Authors: J.K. Hudson
*****
Shelly is so consumed by grief at the loss of her friend, Candy, she barely registers the next three days of living with Gerry and Jerome. She goes to work like normal, but the days fly by and before she knows it, she is back at the house across from the fire station with her head buried in a pillow with tears wetting the pillow case. She falls asleep this way every night.
On the fourth day, she wakes up and feels much better. She is still sad, but she seems to be cried out. Hurrying to the bathroom, she looks in the mirror and cringes. Her eyes are swollen and puffy from crying most of the last three days. Last night, the brothers had to work the night shift so they are still sound asleep.
She tiptoes through the living room where Gerry is sleeping on the couch with the TV is tuned to some infomercial, and into the kitchen. Gathering up a plastic bag of ice, she tiptoes back to her room. On the way through the living room, she can’t help but look at Gerry. His blankets are on the floor and his shirt is off. She takes in his burly shoulders and flat stomach with a grin and hurries back the bathroom.
After taking a cool shower, she applies the ice pack to her eyes in the hopes that it will help relieve the swelling. Today is her day off, but she doesn’t plan on spending it around the house all day. She hopes to find a new apartment today. Dressing in one of only two outfits she has left, she hurries out the front door with one last look at Gerry’s sleeping form on the couch.
She spends the rest of the day looking for an apartment online at the library, in the newspaper, and the old-fashioned way: on foot. Everything she finds is either sold already or out of her price range. Cursing her luck, she drives back to the house across from the fire station. As she pulls up, she realizes that she has no idea what their last name is. She stops on the front steps and poises her hand to knock on the door, but it swings open before she can. Jerome is standing in the doorway.
“You don’t have to keep knocking, Shelly. You’re living here for now and when you live somewhere, you don’t knock. Just come in.”
“I hate to,” she explains as she sets her purse on the coffee table. “It seems like an invasion of your privacy.”
“We offered you a place to live. If we were concerned about our privacy, we wouldn’t have done that.”
“I know. I just feel awkward not helping out.” She reaches down, digs a hundred dollar bill out of her purse, and hands it to him. “Here. It’s not much, but it will help with what I’ve been eating and the utilities I’ve been using.”
“Put it back in your purse.” He pushes the bill away. “You don’t eat enough to keep a mouse alive and the only utility you use is water and that’s free.”
Shelly drops the money back in her purse and looks around the house. “Where is Gerry?”
“He had to work the night shift. It’s just be you and me in the house tonight.”
Suddenly, she knows a way that she can repay Jerome without giving him money. “Do you have any plans for tonight?”
“Not really. I thought I might hit the weights a little, but other than that, probably watch some TV. Why?”
“How about I cook you a big supper tonight? To thank you for taking me in.”
“You don’t have to, but if you insist, I guess I wouldn’t say no to some good home cooking for a change. To tell you the truth, I’m getting real tired of eating from some fast food joint every night.”
“Let me see what groceries you’ve got in the fridge.”
Shelly leaves him standing in the living room and walks into the kitchen. She opens the door on the refrigerator and sees right away that she will need to go to the store before she cooks any kind of meal. The only thing in the refrigerator is beer and an old package of sliced cheese. Back in the living room, she explains to Jerome that she is going to pick up groceries for dinner.
She drives to the store in a better mood than she has been in days. Cooking dinner isn’t much, but it is just enough to get her mind off of her best friend’s death for a while. She gathers up the ingredients for dinner tonight and for a couple more nights as well. She figures that if she cooks for Jerome, she’ll have to cook for Gerry to make it even. As she reaches into her purse to grab her wallet and pay the cashier, she finds an extra hundred dollars. Paying the cashier, she decides that Jerome must have put the money there when she was in the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, she pulls up in front of the house. Jerome is waiting for her on the steps in a pair of shorts that show off his chiseled calves and a grey tank top that reveals his muscular arms. Shelly’s breath catches in her throat for a second when he hops off the porch and starts toward her.
“Let me help you with the bags.”
“Did you put money in my purse?” she asks him as she unlocks the back door of her car so they can get the groceries out. “I found an extra hundred dollars in my purse and I thought you might have had something to do with it.”
“No, I didn’t.” He grins at her and gathers up all the bags save the one with bread in it. “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. You must have forgotten about the money until you found it just now.”
“Okay.” She watches his butt as he walks up the steps to the house and shakes her head. “I need to get a hold of myself.” she whispers and follows him into the house.
In the kitchen, he offers to help her, but she kicks him out and tells him that if he comes back, she’ll smack him with a wooden spoon. She even brandishes the spoon for effect. Jerome’s feet make hollow thuds on the stairs as he heads down to the basement where they keep all of their workout equipment.
The smell of the chicken cooking on the stove and the carrots she is chopping takes Shelly back to when she was just a young girl. She used to love to cook with her father as a small child. Her mother wasn’t around much, but her father loved to cook and he taught her everything he knew. Slapping a healthy dollop of butter into a pan, she tosses the carrots in on top to caramelize them. She is heading to the refrigerator when someone knocks on the door.
Wiping her hands off on towel, she goes to the door and swings it open without thinking. Two burly men are standing on the porch, but she only has eyes for the man in the front. He is holding a gun at her face. All she can see is a massive, gaping hole at the end of the barrel that is so dark, it seems to suck the light from around it like a black hole. A scream works its way up her throat. Before she can do so much as whimper, the gunman’s buddy darts forward and hits her with a shoulder like a linebacker. Shelly always considered herself heavy, but the big man knocks her across the room like a rag doll. All of the air is driven out of her lungs as she lands on the back of the sofa. The couch overturns with her and throws her against the wall with a thud. Gathering herself up onto her hands and knees, she looks up to see the gunman pointing the gun at her once more.
