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Except he was no house cat. I had to take a few steps back to really take him in. He took up the entire street, the three smooth spikes he wore like a crown reaching up to the third-floor window of the building next to him. He dropped down and turned his head, looking at me with one emerald green eye, his mouth curling into what could only be described as a smile.
He gave a snort and a shake of his head. I put my hand out, and he moved closer, slowly, until smooth scale met smooth palm. He was warm to the touch but not uncomfortably so. Like a towel that’s been sitting on a warming rack. It was nice. Comforting almost.
He dipped his head lower until I realized he was lying down. He made himself as flat and compact as a dragon with the same wingspan as a commercial jet could possibly make himself.
“You want me to… get on you?”
He lifted his head in a quick nod before squashing back down against the ground.
I took a couple steps back. This couldn’t be real life. Maybe I had died down in the snake-way, or maybe I’d gotten hit over the head? This could be a hallucination.
He snorted in a way that said, “Hurry the hell up.” His breath kicked a cloud of dust and dirt down the street, pebbles scratching at parked cars.
If this wasn’t real, then I’d have to deal with my dissociation later. There was a crook between Damien’s neck and shoulders, where the forearm-sized spikes briefly stopped before starting again, forming a ridge down his back. Guess I sat there? They should have really taught this in school. Taxes and dragon riding. I would have been set for adulthood.
I grabbed hold of one of the spikes and hoisted myself up. I had a hard time finding purchase against his smooth scales at first, finally tossing one leg over in the most awkward way I could. “Ah, sorry, shit, does that hurt? Should I have taken off my shoes?”
He shook his head as he started to get back onto his four legs. The movement caused me to lean onto the spike behind me. It felt like a perfect fit, but leaning back scared me. Instead, I tilted forward, grabbing a tight hold of his neck as he started to move forward.
Started to pick up speed.
Faster, faster. I bounced against his neck like a horse rider fighting to stay on her most problematic steed. Holy shit. How was I supposed to stay on him while he flew? I was about to fall off, and we hadn’t even left the ground yet.
This was a mistake. He may have saved me from vampires, but he was definitely going to be the one to kill me.
“Wait, wait, no, don’t, hold on!”
Either I wasn’t heard or I was ignored. I didn’t like those options, nor did I like the sinking feeling that pulled at my gut as Damien gave three strong flaps of his wings and took off.
I snapped my eyes shut. My grip around his neck was so tight I worried I could be choking him, then realized I felt like a clinging strand of hair to him, so I held on even tighter. The flapping intensified, and so did the sinking feeling, but the intense bouncing stopped. I didn’t feel like I was about to be knocked off.
It was the opposite. I actually felt quite secure, especially once Damien leveled out his ascent. The flight became smooth. If I focused, I could almost trick myself into thinking we were still on the ground. The wind whipped at my face as if trying to pry my eyes open with invisible fingers. Look! Look at all the sights you’re missing out on!
I peeked, cracking an eyelid open and seeing a sea of stars looking back at me. No, wait, those weren’t stars. They were underneath me—they were houses glittering from out of the Hollywood Hills.
Noooope. Nope.
My eye snapped shut again. This was too much. I wasn’t cut out for this. I thought the hardest thing I’d deal with today would be getting a job. I was the kind of guy who only had the brain-width to handle one or two tasks a day, and that included sending emails. How the fuck was I supposed to process everything that had happened in the last five hours?
Everything that was happening now?
I took a couple of deep, cold, oxygen-lacking breaths. We weren’t insanely high up; I could tell by the fact that I wasn’t passing out. So that was good.
Alright, one more time. I cracked my eyes open. Fewer lights were shining back at me. We must have been leaving LA, getting closer to Malibu, where the hills were much more like tree-covered labyrinths than the populated ones directly bordering Hollywood.
