She slumped back again, her body resembling a discarded rag doll. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but a sudden wave of nausea hit me like an anvil to the gut.
“Ungh,” I said, crawling a few feet away. “Don’t feel good.”
“Don’t fight it. It’ll be over quickly.”
“What will?”
“The change. My blood is changing your blood. In effect, you are becoming a dragon hunter, too.”
“What—” The words stopped abruptly as my bile flowed, and I vomited up the contents of my dinner.
Then I vomited up anything else that had been hanging around my stomach. And then for another four minutes, all I did was dry heave as my body apparently tried to expel all my innards. At least, that’s what it felt like. And when it was over and I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my hoodie (mentally noting I’d have to throw it away since there wasn’t water hot enough to wash vomit out of cloth), I made my painful way over to Helen.
“Have to…call…You’re bleeding too much…” My throat burned, and I had to swallow a few times before I could speak.
“I told you to stop fussing.” She gave me a wan smile. “Dragon hunters can stand a whole lot more than the average mortal.”
“At least let me try to stanch the flow of blood,” I said, hesitating a moment before pulling off my hoodie and using the clean part of it as a compress on her wound. She leaned into me, the silence of the night closing around us for a few minutes. “Who did this to you, Helen? It was a person who punched this hole in you, wasn’t it?”
She shook her head. “Who did this doesn’t matter. Here, you should have this.” She slipped her phone into my hand. “It has one or two contacts who might be helpful to you. Other dragon hunters. Tell them what happened, and they’ll do what they can.”
With an effort, she dragged a long black scabbard across her body and laid it between us, panting slightly at the exertion. I stared at it in surprise.
“What the hell, Helen?” I pushed it away from me. “A sword? You have a freakin’ sword with you?”
“Yes. It’s part of what makes a dragon hunter. A normal one would, that is. This one is empty. I don’t know that it will be much use to you.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds before opening them again and gesturing toward the weapon. “It’s missing…no, that’s too long of a story to tell now. I don’t have any choice. Take it.”
Feeling like I was expected to examine it, I pulled the sword from its scabbard. It was long and thin, like a katana, but slightly curved. I shuddered a little at it, imagining it covered in blood and guts and untold repulsive things. “I don’t like weapons of any sort. I’m a pacifist.”
She gave another one of those hoarse, horrible laughs. “I’m afraid those days are over, Ronnie. If the sword was whole, I would tell you that it’s your élan vital, a representation of your soul in physical form. But the soul was taken from it and used to…No, I can’t go into that now; it would take far too much time. Just take the sword. It was mine, but now I pass it to you. You might find another esprit for it.”
I stared at it for a moment. “Helen, I can’t!”
“You must. Once it’s whole, this sword is a dragon hunter’s most powerful weapon against evil.”
“I can’t take your soul sword! Not just because that thought is creepy as hell—what sort of a soul do you people have?—but because the second I step out in public with it, I’ll be arrested for carrying a weapon.”
“Mortals can’t see it,” she said, her eyes closed again. Her face was pale now, her skin taking on a waxen look that made me feel sick all over again. “It’s bespelled.”
“You’re giving me an invisible sword? Holy scrubbing bubbles, Helen! Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t stick. “I know how it sounds.”
“I don’t think you do. An invisible sword? So now I’m Wonder Woman?”
“She had an invisible plane. This is a sword.”
“Great, so instead of being arrested for carrying a weapon, I’ll be arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.”
“Only if the officer is a demon.” I stared at her until she added, with a wan wave of a hand, “They can cast wards to make bespelled weapons visible to them. But that’s really not here nor there…what’s important is that you take it, Ronnie. Say you accept it. You have to accept it for it to be yours.”
“I—I—” I was about to protest that there was no way in this world that I was going to accept a weapon that was some sort of representation of my soul, but another look at her face had me biting back the words. If it gave her some comfort, then I’d say just about anything. I pushed aside all of the warnings screaming in my head, my anxiety animal strangely calm in this dire situation. “I accept it. This sword, this élan thing. It’s mine now. Is that okay, or do I need to say something else?”
Her shoulders relaxed, a tiny smile curving one side of her mouth. “No, that’s enough. Use it. Get another dragon hunter to help you with it. Tell them what happened to me, and they’ll help you repair it.”
“I don’t know what happened other than you have a huge hole in you and are dying, but aren’t panicking or doing anything you should be doing.” I was suddenly frustrated that I was so helpless to prevent what was happening right in front of me.
“Trust me, this is the lesser of two evils.” She was silent for a moment while I tried to will myself to do something. Anything. “So, you’re writing a book.”
My jaw dropped for a moment, but I caught a whiff of my breath and snapped it shut again. “You’re joking, aren’t you? You’re sitting here dying after telling me you’re a mythical dragon—”
“Very real dragon hunter.”
“—Dragon hunter, and you’re making conversational chitchat?”
One of her shoulders rose in a shrug. “Well, it’s kind of interesting. What’s it going to be about?”
I didn’t know what to do. Should I panic for her? Should I drag her to my car and drive her to the nearest hospital? Should I yell for help?
