Cat and Mouse

MADDIE

“Steal from the ~casino~? No way, Mads.” Harry threw up his hands.

“You’ve had some crazy ideas, but this is ~the~ craziest. I’m out,” Darshan agreed.

I sighed as I finished up the last of my crust.

So my friends weren’t in ~love~ with my plan. I’d known that convincing them was going to take some work though, and I had all night.

I cracked open another beer and stared out at the fading sunset.

I could tell that Harry and Darshan were stewing silently about the plan, thinking about how ~crazy~ it was—and hopefully becoming seduced by it more and more.

I decided it was best to give them a minute, letting the heist ~marinate~ a little in their brains.

Like clockwork, Harry spoke up a few moments later.

“So, if I was interested in helping you, which I am ~not~, how would we pull this off anyway?”

~There we go.~

“Well, my friends, let me start at the beginning. In ~my~ business plan, all proceeds from the casino go to the new orphanage. But now that Loch and Hael have pushed me out of the equation, who knows where ~all that money~ is gonna go.”

I paused while Darshan and Harry thought about “all that money.”

“If we empty the safe, we make sure the money ends up exactly where it’s meant to: the orphanage.”

Darshan finished his beer, so I passed him another before finishing my thought.

“And I think it’s only fair that we take a small cut for our troubles since we are, after all, orphans.”

Harry nodded, following my logic.

“Really, we’re in a perfect position to make this work,” I continued with a shrug. “Darshan, with you, we have access to the kitchen and all the staff since you’re ~obvi~ the dopest boss in the world.”

Darshan tried not to smile.

“And because of you, Harry, we have Onyx on our side.”

Harry melted a little at the mention of his lover’s name.

“And me? I have that handy little ability to lull dragons to sleep when I sing.”

I crushed the beer can between my palms and sent it soaring down to the filthy street.

“So, all things considered, I think stealing from the Dobrzyckas would actually be a piece of cake.”

~1…2…3…~

Now that I had dangled the bait, I waited patiently to see if my friends would bite.

~4…5…6…~

“Alright, fuck it. I’m in,” Darshan announced.

“Goddamnit. Me too,” Harry sighed.

~“Yes!”~

I pumped my fist as that old, familiar thrill settled in my stomach.

~Crime.~

Darshan held out his hand for a cheer, team style, so Harry and I placed ours on top.

“Let’s rob some motherfucking dragons!” I cried.

ZAYDA

When Summer arrived, I was in the kitchen boiling some water for tea.

“Hey, girl,” she called and pulled me in for a hug.

I was preparing two mugs of green tea from the professor’s cabinet when Thor started crying in the other room.

“Good thing I just did this,” I said, picking up the bottle of breast milk I had just pumped, “because God knows I’m not letting those teeth near these tits.”

Summer laughed, and it felt good to make her laugh. Having her there made my life feel normal—well, as normal as it could.

I passed the bottle down to Thor and he began to suck on it, quiet and happy, staring at us.

“How are you feeling after yesterday?” Summer asked.

“Better,” I replied. “I know I need to take care of myself…”

As a response, she reached out and squeezed my hand.

~Buuuuurp.~

Just as I realized that such a large sound had come from a baby body, a blast of orange flame erupted from Thor’s mouth.

“Oh. My. God.” My jaw hung open as Summer and I stared up at the black burn mark on the ceiling.

My friend and I turned to each other, our eyes wide.

“We have to help Thor,” she said. “We have to make him all human.”

I nodded in agreement. While Thor’s scorch-burps were funny and inconvenient now, they would get dangerous as he got older.

And the burps were the ~least~ of our troubles.

“I’ll be right back,” I told Summer.

When I returned with Freesia’s spellbook, Summer was sitting on the floor with a folder full of papers splayed before her.

“Based on my research and ~observations~,” she began, gesturing to Thor as he gnawed on his crib, “he’s continuing to grow extremely quickly, just like he did during your pregnancy…”

I stared sadly at my baby. Even ~I~ knew he looked too strange to be cute.

“I think, Zayda, if we can’t help him become all dragon or all man, Thor is going to live a very difficult…and short…life.”

My friend spoke slowly, delivering the verbal punches carefully…but they still knocked my breath away.

Tears filled my eyes. Of course I knew that my child wasn’t normal.

I knew that something needed to be done. But I had tried to ignore the grim future that awaited my family.

“The problem is…,” Summer continued, “I don’t know of any human medical treatment that could help him. Even if we removed his wings, and his tail…his veins are filled with dragon blood.”

I took a deep breath, staunching my tears. I stroked the rough leather surface of Freesia’s spell book.

“That’s why I have this,” I said softly.

Sensing that Summer was afraid to touch it, I opened the volume, and the yellowed pages ruffled as if there was a breeze in the underground room.

It opened to a page near the middle, and Freesia’s scrawling handwriting spelled out a curse…

The curse that would come to be her own.

~Freesia’s Curse.~

Summer read over my shoulder, taking in the complicated instructions about the purifying of her own blood…so that she could finally do the unthinkable.

Kill her child.

It was the only way to set herself free from her captors, her greatest enemies…her dragon mates.

“This magic is really dark, Zayda,” she whispered.

Though I didn’t respond, I knew we were thinking the same awful thought.

~What if it’s my only option?~

What kind of mother would I be if I raised my child for a life of suffering?

What if the best thing I could do for my baby was the same thing that Freesia did?

STORM

The chase.

The age-old game of cat and mouse was one that dragons loved, and loved to hate.

If you were good, like me, your senses were true. Though it might take a whole day of following the scent of the mouse, eventually you would find what you chased.

But the time wasted, that was what I hated…

That was what tortured my impatient dragon soul.

I ran down the long alley with Dane, Aneurin, and Silver, and our mind-link was quiet.

The search had led us around the outskirts of the city to the old meatpacking district.

We were in our human forms, and I was in the lead, following the scent.

The scent of a dragon…

And now that we were close, the scent of dragon ~blood~.

My heart thumped in my ears.

Finally, we found it. The dragon in distress, the captive of the slayers.

~We’re here…~

~But are we too late?~

Large brick buildings towered above us, deserted. Haunted by the violent industry of another time.

Meat. Blood. The breaking of bones. That was the business of this place.

“This is the one!” I cried out, as we arrived at a warehouse. I immediately shifted to my dragon form.

Standing in front of the large, metal door, a slayer pulled a dagger from his belt.

A small army of dragons, we blasted him with fire, which he resisted.

But then I caught his shoulder between my incisors.

~Rip.~

As his flesh tore, his scream rose into the air. Silver made quick work with the rest of him, snapping his neck, breaking his spine, and leaving his corpse crumpled on the asphalt.

Storm

One down…

Aneurin

Who knows how many more are inside.

Dane

They’ll get what they deserve.

I blasted the door with dragonfire, weakening its hinges so that when I rammed it with my shoulder, it fell in.

I burst into the warehouse space, but the chaos I’d expected to greet me never came.

It was silent.

And though I was an old dragon, and I’d seen battles so grizzly that any mortal would die of shock…I felt the terrifying sensation that something was very wrong.

My comrades followed behind me, and I turned around slowly, realizing that my instinct, as always, was correct.

The floor was a pool of blood—so red it was almost black, and shiny like lacquer.

~It can’t be…~

But when I looked up, I saw my worst fear…

A massive flank of flesh hanging from a hook. White scales covered part of the dragon’s leg, where the muscle and bone were not exposed.

~An albino…~

One of the most mysterious of our noble race…desecrated.

The parts of its body dangled from hooks meant for lesser species.

And perhaps the most sickening part of it all was that the noble creature had been completely drained of its blood…