by Amira Rain
We were soon heading out of Everett, starting on the narrow dirt road that would take us a few miles up the hill to the memorial site. Chet said that he’d constructed it so far up because he’d wanted Brianna and Nicky’s spirits to have “a full view of our beautiful town.”
He then paused, clearing his throat. “That probably sounds idiotic, I know. If there really is life after death, their spirits are in heaven, or in the graveyard in Georgia, or maybe even someplace else…maybe in the park Nicky loved to play in so much.
But I just feel like maybe if some little part of their spirits can move…and if they can sense that I built a memorial for them…then maybe part of their spirits can always exist up here on the hill, with all the pretty pines and evergreens, which Brianna loved.”
Heart aching for Chet, I glanced over at him, trying to smile. “I think that’s a beautiful idea.”
In the backseat, Tommy had perked up from his sleepiness, and he know chimed in. “Me, too. So…bootifurl.”
Chet actually didn’t stop the car and put it in park until we were maybe three miles up the hill and unable to go any further, because the dirt road was completely grown over. Whatever it had originally been used as an access road for, apparently this high up, it hadn’t been used in years.
Looking around, I couldn’t see any signs of a memorial, and I asked Chet where it was. “Will it be far to walk? I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to go in these wedge sandals.”
“Oh, it’s not far at all. And I hate to ask, but would you mind leaving your phone in the car? It’s just that I think of this as a place of peace for Brianna and Nicky, and I just don’t want there to be any phones ringing or buzzing or anything like that.”
I wondered why I couldn’t just turn my phone to silent, but it seemed like it would be insensitive or rude to point this out, so I just agreed.
“Of course. I’ll just leave it here in the car.”
I soon got out, lifted Tommy out of his car seat, and then waved to Mark, who was sitting in his car behind us. He waved back, then opened a newspaper, and I turned to Chet.
“Well, should we start out?”
Carrying Tommy, it was a few minutes later that I realized that it seemed like there should have been some kind of a path leading back to the memorial, if Chet had visited at least more than once to build it. As it was, we were currently picking our way over fallen branches and other debris that I would have thought he would have cleared away if he’d finished building the memorial any time recently.
I was just about to inquire regarding this when we came to a sort of a clearing in the middle of the dense forestland. And it wasn’t a clearing how I would have thought of one in Michigan, like something more like a prairie or a meadow, but it was at least a clearing in the sense that it was a good-sized break in the trees.
Looking around but still not seeing any wooden crosses or other signs of a memorial, I turned to Chet with the hairs on the back of my neck rising for some reason. “Are we here?”
Chet didn’t answer, but someone suddenly behind me did.
“Yeah, we’re here. Don’t move.”
It was Mark’s voice, and something was now pressing into my back, right between my shoulder blades.
“One single move, and I’ll shoot you dead.”
Tommy immediately began whining, burying his face in my shoulder, and I shushed him, feeling as if my knees might literally give out at any second.
“It’s okay, baby.”
Chet took a few steps closer to me. “It will be, if you just cooperate. It’s simple. I’m going to shift into dragon form, and you’re going to get on my back with Tommy. Then, I’m going to fly the two of you off to Darkwood before the commander even knows you’re missing.
Then, our boss, Cameron Asher, will exchange you for the commander, who he’ll kill, before taking over the FDS. Then, Mark and I will get our reward of states of our own once the Midwest of the United States in conquered. All make sense? It actually doesn’t even have to. You just have to get on my damn back and shut the hell up.”
Petrified, I couldn’t find my voice right away, and when I could, it came out with a noticeable tremor. “You don’t have to do this, Chet. Think about Brianna and Nicky, and what they’d think. They’d be so heartbroken and disgusted-“
“Oh, they were never real.” Giving his head a little shake, Chet snorted. “I picked that picture up on the side of the road in Atlanta one day, cooked up the story and got laid with it a few times, then decided to keep the picture as a good luck charm. Glad I did. Now, get ready to hop on my back. One second.”
While sweat snaked its way down the back of my neck despite the fact that the day was sunny but not warm, Chet turned, jogged maybe twenty feet away, and then shifted into dragon form within a blink. Immediately, I felt Mark’s gun pushing me.
“Move. Start walking.”
“No hurt Mama.”
