Dragon's Curvy Engineer Read online

  DRAGON’S CURVY ENGINEER

  by

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  1

  ELLIE

  “You’re going to Scotland to build a what?”

  I straighten my glasses and smooth out my hair. “A drawbridge,” I say like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “You know—those wooden things with chains that let you cross the moat?”

  “Um, yeah, I know what a drawbridge is,” says Frannie as she leans on the cubicle wall and makes it creak. It won’t break, though. I lean on it like a hundred times a day, and we’re about the same weight. “And honey, this isn’t about no drawbridge.”

  “No?” I say, smiling up at Frannie. We’ve been friends since the first day of college (almost fifteen years ago now . . . OMFG), and even though I lost touch with most of the Sorority Sisters, Frannie and I stayed close—so close that she shows up at my office around lunchtime and just strolls past security even though she doesn’t work here. Frannie’s a firefighter—the first woman firefighter this side of town. She’s kind of a celebrity in the neighborhood, and she totally loves it. I, on the other hand, am a nerdy-ass engineer who prefers spreadsheets to . . . to . . . I dunno. See what I mean? Not so good at poetic metaphors. That shit don’t compute in my geometrically aligned brain.

  “No,” says Frannie. “Nobody hires a small American engineering company to build a drawbridge in the Scottish Highlands. This is either a reality show or a serial killer.”

  I laugh and push my swivel chair away from my desk. “Maybe it’s both,” I whisper, making Frannie almost double over with giggles.

  “A reality show about serial killers? Trust those Europeans to get something like that on the air,” says Frannie. “You ready for lunch?”

  “Always,” I say, groaning as I get up off the chair and stretch my aching back. These chairs suck. A tree-stump is more ergonomic than these torture-racks they call chairs. I could design a more comfortable chair in like three minutes. “Where are we going?”

  “How about that new restaurant with the medieval knights-in-armor theme?” says Frannie. “We can ask for a knight who wears a kilt.”

  “I don’t know if Scottish knights wore kilts,” I say with a laugh as we head for the elevator. “Besides, I don’t think these guys are Scottish.”

  “Guys? As in plural? Oh, do tell!”

  “I don’t know enough to tell!” I say as we stroll out into the sunlight. I look for my sunglasses, and then groan when I remember them sitting on my desk. I burn easily, and these squint-lines around my eyes are only getting deeper. Fuck it. If older guys can get away with wrinkles, so can women. Not that I’m older, of course. Just not as young as I used to be.

  Before I know it we’re being seated at a heavy wooden table that seems big enough for the King’s Royal Council. There are suits of armor along the walls for decoration, and the lighting is done with fake-flame torches. The waitstaff are in medieval garb too, and I feel a bit underdressed in my sensible skirt and conservative top. I look around to see what the other customers are wearing, but it’s just Frannie and me. It’s always just Frannie and me.

  We’re quiet as we study our menus (a lot of game birds and big steaks with not much of a salad selection), and soon my mind wanders back to this job I just got assigned. I’m one of the company’s best design engineers, and since the job is kinda unusual, I’ll have to first scope it out, drawn out a design, figure out what materials and labor we’ll need, and then report back so we can get the contractors working on it. I’m just the brains of the operation here. Not gonna be chopping down trees for wood or hammering metal spikes or dragging heavy chains. Though that sounds kinda exciting, actually.

  “Lots of meat and potatoes on the menu. And speaking of meat and potatoes,” says Frannie with a wicked smile, “tell me about these Scottish knights. I bet they have muscular calves and thick thighs. Gotta have the legs if you’re gonna wear a kilt to the ball. Or over your balls.”

  I double over, almost hitting my face on the stiff leather-bound menu. “I told you, the guy I spoke to didn’t sound Scottish. His accent was weird, actually. Like he’s lived all over the place—not just the U.K. or Europe.” Then I shrug. “But he said something about having brothers. So maybe they’re more Scottish.”

