First Cursed [Diablo Falls]

by Fiona Starr

  “Thank you, I do try.”

  I run through it to see if it feels right. “So instead of breaking my magic and making true love the cure, Marissa cast a spell that would bring my true love to me? We know that love magic messes with everything until it’s resolved. It’s why love potions are such a pain in the ass.” I pace the floor. “But that means…”

  “Mazel tov,” Skip says. “You know where to send the wedding invitations.”

  My mouth falls open and I watch as Skip steps out the back door into the garden without a backward glance.

  JAMIE

  I decide to break camp after dinner. I can’t stay the night. My head’s all a jumble with thoughts about Hazel and I can barely think straight. I need to see her. While my dinner’s cooking, I use the time to pack everything away. Once the truck is loaded, I sit down and eat next to the fire.

  I’ve been thinking about Hazel nonstop since I got up this morning. Just thinking her name makes me smile. There’s something special about her—no doubt about that, and I’d like to spend more time with her, starting right away if she’ll let me.

  The full moon rises over the lake like a beacon, overpowering the light from the fire. I pour the contents of my kettle over the flames, careful to rake through the embers to be sure it’s out, before I secure the last of my camping supplies into a bin in the back of my truck.

  A rustling sound to my left gets my attention. I turn and watch for movement and finally see something shiny hiding in the trees. The hair on my neck and arms stands at attention. Something’s watching me. And it feels all kinds of wrong.

  “Hello?” I move my hand slowly to the opposite side of the truck bed until my fingers wrap around my wooden walking stick. I don’t have any real weapons out here, and my knife is packed away. I lift the stick out of the truck and turn toward the trees, holding it like a bat.

  The shiny thing moves as I move, facing me no matter which way I turn. I soft purring sound emanates from the shadows and I wonder if it’s a mountain lion.

  “All right. Come out if you’re coming.” I make my voice as big and as low as I can, hoping I’ll scare it away.

  When it charges me, I can barely track it’s movement. It’s about the size of a Rottweiler dog and it comes at me like a shiny missile. It pounces on my chest. I’m thrown off my feet. I drop my stick and land on my back with the thing on me.

  It’s like a giant lizard with huge golden eyes. I grab hold of it but the skin is smooth and it seems to wriggle out of my hands every time. It whips its long tail around and I run my hands over it as it passes. It has some kind of spike on the end that makes it easy to hold. I pull on the tail, trying to force the thing off me.

  The creature shrieks and claws, tearing through my abdomen and my side. When it sees my blood, it clamps a mouth down on my, sucking my skin.

  “Fuck!” The cuts hurt, and I know that I’m bleeding, but the creature’s saliva is like fire on my broken skin.

  Another creature crashes through the trees, this one much, much larger, though I can’t tell what it is since it’s staying under cover of shadow. The new arrival shrieks and the creature that’s attacking me freezes for a second before darting away. I lay still for a moment, listening for more animals, but it sounds like the larger one was chasing the smaller one and wants nothing to do with me.

  I move to my truck, and slide into the driver’s seat and realize my keys are no longer in my pocket. They must have fallen out when I fell. The pain is unreal, and I am losing a lot of blood. I need to get out of here and to the hospital quick.

  I slide out of the driver’s seat and hobble to the back of the truck, searching for my keys in the moonlight. The campsite is empty from me clearing it out, but the creature must have jumped through the fire pit as it left. Smoking embers and charred wood bits litter the ground. I get on my hands and knees, holding my abdomen while I try to search for my keys through the mess. It’s too much. I have no energy. I have to take a break.

  I roll onto my back and try to get a look at my injuries. My clothes are black with soot from rifling through the scattered embers. When bring my hands up, they are dripping with blood.

  HAZEL

  “There you go.” I open the gate to the garden entrance so my soaking wet dog doesn’t track water through the shop.

  “I vote to make night swims in the river part of our everyday routine,” Skip says.

