Dragon Conjurer, page 3
“I’m sure not, and we wouldn’t want to make more work for ourselves.” The woman placed her hand on her small chest. “My name is Dr. Emma Hastings, and I represent the Americas’ Institution of Magic and Mythology, otherwise known as AIMM. Our mission is to locate talented individuals like yourself and to educate them about the real world we live in.”
“What do you mean by ‘real world’?” I tried to shift away from the door, but the guard had me blocked in. “Also, magic and mythology?”
“I will answer your questions in the order in which you asked them,” Dr. Hastings said while she crossed her ankles and rested her scarily high heeled shoes on the floorboard of the car. “Most of the population has written off the old myths as simply that: myths. We no longer accuse changelings of abducting our loved ones or blame the tectonic shifts on turtles who carry the entire world on the tops of their backs. We have science to help explain away the things we once considered fact. However, we at AIMM understand science is an illusion that now hides the real truth from us.”
“What truth?” I asked as I leaned forward and braced my elbows on my knees. “The truth that monsters have always existed, and we’ve just been blind to it in recent history?”
“Precisely.” The platinum-blonde in front of me smiled wider. “You’re rather quick on the uptake, Mr. Cooper.”
“Not to brag, but I’m a straight-A anthropology student.” I shrugged my shoulders and tried to keep myself from looking or sounding too boastful.
“Yes, we know you understand a fair bit about mythology.” The woman across from me nodded. “This is good. It will be an easier adjustment for you.”
“But what is this magic stuff you were talking about?” I asked as I placed an ankle across the opposite knee and leaned back into the seat behind me. “I can come to terms with monsters being real because I’ve seen them, but magic?”
“Well, you spoke an incantation earlier and summoned the dragon now hiding on your arm.” Dr. Hastings pointed toward my shoulder. “That is our assumption, at least. We have never seen this sort of power in the United States before, so this is as new for us as it is for you. Perhaps we can see this marking now? Would you mind showing me, please?”
“Uhhh… Yeah, I guess so.” I wiggled around in my seat until I could get my arm free of my flannel sleeve. Then I rolled up the shorter sleeve of my t-shirt until the entire tattoo was visible. “Here it is.”
“Incredible.” Dr. Hastings leaned forward in her seat, and she pulled a pair of thin red reading glasses out of her blazer’s pocket. “This is amazing. How big is the beast when you summon it?”
“Uhhh… Probably about the size of a German Shepherd, but its ice breath packs a punch.” I guessed the woman was in her late fifties, but she was still pretty damn hot, and the way she gasped when she looked at my arm was making my cheeks burn. I was starting to feel more comfortable with her and her goons, but I still wanted her to answer more of my questions.
“Yes, as those ruffians in the alleyway found out,” the blonde doctor said as she touched the marking, but then she reeled back and gasped like she’d been hurt.
“What?” I asked as the guard at my side put an arm between Dr. Hastings and me. “What happened?”
“Did you feel nothing from that?” she asked as she looked down at her fingertips. They were red and cracked, like they had been flayed open by something sharp. “Fascinating…”
“Are you okay?” I let my sleeve down and slipped my arm back into my flannel before the guard moved his arm away from me.
“It seems your dragon does more than hide in your body,” she chuckled and stuck her fingers into her mouth to suck on them.
“I didn’t know it could do that.” I looked down at my shoulder and frowned. “I don’t know about any of this. I’m so sor--”
“We know, Mr. Cooper, which is why we’re here to help you.” Dr. Hastings took her fingers out of her mouth and pulled a handkerchief out from her pocket to wrap around her wounded digits.
“Help me with what?” I looked around the car at the people inside.
“Help you understand your magic,” Dr. Hastings said. “It will be dangerous for you, and the people you love, if you do not learn how to control your great power. There is a lot for you to learn and a short time to learn it, but AIMM is here to help.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but then I closed it and decided to think for a bit. The inside of the car fell into silence, so I twisted in my seat and looked out the window at the buildings rushing by us. It was strange being in this car and watching the neighborhoods I knew well whiz on by. Everyone out there was going on with their normal lives, and I was on my way to a whole new one.
“Where are we going, anyway?” I leaned against the darkened window and kept watching the scenery pass us by. “Is it this AIMM place?”
No one answered me, so I decided I would stay quiet in the meantime. In the silence that followed, I squinted through the dark tint of the window while the urban sprawl that surrounded UC Berkeley’s campus turned into smaller houses and woodsy backyards. The streets weren’t as busy here, and I only saw a few families outside of their homes on our way to wherever it was we were going.
What would AIMM be like? If they had super villain cars and doctor women who looked like retired supermodels, I could only imagine they had a bunch of money to spend. Were they some sort of secret society-slash-cult who hunted dragons down for rituals? Were they a secret society-slash-cult who hunted down anthropology students for rituals? It would make sense for them to be based close to the university, then, because UC Berkeley had a lot of anthropology majors. I’d never known anyone who went missing, but there were a lot of students on campus, and I wasn’t exactly the most social butterfly.
“If magic is real,” I said as I leaned forward and braced my elbows on my knees again, “then how come no one else knows about it?”