  “Huh,” says Frannie as she snaps her fingers for a waiter, who comes scurrying over like a stable-boy. “So there’s a bunch of brothers who live in a castle that needs a new drawbridge. And somehow you got the job? How the hell does that compute?”

  I frown at the menu and then look up and cock my head. “Actually, it was kinda weird. My boss transferred the phone call to me because he had another call for a major deal coming up. So I answered the call, but almost hung up on him because the guy was sorta rude at first. Maybe he thought my boss had transferred him to a junior engineer and wasn’t taking him seriously. Which is kinda true, but still isn’t an excuse to be all huffy with me.”

  “Shoulda told him to tuck himself behind his own kilt so he can go fuck himself,” says Frannie. She touches her chin and raises an eyebrow. “Which actually sounds kinda hot, when I think about it. Oops. You were saying?”

  Frannie’s such a cut-up I can’t even handle it sometimes. But I go on, because she’ll actually like this story. It’s totally in line with her “all-coincidences-are-meant-to-be” philosophy of life (which is why she just laughs it off whenever I get down on myself about being thirty-something and single as hell).

  “Anyway, so then I was rude to him. Which got him even more pissed off. But just when he was gonna hang up and call another company, I kinda flipped a switch and told him to give us a chance to at least draw up a design and give him an estimate,” I say triumphantly. “Of course, he complained that the estimate was too high, and when I pointed out I hadn’t actually given him an estimate, he got all grumpy with me again.”

  “So you told him to reach under his kilt and take care of his own business?” Frannie asks with a wicked wink.

  “Ohmygod, you are totally into the kilt thing!” I say. “You wanna come with me? You can pretend to be my assistant. And if this guy doesn’t do it for ya, he’s got brothers.”

  Frannie hesitates like she’s actually considering it. Then she sighs and swipes at the air. “Nah, I don’t have any vacation left. Besides, my money’s still on the reality-show for serial-killers thing, and so I wanna send you as a guinea pig.”

  “Figures,” I mutter through the side of my mouth as I turn back to the menu. The waiter comes back just then, and we both order with straight faces: Steak-salads, steak-fries, and two Medieval Milkshakes. A well-rounded lunch.

  “So you never told me how this Scottish dude who lives in a castle somehow called your company,” Frannie says. “Seems weird, right?”

  I frown and then nod. “Very weird. And what was even weirder was what he called me just before hanging up.”

  Frannie looks up. “What did he call you?”

  “He called me Eleanor,” I say as a shiver goes through my body even though this place is warm and toasty, with flickering firepits reflecting off the silent suits of armor lining the walls. It feels like I’m being transported back in time, back across the centuries, to a time when knights rode through the land with honor and grace, dispensing justice, fighting armies, maybe even slaying Dragons. It’s a strange feeling, and even though I know I’m in a cheesy theme restaurant near a suburban office park, I can’t shake that sense of time and place, of destiny and fate.

  “Eleanor?” says Frannie with a quizzical smile. “That’s not your given name, is it?”

  “No, my birth certificate says Ellie,” I say softly, my eyes misty as the flames cast shadows that dance across the dark walls. “B
ut the weird thing is I was almost named Eleanor. My mom actually started calling me Eleanor in her later years. When I asked her why she called me that, she finally told me the story.”

  “Go on. I’m listening,” Frannie says as the waiter arrives with our Medieval Milkshakes and steak-salads that look like an entire forest topped with most of its animals. She licks the cream off the milkshake and smacks her lips before nodding at me.

  I laugh as I break from that strange sense of being somewhere else, and I pull my shake close and shrug. “Kind of a sad story, actually,” I say as I think back to the last days of my Mama. “My mom grew up in the middle of nowhere. She was an only child, and her parents pulled her out of school when she was ten years old because they needed help on the farm. She never went back to school, and by the time she got married and had me, she’d pretty much forgotten how to read, write, and most certainly spell.” I smile and shake my head. “Poor mom didn’t know how to spell Eleanor, and she was too embarrassed to ask a nurse or doctor for help. So she went with Ellie.”

  “Where was your dad?” Frannie says.

