Forced Magic (28 page)

He pointed at Samantha, and, before I could react, a bolt of
lightning shot from his hand. I knew it would kill her. The air around the
lightning smelled like sulfur and as it flew toward Samantha it changed color
from red to black. This was meant to kill on contact. Strangely it wasn’t
moving very quickly. It was reaching out toward Samantha like a snake moving
across the ground. I shouted at her to move as it went past me, picking up
speed as it went. To my horror, no one was moving to stop it as it zipped past
me. Everyone just stood there frozen. I moved toward Samantha hoping that I
could stop it. I knew it was too late for me to push her out of the way, but I
kept on running anyway, cursing myself for not acting sooner. It seemed like
time had slowed down. I could see the connection from the end of the bolt to
the shadow's hand. It looked like a rope of energy. Not knowing what else to do
I reached up and grabbed it.

A current of power shot through me. My whole body shook as
the energy that was meant for Samantha worked its way inside me. It was growing
in intensity and I knew it would kill me. I felt the forced magic fighting the
bolt. It pushed out of me forcing the bolt out of my body and shot it into the
air. I could almost see it as it continued to grow. As it stretched outward, it
knocked everyone to the ground. I heard the shadow's scream of rage and turned
just in time to see his red dragon blow a jet of red fire at Fetch. Fetch was
ready this time and blew his own flame of blue fire. Both jets collided and as
they did an explosion of sparks shot into the air. It was amazing for me to see
Fetch, so small compared to the other dragon, fending off the attack so
easily.  I started to run toward him to see if somehow I could help. This was a
mistake. My movement toward Fetch distracted him, and a jet of red fire broke
through the flame barrier. It headed right for me. Working on complete
instinct, I did what I had done with Fetch so many times before. I reached out
and caught it. It wrapped itself around my hand and stayed there. It was heavy.
For a second I felt the strange and alien emotions from the red dragon. It was
not happy at how it was being controlled and manipulated. In a flash his
thoughts were gone but the fire stayed.

Fetch's fire always seemed so light, but this flame weighed
down on my hand like a fifty-pound bag of sand. It kept pulsing as if it was
trying to get hotter and burn me. The longer it stayed there, the heavier it
got. I swung my hand around and shot the flame back at the red dragon. It hit
him in the face and caused him to stumble backward. He roared in pain and
unfolded his wings. There was a whooshing sound as he beat them up and down and
continued to roar.

The shadow yelled in rage. Not even wanting to know what was
next, I pushed the magic out of me once again. This time the pulse went
directly toward him. His spell looked like the black inky smoke from my dream.
It poured from his hands, and, as my pulse hit him, this smoke wrapped itself
around his head. Fetch had come to my side by this point and was standing in
front of me in a protective stance. The others were still picking themselves up
after my first pulse. I could hear more screams of rage from the shadow as he
clawed at the black smoke around his head. The red dragon looked at him in
confusion. He seemed to not know what to do. He looked over at Fetch with a
pleading look, and then with another roar picked up the shadow in his front
claws and took flight. They got up about fifty feet in the air and in a flash
of red light disappeared. The goblins, with a chorus of squeals, jumped into
blue balls and disappeared.

I rushed over to the others, Fetch at my side. I was worried
that my pulse had hurt them. As I got to Samantha, she was pushing herself to
her feet. I grabbed her arm and helped her to stand. When she wasn’t hovering,
she stood just about even with me. Her blue eyes were staring into mine with a
look of wonder. She realized that I had hold of her arm and quickly pushed me
away.

“Don’t touch me, idiot,” she said.

She looked over at Pete, who had helped Pek and Molly to
their feet. He met her gaze with a blank look and made no attempt to reach for
his charred sword to protect her honor. I think I had made a new friend.

“You’re welcome, Princess,” I said, "next time I’ll let
him cook you like a hot dog.”

Pete smiled at this and quickly turned his attention to
Molly. Samantha moved away from me. Looking around I spotted Smith sitting on
an overturned trash can. He was staring at me with a look of deep thought on his
face. I walked over to him.

