Mari Mancusi - Scorched

When they had finished, she stepped back, regarding the fire pit with critical eyes. “Do you have a match?” she asked.

Caleb laughed. “Are you kidding? Watch and learn!” He turned to Fred. “Light my fire, baby!” he crowed to the mighty beast. Fred cheerfully obliged, puffing out a small fireball in the direction of their woodpile.

Trinity smiled. “I should have known.”

As the fire crackled to life, she settled down on a nearby log, holding out her hands to warm them by the flames. A moment later, Emmy curled up by her side, contentedly snorting a few puffs of smoke from her snout before closing her large blue eyes. Trin reached over and stroked the dragon’s nose, thanking her for the amazing ride.

But next time, no lunch breaks! she scolded her gently. And no letting them win. They’re already too cocky as it is.

She heard a loud snort and glanced up to find Fred looking at Caleb expectantly, her golden eyes shining with eagerness and a large splotch of drool dripping from the corner of her mouth. Caleb rolled his eyes and waved his hands in the air. Once again, a piece of meat appeared, even more bloody than the one Emmy had devoured if that were possible.

“Okay, okay, I guess you deserve this,” he said grudgingly. “I’m still in shock you let the other one go.” The meat dropped to the ground with a bloody plop and Fred dug in with gusto. When she had finished, she looked up, her mouth smeared with blood like some crazy clown lipstick, batting her eyelashes at Caleb, obviously hungry for more. Trinity giggled. She was worse than a Labrador Retriever.

“No more!” Caleb cried, playfully shoving her huge snout away. He turned to Trin. “Lesson one when raising dragons: they’re all complete gluttons. They’d eat until they exploded if you let them.” He gave Fred a scolding look. “Now settle down and go to sleep. You’re not getting anything else from me today.”

Fred hmphed her disapproval but eventually gave up, settling down beside Emmy. A moment later, her eyes drifted closed and she started snoring like a buzz saw. Caleb groaned. “Gotta love dragons,” he said derisively, poking the beast with his boot to get her to quiet down. Then he settled in front of the fire himself, closing his eyes and holding out his hands, as if he were meditating. Trin was about to ask what he was doing, but before she could speak, a bag of marshmallows dropped from the sky, out of thin air, just like the meat. Two large toasting sticks soon followed.

“Wow,” she breathed. “How are you doing that?”

“Ask and the Nether shall provide,” Caleb replied nonchalantly, though Trin caught him wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. Whatever he’d done, it’d taken a lot out of him. “That’s what makes this place so cool. We can do anything we want to do. Be anyone we want to be. It’s limitless! Well, until you get back to real life that is,” he amended. “Then you have to face the fire.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember how you felt after using your gift on that cop?” Caleb reminded her. When she nodded, he added, “Imagine that but ten times worse. Like a hangover, I guess. And your spark is totally depleted.” He gave her a rueful look. “Sorry, I probably should have warned you in advance.”

She shrugged, taking a marshmallow and stuffing it onto her stick. “Whatever,” she said, waving a hand in dismissal. “This is well worth a little hangover.” She looked out over the valley below, at the sky, flaming red from the setting sun. “To be here. To see this.” She shook her head. “It’s unbelievable really.” She gave him a shy look. “Thank you. It’s just what I needed—a chance to get my mind off everything.”

“So you enjoyed your ride?”

“It was incredible,” she admitted, watching the marshmallow turn a golden brown as she held it over the flames. “I can’t even put it into words. And it wasn’t just the flying either. But the chance to let go like that—to just be able to enjoy the ride.” A warm glow flowed through her. “Let’s just say that’s not something I’ve been able to do much in my life.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said with a slow smile. “I’ll never forget my first time. I thought I was going to die. Instead, it’s when I finally started living.”

A silence fell over them, each lost in their own thoughts as the fire crackled between them. She looked over, watching him gazing tenderly at his dragon and she felt a warmth settle in her stomach. He was so different here than he acted in the outside world. As if just being here allowed him to shed his prickly skin and reveal his true self underneath. Here he seemed relaxed, gentle, kind. Almost sweet. So unlike the sullen, sarcastic boy he pretended to be.

He looked up, catching her gaze. His eyebrows raised. She felt her face heat and she turned quickly away. As she stared purposely into the fire, she could feel his eyes rake over her with curious intensity, as if asking a question she wasn’t sure how to answer.

“Wow, this fire is pretty hot,” she stammered, pushing back on her log.

“Yeah,” he answered slowly. “Some might say scorching.”

Scorching. Yes, she felt scorched all right. But not by the fire. She cleared her throat, trying to still her pounding heart as her stomach flip-flopped madly. She tried to tell herself it was because she still hadn’t eaten. But deep down, she knew that wasn’t it at all.

“So do you only do this in the Nether?” she asked quickly, desperate for a subject change. “Or do you ride Fred in real life too, back home in the future?”

Caleb’s face sobered. “I used to,” he replied, a bitterness creeping into his voice. “Before.”

“What do you mean? Did something happen?” Trinity glanced worriedly over at Fred, who was smacking her lips in her sleep and moaning loudly—likely dreaming of jerky treats. Had someone hurt her? Or worse?

“Remember what I told you—only dragons yet to be born or those who have already died can exist here in the Nether,” Caleb said slowly. “In other words, Fred is no longer a part of the real world. I can only see her when I come here.”

“What happened to her?”

He gave her a hard look. “How do you say it in your world? Oh yeah: I’ll give you three guesses, but the first two don’t count.”

She stared at him, dread rising within her. It couldn’t be true. Could it? “Oh God. Not…”

“Oh yes. The great and glorious dragon hunter,” he spat. “My own brother.”

“How could he do that?” she blurted out, horrified. But even as she asked the question, she realized she already knew the answer. Connor believed dragons were evil. They’d killed his father. They’d destroyed his world. None of them were pardoned from his bloody crusade—not even sweet, silly Fred.

And especially not Emmy.

Caleb scowled. “He actually had the nerve to tell me he was doing me a favor,” he ground out, “that I had been brainwashed by an evil fiend and he was only doing his brotherly duty, breaking me free.” His hands curled into fists, his fingernails cutting into his palms. “But Fred didn’t do anything wrong, Trin. She wasn’t a monster. Her only crime was belonging to me.”

His voice broke. Trinity’s heart wrenched at the naked pain she caught in his eyes. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him—to lose someone he loved at the hands of his own twin. No wonder he was so bitter. So angry. So sarcastic. He was hiding a mountain of pain behind those sullen eyes.

“But I don’t understand,” she tried. “If you were bonded to a dragon and she died…”

“Our bond hadn’t yet been completed at the time he did the deed,” Caleb explained. “That was one of the excuses he gave, actually—he had to kill her to save me.” His expression darkened. “I told him not to do me any favors.”