by Amy Faye
He looked at me for a long time, deciding whether or not I was lying. I like to think of myself as a good liar, but my gut tells me that he's not deciding whether or not I'm lying. He's deciding whether or not to call me on it. Well, I don't care. He's not in charge of me.
"Okay, sure. Take my arm."
I don't take his arm, so much as I take his shoulder, then put my entire weight on him, and use him as a second leg. Like a crutch. He helps as much as he can, and the trip back, most of the way back, is easier than the trip out had been. If I didn't have the dull throb from my mistake of letting myself walk this far, I wouldn't know that my leg hurt at all.
"Are you good getting situated, or…"
"I'm fine. Hey, uh, one thing though."
"Okay?"
"I'm probably not coming back to bed, my stomach feels kinda… not good. I don't know. It's probably nothing."
I look at the expression on his face shifting. I don't know exactly what he's thinking, but all of a sudden he's worried, and I don't know what would have a guy like that worried, about anyone at all. Never mind me specifically.
"You're alright though?"
"It's really not a big deal. I just don't feel like I can sleep through it, is all. I'm going to be fine, okay? Don't worry about it."
He looks like he's absolutely prepared to worry about it, but he doesn't say anything more on the matter.
"If you need any help, just holler. I'm a pretty light sleeper."
"I'll be fine," I tell him. Then I sit down, do my business, and get back up. I thought it was probably going to keep me awake, but it didn't. What did, on the other hand, was the queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it was nerves, and I was going to be fine. Maybe not.
But my first guess had been that I was dealing with something simple, something like a little food poisoning, and that I'd feel better after I passed it along. But I don't feel any better at all. If anything, I feel a little worse. My head swam. My muscles ached a little, and I was tired, but the discomfort in my stomach was too much to sleep.
So I hobbled into the front room, hobbled my way to the sofa, and laid down there, looking up at the ceiling. It was high, for a house that was small. For Seth, it seemed almost too small, like he was cooped up. Then again, after having two houses burn down in the space of a month, maybe it was a good time to think about moving into a place he wasn't going to miss.
I closed my eyes because I couldn't keep them open any longer, but the twisting in my gut kept me awake longer. Then longer still. And then, to my surprise, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jerked a little as I woke up, looked over at Seth. I hadn't heard him come up.
"How are you feeling, kid?"
I blinked sleep out of my eyes. I guess at some point, I'd gone away into sleepiness. It was a surprise to say the least.
"I'm alright." I don't know if it's true or not, but I have to think that it is, even if I'm wrong.
"Still feeling sick?"
"I guess," I say. I don't know if I have the strength to lie. If I'm going to have to do it in the future, might as well save my strength on the little ones. "I don't know. It's nothing, don't worry about it."
"I just keep thinking," he said, as if there was going to be something else. But there wasn't. He stopped there and seemed to feel that was enough.
"What do you keep thinking?"
"I don't want to make things sound weird, but I've been in other relationships."
"Oh," I said dimly. I've been in other relationships too, but I just kind of assumed we weren't talking about it. Which was fine by me.
"And my brothers have been in relationships. You met Blake's wife, right? Cassidy?"
"Yeah, I guess. Why? What's that got to do with anything?"
"I'm just thinking about how she was feeling a little queasy, but it was nothing, and don't worry about it."
"Oh. Good. I'm glad I remind you of your sister-in-law."
"Would you just give me a damn minute?" He let out a long breath. "I was just thinking about how she wasn't feeling so good, and she was feeling like she was a little sick, and then…"
"Then an alien popped out?"
"Not that far off. Then we found out that she was fourteen weeks pregnant."
I blinked. "Oh. And you think…"
"I'm worried about it," Seth said. He made a deep ridge between his eyebrows. "And I'd feel better if, you know… you made sure there was nothing to worry about."
"You don't want me to be, though?"
"I'll tell you later," he answered quietly. "Just test, for me, okay? For my own piece of mind."
I took a deep breath and laid my head back down. If this was a dream, then I didn't like it very much. Give me a better dream. A dream with his head between my legs, for example.
"I don't even have any tests."
21
It took Seth twenty minutes to go out to the store, get a pregnancy test, and get back. Since I knew that the store was only a mile away, I assumed right up until he walked through the door that it meant that he'd somehow died, possibly in a car accident, along the way.
Once I heard the car pull up, the door open and close, and then saw him come back through the front door, I had to adjust my guess. He took forever because there were two dozen tests, and he had apparently decided that it was a critical decision, and spent at least ten solid minutes just worrying about which he was supposed to take.
I allowed myself a smile as he came back inside, amused by the exasperated expression on his face. He'd done it to himself, and at this point I wasn't going to have any sympathy for him.
"You're sure about this? Why waste a test? One that cost, what, twenty dollars?"
"Forty," he growled. "Because I bought two, and you're going to take two."
I closed my eyes and laid my head back. I had slept, which surprised me, but I still felt so tired that I wanted to go right back to sleep. I was surprised I hadn't passed out just waiting for him to come back.