“It’s a well-kept secret,” Dr. Hastings replied as the lights from the tunnel we passed through illuminated her pretty face like a houndstooth-kaleidoscope. “In the past, magic users have been routinely oppressed just for using the abilities they were born with. Take the Salem Witch Trials, for instance.”
“But I thought that was because there was ergot fungus on the rye they were growing.” I pursed my lips and cocked one eyebrow. “The people of the town killed all those women because the entire population was basically taking the precursor to LSD that made them trip some major balls.”
“Don’t believe everything you’ve read on the internet, Mr. Cooper,” she laughed. “I’ve heard that legend, too, and while there might be some validity to it, we at AIMM know those women were more than just victims of bias and ignorance. Some of them really were powerful magic users, and those who managed to evade capture went on to become even more powerful.”
“Then what?” I asked.
“As you can imagine, it has always been dangerous to use magic around others. Before, the ignorant masses were only superstitious. Now, we have the worship of science to explain what was once unexplainable. After that, the people of the world were more than happy to accept science as the ultimate truth because it brought order to the universe as we knew it.” The woman across from me paused and adjusted herself in her seat. “You as a folklore and anthropology student should know that. How many villages tore themselves to shreds because they couldn’t find an explanation for why their friends and family were dying of tuberculosis?”
“Hundreds,” I said and frowned. “More than historians care to remember.”
“And those same historians have documented how the villagers blamed vampires for the deaths, correct?” Dr. Hastings smiled at me, but it was far from a warm or welcoming smile.
In fact, the sharp curl of her lips reminded me of Jim Carrey’s Grinch movie, except she was super hot.
“That’s right.” I nodded my head and glanced back out of the car when we came out of the tunnel and into what looked like another wooded area. “People are always scared of what they can’t understand.”
“And with the advent of science, the unexplainable became explainable.” Dr. Hastings crossed one of her long legs over the other and motioned to the guard next to her. “Or so we thought.”
The guard hit a button on his side of the seat, and the window tint lightened up a little so I could fully take in the new scenery around us.
“Holy shit…” I breathed.
Behind us was a mountain, but in front of us was a sprawling compound bursting at the gills with activity. The property we drove toward was ten times the size of UC Berkeley’s campus, and the buildings were a cool mix of futuristic minimalism and classic Gothic architecture, with straight lines along flat roofs that were protected by stone gargoyles. It was weird seeing a Gothic structure in this part of the country, and I dropped my jaw as I took in all the details.
The car moved along the road and passed down a one-way street that headed straight for the largest building in the compound. The road was lined with trees still clothed in rust colored and burgundy leaves, and the dead foliage crunched beneath the tires and whipped up behind us.
People milled around on the sidewalks underneath the trees, and they wore a variety of clothing. Some of the men had suits like the guys in the car with me, while women wore skirts and slacks with starched lab coats. What struck me the most was the amount of younger people who were probably my age or older, and all of them were wearing short-sleeve, gray coveralls with different color stripes down the shoulder, around the waist, and down the outside of each leg.
“Are you taking me to Xavier’s School for the Gifted or something?” I asked as I pulled away from the window and looked at Dr. Hastings. “Because it’s starting to feel like I’m about to become an X-Men extra.”
“Oh, trust me,” Dr. Hastings laughed, “it’s far better than that.”
“Okay,” I chuckled. “I’m getting excited now. You know, if your goons here had just told me I was going to become a superhero and go to a badass school when they first approached me, I would have totally gone with them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time.” She smiled.
The car drove up to a wrought-iron gate that stretched between stark white walls, and the driver lowered the window to pass something to the guard at the gate.
“We have to maintain quite serious security here,” Dr. Hastings explained as the interaction between guard and driver ended, and the car inched through the gate. “Even though we lived in some of the most tolerant times, we cannot count on the world to accept there are others who are different from them. Others who are more powerful than them.”
“I guess the masses would be pretty pissed if they found out there was a whole population that was able to use literal magic, and they couldn’t,” I said as the car rolled to a stop, and the guards moved to pop the doors open.
“I share the same sentiment.” Dr. Hastings slipped out of the car, and I shortly followed her example after I’d grabbed my backpack. “When I first learned of this place, I couldn’t believe I’d dedicated twenty years of my life to the study of archeology, only to learn I wasn’t crazy when I found a skeleton only a few inches long but still fully formed. My old colleagues wrote me off as a kook, but it turned out they were the crazy ones in the end.”
“So, do you have any powers?” I asked, and I tried my best to ignore the weird mad scientist monologue Dr. Hastings had gone on.
“The only magic I have to offer AIMM is my extensive knowledge,” she sighed while she seemed to calm herself down. “Still, I am of better use here at this facility than I ever was outside of it.”
She took a moment to sweep her arm toward the building we stood in front of, and my jaw dropped when I took in the sheer size of the main structure in this complex.
The building made me feel small, and not because it was so tall, but because it was so wide. It stretched out longer than a football field on the side we were standing on, and it was so big, they put little outcropping rooms along the wall that each had their own entrance and armed guard.
