by JL Bryan
“Are you giving them up, or am I fighting you for ‘em?” the elf asked.
“We’ll return them when we’re done,” Jason said.
“When do you figure that might be?” the elf asked.
“Whenever we’re done being rock stars,” Mitch said.
“Which we haven’t really started yet,” Dred added.
“A day or two?” the elf asked.
“Maybe a few years?” Erin said. “Not forever.”
“Years!” The elf spat on the ground. “You’ve got ten seconds.”
“Maybe we should give them back,” Jason suggested, but the other three told him to shut up.
“Three, two, and one,” the elf said. “Last chance.”
“We need these instruments,” Mitch said.
“Guess you made your choice,” the elf said. “Buttercake…go get ‘em, girl.”
The little unicorn pawed at the ground like a bull and lowered its head. It pointed its horn at each of them in turn.
“Okay,” Erin said, “That is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m taking a picture.” She took out her phone.
The unicorn charged. She grew larger with every step, turning into a full-size horse, and then a giant horse the size of rhinoceros. Her pink horn grew into a long spike, and sharp barbs of horn curled out all over its surface.
A double row of pink spikes grew out through her mane and continued all the way down her back. Pink armor plates formed over her ribs and joints.
The huge, beastly unicorn opened its mouth and blew out a wide plume of fire. Its horn pointed right at Mitch as it charged.
“Not so cute!” Erin screamed.
Everyone backed away except Dred, who dropped to her knees by her drum case and flipped it open. She set the snare drum on the ground and pounded it with both fists.
The ground beneath them quaked, and shock waves rippled toward the unicorn, shattering asphalt and concrete like they were glass. Dred’s van bounced up and down, and the elf was knocked flat on his back. He fought to regain his balance, but each time he tried to stand, another shock wave toppled him again.
The massive, armored unicorn kept charging forward against the shock waves, but she began to stumble and stagger back. She let out an annoyed snort, and then two huge flaps of skin peeled away from her sides. They formed into pink, leathery bat wings. She leaped into the air and climbed high above them in the alley, beating her wings and blowing another jet of fire.
Dred stopped playing. “Are you guys going to help?” she asked. “Mitch, make a little storm or something!”
“Uh, okay…” Mitch took the fairy keyboard from its case and knelt in front of it. The device took no electricity at all—it ran on some kind of magic. Mitch stretched his fingers above the keys, but then he hesitated.
Above them, the unicorn twisted in tight circles just above the alley. It was growing even larger, its body longer and snakelike, the pink armor plates sprouting everywhere. Its cloven hooves cracked, split and unfolded into thick pink talons.
It turned again, and they saw the unicorn’s face had become thick, wide and reptilian. Two golden horns had grown out on either side of the spiky pink ones. It let out a deep, earthy roar that shook the streetlights. The unicorn had become a pink and gold dragon.
“Hurry!” Dred shouted to Mitch.
“I can’t think of what to play!” Mitch said.
“Something about rain, maybe?” Erin suggested. She blew on her harmonica, and a breeze swept through the alley.
Mitch played the melody for the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again.” A huge, dense blue cloud filled the upper reaches of the alley, blocking their view of the dragon. A heavy downpour began immediately.
Jason knelt in the street, trying to pry open his guitar case. One of the latches was stuck. He must have closed it carelessly in the rush to pack up their things. He kept looking up at the sky through the rain, wondering where the dragon would reappear.
“Mitch, a storm!” Dred shouted. “Not just a little rain! Not even purple rain!”
Mitch switched over to a classical song. “Tchaikovsky,” he said. “Number Five.”
“Whatever!” Dred said.
The clouds filling the alley swelled and turned black. Balls of lightning bounced and crackled between the buildings, and the rain turned to hard, pelting hail.
The pink dragon came barreling down through the clouds, its jaws aimed right at Erin’s head, as if it was following the sound of her harmonica.
Erin looked up and saw the pink reptilian face rushing down at her through the blinding rain and hail. She didn’t see the big claw coming up behind her, the talon extended to hook through her as if the dragon planned to pick her up by her rib cage.
“Erin!” Jason yelled. He dove behind her, blocking the dragon’s foot. One huge claw ripped diagonally across his back, slashing him open. He tumbled to the pavement with Erin in his arms. Her harmonica skittered away through the falling ice. Erin pulled free of him and crawled after it.
The dragon’s claw turned Jason over on his back. Its maw breathed smoldering hot air in his face, and it glared at him with dark, angry eyes.
For some reason, all he could say was, “You’re a unicorn.”
The dragon’s head curled back and its jaw widened, and it looked ready to bite his head off.
Erin blew a long, deep note on her harmonica, blowing a stiff wind up into one of the dragon’s wings. The dragon tilted over to one side, and Erin threw herself across Jason so she could blow wind into both its wings at the same time.
The dragon’s wings acted like sails, lifting the dragon high into the air. The tip of one claw cut Jason’s ear and scratched along his head as the dragon soared out of reach.
The black clouds lashed the dragon with hail and lightning as it twisted and roared above them, jetting out a stream of fire. It started fighting its way down against the wind.
