Sammy’s bad singing stopped in confusion, and Eumie moved to stand in front of both of them, both arms out. “Sammy, go get the car,” they demanded.
Andi’s stomach fell into the Earth’s core. The Hunters knew who she was, but they didn’t know who the dragon was. Of course, they’d assume it was one of her friends. Andi’d been so busy trying to protect Damian, she’d never thought she was putting anyone else in danger.
Whatever happened right now was going to be her fault.
“And Andi…go with her,” Eumie said, putting a strong hand on Andi’s shoulder and shoving her Sammy’s way. Andi knew Eumie’d been to every protest their city had ever had. Of course they could sense trouble brewing.
Andi rocked with the shove but didn’t go, instead taking point. “Sammy, do what Eumie says, okay?”
“What the hell?” Sammy protested.
“Rambunctious!” Andi snapped, using the safe word she and Sammy’d used to indicate that they needed help on dates before she and Damian had perverted it.
Sammy looked between them, and then ran for the theater doors.
The Latina woman Andi remembered from her uncle’s meeting strode up, surveying her coolly. The Huntress was wearing much the same outfit as she had on their prior encounter, only with the addition of jarring jewelry, white bone earrings that bobbed as she shook her head. Her forearms were covered in vambraces of some kind of reptilian scale, and at her hip was a sword. “What interesting company you keep, Andrea.”
“My uncle said I was off limits,” she said. She now hated the man, but she wasn’t above using his protection now.
“Lamentably, your uncle’s out of town,” the woman told her with a slight accent. “But you’re right. You are off limits. For now. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have other entertainments in the meantime.”
“My friends are not dragons, okay?” Andi had no idea how she was going to explain all this to Eumie later, and…was Sammy really safe outside? A bolt of bitter fear ran over Andi’s tongue. “So whatever the fuck your plan was for this evening, move along.”
“Gladly,” the woman said, putting her hand meaningfully on her sword’s hilt. “After we talk with this one,” she said, jerking her chin at Eumie.
“No.” Andi reached for her pocket. She would fucking call Uncle Lee or Danny and get him to straighten this out if she had to.
“It’s okay, Andi,” Eumie said, taking a deliberate step forward. “Get in Sammy’s car and go home.”
“You don’t know these people, and I’m not abandoning you.” Andi scanned past the sea of black shoulders. The kids who’d been manning the concession stand had taken off—probably bribed.
“That’s where you’re wrong. Everyone knows the Mother of Monsters,” the Latina woman said. “Except, perhaps, you.”
“Mother of…what?” Andi said, putting herself in the woman’s way while wildly scanning for something she could use as a shield or a weapon.
“Andi, go.” Eumie said behind her, resting a hand on Andi’s shoulder. Their hand briefly took on greater weight and as Andi looked over at it, she saw Eumie’s strong blunt fingers with short baker’s nails grow lean and elegant…and tipped with claws.
“What the—” Andi said, and looked back in time to see Eumie unfurling themself upwards, almost like a growing vine. Andi gasped as her friend, whom she’d known for years, became something else entirely. Eumie’s torso slid into a thick snake’s tail with a bold green and gold scale pattern right below their breasts, stretching back for half the length of the lobby, as it held Eumie’s human portion up high.
“Xochitl,” Eumie said, acknowledging the woman.
“You will regret not having killed me the last time, Echidna,” the woman said, drawing her sword. It was made of what looked like a curved rib bone and her unlined face was possessed by an expression of unholy glee. “I’ve found the last of Orthrus’s lineage. Did you think you could hide them from me forever?”
Eumie surged ahead on their strong snake tail. “If you knew where I’d hid them, would you be here?”
Andi stumbled backward as the woman named Xochitl brought down her sword, and Andi heard the sound of it scraping against Eumie’s scales, as Eumie launched up at a chandelier, whipping their tail in the opposite direction from Andi to catch a brace of Hunters in the chest, knocking them back into a wall.
