CHAPTER 11

Lily

The guys went to the door, but they hesitated to leave.Standing there, they didn't remind me so much of dragons as they did a couple of protective German Shepherd dogs, reluctant to leave the human that they were guarding.

"Guys, really, I'll be fine," I told them."All I'm going to be doing here is practicing.If I'm really going to start working again, I'll need it."I gestured across the living room."The piano will be almost as good company as you are."

They both had the cutest sour looks on their handsome faces.It was so sweet.Jake and Alex had started out as benefactors and quickly gone from bed partners to doting boyfriends.I thought they were adorable — but my mind was made up.They had something to do today, which was my opportunity to give undivided attention to my music.And as much as I loved being with them, a day spent with the 88 keys and the sheet music that I'd packed up when leaving Mark's (sadly leaving my own electric piano behind) was something to which I'd very much been looking forward.

"Are you really sure?" Alex asked."Because I'll bet my friends would love to meet you.They won't mind you joining us."

"No, no," I said."Today was supposed to be for Jake to meet your old friends and for you to plan the Firewings' big reunion.You guys go and meet your friends and have fun, and impress Jake with all your old stories.You deserve a guys' day out, so go.Go on — shoo!"

Alex and Jake traded an uncertain look, and Jake said to me, "If you're really, really sure…"

I laughed, then put my hands on my hips, pretending to be impatient.Making a sweeping motion at the door, I said, "I am really, really, really sure.You go on and have fun and tell me all about it when you get back."

They groaned and sighed a bit, and Alex scratched his head.I kept my hands on my hips and faced them, pretending to be stern.Finally, they gave in."Okay, if you're that sure," Alex said.

"But if you need us for anything, call and we'll be right back here," Jake said firmly.

"That means anything," Alex insisted.

"Yes, yes, okay.If anything happens I'll call.But nothing is going to happen but me playing all afternoon.I'll have a good time here; you guys go and have a good time with Alex's friends."

They slumped their shoulders, unable to convince me."Okay," said Alex."We'll be back soon."

"I'll be right here," I said, waving to them.

Finally, looking back over their shoulders at me, they left, and I was alone in Uncle Robert's apartment.

As Jake once explained to me, his uncle, Robert Hudson, was a retired Upper Executive type from a large corporation.He'd worked his way up the ladder to a salary in the high six figures and retired with a massive pension and dividends package.He wasn't super-rich, but his apartment made it obvious that money was the least of his concerns.During my stay here, I had hardly left this place (when we needed something, we either ordered it in or Jake or Alex ran out for it) and I'd hardly needed to go anywhere.Between the apartment itself and my two guys, I had everything I could want in these rooms.

Allowing my imagination to run off the leash, I thought forward to my future, to what I might hope it would be.I dared to picture myself doing well enough with my music that I might afford a place like this someday.Of course, being a jazz pianist, I couldn't expect to make the kind of money that someone like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift made.Jazz catered to a select audience and I was sure it always would, and I didn't care; it was what I loved.But it was still possible to do very well for yourself in jazz — perhaps well enough to live in the kind of apartment where Robert Hudson lived, on the top floor of an exclusive building with a fantastic view of the beach and ocean.Or, perhaps…

In my mind's eye, my surroundings melted into another place, similar to where I was, but different.It wasn't an apartment on the top floor; my place was a house, where the living room let out onto a terrace that opened out right onto the beach, and the waves came rolling in right at eye level.I had a grand piano, naturally.And there were music posters including the covers of my albums on the walls, and the furniture was upholstered not in leather but linen, and there were potted plants to give the place a feeling of life and growth.

And speaking of life, I wasn't there alone.Jake and Alex were there with me, lounging around in thongs as they most often did, listening to me work on some composition for my next album.I played for them, and Alex sat on the sofa with his legs up on the coffee table, and Jake relaxed in the big Papasan chair sipping on a drink, and as they watched me play I could imagine what else they'd want to sip on a little later.

My little daydream of my imagined future made me chuckle a little.It was possible, but was it probable?I didn't know, but there's nothing wrong with a girl having a dream, is there?At least now I knew better than to give up, and better than to put my life in someone else's hands.

