Here Be Dragons (A Night Call Story) by L.J. Hayward

Author:L.J. Hayward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vampire, urban fantasy, dragon, sea serpent, humourous fantasy
Publisher: L.J. Hayward

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Research didn’t go so well. By the time Mercy woke up I had no idea what the little blighter was. Good news, it had seemingly revived and was now turning in idle loops. Mercy was fascinated, sitting in front of the tank like it was a TV and the creature her latest movie obsession.

Wondering if there was something like a genetic or shared memory amongst vampires, I asked, “Any idea what it might be?”

“Yeah.”

Now, look. I’m going to blame the lingering effects of the lavellan venom and I dare anyone to argue with me. Thus, it wasn’t my fault I missed the dreamy tone or the star-struck glaze over her eyes.

Excited about getting an answer, I said, “Well? What is it?”

“Pretty.”

I watched her watching the lethargically swimming eel-dragon-thing. “That’s it? Pretty?”

“What else is there that matters?”

“I dunno, like maybe, how do we kill it and about a hun—”

Mercy hit me with a brick-wall’s worth of psychic whammy, aimed to take me out at the knees. If I’d been anyone other than her psychically-linked, for want of a better word (which will never be Primal), companion, I would have been jelly. As it was, she’d done this to me so many times in the early days of our semi-combative dual existence, my response happened autonomously of any direct decision making on my part.

I pulled on the psychic compulsion she sent my way through the link between us, effectively drawing it back toward her, so she, in essence, slapped herself in the face.

The fact she went flying backwards into the shelves of monster-fighting equipment spoke volumes of the power she’d packed into the compulsion.

Correction: If she’d managed to hit me with the compulsion, I wouldn’t have been jelly. Rather, I’d have been a slighter larger and messier smear than the lavellan had become.

“Jesus, Merce,” I spluttered, thoughts and emotions all off-kilter. “Holy freakin’… crap. What the hell was that?!”

A pair of silver-sheened eyes narrowed at me from under a fallen drift of rope. “You want to kill it.”

“Yes, I want to kill it. It and the rest of its slippery, screechy school of eel-dragon-things.” I waved in the vague direction of Hays Inlet. “They’re decimating the native fish population. Think about what a swarm of those things could do to an innocent fisherman! Not to mention stinking up the place with their leftovers. If for nothing other than the worst possible smell ever, they need to be eradicated.”

With slow, deliberate motions, Mercy untangled herself from the coils of rope and stood. At least, by the time she looked at me again, her eyes were back to human-brown. Still angry and glaring, but no longer vampire fuelled.

“You’re such a control-freak Neanderthal.”

And with that, she swept past me and stalked back into the house. The door between garage and house slammed behind her. A moment later, the door to her bedroom also slammed. Second after that, yup, the door of her cage.

I winced at the loud metallic clang. Then I winced as her parting words sank in.

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