Ellie frowned, calculating. The izzat, currently disguised as a young man, laughed at a jest from a drunken human girl. As he stepped back she moved forward, bumping into him and spilling half of her scotch and coke.
“Watch out you moron,” she said in a slight accent over the sounds of the thumping dance music. She moved the drink between hands and shook the wet one, then dried it on her faded blue jeans.
Half-drunk, the izzat turned and sneered down at her, “Watch it yourself!” he said, glancing at her unusual white hair. “What happened to you? See a ghost?”
She glared. “A wyvern, actually.” She glanced at his watch. “Nice projector. Creates a first-class illusion. Amazing what technology can do.”
His expression turned hard as he unconsciously covered the device on his wrist. “Who are you?”
She walked past him, finding an empty table on the far side of the room. She placed her drink on a wet coaster and glanced out the window at a street lit by overhead lights and busy with cars. From the corner of her eye she watched the izzat cross the room and drop his lean frame on the bench opposite her.
“Who are you?” he said coldly. He leaned on the heavy wooden table, his expression dangerous.
Ellie took a sip of her drink and placed it back on the wet coaster. “So, what’s a non-human doing on a human world?”
He frowned, hesitating. “Exploratory team. We’re considering initiating contact. How did you detect my disguise?” He didn’t seem nearly so drunk as before.
She smiled. “I can see the energy field it projects.”
His eyes leveled on hers. “You’re not human either, are you?”
She glanced out the window again. “I was. Another world. Another universe.” She presented her hand to him for inspection. He took it. “Watch out for the tips of my fingers. Put enough pressure on them and claws stick out. Very sharp.”
He raised his eyebrows as he cautiously held her hand up to the dim light. “You’ve got scales! Gods, they’re so fine they look like skin.” He released her hand and gave her a calculated smile probably supposed to put her at ease. “Want to tell me about it? I’m Garris, by the way. Gary here.”
“Ellie,” she said. “As I mentioned, I had a run-in with a wyvern. Got infected with wyvern’s blood.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think dragon-kind remained in this world.”
Did she detect a hint of concern? She downed the remaining half of her drink and put the glass back on the table. “You’re right. They don’t exist here.” She waited a moment before continuing. “Listen, I’m sorry I was rude you. I just got irritated when I spilled my drink,” she lied. “I need another. Can I get you a beer? Make up for it?”
He sat back on the bench. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll get the next round.”
She smiled. “Deal.” She left, returning a few minutes later with a beer for him and a scotch and coke for herself.
“So,” he said, “What’s your story? Tell me everything.” He took a sip of his beer and frowned. He held it up, a question on his face.
“Extra bitter,” she said. “Sorry, I should have asked.”
“It’ll do.”
She rested the back of her head against the wall. “Been a long time since I’ve really spoken to anyone about it.” She let longing touch her features, quickly smothered. “By the Creator, far too long. How much time you got?”
He glanced at his dual-purpose watch. “Till dawn. Then I turn into a gutter drunk.” He laughed, though it sounded forced to Ellie.
She played along, producing a smile. “So you’re the reason they close early here? As I said, another world, another universe. It began the year our village had to choose a sacrifice for the wyvern. He came every seven years and took a virgin girl.” She pushed a few strands of loose white hair from her face. “I was sixteen. The lands were wild back then, and probably still are. My father, the local blacksmith, wasn’t a particularly well-liked man. Lazy. A bully. Bit of a cheat. I adored him and he me. My mother I don’t remember. She died from disease when I was young.” Her lips pursed in bitter memory. “I had brown hair, like her.” She closed her eyes, remembering as…
…Trestal, the village elder, called out a name. Ellie recognised it as her own, but it made no sense. A cold spring breeze tussled her hair and sent a shiver into her lower back. Goosebumps prickled her skin. She should have worn a warmer dress.
“No!” her father yelled from behind, making her jump in surprise. He wrapped his thick arms around her, drawing her to him. “She’s my only child! Choose another.”
“The draw was fair, Meham,” Trestal called from the wooden platform. “You watched.”