"You know, it's really not a big deal if I don't get this test done right now, right?"
"It's a big deal to me," he said simply, as if that settled the matter entirely. I didn't see it that way, myself.
"Fine. I need you to help me up."
"Okay," he said. I expected him to help me up onto my good leg, and then act as my crutch again. Instead he took my full weight right off the couch like I was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, and in the total surprise that followed I just let him.
Then he carried me to the bathroom, and slowly let my legs down until I'd managed to twist my way out of his grip and slide my good foot to the floor.
Then I sat down on the toilet, still closed, and read the directions. Then I read them again to be sure.
"Says I need a cup."
"There's a cup right there," he said, pointing to a little glass that he'd put there, ostensibly in case someone needed some water in the night.
"There's going to be pee in it."
"I'll get another cup until we clean that one, but it makes life easier, at least."
"And it says it should be my first urination of the morning. But I already went."
"Just take the test, will you? It's not that expensive, okay? Don't worry about it. I feel better if you take it than I feel about spending forty bucks twice."
"And I need some privacy."
He nodded and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him. I took a deep breath, not enjoying what was going to have to come next. I shoved myself up off the toilet, took my weight on my good leg, turned, pulled up the toilet bowl lid, and then dropped back down.
Only using one leg made the whole thing uniquely difficult, but I maneuvered the cup between my thighs, peed, and then re-read the instructions a third time to make sure I understood absolutely. Then I tore the boxes open, dipped the test as per instructions, let them sit as per instructions, and ignored the pain in my hip. It didn't recommend that on the sheet, but I did it anyways.
Thirty seconds passe
d. I could check, then. But I didn't want to. So another thirty seconds passed. Then two minutes had gone by, and then three. I finally made myself look. The tests he'd given me were digital. The kind that said "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant."
There was no "Not" at the top. Just the bottom word. Pregnant. I looked at the second. It was a mistake. A fluke. I wasn't pregnant, so I knew the other one would say so.
That one seemed to have made the same mistake. "Pregnant." No "not" at the top like they'd shown on the box. I checked again to make sure I wasn't misreading it, because no matter how clear it was, I wasn't sure. I didn't believe it.
"Seth?"
The door opened, as if he'd been standing outside the door the whole time. If I didn't miss my guess, he probably had been.
"What's the verdict?"
"You can't go fight Kyle," I said. It made me a liar, but I couldn't let him do it if I was pregnant.
He ignored me and picked up a test, as if that was his answer to what I said. Then he scowled, looked at the other.
"Did you hear me? You can't fight Kyle. Whatever is going on, it's a trap, can't you understand that?"
"I'm not going to fall for a trap. I know what I'm doing."
"You can't go. I don't care if you think you know what you're doing, okay? I can't handle this by myself."
"You're tough, and you're going to make a great mom," he said. As if it was a foregone conclusion. "But if you're pregnant, then I can't have some scumbag Black Dragon running around trying to turn you back to… to what they do."
"Black dragon?"
"I never did tell you, did I? Black dragon. Kyle is a dragon. I said you had a type, didn't I?"
"You're kidding."
"You must have seen him, that night. The night you got hit."
"I don't believe you, is the problem."
"Well, believe it. They're not all exactly like him, but they're all his type. They're attracted to dark things. Drugs. Violence. Pornography and sex. Usually some mixture of the three. And they like it best of all when they can take someone standing right on the edge and push them over." He didn't stop looking at the test, except to look at the other one again for a few minutes, and then switch back. "I pulled you back, Meg, and I'm not going to let you go down that road again. No way."
22
Seth swallowed hard. It wasn't supposed to be like this; he was supposed to be the smart one. He was supposed to be the favorite, and the reason he was favorite was because he didn't make stupid mistakes. Stupid mistakes like, for example, knocking up some poor girl.
Blake was the one who did that sort of thing, and even if Cassidy was alright, it wasn't by any means a guarantee. Seth was smarter than Blake. He was
He wasn't supposed to start feuds. That was Dad's job. Or it was Lance, the hot-headed baby. It wasn't him. He was smart. He was cool-headed. And this was all supposed to be a real simple revenge plot.
Black dragon hits a Pistolet shipment, in Seth's territory? They get hit back. Hard. Meg was a complication, and one that he didn't know he wanted. One that he shouldn't have wanted at all.
"You shouldn't have come," came a voice. Kyle's voice. Seth let out a low breath. This was his mess, and he was going to clean it up. No matter what it took.
"What, and let you walk over my family? Hardly."
"You didn't bring them, did you? You came alone, like we agreed?"
"You think I'm going to get them all involved to crush one little pip-squeak like you?"
Seth's teeth grit together. The whole thing smelled like a trap. The darkness suited the Black. He could make a move any moment, and Seth was going to be on his back foot the whole time.
If there was anyone else there, anyone on Kyle's side, then the disadvantage would be enough to ride off into the sunset. There was nothing that Seth was going to be able to do to prevent it. But that didn't mean that he was going to let the fear show on his face.