“Andi! Go!” Eumie shouted from above, before dropping down and winding back bodily the way they’d come, diving into a theater with all the Hunters hot on their tail.
Andi’s instinct was to run after them in case there was any way she could help, but thinking quickly, she knew the theater itself would be empty except for the chairs, and there wouldn’t be anything she could use as a weapon there. She looked around and ran through the saloon doors to the concession stand’s far side and looked around.
And found…not much. She could throw water bottles at people? Which sounded stupid, listening to the sounds of an intense fight happening down the hall. Fuck. Then she spotted the industrial sized bag of popcorn kernels they refilled the popcorn machine with. She grabbed the corners of the bag and lugged it out the way she’d come, through the saloon doors, to pour it over the lobby’s tile in a golden wave.
The sounds of fighting became louder as Eumie returned to the lobby, using their snake’s tail to propel themselves at speed, with just Xochitl plus another three Hunters hot behind them. Xochitl was deft enough to stay in the space Eumie’s tail had swept clean, but the others weren’t. Two Hunters went down with head-hitting thunks on the ground, just like cartoon characters, and the third paused, stymied. Andi cheered and then took in Eumie. The baker was bleeding from several gashes on their tail, and an ominous one spreading on their chest just under the “1999!” of their shirt. One of Eumie’s hands was clasped against it, and they were breathing hard as Xochitl advanced.
“You don’t have to do this!” Andi screamed at Xochitl and started throwing water bottles, which the woman dodged, seemingly without even looking at Andi.
Eumie spared Andi a wild grin, and Xochitl hacked into the meat of their tail, like her sword was an axe. Eumie bellowed as Andi shouted, sweeping her arms full of every projectile the concession stand had and running back through the saloon doors to pelt them at the other woman, who was in the process of pulling her sword up for another strike. The Hunter at the back of the lobby started mincing forward on the tile, and other Hunters came out of the theater where they’d been fighting, leaning on each other, holding broken arms, helping ones with broken legs limp along, and Andi started throwing water bottles at all of them.
“Fuck all of you!” Andi said, putting herself into their paths. Eumie lashed their tail safely away as Xochitl raised her sword, leaving a broad stripe of blood on the tile. Andi didn’t know what she was going to do next, but if they were going for Eumie, they were going to have to get through her, and if her brother or uncle thought that she would ever help them after this, much less speak to them again, they were so fucking wrong.
Then all of the Hunters paused as one, like a squad of adults playing red-light green-light, and several of them reached for their ears.
Xochitl was the first to recover, and then clearly curse in a language that Andi had never heard before.
“We can finish here first,” said the man nearest her.
Xochitl’s eyes narrowed. “No. If we don’t participate in taking the beast down, we can’t lay claim to the spoils.” The woman stared up at Eumie, who was weaving gently back and forth, staying in motion, ready to evade any attack. “Until next time, Mother.” She saluted Eumie sarcastically with her sword, and then licked the blood off the blade before sheathing it and running for the theater’s exit.
As the doors opened, Andi heard the honk of a car approaching outside. It kept honking—Sammy!—as the Hunters rushed out and Eumie sagged to the tile, holding themselves off of it with their braced hands.
“Are you all right?” Andi asked, crouching at their side.
Eumie looked over at her. They’d lost an earring in the battle. “Are you?”
“Yeah…may I?” She already had her hands hovering over Eumie.
“Please,” Eumie said, flipping over onto their back and then clutching their chest with one hand tightly as they groaned. Sammy was still honking the horn of her car outside for them, as Andi pulled up Eumie’s shirt and saw small pulses of blood. Something arterial was cut inside. She ran to the napkin dispenser, popped it open, and grabbed all the napkins inside.
“Are you going to heal?” she asked, returning to apply pressure with a fistful of them.
“I’m not entirely sure. It slows down the older you get, and I am very old. No hospitals, though, promise me.”
