Arsenic Dragon Read online

  “What shower should I use?”

  “Um, there’s only one bathroom, so I guess mine?” she said, blushing deeply for some reason.

  “Good,” he said. He gave her a stern look. “And when I’m back, I expect to see that plate empty.”

  She barely had time to blink at him in surprise before he headed to the living room and slung his backpack over his shoulder to head upstairs.

  Chapter 8

  Farrah was surprised by her own nervousness as they pulled up to the Christmas tree lot she usually frequented.

  There weren’t many trees left to choose from, but that wasn’t shocking, considering it was Christmas Day. She was touched by Arsenic’s care for her, insisting she try to at least make the holiday work for her instead of giving up on it entirely.

  She still didn’t know if this was going to be inspiring or depressing. But at least she should be going through the motions of a normal life if she wanted to go back to one.

  Still, if this was her nice, normal world, why didn’t she feel safe?

  As she stepped out of the car, Arsenic having opened the door, she felt a shiver go through her that had nothing to do with the cold.

  She had no desire to interact with anyone, which would be required to buy a tree, and besides that, wouldn’t they look at her weird for doing it on Christmas Day?

  Arsenic came up to stand beside her, and she steeled herself as she walked forward. He looked so handsome today, having changed into jeans, combat boots, and a black-and-green flannel shirt that somehow looked at home on him, even if she had a sneaking suspicion someone else had chosen these for him.

  After all, he’d been wearing plain black and leather clothing yesterday that looked more like combat apparel, and he didn’t seem like someone who was vain about his looks.

  He seemed to sense her studying him and looked down at her quizzically. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s just a bit embarrassing to be here on Christmas.”

  “They should be grateful for your business since it is long past the prime of their selling season,” he said practically.

  That was true.

  His collar-length hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, and his handsome features appeared more severe. Still, as much as his height and sternness could probably be terrifying to anyone around them, there was a slight softness to him whenever he looked at her. For some reason, it made her feel safe.

  She heard footsteps and had to resist the urge to grab Arsenic’s hand, Nic’s hand, as a man stepped out from behind a row of trees and started toward them, a smile on his face.

  Nic stepped slightly in front of her, and she had to admit that while she was usually the type of person who liked doing everything herself, she was grateful for his interference.

  Apparently, it wasn’t just shifters she was afraid of now, but males in general.

  “What can I get for you?” the man asked in a friendly tone, though he was leaning slightly, trying to see around Nic’s huge form.

  “A tree,” he said. “The largest that will fit in a small living room.”

  “Gotcha,” the man said, a slight drawl in his voice. “Well, that’s a little vague, but we’ll see what we can do. We’re a bit low on stock, but we still have a few good ones.”

  She followed Arsenic through the trees, but as she walked, she felt eyes on her. Two employees who’d been working on netting some trees stopped what they were doing and looked up at them.

  One nudged the other and motioned to her, and his friend laughed. They both observed her with dark expressions that made her want to curl into the ground.

  She reached out and tugged on Arsenic’s arm, distracting him from listening to the owner and his info about available trees. “Perhaps we should go,” she said.

  Nic turned to face her, cocking his head. “But you want a tree?”

  “I do, but…” She couldn’t help her eyes darting in the direction of the employees, who were now openly snickering.

  Arsenic looked to the side and seemed to understand, and his arm curled protectively around her shoulders, bringing her in against him.

  She should have been afraid of the touch, but instead, she felt secure, and she saw the employees mumble something to themselves before retreating into another row of trees.

  “Don’t worry. I’m here,” he murmured in a low voice, keeping her against him as they walked forward and the owner began to talk about trees again.

  It was odd how such a big, scary man could make her feel comfortable. Despite all her instincts being on high alert, she let herself relax against him and just trust that everything would be fine.

  She sort of just blocked everything out, focusing on Nic and letting everything else fade away, until she realized they’d found a tree and Arsenic was already paying for it.

  “No need. Let me,” she said, rummaging in her pocket for her wallet.

  His glare stopped her in her tracks. “I’ve got it.” His dark hair was whipping in the wind, and he looked a bit like an angry pirate, so she just grinned.

  “Okay,” she said, putting up her hands and stepping back.

  “Will you be okay if I take this to the car?” he asked. “I don’t trust the scrawny human to do it.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  He looked around him, probably for any sight of the snickering employees. “I won’t let anyone laugh at you. Douchebags.”

  “Surprised you know that word.”

  “I watch TV,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Okay, stay close.” Then, as if it weighed nothing, he hefted the tree over his shoulder and walked to the car to tie it down.

  When they reached the car, she realized they had nothing to tie it down and instinctively jogged back to the lot to ask for some rope.

  Arsenic was already positioning it on the roof of the car, so she yelled that she’d be right back.

  Besides, she felt slightly empowered by the idea of going off on her own, even for a moment.

