by Amy Faye
Then he laid down beside me, wrapped an arm around me and held me tight. It felt good. I liked this. It was something that I hadn't had in a long time, outside of these past few times with Seth.
Then he spoke softly. So softly that at first I was sure I misheard him. So I replayed it in my head again, and again, and felt my heartbeat racing again. The voice in my head repeated again what a mistake I'd made. But I was sure of what he'd said. As sure as I'd ever been.
"I love you, Meg," he'd said.
I was making a mistake.
13
I tried to hide my reaction. I closed my eyes and leaned my head on his chest and pretended that inside, I wasn't shaking with panic.
Nobody had ever said it to me as the start of something good. I knew that there were relationships that worked out. Not my relationships. So if I'm going to be some guy's sex slave, that's fine. If I'm going to be his friend with benefits, or whatever, that's fine. I can handle that. I've handled worse.
And Seth's pretty nice about it. So that makes it even easier to handle the idea of being his property, and letting him use me how he saw fit.
But his girlfriend? Or whatever he wanted from me? That's pretty much a death warrant for one of us. Either he's a genuinely nice guy, mixed in with precisely the wrong sort of person, or worse, I'm the right sort of person for him.
In that case, dating means that I'm back onto the path I thought I'd gotten free of with Kyle. That's dangerous territory for me, and I don't intend to go back if I can help it.
I could feel the weight of his eyes on me, behind my head. Could feel the question that was rising in his mind. There might have been some expectation that I would say it back. Or maybe he didn't think that at all. Maybe he thought that I wouldn't hear it.
But I did, and evidently this wasn't the reaction he wanted.
"Just hold me," I said. I hoped that would make it okay.
"Is something wrong?"
"I don't want to talk about it," I said. My body still tingled from the orgasm I'd just had, and I was much happier to stay in a state of post-orgasmic satisfaction, rather than having to worry about him.
"What don't you want to talk about?"
"I said, I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay."
There was a long time where we laid there in silence. He made a comfortable pillow. And I was very tired. So it seemed like a good fit. But something just kept eating at me. Kept running through my head.
It had been minutes. I should have just moved on. I was sure that he had. But I couldn't.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
I sat up and faced him. The sofa was small, but there was room enough for me to turn around and face him. He looked almost sad. His jaw clenched itself, and then unclenched.
"What's what supposed to mean?"
"You said you love me."
"I do," he said. Then he let out a sigh. Like I wasn't understanding or something. Like he was being clear and I was the one acting nuts.
"How? How could you possibly?"
"Look, just don't worry about it, okay?"
"Don't worry about it? How the fuck am I supposed to not worry about it, Seth? Explain that to me."
"Just forget I said it, okay? Please? Can we drop this?"
"I can't drop it. You've met me three times. Three. We've had some great sex in that time, but you don't know anything about me."
He made a face. Like he was trying to avoid saying something that he knew he was going to regret. Then something unexpected happened.
The air around him started to shimmer with heat. The place where his knee touched mine felt so hot that I thought I'd touched a stove. I yanked my leg away.
"What the fuck?"
He blinked at me, then clenched his jaw again.
"I have to go," he said. He took exactly long enough to button his pants before he ran off into the cool autumn evening. I could hear the sound of a car engine starting, and then the sound of the same car driving away.
I blinked. What the fuck just happened? There's so much to unpack that I don't know where to start.
First, he'd known me, what, a month? Total? Including the three weeks where we weren't speaking and I didn't see him? That was insane. He'd just jumped into my life, and expected us to have some kind of relationship?
Second, I thought back and realized that he always came in me. That seemed hinky, too. Oh, I fucking loved it, but it seemed like a very possible mistake. One that I ought to have had the good sense to avoid.
I laid back on the couch, feeling him slowly dribbling out of me, and then in a fit of humiliation covered my face and rocked back into the cushions of the seat.
Jesus Christ, what have I gotten myself mixed up in now? And how the hell am I ever going to hope to get back out of it?
14
I have to admit that I wanted to leave, because at this point it's going to sound strange when I say that I didn't. The reasons that I didn't all make sense, if you squint, but I need to say first and foremost that I thought 'I should get the fuck out of here' almost immediately.
The trouble was that honestly, I was so confused by the whole thing that I just stayed there. My face, screwed up in confusion, didn't even move from watching down the hallway of this new building. He'd found a new place pretty quickly. Then again, if his own words were to be believed then he had paid Kyle ten grand to walk away. So he clearly had the money to move into a new place right after the first one burned down.
So I tried to pick up my arms and start getting my clothes. The effort ended up getting me almost as far as shifting on the couch, but then the confusion settled in again. What the fuck had just happened? Had I been imagining that? Is it some kind of, like, STD or something? Is that… no.
If there was a medical condition that caused people to look and feel like they were three hundred degrees, then I'm pretty sure that I'd feel that.
A fever? Sure. A high fever? No doubt about it. But there was a big difference between a hundred and three, and two hundred and fifty.