What could a hospital possibly do for Eumie anyhow? Andi bit her lips before answering, “Okay.” Eumie’s close cropped gray hair and easy smile were so familiar, and yet, everything else…. “Who are you, Eumie?” she asked. They only had moments before Sammy would come in with too many questions, surely.
“Eumie, your neighbor, the owner of the Greek bakery below your apartment.” They put their hand over Andi’s and squeezed. “Because I am now who I choose to be. I am no longer constrained by my past—periodic attempts by my past to murder me aside.” A faint smile traced their lips.
They both heard footsteps running up outside. It would only be moments until Sammy could look through the glass. Eumie groaned and writhed and Andi realized why Damian hadn’t wanted her to see the wolves change at the hospital that night long ago. It was a disturbing sight to see. Like a Transformer transforming…only with flesh. Their tail parted violently, like Eumie was being torn, and then the scales inverted as it lost mass, becoming the legs Andi was familiar with seeing in summertime—still showing every one of the wounds the hunters had given them. They looked even worse on a human-sized scale. Sammy barged in and stopped three steps inside the door.
“Whoa,” Sammy said, eyes wide, taking in the sweeping bloodstains on the floor, the chandelier hanging by a wire above, and Eumie’s half-naked form. “What the fuck happened to Eumie’s jeans?”
“Nevermind that,” Andi said. “How close can you get the car?”
Sammy brought her car right up to the doors outside, jumping the curb, as Andi found an apron in the back to wrap Eumie in, and then it took both the girls efforts to get the baker out the door and into the back seat of Sammy’s car safely. By the end of it, they were smeared with so much blood, how was there any left inside of Eumie?
At least their blood is red, Andi thought. One less thing to have to explain.
Sammy started driving like she was racing again, and for the first time as a passenger, Andi didn’t complain. She sat with Eumie’s head in her lap in the back seat, leaning over Eumie, still applying pressure, hoping that whatever healing processes Eumie had were working inside.
“What the hell happened?” Sammy asked, eyeing them in the rearview as she yanked her Subaru WRX onto the freeway.
Andi looked down at Eumie, whose eyes were closed. It would be impossible to explain, and it wasn’t her story to tell.
“If someone doesn’t start talking by the time I get to the hospital….” Sammy threatened, wringing the steering wheel anxiously.
“No!” Andi exclaimed.
“No?” Sammy twisted her head back—which was worrisome at their current rate of speed—to gawk at Andi.
“Just home,” she said, and tried to fight down flashbacks of telling Damian the same thing at his castle.
“Eumie’s bleeding in my back seat with no jeans on and you want to go home?” Sammy said, her Irish accent rolling each word.
“Yes. It’s what they wanted.”
“Did they have more blood in them at that time?” Sammy pressed.
“Sammy, I’m sorry, you just need to trust me. Shit’s weird, all right?”
There was a harrowing moment as Sammy shifted gears and blew past other cars on the road, before downshifting and taking the appropriate exit. “This is such a bad idea,” she muttered, still driving at speed.
“I know,” Andi said. “Believe me, I know.”
Sammy’s car squealed to a stop in their parking lot, and Andi helped navigate Eumie back out of the car, doing the best she could to apply continuous pressure to the wound on Eumie’s chest. The baker woke up enough to hiss in pain, and it didn’t look to Andi like anything about them had improved.
“Are you getting better?” Andi asked, feeling frantic. It wasn’t too late to call 911—and what were they going to tell the authorities if Eumie did die?
“Not really, no,” Eumie admitted, grunting as they tried to help the girls get them up the stairs.
“How can I fix you?”
Eumie inhaled and gave a harsh laugh. “That boat sailed long ago.”
“Cut the crap, Eumie,” Sammy said, using her keys to open up their apartment. Andi saw her hands were shaking, and knew it wasn’t from the land-speed record she’d set getting them home. Her roommate and best friend was scared because their other best friend was dying. “I know you hate authority and all, but now is not the time to become a conscientious objector to modern medicine.”
