Path of Dragons

Tiny clouds of dust kicked up with each of Elijah’s steps as he shuffled forward, lost amidst the roiling memories of days long past. Just like the rest of the house, the basement had been ransacked. Boxes had been overturned to spill their contents over the concrete floor. Most of it was useless. One had contained old winter wear, another had been filled with tangled Christmas lights. There was a disassembled fake Christmas tree as well as a few old, festive wreaths. Elijah saw a couple of bicycles, their tires having dry rotted. And a host of other bits and pieces that were all that remained of the lives Alyssa and her family had once led.

But Elijah only had eyes for one item, as well as the wooden crate beside it.

He approached, then laid his hand on the old record player. The façade was brushed aluminum, with sides of laminated particle board and a clear, plastic hood that had been so discolored by age that it obscured the inner workings of the player itself. On either side of the machine were matching speakers, maybe six or seven inches tall.

With bated breath, Elijah reached out and touched the plastic hood, feeling the rough surface that had been through so much over the years. Like everything else in the basement, it was covered in a thick layer of dust, which took a couple of swipes from Elijah’s hand to remove. And there on the top was the Nirvana sticker he expected. He stared at the simple, black-and-yellow decal as he remembered the day his sister had gotten it.

She hadn’t even been a teenager when she went through her grunge phase. Of course, they were both at least a decade too old to have lived through the genre’s heyday, but Alyssa had never cared about following trends. Indeed – she’d reveled in eschewing the sorts of things all her peers seemed to hold in such high esteem.

And because Elijah had idolized his older sister, he had as well.

At least when it came to entertainment.

The sticker was surrounded by a dozen others, all representing various bands. In a lot of ways, it was a timeline of her evolving tastes. She had never cared about consistency, putting hip hop artists right next to death metal, and with everything in between.

It was a perfect representation of who Alyssa had been in her youth. A girl searching for something – anything – that spoke to her. And when she found it, she latched on with both hands. It didn’t matter if it matched her perceived persona. She’d never cared about fitting in. Instead, as cliché as it was to think of it in such terms, she had always walked to the beat of her own drum.

And she’d paid for it, too. On top of being tall, awkward, and lesbian, she’d made no efforts to be like all the other girls. That had made her something of a loner. Sure – she’d had a few friends, but they were relationships of circumstance, rather than true affection.

But Elijah had always been there, a few years younger, but still, they were incredibly close.

And now she was gone.

Forever.

He would never listen to music with her again. He’d never hear her talk about the girls she liked. The obscure movies she always overanalyzed. Her plans to lead the way in changing law enforcement. The list went on and on. If there was one word that could describe Alyssa, it was that she was committed. It didn’t matter the subject. If she latched onto something, she embraced it completely, and to a nearly obsessive degree.

And Elijah missed that.

Tears carving a path down his cheeks, he opened the record player’s lid, exposing the interior. It all looked to be in good order. No missing pieces, and the hood had protected it from the dust. It was a shame, then, that there was no electricity.

Still, Elijah hefted it and slipped it into his satchel. It was almost too wide to fit, but he managed it. And once it was inside the bag, it settled in next to all of his other supplies. The speakers came next, after he’d wrapped the wires around them. Finally, Elijah turned his attention to the wooden crate.

Leaning forward, he pursed his lips and blew. With his Strength, it was like using a can of compressed air, and the dust billowed before him. Not having expected that, Elijah pulled away, coughing as he waved his hand in front of his face. Once the dust settled, though, he saw the crate’s contents.

His sister’s collection of records had never been large. Often, she traded them in at a local second-hand store so she could satisfy the terms of whatever her latest obsession might have been. Her fixations were powerful but flighty, and when she was done with something, she moved on quickly.

Even so, like the stickers, the crate’s contents were akin to a timeline of her tastes. The first record was, predictably, Nirvana’s Nevermind – the one with the underwater baby on the cover – and though the iconic photo was faded with age, it was still more than recognizable. Elijah flipped to the next, which was a record by Aerosmith. The next after that was Blind Melon. And then things took a hard left turn when he found a record from the eighties.

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The cover featured a simple portrait of a pretty, teenage girl with red hair and a single word. Tiffany.

It was the pop star’s first album, and the one that launched her to stardom in the late eighties. Of course, if Nirvana was before Alyssa’s and Elijah’s time, then that album – which was the sort of vapid teen pop of the era – certainly was. However, it also featured some themes that resonated with Alyssa in a way that none of the current music of the time ever did.

More than that, though, it was special because it was the album Alyssa had been listening to the night she had come out to Elijah.

