Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,7

was their leader.

He sat down next to me at the bar and told the bartender my drinks were on him.

When I met his very blue gaze, I knew he wasn’t human. Not even close. Not even in the same universe kind of close. And I was fine with that. I hated humans right about then. Humans had ruined my life. In fact, I vowed never to suppress the dragon in me again in favor of a human. Never.

The stranger didn’t ask me why I was drinking, yet somehow I had the feeling he knew. I could tell he understood. I was wrapped in a kind of pain that only the very old or very different could recognize and I was pretty sure he was both.

I was a vessel of bitterness and regret, as doleful as that sounds. It’s just the damn truth. I had no idea what to do with myself any longer and wasn’t in the mood to talk or make friends. But a kind of silent camaraderie came over me that night as the two other motorcycle club members joined us as at the bar and the four of us drank. It was the quiet start of something different, something that would take me from one century into the next.

I’ve accepted that life will never be as it was before Annaleia. The beast in me is a little darker, and unfortunately a little meaner. Pain will do that. But it turns out I’m not alone.

Now I have twelve clan brothers. For our own reasons, we were all pulled into Cain’s club over time. We were given refuge in a leather jacket, and freedom in a V-twin.

A white patch on our backs gives fair warning to the world of who and what we are:

Monsters.

Part Two – From the diary of Annaleia Faith

It was November of 1967 when I learned the truth of what Hamlet had been trying to tell Horatio for more than four hundred years. There really was more in heaven and earth than was dreamt of in our philosophies. In his screenplay, Hamlet had been shouldered with the incredible burden of opening one’s eyes to the limited knowledge of humanity. Of course, he was doomed to fail. Humans are the most stubborn of the realms’ races.

I’ve met a good number of those races now, so I should know.

My own private Hamlet came to me at the beginning of that November more than fifty years ago. At the time, my mom was very pregnant with my little brother, Joshua. I’m the one who decided on my brother’s name. It was my dad’s middle name, so it was a safe bet and it was perfect.

To help with bills, I was working part time at the diner down the street from our house. And Antares….

Ares.

Ares was working there with me. And because of that, and because of what Ares meant to me, I was happy. It didn’t matter that my family was “broken” or that I had a shit job or that we were in the red, not really. As long as the two boys in my life were there, I was okay: My unborn brother Joshua held my father’s DNA. He was the only piece of my dad I had left. And Ares was my best friend. And so much more.

It was baffling as hell to me, I have to tell you. Ares was the most perfect specimen of the male sex I had ever seen. It went without saying that he was the best looking guy in our school, hell in the whole town. Not that Philly was all-encompassing. Now that I’ve been around the world a few times, I can tell you with some certainty he was the most beautiful creature on the planet. At seventeen, he was already more than six feet of solid muscle. He had thick, soft hair the color of night, and eyes that reflected the stars right back at me. I got lost in them time and again.

To me, he was pretty much a god, and in 1967, I wasn’t going to look a gift god in the mouth. I was thrilled he enjoyed my company enough to stay by my side and call me friend. Best friend.

What’s more, I was well enough aware of how guys behaved and what they wanted to recognize that Ares would have been more than happy to get even closer. That was a thrilling thing to know, I admit. The most gorgeous guy in the world