They dragged Eumie to the couch and lay them down, and Andi realized all of her couches were destined to be biohazards, only if Eumie died tonight it wouldn’t be something that flipping a pillow could solve.
“There has to be something. Some way,” Andi pleaded, stroking Eumie’s short cropped hair back.
Eumie’s eyes closed again and Andi’s free hand searched for a pulse. “Can you get some cao wu?” the baker murmured.
Andi blinked. If she’d just heard Eumie right, she’d asked for a Chinese herb. In really excellent Chinese. Jesus Christ, did everyone secretly speak Chinese better than she did? “Eumie…what the hell—”
“You know,” Eumie said, opening their eyes to pierce Andi with a look.
“Cao wu?” said Andi hesitatingly, achingly aware of how terrible her accent was. She’d had no one to practice with ever since her mother’d died. She and Danny never spoke Chinese with one another.
Eumie nodded subtly. “It looks like pieces of burnt tree bark.”
“Almost all Chinese medicinal herbs look like burned tree bark!”
One of Eumie’s eyebrows rose. “You know that I know that you know.”
“Well I don’t fucking know!” Sammy said, throwing her hands up in the air, pulling out her phone. “That’s it, I’m calling 911.”
Andi caught her wrist. “No.”
“Why?” Sammy said, beginning to fight with her.
Andi let go and got in Eumie’s face again. “You’re like one hundred percent this is going to work if I get some?”
“As sure as I can be, considering,” Eumie said, gesturing at their current state with one hand.
Andi rocked back on her heels. “Fuck my life.” She grabbed Sammy’s hand and put it where hers was. “Hold here.”
Andi ran out onto the small stoop outside with her phone. She knew she was wasting time—time Eumie might not have!—but she needed to think things through. Because what she was thinking about doing was a huge-ass risk.
Her first instinct was to call Damian and tell him to get Austin over here right-the-hell now, but if the sinking feeling in her gut was right, the only thing that would’ve detoured the Hunters trying to kill Eumie was bigger prey, and the only thing she knew about “worth” killing more was Damian. If she called and distracted him…no. This was why they were broken up. Even if she was holding his necklace through her shirt as she paced.
So with her free hand she found Danny’s number. He was dangerous, too, but a known danger.
Danny? she texted him.
His response was instantaneous. I’m dealing with some things right now, Andi.
Andi bit her lips. What if he was also on his way to fight Damian? If he was, then wasn’t distracting him a good thing?
Then why did everything about the situation make her queasy?
I need your help, she texted quickly.
A slightly longer pause, then an onslaught of questions. Where? Why? Are you all right?
At my apartment. Because a friend is hurt. And I’m pleased you care.
What kind of friend? Danny asked.
She frowned at her screen. The kind of friend that needs you to bring me some cao wu. It looks like burned tree bark.
Andi watched the dots at the bottom of the screen whirl for an uncomfortably long period of time before the next message resolved: Almost all Chinese medicine looks like burned tree bark.
I know! Andi blinked at her phone, her fingers typing faster than she could stop herself. Did Mom feed it to you?
A second later, Danny replied. Yes.
She had another irrational pang of jealousy, feeling left out all over again, even now that she knew the truth of things, as Danny sent another text: On my way.
Andi went back into the apartment and found Eumie and Sammy the same as she’d left them. She went to their small kitchen and grabbed some fresh dish towels. “Okay,” she announced, retaking her spot beside Sammy. “The thing you asked for is on its way.” She saw Eumie’s eyelids flutter in response.
Sammy glared between the two of them. “Don’t code-word me. What’s going on?”
Andi shook her head, suddenly realizing why Damian had found using the Forgetting Fire on her so tempting after she’d first seen his dragon. “I want to, Sammy, but….” Andi let her voice drift.
