry to have come, but I can’t move from this iceberg. My legs are cramped. I’m cold. So very cold.”
His eyes did a…roll. Had he just rolled his crazy eyes at me as if I didn’t make any sense?
I clamped my mouth shut and ground my chattering teeth lest I say something I’d regret. The dragon nudged my leg again, and I slid an inch, half my bottom on the iceberg, half not. Okay, if he nudged me once more, I’d fall in. I forced my hands to move and put them on the ice so I could crawl to my car.
The dragon butted my side. Stuck in this awkward position on all fours, I didn’t move. “Well, fuck, what do you want?”
He huffed out a breath and—I believe—tried to nudge his snout under my belly.
“Child, you’ll freeze out there,” the woman from the castle shouted.
“Oh, thank you,” I whispered, as if I didn’t get that part on my own.
“Climb on,” she added.
“Huh?”
The dragon huffed.
I took it as a confirmation. I crawled over his nose, onto the muzzle, between the eyes, and perched on his forehead, leaning my back onto his big horn. Oh my God. This thing is warm. I patted his horn. “Good boy.”
The dragon glided through the water, and because it was so huge, I didn’t even feel it moving. Sort of like a giant, living boat.
I liked it.
Him. I liked him. He would save my life.
4
Lance
Before escorting the girl into my library, a place where I received guests, Mandy got my cloak and dimmed the lights so I could sit in my dark space and observe the girl instead of her observing me as if I were a caged animal in a zoo. Nentres joined me on the couch in front of the bookshelf that took up the entire wall. Two chairs with a small table between them sat across from us. Mandy opened the door for the girl.
The girl wrapped her hands around her body and shivered, but her lips weren’t blue anymore, so she’d live.
“Have a seat,” I said.
She paused at the sound of my voice and looked around. The library stretched for about fifty feet, with many places to sit on. I found it irritating that the girl didn’t look for a place to sit when I’d clearly commanded her to do so. Her wide gaze swept over the books on the shelves and paused at the large collection of dollar bills and coins, our old currency, displayed behind fire- and bullet-proof glass on Nentres’s left. “Wow,” she whispered.
“Wow yourself,” Nentres said.
I suppressed a groan.
The human intruder—I’d sniffed her out and hadn’t detected any Cy parts on her—wore a fine yellow cotton knit sweater and jeans. “Sit,” I said, a little more firmly. She must be under twenty, thus unfit for her first implant. Her long brown hair appeared healthy, her nails trimmed and painted pale pink, and the boots she wore must’ve cost a fortune. This human girl lived well in the habitat, so what could possibly have driven her to leave the comfort of her home?
“Ms.…” I said and left the rest hanging.
“Selena Salazar.” She sat on an old chair, her curious brown eyes as wide as a doe’s and everywhere at once. Ms. Soon to be Cyborg didn’t mention the fact I’d accidentally pissed on her, nor did she complain about her current state. A desperate human, I supposed.
“Can I get you tea to warm you up?” Nentres asked.
I snapped my head his way, wishing we could communicate mentally in human form so I could tell him to fuck off. I hated guests. Even the ones I liked.
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“A blanket?” he offered.
“She’s fine,” I said, a little more forceful than necessary. Why hadn’t I thought of the blanket? The human sat up straight, her eyes on the floor. Nentres walked to the mini bar, a simple tray with drinks, and poured himself a whiskey over three cubes of ice. He lifted an eyebrow at me. I nodded his way, indicating I wanted one, then I watched him put three ice cubes in my glass as well when he damn well knew I drank my whiskey dry. Nentres retired to his seat, a big smile on his face.
Some days I wondered why I bothered with him at all. He handed me my drink, and I put it on the table on my end. “Ms. Salazar,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
She looked down at the hands in her lap. “I’m looking for…asylum. I need shelter.”
“From?” And why?
She took a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m to marry someone. See, I’m one of the last Salazars in the world, and his family has agreed to take on our last name if I marry him. My dad wants to continue our legacy. He’s kind of obsessed with it since we’re the last two Salazars, a proud family originally from Mexico City.”
She also seemed proud of that. By the way her chin tipped up, I could tell the Salazar name meant something to her as well. There was strength in this human girl. I respected that. “I presume you do not wish to marry the…human?”
“He’s a cyborg. Level four already. He’s fifteen years older than me.”
“An old man,” Nentres said.
Now I just wanted to slap him. I was thirty-two to his twenty-nine, and I presumed the cyborg in question was a few years older than I. “What happens if you refuse the marriage?” I asked.
“We get cast out. The society stops buying our products. Our business crumbles, and we’re left with nothing. Not to mention the Salazars die out. I know you don’t
take cyborgs to your island. I’m still human, so I’m seeking help now.”
“I see. You want protection. But you’re willing to leave your father to deal with the aftermath.”
“I’m hoping you’ll accept my proposal, which won’t leave either of us penniless. Yes, my dad would need to make some adjustments, but he wouldn’t become homeless.”
I leaned my elbows on my knees, thinking she couldn’t possibly offer me anything I needed. She hadn’t a clue about what I needed. She came from a wealthy family and was an only child, probably used to getting what she wanted. She didn’t want to marry an older man even if it meant saving her family. Many women I knew had done just that. Times were hard. Besides, I had this horrible gut feeling, the instinct that came with my beast, that if I kept this girl, my life would never be the same.
Apart from the water element I couldn’t control, the problem Ms. Salazar couldn’t help me solve anyhow, I liked my life. Sure, I could use a thing or two here and there, but nothing worth causing trouble with two powerful cyborg families. I couldn’t afford enemies, not at this time. My home housed a wolf pack nobody knew about, enormous reserve storage for the upcoming winter, and some humans, most of them convicts. We even had nine children in the castle. Drawing attention here would be stupid, not to mention reckless. People depended on me. “The answer is no.”
“But you didn’t hear my proposal.”
“Don’t need to.” I chugged the watered-down whiskey and set the glass back on the table.
Her eyes filled with tears. She looked away.
“Excellent. I was on pins and needles here,” Nentres said, his Southern drawl exaggerated, intent on getting Ms. Salazar to drop her panties. “Now that he’s refused, it’s my turn. Tell me, sugar, what can I do for you? I’m twenty-nine, by the way. Not old. And I didn’t urinate on your head. That was him.” He pointed a finger at me.
I snapped my head his way. “What the fuck are you doing?”