“You’re not taking her. Anyone here tries to touch her and I’ll-”
Ellie heard a dull whack, and then her father fell, taking her with him to the muddy ground. “No!” she screamed as two men pulled her away from her father. She cried out and struggled uselessly as they hauled her from the square, their fingers bruising her arms.
Trestal followed as they dragged her down the muddy street and away from the crowd. Beyond the edge of the village they lashed her wrists together around a stout pole, and then left her there as tears crossed her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” Trestal called as he walked away. He glanced upward and a look of concern and fear crossed his face. He swore, but the wind carried his words away. He hurried back to the relative safety of the village.
She followed his gaze and saw the gold underside of the wyvern as he glided toward her on the breeze. “Lords of the Higher Realm, save me!” she cried.
She struggled with the cords binding her wrists but they only bit deeper, chafing her skin. Her vision blurred with tears. She pulled until her wrists bled and the wyvern landed heavily behind her, his claws biting into the wet earth.
Heat radiated from the wyvern like a forge. She risked a glance back and cried out.
At the withers he stood taller than a barn, his lean muscles hard. He folded his green-scaled wings, leaving only his chest and inner legs showing gold. His long tail flicked through the air, the golden underside quickly coming to rest against the muddy earth. His yellow eyes regarded her only briefly before he took her in a claw and lifted her up over the pole.
Ellie cried out as he sprang into the air, but his grip was surprisingly gentle. She pulled the cord binding her wrists loose with her teeth, then struggled and kicked as he held her close. He showed no signs he even felt her.
His wings caught an up-draught and stopped beating as he turned into a smooth glide. She thumped her fists against his claw, trying to force him to drop her – better that than any death he might have for her, but he turned her in his grip and she felt him shift.
Suddenly he was only twice her size.
She screamed as both his forearms wrapped around her. Rushing air carried her cries away as he his rear claws took hold of her legs. All her struggling couldn’t have prevented what happened next.
Something scalding hot entered her.
Ellie cried out in shock and pain as the burning spread through her. She blacked out in fear and pain, only to wake and cry out once more when the wyvern withdrew from her.
Hot liquid stung her thighs but she lay unmoving, listless and staring at nothing, a dull ache in her stomach.
Ellie barely noticed as the wyvern shifted back to his natural size. Pain, humiliation and fear buried her thoughts deep.
She lost consciousness long before a cave closed around them, waking on cold stone to an icy draft and an aching stomach. Darkness pressed in on her and stars revealed themselves beyond the wide entrance.
The wyvern remained unseen, but she felt his presence pressing against her mind. She turned her head and closed her eyes in revulsion.
Exhaustion claimed her once more. Reflected daylight from the entrance eventually woke her. Exhausted and hot, she blinked hard before the cavern came into focus.
Crouched on all fours beside the entrance, his long tail wrapped around his talons, the wyvern watched her. His presence still thick against her mind, Ellie turned away as much with fear as disgust with herself.
She felt sick in the stomach, but it took a moment to realise the reason. Her belly was swollen, the wool of her dress tight. She moved and felt an ache deep inside.
“Gods of the Higher Realm.” She glared fearfully at the wyvern as she placed a hand on her swollen belly. “What did you do to me?”
The wyvern raised his head slightly. His ears stood up above short, rear-pointing horns.
“Our females have no womb to carry fertilised eggs. It falls to the male to take the eggs and find a surrogate,” he said in a surprisingly soft, deep voice. “The greater dragons once carried our eggs for us, though they are few in this world since the female unicorn was slain. With only one unicorn remaining, there isn’t enough natural magic in the world to sustain more than a few of the greater dragons. Fortunately your kind are able to grow healthy eggs, and your flesh is nourishing to the drakes.”
The implications closed around her like chains. She swallowed the acid that rose with the fear in her throat. “You mean I’m going to lay eggs, and when they hatch they’re going to eat me?”
“Of course.” He sounded as if she should already know that. “The draken,” at her confused expression, he said, “The greater dragons, carried our eggs full size for us, where you cannot. The drakes will hatch small and require your flesh as sustenance for the first few weeks after hatching.”