In the end, I did none of that. Instead, I humored her, figuring if she wanted her last moments to be spent discussing something so trivial, who was I to deny that? “Mr. Manny says to write what you know, so it’ll be about my life.”
“Ah. What will you call it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d better pick a good title. Something snappy that will look good on the movie screen in case it goes over well.” She leaned into me, closing her eyes for a moment.
And at that moment, I had a bird’s-eye image of what I looked like—covered in blood that was both my own and Helen’s, sitting against a filthy dumpster in an abandoned mall, surrounded by garbage and refuse, the whole place probably crawling with vermin of every ilk. I sat there cradling my sister, whom I had known for a few short years before she disappeared, only popping into my life twice since, and with every passing second her life ebbed away.
I wanted to scream at the world, to shake her and make her understand that she shouldn’t just give up this way. I wanted to run away and pretend none of this had happened. I wanted to return to my lovely apartment and well-ordered life, and bathe in gallons of antiseptic.
But I couldn’t leave Helen. Not here. Not this way. I held her, determined that if she was dying, she’d die in my arms. Not alone in filth and squalor. Instead, I’d surround her with love and unconditional acceptance.
I’d distract her from the horrible end that awaited her as best I could. “How about Memoirs of a Dragon Hunter?”
“You can’t call it that.”
“Why not? You guys are hunters of dragons, I presume.”
“No, we’re hunters who are dragons. There’s a difference.” The words came out more a sigh than actual speech.
“I suppose it doesn’t really matter to my title.” I desperately searched my brain for something to distract
her from the suffering she was clearly feeling. “Do only you guys call yourselves dragon hunters? Or do other people know about your secret name?”
“Some know. Most refer to us as half-blooded dragons.”
“Diary of a Half-Blood. That sounds kind of Harry Potterish. How about Memoirs of a Badass Chick?”
“I have never…” Her breath rattled loudly in her throat, her body convulsing with each word. Fingers dug deep into the flesh of my arm where I pressed my hoodie against the gaping hole in her torso. “…heard you call yourself a chick.” It took a good ten seconds of gasping tiny little breaths, the maroon blood now sluggish and barely seeping around the edges of the hoodie. “The change is really taking hold of you.”
I was silent for a moment, fat, hot tears rolling down my face as I leaned my cheek against the top of her head. “I don’t want you to die, Helen. I know I haven’t been a good sister. I haven’t kept in touch like I should have, but you know how it was at home—”
“I know…” She gasped for air again, the gurgling sound making me want to scream at the world. “It wasn’t you…Something about me was different…”
“All we had was each other.” Gently I hugged her, guilt mingling freely with bone-deep sadness. “But I ran off to go to college, leaving you with Mom and her bottles. God, Helen, can you ever forgive me for that? I was so selfish.”
She seemed to rally for a minute, giving me a rueful half smile. “I would have done the same, Ronnie. Home was toxic once Dad wasn’t there to buffer us. There’s nothing to forgive, so stop making yourself a martyr.”
My nose desperately needed a tissue, and I managed to dig a small wad of them out of my pocket without disturbing her too much. “I’ve wanted to tell you how sorry I was that I left you alone for the last four years. I had a really good therapist who made me see just how shitty home was for us with an alcoholic, narcissistic mom and absent dad—no reflection on your father, by the way. Mine is just as flaky…oh crap, sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” Her back arched, pulling her out of my arms for a few seconds before she collapsed back onto me, her words coming out as little gasps. “Put that emotion you worked through in therapy into your book.”
“My great American novel isn’t important. You are.” My nose ran freely, the wetness mingling with the tears that made my eyes burn, my throat aching so hard I was amazed I could speak. My tissues were now a wadded mass of moisture that I somehow felt reflected my life. “I don’t want to lose you now that I found you again.”
“Dragon hunters…” She clutched my arm even tighter, her fingernails digging into my flesh, little crescents of blood forming. “Dragon hunters…”
Her head slumped back against my shoulder, her body convulsing uncontrollably.
“Dragon hunters what?” I asked, my mind wailing and screaming. How had this come to be? What had she done to deserve this end?
She stiffened, her head tilted back, her mouth open in an O and her eyes wide and staring. Her lips didn’t move, but I heard the whisper as it drifted away on the wind.
“Come back.”
Still Day One.
Really Have to Work on Chapter Headers.
Consult Mr. Manny About Whether Numbers or Descriptions Are Better, and If You Can Have Too Many Day Ones
EONS PASSED. AT LEAST, THAT’S MY IMPRESSION. Great, long eons in which entire eras of dinosaurs could have risen, ruled the Earth, and faded away until they were nothing but calcified bones buried deep in the crust of the Earth. That’s how long it seemed since I had left my apartment, gotten into my cute VW Bug, and driven off to find my long-lost sister.
I stood over a dark stain on the ground next to the dumpster, all that remained of my sister’s body after she died. It seemed dragon hunters didn’t linger in the world once they had ceased to live, since Helen’s body had crumbled into a black, sooty ash that swirled upward into the night sky, leaving nothing behind but a deep ache in my heart.
