I Married A Dragon by Regine Abel

Shouts, screams, and the thudding sound of countless feet stampeding out of the research facility greeted us the minute we entered the building. Panic and terror too often brought out the worst in people. My heart constricted at the sight of some employees getting blindly shoved, falling, and getting trampled by their colleagues attempting to flee whatever beasts emitted the dreadful roars and screeches further in. But once survival instincts kicked in, rational thoughts usually went on a hiatus.

I fought my natural urge to assist the fallen, since my colleagues would handle them. As part of the main strike team, it fell to my teammates and me to contain whatever mess awaited ahead. I’d taken part in countless hairy missions, but never with anything that sounded like those things.

Hot on the heels of Tedrick, our squad leader, I adjusted my blaster to the highest stun as we reached a first set of security doors. They gave access to the long corridor leading to what the facility’s map on the interface of my armband described as Engineering. As soon as they parted, all wandering thoughts of the panicked civilians vanished. I shuddered at the sight of the two abominations that had been trapped in the corridor when the security lockdown kicked in.

Their bodies vaguely reminded me of a nightmarish greyhound with twisted legs. Their heads had no visible eyes, only a flayed, long maw of dagger teeth. Thick spikes covered the area where their eyes and foreheads should have been, tapering off along the nape. Above what appeared to be an ethereal set of shadow wings, and extending off their shoulders, they had a pair of snake-like appendages that attempted to strike their target whenever within range. The long tail, covered in spikes, ended with a spiked-mace-like bulge with a sharp blade at the tip.

“Eliminate the aqrats,” Tedrick shouted. “Shoot to kill!”

He didn’t have to say it twice. My teammates and I switched our blasters’ setting to lethal and unloaded mercilessly on the two creatures that were charging us with rabid fury. To my utter relief, they were no challenge to our combined fire power. Still, it blew my mind that, instead of a gaping wound where the blaster shots hit the beasts, chunks of flesh tore up before dissolving into smoke. When they died, each creature simply evaporated, as if it had never existed. However, the deep claw marks on the walls made it clear they had been real.

“What the fuck are they doing in this place?” Oleg asked, echoing the thoughts each of us undoubtedly shared.

“Veladeem’s scientists didn’t create these horrors,” Tedrick said in a tense voice through our com. “They just messed with shit they shouldn’t have and let these bad things come in.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but knew better. Tedrick wouldn’t give more details than he was allowed or willing to. Anyway, now wasn’t the time. He gestured for us to follow as we ran up to the end of the corridor. A massive set of reinforced doors barred the access to Engineering.

“Overriding the security locks,” Maeve said through our com.

She hooked her hacking device to the biometric lock, then tapped a few keys. Seconds later, the massive vault doors were parting before us. As Enforcers—agents of the United Planets Organization’s peacekeeping force—we had the best of everything the galaxy had to offer. Our hackers also had backdoors in far more places than the public would be comfortable knowing.

We found more of those dreadful creatures swarming inside, flying around what looked like a giant power core.

The target? A ginormous gold and bluish-black dragon with a shadowy aura.

It only took a second to realize the smaller nightmarish creatures were attacking the magnificent—yet terrifying—dragon. Although he was wrecking them, a single well-placed swipe of his massive paw all but tearing one of the creatures in half, with so many of them attacking him from all sides, the fiends were still getting several hits in.

“Protect the dragon!” Tedrick shouted in our com.

Despite the billion questions firing off in my mind—and undoubtedly in my companions’ as well—we quietly complied. With his security clearance level, Tedrick knew a lot of classified information, little of which he could share with us. I’d never heard of an aqrat, let alone seen one before. What the fuck were they, and where did they come from? And a freaking dragon?

While his body had all the characteristics of a dragon, I absentmindedly noticed that he mostly appeared to stand upright—almost bipedal—instead of on all fours. He was fighting on the circular platform around the power core. The tall railings offered little safety for him should he get knocked over. There was at least a fifty-meter drop, not that he wouldn’t be able to fly back up.

To my shock, a shadowy portal—halfway down the shaft the power core was erected on—seemed to be the doorway through which these nightmarish creatures had entered the research facility.

My team and I spread along the outer walkway while shooting at the aqrats. Although it required multiple shots to the body to slay one, a single shot to the head had them shattering in an explosion of shadows before vanishing.

