by Faye, Amy
I know Dante’s older than he looks, but when he turns, when I see his face, he just… every time, I keep thinking that he looks eighteen. It’s impossible not to think so. And second, he looks sad. He always looks sad, but now he looks particularly sad.
“Yeah, they exist.” He makes something that might have been called a halfway smile. But with the rest of his face looking like a kicked puppy, it just adds to the image. “That’s part of the trouble, I guess.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stick around long enough, and you’ll find out.”
He let himself down into a chair.
“So… if it’s unsafe for me out there, why can you be outside?”
“Lots of reasons,” Dante says. His lips pinch together, his eyes watching the crack between the floor and the wall. “First, and foremost, because they’d never hurt me.”
“What, like a pet-owner thing?”
That earns her a laugh. It’s only for a moment, and then he starts to sink again, but even as his mood starts to fall back through the floor, Dante’s eyes roll in amusement. “‘Pet-owner thing,’ wow. Um. No, not exactly. They know me. They’re smart. I mean, they’re dumb; it’s why they’re fighting. But compared to, like, a dog? No comparison.”
“So, they’re similar to like, a human’s level of intelligence?”
“Sometimes I wonder, to look at them. To think about some of the things they do. Then again, I guess you think that about ‘human’ intelligence, too, don’t you?”
I keep my mouth shut. I’m not about to go off on my life story with Blake’s younger brother, no matter how much I hope that he’ll be able to explain what’s going on. Once the urge passes, I answer him. “I guess I know what you mean.”
There’s a sudden flurry of activity; I notice that Blake’s pulling a shirt on as he comes through the door, and he’s panting as he comes through. I guess he probably ran to get here, same as Dante did. The difference, I guess, is that he had to get the dragons taken care of.
“Dante, what the hell happened?”
“Your girlfriend got out. I went to go make sure that nobody got hurt.”
Blake closed his eyes for a long moment. “Yeah, okay. I see how that would make sense.”
“Did you get the dragons put away?”
Blake looked at me like I’d said the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
“I’m sorry… what? Put away?”
“I figured, you know, arms dealers, you have these big old lizards. Legendary for their ability to kill stuff, right? So if we accept for a moment that they’re real, not just something that is made up for stories, even if they are just cooked up in a lab, then it makes sense that you’d sell those, too. Right?”
Seth stepped through the door a moment later. He hadn’t bothered putting a shirt back on, and he glared across the room at all three of them. If there was any brotherly love between them, he apparently wasn’t feeling it.
“Yeah, hon, that’s… uh… not what that was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I should have explained this sooner, and I’m sorry. So let me start with that.”
“Explain what, Blake? What’s he talking about?” The second question was directed at Dante, whose sadness was quickly masked and replaced with what appeared to be honest confusion.
“There’s a few things you should know. Thankfully, Dante’s already told you one of them.”
“I didn’t tell her anything,” Dante said. Defensive, annoyed. “Nothing that she couldn’t have seen with her own two eyes, thanks to you idiots.”
“First, dragons are real.”
“Obviously,” I said. “How’d you get them? Is capturing them hard?”
“Second… you should stop guessing on this because you’re going to feel dumb.”
“Guessing? What?”
“Second, I’m one of them. So is Seth. So is Dante, in spite of himself. So are my parents. So are my entire family.”
He was right; I do feel stupid, the minute he says the words. I’m not sure which part should make me feel stupider: that I was just suggesting that he might keep himself as a pet, or that I’m willing to believe any of this.
“You’re joking.”
“Not joking. And I’m not done yet. So don’t interrupt.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just…”
“Nope, that’s it. Off. It’ll wait.”
“Okay?”
“Third, and most important of all, we’re not the only ones. You’re one, too.”
16
I don’t know what’s come over me, but I know what I’m going to do about it. Everyone here is nuts. I’m nuts just living here, and I’ve only been here a couple days. So the answer’s pretty easy.
I leave. I whistle a tune to myself as I do it. I don’t recognize it, but I’ve been whistling it for years. Every couple of weeks it pops into my head and I just whistle it softly to myself. I must have heard it somewhere, but I couldn’t begin to say where.
I turn back to the dresser. I’ve already got it halfway emptied out, and the second half should go even faster. I’ve got my rhythm going now. I pick up a stack of blouses, take the two steps to the suitcase, and put them in.
Two steps back, another stack. Two steps again. Put them in, force them into the corner to make space. Neatness is important, and making sure that you don’t waste a single inch is just as important. Again. Another stack, and again I press them down on top of the last stack and then make sure the I’ve taken all the space out between this stack of clothes and the one beside it.
That’s good. Satisfying. I stop to take a breath, the blouses empty. Sitting gives me time to think, which is the last thing I want, but I’m starting to feel tired again already. This is my third rest since I started, and if there were someone to see it then I’d be embarrassed.
Half-dragon, they said. I run through the entire argument in my head as if I were going to have it out with them. As if I weren’t going to walk away and let them think that I completely believed it, and they might try to argue with me.