Dragon hunters come back, she’d said. I clung to those words, hoping that meant that her death was somehow a temporary thing and that I’d see her again. I said a silent prayer over the black stain, calling on whatever deity would listen to me to take care of my sister, to guide her to wherever she was going, and most of all, to let her come back if that’s what she wanted.
An odd sense of comfort settled over me when I made my way back to my car, just as if Helen’s being had approved of my act. Perhaps it was a form of self-protection, perhaps my mental animal had finally gone nuts itself, or perhaps it really was Helen, but my spirits lightened with every step until, by the time I reached my car, I felt like I had a handle on my life again.
“Right. First things first. Hand sanitizer for as much of me as I can reach until I can take the longest, hottest shower in the history of long, hot showers.” I got into my car and pulled out the small bottle, and without thinking about one of the main ingredients of hand sanitizers—alcohol—squirted it on my bloodied wrist.
The screams of agony almost rattled my car windows, so loud and strident that it took me a minute to realize they were coming from my mouth. It didn’t take nearly that long for the nerve receptors in my wrist to register the sensation of alcohol on an open wound.
“Ack! Ack! Ack!” I screamed, and first I tried to claw the hellfire inferno off my wrist, then ripped the bottom half of my cotton shirt off in order to wipe away the pain.
It didn’t work. For ten agonizing minutes I searched frantically in my car for water that I could use to rinse off my wrist, and by the time I was cursing my compulsively tidy ways, the worst of it was over. I bound my wrist with a strip of torn shirt, ignoring the blood smeared down to my palm and up almost to my elbow, and tried to focus on getting myself home without having any more catastrophes strike.
I didn’t need to look in the rearview mirror to see how much I’d changed in the eons that had passed since I had left my apartment to meet Helen. I pulled into my parking spot and turned off the engine, feeling alternately numb and exhausted and heartsore, with just a tinge of hysteria every now and again that made me giggle the sort of giggle that gets you locked up in a psych ward.
Averting my eyes from my reflection in the side mirror, I grabbed the bundle wrapped in my vomit hoodie, which I’d placed on the passenger seat without due regard to hygiene or the very real possibility of ruining the upholstery, and staggered out of the car toward the stairs.
That’s when I remembered Helen’s sword, the one she’d given to me. I’d left it behind with her ashy remains, too befuddled to take it with me when I ran from the hellish cesspit of nightmares.
“Crapballs,” I said to myself, using the last clean bit of my hoodie to pull open the door to the stairwell. “I’ll have to get it in the morning. Assuming no druggies get it first and hock it for more…”
I stopped when voices drifted down from the second floor.
“—have two kids, but I’m thinking about getting a nanny, so if you wanted some company at the gym, I’d be happy to introduce you around.”
I frowned and paused before making my way up the landing that led to the second floor. Who was Teresita trying to talk into going to the gym? She hated the gym. She hated all sorts of structured exercise, going so far as to refuse to join me at the local yoga school.
“That’s very kind of you, but I’ve only just moved in, so I’m not really looking for an exercise partner, or a gym—”
That was a man’s voice. I leaned against the bannister, suddenly too exhausted to move. I thought of frowning even more, but it seemed like too much of an effort after having survived the eons that occurred between Helen dying in my arms, turning into a puff of black, ashy smoke and disappearing before my eyes, and me driving home. Besides, the most important thing right now was to take a two-hour shower. My skin positively crawled with the thought of all the filth on me.
Something inside me pooh-poohed the idea of germs, shocking my anxiety animal. I considered this calm new voice in my head,
and wondered at it. Also, why was it urging me to pay attention to the man speaking, when we all knew I needed to sanitize everything on my body immediately, if not sooner?
It has to be mental exhaustion, I told the calm voice, but germs, filth, vomit, and blood nonetheless, I eavesdropped.
I’ll give him this—the stranger had a nice voice, baritone, not deep, but deepish. It was a mahogany sort of voice, I decided. Rich and warm and dark. It also had the tiniest hint of an accent, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
“No? How about lattes? You drink coffee, don’t you? I can fill you in on the best coffee shops around the neighborhood. Not the chains, of course, because they’re so…well…commercial, but some really good independent coffee shops that sell ethically sourced coffee served by immigrant and migrant peoples seeking to better their lives.”
“I prefer tea over coffee, thank you. If you don’t mind, Miss…Mrs.…”
“O’Hanlon. Teresita, actually. And you are?”
“Iskandar.”
“Iskandar? What sort of a name is that? I mean, what ethnicity is it? I’m all over ethnicities. My mom was from Guatemala, but Dad was born in Mexico City. Whereabouts is your family from?”
“Tajikistan.”
“How interesting. Does it mean something in Tajikistani? Is that your first name or last name?”
“It’s my surname. If you don’t mind—”
“Well, it’s very unique. I like, though. Is your first name as exotic as that?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “No, it’s Ian. I really must—”
“Ian Iskandar.” Teresita all but purred his name. I rolled my eyes to myself, making a mental note to remind her that ladies who had husbands they claimed they adored shouldn’t be purring at strange men in the hallway. “That’s just a lovely name.”
“Thank you. And thank you for the welcome, but I really must get to my unpacking.”