Dragons Wild (Print)

Dragons Wild (Duet)
Willa Okati
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2019 Willa Okati
Excerpt from Wild Hunt

Delaney’s guitar beat a thump-thump-thump tattoo on his back as he toiled uphill, toward the summit where he could look down and see the cellar. One of the oldest venue stickers, crumbled away in places, tickled his nape. He shrugged irritably and hitched his case higher on his shoulder.

“I have some aloe,” Black-Eyed Susan said, her sudden presence making Delaney jump. She had quite the way of sneaking up on a guy, didn’t she? “Well. I know where an aloe plant is. They won’t notice if I break off a stem. Probably.”

“What?” Puzzled, Delaney waited for Hugh to join them and reclaim his lady. Not that he thought Black-Eyed Susan would go along with anything she hadn’t chosen for herself. She reminded him of a maple sapling, small and thin, but with roots that stretched as deep as a thousand-year-old oak.

The flash of an eye through dark gold hair obscuring a man’s face. A double row of brass rings laced through with black suede, a false corset on a man’s firm back. Bared teeth, white and sharp.

“Are you all right?” Black-Eyed Susan stood on tiptoe to peer at him.

“Yes.” Delaney tightened a fist around his guitar case’s strap. He tried a fake smile. “I had too much to drink and went a little crazy. It won’t happen again. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it. Maybe going back to the cellar to practice isn’t such a good idea. I mean, memories and all?”

Delaney thought, for an uncharitable second, that he liked Black-Eyed Susan better when she was drunk, and knew he preferred her when she had eyes only for Hugh. “There’s nowhere else to practice,” he pointed out. True enough; all the good grottos and groves and niches had already been claimed by the time he and his had stumbled ragtag out into the morning. “Don’t worry about me.”

“What he said.” Hugh finally reached them. He playfully batted Black-Eyed Susan’s shoulders with the smooth flat of his bodhran. “C’mon, lass. You promised to dance as long as my wrist action holds out.”

Tam, forever Delaney’s darker shadow walking silently by his side, covered her mouth but wasn’t able to hide her smirk at the innuendo.

“That’s good,” Delaney said, the joke a welcome relief. It felt good to laugh. “You don’t even have to think about them anymore, do you?”

“Funny.” Not in the least bit insulted, Hugh rumpled Delaney’s hair and then Tam’s, bound so tightly to her head as to be immovable as a skullcap of dark glass. “We’re going to check around later. See if there was anything besides whiskey in the jar last night.”

“Hugh…”

“I know, I know. But you’re too out of it for me to be comfortable, so humor me, okay?”

Delaney couldn’t argue with that, not without ingratitude fit to shame a thief. “I keep remembering things. Not what happened. I don’t think.” He chafed his forearms, a little chilly despite the heat of the summer sun rising toward noon height. “More like dreams. Maybe. Crazy stuff. They’re throwing me off my game.”

He walked ahead of the trio before they could press him on that and stopped at the top of the hill. Below him, the cellar pit opened like a mouth in the earth, the rough-hewn stones its teeth and the heavy-hanging pall of last night’s smoke its breath. No one had been back to clean up. The ashes and embers of the fire made an ugly black smear in the middle, with cigarette butts and detritus littered about like random snow.

“Real nice.” Hugh caught up and pulled a face at the mess.

Delaney tried to lighten the faltering mood. “At least I’m not the only one who got too buzzed to behave.” He knew it was a mistake the moment he’d said the words. Words had power; any musician knew that. “Hugh.”

Hugh rubbed his jaw. “It’s in the past. Leave it there. We’ve got the place all to ourselves, anyway. That’s something.”

Tam hovered into place at Delaney’s other side. “Wind picking up?”

The question didn’t make sense until she pointed at the cellar, at the remains of the fire, the awkward black streak of soot and ash. It seemed to move, a length of char stretching out and away from the middle. Delaney licked his finger and held it over his head. No trace of any wind at all. The day was as humid as a swamp and as still as a stump.

“There it goes again.” Hugh leaned on Delaney to better squint down at the cellar.

“Moving,” Tam observed.

“I’d noticed,” Delaney said. His heart rate quickened, though he couldn’t have said why. He kept that to himself. “Is it a black cat, maybe?”

“Poor kitty.” Black-Eyed Susan pressed tighter to Hugh, half hiding under his arm.

