Page 34 of Her Dragons

He asked, “Is that all you have to say to me?Really?Just ‘Mark’?”

It was an effort to speak with my heart pounding.I asked him, “What would you like me to say?”

“How about how much you missed me?You did miss me, didn’t you?You did see what a mistake it was to leave me, to sneak out on me.That wasn’t fair, Lily.I searched the whole place, looked high and low for you, had my people out looking for you.Without a word, you just left.Didn’t you think I’d be afraid that something might happen to you?”He sounded almost like a father whose daughter had been out all night.

“I don’t think anything really scares you, Mark,” I said.

“You’re wrong,” he said plaintively, actually seeming to be stung by my words.“I was out of my mind, worrying that you were out there somewhere, where I didn’t know where you were, and I couldn’t take care of you.Anything could havehappened to you, Lily, and I wouldn’t have known.”A note of menace crept into his voice.“I hated not knowing, Lily.Hated it.”

His shifting emotions made me cold with fear.“I was fine, Mark,” I said.

“Yes, I know you were,” he replied.“You had someone else looking out for you, didn’t you, someone else taking care of you.As a matter of fact, it was an old friend of mine.You probably told my old friend Alex Duvall about us.You did tell him, right?”

Hearing him say Alex’s name made my heartbeat spike.I said, “That was the first thing we found out, that we had you in common.You never brought up that you were in a gang once.”

“It’s not a part of my life that I talk about much.It has bad memories.”He frowned, and I sensed he was remembering the old days, his face etched with anger from long ago, his muscles twitching with contained fury.“Flint Street, the Firewings:those should be good memories.It was your basic ‘humble beginning’.I used to think my friends were my fortune.I believed that, you know — until I learned better.”

“I guess there are bad memories all around,” I said.

He stepped closer, which made me want to jump through the wall behind me, and stared at me with cruelly glaring eyes.I remembered hundreds of blows from hard, scaly hands and a thrashing tail, and flinched with fear.To my surprise, though, he backed off and gestured to the piano.

“I brought you something that I thought would be a good memory,” he said.“You left your piano with me.I remembered how much you loved it.And how much I loved hearing you play.You could play something for me now, Lily.Play something, like you did before.Remember how we both enjoyed it when you played?”

Remembering that it was one of the few things we enjoyed, I said, “I don’t feel much like music right now, Mark.”

He made a bitter sort of half-smile at that.“Is that so?Did you ‘feel like music’ when you were with Alex Duvall and his friend Jake Hudson?Did you play for them the way you did for me?”

Screwing up the little bit of courage that I had, I asked, “How did you know where I was, Mark?”

The corner of his mouth turned up in a bigger half-smile.“Did Alex tell you about some of the things we used to do in the Firewings?Did he tell you about some of the scrapes and rumbles that we got into with the Blackhorns from Anchor Street?”He laughed a chilling little laugh.“Believe it or not, some of the guys from the Blackhorns work for me now.Isn’t that ironic?The Blackhorns were our rivals and now I have some of them working for me.They’re some of my messengers.A couple of them were at the Drake Festival.Obviously, you didn’t notice them because your attention was on other things.”Now his smile dissolved into a more sinister, narrow-eyed look.“But they spotted you and they told me you were there — and who it was you were there with.Alex Duvall and his friend, of all people.We did some checking around, found out what Alex was doing, where he was staying.And that was right where you were.”

I looked off, filled with despair at how Mark found me out.That night was so happy, and now it had led to the thing I dreaded most.

“You played for them, didn’t you, Alex and his friend Jake Hudson?” Mark asked.“Like you played for me — you played for them.Am I right?”

His accusing tone made me continue not looking at him.I stayed silent, trembling, consumed inside with rising terror.

Mark’s voice became a growl.“Am I right?Answer me!”

He came close again and reached for me.I gasped and flinched as he took me roughly by the chin and turned my face back to him.

Louder, he demanded, “Tell me!Am I right?”

I pulled myself free of his grasp and crawled up onto the bed, feeling as utterly helpless as I did before I got away from him.My voice was filled with all the fear I was feeling.“Mark, you should have just let me go.Why didn’t you just let me go?”

He roared at me, “Let you go?Just like that?When you snuck out on me without a word, when my back was turned?Let you go?!”

“What would you have said if I told you I wanted to go?”

Though he lowered his voice, he sounded just as angry.“You want to know what I would have said?I would have reminded you of how hard it was for you out there, how you wanted a career but couldn’t get a break, how you were ready to give up.I took you away from all that, Lily.I cared for you, protected you, gave you everything you needed.”

For the first time I sounded defiant.“I needed to feel loved!”

Mark returned to shouting and shook his fists as if his reaction came from a bottomless pit of fury inside him.“I loved you!I did, Lily!I loved you like no one ever did, like no one ever could!I took care of you!And were you grateful?Did you have any gratitude for me, after everything I did for you!”He actually sounded hurt, almost like a broken-hearted child, which made me sick to my stomach.“You were my treasure, Lily.My precious treasure.Do you remember what I said to you in bed after the first time I made love to you?Remember what I told you about the stories that humans used to make up about dragons, how they were supposed to live in caves and guard gold and jewels and precious treasures?That’s what I said you were to me, Lily:my precious treasure, to protect and to guard.”Histone turned bitter.“And what did you do, Lily?My precious treasure…ran away from me.Just ran away.How did you think that made me feel?”

“I didn’t feel ‘treasured’ or ‘protected’, Mark,” I said.

“After everything I did for you, Lily, you didn’t feel treasured or protected?”Scales broke out on his face, his bare arms, and the exposed part of his chest.The horns began to protrude from his forehead.“Is that how you felt with Alex Duvall and Jake Hudson?Did they make you feel the way I wanted to make you feel?”

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