  I smile that he’s speaking words again. “It was nice to cool my feet in the water. I’ll make more time for that. I promise.” I hang Skip’s leash on the hook and head inside to prepare a bowl of kibble for him. I scoop the dog food into the bowl and a vision comes over me.

  Jamie lies on a thick bed of pine needles. He’s in the forest… it’s night and he’s lying on his back, looking up at the full moon over the top of Devil’s Crown. He’s breathing heavy. Something stirs in the trees. There’s a low animal shriek. Jamie looks at his hand… oh my god, he’s bleeding. Something’s wrong with his side. He’s in pain. He scrabbles to his feet but he’s running out of strength, only manages to get on all fours. He crawls toward his truck, which is at least a dozen yards away. The growling grows more fierce, then another animal joins in. Something about them sounds different somehow—not entirely animal. I have to…

  I drop Skip’s bowl. It clangs noisily and rolls round and round as the kibble scatters across the floor.

  Jamie’s hurt. “Oh god. No.” I’m confused, trying to make sense of the vision. I thought I misread the one about him being in danger. I thought it was all a means to get us together and that the warning was all in my imagination. I don’t understand.

  Skip bumps my leg. “Hazel? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Jamie. I think. I…” I close my eyes and try to conjure the vision again but it’s no use. I have to pull it from memory, but after the ridiculous mistake I made last night, I don’t know what to think. Did I really see him in danger, or am I about to find him in the middle of…?

  I argue with myself, trying to rationalize the pull in my gut that tells me something’s very wrong. This isn’t how I felt last night. Last night I got a vision of him and it was alarming, but I didn’t feel this dread. Now that I think about it. I did feel this dread the first time, when I fainted.

  Oh my god. “There were two different visions!”

  “What does that mean?” Skip asks.

  I feel my throat tighten. “It means Jamie’s really in danger.” I grab my car keys and run out the door.

  When I arrive at the campsite, everything is dark, but Jamie’s truck is there. I hurry to the cab. His door is open but he isn’t inside. Then I hear a groan from the back of the truck.

  “Jamie?” I call out.

  “Here!”

  I hurry to him. He’s lying in the dirt, exactly as he was in the vision, only this time he’s really in pain. I check his body, knowing exactly where to look. His side has been torn open by something with very sharp claws.

  Oh god. “Someone tried to make ribbons out of you. Can you stand?”

  He nods and puts an arm over my shoulder. “Cant. Find. Keys.” He breathes the words through gritted teeth.

  “We’ll take my car. Don’t worry.”

  I belt him into the passenger seat and before I leave I place my hands over his wounds. I feel the healing magic rising in my belly and pushing out through my fingers. The energy is warm and the glow is green and gold, which tells me it’s working, but something isn’t right. I can’t stop the bleeding on my own.

  I reach into the back seat and grab a denim jacket and press it onto his wound. “Here, hold this. Keep pressure on it.”

  Diablo General Hospital sits in the center of town, a thankfully short drive once we’re out of the forest. I pull up to the ER and honk my horn once. A young female orderly races out, calls for a gurney and some help. Now that Jamie’s in the hands of the doctors and nurses, I feel like I can finally breathe.

  I explain to the nurses what I know, without tel
ling anyone I learned it from a vision, and watch as they wheel him away, unable to deny the crush in my heart as the distance between us grows. I am still trying to digest the idea that he’s my true love. How can anyone know that about him—or about me—before we know it for ourselves? That’s a big knot to untangle about magic and energy and knowing, and I don’t have the bandwidth for that tonight.

  I can say that the idea that he’s meant for me feels nice. I like him a great deal and I look forward to spending a lot more time with him, assuming he makes it though this. I drop into a chair in the waiting area and stare at the door they wheeled him through.

  “Don’t die. I just found you,” I whisper.

  Hours pass and I notice that everyone is tight-lipped about Jamie’s prognosis. I go to the desk and wave one of the nurses over; a girl I know from high school. “Hi, Lara.”

