The old man tugged lightly at the pressed sleeves of his shirt, pulling them out slightly past the cuff of his jacket, and crossed his legs. He settled back into the jet’s leather seat as it began to taxi out onto the runway.
“Seeing as we haven’t been formally introduced,” he said, “let’s start there. My name is Barrett Freeman and the young lady there is Alice.”
“Alice Aisling Carroll,” the egregiously beautiful redhead said, favoring Aaron with a smile that made his stomach feel like the plane was rapidly accelerating upwards.
“I’d introduce all the security folks, but they’re on the clock and it’s good to have some distance from the rank-and-file besides,” Barrett added.
A frown stole across Aaron’s face.
That’s some elitist bullshit right there, he thought. Barrett might have had a military background and be used to that kind of thinking, but Aaron didn’t and wasn’t. All it does is encourage treating people like they matter less than you when you force distance between you and ‘the help.’
Barrett seemed to read his expression. “I know it sounds unkind, but when you’re in a position where you might need to make hard decisions, distance helps. The ability to consider the value of the life you might have to jeopardize is what separates good leaders from tyrants.”
“What hard decisions am I going to have to make?” Aaron asked. “I can barely navigate working an office job with the occasional attempt to stab me.”
The thrum of the engines began to pick up and the jet gained speed. In seconds they were lifting off, the plane tilting back into its ascent. The redheaded woman, Alice, was gazing out one of the windows, a dreamy expression on her face, and Barrett simply smiled at Aaron.
“You might could be surprised about the decisions in your future,” Barrett said. “But let’s set that aside for the time being. I’d like to ask about these assassination attempts. When you reached us in your dreams, you said there might’ve been more than one attempt?”
“A patient showed up at the hospital after I checked in. I felt like he was watching me then I caught him sneaking around in my room when I woke up from, uh, our first dream meeting. He was there again after the last one and came at me with a weird knife.”
Aaron paused. This is where it gets weird, he thought, but if I can’t tell these folks about the other stuff, what the hell am I even doing here?
Knowing that was true and knowing it were two very different things and didn’t make it any easier for Aaron to talk about it. Even after coming to terms — and proving — that he wasn’t hallucinating or delusional, there was a lingering sense of shame attached to talking about mental health stuff, especially something that went beyond the ‘standard’ stuff people on social media called neurodivergence. It was hard enough to talk about mood, learning, or personality disorders, but to confess you were unsure enough of your sanity to think you could be developing late onset schizophrenia or something?
The most galling part was that Aaron knew better. He knew mental health issues were nothing to be ashamed of and whatever judgment someone might form over it was their problem. That didn’t make it easy.
He swallowed hard and went on. “I’ve also been seeing things; things that aren’t real. Another, different person. Sometimes they have their own knife and other times… I think… I think I might have killed that person and can’t fully remember it.”
Alice sat up in her seat and turned her attention fully to Aaron. “Memory alteration is very difficult magic, but not impossible,” she said. “Especially for the right people or with alchemy.”
“Magic? Alchemy?”
“We’ll get to that,” Barrett said, turning his focus to Alice. “Can you detect it?”
Alice scrunched her nose up in thought; it was an entirely charming expression. Aaron forced himself to keep (most of) his attention on Barrett. He didn’t want to seem like some leering creep, even if a small part of his brain was loudly encouraging him to leer while the leering was good.
Finally, she nodded. “I think I could perform a spell to detect a recent alteration. Maybe not what was altered, but at least that it happened. If we could connect in our dreams, I’d be more confident in the results.”
Barrett rubbed his chin. “Are you feeling up to trying to sleep?”
Aaron shook his head. “I’m a bit too wired for sleep. Too many questions trying to burst out of my skull. Maybe later?”
“We’ll stick a pin in it, for now; it’ll have to wait until after the Vault, in any case,” Barrett said.
“Of course,” Alice said, offering Aaron a comforting smile as she relaxed back into her seat.
