My Boyfriend Merlin (3 page)

“I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for the tremor.”

“A scientific explanation,” he said slowly. “Is that what you really think?”

“Sure, why not?” I pulled on my backpack and put one foot out from the desk. “Look, I’ve got to get to gym.”

He blocked my exit. “I saw you switch off my text.”

My cheeks puffed. I seriously debated throwing my backpack at his head.

“You have nothing to say that she wants to hear, Matt Emrys.” In a staccato of long thigh-high boots and bouncing brown curls, Alexa stomped up to my desk. A boy in the desk beside me nearly swallowed his tongue at the sight of her in avenging-angel mode. Alexa didn’t notice. Her usual carefree expression was set to protective bulldog.

“Pardon me?” Matt stared at her in confusion.

“Pardon me,” Alexa mimicked. She grabbed me by the elbow. “You sound so polite. Too bad you don’t act it.”

She grabbed me by the elbow and started pulling me toward the door. “Let’s go or Coach will skin us for being late again.”

“Ryan, wait,” Matt started. “It’s important. I need to talk to you.”

My traitorous heart fluttered. I wanted to say, yes. But I’d been saying yes for two months. We’d been talking for two months. I thought we were friends. I’d been wrong. It still hurt how wrong I’d been. I shook my head. “You dumped me, Matt. Remember? You don’t get to talk anymore.”

CHAPTER 2
ATTACK

“I can’t believe you even let that jerk near you,” Alexa said as she hurried us down the hallway. “After the way he treated you—”

“It was only two dates,” I muttered.

Alexa snorted. “He texted you to break up. How weak is that?”

“I text all the time,” I defended

The hallways of Acton-Concord High were crowded with kids. Everyone took the few minutes in between class to check their phones that were supposed to be kept in the lockers. It was the one rule I couldn’t make myself follow. I couldn’t bear to be parted from my scheduler and with all the activities and clubs I’d signed up for, on top of taking a full AP course load, a paper scheduler just did not work for me.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. “We’re going to be late.”

Alexa rolled her eyes. “Do you sleep with that thing?”

We ran across a small courtyard, barely glancing at the gloomy sky outside to a side entrance of the gym that led directly to the girl’s locker room. Alexa stopped just at the door.

“Grey and I just want to look out for you, Ry. You’ve had a tough year. Don’t think we don’t know you still have nightmares?”

My jaw dropped open. “You hear me?”

Alexa’s generous lips turned down into a sad smile. “We’re on the same floor and you’re not exactly quiet.” Her perfectly symmetrical eyes narrowed. “And I’m not letting Emrys take advantage of my way too sweet sister.”

I felt my cheeks heat. The white knight routine happened to me a lot. The combination of possessing a petite frame, curly blond hair, and big eyes seemed to land me in the role of the damsel in distress every time. They all thought I needed rescuing.

But it wasn’t like I was a basketcase. Well, not totally. I sighed. “Let me remind you that when your mom adopts me, you’re officially going to be
my
little sister.”

“Only by age.” Alexa snorted.

I opened the door to the gym. “I can handle Matt—or anyone else for that matter.”

Alexa raised curved eyebrows. “Really? Have you picked the Prom theme yet?”

“It’s a committee decision,” I defended.

“It’s
your
committee, pres.” Alexa went into the locker room.

I chewed my lip. “What if everyone hates what I pick?”

Alexa went into the locker room. “You can’t please everyone.”

“I just want it to be perfect,” I muttered before following her in.

***

Behind the gym, the mossy field smelled sharp from rain. Crisp blades of grass as it crunched under my cleats. Wind tried to penetrate the leggings under my blue skirt and chilled the skin exposed by my tied-back hair. I held my lacrosse stick tight against the fabric of my yellow shirt. We scrimmaged against girls wearing green shirts.

We were up two to one. Alexa passed me the ball. With a speed I only seemed to possess on the field, I ran down to our goal sidestepping through the other team’s defensive net as easily as if they’d laid out a path for me. I had almost made it to the goal when a girl, the size of a bulldozer, charged me.

