Dragon Conjurer, page 11
“Hey, mind if I sit here?” Steffi asked as she took the seat next to me, and she fastened her belt before I could object.
“Uhh, why would I mind if you sat here?” I cleared my throat and tried to force a smile as the engines whined to life. “Of course, you can.”
“Thanks, Dylan.” The fairy girl reached up and pulled down a headset hanging from the headrest of the seat in front of her, and then she put it on and motioned toward the wall next to me. “Want to put yours on?”
“Oh, sure.” I reached up and grabbed the headset, then I fit it onto my scalp before I turned back to Steffi. “Can you hear me better this way?”
“Yes,” she replied, and her voice seemed to echo in my skull and tickle the hairs on the back of my neck. “We should be set to a private channel.”
I glanced over at Nick and Nala, and I noticed Nick was sitting in the seat right next to Nala, and they seemed to be communicating through their own headsets. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I figured Nick was annoying Nala based on her facial expression and his animated gestures.
“He likes her, doesn’t he?” I asked Steffi as I turned away from the others and back to the fairy goddess in front of me. “Why else would he pick on her if he didn’t like her?”
“That would be very childish of him,” the pink-haired beauty snorted and shook her head. “I don’t think he likes her. I’ve never seen him flirt with any girl here, but he talks about them enough for me to know he’s not gay. I think he just has a specific type.”
Well, that made me feel better about thinking both girls on our team were hot, since I didn’t have to worry about Nick being competition.
The engines stopped whining and started to roar as the jet began to move away from the wall and toward the hangar doors.
“Shit,” I breathed and gripped the armrests with both hands.
“Nervous flyer?” Steffi chuckled.
“A bit,” I grumbled.
“It’s alright,” she reassured me with a smile. “The takeoff is the worst part, but it’ll be over quickly.”
I actually didn’t think I was too afraid of flying, but I did prefer to have my feet in the ground like most everyone else. Or maybe I just hated the idea of airports, TSA, waiting at the gate, and getting crammed into a forty-year old 737 next to a dude who smelled like tuna fish.
Yeah. Flying sucked.
I kept my feelings to myself, though, because I didn’t want Steffi to think I was a wuss about it. I was the most powerful magic user in AIMM, wasn’t I? The red stripe on my uniform proved it, so I had to act the role and be tough.
“Thanks for sitting next to me during this flight, Steff,” I said as the plane leveled out and eased my nerves. “You’ll keep things from being boring.”
“No, thank you,” she replied with a small smile, “because you’ll help keep me company for the next hour. I would much rather sit quietly next to you than listen to Nick and Nala bicker for the next hour.”
“I can imagine,” I chuckled and crossed my arms over my chest while I tried to get my heart to stop beating so heavily against my sternum. I worried Steffi could feel the rhythm, even though she was nowhere near my chest.
“Just close your eyes for a few minutes,” she whispered, “and it’ll be over soon.”
Hmmm… was that an innuendo? I thought about maybe firing a sly one back at her, but then I figured we’d have plenty of time to talk, and I didn’t need to rush things.
Instead, I took her advice, closed my eyes, and leaned my head back. The headset seemed to cancel out the noise around me, and I was only able to hear Steffi’s gentle breathing. The soft and steady timing of her breaths calmed me down, and I found myself drifting into a light sleep.
I woke up when the plane started to rattle, and panic seized my heart as my eyes snapped open. Then a small and thin hand on my chest reassured me, and I was able to take a deep breath .
“Have a good sleep, sweet prince?” Steffi giggled as she picked her head up off my shoulder and looked at me. “Wasn’t that easier than you expected?”
“Much easier, yeah,” I chuckled, and then I sighed and closed my eyes. “Can’t believe we’re here already. We’re on our first mission. I’m excited.”
“It’s going to be great.” The fairy girl unfastened her seatbelt and pulled her headset off before she stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “Anyone else hungry?”