Her breath frosted in the cold air, though she didn’t feel the cold other than on her skin. She tried to stand, but there was no strength in her legs and she collapsed back to the stone.
She stared back at the wyvern in horror. “I hate you,” she said. His presence against her mind smothered her like the haystack that had once fallen on her as a child. She felt short of breath.
Massive shoulders flexed as he stood on all fours, his head scant yards from the cavern’s roof. “You knew your fate when I came for you.”
“I only knew fear!” She forced her weak arms to push her into a sitting position, though the effort cost her more than she felt she had. “My people know only fear! Why do you think they had to tie me to a post?”
His nostrils flared over his narrow, toothy muzzle. “A bargain is a bargain. Your people prosper under my protection.”
“They’d rather be free!”
“So would I!” he roared.
Ellie rested her back against the wall. “You’re a parasite,” she whispered. Her eyes closed. She was so tired she couldn’t keep them open. She could feel the heat in her body burning up her strength. “If I had a weapon I’d kill myself.”
“And I would be forced to destroy your village.”
With the last of her strength she said, “After what they did to me, do you think I care?” With that she collapsed into unconsciousness.
His presence haunted her sleep like a weight around her soul, keeping her restless and her sleep fitful. She woke to an agony of stomach cramps in pitch darkness, her dress already torn at the seams.
The wyvern stirred at her movement, but she couldn’t see him. Between cramps she managed to pull her dress over her head and use it as a pillow. By dawn she felt so hot she had to keep crawling around the floor to find cool stone, despite the icy draft.
As the first touch of sun found the cave, she screamed in agony.
A dozen soft-shelled eggs spilled from between her legs amid a slick of blood and clear acrid fluid. She crawled a few yards away and collapsed, not caring that the uneven stone bit into her aching belly. She lay there until the sun reached its peak before finding the strength to move again, her only thought to get away from the eggs before the drakes hatched and found her.
She managed to drag herself a dozen feet before collapsing, her energy expended, though the heat of her body could have rivalled a small campfire.
Dusk settled before she felt strong enough to move again. In near darkness the wyvern regarded her from his position near the entrance, its presence a sentinel against her escape.
She swallowed in a dry throat and said, “Why don’t you just kill me?”
His ears stood up. “Your flesh must be fresh for the drakes.”
“I hate you.” She pushed herself up on her elbow, resting there a moment. “Why am I so tired?”
The wyvern regarded her with his head cocked to one side.
“What happened to me when you raped me?”
“Not rape,” the wyvern said, as if finally understanding. “As per our covenant, you carried my mate’s eggs for her. The eggs lay in birth fluid which becomes a part of you if it doesn’t kill you first. The fluid makes your body hot enough to nurture the eggs. It also makes dragon blood flow in your veins. The blood makes more birth fluid and the fluid nurtures you for as long as you carry the eggs.”
“Makes me part wyvern?” She laughed sourly at the irony. “Are wyverns cannibals now?”
He lifted his head and looked down his snout at her. “You are not of dragon kind. Even should I let you leave, you would only survive a few months. Dragon blood is in you. It will destroy you now the eggs are birthed.”
She closed her eyes, resting her head against the cool stone. “So I’ll die no matter what happens?”
The wyvern inclined his head.
A sickening feeling almost choked her. She took a deep breath and asked, “When will the eggs hatch?”
“The shells should harden by morning. They will hatch shortly after that.”
She was quiet for a while, her stomach twisting with fear and anger, but strangely no hunger. Tiredness overwhelmed her.
She awoke with a start as the wyvern’s normally calm presence against her mind reacted to danger. Dawn’s light lit the cave, the sounds of heavy breathing coming from without. She glanced at the eggs. The silvery shells looked hard.
The wyvern’s ears twitched, but he didn’t look at her. He watched the entrance. A few moments later Ellie heard the sound of a bow release and saw an arrow strike the wyvern’s muzzle and deflect harmlessly to the ground.
The wyvern’s nostrils flared as he turned his head. “Village man,” he said, his breath nearly as hot as fire. “If we have a quarrel I do not know of it.”
“Give me back my daughter and we have no quarrel.”