Jason crawled to his case and pulled at the jammed latch again. Then he turned the case on its side and bashed it against the street, breaking the latch altogether. The case fell open, and he caught his guitar by the neck as it tumbled toward the pavement.
Jason stood up, squinting against the rain as he found the bright shape of the dragon wriggling in and out of the swirling black clouds. He began to play. His guitar still felt hot, still charged up from the concert.
The rain turned to steam around him, and he played faster and harder as the dragon clawed its way down towards them.
He felt again the heat building all around him. He wanted to hit the dragon with all the power the guitar had. He kept playing, switching to the guitar riff from “Light My Fire” as if to really drive the point home. The guitar wasn’t doing the work for him now. Jason had to make this happen himself.
He played until the air around him was scorching hot. The dragon managed to fold in its wings, and it dove straight for Erin.
Jason struck all six strings and released the heat bubble, with the face of his guitar pointed directly at the dragon. A giant fireball raced away from him, punching a wormhole of steam through the sheets of falling hail.
It struck the dragon and ignited, casting off blazing comets that sliced up the black clouds.
The dragon roared as the flames swept over it and engulfed its entire body. It plummeted towards them.
Jason dropped his guitar and grabbed Erin’s hand, and they ran away together, toward the huge crowd of fans that had gathered behind the club and now gaped at the burning dragon falling towards the street.
The dragon’s colossal body crashed to the ground, sending a wave of the shattered asphalt high into the air. Jason and Erin toppled over, and so did most of the gathered crowd.
The flames slowly twisted into dark smoke, as did the dragon body itself, leaving a dark heap of pink smoke behind. The stormclouds began to break up, and shafts of neon light from the Fleet Farm billboard above crept into the alley.
Jason helped Erin to her feet. Mitch and Dred
sat up nearby—they’d run, too, abandoning their instruments. Everybody was covered in smoldering pink soot.
A tiny unicorn horn tumbled down through the smoke and clinked against the asphalt.
The audience burst into applause and whistles. Mitch waved, nodding, soaking it up.
Erin looked back at the drift of pink ash snowing down over their instruments. Then she looked at Jason.
“So…did we just kill a dragon?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“That’s more excitement than I expected in Minneapolis.” She frowned and touched his cheek. “It got you pretty bad, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, how’s it look?” Jason turned around so she could where the dragon claw had raked his back. When he faced her again, she looked like she would burst into tears.
“Jason, I was talking about your ear,” she said. “I didn’t know about that.”
“I got it when I saved your life from that dragon,” he said. “Remember that?”
“I think I do.” Erin stood on her tiptoes and gave him a long kiss.
“Buttercake!” the elf’s voice wailed.
The rough-looking elf with the impossibly long name knelt in the pink ash, clutching the unicorn horn and weeping. “Poor, sweet Buttercake!” he cried.
Grizlemor strolled out from behind a dented trashcan, looking shocked.
“You beat the dragon?” the goblin asked Jason.
“Yeah,” Jason said. “By the way, nice job mentioning that unicorns turn into dragons. Before you ran off.”
“I thought everyone knew that,” Grizlemor said.
“Now I’ll have to take her back to the swamp and regrow her!” the elf cried, waving the horn at them. “I hope you’re happy!” He turned and ran away into the dissolving pink smoke.
“Should we go catch that elf?” Jason asked.
“If you don’t, he’ll be able to tell the fairies about you,” Grizlemor said.
Jason and Erin pursued the elf down to a sewer grate at the end of the alley. He slipped into the drain under the sidewalk, an opening much too narrow for either of them to follow him. They heard his footsteps splash away.
“I can’t even think about chasing him,” Erin said. “I’m about to collapse.”
“Me, too.”
They walked back up the alley together.
Mitch and Dred were busy with the crowd, who advanced further into the alley now, taking pictures and begging for autographs.
“I wonder if that dragon will be all over YouTube tomorrow,” Erin said.
“It’d make a great video,” Jason said. “Maybe you should write a song about it.”
“Maybe you should,” Erin replied. She squeezed his hand, then went to check on Mitch and Dred. The fans flooded around Jason, hugging him and taking pictures. He felt dazed, but he managed to smile.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
They dusted off their instruments and managed to drive away as the fire department arrived. Dred’s van rode uneven and bumpy now, after being quaked hard by her drum, but it still drove.
They were quiet as they made their way out of Minneapolis. Mitch played the Rolling Stones on the stereo, and Dred didn’t stop him.
“Dragonslayers,” Grizlemor said, shaking his head. He sat on the heap of pink-dusted instrument cases behind them. “Queen Mab will have a new respect for you. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
“I told you guys the fairies were nothing to worry about,” Jason said.
“You call getting attacking by a giant candy dragon nothing to worry about?” Dred asked.
“Grizlemor,” Mitch said. “I’d like to ask you a few things.”
“Such as?”
“Things about being a goblin, basically.”
“Ah. I happen to be a learned scholar on the subject.” Grizlemor puffed his way from the back of the van to the front. He sat on the dashboard, dangling his feet while he answered Mitch and Dred’s questions about goblins, fairies, elves and unicorn-dragons.