A handful of the aqrats we targeted redirected their attention towards us, but most remained focused on the dragon, making our job of thinning their numbers easier. The dragon dove from the platform, spraying a flock of aqrats below us with purplish shadow flames. Instead of burning them, it appeared to make them swell and bloat, as if they were absorbing the shadows. Their flight patterns became erratic, almost drunken. The dragon flew around, smashing a bunch with his tail and lacerating others with his claws. Either option had the same outcome of making them shatter, then dissolve into smoke.

The remaining aqrats following the dragon down the shaft forced us to move on some of the ramps leading to the platform of the power core in order to get a proper angle to fire at them. Four of us stood by ourselves on our respective ramp, while Maeve and Oleg stood together on the southeast ramp.

“What do we do about the dragon once we’re done with the critters?” Oleg asked as we were taking out the handful of stragglers.

“Fall back to the exit at the end of your ramp,” Tedrick replied. “If all goes well, he should simply return to his realm through the portal.”

“And if all does not go well?” I asked.

“Then it’s going to get ugly real fast. Find a place to shelter, but do not harm or kill the dragon,” Tedrick said in a tone that brooked no argument.

My curiosity further spiked as to what was so special about the creature… beyond the fact that he was a freaking dragon.

As the last couple of aqrats dissolved, we all started running back towards the doorway at the end of our respective ramps. However, an enraged roar from the dragon had my blood turning to ice. He didn’t seem appeased at all, but he appeared to be itching to fight a bit longer.

Arms and legs pumping, I dashed towards my exit, only to stop dead in my tracks and throw myself backward when the dragon breathed a powerful stream of shadow flames directly in my path. The flames shot upward through the grids of the ramp while the dragon flew up.

“Fuck! It’s blocking my way!” I exclaimed through the com. “I’m going to circle through the platform towards another ramp.”

“Run!” Tedrick shouted. “Everyone else, blasters to stun. Aim for his throat!”

I never reached the central platform. Like a deadly monster emerging from the depths of a dark ocean, the dragon soared above the ramp, breathing his shadow flames in a sweep in front of me. Flying overhead, he reached the central platform and, with a powerful swipe of his enormous claws, he destroyed the connecting paths towards the other ramps.

While he was savagely wrecking any means of exit that way, I tried to go back towards the doorway. But seconds later, I heard a loud flap of wings before he fired his flames again in front of me. In my attempt to come to an abrupt stop, I tripped and fell onto my stomach. My teeth rattled in my head from the force of the impact. I turned onto my back and immediately pushed myself up on my feet, only to see the giant beast land on the ramp directly in front of me.

My stomach dropped to my feet. Heart pounding, I could barely breathe as the creature roared again, its golden eyes filled with madness. It appeared to be foaming at the mouth while a shadowy substance—likely blood—dripped from the countless lacerations and wounds the aqrats had inflicted.

As if in slow motion, I raised my blaster and aimed at his throat, knowing I wasn’t making it out of this one. I stared at his massive maw opening to countless razor-sharp giant teeth as he roared again and lunged for me. My shot went off at the same time his hand closed around me, knocking off my weapon.

I vaguely heard Tedrick barking orders through the com, but the deafening sound of my blood rushing in my ears drowned it all out. Like a brick wall, the golden chest of the dragon came at me at a dizzying speed as he lifted me up. I thought he would toss me into his gaping maw, but he slammed me against his chest. I gasped, the wind knocked out of me.

“Ejaya!”

The foreign word resonated loudly in my mind. It hadn’t come through my com, and I hadn’t heard it through my ears. It had been spoken to me telepathically. But by whom? The dragon? And what the fuck did it mean?

I knew it was important, and that I should focus on it, but that stupid survival instinct I’d mentioned earlier kicked in with a vengeance. I wiggled and fought to free myself from his crushing hold. That only made him tighten his grip, his second hand joining the fray.

“He… he’s crushing me,” I said to my team.

“Ejaya!” the foreign voice repeated.

“No fucking way!” Tedrick whispered in a disbelieving voice through the com. “Kaida, stop fighting! He won’t hurt you. He’s calming down. Don’t fight him!”

As I tried to listen, my body had gone into flight mode. I was being crushed. I couldn’t breathe. My skin tingled, and my head felt light. In that instant, I knew I would lose consciousness. Maybe it was a good thing. Then I’d stop fighting. Then, maybe, he’d loosen his grip.

But even as that thought entered my mind, I realized it was no longer his hand holding me, like King Kong holding Ann Darrow. It was now both of his arms. I couldn’t say if my mind was playing tricks on me, but he seemed to be shrinking down to a more human size. However, I would never know. Just as a veil of darkness descended before my eyes, a massive sedative dart embedded itself in his neck.