I blinked. Her face twisted. I froze.

A protruding forehead. Long teeth. Hulking body—the beast stared at me.

I blinked again. Her face returned to normal.

It was too late. The girl knocked me to the ground, grabbing the ball from me. She turned to pass it off, but Alexa intercepted it and lobbed the ball at the goal. It hit the side of the pole, and I saw it turn to fall back outside, but a sudden shift of wind pushed it in instead.

The girls on our team cheered.

Alexa sauntered over to me. “It’s a good thing you have me to back you up.”

She held out her hand. I slapped it.

I grinned at her, my heart full for the first time since I could remember. To both our surprise, I hugged her. “Sisters are forever.”

***

After school, I walked past the curb packed with lower-classmen waiting for the buses to come. A 70’s red Corvette roared up the curb from the student parking lot. The freshmen stared at the fancy car with awed eyes. We lived in one of the wealthier towns just outside of Boston. A Corvette wasn’t an uncommon sight in the student lot, but Grey’s happened to be a vintage restoration. It screamed for attention.

Grey rolled the driver’s side window down. “I’ve got to take Alexa home. Her car won’t start. I told Mom not to let her buy that European scrap-heap.”

Alexa leaned toward me past her brother. “Tell him it’s a classic Aston Martin, not a heap. And he should get something other than a two-seater. There are three of us now.”

Grey turned red in the face. “I already asked Mom for a Land Rover—”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll take the bus. I’ll be fine.”

A mammoth yellow bus turned into the school lot. It grumbled up the lane, but had to stop just a few feet from the Corvette that blocked the whole lane. The door of the bus opened with a bang and the youngish driver came bustling out wearing a thick coat and Bruins wool cap.

“Whaddya think you’re doing?” He stopped short when he saw it was Grey. Tommy had been driving Grey and Alexa since they were in kindergarten.

Tommy gave them a huge smile. “How’s that gorgeous mother of yours?”

“Working too much as usual, Tommy.” Grey smiled his most charming smile. He glanced at me. “Ryan’s going to need a ride out to the manor.”

The deafening rev of a high-powered engine filled the air. Like a rocket, Matt’s sleek Ducati thundered up the drive.

Matt took off a top-of-the-line Arai helmet and quirked a brow at me. “I can take her. Save the bus a trip up to the manor.”

“No one is going with you, Emrys.” Grey bit out. “Haven’t you noticed it’s raining?”

Right on cue, a giant whooshing sound hissed from below the bus. The bus tilted as its back tires deflated in front of our eyes.  A cacophony of groans filled the air.

Matt extended his hand. “Please, Ryan.”

I hesitated. I should say no. Why did I want to say yes?

Fat raindrops slid down from the grey sky like wriggling worms.

Before I realized it, my hand was slipping into his. He didn’t have gloves on. Big warm hands wrapped around mine. The warmth seemed to spread through his hands all the way into my bones. I climbed on the bike behind him and sank against his back. A thrill of pleasure shot through me. My fingers curled—and probably my toes. Not that I could see them to confirm.

“Ryan!” Grey and Alexa protested at the same time.

“It’s only drizzling. I’ll see you at home,” I said.

The Ducati’s steel heart roared to life. The next thing I knew I was plastered to Matt’s back, a white helmet on my head, as the bike flew out of the school gates and onto the street.

The streets of Concord dipped and rose making the ride more akin to a roller coaster than a steady skate. Painted with fall leaves of red, brown, and gold, the picturesque town of closely-knit buildings, upscale Victorian houses, plus the occasional patriotic red farmhouse, complete with horses, looked like the perfect New England town. The chill of wind seeped through the crevices of my coat. We stopped at a red light under an antique-looking streetlamp that marked the end of the main part of town.

“How can you drive this in the rain?” I asked.

Matt shrugged. “Rain doesn’t fall on me.”