“Father!” Ellie cried. Hope surged.
Another arrow deflected harmlessly off the wyvern’s scales. The wyvern stood. “Leave now!” he roared. The air wavered with the heat in his breath.
Her father stepped into the cave entrance. “Let me see my daughter!”
The wyvern’s long tail whipped through the air, striking stone from the wall behind him. Something rumbled deep in his chest and his ears stood forward. “I understand your anguish, village man. Leave your weapons where you stand and you may enter.”
“I don’t trust you. I’ll keep my weapons.”
The wyvern roared, the sound nearly shattering Ellie’s hearing. She covered her ears with her hands, crying out and shedding a tear with the pain. She could feel the wyvern’s anger when he spoke again. “I could obliterate you where you stand, village man. Your weapons are useless. I will not make my offer again.”
Meham cursed, but dropped his bow and quiver. The wyvern moved to allow him entrance, and when he saw Ellie he ran. She cried with too many emotions as he knelt before her and pulled her close.
“You’re burning up,” he said. “By the Higher Realm you’re hot!” He glared at the wyvern. “She’s sick. You must let me take her home.”
“She will soon be dead. Her sacrifice will feed the drakes.”
Meham swore under his breath. Aloud, he said, “You’ll have to kill me before I’d allow that to happen.”
The sound of a shell cracking interrupted them. Ellie glanced at the eggs. “They’re hatching, father. Please leave. You can’t save me.”
“Never.” He pulled a dagger from his belt. “I’ll kill the drakes first.” He took two steps toward the eggs but a burst of flame washed over Ellie and struck him. He screamed as his clothing and hair burst into flame and his dagger tumbled to the stone.
“Father!” Ellie cried.
He screamed louder as he tried to put the flames out, stumbling wildly as he tore his cloak and shirt from his body. He staggered closer to the eggs as another burst of flame struck him. He finally fell to the ground with an agonised cry.
He thrashed against the stone for long seconds before a groan passed his lips and he lay still. The flames died on his blackened body and the nauseating stench of burnt flesh filled the air.
“I’ll kill you!” Ellie yelled impotently at the wyvern. “I’ll kill you and all your kind!”
The wyvern glared back. “Your father broke our covenant. Be thankful I do not seek revenge on your people.”
The first drake broke from its shell.
Green skinned, it craned its long neck and made a high-pitched call, quickly answered by muffled replies from the other eggs. Ellie cried out, pushing herself away.
Shaking as much from weakness as fear, her endurance gave out. She closed her eyes and buried her head under her arms to wait for the inevitable. Another egg cracked, and in quick succession two more.
Tears broke from her closed eyes and she sobbed loudly enough that she didn’t hear the excited calls of the first drake as it found her father’s body. It wasn’t until more hatched that she realised what was happening. She lifted her head and glared at them with all the hatred inside her.
“Get away from him!” she yelled. “Leave him alone!” They ignored her. Too weak to move any further, she buried her face in her arms to be tortured by the sounds of their feast.
When they were done the drakes flew from the cave in a small cloud, leaving her alone with their sire and the bloody remains of her father’s body. The wyvern stretched his legs.
“Are you going to eat me?” she asked. She pushed herself to her knees with an effort.
The wyvern laughed at her, the sound deep and echoing. “Only our first meal is flesh, and only then if we hatch small. We are creatures of magic.”
“Then what’s to happen to me?”
“You will die slowly. The blood in your veins will destroy your body without the birth fluid in your womb to nurture you. It will not be pleasant.”
“Then kill me. My father is gone and I won’t return to my people. Kill me. Quickly.”
The wyvern raised his ears. “You do not wish to live a few more months?”
“For what?” she said bitterly. “Kill me. Please. I beg you.”
“As you wish.”
He took a deep breath and fire washed over her like a warm blanket. Her nearby dress burned away in an instant, but when the heat passed she remained untouched.
He frowned. “Strange.” He took another breath, and pure fire warped the air with heat, stinging her skin.
Flame flashed throughout the cavern, cremating the bloody bones of her father and blackening the silvery shells left by the drakes. When it was over, her knees rested on rock glowing red from the heat.