“Tommy, be quiet.’
He’d lifted his face from my shoulder and was now glaring at Mark over my shoulder. “No hurt Mama. Bad, bad man.”
In reality, everything that happened next took place in the span of several seconds, though to me, they were seconds that each somehow felt like years.
Tommy’s ‘light show’ nearly blinded me. Something knocked me over. I blinked once, then twice, before I saw that what had knocked me over had been my own toddler son. Who was now in dragon form, dark and scaly, maybe half the size of a compact car. Eyes wide, he was just standing, appearing completely frozen.
Thinking about everything later, I’d realize that me hearing Mark’s gun go off was actually something that had happened between Tommy’s ‘light show’ and him accidentally knocking me over by shifting. However, at the time, I kind of heard the gunshot only as an echo in the back of my mind once I was already on the ground.
It didn’t appear that Tommy had been shot, and I didn’t hurt anywhere. Mark just stood holding the gun, eyes wide, looking at something in the distance, and he was saying something, though at the time, language wasn’t really registering.
“Oh, God. Oh, God, Chet move. Chet?”
Finally, still not completely understanding Mark’s words and how they might relate to the gunshot, I turned my head, following Mark’s line of vision, and saw Chet in dragon form, sprawled in the dirt. One of his pale blue eyes was open, and the other wasn’t, but it wasn’t closed, either. It was just gone. It was as if the bullet had exploded in it.
It was realizing that Chet was dead that finally made time snap back to normal for me. Now Tommy and I had Mark to deal with, before he shot us both.
*
“Tommy, fly! Flap your wings like Daddy!”
As a mom, I’d had to learn to multi-task, although I’d never multi-tasked like how I was currently doing. Even while I’d been speaking, I’d been engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Mark, after having tackled him to the ground, knocking the gun from his hand.
At first, seeming to have had the benefit of his shock about what he’d done to Chet, I’d gained the upper hand, smashing my fist into Mark’s face repeatedly, how someone might bang their fist on a table. Not ever having punched anyone before, this had just been my instinct of how to do it, even though in the back of my mind, it didn’t feel quite right. And after a few blows, Mark started punching back beneath me, trying to roll me off.
Having the advantage of being above him, I dodged his blows, then punched him square in the nose, and this time, the “right way.” Groaning, with blood now flowing from his nose, he paused in his assault on me, and I yelled at Tommy again.
“Fly, Tommy! Flap your wings! Go up in the sky and make fire so Daddy sees!”
Since he’d shifted, he’d appeared to be frozen solid, but he now suddenly flapped his wings and began lifting into the sky.
“Yes, baby! That’s it!”
Catching me off-guard, Mark clipped the side of my head with a blow that was thankfully pretty weak. I immediately punched him back, first wit
h a right, then with a left, thinking that I was going to have to eventually knock him out.
I was completely forgetting that he was a shifter. Maybe in his shock about Chet, and then in the surprise of my assault, even he’d forgotten. Because I was able to punch him several more times before he suddenly shifted, knocking me up and then off him while he did so, sending me rolling in the dirt.
Knowing he might try to go for Tommy, I jumped to my feet and charged him without a second thought, grabbing one of his wings the moment I reached him. Bellowing, he instantly shook me off, though, then lifted into the sky, where my precious little dragon boy was already circling, breathing a fairly weak, but still very visible stream of fire.
“Tommy, look! Big dragon coming! Fly away from him!”
Panic-stricken, I was sure Tommy probably couldn’t even hear me.
“Fly away, baby!”
However, whether he could hear me or not, he suddenly began zipping away just as Mark neared him, maybe having seen Mark out of the corner of his eye.
“That’s it, baby! Go fast!”
He was fast. Incredibly fast. Whether because of his relatively tiny size for a dragon, or whether because he was just naturally speedy, he was already far enough away from Mark, speeding toward the valley, and Mark’s jets of fire couldn’t even touch him.
“Keep going, Tommy!”
But then, suddenly, I couldn’t see him anymore because a line of tall pines was blocking my view of that patch of sky.
I’d seen enough, though, and I knew I’d done all I could do. Taking off at a sprint, I began heading back through the forest to the cars, knowing that Chet always left his unlocked with the keys in the ignition. My only thought now was getting back down to the valley to alert everyone to give Tommy backup just in case Chet caught up with him.