  She wasn’t going to let her PTSD take over. The world wasn’t full of demons waiting to hurt her. And yeah, maybe a couple pervy teenagers with nothing to do had looked at her, but it wasn’t something to be afraid of.

  Once this was over and she forgot everything, Nic would be gone, and she would have to be okay on her own anyway.

  Perhaps if she didn’t give off as much of a fearful impression, she wouldn’t be so much of a target.

  She was nearly to the middle of the lot when she realized she had no idea where the owner was. She turned to go down one of the rows and stopped, startled, when the two employees stepped out.

  She decided to stay calm, assuring herself that she had probably imagined them to be lascivious simply because of what she’d been through with the shifters.

  Most men weren’t simply waiting to pounce.

  “I… um, I need some rope. For the tree.”

  One of the men gave her a creepy grin. The other nodded. “I’ll get some and be right back.”

  She stood there awkwardly, wondering if she should have waited for Arsenic. “Um… maybe I’ll just…”

  “He’ll be right back,” the first man said. Sure enough, his friend came back holding a length of rope coiled around one arm.

  “Where’s your friend?” he asked, stepping forward ominously.

  Yes. Ominously. She was pretty sure she wasn’t imagining it anymore.

  Ugh, why had she been so stupid? She should have followed her gut, except she felt she had no idea how to follow her gut anymore. Now that it was always screaming of danger, how did she know when the danger was real?

  She took a step backward. “He’s at the car. I think I’ll just go back and—”

  But before she could leave the row of trees, the first employee somehow had moved behind her, closing her in.

  Damn.

  “You said you wanted rope,” the second man said, grinning. “I can think of some things to do with it.”

 
; “You do and you’re dead,” a cold voice interrupted. Farrah whipped around to look at the end of the row and saw Nic there, standing imperiously, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Get out of here, loser,” the first employee said.

  Farrah sent Arsenic a hopeless look because there was clearly no reasonable way to get out of this.

  The men turned back to her and started to close in, and Arsenic’s motions were instant. His hand extended, and two daggers flew out, hitting their targets with soft thuds as both men fell to the ground around her.

  Arsenic stepped over the one behind her as he gathered her up in his arms.

  She looked down in disbelief at the men on the ground and pounded on Arsenic’s chest for him to let her down. “You can’t just kill them!” she screeched.

  “Why not?” he asked. “On Drakkaris, the punishment for attempted rape is death.” His jaw was taut, and despite his outward calm, his eyes were emanating a rage that immediately made her want to shrink back in silence.

  But she didn’t want him to be a murderer for her. Though she supposed he already had been. That was different. Those were shifters.

  “I… Please don’t kill them.”

  He rolled his eyes and set her down, walking toward the men and retrieving the daggers. “There. Now the amount of poison should just be enough to make them rethink their actions.” He crouched on the ground next to one of the men and raised a still-bloody dagger to his cheek. “You hear me, bastard? You try anything like this again, you’ll feel my poison.” Then, to Farrah’s shock, he made a deep X mark over the man’s jaw, probably disfiguring him for life.

  Before she could stop him, he did the same to the other.

  She stared after him as he then walked past her, posture rigid and tight, hands in fists.

  He was angry. No, he was pissed.

  She ran after him, puzzled as to his reaction. Her heart was still pounding from being in danger but also from sheer shock at what he had done to those men.

  It had been so harsh, so merciless, so—

  Her thoughts were cut off as he whipped around to face her. “What? Now you’re going to judge me? I’m a monster, Farrah. Especially when it comes to protecting you. And you can look at me like I’m evil all you want. I won’t stand for dishonor, and I won’t stand for dishonorable men going through life unharmed despite their attempts to harm others. Those men will go around hurting others if not stopped, and if you won’t let me kill them, I need to at least make a failsafe.” His green eyes were narrowed, blazing. “So go ahead and hate me if you want. Go ahead and lump me in with the other shifters. But there’s a difference between them and me.” He cocked his head to the side. “I’m a monster because I have to hunt monsters. They are just monsters.”

  With that blunt statement, he turned on his heel and walked back to the car.

  “What about rope?” she asked feebly.

  He shook his head. “Don’t need anything.”

  Puzzled, she followed him to the car and watched in amazement as he shot strings of metal from his fingertips, which bound the tree to the rack on top of the car.

  “Amazing,” she said.

  “I suppose you aren’t supposed to see that,” he said. “But then again, you’re going to forget all of this, right? So what does it matter?”

  He opened her door for her, waited for her to get inside, and then impatiently started over to his side of the car.

  But she couldn’t leave it like this, feeling how mad he was.

  She ran around the side of the car and caught him in a hug, surprising herself and him with her audacity.

  He turned to her with shock that she found adorable, and she gave him a small smile.

  “Thank you for saving me back there,” she said, looking into his eyes, trusting what she saw there. “And before. I never thanked you. And… you’re not a monster. You aren’t like them at all.”

  He looked so confused for a moment that she had to resist the urge to give him another hug. Then he smiled, just a slight quirk of the muscles on one side of his mouth, there for a moment and then gone, leaving him hard again. “You’re welcome.”