“How’s your back?” Erin asked Jason. “Shouldn’t we go to a hospital?”
“Nope, I’m fine. It’s just a scratch.” A diagonal streak of pain burned across his back where the dragon had clawed him. It did hurt, but he didn’t want to complain. He wanted to get home.
Jason and Erin looked at each other, smiling. He took her hand, and she let him hold it for a minute. Then she slowly pulled away and gazed at the night outside her window. Her reflection showed a confused look. She would be thinking about her boyfriend, the one who was too busy shooting a German pizzeria commercial to see her first show.
But she had kissed him, and Jason knew she didn’t hate him. Far from it.
Jason closed his eyes. Despite the aching wound in his back, he gradually dozed off as he rode home, and he dreamed of fairies, and of music, and of Erin.
THE END
Watch for Fairy Blues (Songs of Magic, #2) in December 2011.
Find more J.L. Bryan books on Smashwords
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.L. Bryan studied English literature at the University of Georgia and at Oxford, with a focus on the English Renaissance and the Romantic period. He also studied screenwriting at UCLA. He enjoys remixing elements of paranormal, supernatural, fantasy, horror and science fiction into new kinds of stories. He is the author of The Paranormals trilogy (Jenny Pox, Tommy Nightmare, and Alexander Death), the biopunk sf novel Helix, and other works. Fairy Metal Thunder is the first book in his new Songs of Magic series. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Christina, one baby, two dogs, two cats, and assorted attic squirrels. His website is http://jlbryanbooks.com. You can also follow on him on Twitter or Facebook.
An Excerpt from Beautiful Demons by Sarra Cannon
BEAUTIFUL DEMONS is Book One of the Peachville High Demons Series.
In Peachville, even the cheerleaders have a dark side…
Harper Madison isn’t like other girls. She has extraordinary powers, but her inability to control them has gotten her kicked from so many foster homes she’s lost count. Shadowford Home is her last chance, and she hopes Peachville High will be the fresh start she needs. But when evidence ties her to the gruesome murder of a Demons cheerleader, Harper discovers this small town has a big secret.
This is Your Last Chance
Six foster homes in one year had to be some kind of record. I ran my sapphire pendant along the silver chain around my neck and looked out at the pine trees zooming past. Where would they send me next?
“I don’t know what got into you, Harper,” Mrs. Meeks said. Her hair shot out every which way and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. The call to come pick me up probably came in after she’d gone to bed for the night. “I can’t keep doing this.”
I eyed her. Was she passing me off to another case worker? Mrs. Meeks had been there with me from the beginning. Since the fire. I didn’t want her to abandon me now.
“It was an accident,” I said. I sat up straight in my seat and studied her tired face. I needed her to believe me.
“An accident?” she said. Her voice took on the shrill tone I had come to expect from her. “Mrs. Sanders said you threw a lamp at her. How could that have been an accident, Harper?”
“I didn’t exactly throw it,” I said. I bit my lip. How could I possibly explain it to Mrs. Meeks? Or anyone for that matter? One second I was arguing with Mrs. Sanders about a party she wouldn’t let me go to and the next, well, everything in the room that wasn’t nailed down was floating three inches in the air. “It just sort of-”
“Sort of what? Threw itself.” Her face contorted into an angry grimace. She didn’t believe me.
I sank into the leather seat and sighed. No one ever believed me. Instead, they called me names like ‘witch‘ and ‘freak‘.
“Harper,” she said, her voice softening. “I’ve always tried to place you in the very best foster homes in the city. Places where I thought they would try to understand your…” She searched for the word. “Your unique issues. Bu
t this is the sixth foster home you’ve been kicked out of this year. And with your history.” She glanced over at me and sighed heavily. “It’s getting harder and harder to place you.”
My history.
I leaned my forehead against the window and felt the cool glass against my skin. After everything I’d done, it made sense that no one wanted me. I closed my eyes and remembered the beautiful porcelain skin of my adopted mother, Jill. I never meant to hurt anyone, especially not her.
“At this point, there’s no other choice,” Mrs. Meeks said.
I opened my eyes and looked over at her. In the light from the dashboard, she looked old. Worried. Angry. A wave of nausea rolled over me.
“No other choice than what?”
She looked over and patted my leg with her hand. Not a good sign.
“I’m taking you to a place called Shadowford Home,” she said. “It’s in a town south of here. Peachville. And the woman who runs it is well known for taking in girls who are struggling in the regular system. Girls like you.”
There are no girls like me, I thought. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Peachville is a small community. Very different from Atlanta. I think it’ll be a good place for you. Atlanta is just too big. Too full of opportunities to get in trouble or get mixed up with the wrong crowd.” She pulled the car off the interstate. From the looks of it, we were in the middle of nowhere. “But I have to be completely honest with you, Harper. If you can’t make it work at Shadowford, I’ll have no choice but to take you to juvenile detention until you turn eighteen.”
I sat up. “What? You can’t be serious.”
A home for troubled girls was bad enough. I certainly didn’t belong in juvie. I’d known people who had gone to the one in Atlanta. It was practically like prison for teens. Constant supervision. No freedom. Strict rules. My entire body tensed just thinking about it.