  I hold the smile, but it’s tighter now. “He was already gone by then.”

  “Oh,” says Frannie, blinking and looking up. “I thought your parents split up when you were older.”

  “Nope,” I say cheerfully. “My dad left three months before I was born. Whatever. I don’t care. Mom didn’t pass on much emotional baggage related to my dad. I just think they were never meant to be together.”

  Frannie sighs and picks at her salad. Then she glances up at me, a soft, faraway look in her eyes. “Do you think the opposite happens too?”

  I laugh, surprised at Frannie’s weirdly wistful tone. “What do you mean?”

  Frannie shrugs. “I mean two people who are meant to be together.”

  “Like, does that exist? That’s what you’re asking?”

  “Correct,” says Frannie.

  “So like fate? Destiny? Meant-to-be?” I say, wondering if Frannie’s serious or if the milk in her shake is a little off. “Um, why are you suddenly thinking about that kinda stuff?”

  Frannie fidgets with her fork and sighs. “I dunno. Just got this weird feeling, like something’s happening. It’s kinda like the feeling I get when I go into a burning building. A connection to . . . something deeper. Maybe it’s just instinct or intuition.” Then she leans forward, her brown eyes shining as that weird energy snakes its way up my back too. “But think about the weird coincidences of this new job, Ellie. Firstly this Scottish guy calls your company out of thousands. Then he calls right when your boss is busy, so you’re forced to take the call. And then he calls you Eleanor! That’s three coincidences in one morning, Ellie. That’s how fate works!”

  I blink and try to laugh it off. “This is about your kilt fantasy, isn’t it?” I tease.

  But Frannie’s not laughing, and now I’m not either. Frannie’s told me about that sixth sense that comes alive when she enters a burning building. It’s saved her life. It’s saved other people’s lives. That shit is real, even if neither of us can explain it.

  Even if neither of us dares explain it.

  “Just go build your bridge, Ellie,” Frannie says softly as those silent suits of armor watch us like sentinels from another world. “Go build your bridge.”

  2

  EASTON

  “There was a day we could have built this bridge ourselves,” I say to my reflection in the slow-moving moat that encircles my castle like a noose. “We three brothers could have hauled the wood ourselves, stood up the mighty posts, smelt the iron for the chains. But that was not our fate,” I growl, looking up at the sun and squinting. “I am scarred and disfigured. Fikus is a broken shell of the man he once was. And Gilfred has sworn never to set foot on this land again. To think there was a time we thought we were Dragons! Hah! How cruel is fate, yes?”

  I hear the snakes swirl in the murky depths of the moat, and I break a hideous grin that shows off every vicious scar on my once-handsome face. I think of the woman who is on her way here, and I shake my head and wonder what will scare her away first: My twisted smile or the water-snakes that have lived for centuries in this moat, creatures of dark magic that survive by feeding on each other.

  “That is what humans are too,” I mutter, rising to my feet and squaring my shoulders in the sunlight. “Dark creatures that feed on each other’s weaknesses.”

  Dragons are no better, comes the thought. A thought so clear I’m startled. Your father was a pureblood Red Dragon, and his weaknesses were as pure as his blood, were they not? The unquenchable thirst for diamonds and gold. The insatiable lust for destruction and chaos.

  I frown as the sun’s rays reflect off the polished shoulder-plates of the old leather vest I’m wearing. It is not uncommon for me to talk to myself—though of late my thoughts are indistinguishable from sound. Still, I know enough about the human brain to know that in isolation a man invents an imaginary world so vivid it might as well be real.

  But I cannot help but think this voice does not come from my brain. It does not come from me. Is it a disembodied spirit? One of the ghosts that roams these glens, unable to break away from the trappings of the flesh? I remember watching our mother speak with the spirits, but I was not born with her gift.

  Neither was I born with my father’s gift, I think as I clench my fist and glare at the sun.

  Instead I was born with his curse.

  A curse that shines red like blood.

  A curse that shines bright like a diamond.

  A curse that begins and ends with the Red Diamond.