However, by the time I reached the center of town, where the council hall was located, it appeared to be all over. I saw several dozen dragons in the skies, many of them above the hill I just left, as if maybe they were looking for me, but I didn’t see Tommy’s tiny dragon form or anyone else fighting with a dragon that looked like Chet. In the parking lot adjacent to the hall, a large crowd was gathered around something that appeared to be a massive dragon carcass. There was also a large crowd out front, and I slammed on the brakes, threw the car in park, and flew out, yelling.
“Tommy! Where’s my baby?”
Making a sort of collective gasp, the crowd parted, and someone yelled back at me.
“Alyssa!”
It was Gavin’s voice, and after more people got out of the way, I saw him. Cradling Tommy, he was now running toward me.
“Alyssa!”
Both running, we just about crashed into each other. Tommy lifted a tear-stained face from Gavin’s shoulder.
“Mama!”
Gavin wrapped us both in his arms, rocking us, and spoke in a low voice near my ear. “Mark’s dead. I saw him chasing Tommy, and I got him.”
With tears streaming down my face, I nodded. “Chet’s dead, too. Mark got him. I think we can finally live our happily-ever-after now, though. I don’t think there was anyone else in on their plan. It was just them. Now we can all be happy and safe.”
Sniffling, Tommy nodded. “Yeah.”
Now crying harder, I lifted my head from Gavin’s shoulder and cradled Tommy’s face in my hands. “You were so fast and brave, baby. You saved mommy. You led the bad man away.”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah. Mama helped. Mama hit bad man. Daddy hit bad gagrin. Daddy go ‘Boom!’ on bad gagrin. Daddy big gagrin.”
About a month later, after we’d put Tommy to bed, Gavin led me out to the ballroom, which, to my astonishment, was lit with at least a thousand lavender votive candles in clear glass domes. Lavender was my favorite color. Some of the candles, several thousand of them, formed the outline of a heart in the center of the ballroom. Atop the marble pillars that lined the walls, hundreds and hundreds of lavender and pink roses sat in crystal vases.
Almost speechless, I asked Gavin what was going on, even though I kind of already had a clue. He didn’t answer me, though, just continued leading me through the ballroom until we were in the center of the heart. There, he dropped to one knee, produced a dazzling diamond ring, and asked me to marry him.
Crying, I said yes. Just slightly misty himself, he slid the ring on my finger, telling me I’d made him the happiest man alive.
It was only a few minutes later, when we stood embracing, that I realized I had a question for him, and I lifted my face from his shoulder.
“Gavin? I want to marry you no matter what, but I just want to know. Would you have still asked me to marry you if we hadn’t had Tommy?”
Gavin’s expression became one of complete sincerity and tenderness, maybe mixed with just a touch of amusement. “Let me put it this way…I almost asked you to marry me that first night on the Ferris wheel. And I’m only half-joking about this.”
Smiling, I put my head back on his chest. “That was all I needed to hear.”
That summer, DJ and Mandy came for the wedding, then took care of Tommy in the mansion for a week while Gavin and I toured Canada, and then spent a weekend in Paris, on our honeymoon. The day they’d arrived in the FDS, DJ and Mandy had had a big surprise for Tommy, telling him that he was going to have a baby girl cousin in about five months. They’d asked Tommy if he had any name suggestions, and he’d come up with “cute potato.”
When Gavin and I returned home, Mandy and I watched while Gavin, DJ, and Tommy prepared to play a game of “bee-ball” in the yard. Except that Tommy now called it baseball. He also pronounced DJ’s name properly, too.
While Gavin and DJ set out the bases, Tommy, in dragon form, soared high above the yard, doing little flips and spins. He was still the youngest dragon ever to fully shift, by about fourteen years.
When the game finally got underway, with all participants in human form, Mandy leaned back in her chair, virgin strawberry daiquiri in hand, smiling. “Ah, this is nice.”
Watching Gavin pitch a plastic baseball to Tommy, I nodded, suddenly misty. “It’s perfect.”
THE END
Message From The Author:
Thanks so much for reading all the way to the end, I really hope you enjoyed it. If you want to check out all my other books (including the bestselling MELTED series) then just check out my Amazon Page here! :)
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