“You think I’m so innocent, Andi? Remember when you met me!” Sammy said.
Andi did. She’d first met Sammy when she’d been dating Danny, and about thirty seconds afterward she realized Sammy was too good for him. That didn’t stop them from dating for the next eight months though, during which Danny’d been stealing cars semi-professionally, and taking them to the roving chop-shop Sammy worked at. She’d gotten straight after she’d dumped Danny, but Andi would be a fool to think Sammy hadn’t seen the underside of life.
“So, those people in black were clearly trouble, and…?” Sammy prompted.
“They were after Eumie,” Andi began. “But that’s not my story to tell, and besides, they could’ve just as easily been after me.”
Sammy’s head tilted practically sideways, like a dog that’d just watched a magic trick. “What?”
Andi calculated the value of their friendship, divided by the cost of lying to Sammy now, and decided it was too steep. Plus, if Sammy was going to be put into danger by virtue of just knowing Andi, didn’t Andi owe her the truth? “If I tell you a secret, do you promise to take it to your grave?” Andi asked.
“Of course,” Sammy said, crossing her legs, settling in to listen.
“Okay, so not everyone’s what they seem, Sammy. I know you know that.”
Sammy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Danny told me about you and him going off to hustle frat boys at pool halls back in the day. If that’s your dark secret, I’m not impressed.”
“No. I mean more different than that. Like a lot more. My most recent ex-boyfriend wasn’t just like a normal rich dude, Sammy. He was also a dragon.”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed, then she rapid-fired questions. “Why was he dating you then? Were you like, what, his Asian side-piece? And why the fuck would you let anyone from the KKK touch you?”
“No! Not that kind of dragon.” Andi went to press her hand to her forehead, but caught herself in time; it was covered in blood. “Like a mythical being, big wings, claws, teeth, scales. A Lord-of-the-Rings kind of dragon. Like a werewolf but a dragon version. He could change back and forth at will.”
“What…the fuck?” Sammy’s ginger eyebrows went high in disbelief, and then she guffawed. “You’re like the world’s worst liar, Andi. Jesus.”
“That’s why I’m not lying!” Andi groaned, watching her roommate utterly disbelieve her, as she wanted to melt into the ground. “I just never thought I’d be saying anything like that out loud.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine why,” Sammy said, shaking her head before she scoffed. “I’d be pissed at you if it weren’t so ludicrous.”
“Just because it sounds bad doesn’t mean it’s not true,” Andi said, wincing. “But whatever. The thing is, he’s got enemies, and so does Eumie, and that’s why those people attacked us tonight. And that’s also why I dumped him.”
Sammy pursed her lips tightly. “So that random groups of ninjas wouldn’t stalk you?”
“Pretty much. I was worried for him. He has to fight a lot of people. And I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“Which is why he keeps texting you that he’s alive?”
“Yeah.”
Sammy sighed deeply, as if from the bottom of her soul. “Were you high when he told you all this? No judgment, honestly.”
“No, I wasn’t high. I was,” Andi began, inhaling, feeling the words and emotions choke her throat. “I was in love, okay?” She looked between Sammy and Eumie—she’d finally gone and said it out loud for real, in front of witnesses. Only one didn’t believe her, and the other was possibly dying.
But that didn’t make it any less real for her, and it wasn’t past tense. The intervening weeks since she’d seen Damian hadn’t changed a thing about her feelings. She’d loved him then and she loved him now, and she was probably cursed to love him forever just like he was cursed to become a dragon for how hollow she felt when she stopped to let herself think about it—like there was a hole inside her that not even the thrill of saving lives or pints of high-end ice cream could fill.
The tears she’d kept at bay outside of her bathroom rushed up and threatened to jump out of her eyes. “I loved him, and people were going to try to kill him, and I got scared that protecting me from them or something was going to get him hurt, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sammy said. “For reals?”