“What kind of weapons work against magic users?” I asked as I looked at the AR-15 the nearest guard was holding. “Silver bullets? A bucket of water? Fairy dust? A wand made of yew wood with a phoenix feather core?”
“Mr. Cooper, we don’t use violence to keep the peace here,” Dr. Hastings said as the guards opened the door for us, and we stepped inside. “The very idea of threatening pain on someone in the name of harmony is just ridiculous. Instead, we only have guards to make sure no unwanted attention gets very far into our operation.”
“That makes sense, but I guess I was asking more about the standard weaknesses for the monsters in mythology, and if they were really effective.” I stopped in the doorway of a stark white room made of subway tile and cinder blocks. The room itself looked like the interrogation room Agent Smith put Neo in at the beginning of the first Matrix movie, only there was no green tint, it was cleaner, and Dr. Hastings was like a zillion times hotter than Agent Smith. The walls were bare, with no one-way mirror on one wall, and the space was decorated with only a metal folding chair and a tripod with a device that looked somewhat like a camera on it. It didn’t quite look like a camera, but I couldn’t figure out what put me off about it.
“Take a seat, Mr. Cooper,” Dr. Hastings said as she walked around the edge of the room and headed for the door opposite of the one we came into, and the guards followed her and stood on either side of the solid metal door while she opened it. “My companion will be in here shortly.”
“Companion?” I asked as she walked through the door. “Who else do you need me to talk--”
But the door slammed closed before I could finish my question.
I looked at the guards and contemplated asking them what Dr. Hastings had meant, but I didn’t think I would get too much out of the guys I’d outsmarted on my way back to campus earlier. Somehow, I doubted they would be in a talkative mood after I’d pulled off the stunts I did to get away from them.
“Sorry about earlier,” I said as I turned the chair around so I could straddle it and lean my chest against the back. “You guys were kind of scary, and I didn’t want to be neuralized.”
The guards stayed quiet, and one even balled up his meaty fists at his sides.
“Okaaay, you guys aren’t Men in Black fans, got it.” I propped my chin on top of the back of the chair and sighed.
The urge to start clucking my tongue, popping my knuckles, or biting my lip was almost overwhelming, but I decided to refrain from making any sorts of noises that might set these guys off. I figured I could get away with talking better than I could get away with making annoying sounds that would drive even the most patient person to violence.
“What’s going to happen to me while I’m here?” I asked while I tapped my feet on the floor to keep from bouncing my leg. Tapping my foot seemed to be a lesser nervous tic than bouncing my leg, even though I was on the verge of shitting myself.
“We’ll find a place for you,” a tiny man in a lab coat announced as he came into the room and walked between the guards like he wasn’t scared of them. “My name is Adam Romine, nice to meet you.”
The man couldn’t have been taller than five and a half feet, and his brown mop of curly hair made him seem even younger than he already looked. The only thing that kept him from looking like a fourteen-year-old science geek was the full chocolate-colored goatee that covered the space under his nose and chin. His brown eyes looked me up and down past the rim of his silver glasses and the edge of his hooked nose, and the eccentric man danced around me in shoes too big and pants too short for him.
He was just like a cartoon character.
Then he stuck out his hand, and I gave it a wary shake.
“Nice to meet you, too, I guess,” I said as I stood up to turn the chair around and face him while he stood behind the tripod. “Dr. Hastings explained some things to me, but I’m still more confused than I was before I got here.”
“I’m sure you are, Mr. Cooper,” Mr. Romine said as he fiddled with the device on top of the tripod. “Everyone is when they first come here, but you’ll get used to the idea of monsters and magic and whatnot after a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?” I raised an eyebrow as the worst thoughts started to work their way into my mind. “I have a job and school and stuff. How long do you guys expect me to stay here?”
“Oh, that’s simple.” Mr. Romine looked up from what he was doing with the machine and fixed me with a look so matter-of-fact, I was caught off guard by what he said next. “You’re going to be here forever. Welcome to AIMM, where your whole life now revolves around stopping monsters from destroying life as we know it.”
I blinked rapidly in shock, and my heart skipped a beat.
“Monsters… destroying… life?” I asked slowly.
“Yep,” he said with a strangely happy nod. “And I gotta say, we are all very excited to finally have someone of your power and potential with us.”
Chapter Three
“What do you mean, someone of my power and potential?” I asked Mr. Romine while the little man moved back behind the camera and started to fiddle with it again. “I thought this was a temporary thing. I mean, it’s cool that I’ll get to learn about monsters and stuff, but I still have a degree to get.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mr. Romine said while he popped up from behind the machine. “Didn’t Emma tell you this was a more permanent thing?”
“She didn’t mention it, no.” I frowned and crossed my arms. “Convenient, huh?”
“She was probably just a little starstruck by your power.” Mr. Romine motioned toward my arms with both of his hands, and he pointed to each of my shoulders. “Which one is it?”
“My right one,” I said as I eased the flannel off and rolled up my t-shirt sleeve. “What did you mean by ‘starstruck’?”
“You’re a rare breed, Mr. Cooper,” he mused while his eyes rounded like saucers, and his hands clenched and unclenched. “We’ve never seen one like you here at AIMM.”
