Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,6

was too strong and too dangerous. It was too hungry. I couldn’t let it harm my best friend in any way. Especially the way it so badly wanted to – with a sacred bite and its permanent mark that would make her mine once and for all.

That night, I was gentle. It wasn’t easy, but I would have done it if it were a thousand times harder. The gift she was giving me was the most beloved thing I’d ever been given. Patiently and deftly, I guided her and helped her, awakening the sensations within her that would eventually cloud her mind with lust, and finally ecstasy.

It’s true what they say; dragons love treasure. But in ten thousand years, I’d never unwrapped anything as priceless as Annaleia. It wasn’t her physical virginity I cared about. It was the fact that she was trusting me with it. It was the fact that she’d out-and-out said she wanted me to be the one.

That was what drove me that night, what filled me with white-hot need and hotter bliss, and took us both to the edge of ecstasy and shoved us over it again and again. And again.

We fell asleep in each other’s arms. We were in the living room when we finally succumbed to exhaustion, and her long rose-gold hair was spread out over my chest. The silken strands shimmered in the glow of the crackling fire. I remember running my hand over those strands, marveling at their pure scent and satin feel… until I surrendered to the deep, peaceful sleep that only the complete satisfaction of happiness can provide.

When morning came, Annaleia was gone.

I kept my shit together. So she’d left. Big deal, right? Maybe she had to go home for her mother. Her mom’s due date was January 4th, but the last few weeks of a third trimester were always touch-and-go in a pregnancy.

No one answered Leia’s home phone. I called the hospital, figuring they’d for sure had to go there. But no one under the name “Faith” had checked in.

I drove to her house, keeping up the calm human pretense.

The house was empty, no furniture, no car, no pregnant mother, nothing. There wasn’t even a “For Sale” sign in the front yard. No one in the neighborhood had any idea where they’d gone, in fact no one had even heard of them. It was a live-and-let-die neighborhood, but that level of ignorance was unbelievable. Literally.

I won’t bother describing the panic and knee-jerk fury that came over me. Suffice it to say, I developed a new hatred that day, this one for myself. If I hadn’t forced my dragon into submission, I wouldn’t have been so susceptible to human weakness and its need for sleep. I would have noticed when she’d gotten up to leave, heard her leave, felt her.

But in the grip of my love for her, I’d let my guard down in the biggest and worst way.

The dragon I held at bay the night before was in full control as I slipped into hunting mode. I checked with the hospitals again just to be sure. I checked with the school next. I checked with the diner. None of them had a clue where she’d disappeared to.

None of them had any clue she’d ever existed.

And I knew first-hand no one was lying to me. I made sure of it.

I had no leads. She was just gone.

Over the year and a half that she’d known me, Annaleia had woven a brilliant tapestry of feelings in me I hadn’t realized was even possible for my kind, something bright and colorful against the field of black that was my soul. She’d sewn the final stitch to that tapestry on Christmas Eve.

Then in the blink of an eye, she’d ruthlessly ripped the material away, leaving a gaping, jagged, bleeding hole where her presence had once been.

I spent every second of the next year in the mortal realm searching for her, with no luck. On December 24th of 1968, I was in a body I’d made to look about ten years older and sitting at a seedy bar in Philly, one of around ten that were still open Christmas Eve. I was about to celebrate the anniversary of the utter annihilation of all three of my hearts when a man in a black leather motorcycle jacket walked through the door. The back of the jacket was decorated, and two others with the same jacket came in after him, but I knew right away he