I went over to where the piano was.Built into the wall facing the piano were shelves containing not only Robert Hudson's books, but his souvenirs.He was traveling now, but he had already been well traveled for years before his retirement.He had an impressive collection of solid glass globes containing figurines and mini-sculptures representing places where he'd been in different parts of the world:Europe, Asia, Canada, South America, the South Pacific.One of his globes had etched onto it not places on Earth but places in the sky.This globe imagined the sky as a sphere and showed all the constellations — not only the twelve constellations of the astrological Zodiac, but all the other constellations that they never talked about in horoscopes.Some of the patterns of stars in the sky were reptilian:Lacerta the Lizard.Ophiuchus, a man holding a snake.Hydrus the Water Snake and Hydra the Sea Serpent.Chamaeleon the Chameleon.Serpens the Serpent.And of course, Draco — the Dragon.Considering where I was and whom I was staying with, Draco was the most fitting and appropriate one of all.

I was in the home of Draco the Dragon and I was happier, more at peace, more contented than I'd ever been.When I was happy, I felt filled with music; songs that I needed to bring out of me.I turned around from the bookshelves to the piano and sat down on the bench, and uncovered the keys to begin to play.

The first song that entered my thoughts was "Heart and Soul," a good old standard and one of the first things that many music students learn how to play.As I brought the melody out of the keys, I went back in my mind to my teenage days and found myself back in my parents' home, practicing this song in between lessons.I was in the living room, playing on the little spinet we had there, and Elyse was there, listening, swaying back and forth as if she were hearing some pop tune on the radio. Elyse was my first fan, in the way that best friends are.Playing for her and having her appreciate what I played always gave me the confidence to play in recitals.She was the perfect audience; she always made me believe I could play anything.

Everything made me feel so good — the music, the memories, my surroundings, the thought of Jake and Alex coming back later.My fingers chased each other up and down the keyboard and I became the music, closing my eyes and letting it both flow from me and rise up from the instrument.My whole body seemed to sing.Heart and soul.I fell in love with you heart and soul.I fell in love with you madly because you held me tight…

Somewhere in the midst of that, from behind my closed eyes, I sensed that something was fluttering.There was a shifting in the sunlight and the sound of feet touching down on the terrace outside.That was curious.Were Jake and Alex coming in for a landing out there?They had left fully clothed and on foot.Why would they have stripped down to fly home?Were they in a hurry?

I opened my eyes and saw the two big dragon figures out on the terrace.They were silhouetted in the sunlight at first, until they came closer to the glass doors letting into the living room.I stopped playing and stared out and across the room at them as they folded their wings.

"Jake?Alex?" I called.

One of them slid the terrace doors open, and the pair of them stepped into the apartment.At once I saw that these were not the two dragons I knew.They were built bigger than Jake and Alex.One of them had black, blue, and grey scales; the other had dark green scales with patterns of a cinnamon color.

At once the most awful feeling came over me at the sight of these two strange Drakes.Their presence couldn't mean anything good.There was something menacing in the way they looked at me.I got up nervously from the piano bench and took a step from it.My voice trembling, I asked, "Who are you?What are you doing here?What do you want?"

"It's not what we want," said the black, blue, and grey one."It's who we work for — what he wants."

My stomach sank and I was afraid my voice would thin out."Who is it you work for?Who sent you?"The most likely answer clawed at the back of my mind.Please, no, begged a voice inside me.Please.No.

"He misses you," said the dark green one."It made him very unhappy when you left.When he's unhappy, so is everyone who works for him.He wants you to come home where you belong."

And now that pleading voice was no longer inside me.I half shouted and half-sobbed, "NO!NO!No…"

"You have to come with us," said the black and grey one.

"NO!" I screamed.

"He wants you back," the black and grey one said, and reached out with one clawed reptilian hand for me.

My breath froze and I snapped into a flashback.Suddenly in my mind, there I was again, in Mark's penthouse, with him looming over me and roaring at me in an inhuman rage for something I'd said or something I'd done or something that went wrong at work; I couldn't remember what and it didn't matter.All that mattered was that one moment he was calm, the next he knocked me down, and as I gazed up fearfully, he towered above me and his human shape melted into his dark green and purple scales.His neck extended, horns came from his skull and spines from his jaw, his wings unfurled, and his tail lashed.

No!Mark, please, no! I cried, gasping with utter fright, scrambling back to my feet and backing away from him, dreading what would come next if I couldn't talk him down.My attempts to talk Mark down never worked.His hand came slashing through the air at me and the only mercy that followed was that the back of it battered against my face.I went flying back in pain, right onto my electric piano, sitting on its stand.The keyboard clattered to the floor and I went with it, my sheet music flying like scared butterflies.

