I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT night. My dreams were so messed up I couldn’t tell up from down. Paul always found a way into them, and now I knew why. It was because the bastard was still alive.
He was out there, heck he could be close by and I wouldn’t know it. Every night Blake turned into Paul, he would taunt me by laughing that horrible crazy laugh he had a couple of months ago inside the cave. I would always wake up with a dream that emerged a couple of weeks after I discovered what I was, with Dad yelling at me to wake up.
When I finally came to, I went to the couch and picked up the pile of paper I hadn’t searched through yet. I didn’t understand how it’d never crossed my mind to search for him this side. I could’ve had so many questions answered, but then again, so many things had happened that there hadn’t really been time to worry about the dead, even though he would constantly haunt me.
So far I had looked through two hundred Herbert Watkins and none of them were my father.
It had to be Fox that night, otherwise why on earth had he stopped killing?
That gave me an idea and when my digital clock struck six I found myself inside the library.
I typed ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and found the list I was looking for. There were a couple of pages filled with faces and I scrolled down to the ones that had a huge ‘x’ over their faces.
I froze as the image of a man with long black hair jumped on the screen. It was him, he had the same eyes and the same hard jaw. My entire body was pins and needles. The name read ‘Cullen Briochinni’ and in brackets it said ‘(The Fox)’.
I found myself with my head in my hands, eyes closed. Why had he been after Dad? Why hadn’t he told me, why hadn’t I known? Everything this side just had a way of finding me, and yet, I knew nothing about my life, or who my father was.
I decided to do a thorough search on Fox and printed out a list of the people he’d killed. I could tell by some of their eye color that they were dragons. The hair was normal, brown, blond and some even carrot red. Most of them were in their early thirties, others had peppered hair. There was no picture of Dad though, only a huge article about that night and that one of the corpses, or what was left of him, was assumed to be Fox through the dental records.
My fingers typed other words and when the search was done a big picture of Lucian’s face jumped onto the screen.
“Why did you leave me?” I asked even though it would be yet another question that would never get answered. The pain jolted through my heart and I expected tears to roll down my face, but they never came. I still couldn’t cry.
I pressed the ‘x’ button on the right hand top side, and Lucian’s face disappeared.
Becky and Sammy were still sleeping when I returned to the room. I planned on finding Dad this week and finding out once and for all if I had family left inside Paegeia.
Most of the Herberts I searched through were from the other side. I found one Herbert Watkins this side. He was an engineer and owned his own company, making straddles, whatever they were. His picture looked nothing like Dad though, quite the opposite to be honest. For some reason the word ‘patsy’ came to mind, although I had no idea why.
Familiar words suddenly entered my mind: A day will come and a day will go, a choice you have to make otherwise the truth will never be known.
I promised myself never to wonder about those words again, but I couldn’t help but think about what on earth I needed to do to make them become red.
Taking the wrong path would mean someone close to me will die, just like Brian and Lucian. I can’t follow my foretelling again, but I couldn’t stop wondering why it was so important that it had made the Book of Shadows.
What truth couldn’t possibly be revealed if I didn’t make that certain choice? It was never going to be revealed and I refused to lose any more people I loved.
I snuggled deeper into the duvet and thought about Queen Catherine again. For a couple of days after Lucian died I thought that she had prepared me for his death. He went into a forest and died after he came out, but a few weeks later she showed up again, pointing in that same direction, ordering me to go in.
Now the question that I was constantly struggling with was what was inside that forest that she so desperately wanted me to know?
THE NEXT DAY, I waited on the rocks for Blake for almost half an hour.
Please come, I silently recited in my head.
This was so messed up; for the love of blueberries I couldn’t figure out how the boy that despised me had turned into someone that would keep me from turning dark.
I wasn’t going to tell him this. Becky was right, it would freak him out and he would just think that I’d broken my promise and fallen in love with him.
Not that it would be hard to break. Blake was different when he was with me. Sammy and Becky said that and I could see it in Tabitha’s eyes whenever she saw Blake and me together. She didn’t like him spending this amount of time with me one bit.
The uneasiness of my chest started to fade and it felt as if my lungs opened and I could breathe properly. I knew what it was. Blake was close. I smiled but it disappeared fast. I didn’t know if I loved this feeling or not. Why couldn’t Lucian be here to be this to me?
I laid my head on my hand in thought, letting the sorrow rush over me.
“Sorry I’m late.” His voice came and I didn’t look up because I knew he was butt naked like usual. He chuckled. “You’ll need to get used to that one way or another Elena.”
“Today is not that day, just get dressed.”
“Ouch, what Night Villain spat in your milk this morning?”
“I don’t need a Night Villain’s acid, I’ve got my own.” I looked up and thanked the heavens he had his robe on. He dropped down right next to me. The smell of roast and musk filled my nostrils and for some reason it made me feel a bit drowsy. I swallowed hard and tried to get the dryness out of my throat.
The scent was mixed with a horrible stench and I saw Blake taking in a huge drag of his cigarette.
“I don’t know how you can smoke that.”
“It calms me down.”
You want to know what calms me down….don’t go there Elena.
“So what do you want to talk about today?”