The urge to return the grin was profound — anything to make a good impression — but Aaron restrained himself to the smallest smile in reply. Usually, he kept a fairly level head in the company of attractive women — at least until he tried talking, but he had that problem with everyone — but this woman, Alice, was on a completely different level.
If I smile more than this, I’m likely to wind up baring my teeth at her like some kind of lunatic, he thought. The word stunning isn’t an exaggeration here; I’m actually having trouble thinking straight.
He’d known women who could have been models and movie stars, but never anyone quite as good looking as this Alice woman. The stress of his situation might have played a part, but it was just as possible Alice really was that beautiful. On the other hand, maybe Aaron was an awkward, lonely goob who was prone to doing awkward goob shit. It was probably a finely-tuned mix of all three.
He had to get his head on straight; there were far more pressing issues than ‘holy crap pretty girl!’ that needed his attention.
“Can you at least tell me why I’ve got people trying to stick knives in me?”
“Because of who — and what — you are,” Barrett said. “That’s where things might start to seem a little far-fetched and hard to digest; unbelievable, even.”
Among the things Aaron had come to terms with in the past few hours were trained killers — who used knives instead of guns — coming after him despite his relatively pedestrian existence. Then being whisked away from a mental hospital to a luxury private jet by a small private army of security guards. And a memory that seemed to have been suppressed which Alice and Barrett both felt confident they could somehow detect if not outright overcome. So he felt like Barrett’s claim was a little bold.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Shit’s already pretty wild, so go ahead and swing for the fences. I’m interested to hear what you think can top it.”
Barrett chuckled. “I’d like you to recall two things I said to you. The first was a question — how is it you recognize me? The second was that you’re awakening to your power. Sound familiar?”
“I definitely remember the ‘waking to your power’ stuff,” Aaron said. “It had a real welcome-to-the-cult ring to it.”
That earned a quiet laugh from Alice as she watched the night sky out the window and Aaron felt his guts do a loop-de-loop. His irreverence didn’t seem to faze Barrett at all, whose smile only grew larger.
“That’s not far from the truth of it, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Let me ask you something else — have you felt that same kind of familiarity with anyone else in our little entourage this evening?”
There had been a vague sense of recognition for several of the security people, but it wasn’t nearly as intense as when he’d first seen Barrett in the park or even in the times since. Now that he was thinking about it, there had been different degrees of familiarity between the guards that provoked that feeling.
Aaron nodded. “I have, for some, but it wasn’t very strong.”
“And what about Alice here?”
Aaron turned his attention to the redhead. She shifted position in her seat to face him again. She had green eyes, Aaron noticed, and he was actually having trouble thinking about anything else. That… bothered him. His brows furrowed slightly.
“No, not familiar. She’s… no offense, miss, but I’m having some trouble concentrating around you and it’s a little frustrating.”
Barrett barked a single, loud laugh, and Alice laughed demurely, as well. Aaron didn’t know what was supposed to be so goddamn funny. He felt his face warming.
Did I say something stupid? he wondered. Are they laughing at me?
“You must got the spirit of a mule in you,” Barrett said. “I bet you’re prickly as a pear when someone tries to move you when you’re happy to set.”
That comment stung. People sometimes accused Aaron of being obstinate, when what they really meant was that he wasn’t willing to roll over to their every claim or whim without a damned good reason. Most people had, in his experience, a rather authoritarian, tyrannical mindset when it came to their own perspective and they often felt insulted being asked to explain their reason beyond anything more complicated than ‘because I said so.’
Aaron couldn’t help but frown. Barrett kept talking, giving him a bit of relief and a dawning sense of horror.
“Our young friend, Alice, is one of our two prodigies,” the older man said. “They’re rare as hen’s teeth for us; usually our people don’t take to magic until they’ve fully awakened to their power. Alice and Tia — you’ll meet her soon enough — both had the knack before they came into themselves.”
Alice had a mysterious grin on her face and Aaron desperately tried not to pay any attention to how absolutely charming it was.