“Fuck, yeah,” Nick groaned as he hopped out of his seat and raced to the front where we’d left our snacks. “I’m starving! If I don’t stock up soon--”
“We know,” Nala teased as she walked behind him and grabbed an orange out of the bag. “You’ll die, or at least pretend that you will.”
“Don’t mock my condition, Nala,” the nymph dude mumbled around a mouthful of granola bar. “I didn’t choose it.”
“Must be nice, though.” Nala peeled her fruit and tossed the discarded pieces into a plastic bin before she separated the slices to eat them. “Not having to worry about what you’re eating.”
“Nala, you’re already skinny,” Steffi scoffed as she reached into the bag and got some yogurt and a banana. She walked back to me and sat down, and then she held up the two options. “What do you want to eat?”
“I’ll take the banana,” I said and accepted the fruit from her when she handed it to me. “Thanks.”
“We have to keep our strength up.” She opened the yogurt and folded the thick foil lid into the shape of a spoon to stir her dairy breakfast around. “What do you think we should do first?”
“Oh, right,” Nick said as he headed over to where Steffi and I were sitting. “We need a game plan.”
“What d’you have for us, Dylan?” Nala asked as she finished her orange and stole a granola bar out of one of Nick’s pockets without the nymph noticing.
“The tlahuelpuchi won’t be easy to find in the daytime,” I replied as I swallowed the first bite of banana, “so we might have to wait until nightfall to hunt it. However, we can ask around the villages and see what we can learn about the mysterious deaths. That might be our safest bet until night comes.”
“No habla espanol, amigo,” Nick said while he patted the now empty pocket and glared at Nala. “Anybody speak Spanish?”
“What, AIMM doesn’t have translators that fit into your ears?” I asked as I took the last bite of my banana.
“I can speak Spanish.” Nala smirked. “Fluently.”
“Great, we have our translator.” I got up and tossed the banana peel into the trash with the rest of Nala’s orange peel. “What about transport? How far away are these villages?”
“I don’t want to butt in on your team powwow,” Silva said as he left the cockpit and walked over to us, “but the villages are within walking distance of each other. They’re only separated by a few miles, which makes sense if one monster is bothering all of them.”
“Do you know if there are any caves or stone outcroppings in the area?” I asked and crossed my arms over my chest. The dragon tattoo seemed to squirm under my short sleeve, and I reached my hand up and rubbed my bicep to calm it down.
“I don’t know for sure, but anything’s possible.” The pilot shrugged and pressed the button to lower the ramp. “You cadets better get a hustle going if you want to do your investigation before it gets too dark. You’ll have a lot of ground to cover today.”
“Anything to protect us from the sun?” Nick asked and rubbed his arms. “I’m kind of pasty, you see?”
“Hold on.” Silva pushed past us and walked to the back where the cargo was being stored. Then he opened up a compartment and pulled out a few more shemaghs for everyone else, as well as some sunglasses and sunscreen. “Dr. Hastings said you might need these, so we made sure they were packed and ready to go before we left. She also said to check the safe for your sidearms.”
“Sidearms?” I echoed as the rest of my team headed into the cargo area of the jet and walked straight to a sealed glass case. “Wait, we get guns?”
“Yeah, we do,” Nala said as she opened the case with a code and passed a Glock to Steffi, and then she grabbed another one for herself. “You won’t, sorry, but maybe next time.”
“Why don’t I get one?” I frowned and crossed my arms as Nick got his own gun out of the safe.
Nick’s firearm of choice was a silenced MP5 with a flashlight and red-dot sight. The metal was worn, and the grip was smoothed down in the exact places where his fingers wrapped around the stock, so I figured he’d trained with it a bunch.
“You haven’t been through the training,” the nymph dude explained as he pulled his gun’s strap over his head. “You’d be a danger, but you’ll get your chance someday.”
“Nick uses his as an offensive backup,” Nala added as she holstered her little pistol. “The rest of us keep them just in case we have some violent local yokels we need to scare off.”
“Ideally, we won’t need them,” Steffi murmured and looked out the window. “I’d rather not have to shoot anyone.”