“Yeah. Even if you don’t believe the dragon part, you saw what those assholes did to Eumie.” Andi sniffled to control herself.
“Not that part, Andi. You mean, you fell for him? That hard?” she asked, her eyebrows high, as Andi nodded. “And…you weren’t just dick-ma-tized?” Sammy went on lightly.
Andi blinked and stared blankly at her.
“It’s a medical condition! I read about it on the internet. As a nurse, I’m surprised you don’t know more about it,” Sammy said with a snicker and a leer.
Andi rolled her eyes to their popcorn ceiling and snickered, too, tears banished. It felt so good to talk about him finally. And to tell someone else she loved him. It made her feel a thousand times less alone. “Yeah. Okay? Maybe I was. But I was everything else-ma-tized too. He was a good man, Sammy, and I had to leave him behind. Because if this happened to him because of me,” she went on, looking forlornly at Eumie, “I just don’t know.” She laced her hand through the baker’s and squeezed. Eumie gave her a fluttering squeeze back. “Hold on. Please.”
“Wait,” Sammy announced. “That photo…I saw…does he dye his spunk green?”
“Oh my God, no, it’s not green, but his blood is, and fuck you for asking, Sammy.” She waited for Sammy to laugh again, but this time her roommate just swallowed instead, and then the doorbell rang. “Stay here,” Andi told her and ran to get it quickly.
Andi darted outside and hauled the door shut behind her, pulling it closed and keeping her hand on the knob as her brother came near. He looked a little better than he had the other night…tired, but significantly less jaundiced. Still angry, though, and tense. “Did you bring it?”
“Yeah,” he said, handing a small paper bag over.
“It’s not for my dragon friend, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Friend?” Danny asked archly, like they were sixteen again and he was the man-of-the-house, interrogating her dates, and then laughed. “Nah, I know.”
Andi’s heart lurched. She wanted to ask him how he knew, what he knew, but instead she said, “Thanks. I owe you.”
He broke into a sly grin like she remembered from their childhood, while also rolling his eyes. “I’ve heard that before.”
She rolled her eyes right back. “Yeah, you’re still ten thousand bucks in the hole with me, technically. So what’s the street rate on this,” Andi asked, shaking the bag, “and I’ll take it off your tab.”
The door knob in her free hand twisted hard. As Andi’s hand was still slippery with Eumie’s blood, it was nothing for Sammy to shoulder bump the door open. “I heard someone that…Danny?” she said, stepping out and crowding the already small space further. Andi reached behind her to reclose the door, keeping Eumie hidden. “You’re…alive?” Sammy asked him, then looked to Andi. “And you knew?” she asked accusingly.
Danny cut off anything Andi could’ve said to save herself. “Hey, Samantha,” he said, giving her a nod and an appreciative glance. “You look good. Still working at the shop?”
Sammy’s eyes narrowed, and Andi remembered they hadn’t parted on good terms. “I liked you better when you were dead,” she said, frowning deeply at Danny before grabbing the bag from Andi’s hands and wheeling back inside.
“It’s been a busy night here,” Andi said once the door was closed again.
“Sounds like,” Danny said with a chuckle. “She knows that’s poisonous right?”
“Somebody in there does,” Andi said. She knew she needed to go back inside and help Eumie, but she also felt like she might never see her brother again.
Which would be a good thing…wouldn’t it?
“Take care, Andi-bear,” Danny said with a nod. He turned to trot down the stairs, and then paused to turn back. “And tell your so-called friend to lay low. There’s practically a Hunter convention in town right now.”
“I’d noticed,” she said, catching herself before crossing her arms and getting Eumie’s blood on even more of herself. Danny gave her a mock salute and took the remaining stairs two by two, before hopping into his car, a vintage dark-green souped up El Camino, and driving off with a thunderous roar.
After he’d gone, and before she went back inside, Andi wondered which friend he’d meant…Eumie or Damian.