Her skin was almost a silvery colour. “Kill me!” she cried. “I don’t want to die slowly.”
The dragon snarled, revealing huge teeth. She felt his irritation.
His next breath struck and she cried out in agony. Flame seared into her and through her, burning away everything that remained human inside her. When it eased, she found herself kneeling in six inches of molten rock, its heat an enjoyable warmth compared to the wyvern’s breath.
“No!” the wyvern roared, its sudden unexplained fear palpable against her mind. Another burst of flame slapped her backwards to the cavern wall, melting the stone behind her. She writhed and screamed in pain until the wyvern’s breath stopped.
Slowly, as if new to movement, she took a deep breath and stood, wiping molten stone from her body. Fine bronze scales covered her skin and her hair had gone white. She stared at her hands as if they were someone else’s, and then looked up at the wyvern.
“What have you done to me?” she asked in a voice she didn’t recognise. His eyes reflected the shock and fear she felt from him in her mind.
“No!” he roared loud enough to have shattered her eardrums only minutes before. He sprang at her, a huge claw smashing her across the cavern.
She crashed into the wall and fell to the floor, a shower of fine stone dusting her. Shaken but unhurt, she carefully stood. A slapped cheek a day ago would have stung more. She stared at her limbs in wonder.
She could almost touch the wyvern’s fear. She reached out without knowing quite how and twisted something. He screamed in pain.
Sudden realisation struck her harder than the wyvern’s blow. She almost sank to her knees. She knew his Name. It was now part of her own. He was hers to command.
“Get out of here,” she said, testing.
The wyvern bolted for the entrance and sprang into the air with a roar of rage. With a snap of his wings he was gone.
She followed him to the entrance and stared in wonder while cool air caressed her new bronze scales. With perfect vision she watched the wyvern fly as fast as he could toward the far ranges.
The leaves of trees on distant mountains were individually visible to her, and she felt the natural magics in the air.
She too, was now a creature of magic.
She knelt, touching the stone and feeling the elemental fire deep within the earth, and the magic that bound it there.
She jumped from the edge of the cavern and landed lightly more than two hundred feet below as if skipping down steps. Her mind echoed with the emotions and unguarded thoughts of hundreds of wyvern across the world, and through them discovered other girls dying as she almost had.
Anger suffused her thoughts as she walked among spring wildflowers. She breathed in the fresh mountain air, feeling the currents of natural magic about her as a normal person would wind.
The cold hardly touched her as she made her way back to the village. She walked through an entire night and the following day and only stopped at the Mendder’s farm to steal a dress of dark blue from their eldest daughter’s room.
The coarse wool slipped easily across her fine-scaled flesh.
Farmers she knew watched her pass without recognition, more curious about her white hair than anything else.
On the second evening she arrived at her village, sustained by the world’s natural magics.
She ignored the curious stares from familiar faces and made her way to her father’s forge. Inside she found a polished steel mirror.
Someone she didn’t know stared back. Even her eyes had lost some of their natural deep brown and were now tinged with yellow around the pupils.
She put on a leather apron to protect her dress and fired up the forge with enough fuel to make a hardened blacksmith curse and back away.
While it heated she collected the mirror and every other scrap of steel in the workshop, placing it all in the coals. She stroked the elemental magic in the fire, caressing it like a lover.
When glowing she pulled two pieces of steel from the fire with her hands. She thought of the wyvern and her anger swelled, the soft steel bending in her grip. She pounded the two pieces with a hefty hammer, folding them together over the anvil and binding the elemental fire magic into the steel.
The door creaked open to reveal Trestal’s slim form.
“What do you want, Trestal?” she asked before he could set a foot inside.
He raised his white eyebrows, peering at her suspiciously. “Who are you?”
She returned the still-hot metal to the forge. “Surely you remember a girl you sentenced to death only a few days ago?” Though she tried she couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice.
The old man’s jaw dropped. “Ellie?” He stepped over the threshold, staring at her with a deep frown and squint. “By the Gods!”