“Are you ok?" I asked.

He looked at me for a minute. Studying my face, he began to
laugh. He sat there laughing for a good while and it began to worry me.
Everyone gathered around him wondering if he had lost it.

”I am ecstatic, Jack!” he finally said, "If I live
another four hundred years I will never forget this day. You stopped a spell
from a wizard. One who has found the ability to control dragons. You stopped
him in his tracks, Jack. You have done what no human has ever done before. And
you, dear Fetch, you deflected fire from a dragon three times your size! Truly
the two of you are a force that the world has never seen before. You are truly
a living legend."

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said the shadow's voice.

We all readied ourselves for another attack. The voice was
coming from a small coyote sitting about twenty feet from us. It had its mouth
open and the shadow's voice was speaking through him.

“Don’t get me wrong, Jack, you are truly amazing, but not a
legend. You took me by surprise, I’ll give you that much. You will never do so
again. Remember, I still have your friend Michelle. I am gaining strength.
There is magic, Jack, magic that the world has never seen before. You are a
small part of it yes, a very small part though. Come see me, Jack, midnight
tonight. My friend here will show you the way. You might even save Michelle.
Though I doubt she will ever trust you again."

He was trying to get to me. There was a chance she was still
alive. If she was, I had to play his little game if there was any chance to
save her. I wanted to hold on to the hope that Michelle might be alive. I had
to believe she was.

Pek spoke up, “You can’t fool us. You are just trying to
control Jack. He is smarter than you think and very powerful. Whatever spell
you cast to control the dragons has backfired. Nature finds a way. That way is
Jack and Fetch. They will stop you."

The shadow laughed, “Do you really think Jack is on your
side? He is nothing like any of you. He will eventually join me. If he does so
tonight he might save his friend. If he waits too long, she may die."

“Johnathen won’t allow this,” I shouted, "He will find
you and we will stop you together."

The shadow laughed, “By all means, if you can find him bring
him along. It would be a most interesting meeting. I will send my messenger
back for you, Jack. Until then, try to consider what you are doing. Without my
help you are truly alone. Your new friends will never fully trust you. Look at
them, Jack, even now they fear you. You will never fit in the world of magic
the way it is now. Your only hope is to join me. “

The coyote turned and disappeared. I was standing there
staring at the spot where it had been. I looked at the little crew of people I
was with now. Any thought that these fairies were trying to kill me left. They
had every chance to destroy me tonight, and instead they stood their ground
with me. But still, I could see something in their eyes. They were afraid. They
had no idea who or even what I was. They didn’t fully trust me. An old familiar
feeling came creeping into my heart, the same feeling I have had my entire
life. I simply didn’t fit in. I was different. Every day I seemed to change and
those changes took me away from the world I grew up in and kept me distant from
the world of which I was now a part. I was truly alone now, a complete misfit.

I felt a gentle push on my hand. Fetch had come up to join
me on the small hill. I looked down at his bowed head as he nudged my hand. He
had grown since that first day. He was about the size of a pony. His snout had
grown hard ridges of silver all around it and the two small bumps on his
forehead had gotten bigger. I wondered if they would become horns one day. He
moved his head up toward my face and looked me in the eye. His eyes were
changing colors from red to blue to green to purple. He had a look of confusion
on his face. He had finally seen another of his kind. One that commanded power,
even if it was being controlled by a wizard. But, just like me, he was left
with more questions than answers. To my surprise a big white tear rolled out of
Fetch's eye. Some kind of silent communication had gone on between that dragon
and Fetch. Even if it was controlled by the shadow, there was still a nobility
to it. I remembered feeling what it felt and I wondered if I could use that to
our advantage.

I looked at Fetch and thumped him on the forehead. Fetch had
refused to destroy me. He had refused to take my life essence, and, because of
that, he would never be fully accepted by other dragons. He was a misfit too. I
wasn’t alone.

I put my hand on the side of his face and looked him in the
eye. I said the one thing I should have said in the tunnel when I first
realized he was not going to kill me.