“Where are the dragons, lady? And don’t jerk me around. I ain’t got the patience.” He jabs the gun at her face for emphasis.
“What....dragon?” She just manages to get the words out as she shivers in fear.
“The fucking dragons you are living with! Where are they?” This time, he yells at her and shoves the gun against her cheek.
“I...”
She pauses as she hears thumping on the steps that lead to the basement. The gunman nods his head to his buddy and they share a grin. The man without the gun moves to the top of the stairs and steps to the side so he can ambush Jerome when he bursts through the door. As the footsteps near the top of the stairs, they grow louder and sound heavier to Shelly.
The door to the basement bursts asunder and pieces of it fly out into the room. Shelly’s mind grasps at an explanation for what emerges through the door. It still is mostly the same size as Jerome, but looks nothing like him. Horns grow from its elongated head. Great, leathery wings sprout from the back of the creature. Claws like small meat hooks dangle from the ends of its fingers. Iridescent scales cover the entire body with the exception of the leathery wings. A long tail sweeps back and forth from behind.
The man to the right of the door tries to yell and charge, but the beast turns and grabs him by the shoulders. With a grunt, the beast hurls the man through the window that looks out at the street and charges toward the man with the gun.
“Don’t! I’ll shoot!” screams the man as he levels the gun at the charging beast.
As the beast roars, the man fires. Shelly hears the crack of the shot as it hits the charging beast in the left shoulder. The roar grows louder and she covers her ears for the fear that her eardrums with burst if she doesn’t. The gunman works the pump to put another shell in his gun and Shelly closes her eyes. The ground shakes as the beast nears. The gunman screams, the beast roars, and then with the sound of shattering glass, all goes quiet. Knowing full well that she is about to die, she keeps her eyes shut and waits for the inevitable attack, but it doesn’t come. She hears the footsteps of the beast as it nears her. It takes every ounce of courage she has to open her eyes.
She lets out a relieved sigh.
Standing before her with his hand stretched out is Jerome and not the beast with massive wings and claws. She takes his hand and allows him to help her up. He holds her at arm’s length and looks her over to make sure that she is not hurt.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“I guess so, but what happened?” She glances down and notices that he is bleeding from a wound on his shoulder. The left shoulder. The same shoulder the beast was shot in. Jerking away from his grasp, she backs up until the wall brings her up short. “Your shoulder.”
“It’s just a flesh wound. All I need to do is wrap it up and it’ll be fine in a day or two.”
“No, you’re wounded just like the beast was and that guy asked me about a dragon.” She reels as her mind tries to process the information. “What the hell is going on? What are you? Who were they and why did they point a gun at me?”
“Calm down.” Jerome holds his hands up and pats the air in a calming motion. “I’ll explain everything, but first, I need to get those guys off the street before someone sees them.”
He walks out the front door without another word and leaves Shelly standing in the living room looking dumbfounded. Her legs are growing weaker by the second so she falls into a chair near the TV. She tries to go over what she just saw in her mind, but the images seem too fake to her. She just can’t believe that what she saw was real.
A few minutes later, Jerome walks back in with the gunman’s shotgun in his hand. He props it up in the corner and walks over to Shelly. Her eyes widen as he closes in, but she stays in her seat. He squats on his haunches and begins to talk.
“What you saw was real, no matter how much you want to believe that it wasn’t. Those two men were thugs who thought they could kill me and my brother for our scales. Me and Gerry are both dragon shifters, which means that we possess the ability to turn into dragons if we want to. Dragon shifter scales are highly sought after in the black market and sometimes we get fools like those two coming around and thinking that they can take ours. It never works. Now I can see in your eyes that you have a lot of questions and I will be happy to answer them, but first, I need to say two more things. One, I didn’t kill those men. They hit the street hard, but they both got up and walked or, shall I say, ran away. Two, no, I don’t plan on harming you and yes, my shoulder hurts. I guess that last one was really two things. Now what would you like to know?”
“Where do you keep your first aid supplies?”
Jerome’s eyes widen in surprise. “In the bathroom under the sink.”
Shelly goes to the bathroom and moments later, returns with the first aid kit and a couple of fresh towels. Placing one of the towels on the wound, she instructs him to hold it while she goes through the kit to see what she has available. She takes out some antibiotic ointment and a large bandage that will cover the wound. With some alcohol, she cleans the wound and disinfects it. He lets out a hiss through his clenched teeth as she pours in the alcohol, but stays still. She carefully applies the antibiotic ointment with a couple of fingers and then places the bandage over the wound. He inspects her handiwork as she puts the rest of the first aid supplies back in the kit and smiles at her.
“You know that was the last thing I expected you to do. I figured that you would do what most people do when they find out what me and Gerry are.”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Run away screaming or call the police. Sometimes both.”
“Why would I do that? First off, you saved me from those two men and if you were gonna harm me, I suspect that you would have done it by now.” The smell of burning chicken wafts in from the kitchen. Shelly jumps up and hurries out of the room. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?”
“I burned the food.” She sits down in a kitchen chair, points to the pan on the oven, and begins to cry. “I’m sorry.”
“What...” Jerome kneels beside her and puts a strong arm around her shoulders. “Don’t cry. We can fix more or go out to eat. It isn’t a big deal, Shelly. Now please don’t cry.”
She looks into his eyes and sees only compassion. The urge to kiss him overwhelms her and she leans it. Before she knows it, their lips meet. It has been a long time since she kissed a man. She does so now with a hunger. For a second, he kisses her back, but then he pulls away.
“Whoa. Slow down.” He gets to his feet. “You’ve had a crazy day, hell, a crazy week and your emotions are playing tricks on you. Let’s get something to eat.”