With a pain on my cheek and a pain in my side where I hit the piano, I lay there, hearing Mark's grunts of anger and his footfalls on the carpet.And when my spinning, blurry vision finally cleared, I found myself looking up into his snout and the fangs of his open mouth, and I screamed.His tail swung hard and fast through the air and came down on my hip.The pain was searing and cruel.Agonized, I curled up into a ball, and another blow of his tail slammed across my back, and another battered my shoulder.He kept lashing me again and again, making me fear the thunderous pain would never end — or wish that he'd finally kill me and stop pretending to love me.

Just as quickly as I flashed back to that moment, I snapped into the present once more and saw that clawed dragon hand reaching for me, and it was as if a forest fire of terror ignited inside me.Somewhere in my head I screamed, No, not again!Not again!

My only thought was to bolt and run — but where?I'd never make it to the door; the dark green Drake was in my path in that direction and would grab me as fast as I moved.Around the wall behind me was the hallway leading to the bedrooms.If I tried to make a break for there, I would probably not get three steps before the black Drake had me.If I could get to the bedroom and lock myself in, and then run to the master bath and lock myself in there, I might just have time to get Jake on my speed dial before these two broke through the doors and got me.It was a desperate hope, but it was the only one I had — if I could just hold them off, take them by surprise somehow.

On a reflex, fueled by "flight or fight," I lunged and grabbed the most convenient weapon I could find — the piano bench.I took it in both hands and held it up in front of me like some old lion tamer fending off a big cat in a circus.Gritting my teeth, I shoved it at the two Drakes, making them feint backward, emitting rumbling and hissing noises at me.I used the bench as a shield, shoving it at them every time they tried to approach, and began to take careful steps backward towards the end of the wall.They showed me their claws and twitched their tails menacingly, and I kept the bench up and took another step, then another…

And then, with a roar that sounded so much like Mark that I instinctively wanted to curl into a ball again, the black Drake lunged out with both hands and grabbed the bench while I clutched it in my hands.I screamed frantically, struggling with him for possession of the piece of furniture that was my only protection, but he was too strong for me.The dark dragon man wrenched the wooden shield from my fingers, hissing loudly, and flung it across the living room.It crashed against a chair and hit the floor with a thud.And now I was defenseless.

But another thought seized me.I whirled around to the bookshelves and grabbed the glass ball with the constellations on it, then whirled back and flung it with all my might.It hit my dark-scaled attacker on the horns of his head, and cracked and splintered and spun away onto the floor.The dark Drake reared back, more in surprise than in pain, while his friend stepped forward and around him.With heavy breaths that were partly sobs of terror, I grabbed other solid glass balls and tossed them hard at the two of them.They hit at the snouts and necks and chests of the Drakes, bouncing off, cracking, and flying away to the floor, barely holding off my foes but not hurting them.They were more irritated by my defiance than anything else.I seized the one tiny moment that I had and broke into a run, hoping I could still beat them to the door of the master bedroom.I was just in the threshold between the living room and hallway when the feeling of scaly, taloned fingers on my arms made me scream in panic.

The reptilian hands that had grabbed me now pulled me roughly back in the direction I'd come from.I flailed and thrashed my legs and screamed again, as loudly as I could, hoping someone on one of the lower floors might hear me.My one arm was just free enough that I could reach into my pants pocket and pull out my phone.If I could struggle just loose enough, I still might manage to hit my speed dial.

But it was a futile hope.The dark green Drake turned me around to face him and brought his angry snout into my face.Another scream froze in my throat.He released his grip with one hand, grabbed my phone, and tore it from my grasp.He threw the phone across the room.It hit the TV screen, cracked it, and fell to the floor.Now in a startling fury of my own, I hammered my fist against his snout.It was even more useless than throwing the glass trinkets at him.It only hurt my hand.

The black and grey Drake came up beside us, whipped out a gag, edged it across and into my mouth, and tied it around my face, cutting off any other sound I might make — but not cutting off my tears of terror and fury.I continued struggling in the grip of the one who'd grabbed me, but the strength of a scared, angry human woman was nothing against that of a big male Drake.Exhausted from fear and struggle, I started to grow limp as my captor lifted me up into his arms.My eyes began to flutter closed, and the last thing I saw was the black and grey one putting something — a card? — on top of the piano.

With muffled weeps of despair, I surrendered.My attempts to resist were doomed from the start.I felt them carry me back across the living room, making for the glass terrace doors.My smothered voice called, "Jake…Alex…Jake…"

In a moment, I felt the whoosh of the air against me and heard the heavy beating of wings around me.They were carrying me away to my fate.