“Thank you.”

He looked surprised at first, then simply nodded. I smiled
at him. Leaning in and talking quietly, so the others wouldn’t hear, I
whispered to him.

“Who cares, Fetch? Who cares what they all think? We will
find Michelle and get her out of this mess. We will live our lives the way we
want. I have always been a misfit, so why not keep on being one? The way they
treat us, we can be a mystery to them. All we have to do is look wise and act
like we know more than we are telling. I’m done trying to fit into any kind of
mold that people think I should fit into. You should feel the same pal. You
just beat that big dragon like it was nothing, and I just had a standoff with a
wizard, so let’s keep playing the part. They want to be afraid of us, let them.
Who gives a flap?”

Me, using the word 'flap', made Fetch laugh a little. He
looked at me with defiance in his eyes. I knew a lot of what I was feeling was
bitterness from the life I had always lived. I wasn’t mad at everyone. I was
hurt. But, I was going to do things my way. If I had to play the role of a
powerful enigma, then I would. I looked behind me and saw all of them staring
at me and Fetch with the same look of wonder and apprehension I had seen on
their faces before. What was I supposed to be to them?

I started walking toward them, not looking at any of them. I
needed them to believe I knew what I was doing. They needed to tell me
everything that they knew. If they didn’t, then I was ready to strike out on my
own. I really had no desire to go before this council they kept on talking
about. Not if I was going to be judged by them as a threat. As far as I knew
this council was not in the right. From what I had heard, they might not have
mine or Fetch's best interest at heart. I kept from looking at Samantha. She
affected me in a way that made it hard for me to think straight. I really had
to focus around her to keep her from affecting me too much. I walked up to
them.

”Is everyone ok?”

They all acknowledged that they were fine.

“Ok. I’m sorry about your trailer, Pek. I had no idea that
you would be attacked. It was this shadow's plan all along to use Michelle's
cell phone to lure me here."

I reached into the pouch that Johnathen had given me at the
park and pulled out handfuls of money. Not bothering to count it, I handed it
to Pek.

“If you need more, just let me know. All I want is to get
Michelle out of this mess she is in. I hope she is still alive and I think she
is. We are the victims in this. Neither one of us asked for this life. We both
wanted to go before this council and get their approval. At this point, I don’t
care what they think. This mixed up world you live in is way too complicated
for me. I hope, if I can stop this crazy guy, everyone will see that Fetch and
I are not a threat and just want to live in peace. I just want to save my
friend. We are making the best of what has happened. We deserve to live our
lives the way we choose. Fetch should be allowed to live the way he wants. His
choices have kept me alive so far. He is just as much a victim as any of us.”

I was tired and I had no idea where all of this was coming
from. All I knew is that I wanted a normal life, well as normal a life I could
have now. I was scared and tired, and I couldn’t see any other way out of this
but to go up against this shadow wizard and get Michelle back, or die trying.

“Now I realize you weren’t trying to kill me that day, but
could you tell me just what you were doing by appearing to me?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” said Samantha, “the rest will
have to be filled in by the others. If you haven’t pieced it together by now,
someone has been spreading dragon eggs around the entire city."

I already knew this but I didn’t want to interrupt her as
she talked.

"The Fey have known for some time that someone was
doing this. We didn’t know why until now. This shadow wizard has obviously
found a way to take part of the essence that dragons create when they are
hatching and use it to control them. I was In search of one of those eggs that
day when I first saw you. A dragon's pulse had been felt in the area, and I was
trying to locate it before it disappeared. There is a pattern to dragons
hatching. They will always hatch in threes. You can’t detect a dragon until it
has hatched. A magical barrier protects them from being seen, but the last dragon
pulse we felt was in that area. When I appeared on the road that day, it was
because I was searching for that dragon. I just happened to be there when a
spell was cast that destroyed my magic that had kept me from being seen. When
that happened, I realized that you had a dragon egg with you.” She paused for a
moment. “Why did you have Fetch's egg with you anyway?”