Dragons and humans were fundamentally incompatible, I’d say. I just watched them fighting, remember? They were massive. Like, just the bulk of their body, not counting wings and long necks and long, spiny tails, they were the size of a Hummer.
I’m not a biologist or whatever, but the size of the cock on something that big had to be absurd. So there’s no way that my mom, or any other woman, took that inside her.
Second, the idea that Blake himself ‘was a dragon’ was just as absurd. They’d try to convince me that he had a dragon’s heart or something. That was the most likely line of argument. I’ve read similar stuff on the Internet. People claiming that they’re wolves in spirit or whatever. So they dress up in stupid costumes and then fuck dressed like dogs.
It’s not a good look, and if I’d known that was what Blake and his family were into, then I’d have known not to get involved with him. But he’d managed to hide it this long, so I had made it all the way out here without finding out that the entire family is nuts-o.
Third of all, dragons aren’t real, which is something everyone knows. So there might have been some giant flying lizards outside, but those were cooked up in a lab. Like most animals cooked up in a lab, they were most likely sterile.
So if you took the cock out of it, and you ignored the laughable idea that Blake and his family ‘were dragons’ in spirit or whatever, and you just took sperm from these lab-created lizards, then they were almost certainly sterile anyways. I know a little bit about sterile, and it’s not a good look.
But even worse, to pretend that they’re just not? Laughable.
A voice pulled her out of her repose.
“So you’re really going, huh?”
Nia stepped in. I didn’t want to talk to her before, and I definitely don’t want to talk to her now. But I want to get into a cat fight even less.
“Yep. You win. Do whatever.
Have a ball. Family’s nuts anyways.”
Nia barked a single pointed laugh. ‘Ha,’ like that. It felt like it was targeted more at me than it was at them, but at this point I don’t care any more. I push myself up and push the drawer shut and move down to the next one. A handful of pairs of shorts. There are so few that I don’t even need to take multiple trips.
“You want to know something, Cassidy?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me, no matter what I say.”
“When Margaret called me, she was all worried. She said some tramp had come along to take Blake away from me. Said that he was probably fucking you all over the house, like some kind of whore.”
“Sounds like Margaret, yeah.”
“So I came to deal with it. I came in a hurry, because she was worried that he was getting attached to you.”
“Oh, how sweet of the two of you,” I said. I kept my eye-rolling on the inside.
“But I was never worried. I knew that he couldn’t possibly move on from me. He never will, you know.”
“Good for you.”
“But when I got here?” She paused for effect while I went over to the closet and started pulling dresses off coat hangers. “That’s when I worried least of all. You want to know why that is?”
“Again, I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Because I knew you couldn’t hack it. I knew you weren’t going to stick around. It didn’t matter whether he could move on or not. Maybe one day, that man’s going to grow a spine, and he’ll do something for reasons other than pure spite and actually stand up to his parents. But you? You’re not going to be around that long.”
I stiffened and turned. Everything else she said just rolled off, but that? That stung. More than I’d have liked to admit.
“What? You going to deny it?”
“You know what?”
Nia smiled. Like everything else she did, it made her look perfect. “What, sweetie?”
“I think I’ll stick around after all.”
The look on her face as it settles in is absolutely perfect. Everything I could have hoped for and more. Maybe that’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut, you stuck-up bitch.
17
I take a deep breath and moment to remind myself of the look on Nia’s face when I told her I was staying. The look that made everything else worth it, frankly. I need it to get through the rest of this conversation. It’s going to be a treat and a half.
But if I’m going to stay, never mind stay in some kind of relationship, then I need to understand. Otherwise I think I’m going to go nuts.
“Okay, so. Blake.”
He looks at me like I’m being condescending, and maybe I am. Then again, maybe he’s nuts. So I don’t know whether or not to feel bad about it.
“Yes.”
“Let’s start from the top. You’re all dragons.”
“Yes.”
“Like… is this a metaphorical thing?”
“You mean like a furry thing? Dressing up in costumes?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Oh, okay. So it’s more like a… family crest? Family symbol?”
“Yes and no.”
“Why not tell me the yes first, and then we move on from there?”
“There’s a dragon in the family crest.”
“Okay, that’s a start. And the no?”
“The dragon’s there because we’re dragons.”
I blink. I blink again. We’re going around in circles and I’m pretty sure that I’m going insane. “Okay, walk me through this again.”
“I feel like it’d be easier to just show you.”
“Okay, then. Go on.”
He rolls his eyes like I’m the one being an insane weirdo. “Not inside. It’s a little cramped.”
I try to imagine the dragon I’d seen outside, sitting inside the foyer of the mansion. It might fit, just barely. But only just.
“Okay, then. Outside. Let’s see it.”
“This way, then.”
I follow him. It’s easier to let him feel like he’s going to convince me, I think. But I mean, if he managed to convince me, then that would be something, too, right?