  As Farrah started the car, she reminded herself not to become dependent. After all, the goal here was still to adjust back into her world and forget everything, including the handsome man who made her feel safe.

  Farrah was feeling much better by the time they were setting up the tree, having stopped on the way home for decorations, lights, and some Christmas treats.

  Arsenic had surprisingly insisted on going out and setting up a few strings of lights along her small roof. When she’d insisted the neighbors wouldn’t want them up very much after Christmas, his answer had been a tersely muttered, “Fuck them.”

  She had to admire Nic and his way of doing exactly what he thought was right without any consideration for what people thought of him.

  Perhaps it was easier to ignore Earth customs, since he was from another planet. She looked out the window to see him shivering again as he surveyed his work on the roof and sort of wanted to ask him what his planet was like.

  Was it warm there?

  He blew on his hands and rubbed them together, then nodded to himself and headed for the front door.

  Not wanting to be noticed, she jumped back and made herself look busy organizing the popcorn strings in clean lines on the table in front of her.

  “Done,” he said. “Tonight, you can tell me what you think of them.”

  She gave him a smile and saw his eyes widen in surprise. She sort of loved that his reactions were so easy to read sometimes. “Thanks. Do they have Christmas lights in your world?”

  “No,” he said, shedding his snow clothes. He pulled off his hat and jacket first, then stepped out of his boots.

  “How did you know how to do lights, then?”

  He shook his head, knocking off a few bits of stray snow that had missed the hat. He looked a little bit like a wet dog when he did that. There was still something animal about him. The shifter in him she supposed.

  “We did them at the mansion. My friends’ human mates taught us how.”

  “I bet that was pretty, on such a big mansion. Maybe I could see it sometime, in better circumstances,” she said, surprising herself that she’d want anything to do with something from the shifter world.

  He sat wearily on the couch and looked over at her. “Perhaps… when we go to get your memory erased.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps.” The thought of it sent a shiver through her, and she wasn’t sure if it was from a good or bad kind of anticipation.

  She’d only wanted to lose her memory, from the second she’d found out it was a possibility. But being back in her new life, it was just not feeling as home-like as she’d expected.

  Perhaps there was a small possibility that things had changed now, in a way that no amount of forgetting could reverse.

  She didn’t want to think about that possibility, though.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked, pulling up a chair across from her at the kitchen table to help string more popcorn garland. “Still disturbed about what happened at the lot?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I understand why you had to do… what you did. Compared to what I’ve seen the past few weeks, it’s not so much.”

  He nodded. “That’s not what I meant. I meant the men threatening you.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I just… I was surprised by that. I’ve never been one to—”

  “Yes, you said that before. But I’m not sure why not. You’re a beautiful woman. Not that it has anything to do with monsters like that. They’ll take any potential victim who comes around.”

  “Victim?” she asked, rankling even at the sound of the word.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “Just that anyone who meets their criteria, probably just being female, could end up attacked.”

  “Maybe they were just joking,” she said, looking at her strings.

  “No, th
ey had evil intentions. I read their thoughts.” At her shocked look, he got defensive. “I only said I wouldn’t read your thoughts. I never said anything about anyone else.” He pressed his lips together. “For what it’s worth, you were right. I was very naive about humans. They can be filthy little wretches and very much deserve any amount of pain I dish out on them.”

  “So they were really that bad?”

  He nodded. “I would guess you weren’t their first.”

  She swallowed. “Seriously?” She felt her neck grow red and itchy, a stress response she was getting used to. She didn’t really want to continue this conversation because it would inevitably lead to thoughts about what she’d been through. When she’d been a victim.

  “Anyway,” he said, rubbing his neck nervously. “It’s not something you have to worry about. I have adjusted my expectations of humans and will make sure we aren’t caught off guard again.”

  “You were there in a second,” she said.

  “You should never have even felt threatened if I was truly doing my job.”

  “Because you’re so good at it, right?” she said, paying him a genuine compliment.

  She was surprised by the way he warmed up to it, looking flustered as he leaned his cheek in his hand uncomfortably, then busied himself messing with another popcorn garland.

  “Yes. I’m good at my job,” he said, almost more to himself than her.

  He was such a mystery to her, this big man with an even bigger sense of honor and responsibility. He seemed deep in thought for a moment, then exhaled roughly and set the popcorn aside. “So you think you’re getting undue attention?”

  She nodded. “Either that or I’m just hyper-aware. I don’t really know how to trust myself anymore.”

  He nodded, lips pressed into a hard line. “You know, if your memories are erased, that’s all that happens. Nothing more. So you’ll still have that hyper-fear, or whatever you call it, but no ability to know why or what to defend yourself against.” His green eyes met hers. “If you forget everything, will the world ever be safe?”

  Her mind swirled, the painful fog that had been circling since the event in the tree lot coming closer, caging her in hurtfully.