I thought about it for a minute, I had to ask questions otherwise this training thing would end soon.
“How many abilities do we have?”
He gave me an unsure look.
“Seriously. I’m not the enemy here, Blake, and one of my friends already has a dragon. My lips are sealed.”
He blew out a breath. “Ten.”
“Ten?”
“Our flame is pink because of the Red and Blue fire. We can see the future the older we get, we can breathe lightning, chloroform and acid, we can persuade people with our minds.” He picked up a rock and folded it into his hands. When he opened his fist, the rock was frozen. “We can freeze things and as you know heal living things too. The healing part takes some practice and a lot of concentration.”
I didn’t tell him how easily that one came to me.
“We can move objects in our dragon form, and lastly we can make people see things that aren’t there.” I gasped.
“Relax, it’s nothing special. All the Chromatics have that.”
“Ten,” I said with a sigh. “How do you use them?”
He grinned and bit on his tongue gently. My stomach turned. It was a power Blake had always had and wasn’t new to me. “Now that the flying part and hopefully the fear of heights thing is cured…”
I giggled and he chuckled too. “I think it’s time to show you what we can do.”
He got up and moved a couple of paces in front of me. I pushed myself up from the rock and stood right next to him.
“It’s not easy conjuring your abilities while in human form. It takes time and the more you do it, the easier it comes.” He lifted up his index finger and a soft pink flame sprouted from the top of it. “This one you don’t have a problem with. Every being is afraid of the Pink Kiss.”
“The pink what?”
“The Pink Kiss.” He smiled. “I know it sounds stupid but I’ve grown quite fond of the name. When it touches skin, it spreads like a virus. Nothing can stop it and your enemy will die a slow and painful death. Constance can’t even heal it or slow the procedure down. There is no cure for the Pink Kiss.”
I’d heard that before and seen it the night the Wyverns attacked us. “It’s like the Hippogriff’s venom.”
“Exactly,” he said in a soft tone, just staring at the flame coming from the tip of his finger. He lifted up his middle finger, and right next to the pink flame a small spark of lightning came. “Lightning is handy in the ring, especially if it’s not the Dragonian’s ability.”
“You used lightning on Lucian before.”
He nodded. “He failed the first time because of my lightning.”
Then he lowered both his fingers and showed me his palm. A green fog with a strong smell of gas appeared in the palm of his hand. I coughed a bit and covered up my nose and mouth with the sleeve of my robe.
“It can’t harm you, Elena. You are immune to it. The smell is something to get used to though.”
The ball of green fog turned into acid and it ran down his hand and landed on the ground, incinerating the grass and rocks it fell on. A tiny bit of smoke evaporated into the air. “Deadly,” he said softly and closed his fist. When he opened it, it was gone. His hand didn’t carry any mark, not even a red burn to show that he’d just handled acid.
“It doesn’t burn?”
“Slightly, but it doesn’t hurt the way it would a person that isn’t immune to it.”
“How did King Albert claim your dad then?”
He smiled and huffed softly while taking his seat back on the rocks.
I followed him.
“King Albert had a gift for making weapons. His armor was of the thickest metal there was, but it was also the lightest.” He smiled. “Don’t ask me how.”
I giggled.
“He had a weapon that the royal council still uses today. It’s called an acid blaster. He used to fill it up with my father’s saliva and then use it on the enemy. He wasn’t the type of man that loved wars though, but he was the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
“You still remember him?”
He nodded. “A dragon’s memory works differently than a human’s. Usually humans don’t remember anything before their fifth birthday. It’s different with us. I remember everything. Even before I hatched. I remember the inside of my egg, my mom’s tone of voice when she was close and the temperature whenever she lay on me.”
I smiled thinking how amazing that must be, to remember everything like that. I couldn’t remember my father’s stupid stories and here he tells me what the freakin’ temperature of his egg was whenever Isabel lay on top of him. If that was normal, then I sure was a broken dragon.
“I remember King Albert. He had a special look just for me. I guess it had to do with them knowing that I would become their child’s dragon, if they ever got to that stage.”
“How did he look at you?”
He laughed. “Admiration, warning.”
“Warning. Why?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what it felt like.”
“I’m sorry that he died without giving you what you needed.”
He chuckled and shook his head. I could sense he was hiding something.
“What?” I smiled.
“You would laugh if I told you.”
“I won’t, just tell me.”
He picked a long weed that grew from inside the rocks and started to bend it. I couldn’t stop watching him. “I woke up from a strong jolt the night Matt brought you here.”
“What?”
He didn’t look at me, but kept bending the weed. “I’d never felt anything like that before so obviously I had to investigate. Lucian woke up as I started to put on some clothes and wanted to know what the hell was going on. I told him something had happened and you know Lucian.”
I giggled. “He wanted to know as well.”
He nodded. “So we snuck to the infirmary and we heard Master Longwei and Constance speaking with Matt. He kept telling them that there is no way, kept talking about the wall and how no human could go to the other side if they are born inside Paegeia. That the girl isn’t who they think she is.”
“Me?” I asked and he nodded. “Who did they think I was?”