Oddly, he was right. Droplets seemed to fall around us but not on us. The light turned and the Ducati took off. My cheek slammed into Matt’s shoulder. The scent of sandalwood soap and synthetic leather filled me—Matt didn’t like real leather.

We turned off onto a one-lane road marked by a plain red mailbox. Small gravel paths splintered off the main road, and through the woods eventually led to grand isolated houses. The sky grew dark as a cloud moved over us. Matt cursed and swerved the Ducati. If I’d been plastered to him before, now I could have been a second skin.

Matt jerked the Ducati to and fro.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“We’re being followed.”

I glanced behind us. There was nothing. A prickle at the back of my neck made me glance up. My breath hitched. A diaphanous shadow the size of a big rig swarmed over us. It swooped down toward us.

Matt cursed. “Why did I get you a white helmet?”

Matt said a word I didn’t recognize. A strange wind swept over my head and my helmet buzzed. My ears hurt. In the bike’s side mirror, I saw the color of my helmet was now black.. I blinked. Was I seeing things? My arms tightened around Matt. “Matt, stop the bike!”

He ignored me. “Hang on."

The Ducati swerved again. We slipped in oil-slicked black ice that ran along the road gutter. I screamed when the Ducati skidded. The bike started to overturn. We dipped so far that I my head should have scraped the ground. But Matt put out his hand and somehow the bike righted itself.

We sped down narrow streets off the well-worn paths and further into the countryside. Crossing a sleepy cemetery just outside town, we pulled off the street. The Ducati zigzagged in and out of trees, but the shadow stayed with us. Branches and tree limbs hit back at us as we burst past them.

Matt pulled the bike to a screeching halt inside an isolated clearing.

The shadow landed in front of us. It was about as five times as tall as us, with a long serpentine body and two giant wings. The wings had no feathers, instead their surface seemed as blank as an abyss. As if sensing my gaze, the shadow looked down. Round glowing red eyes locked on me. Its beak opened like those of a hungry dragon finally catching sight of its prey.

“What is that?” I screamed.

Matt pulled out a sword from a sidebag on the Ducati—a sidebag I’d never noticed until that moment. He threw the sword at me. I grabbed it out of reflex.

“What am I supposed to with this?”

He dug around in the sidebag. “You used to take fencing lessons—”

“How did you know that?” I hadn’t fenced since my mother died.

“I’ll tell you later.” He pointed to the shadow while he pulled out a book and some plastic packets from the sidebag.

“Are you serious? You're going to read?”

Matt flipped open the book. “Just keep it occupied.”

I debated running off into the woods. I debated slapping myself to get out of whatever nightmare I was having. But I couldn’t leave Matt.

Then, the shadow swooped down, solidified somehow, and took shape—into a shadow a giant dragon. Not knowing what to do, I hacked away at it without any sort of plan. The shadow-dragon swiped back with wings like claws. I ducked and hacked again as its teeth snapped at me. Every time the sword connected with the shadow-dragon, my arms rung in pain as if I’d swung against solid rock.

The shadow-dragon opened its mouth and a stream of fire roared out. Instinctively I raised the sword above my head. Fire blasted the sword, but instead of burning me to ashes, the fire redirected back onto the beast.

The dragon screamed as fire singed its side. It swiped a hand at me. Deep claws shredded through the skin on my right side. I screamed. Blood oozed through my clothes. I dropped the sword.

The dragon poised for its final attack. I was going to be burned alive.

Grey’s Corvette roared through the woods.

I heard Alexa shout, “I see Ryan. Get closer.”

The Corvette turned directly into the path of the shadow. Grey rammed the car into the shadow. The dragon screamed but didn’t retreat. Its wing slammed the Corvette like a batter hitting a giant red ball. The Corvette flew into the air, flipped and then crashed back into the snow.

“No!” I cried.

The dragon’s seething eyes turned back on me. It began to head toward me. The Corvette’s door opened and Alexa jumped out. She started to head to me, but stumbled on the sword I’d dropped.