The cars were passing us as if there wasn’t a massive damn dragon right beside the road.
“Can you teach me how to do this shadow bend thing?” I asked the two of them.
“I planned to start teaching you as soon as you asked; so, yes, you can learn as much, or as little, as you like. I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much information in such a small period of time,” Nikolai informed me.
I smiled into the leather of his jacket.
“Cool,” I whispered.
Nikolai jumped up suddenly, and I gasped.
But it was only so he could start his motorcycle back up.
I laughed nervously at the smile he tossed over his shoulder, satisfied that he’d scared me.
“Gonna go back into the illusion until we hit the road to the sanctuary, so don’t be afraid,” he yelled.
Then we were gone, or my mind was. My physical body was still pressed up against Nikolai’s back.
It was an odd type of feeling that was for sure.
The ride was long, and there was a ton of traffic I could feel whizzing past us, but at least Nikolai was able to give me the illusion of a nice, traffic-free ride.
I knew the moment we got within the protection of the sanctuary, because suddenly I had the ability to use all five of my senses once again.
My eyes took in the long drive that led up to the house.
It was a blacktop asphalt and felt so smooth as we moved up it, taking turn after turn.
Sporadically, trees dotted the large, sprawling lawn.
Some pine. Others oak. But my favorite was the weeping willows that we had to drive under just as we reached the carport of the house.
Perdita flew over the house, not stopping, and I turned just in time to see the terrible three come flying at us like they were tracking down prey.
I closed my eyes, but before they could hit me and knock me off the back of Nikolai’s bike, I was suddenly hauled off by two strong arms and placed none too gently on my feet nearly ten feet away.
I turned in time to see Nikolai go down.
“No ice!” he yelled.
I wondered what he meant by the ‘no ice’ comment, but saw what he meant seconds later.
Each and every place the triplets licked (yes, they were like a bunch of happy dogs) there was a trail of ice in their tongue’s wake.
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my own arms.
Reddened lines in the shaped of slithery snake tongues showed up on my arms, and I looked at the back of my hands, only then seeing the bloodied cuts.
“What…” I said, looking up at Nikolai as he pushed to his feet. “What’s going on with my hands?”
How had I missed hurting them?
Nikolai frowned.
“I thought I explained that to you,” he said. “When either one of us gets hurt, the other displays the same cuts on their own bodies.”
I blinked.
“No,” I said. “I would’ve remembered that discussion.”
He held his shirt up and showed me his side, and I gasped when I saw my scar from my time in my uncle’s captivity on his own body.
“Holy…” I breathed. “Holy shit!”
He grinned.
“Creepy, huh?”
I let my hand trail down to the dragon at my feet, and slowly stroked his leathery wings.
He was about the size of a small Shetland pony, so he reached to just about my mid-thigh.
“What makes Perdita yours?” I asked.
Nikolai looked up at me in surprise.
“You mean, how am I bonded to her?” he clarified.
I nodded. “Yes.”
He walked around the side of the house, and I followed, waiting patiently for him to explain.
I followed behind him, watching him.
“I was standing right,” he stopped. “Here. When I bonded to Perdita.”
I looked at where he was standing, and then up at the house.
He was standing under what I thought to be his window.
“How old were you?” I asked.
He looked up at the sky, completely ignoring the three dragons that kept jumping up to nip at his fingers.
They were like a mixture of a dog and a cat. Playful like a dog, but lithe and graceful like a cat.
“It was the eve of my nineteenth birthday,” he explained. “And I was sneaking out my window to go to a party with some new friends I’d just met earlier in the day.”
I blinked.
“You snuck out?” I asked in surprise. “For real?”
He nodded.
“I was in the rebellious stage of my teenage years. My father had just died about a year before, and my mother hadn’t said a word in the same amount of time. I went from having total iron control of my senses to absolutely none. My father was my best friend, besides Keifer. When he was no longer there, I didn’t have the same outlook on life,” he explained.
He started walking again.
“And that night I’d planned to try drugs for the first time. I had a pocket full of weed to share, and I was ready to get lost.” He pointed. “I was looking over that tree right there when the first jolt of power hit me, bringing me to my knees.”