And you don't start getting heat shimmer until pretty damn hot. Hotter than a hundred and ten I'm pretty sure.
So I don't know what to attribute this all to, but I know it's not some perfectly normal thing that I can just brush off. And then, in the moment that I'd been taking to collect myself, a moment that lasted much, much longer than it should have, I heard the door open behind me, and then close again.
Seth was practically doused in sweat, like someone had turned over a bucket on top of him, and he was breathing hard. I noticed that I hadn't heard the sound of his car coming back, as well.
"You're still here," he said, trying to hide the surprise in his voice.
"What?" I'd heard him, but nothing was processing at this point.
"I thought you'd have bolted when I ran out."
"What the heck was that? You looked like an oven, and you felt like the top of a stove."
He blinked. "You, uh… noticed that, huh?"
"Of course I noticed." Saying the words made it all seem much more real, and at the same time, it made everything feel a little bit more okay. Like, at least I hadn't imagined the whole thing. And if I had, then he could just tell me that I was nuts, and then we could both move on. It'd be easy, even painless. "You want to explain, or…"
"I really wouldn't like to explain, but I guess you do deserve some kind of explanation."
"You think?"
He spread his arms out wide and shrugged. "I don't know, man. I guess I have to. You're already this far down the rabbit hole, right?"
"So start explaining, then."
"Well, I guess… I'll start with, I'm not a human."
I blinked. "Okay. Wait. Let me guess. Ghost. You're a ghost. No. Vampire."
He gaped at me. Blinked twice, and then a whole lot more times a moment later, and then lightly touched his forehead. "You're kidding."
"What? Did I get it?"
"No! Ghost? You're kidding. They're not…
Meg, ghosts don't have physical bodies. They're dead. If they had bodies, they'd be, what, ghouls? Zombies? Heck, they'd be vampires, too, maybe, depending on the circumstances of their death. And vampire? What does that have to… you know what? Moving on. No, I'm not some undead creature."
"Oh," I said, dimly. I thought they'd been good guesses, even if the whole thing was nuts. I mean, my aunt had a gift. She could speak to ghosts, or at least, that's what she said. And it was real spooky when she did it at parties and stuff. So I was ready to believe I'd gotten the family gift. I guess not.
"No. Babe. I'm not sure if you realize this, but you've apparently got a type, and that type is 'dragon.'"
"Dragon. You're kidding. Look, you made fun of me for the ghost thing, but seriously?"
"They're real."
"Okay, King Arthur, sure they are."
"If you're not careful, I'm going to actually get angry with you, you know that, right?"
"You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun of King Arthur. I'm sure he was a great dragon."
"There's not even any dragons in that story. Would it help to just, see the transformation?"
I shrug. "Sure, dude. Take me to the stone, pull the sword out, hold it in place of your dick, whatever. I really don't care."
He rolled his eyes and stepped in front of me. "Alright, up."
I got up, and he moved the sofa out of the middle of the room to make a big space in the middle. Then he stripped nude, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
There was another moment of heat coming off him, in waves. Like he was an oven, or something. The heat got even more visible. I don't know how hot he was, but it must have been quite a bit. And I know that it was starting to sizzle on the wood flooring, and the smell of wood burning starting to reach my nostrils.
And then, in a flash of steam, it was like his skin burned away, and in the instant of change everything moved and switched. Then he was a big old dragon. Just like King Arthur.
I blinked. What the fuck? He transformed back into his old self, standing in the same spot. His feet even matched the burn marks on the floor. He was breathing hard again.
"How's that?"
15
"How's that?" Seth chanced a halfway smile, and for my part, I stared at him. Blinked a few times again for good measure. I was trying to convince myself that I'd imagined the transformation. Trying as hard as I possibly could. Even still, it wasn't working. It was doing no good at all.
"You were serious."
He nodded. "As serious as a heart attack. Which, by the way, can we just sit down for a minute? I'm getting a little…"
He flopped down onto the couch without trying to move it back. I started to move back onto the couch.
"So what's… like… wait. What did you mean, I have a type?"
He looked over at me. "So I guess you didn't know after…"
The rest of what he was going to say was cut off by the entire building rocking hard. Something slammed into it, like a wrecking ball, and immediately I felt like I was going to be thrown to the ground. I caught myself, but just barely. Seth, on the other hand, as surprised as I guessed he was, acted immediately.
He started running for the door, not bothering to get dressed, and I could see that heat shimmering again all around him. He left a trail of footsteps across the floor, each darker and more burnt-in than the last, until he was out the door and then I could see his red tail whipping behind him as he moved.
I watched through the door, baffled by the whole thing, until I heard the Godzilla shriek from outside, felt the house shake again, and decided that maybe it would be smarter to get out of here.
I ducked out of the house, trying to stay low. Behind me, only a second too late to come crashing down on my head, was a giant black lizard. It was as large as Seth, or whatever Seth had turned into, but its scales shimmered like an oil spill and I could practically feel myself getting sick just from looking at it.
