Even as she pronounced the last word, she metamorphosed. Her arms stretched till they became forepaws attached to a long, sinuous, silvery body that shone wetly under the moonlight.
She was beautiful. More beautiful, thought that part of George that was still George, than any human. She was a primordial female, a creature of stars and sky and elemental sea; the end of the beginning, the seed of the end.
She stretched her head, opened her mouth. From the sharp-fanged cavern a sound emerged that was not laughter and yet had the same feel as her laughter.
The challenge.
She flew up into the sky, straight up, laughing her drake laughter.
He flew after her, pulled by invisible strings. Heavier, sturdier, he flew slower. Yet, he’d catch her in the end, because she wished to be caught.
She gave him a run. Their sparkling bodies wove shining lines in the sky. Their afterimages drew the twenty secret symbols of the alphabet of Mu, the sacred alpha of lost Atlantis.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, he caught her. Their bodies pressed together, metallic scales against metallic scales, his foreclaws holding her still, their wings flapping in unison, to keep their combined weight aloft.
Pleasure blotted out his thoughts, spread through his nerves, tingled in his skin, inflamed his brain.
There was only the serpent and the serpent’s joy, as the female’s quiescent body allowed itself to be guided by his.
The sky turned the opaline color that precedes dawn.
His dream lasted until he heard her dragon-challenge and felt her pulling away from him.
Now they’d descend separately to the sandy beach that seemed so far below. On the way down she’d flame him. She’d gorge on his remains and on whatever humans she could catch, until—bloated and satiated—she’d crawl into some cave to spawn the litter that would one day rule the world.
George started opening his claws, ready to accept his fate and search Elisha’s ghost in whatever Hades awaited dragons and their victims. He’d die like Elisha who’d been his bride and died a sacrifice to his dragon instincts.
But even as his heart gave up, his reason awakened.
Dragons had destroyed themselves before, in the stars. Despite the many worlds they’d lived in, they’d come to an end. How, but through their own voraciousness? And how many species had they killed in their wasteful savaging?
All for nothing.
Even on Earth, they’d been uncontrolled devourers and brought themselves to the brink of extinction. They’d do it again. They’d ride mankind to its grave.
If he tightened his claws
She was a quarter his weight
If he let his fangs sink into that sinuous silver neck
The thoughts never came to their logical conclusion because the worm in him twisted in revulsion at each of them.
Sacrilege, his instinct screamed. Sacrilege. It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done. If you
But the human George had already lowered the drake’s powerful jade head.
He felt his jaws clamp on her silver neck.
She struggled for only a second.
George tasted the bright poison of her blood burning a path down his throat, scorching him alive as he swallowed.
Tasting his own death, George let the inert weight of the female pull his dazed body downwards into the sea
Above, the bright stars glared in an indifferent sky. Below, the lights of the city twinkled paler and paler as the sun rose. To the west, the undisturbed sea stretched like molten silver.
Songs
I went to a workshop in the Oregon coast. One of the assignments was to write, in twenty four hours, a ghost story set in a particular room of a particular hotel assigned to us. I’d never written a story under that kind of deadline, with no time to think or research, and I felt as if I were staring down an abyss from which no idea emerged. Then I noticed the antique radio in the room. Phil and Nick came to life at that moment. Of all my characters they remain—no pun intended—two of the most haunting.
Phil rode the accelerator the two hours from Portland airport to the coast, fuming on single lane stretches behind eighteen wheelers, and speeding up around them as soon as opportunity offered.
He must find Nick; he must talk to Nick; he must explain.
The impossibly tall trees clustered together on either side of the road, forming a green tunnel that enclosed the road on either side, reinforcing Phil’s impression that there was no turning back, no turning around. He was on a one-way road back to the past.
Twenty years back.
He lit one cigarette from the end of the other, the nicotine bitter on his tongue, soothing in his bloodstream. Clouds of smoke filled the small rental car.
Tobacco smoke on Phil’s nostrils masked the chemical smell exuding from his every pore. Take enough medicine and you’ll start smelling like a pharmacy.
It had been hell refraining from smoking all the way from Denver, in the plane.
Damn, oh, damn, they should have flights for the dying only; for those beyond risk of illness from passive smoke—great flocks of moribund, shuttled through the sky in a cloud of bitter, soothing smoke.
Cyanide or hemlock, sir? Will that be all?
If only it were that simple.
He chuckled, deep in his throat.
If that could be all.
To close one’s eyes and end it all.
He longed for that nothingness like a tired child longed for bed after a long day.
If only he could be sure of that rest, that nothingness, he wouldn’t submit to this nonsense of drug cocktails and the indignity of losing his senses and faculties one by one, of watching old age arrive prematurely and install itself in every mirror.
He could stand not seeing his nephew and niece grow up. He’d come to accept that chances were one-year-old Stacy would become a woman with no memory of him. Ian would learn baseball from someone else. It wasn’t like his sister would ever mention him to the kids now. Not now.
But what if consciousness and memory subsisted after death?
He lit another cigarette and pushed the car, faster, faster, through the asphalt-paved tunnel amid towering trees.
His dreams, if dreams there were after death, would be of Nick. Even Nick’s name, after all these years, still brought a reaction. Nick, Nicky, Nicholas Stevelanos. His heart went out to meet the syllables full of joy and winced away from them like a guilty child.
Giving up Nick had been Phil’s greatest mistake ever. Abandoning Nick in that motel room, to face the cold morning alone, had been Phil’s most egregious crime.
The one he didn’t want to answer for eternally.
So now Phil would go back. He sucked in the bitter smoke, pressed the gas pedal and made himself think of finding Nick as a sure thing. He’d go back to the motel and Nick would be where Phil had left him twenty years ago.
Twenty years.
They’d been only twenty two. They’d just finished college. That last summer together, after four years as Nick’s roommate—as Nick’s lover—Phil had told himself over and over that he wasn’t really gay; that he just happened to really like Nick; that anyone would like Nick.
At the threshold of adulthood, Phil couldn’t bear the thought of telling his large Italian family that he was gay, that he had a lover, that they would be living together. Phil had run from Nick to avoid facing up to the family; to avoid facing up to the world.
Like it had helped. Like Phil’s family hadn’t found out. Like he hadn’t ended up being shunned and given the cold shoulder anyway. By everyone except Tessie, his sister, who lived in Denver.
Even Tessie had turned remote and distant a year ago when he told her he’d tested HIV positive. She’d said something or other about not knowing he was promiscuous. As though he’d caught it from being promiscuous and not from sweet talking I’d-never-want-anyone-but-you Mike.