She reached into the fire with a bare hand and pulled the glowing blade of a sickle out, then a damaged rim from someone’s cart. Trestal stared at her in shock. Without the benefit of the anvil she twisted them together then threw them back to the heat. “What do you want, Trestal?”
His eyes moved from the forge to her as she began pumping the bellows. “What are you doing?” He leaned against the doorframe as if uncertain he could stand on his own.
“Forging a spear.” She pulled a couple of horseshoes from the glowing coals and bent them around each other.
“But-”
“Trestal! My father is dead and I wish I were. I don’t blame you for what happened to me, but I’m going to make sure this never happens again. Unless you wish to help, get out.”
He watched her pull more glowing metal from the fire with her bare hands. “I’ll pass the word you’re to be left alone,” he said. With an unsteady nod he turned and left.
For hours she labored at the forge, folding steel into a huge lump even a blacksmith would be hard pressed to lift. When done she placed it back into the coals and closed her eyes, sensing the magical properties of the fire.
With her new awareness she forced the escaping elemental magic back into the forge, melding the fire and steel together like an alloy. When hot enough to trigger a resonant response, she called to the earth and heat deep within answered.
Hoping she wasn’t violating some sacred principle of magic, she built a link between the steel and the heat below. When she opened her eyes she found steel the colour of the sun, its form unchanged. She pulled it from the forge, scalding even her hands. For long hours she shaped it, re-heating it regularly with the earth’s elemental magic until she had a spear ten-foot long and as thick as her wrist.
Still glowing, she took it outside where it made sunlight seem dim, and threw shadows behind people and objects. Villagers she knew squinted at her as she passed them, shying away.
“Ellie?” one matron called.
Ellie stopped briefly as she caught the woman’s eye, nodded slightly, then continued on, otherwise ignoring the woman who’d once kindly given the blacksmith’s child her own daughters’ outgrown clothes.
At the creek she knelt and whispered, “This is for you, Father,” and dropped the spear to quench in a screaming hiss of elemental agony.
Steam billowed into the air, submersing her for minutes in a white fog rising above the willows. When the creek boiled dry she took the dark spear and silently called, commanding the wyvern’s presence.
A roar of rage sounded deep in her mind, shackled by her mastery of his Name.
In a blast of hatred she sensed the wyvern spring into the sky. He resisted her demands like an eel would a man’s grip, but she forced him forward despite his efforts to turn away. Hours passed as she waited, the wyvern using every stray breeze to delay his arrival.
She watched as he finally came into view, her own hatred coursing inside her. The moment arrived. She gripped her cold spear and moved to face him.
The wyvern landed before her, fear in his eyes as she hefted her magic-wrought spear. He remained standing as if her mastery of his Name could change at any moment and he might achieve freedom from her.
An unspoken command forced him to drop to his belly.
“Kill me then,” he said. “It will change nothing.”
“Oh, you’re right,” she said as she approached his chest, close to his heart. She touched the point of her spear to his scales and ran it down his side without leaving a mark. “But I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to make you suffer. You’re going to help me kill all of your kind, and then you’re going to live with it. I’m going to make sure this never happens to another girl again.”
The wyvern’s howl of ineffective rage reached the mountains as she sprang to his back and commanded him to fly…
…Ellie opened her eyes to the dim nightclub, her heart still beating hard with remembered emotion.
“What happened then?” the izzat asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her.
Ellie glanced at him. “I spent the next ten years hunting wyverns,” she said. Her expression turned inward again. “I wasn’t very good at it, actually. Only injured two. Most refused to fight – kept flying away. They’re not stupid, at least not the old ones. The seventh one killed my mount when we caught him by surprise. A fall of a thousand feet knocks the wind out of you – in case you’ve never tried it. If it hadn’t been for my spear he would have killed me, too.”
“He killed your mount? You mean the wyvern who’s Name you knew?”
She nodded. “Actually, I think he suicided. Didn’t put up much of a fight, anyhow.”
“What did you do then?”
“I didn’t know any of their Names, so I couldn’t command any, but I could track them by their emotions and thoughts. Travelling on foot took time though, and it was nearly two years before I cornered a small female in a cave her mate had once used to hatch their young.”
