“What the fuck is that?” I whisper, walking toward the noise.
Beyond the orchard is the storage barn, and past that is the house. It sounds like the strange clicking is coming from the barn, and since that building is used for storing the harvest until the trucks can come pick it up and for brewing the cider, there shouldn’t be anyone or anything in there clicking like that.
“What is it, baby?” I whisper, forcing myself to push past the fear to find out what the hell is happening on my family’s farm.
“Stop. Teleporting. My mate.”
Darcy’s intense growl, directed at the baby flink, stops me in my tracks. A couple of apples fall from the boughs above us as I turn to face my mate, putting my fingers to my lips. “There’s something in the barn,” I explain, pointing toward the noise.
The baby chirps twice and disappears from my neck with a clap of thunder. I’m slightly relieved (though I wasn’t too worried about them since they can teleport themselves to safety) but also a little worried, because whatever is making that noise definitely knows I’m here now.
Darcy cracks his neck, shakes out his arms, and starts marching, yelling loudly. “Hey fucker! Darcy Hellspinner here. Do with that what you will!”
Oh. I guess we’re not trying to be stealthy.
I smile at my lover. That’s one way to determine the threat. “You’re so fucking sexy when you’re being murderous.”
Darcy shoots me a flirtatious grin and winks. “I’ll fuck you when I’m done with whatever the fuck is happening here. That clicking sounds like a,” he makes a noise that isn’t possible for a human to make. It’s just a vibration, and it spikes the fear crawling through me. “Oof, that’s in the scare-humans range, innit?” he says apologetically.
I confirm that with a nod. “It’s fine. I know you’re dangerous.”
He chuckles softly, dipping down to grab a freshly fallen apple from the ground. He wipes it off on his clothes and bites into it. “Can’t be that thing anyway. Not unless… It’s not possible.”
I believe him.
It takes a few minutes to walk through the orchard. Nothing looks amiss, but the clicking is still happening, and it’s coming from inside or the other side of the building, so we round to the front, where the doors are standing wide open. Inside, my father is using a pitchfork to keep a giant insectoid at bay while mysister sits on the ground with something—no wait, she’s pinned to the wall by a stinger that impaled her through her stomach.
28
My universe blacks out, my body changes, and the Hell dragon that lives inside me bursts out. Dashing toward the monster, I grab it in my arms, flinging it out of the barn, rolling with it, and stabbing my claws into every soft part around its carapace. I yank the antennae off and then dig into its eyes, roaring in fury at what it’s done to my sister. How dare anything come onto my family farm and threaten any person here.
Darcy’s going to fix her, I know he will. She’s alive, and he will fix the hole in her that’s killing her, and I will kill this thing. I don’t care what it is, I’ve never seen it, I’ve never heard a word about it, none of my progenitors ever came across this creature, so it’s completely new to me, but soft parts equal vulnerabilities. All I need to do is get between the hard defense of its exoskeleton. I rip one of its limbs out of its socket and shove my entire arm into its soft insides.
The rumble of the creature’s dying scream would have sent terror crashing through me in human form, but my dragon form hears it for what it is: the final death gurgle of the damned.
I rip my claw through its insides until the creature’s scream dies, and it falls. When I’m sure it’s dead, I pull my arm out of its shell, turning to check on my sister.
My mate helps her down onto her back, then yanks the stinger out of her, tossing it onto the ground. I rush over, grabbing my father in my arms to keep him from getting between Darcy and his patient.
My sister stares up at me, smiling with eyes blown wide. “Dragon. You came back,” she whispers, smiling at me.
Of course I did. I would never abandon her. I don’t have the ability to tell her that. This mouth won’t form English words, and the translation spell might not work for her, but it’s satisfying that she remembers the last time she saw me in this form.
I bend with our father sobbing in my arms, nuzzling her hair. Most humans wouldn’t remember me at all. Dad certainly won’t, and that’s ok, because monsters are traumatic, and I’m going to forget too, so I can’t really blame him for that.
“Peach,” Darcy warns me, pushing my head out of his way.
I reluctantly shift my head away and watch him as he pulls components out of his pouches and drops them into the hole in her, muttering his spells. He eventually gets to the part where he cuts his own arms and dribbles his blood into the open cavity.
My sister gasps like she hadn’t been able to breath until that moment, then she screams, feeling her own pain at last. My father fights against my hold, but I bear his wrath and keep him away. She’s healing. That’s why it hurts. I wish Darcy would’ve stopped the pain, but he’s on a time crunch to keep her from expiring before the spell can fix her.
“If she was human, this wouldn’t work,” Darcy tells me, shooting me a narrowed gaze. “She’s got the same genetics as you, Peach, but hers ain’t been activated. She ain’t got yer MawMaw’s mark on her.”
We’ll just have to ask MawMaw to mark her, then. If she can. I’m not sure if knowing about magic is better than not, but she at least deserves the chance to make that choice.
I wonder if she’ll be able to shift into a Hell dragon, too. We don’t have very many female presenting dragons. Just the occasional mutation that allows one through here and there, like humans have people born intersex. That will be interesting to find out.
My sister’s scream suddenly cuts off, and I stare at her chest as it closes up and skin covers her visible insides again. My father struggles again, and I catch Darcy’s eye. He looks pale, but he gives me a permissive nod as he rises to his feet and I set my father down. He scrambles for my sister. She’s asleep now, and since my father has her in hand, I pull Darcy to me, hugging him to my chest and vibrating with pleasure at having him this close again.
