Tesser: A Dragon Among Us (A Reemergence Novel) (48 page)

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Alec

Alec was crying.

There are few real things that a human being can experience that are truly chilling. Really and truly frightening, not like a movie thrill, or the discomfort one experiences when reading a scary book alone late at night. When a parent hears a cry of pain from their child, or when you see something that shouldn't be there, like the image of a dead relative in the mirror, a human might be chilled.

Alec was finding out that the cries of a dragon in pain were chilling. It was a primal response that required no thinking, like a rabbit hiding from the shadow of a hawk, or the octopus that squirts ink when fleeing from a predator. Hearing the dragon roar in pain was alien and frightening. On some level he didn't know he had, Alec understood that a dragon should
never
be in pain. They should
never, ever
be harmed because they are integral to something larger than he could understand.
If I had ever heard the purple dragon make that noise, I would set her free. How could my father allow her to be taken? He must've heard her cries of anguish. Who was my father really? What good are we really doing keeping her here?

Alec was sitting in an uncomfortable, blue plastic chair in the center of the room. He wiped the tears from his eyes and looked around the small room. Standing at the door, flanking the drying bloody contract on the wall were two of Mr. Host's men. They stood hunched over slightly, breathing heavy and making strange expressions every few seconds. They were detached, almost not even in their skin, and they were paying little attention to what was happening in the room.
One of them is drooling.

Alec looked over at the heavily breathing Matty. She too seemed too restless in her drugged up state.
What do I do? What can I do? I'm a prisoner here.
Alec looked back at the two guards. One of them had rolled his eyes up, leaving nothing but white visible. Alec stood, and after pausing to see if they would react, he walked over to Matty's bedside.

Fuck this empire. I need to do something. I may die tonight, but I am going to set this woman free. Maybe she and her unborn child can escape and have a good life, far from me and this fucked up life I've made for myself.
Alec reached out to pull Matty's IV, but the moment his finger touched her flesh, he felt an electrical jolt and the world went black.

A moment later (or was it ten years?) he opened his eyes and he was in the same room, but things were different. A picture of a Japanese village hung on the wall where a landscape had been before, and Matty wasn't in the bed. Instead, it was a completely different woman. This lady was pretty, almost to the point of seeming created and not natural. But Alec knew she was real. She had Asian descent in her eyes and skin tone, and despite her unnatural paleness and the sweat on her brow she radiated some kind of warmth. It pleased him to stand near her. It was fading though, and fading fast.

She opened her eyes slowly and cracked the faintest of tired smiles. She had intense violent colored eyes.
 
"You must be Alec, the son."

Who is this? Why do I know her?
"Yes."

"I never got to talk with your father before he died. I understand he was a man of tremendous achievement," the woman said. She coughed.

"Yes. Who are you? You're familiar to me. I know you."

She nodded meekly. "I am Kaula. The dragon you have had kept in a coma for a little over ten years, Alec. I've tried to reach out to you, but Legion has kept us apart."

Good lord. Her eyes. And her hair, it's a shade of dark purple too
. "You can shape shift. Amazing. Are you in pain? I was assured you were brain dead. I'm so sorry, Kaula."

She nodded again, as if she understood and believed him. Alec was relieved. "How much you've been manipulated saddens me. I am in constant pain, Alec. So little of me is left inside now. I'm rotten to the core. Maggoty. This conversation could be the end of me, but that's alright. I've led a very long life. Will you help me? Will you help the world? Bring magic back? Give life back to the things that have seen their essence fade away? Make it all right again?"

Alec nodded emphatically, understanding without question that her course of action would help the world far more than the one his company had pursued for so long at her expense. "Of course. This has gone too far. I never wanted so much pain and suffering and death. Just tell me what to do."

"It will not be easy."

"I do the impossible all the time, Kaula. I need this insanity to stop. I can't keep going on like this."

"It will mean giving up everything, Alec. But it will mean saving the world."

I'm not going to like this.
Alec's voice was shaky, but he had the courage to say what needed to be said. "Tell me what to do."

*****

A few minutes later Alec came to in the still room. He looked over to make sure his remaining guards were still far and away, then pulled out Matty's IVs and lifted her oxygen mask off. A small squirt of blood jetted out from the hole where the needle came from, but it stopped quickly, and she was otherwise unhurt. Alec brushed her dark hair off a sweaty brow and hoped she was okay. He could hear more violence coming from down the hall in the main dragon observatory. He wiped the wet tears from his cheek.
I know what to do now.

"Alec…" Matty whispered out of a dry mouth. "You prick."

Well, when you're right, you're right.
Alec shushed her softly. "Matty, quiet. We're in danger. Another dragon is here. Several actually. They're destroying the facility."

She perked up considerably. "It's Tesser. He's here to save Kaula and me."

"Yes, it would seem that way. You talked to Kaula, too?"

"Yeah, in a dream. She spoke with me. Undo my hands, Alec. Let me go. Please, I'm pregnant."

Alec shook his head. "Not yet, Matty. You need to be kept safe. I'm not scared anymore. I know what to do."

"What? Free me, Alec. I can help. I just need to be let go…" Matty struggled against her bonds, but she was exhausted and weak.

Alec fixed her hair again. "It's okay. They'll come for you soon. It'll all be over in a few minutes. I can undo it all. I understand so much of this was a great big mistake, but I can make it right. Kaula told me how." Alec turned and lifted a bag of saline solution from her IV stand. He removed a small syringe from a chest nearby and walked over to the white wall where his blood had helped him write a new deal between he and the daemon his father had summoned to this world. One of the guards, the one with the rolled up eyes suddenly came to, and stared at him as he stabbed the needle into the bag. He drew the plunger back and filled it with the clear solution.