“So you killed her?” he asked, a hint of a smile implying approval.
Her index finger pressed against the table and a sharp claw protruded, revealing a trace of dried blood on it. She frowned, releasing the pressure. “No,” she said as the claw disappeared.
His smile dissolved as he leaned forward. “Why not?”
Her lips barely held off a sneer. “I only thought I’d trapped her. She’d actually trapped me. There were two more outside. Big males. Together they could have torn me apart. Instead she offered me a deal.”
His eyes widened. “You dealt with them? Gods. Dragonkind are the most dangerous and cunning creatures my people have ever discovered. We avoid them. Always.”
She shrugged. “Didn’t have much choice, remember? It was deal or die. The deal was this; they would never use another girl as a surrogate again if I promised to give up my crusade and leave them in peace. I had the feeling they didn’t want this to happen again any more than I did. I think they even felt sorry for me.”
“Doesn’t explain how you got here.”
“When I gave them my spear they taught me to travel between worlds – to get rid of me no doubt. I used to think I got the better deal. I’m not so sure now.”
“I’m curious. How do they, you know, reproduce without using girls as surrogates?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I didn’t stay to find out. I guess they use cattle or something.”
He screwed his face up. “Oh. Sorry I asked.”
“They’ve gotta do something, I suppose. How about we change the subject?”
“Fine by me. So, why’d come you came to Earth? It’s pretty backward.”
She laughed. “Compared to what? I crossed the veil between my universe and yours about two hundred years ago. Almost every world I visited before here was either colonised, lifeless, or destroyed by war, all resources taken.”
He sat up straighter, his expression closed. “And?”
“And then I found a world not far from here. Primitive people, lovely world. It was a paradise. Strangely enough, a bunch of izzen surveyed the place then wiped the people there out, despite my efforts to negotiate. They raped the world. Took everything.”
Any friendliness he’d shown disappeared. “So you know why I’m here then.”
She downed her drink. He’d finished his already. “Yeah.” She gave him a pointed look. “Did I mention I killed your other team member this afternoon? No? Sorry, must have slipped my mind.”
He stared in shock. “You bitch!” he whispered under his breath. He reached for a small laser cutter at his belt, but found it gone.
She held it up and showed it to him before crushing it in her hand. “This is my home now. You’re not going to destroy it.”
He sat back, a sneer on his lips. “You’re too late. I’ve made my survey. I’ll be returning home as soon as I get to my ship.”
She smiled. “Really. Did you enjoy your beer?”
“What?”
“Your beer? Did you enjoy it? Wasn’t it a little bitter?”
He swallowed. Hard. “What did you do?”
She held up a finger and forced the claw out. It still had a hint of her dried blood on it. “Just added a little dragon blood, that’s all. Oh, don’t stand up, you’ll puke. That’s why I told you my story – keep you seated while your stomach had time to absorb the blood. Mouth feel dry yet? Getting tired?”
He looked worried. “Maybe.”
She blew him a kiss. “Enjoy the rest of your life.”
“You mean I’ve got months?” Relief crossed his face. “I can get home and find a cure by then, easily. Cryosleep and FTL travel. Did I mention that? I might arrive home decades from now, but to me it’ll be moments.” He laughed.
“I put blood in your beer, not an egg in your gut. In about an hour you’ll be a red slick on the pavement.”
He paled. “Wait. I can-”
She stood up, leaning forward with both hands on the table. “What? Bullshit your way out of this? Not a chance, izzat. Gotta go call the media. There’s a ship that needs to be discovered. I’ve studied your people too, by the way. I plan on sharing what I know.” She patted him on the cheek. “By the time the next survey ship arrives, this world will be expecting it. It’ll be hundreds of years before your people figure out something’s gone wrong.”
“But—”
She held up her hand, forestalling anything else. “When the wyverns realised they’d made a mistake, they fixed it. Your people are going to find out they’ve made an even bigger one. Let’s see what they learn.”
© Chris Andrews
If you enjoyed Wyvern’s Blood, you might like the the world it was originally drawn from – Prophecy of Power: Quarry.