  Lara gets up from a computer and comes over to me. “Hey, Hazel. I just checked on Jamie. He’s going to be fine.”

  I look over my shoulder and lower my voice. “I noticed the doctors aren’t really talking about what might have attacked him. Have you heard anything?”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing official, but tonight’s the full moon. So… they are careful not to speculate until they can speak to… everyone.”

  “Everyone?” It takes a moment for her words to become clear. Then it hits me. “Oh god. The full moon. Shifters. I should have warned him to stay away from the lake!” Then another realization dawns. “Have you checked his wounds?”

  Lara takes my hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “Yes, we all have. I just checked them again myself. The gashes are pretty deep, but as far as I can tell, he’s only been clawed, no bite marks.”

  Relief floods my body. “Thank goodness. Can I go see him?”

  “Of course. They just administered a healing compound. So, he’s going to be out of it.”

  “I promise I won’t be long. I need to call his grandmother and I want to see him myself before I do that.”

  “I understand.” Lara smiles. “Tell Gertie I said hello. Tell her he’s going to be just fine.”

  The lights in Jamie’s room have been dimmed to let him sleep. He’s snoring gently as the healing compound works its magic. It isn’t widely known, but I know they use a drop of vampire blood to stop heavy bleeding when they need to, and I realize how grateful I am that Jamie is in Diablo Falls. If he were in a normal hospital… The gashes in his torso are deep enough that he might have bled to death, or had internal bleeding if he hadn’t been found in time.

  I move to his side and place my hand in the air a few inches over his wounds. A strange energy is coming off him and I can’t tell what’s causing it. I bend to get a closer look at the tears in his skin and I see the edges of the gashes appear to be twinkling in the light. I take out my phone and shine the flashlight onto the wound and sure enough, the edges of the torn flesh look like they’ve been dipped in blue-green glitter.

  “Excuse me.” A nurse leans in the door. “You shouldn’t be in here. Family only.”

  I feel like explaining to her that I am his true love and he is mine, but that won’t get me anywhere and I don’t have it in me to fight. “Sorry. I’ll go back to the waiting room.”

  I walk outside the hospital so I can use my cell phone and when I pull it out of my bag I see I’ve missed a couple of calls from Gertie. I tap her name and wait for her to answer.

  “Hazel! I had a vision. Can you believe Jamie was attacked by a dragon? How’s he doing?”

  My back straightens as I process what she just said. “Gertie? What? A dragon?”

  She’s breathy with excitement. “Yes! Well, a dragon shifter. I couldn’t believe it myself but since neither of you has seen fit to call me back, I did some research and you won’t believe the things went on before the dragon shifters were banished from Diablo Falls.”

  “Gertie… wait. You sound like you’re happy about this? Jamie could have died.”

  “Don’t be silly. You were watching over him. I knew you’d be there for him. Also, I have a theory about that so-called curse Marissa laid on you. I don’t think it’s a curse at all. But back to the dragons. Did you know they have their own special elixirs and spells? I’ve been trying to tap into the dragon realm for ages… ever since I ran into that dragon shifter, Rodney, years ago back in Vegas. Talk about a total scorcher, I still have a scar on my thigh from that man.”

  I listen to the old witch ramble on about dragons and shifters and ancient Diablo Falls history and realize that I’m smiling because if a wise witch like Gertie’s not worried, I have no reason to be either.

  Jamie’s going to be okay, and that means we’ll have time to find out if we’re really meant to be together.

  ** FIRST EPILOGUE **

  ONE MONTH LATER

  HAZEL

  “It may take several months, possibly even a year before you see anything like a physical shift.” Romeo Valfensys, an elder dragon shifter from the banished Diablo Falls clan sits across from us at my kitchen table, explaining what they’ve learned about what happened to Jamie and the events that led to his attack.

  I hurry back to the table, not wanting to miss a thing. “Here you go.” I place a large glass of ice water in front of our guest.

