by Tammy Turner
“Sit,” she told him, patting the top of the bar stool next to her.
Obeying, Kraven propped against the seat and threw the folded paper to the countertop. Unfolding the creases, Alexandra recognized her sketch of a dragon.
“But I threw this away,” she said. Kraven flipped over the paper in her hands.
The paper showed the beginning of his letter to her. But the letter had been crossed out. A single word remained bold and large across the page.
“Iselin,” she read slowly. She looked up to meet Kraven’s expectant gaze.
“Would you like to see my wings?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, turning her head and patting her waist, “not on an empty stomach.”
Setting a wide plate in front of her, Callahan piled strips of crispy bacon and runny yellow eggs atop the white porcelain. Plunging her fork at the feast, Alexandra ate ravenously, grease slipping from her lips down her chin.
Sliding a paper napkin toward her across the counter, Callahan smirked proudly. “Slow down, my dear. I don’t want you to choke.”
“Should we offer the beast upstairs a final meal?” Kraven asked Callahan.
Callahan shook his head no and laid a plate in front of Kraven on the countertop.
“I think we should keep him around a little while, rather like a pet,” Callahan mused.
“Who’s going to house train him?” Alexandra asked, grinning and wiping her mouth.
“I shall,” Kraven offered, standing from the stool to stretch his back. A sharp burning radiated from between his shoulder blades. “Will you excuse me?” he muttered, stooping in pain as he fled the kitchen.
Once in the backyard, he ripped his tattered black t-shirt from his flesh and spread his legs. From the kitchen window, Callahan stared in awe while a pair of red wings, stretched taut over bone and muscle, arched majestically from Kraven’s back and stretched toward the rising sun.
Next to Callahan, the crack of the wooden screen door broke his awestruck trance. He saw that Alexandra had gone outside. In the damp grass, Alexandra slipped and fell but was caught in Kraven’s arms. The ancient oaks and towering cypress trees fencing the yard concealed their embrace.
Wrapping his wings around their bodies, Kraven whispered to Alexandra, “The battle is over for now. But,” he warned, “you must be strong if you accept me into your life.”
Alexandra gazed deeply into his sober eyes and squeezed his body tightly against her own. His fiery skin melted against hers as she murmured soft words against his pounding chest.
“I’m ready,” she promised. The first beams of a dazzling sunrise filtered across her freckled face through the trees. “I am prepared for whatever the future may hold with you.”
Reality tugged at the edges of her thoughts. Feed Jack. Walk Jack. Call Mom. Tell Mom I spent the night reading and ordered a pizza.
Alexandra shooed her responsibilities aside for a moment and laid her head against Kraven’s chest. His skin felt so warm. She thought that she could melt into his body and be one with him forever.
“Forever,” Callahan whispered into his cell phone in the kitchen.
“Speak up!” the Scotsman demanded through the receiver.
“I said forever,” Callahan repeated. “This time-walker, Kraven—he just promised to his princess bride that he would love her forever.” He watched Alexandra and Kraven embrace through the screen door of his back porch. “They are together finally,” he said.
“Can you provide evidence of this time-walker?” the Scotsman implored.
“As you command, sir. I shall try—somehow, some way. But I assure you, on my honor, he is the dragon king.”
Callahan put down the phone. The promise of a new day, a new adventure, swelled in his hopeful heart.
Epilogue
Through the raised attic window, the smell of saltwater and boggy mud wafted toward June. She scrutinized the round figure trolling the hurricane-battered beach beyond the sand dunes that buffered the backyard of Peyton Manor from the churning Atlantic seaboard.
“Good riddance!” June cried at the woman on the beach as she slammed down the glass pane. Raising a hammer and nail to the window frame, she pounded with all of her strength, the walls of the attic shaking around her. “Try coming in here now,” she shouted, gasping as she rocked from the exertion.
On the beach, Jasmine cackled to herself while she strolled along the deserted, driftwood-strewn sand. While the fingers of her left hand gripped a tobacco pipe, in her right hand she carried a red sand pail, faded and warped by the sun in the long years since Alexandra had erected her mighty castles on the beach. At her shuffling bare feet, a solid-white wolf pup with emerald-green eyes tugged tenderly against his mistress’s flowing skirt.
Spying a crab scurrying across the sand, the pup chased the frightened creature into a hollow driftwood log and tugged at its claws.
“Dat me boy,” Jasmine said as the pup dragged the crab from the log. Shaking his head furiously from side to side, the pup’s bite shattered the crab’s red-and-white shell.
Smiling to herself, Jasmine tipped the red pail. To the sand spilled a weathered plastic dinosaur and a weary blond doll. “Dat Cyrus!” she muttered to the pup, stroking his thick, white fur, “He dun gone too long. Him dead to me.”
Gathering bits of driftwood and sea grass at her feet, she piled the kindling into a pyre. She balanced the blond doll and dinosaur delicately on top. Striking a match against the log, she lit her pipe, a puff of smoke rising into the air before she held the match to the pile of dry tinder. While orange flames licked at the plastic toys, Jasmine and her pup howled together at the sun breaking across the horizon in the harbor.
“Dat girl!” Jasmine cried fiercely at the seagulls gathering overhead. “Dat girl tole me book, and only dat devil heself can stop me from takin’ it back.”
Continue this story with Book 2 of the Spitfire Series, The End of Never:
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