“In Alice’s case, she had a talent for unconscious magic,” Barrett continued. “There’s two things common to most natural magic — it can fudge the rules and it often comes at a cost. Miss Alice has a weak glamour stuck to her and that’s probably what you’re noticing.”
“You’re talking about actual, literal magic, right?” Aaron asked. “So when you say ‘glamour,’ you mean an enchantment of some kind.”
Alice sighed. “When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to be attractive and desirable. I had started to realize some of the things I could do were magic so I tried to use it to make that true. I didn’t know I’d never be able to get rid of it, or even dampen the effects.”
“So it’s like a blessing of hotness?”
Barrett laughed. “That’s the gist of it. It’s relatively weak compared to a proper glamour, like the fae might do, but it’s strong enough to influence most people to take a specific kind of interest in our gal.”
“That sounds like one hell of a glow up,” Aaron said before he could stop himself.
“It made my adolescence better and so, so much worse,” Alice conceded.
The discussion of performing magic like it was a normal thing people did all the time was interesting, but it took a distant second to the point Aaron latched onto — something was influencing his mind. The cycle of infatuation Aaron struggled against was already hard enough, but being attracted to someone because they were tampering with his mind? He didn’t like that one bit; it cast every moment with the beautiful redhead into doubt.
Has she even been smiling at me, or is that her magic manipulating me? Aaron wondered. Is it an illusion making me see what I want to see?
“Is there anything I can do to be less affected by this, uh, glamour?” he asked.
“Familiarity helps and there are mental exercises that create a strong mental defense,” Barrett said. “Coming fully into your power will go a long way towards protecting you from this sort of magic.” The old man chuckled again. “And with as strong-willed as you’ve got to be to have noticed the influence in the first place? I’m betting you’ll hardly even notice it.”
Frustration warred with curiosity and both had to fend off skeeviness, or maybe just pent up horniness. Here was a ready-made excuse to ogle Alice as much as he wanted and he was trying to find a way to fight it?
Well that just makes me feel shitty about me, Aaron thought. I don’t want to be some lecherous prick leering at women because I have a passing interest in fucking them.
The cinched it — he needed to find out more about these mental defenses Barrett had mentioned and started practicing them right away. Aaron fought enough losing battles against his own mind, he didn’t need magic throwing its weight behind one side or the other. Moreover, he really didn’t like the idea of someone forcing how he thought.
He also couldn’t just come out and say that right in front of Alice, so he’d have to table it for now. There were other things he had questions about and that wasn’t one he could get answers to right now.
And how weird is it I’m just, like, accepting that all this magic stuff is real? he thought.
“So, uh, why isn’t Alice familiar like you or the guards?” he asked.
“It’s impossible to know for sure, but we have some solid theories,” Barrett said. “This sense is strongest when someone is awakening to their power, but that’s not why the recognition is there in the first place.”
“In my case,” Alice interjected, “it’s likely this is my first time.”
“First time what?”
“First time being one of us,” Barrett said. “The recognition is stronger if there were more or deeper connections in the past.”
That was leaving a lot unsaid, Aaron felt, but he had no way to guess at what the implications might be. He looked from one to the other, going over everything they’d said so far to see if there was some hint that might give him an insight into what Barret meant. Nothing jumped out at him, but it wasn’t like he had a perfect recall of everything either of them had said.
“I feel like I’m missing some important context here,” he said. “Let’s start with the basics: who and what are the ‘we’ you keep referring to; how does it make us ‘close as kin;’ and, how could I have interacted with someone in the past if I’ve never met them before?”
Barrett adjusted himself in his chair. “We are called the Drakon, the Drakon Society, the Ordo Draconum, and a host of other names. Our members are called drakus, which is both singular and plural, and we are led by three individuals — the Primus Draconis, Cordus Draconis, and Animus Draconis.”
“Drakon, drakus, draconis … those all sound like words for dragon in different languages.”
Barrett smiled and tapped his nose with a forefinger. “Right in one.”
“Bullshit,” Aaron said. “Come on, be serious.”
The old man leaned forward, looking at Aaron with a completely sober expression.
“I’m dead serious.”