  “Thank you.” Romeo sniffs. “As an elder, I find it grows difficult to manage in this heat. Water… helps.”

  “It’s no trouble,” I say, smiling.

  Jamie leans forward in his chair and smiles. “I really appreciate you making the trip.”

  The dragon shifter nods. “I can assure you that we will be seeing a great deal of one another from now on, judging by your scar.”

  The attack Jamie suffered resulted in a scar that healed entirely with blue-green scales. To most people, it might look like a tattoo, but to dragon shifters, it serves as proof.

  Romeo continues. “Remember, your first shifts are likely to tap into your psyche before they manifest in your physical form.”

  Jamie nods. “Yes. That’s already happening; it’s why we called you. I’m having trouble managing all the mental chatter I’m hearing.”

  “I see.” He looks down his nose through his monocle at the paperwork stack in front of him from our first contact with the dragons. They have quite a bureaucracy in place to manage their population and they track everything.

  “Oh yes, I see where that was noted here. Forgive me.” He licks the point of his pencil and poises it over his notes. “Can you describe what it is you’re hearing, because as an elder in the clan, I can assure you that I cannot sense you, and as I have been attempting to communicate with you during my time here today. It appears you cannot yet sense me.”

  Jamie shakes his head. “Yeah, I can’t hear you at all, sir. No. The voice that I’m hearing… it’s young. Like a child. It’s completely scattered. Nothing about the thoughts seem quiet or calm. It’s all energy and fire and eating and running.”

  “You say the voice is… younger? You’re certain?”

  “Yes, like a kid. Maybe like a five year old? They can talk, but nothing mature.”

  The dragon elder removes his monocle and rubs his eye. “Then that’s all I need to hear.”

  Jamie grabs my hand. “What do you mean?”

  “If you’re hearing the child, then we have no choice but to enlist your help. You see, several months ago, someone crept into the dragon lair and stole one of our eggs.”

  I gasp. “That’s terrible. Who would do such a thing?”

  Romeo shakes his head and looks very sad. “Dragon’s possess many ancient secrets that others would take from us. Be it alchemy or longevity, healing or casting spells in the ancient tongue… all this information is contained within the clan. We live very long lives and as you noted, we record everything.” He taps the stack of paperwork. “Years ago, before your time, dragons were hunted mercilessly for this information and our gifts. There was a time when dragons came close to extinction.”

  I nod and touch Jami
e’s arm. “We’ve been reading the histories, I am so very sorry for everything that your people have been through.”

  “Thank you, young Hazel.” He smiles. “But that brings me to you, Jamie.”

  Jamie sits up. “You said you need my help?”

  Romeo nods. “It seems the egg that was stolen has produced a hatchling at the full moon last month. When a dragon hatchling is born, they don’t emerge from their shell like a weak creature, they burst forth with fire and fury and all the things that make a dragon burn.”

  He touches his side where the scar glitters under his shirt. “Ah, then I think I met your hatchling.”

  “Quite so, I am afraid. You see, when a hatchling emerges, they imprint on the first creature they see. It takes only a second for the connection to take hold, but once it does, it is an unbreakable bond. It is why the hatchlings are secreted away. There is no much at risk if they imprint outside of our kind.”

  “But this one got away and hatched.”

  The old man sighs. “And it seems the reason we have lost telepathic contact with this baby dragon is because he or she has imprinted on you, my friend.”

  Jamie looks stunned. “Imprinted? Like, it thinks I’m its mama?”

  “Not in the human parental way you are thinking, but… yes. I believe it attacked you because it instinctively sensed that you were not like them. So they brought you into the fold through the tearing of the flesh. While most animal shifters must bite you to bring you over, a dragon need only drip its saliva into your dragon wound to turn you. And a baby dragon would do this without thinking.”

  “Then what are you saying? What kind of help do you need from me?”

  “Since you’re the only one who can communicate with the lost one, we’d like to train you to speak to it. Teach you the dragon tongue and hopefully bring the dear one back home.”