Tam wrinkled her nose and nodded sideways at the cellar. “Still alive,” she said with a shrug. “Whatever it is.” She chuckled. “Maybe a skunk. Huh. Or a cuckoo.”

“Or a partridge in a pear tree,” Hugh said. “I’ll take care of it. You stay here and keep an eye on Black-Eyed Susan.”

Delaney doubted Black-Eyed Susan needed any help. And besides, there was something about the stretch and shape of the blackness as it moved. Something not feline, not bird, not…

“Fuck me.” Hugh stilled. “That’s not a man down there, is it?” His laugh was forced and fake. “I don’t smell burning flesh. Can’t be.”

“I don’t think they’re burned.” Delaney slid his guitar case off his shoulder and pressed it on Tam. “Hold this. Stay here, all of you.”

“Delaney, if that’s a man, you can’t go down alone. Delaney!” Hugh shouted after him. Too late; Delaney was already halfway down the hill and picking up speed as he went, so that when he hit the short, smooth green before the cellar, he was running.

He knew before he’d dropped down into the cellar what he’d find there, just as he’d know the next line of a ballad before he’d sung it. Yet he didn’t name it even in his thoughts, not before he’d seen it with his own eyes and touched it to be sure. No. Not it. Him.

Delaney dropped to his knees beside the ragamuffin tangle of ash-dusted black rags more draped over the man’s limbs than worn. His joints protested, as did the flesh that covered them, reminding him of scrapes and bruises that’d slipped his mind.

Hands and knees, straddling a man dressed in nothing but the night but once clothed in black. Pinning him down. The man laughing like a wild creature and rearing up to bite at him and catch his mouth, demanding to be kissed. Subdued.
Though he’d been reaching out to shake the man’s arm, Delaney pulled away with a hiss.

“Is he hurt?” Hugh called from atop the hill.

“Don’t know.” The air down here was acrid and reeked. Delaney licked his lips for the moisture and regretted it. “Hey. Are you awake?”

Silence, at first, and then a small groan. The man lay on his stomach, his face hidden in the crook of his arms. “Are you hurt?”

No answer. Delaney touched him. Once. He’d intended to tap the man on his shoulder, but he’d changed midpath and stroked the thick, soot-darkened tangle of hair away from the man’s face instead. Pale skin beneath, smudged with ash but unburned.

Delaney knew when the man woke from his sleep or stupor by the small gasp and the abrupt tension in the way he held himself. He remembered that way of moving. Prey spotted by the hunter, caught between fright and flight, a deer in the headlights.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, hoping he could keep his word. “Look at me.” He caught the man when he would have looked away, and turned the man’s face toward him, careful but firm.

Soft lips, sharp teeth, eyes as dark as night. A laugh, a shout, a cry of pleasure. A challenge, a dare, a risk.

Yes. It was him. “Prey,” Delaney murmured.

The man nodded, sharp and jerky, and kept his stare fixed on Delaney. Less afraid. More wary. Ready to run, but hesitating. Waiting to see what would happen.

“I remember. All of it, from the fiddling to -- God almighty. Who are you?” Delaney’s touch softened, but he didn’t let go. He wanted to. Wanted to goad this almost-stranger into a run so he could be chased and caught again. Implausible, yet undeniable, and even as his body warmed with remembered arousal, he wanted no part of it. What lived in the dark should stay in the dark. “Why did you come back?”

The prey -- the fiddler -- lay still, but not as a meek and biddable thing. He would have run if he could have. Would have bitten and clawed if he couldn’t have run. Instead he watched Delaney from the corner of his eye, crouched so that if he chose, he could be up and away in seconds with Delaney left to chase after him.

Though Delaney knew he shouldn’t, he drew closer regardless. The nearer he came to his prey -- no, his fiddler -- no, not his at all; the fiddler belonged to himself, whoever -- whatever he was --

Delaney couldn’t think clearly with only inches between them.

When he came so near that his breath stirred the fiddler’s hair, the rich earthiness of the green filled his senses. Loam and humus and old, old stones. The essence of the wild forest twined its way inexorably through his mind and colored his vision. He thought he felt the reverberations of the land groaning in its shift beneath his feet.

He knew the fiddler felt it too. That all it would take was a touch, a command, a kiss, and the fiddler would make it happen. For a moment, Delaney wanted nothing more than to give that word and watch the fiddler disappear into the forest. A head start for the sake of the game, and then… the chase. He parted his lips, tasting the fiddler’s breath. Ready to give the need a voice.

“Stop!”