One of the guards stepped forward, alarmed. "Mr. Fitzgerald, what are you doing?"

Fucking you over.
"Righting some wrongs my family has made."

The other guard suddenly snapped to attention and drew his sidearm. When he spoke, he spoke in Mr. Host's voice. "Now let's not make a hasty decision, Alec. Years of hard work… We can't just throw it away. We can discuss changes to the terms of the contract when things have settled down. Think of your safety, Alec. Changing the deal now would be catastrophic."

Alec ignored the daemon and squeezed the syringe out, drawing a line of fluid on the white wall above his bloody writing. It started to run down, ruining the words he'd written, sending pink, watery streaks down to the floor. He stabbed the needle back into the bag to refill it.

The guard lifted his gun and pointed it at his face. "Stop or we'll be forced to shoot you."

"You can't shoot me. It's in the contract. The original contract my father drew up. Shrewd guy, my dad. You can't kill me. You can't even hurt me. All these years, I never remembered the fine print of that dusty old piece of evil. I was so scared. Scared of failing my father. Scared of you, but you know what? I'm not scared anymore. I talked to Kaula. She told me what I had to hear. What I wanted to hear all along."

The guard's face rippled, as if a stone had been thrown into the water of his skin. He shook his head and suddenly he was Mr. Host. "How? There were precise instructions. Measures taken. You were to have NO contact with the dragon."

"Oh, Mr. Host," Alec said as he sprayed another stream of saline into the words. "You can't stop dragons. You can only hope to contain them, and even that doesn't last, now does it?"

"You'll pay for this treachery, Fitzgerald. Your family will be cursed for the rest of time for this. You'll die slowly. Painfully," Mr. Host spat, his features twisting into a devilish caricature of himself.

"That's not the plan I have. Mr. Host, I renounce this contract. I'm sure my lawyers would agree it was signed under duress," Alec said as he used his very expensive shirtsleeve to wipe away all the blood, destroying the newly minted contract.

From the other room where the battle waged on, Alec heard a tremendous cry of pain. Except this time, it wasn't the sound of a dragon in pain.

This time, it was Mr. Host.

Alec sat the bag down, and bit the cut on his finger, setting free a new stream of blood. He started to write something new on the wall. A new contract that would help set things right.

This time, his handwriting was resolute.

*****

Alec walked down the concrete hallway into the main room, stopping only to remove a handgun from the holster of a dead and disappeared security guard. His finger throbbed. He didn't really know how to use the gun, but he only had to shoot one thing in the room to achieve what needed to be done. He knew from watching movies how to check to see if it was loaded, and he made sure the safety was off. No sense risking a small mistake now.

The carnage in the main dragon observatory was incredible, and the destruction matched the chaos and the noise. Three men were fighting against a dwindling number of Mr. Host's now naked security men. How they had lost their clothing was beyond Alec, but they looked afraid, and disorganized.
They don't have any junk. Or nipples. Look at that
. The three men (two younger, one older) were all shooting guns into the daemons that were highly effective against them. Each pistol shot seemed to kill instantly, and the man with the automatic weapon was firing so many bullets, even the daemonic bodies couldn't withstand the attack. The old man held a sword in his hand that crackled with an electrical charge. A naked guard tried to sneak up on him, and an arc of electricity shot out and destroyed him. A black puff of smoke was all that remained.

Alec watched as a smaller but similar golden version of Kaula literally went around the room, tearing Mr. Host's men limb from limb as easily as Alec could tear off a sheet of paper towel.
That must be Tesser
.
I thought he'd be bigger
. Each of the mangled bodies disappeared into a puff of smoke instead of gore and right as each was destroyed, their faces shifted into that of Mr. Host's.
It's almost like he's trying to catch up to Tesser to fight back.
Above them in the earth, a terrible thumping, scraping noise resumed. Something was digging down to get at them again. Something very large.
 

"STOP!" Alec screamed. Suddenly the gunfire abated, and the daemon guards turned towards him, concerned and apologetic. Caught. They raised their hands in a calming gesture, attempting to appear nonthreatening.
 

"Now Alec, don't do anything rash," Mr. Host said. Another Mr. Host added, "Please leave; it's for your own safety. You don't understand how much I care for you, Alec. Please listen."

Behind a row of the face-shifting bastards, Tesser's face changed. He'd seen Alec enter the chamber. "YOU!" He screamed out a half dragon's mouth. From above, a massive crack appeared in the reinforced concrete ceiling and gray dust fell like dirty snow. Something was nearly inside the room.

Alec nodded sadly. "Yeah me. Me all along. But I came out here so we could set things right, Tesser."

The half dragon stormed across the room, knocking aside several of Legion's remaining bodies, but he stopped short of dismembering Alec. As the men that came with him dealt with the surviving guards, it crouched slightly, coiled and ready to end his life. "Speak," he said, his voice full of restrained anger.

"I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry for taking Matty, and I hope to God nothing is wrong with your child. God only knows what the fuck these things were pumping into her. She's safe, right back there. I wrote something on the wall for you too. Make sure you read it. Make sure the lawyers read it. All I wanted to do was help people like my dad did, Tesser.
 
Well, like I thought he did. Here now, I'm starting to realize that my father may not have been the good person I thought he was. All I wanted was to do good. Be a hero.
 
All I wanted to do was follow in his footsteps, make him proud. And you know what? I did. I took every step the same as he did, and in the end, it got me the same thing it got him." Alec looked down at the handgun, then back at Tesser. "In bed with a devil, and dead."