"You should have thought again."
"I'm not afraid of you," Seth answered him, and readied for something to happen.
Then it did, all at once. A sudden burst of movement and a flame that blew by like a gust of icy wind, missing him by inches as he dove out of the way and forced a quick transformation.
With the transformation came a dozen other changes at the same time. There was a moment where he wasn't sure that it was going to happen in time, but then the room seemed to light up a thousand times brighter than it had been. The corners had been nearly black before, but now he could see them without difficulty, and the middle, where he had been standing, was impossibly bright.
With time, his eyes would adjust, but the dragon-eyes were something that he would rather preserve. He looked around the room. There were two others, at least. With some luck, he could still make that work. But there was going to be luck involved.
He caught wind under his wings and sped towards the small hangar-style door at the far end of the room. It started moving to shut, not not fast enough. Not fast enough to stop him. He made it through and into the night air, and then started to get higher.
If he was lucky, they'd make a mistake, like coming out without defending from above, and he could dive on them hard. If he could eliminate one for even a moment, the fight was over. Kyle thought that he was hot shit. All Blacks tended to. It was a consequence of the type of people that they surrounded themselves with.
Seth didn't make that mistake. He was as good as dead if he made a single unrecoverable mistake, and he was going to act like it.
There was some movement. He dove hard, forcing things to move quickly. If they didn't have time to react, they didn't have time to plan to stop him. He was already belching flame when the shape streaked out of the warehouse, and the fire caught the black dragon by surprise.
The dragon fell the few feet to the floor and skidded, his body already starting to reverse the transformation. Then there was a brief, sick moment as Seth realized that he had made a mistake. A big one. The kind that he wouldn't be able to recover from.
I watched the whole thing sickly from the far hill. Seth didn't know I was there, and I had no intention of letting him know. He thought that I was at home, and when he got back home, I was going to be waiting for him. Nobody had to be any the wiser that I'd followed him out.
When the other dragon bit into him, the big red shrieked in agony. I could feel my chest tightening. He shouldn't have been there in the first place. He should have just let Kyle go. There was no reason to fight, and every reason to leave it be.
That wasn't Seth, though. He was too stubborn and too proud to do something as 'weak' as letting someone beat him.
The dragons tangled in the air for an instant, and then they separated. The red one, the one that she knew was Seth, moved wrong, like it was having trouble keeping its body in the air.
The black came around for another pass, teeth bared. I watched it through my binoculars with my own teeth chattering from cold and panic. The panic didn't fade when the red darted at the last second as if it had never been hurt in the first place.
It caught the black and wrenched hard. In that instant, I realized that they were going to be matched evenly, and that would mean that Seth was going to lose. And that, by itself, meant that something needed to change in a hurry.
I turned the key in my ignition and started to drive, and hoped to high heaven that I wasn't making the biggest mistake of my life.
23
I'm not proud to admit this, but I screamed the whole time that my car barreled towards the dragons. I can pretend that there was some element of a war cry to it. Like I was trying to scare the big black dragon away from my man by sheer force of will.
I'd be lying, though. I was terrified of what was going to happen, and the adrenaline was pumping so hard that I felt the buzz of it in my stomach more powerful than anything I could have possibly imagined.
Yet, still, I drove on. I had no other choice, unless I wanted Seth dead. He might not be the only one to die in that scrap, if he was luc
ky, but I never count on luck. I've never had any to get me through, and I find that it's safer to assume that luck isn't coming. That there's no pot at the end of the rainbow.
My tires squealed as I hit the brakes, hard, and the black dragon bounced a little way down the street. I could practically feel the dent in my fender, like it was a dent in my own chest, but I slapped the unlock button hard. Then I rolled the window down and screamed as hard as I could.
"Seth!" The red dragon was already shimmering with that preternatural heat, the kind that I recognized from his transformation.
Then a very naked man was running towards me, like something out of The Terminator. He wasn't bleeding, at least not at first. It wasn't until he was on my gray cloth seats that he started to really bleed bad enough for me to notice.
Sure enough, the chunk missing out of his arm was big and bad. Bad enough to worry me. But I wasn't going to let him know that, and besides, we had bigger fish to fry. I slammed the car into reverse, stepped hard on the gas, and watched out behind myself. I spun the wheel hard and got the tires slipping a little, and then kicked the car into drive and put my foot down again.
The black dragon didn't pursue us, though I couldn't see well enough in the dark to know if it flew away.
"What the fuck was that?"
"What was what?" Seth's voice was low and rough and maybe held a hint of anger. A hint that he didn't do nearly as good a job hiding as he probably thought that he did.
"You idiot, you could have gotten yourself killed! Is that what you want?"
I barely touched the brake as I spun around a corner. Dirt country road like this, at this time of night, there was nobody else around. I wasn't worried about hitting someone, and I wasn't worried about slipping into the ditch on the side of the road. So I took the corner at fifty and sped back up to twice the speed limit.
We had to get to a hospital, and I mean like, five minutes ago.