The gable of the house crushed in on itself with a loud crack, and the black dragon dropped another three feet lower. I screamed and ran a little further away, watching from the edge of the street.
The black turned and fixed its eyes on me, and then let out another furious shriek and streaked up into the sky. It faded completely into the night, invisible to me except for the shape swooping to cover the moon for an instant. It could have been a cloud, but I knew better than to believe that.
The red dragon was easier to see. It whirled a wide, arcing path around the sky, spouts of flame shooting out at odd intervals, briefly illuminating the black with every shot, the flames glistening on its scales. It shrieked and dived in, again and again. Over and over. And then it dived in, coming at the red's side, and for a moment I had to cover my eyes.
Then I heard the black's shriek, and uncovered them. They were hurtling together towards the ground, the red still flapping its wings to speed them down further. And in its mouth was a big bite of the black's shoulder. The pair of them hit hard, together, and it rocked the entire ground beneath me.
I went sprawling out, unable to keep my balance, and I could see as I fell that I wasn't the only thing. Street lamps started to sway and tip and fall, shooting strange, moving shadows across the whole street and finally falling pointed right at me.
Which was why, I think, I couldn't react quickly enough to the car that came driving up behind. I couldn't see it, being behind me, and the lights all around were so wild that another light coming up didn't make a difference.
The sudden light in the driver's eyes must have made it so that he didn't see a little shape moving in that blinding brilliance, either. So I went down hard into the asphalt, and then something impossibly hard and impossibly heavy slammed into my side at thirty miles an hour and sent me sprawling out of the ground.
They had their windows open, apparently, because as I came to a skidding halt, even under the sound of screeching tires and screeching dragons, I could hear someone make a sick-sounding moan.
And then a car door, and footsteps, and someone's voice I didn't recognize.
"Oh God," they shouted. "I didn't see you, I'm so sorry."
I tried to move, to get up. I tried to tell them I was fine. I've had worse. I mean, I haven't, but I don't want to make them feel bad, because I think I'm going to be fine.
But when my arms decide that they're not interested in moving, I realize, maybe I'm not as fine as I think I am. I get a little wiggle out of one of my fingers, but that's the best I can do. My words come out vague and slurred, and then the whole world around me starts to slip into black and red.
16
I couldn't tell where I was at first. I could tell one thing. I was moving. Not in a car; me, personally. I was moving. Though, that's not right either. I was being moved. Someone had their arms around me, and they were carrying me somewhere. Suddenly, my surroundings, which had been too dark to see, turned bright in a flash.
And then, as the world started to turn around me again and I started to understand what was going on, I heard voices around me.
"What happened?"
"She was hit by a car."
"And you didn't wait for the ambulance?"
"I couldn't afford to wait."
"Do you have any medical information for her?"
I wanted to tell them whatever they needed to know, but my mouth didn't want to work right. In fact, my whole body really wanted to go back to sleep, the sooner the better if you please.
Heck, even if you don't.
I took deep breaths and tried to speak. Then again, baby steps. I stopped trying to speak when I got little more than a dull moan, and set about trying to keep my eyes fixed on something. Anything.
That was a challenge all by itself, until I found something at all to focus on. Seth's face was strange, to me. He didn't look the way I was used to him looking.
Usually, Seth was angry at the best of times, and at the worst of times, he was something else entirely. Angry or indifferent or sarcastic. H
is range of moods were all bad, but there were 'good' ones in there, if you knew to expect that he was probably in a bad mood in the long run.
He caught me looking at him and I tried to smile. It just made him look more worried. But that didn't mean I didn't keep trying to smile, even as he turned back to talk to the doctors.
A moment later they had me laid down on a gurney and they were moving me through the hospital. Any hopes I might have had of keeping my eyes fixed on something in the background were gone; it whirred past too fast to see anything for more than a second, and it took me longer than that to get my eyes fixed in a spot.
The doctors rushed me back, and then put something over my mouth and I breathed in gasses that put me right to sleep. That's good, I thought. Because I'm very, very tired.
When I woke up again, I was feeling better. Well, no. I'd traded a dull, far-away feeling of shock, right for the sharp, stabbing sensation of broken bones and pain. But I managed, at the very least, to survive this far. That's something, at least, right?
"Hey," I say to the open air. I don't know if I have the energy to look around and see who's there, but I can feel someone at the edge of my senses.
"Oh, you're awake," a voice says. I don't recognize it. "I'll, uh… I'll go get the nurse."
"No," I tell the voice. "Stay here."
A woman's voice joins in. "I'll be right here with you, don't worry. You're going to be alright."
With a force of effort to get any message at all through the veil of pain, I turn my head towards the man, who's walking out. He's tall and masculine and clean-cut. Not really my type. I keep turning and end up facing a woman.
She's a very pretty woman, that's for certain, with blonde hair that falls around her head in large, luxurious curls and a face that's twisted up in worry. Worried about me? I don't know if I can believe that.
"What happened?"