  And now I raise my arms and roar up at the sky, my voice thundering across my barren lands, my eyes staring up at the sun. My blood burns as I think back to what my father did for the Red Diamond—and what he lost in the bargain. What we all lost in the bargain.

  We lost our mother.

  As for our father?

  He lost his Fated Mate.

  I shout again as centuries of anguish roil my blood like those snakes churn the moat’s dark waters. My bare arms are spread wide like wings, and it’s only when I start to see stars that I realize I am staring directly into the blazing sun. Unblinking. Unflinching.

  “What in the devil’s name is happening?” I mutter. I remember the three of us boys looking at my father in awe when he stared at the sun for hours on end without going blind. It is the mark of a Dragon. A mark that we half-breeds clearly did not have.

  “Your time will come,” Father had assured us when we’d tried to do the same and couldn’t last more than a moment each. “You are half-breeds, but the Dragonblood flows in your veins. In time you will grow into the Dragons you were born to be.”

  But the centuries came and went, and although the Dragonblood in our veins kept us alive, that was all it did for us. It was only when I unearthed an old chest full of ancient scrolls that I understood what was missing:

  Our mates.

  “The Myth of Fated Mates only applies to pureblood Dragons,” Fikus had said when I told him about it. “Look at us, Easton. You’re a scarred monster. I’m a stooped beast. Even if we did have Fated Mates, what would they say if they gazed upon us in the light of day?”

  “According to the Myth our mates will see through the horror of our appearance,” I’d said with a grim smile. “Though certainly a little grooming might help us.”

  “Even a mask would not help you,” Fikus had said with a grin. “As for me . . . perhaps I can hide in the shadows during the courtship.”

  I laugh now as I think back to that rare moment of levity. I know that Fikus harbors that same undying faith in the promise of his blood as I do. It lingers deep beneath the scars on our faces, the wounds in our souls. It has kept us alive this long, kept us hanging on to this world by our fingertips through tests and trials, loneliness and isolation, darkness and rage.

  The sun flashes upon my face, and I blink as I am brought back to the moment before I give in to my anger. I have never been a
Dragon, but the blood is in my veins and I have had many a fine rampage in human form. I may be scarred, but my body is hard muscle, chiseled stone, raw power that I have unleashed on anything and everything on this property. Indeed, most of the damage to this drawbridge was done with my bare hands, I think with a smile.

  I look down at those hands, and then back up at the sun. This time I stare at its furious flame with intent and will, and once again I do not flinch. I can scarcely believe it, but I am staring directly into the midday sun!

  Staring into it like a Dragon.

  “Could it be?” I mutter, wondering if I should call Fikus out here to see if he can do it too! This is a clear sign from fate that the time is approaching, that our patience is being rewarded, that the little faith that kept us alive was perhaps not so little after all. “Will we become Dragons after all?”

  I stretch my bare arms out wide again, and I broaden my back in the hope that wings will explode out through the sinewy muscle. But there is nothing, and I slump my shoulders and shake my head.

  And then the sun goes behind a cloud, and it is like the universe is laughing at me, thumbing its nose at Easton the Half-Breed Fool who believes that his time has come.

  Not yet, says Fate. Not yet.

  I storm back to the moat, leaning over to see my reflection again. But all I see are the snakes, and they are twisting and turning like it is either feeding season or breeding season. I frown as a big green one with two heads jumps up like a fish, both jaws snapping at once, the twin forked tongues darting out, its yellow fangs oozing with poison.

  If I were a superstitious man I would take all of this as a sign of doom. Hell, a few years ago I would have taken this as a bad omen. But instead I smile at the cesspool of evil that flash their fangs at me. Because I know that being able to look into the sun was a sign too.

  And that’s the sign I choose to follow.

  A sign that something is coming.

  “I know there’s no sign, but I think if we follow this road we might—oh, there’s someone! We can ask him! Hello there! Is this Dragonswain Castle? Oh, it must be! Look at that ramshackle drawbridge! Wow, we are gonna have to rip that thing out and put in a new one.”