“We won’t have to,” I assured her and put my hands on my hips. “Let’s just keep getting ready for the mission. Silva’s been standing there like our servant, holding all our shit.”
“I’m fine,” the pilot grumbled before we turned around to face him again. “It’s fine. Not like I have anything else to do right now.”
Nick seized the bottle of sunscreen from our pilot while the girls picked up the shemaghs.
“Thank you,” I said and took the sunglasses from Silva. I put them in the front pocket of my pants and took the shemagh off to wind it around my head and protect everything above my shoulders from the sun.
“Can you help me with this when you’re done, Dylan?” Steffi asked as she tried and failed to fold her shemagh. “I don’t have the slightest clue about this.”
“It’s okay,” I replied and took hers before she got herself too tangled. “I watched a few videos about these when I was younger.”
I licked my lips and walked her through the steps to folding the shemagh until it would wrap around her head and face. Once I helped her put it on, only the bridge of her nose and her eyes were visible, but I could tell she was smiling by the crinkle at the corners of her golden orbs.
“Thanks, Dylan,” she said as she took the sunscreen from Nick and the glasses from Nala. “At least I know my skin won’t match my hair by the end of the day.”
“Just make sure you keep applying sunscreen,” I instructed as I put my sunglasses on my face and made sure they wouldn’t fall down the end of my nose. “Let me see that when you’re done, please.”
When the fairy girl finished lathering herself up with the sunscreen, I had to take a moment to savor how the oily substance made her skin shine in the artificial light inside the cockpit.
“Here you go,” she said and handed me the bottle. “Want me to hold your gloves for you?”
“Yeah, that’d be great,” I said as I took the gloves off and handed them to the fairy girl standing in front of me. Then I squeezed the appropriate amount of lotion onto my palms and spread it over the only sections of exposed skin I had, which were the bridge of my nose and my arms.
The tattoo wriggled when I swiped the sunscreen over it, and I almost apologized before I realized it might look weird to everyone else.
When I finished, I stowed the half-empty bottle into one of my pockets, took the gloves back from Steffi, and looked at the rest of my team.
“We’ve got this,” Nick said as his thin arms crossed over his chest and squared his shoulders.
“Hell, yeah!” Nala shouted and straightened her back, but she only came up to Nick’s shoulders. Still, she looked hot and tough as she pounded her fists together and nodded her head.
“What do you say, Dylan?” Steffi asked as she moved to stand next to me, and then she placed her hand on my shoulder and patted it. “You are the highest rank on the team. Do you think we stand a chance against these things?”
“I think we’ve got a really good chance.” I grinned as I took a deep breath to puff my chest out. “I know I’m new to all this, but I think we’re some of the baddest motherfuckers I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think the tlahuelpuchi are going to know what hit them! We’re going to find out why these babies are sick and dying, and we’re going to put an end to it. Alright?”
“Fuck, yeah!” Nick cheered as he pumped his fist into the air. “That’s our Red!”
“Not a bad speech, man,” Nala said while she nodded her head again and adjusted her sunglasses to fit on the narrow bridge of her nose. “You sound like a fucking badass. I’m happy we have a Red on our team. Can’t wait to see your dragon eating some vampire putas.”
The Spanish curse word flowed off the dark beauty’s tongue with an almost musical cadence, and I abruptly imagined her whispering foreign sweet nothings into my ear.
Then I shook my head, because we definitely didn’t have time for my libido right now.
But I’d revisit the thought later.
“I don’t agree with the vulgarity of Nala’s statement,” Steffi sighed and bumped my shoulder with hers. “But I will agree that you did a very good job for our first motivational speech before a mission.”
“Thanks, guys,” I murmured and rubbed the back of my neck as my cheeks flushed, but they thankfully couldn’t see it under my shemagh. “Now, let’s get out there and do some Scooby Doo shit.”
“Yeah!” Nick yelled while he led the way down the ramp. “Let’s go, Mystery Gang!”