He looked at me. “Matt saw me, and motioned for me to hide. I knew that he would speak to me afterward. Lucian left after his curiosity was filled and I waited for Matt. I had this weird feeling inside of me the entire night that I couldn’t explain. When he found me, he told me about you and some details of the accident, but I swear he never mentioned Fox until the second time we met. He also told me about what he saw when he got a better look at you. He said that you didn’t respond and he was really worried and when he saw your mark, nothing made sense.”
“What didn’t make sense?”
“Why he never knew about you or your father, and if your father was a dragon how the hell you ended up with the mark of the riders.”
“That makes two of us.”
“For a long time people thought that you were somebody else. That your father wasn’t your Dad at all.”
I thought about my dream, about what Paul said. People knowing who I was but not telling me. “What?”
“Why do you think when you walk into a place everybody stares at you, Elena?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because of who you remind them of.”
“Who?” I give an irritated laugh. It felt like déjà vu and I knew that somehow I wasn’t going to hear the part I so badly wanted to. Like something was going to happen.
He took a deep breath and I could see the invisible wall covering him again.
No, no, no, please…
“It doesn’t matter now, you’re not that person, you’re just somebody that looked like him. We should get started and you should concentrate on mastering your gifts.”
He dropped the conversation right there. I just gaped for a while and knew that Blake wouldn’t say anymore.
“Fine, so how do I do this?” I asked, using one of my frustrated tones.
“You’re angry?”
“You started telling me this story and then you just drop it out of thin air. You have no idea how much shit I have to deal with and this will just go on top of that pile.”
“Elena, it doesn’t matter anymore. You are a dragon. It is not going to help you to move on. That is why I stopped telling you that stupid story. You are like me, that is why I woke up that night, nothing else.”
“I still want to know who they thought I was.”
“It doesn’t matter. You have to concentrate on what you are, not what everyone thought you were.”
“Fine! But I have no idea how to concentrate now I’m worrying about your stupid story.”
“I know it’s hard, but it will get better. I really should’ve kept my mouth shut.” He smiled again. He was enjoying every single moment of this.
“Fine.” I sounded like an annoyed little girl. “How do you do it?”
“Close your eyes.”
“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” I joked and he laughed.
“I promise.”
“Good.”
He chuckled. “Concentrate and see your flame.”
I did what he said and thought about the pink flame I’d seen on his finger.
“Now fill in the details. The pink in the middle, the red and purple edges, feel its warmth spreading from your fingertips to the middle of your palm.”
I listened to the deep tone of his voice, and I swore I could feel my palm getting hotter and hotter.
“Now open your eyes.”
I did and saw a ball of fire in the palm of my hand. I shook my hand fast and the flame disappeared.
“Elena, you need to control it.”
“It’s not normal.”
“Nothing is this side.”
I rubbed my hand against my robe and took another deep breath.
“It’s not going to hurt you. It’s your friend and the sooner you make peace with it, the better it will be for you.”
“I know, it’s just weird seeing it.”
“Again.”
I looked at him. “Do we have to?”
“Yes, again.” He sounded adamant.
“Demon slaver,” I mumbled and he just laughed. I closed my eyes again and this time he touched my hand. He was warm and just like his music, his touch tingled through my body.
“Concentrate on the flame.”
We did that for the next hour. Every time I had it, he forced me to look at it dancing in the palm of my hand. I could feel the heat, and he was wrong. It burned which again didn’t make any sense. The minute he touched my hand and killed the fire, I imagined a big blister on the inside of my hand but when he took his hand away, I found nothing. Not even a hint of a burn.
At four, I felt drained.
“I think that is enough for today, tomorrow we can practice lightning.”
I sighed.
“It’s not that hard, Elena.”
“No, I just remember Becky doing the shakes on the ground when she got her first dose of it.”
“I promise you won’t do the hippy hippy shake.”
I laughed and shook my head.
“How do you feel?”
“Like I haven’t slept for days.”
“Climb on my back.”
“No!”
“You want to fly back home yourself?”
“No,” I said softly and closed my eyes just in time as he ripped off his robe. He laughed again as he saw me standing there with closed eyes and I could feel him touching my arm and putting it around his neck. He lifted me onto his back in one movement and then he ran. I opened my eyes and saw how we dove off the cliff.
He changed in mid-air and I grabbed one of his horns just in time. It was a ride Lucian experienced once before he died and here I was getting one without even lifting a finger.
Thinking about Lucian again, knowing that he wouldn’t be waiting for me, asking me how it was made my heart ache. Still no tears would come. I rested my body in between two huge horns on Blake’s back and took in the air and the soft breeze. Even the sound of his wings flapping changed how I felt about everything.
There was no more Lucian, but there was now, there was this moment and there was this amazing dragon that would turn evil by the 23rd of August.
That couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t.
A familiar feeling jolted though my gut. I’d only had it once before but I would never forget it. It was the time when I knew I would succeed in finding the King of Lion sword. It was that same feeling, but this time it had nothing to do with that stupid sword or the words the Viden had spoken. There wouldn’t be a substitute but there would be another mission. One Lucille wouldn’t be happy about, and one that would lead me to find out what Lucian knew. I was the only one that could find the answer to save Blake.