That year, Elijah had just started to get serious about boxing, and he’d spent most afternoons after school at the gym. So, he didn’t get home until a few hours after his sister, and when he did, he arrived to find her crying in bed while listening to “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

He remembered it so vividly. Almost twenty years had passed since that day, but the memory was still so fresh in his mind. He sat on the end of her bed and awkwardly patted her on the foot, telling her that it would be okay. At the time, he’d had no clue what had made her so distraught, but he knew enough to offer whatever comfort he could muster.

Of course, Alyssa had insisted that it wouldn’t. That’s when Elijah asked what had happened, and she just blurted out that she was a freak. She’d practically screamed that everyone at school was going to find out about it, too. And in true dramatic teenager fashion, she’d collapsed onto the bed in a fit of tears.

Elijah had continued to try to comfort her, but he had no clue what was really the matter. Alyssa had never cared about fitting in, after all. So, if someone thought she was a freak, she’d have borne that label with pride.

Finally, she’d let the proverbial cat out of the bag, revealing that she was, in fact, a lesbian. More, she’d confessed her love to one of the other girls on her track team.

Those feelings were not reciprocated, and Alyssa had retreated in horror, leaving track practice early.

At the time, Elijah had had no idea how to respond. He didn’t really understand the gravity of her revelation until much later, but he definitely understood that Alyssa was hurting. So, he did his best to comfort her.

It didn’t really work, though.

Still, she eventually got over the rejection, and when Elijah finally realized what it really meant that she’d chosen to come out to him before she’d even done so with their parents, it brought them closer than ever before.

And since that day, Elijah had always associated that song with his relationship with his sister. There were other songs they enjoyed together, too. Lots of other albums, many of which were represented in that crate. As Elijah flipped through them, his grief continued to mount with every memory they brought to the forefront of his mind.

The time she’d helped him get ready for his junior prom. The day of her graduation. The night she got home from her first real date with a girl. Long conversations about their plans for the future.

The night their parents had died.

The day Elijah had left for Hawaii.

Alyssa’s old music had even been playing in the background when Elijah had let her know – in a phone call – that he had been diagnosed with cancer. She hadn’t believed him, at first. Denial was often the first phase in those sorts of situations. For a while, she had even insisted on coming to Hawaii to support him.

Elijah wished he’d let her.

He wished he’d done so many things. Made so many changes. Those feelings of grief and guilt wrapped even more tightly around his heart, constricting his mind and soul to the point where he could scarcely think.

And then there was the rage burning everything else for fuel.

He would never again see his sister. Never hear her voice. They would never sit and listen to music again. They wouldn’t watch movies together. They wouldn’t reconnect after Elijah’s ill-conceived flight to Hawaii.

She would never see her son grow into a man.

She would never get to grow old with the love of her life.

She would never see the miracles Elijah sometimes took for granted.

And it was all because of one deluded and self-absorbed man. Elijah wanted to lash out, then and there. He needed to destroy something. To tear the house down. Yet, he kept himself under control, slipping the records – one by one – into his Ghoul-Hide Satchel for safekeeping.

He spent a little more time looking through the basement, but he found nothing else of sentimental value. So, a couple of hours later, he regretfully climbed the stairs and traversed the interior of the house until he’d left it behind.

After a single look back, Elijah adopted the Shape of the Sky, transforming over the course of a second or two, then launched himself toward the blanket of gloomy clouds above. Only a few minutes later, he landed in a copse of trees just outside Easton, then used Shape of the Predator.

As was the case in Norcastle, Elijah had no interest in announcing his presence to the residents – or more importantly, the guards – of Easton. Instead, he chose to enter under the Guise of the Unseen. However, when he found his way to the wall, he discovered that it was far too sheer to climb the hundred-foot edifice. So, after seeing that, Elijah slowly padded along the length of the wall until he reached a gate.

It was guarded by a half-dozen men wearing blue and white uniforms. Each one felt reasonably strong, though Elijah had no notion of their levels. But judging by the ethera wafting off of them, they were at least high enough to give him pause. More importantly, when he came into view, one of the guards’ eyes settled on him for the briefest of seconds before moving on.

Elijah didn’t know if the man had seen him. Probably not, or he would have attacked. After all, he was in his terrifying draconid form, which would certainly elicit some reaction. More likely, the guard had only noticed something out of the ordinary. Or he’d gotten a feeling. And Elijah suspected that if he tried to walk through the gate in broad daylight, he’d be detected.

So, without further hesitation, Elijah retreated a few hundred yards and settled behind a tree, where he intended to wait until nightfall to enter the city. Impatience gripped him, but he pushed past it, focusing on the impending task.

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