He steps out onto the lawn. It’s got a thick tear where something tore up the sod. But I can already hear, off in the distance, the sound of machines working on the lawn. They’ll get here before too long, and then the gouge will be gone, as if it had never been there in the first place.
“Ready?”
I nod. “Sure. Knock me out.”
He shrugs, strips off his shirt. Then he strips off his pants, too. With one foot, he hooks under them and kicks the garments away with an easy motion. Then his underwear, too. He’s standing completely nude in front of me, and to my absolute bafflement, he doesn’t look like it’s weird at all.
Then the air around him ripples with heat, and there’s a flash of light, too bright to see anything at all. A flash that I strongly believe comes from inside him, but it’s over in a second. I squeeze my eyes shut tight, and when I open them again, things are blurry as all hell, but I know one thing for sure. There’s a very, very big lizard sitting in front of me, and he’s very, very dangerous.
I wish I could say that I was brave and stood there, examining him. But I turn, run away, and make it about four steps before I find the dragon darting in front of me, blocking the way.
The dragon seems to shift for a moment. It’s still hard to see, the brightness of an instant before still blinding my eyes even in the full brightness of day. Then he disappears in another mirage of heat and there’s a man standing in front of me.
A man with high, prominent cheekbones, hair manicured considerably less than it had been before this, and a cock that I’d tasted a dozen times before this. And just like he’d been three seconds earlier, he was completely nude.
“How’s that?”
My mouth opened and then closed again.
“So you believe me now?”
“What the fuck? How could you keep this from me?”
“It didn’t seem important at the time.”
“Oh, good. That makes up for it, then. No problem! It’s no big deal!”
“It’s a family thing, and it’s a secret family thing.”
“Okay, well, maybe before you took me to meet your secret dragon family, you could have warned me!”
“I mean… maybe you could have told me that you were marked.”
He pointed at the diamond on his hip. A diamond that matched my birth-mark almost perfectly.
“Marked? That’s a birth mark. It’s nothing. I’ve had it since forever, and it never meant anything.”
“It’s like a brand. Marks dragons. It’s the surest way to know.”
“Well at least it’s out of the way,” I laugh. “That’s good.”
“I’m serious. It’s a big deal.”
“So, what? Now this is like, an incest thing? You’re like my cousin or something?”
“No,” he said. “It’s genetic, sure. But it’s probably a connection, like, ten generations ago. Plus, you’re only half-dragon, so it’s really not the same thing.”
“Oh, good.” I laugh again. I don’t want to laugh, of course; yet, when I try to stop, it doesn’t come out that way. I laugh a third time.
“So is this, like, a deal breaker?”
“Uh…” I laugh. I wish I could stop, but my body burps out another laugh as if it’s committed to proving to me that I’ve got no control over it. “I guess not. If you’re not crazy, then I guess not.”
He lets out a breath. “You thought I was crazy?”
Then he sets about getting his clothes from the ground, pulling them on as he picks them up until he looks almost the same as he had, except for being a little more rumpled.
“I mean, for a minute, yeah.”
“Does that mean you’re going to stay?”
“Nia’s not going to like this.”
>
“Fuck what Nia wants.”
I smile at that, in spite of myself. I ought to be more charitable. But I’m not going to be. I can be as charitable as a toad, and there’s nothing anyone can say about it.
“You always know exactly what I want to hear.”
18
I’m more than willing to put a happy face on for everyone. I’m even happy to pretend to be more comfortable than I am about the whole dragon thing. It’s weird, and I think that’s a normal thing to think when your boyfriend, a guy who took you to meet his parents after only a couple short months, reveals that he’s a dragon, that it’s going to take some time to come to terms with it.
Nothing wrong with it, right? Right.
I let out a long breath. I just wish I knew what I was supposed to think about it, now.
There’s a brief moment where I start to feel my brain cracking under the weight of it all. He’s got the same birthmark as me. That sounds super genetic. SUPER genetic.
Then again, Anatoly had known right away. Like he could smell it on me or something. At the thought, I sniff my shirt, as if that’s going to tell me something. It smells the same as always: like lavender. Like my lavender laundry detergent.
I need to go back into the house, of course. I need to let them talk to me, let them try to calm me down. I need to pretend that it’s working, too, which is going to be the real challenge. I force a smile onto my face for practice, until my cheeks hurt.
Then again, I’d already come in here to use the bathroom, and if I come back ten minutes later without even flushing the toilet, it’s going to be suspicious.
So I wait a little longer, because that seems like a good excuse not to go back yet. It’s snooping, but I have to wonder all of a sudden. Medically, what’s up with dragons?
Does a dragon need painkillers? Do they take antidepressants? Do they have heart medication? I’m sitting in one of the five bathrooms in the house. It’s as good a place to keep medicine as any. Particularly since this is the one right by the boys’ rooms.
So I open up the medicine cabinet. Nothing. There’s a handful of toothbrushes and a few razors for shaving.
