Dragon Unleashed (Book 1 of the Dragon Mage Saga)

The Girl Who Isn't

Black. All Darla could see was black.

They said black was the sum of all colors. If you took all of the colors sprinkled across the rainbow and stirred them together into a colorful mix, this was what you got. Darkness. Vacancy. Death. Nothing. How inspirational.

            Darla was paralyzed, as if someone had frozen her body into place. She was incapable of moving even the tiniest of muscles. She briefly wondered if she had been blinded by Nurse Julie’s shot, explaining why all she could see was a thick cloud of inky black, filling her with dread and malice. She hated the dark with a burning passion.

            “Darla,” a voice boomed out.

            Stepping through the monstrous shadows was Charles, but at the same time it wasn’t Charles. This wasn’t the friendly, smiling Charles with the warm green eyes and the rumbling chuckle. This Charles…well, for starters, he was a dragon.

            The dragon was mammoth, each slick, plate-sized scale a soft silvery-white, the exact color of a diamond. Its eyes were the same piercing earthy green, the only sign that this beast standing before her was the boy she had barely even known.

            Darla was physically unable to speak-her throat was a dry, barren desert deprived of any moisture. She couldn’t move her eyes from the dragon, so glorious and enchanting in its silver scaly majesty.

            “Fly away with me, Darla,” the dragon whispered, in Charles’s light, airy voice, as comforting as a fuzzy woolen blanket on a chilly December night.

            Before Darla knew what had happened, she was soaring through the sky. No, she wasn’t stuck in an eternal sea of darkness and shadow. She was in the night sky, flying past glowing white stars and a luminous crescent moon, which smiled at her from the heavens. Flight was natural. It was easy, simple, and most of all…freeing.

            When Darla flew through the nighttime sky, the soft wind brushing her long blonde hair, she felt an immense weight lifted off her shoulders, off her inner soul. For once, all she could see was the Charles dragon and the night spreading out in front of her like infinity. All was peaceful and beautiful and tranquil. Nothing could hurt her while she was flying-

            That was when it dawned on Darla. Knocked out of her trance, she spotted the long, golden wings jutting out of her side, shimmering in the starlight. She saw the black talons poking out of curved, reptilian feet.

            Darla was not Darla.

            She was the dragon. The golden dragon with the blue eyes. It was her. It was her.

            It was her, and nothing would ever be the same.

            It was then when Dragon Darla realized that Charles Dragon was nowhere to be seen.

           
            “You up?” croaked a deep voice.

            Darla’s eyes widened as she jumped from the cot she had been perched on. She felt oxygen rush through her lungs. It was as if she had stopped breathing during the dream, like oxygen was no longer a necessity when she was…a dragon.

            “Where am I?” Darla whispered, sitting up. She felt a fierce pain in her arm. Brushing the tender red skin, a whirlwind of memories blew through her mind. The necklace, the note, the new boy and his tattoo…of her. Darla’s violent outburst, kicking and screaming and punching. She was the girl they thought she was, the girl they made her out to be-wild, feral, animal. Barely human.

            “Cherry Creek Infirmary,” the voice murmured, belonging to Dr. Clancy. Darla didn’t even attempt to hide her groan when she saw her psychiatrist’s unsmiling face.

            “Now, now, Darla, I thought you said your visions of dragons had gone away,” Dr. Clancy said, her thin lips smacking together as she spoke.

            “They…they have.”

            Darla didn’t want to admit to lying, but at the same time she couldn’t continue to pretend she was sane. Darla wasn’t sane anymore. She wasn’t even a girl anymore, or even a human. What was she? She was the thing nightmares were made of, or at least, that’s what Darla thought. She scared herself sometimes.

            “Don’t lie, Darla,” Dr. Clancy hissed, reminding Darla of a lashing snake. “You are lucky you didn’t break Charles’s nose-only gave him a bad nosebleed. You are a foolish girl, young lady. One more outburst and we’ll kick you on the streets.”

            Darla stared into Dr. Clancy’s eyes, gray as smog.

            “Go ahead. I never liked it here anyways.”

            Dr. Clancy’s face darkened instantly and she opened her mouth to speak when a blaring siren erupted. The noise was of a thousand explosions at once.  Darla could no longer hear her thoughts.

            That was when she smelled it. Thick, intoxicating smoke. Smoke that was coming from…

            It appeared Cherry Creek had caught aflame.