We disembarked from the jet, and I stared out into the wide desert expanse in front of us. It was nothing but rocks, sand, and cacti as far as I could see. The sun beat down on our heads like an oppressive monster breathing down our necks, and the mirages on the horizon made it hard to tell if there was water or not ahead of us. It looked and felt like Tatooine, but with a little more greenery and a lot less slug monsters.
“Next stop, Monsterville,” I muttered to myself and pushed my sunglasses up. “Here we fucking go.”
Chapter Eight
Back at UC, I didn’t like having to bike everywhere all that much. Sure, I was glad it was a more convenient way for me to travel, but in the late spring, it got really hot before school let out and made it hard to get anywhere without working up a massive sweat. It wasn’t so bad, but it definitely could’ve been better.
But now, as my team and I hiked through the Mexican desert, I was glad I built up endurance for riding in the heat.
“Anybody want a sip of water?” Nick asked as he paused, opened his backpack, and passed Nala a canteen. “We have more back at the jet, so don’t worry about conserving too much.”
“But we want to limit the number of times we return to the jet,” Steffi said and pulled her shemagh down so she could get some water. “We have a lot of ground to cover today.”
“I just hope it won’t be too long before we find out where the tlahuelpuchi is hiding,” I sighed and gratefully took the water from Steffi.
“Dylan, do you know what tlahuelpuchi means?” Nala asked. “I speak the language but haven’t heard that name before the brief.”
I wiped my mouth and passed the water to the front where Nick could put it back into his bag.
“Well,” I began as we started walking again, “it means something like ‘glowing youth,’ I think. The name is a reference to the fact most tlahuelpuchi are young when they’re discovered, and they usually don’t live very long since they’re hunted down to keep them from killing dozens, if not hundreds, of innocents.”
“But it sounds like the tlahuelpuchi are innocents, too,” Steffi said and looked back at me. “They’re humans who developed magic powers like we did. Only… their abilities came with a curse.”
I couldn’t see her gold eyes through the lenses of her sunglasses, but I had a feeling she was frowning under her face covering.
“What are we supposed to do for them, Steffi?” Nick asked and turned to face her. “We don’t know for sure they’re simply human, right? The legends could’ve been misinterpreted. Right, Dylan?”
“Right,” I said with a nod. “Maybe they’re like changelings or something. Maybe the tlahuelpuchi snatch human babies and replace them with their own. We’re going to take care of these monsters, alright?”
“You’re right.” The pink-haired fairy girl nodded and puffed out her chest, and I couldn’t help but notice the way her breasts jiggled when she took a sharp breath. “These creatures are hurting innocent children, and they have to be stopped.”
“That’s the spirit.” I grinned.
After we walked for another half hour, we came across an adobe village nestled between two large rock formations. The houses were sunbaked and coral in color, and a few desert plants decorated the exterior. I couldn’t see any people wandering around, but that didn’t mean it was abandoned.
“Let’s go,” I said and picked up the pace as we came into the village. “Hello? Anyone here?”
We wandered up the main path between the houses and other buildings, but no one came out to stop us or to tell us to leave. It was strange everything was so quiet, but there were fresh tracks in the sand beneath our feet.
“¿Hola?” Nala called with her hands cupped around her mouth. “¿Hola?”
Then a weathered woman in a baggy black skirt and shirt came out of a doorway and pointed at us. She started speaking rapid Spanish, but the only words I could catch were “muerte,” and “maldición.”
“‘Death’ and ‘curse,’” I murmured as Nala stepped closer to the woman. “Guess we’re in the right place.”
While Nala and the woman conversed in Spanish, others began to emerge from the buildings around us. These people looked tired, worn, and haggard, as though they’d been forced to stay up for several nights without any rest. Even the children I could see had dark circles under their eyes and a stretched appearance to their faces.
This was no way for these kids to live.
“Gracias,” Nala said to the woman before she turned around to face us. “Okay, guys, we’re on the right track. Rosa there told me three of the ten village infants fell ill or passed away within the last few days. Everyone has been worried since then, and they sent a messenger to a nearby city to bring the police and a doctor. I told them we were the help.”
