Fragment 43

"I had just learned that I was really a dragon the night before I found you," Chris told Anne.

Even as he spoke the words, he still wondered how true they were. Sometimes he seemed so much different than Amaru that he still wondered if he wasn't actually some other kind of shape changer who had once taken the form of a young dragon. It seemed extremely unlikely that there were two species capable of such complex mimicry though. It was far more likely that the differences were cultural, since Chris had basically been raised by the wolves that called themselves human.

"For several centuries prior to that night, I had believed that I must be a vampire, and that the lore about them was merely incomplete and inaccurate." He avoided Anne's wide eyed gaze as he admitted, "I still catch myself thinking of myself as a vampire, and comparing my actions to fictional characters."

When he had attempted to ask Amaru what kind of activities and behaviors were draconic, the elder dragon had seemed confused by his questions. The answer to the question, 'What would a real dragon do?' seemed to be, 'Whatever it wants to.'

When he glanced back, Anne was nodding as she asked, "You can even give your human form fangs if you want to, can't you?"

"I can, but it is a rather inefficient method of feeding," Chris agreed warily.

"Can you really live on just blood?" she asked doubtfully.

"Yes, but you could probably do the same thing," he pointed out a bit dryly.

Her eyes widened. "Because I can absorb energy from the rivers of life like a dragon?"

"I just meant that I think most humans could," he explained quickly. "For a while at least."

She grimaced at the idea, but didn't argue. Instead, she asked, "Can you take the shape of anyone that you drink the blood of, or does it have to be from their heart? If you drank some of my blood, could you look like me?" Chris stared blankly at her for a moment. "You said that you took the shape of the first human that you, that you drank from," she pointed out nervously.

"Yes," he agreed slowly. "But I do not have to drink blood to change my shape."

"Then why did you live as the boy?" she asked.

It wasn't the first time that someone had asked him that, but centuries later, he still didn't have a good answer. Anne waited with surprising patience as he shifted himself into a more comfortable position and remembered the beginning of his first human life.

A beginning filled with pain and blood, like all lives. He had been wearing the form of a small dog, and daring to explore the fringes of the city that had been growing up beside the meadows that he called home. The young man who had hunted him had been vicious and cruel. Cutting him and then letting him flee, only to track him down and cut him again.

It had taken him much more effort and time to change his shape back then, and he hadn't been able to find a safe place. He hadn't known how to reform just part of his shape back then either. Wounds sapped his energy just as fiercely as they would any other animal, and he had grown more hungry and more fierce even as he had weakened.

He had ripped the young human's throat out without a trace of remorse, and only desperation had given him the strength to reach the heart that contained the energy that he had instinctively known that he needed to live. When he had shifted his form to heal his wounds, instinct had also guided him to take the shape of the foe that he devoured.

His brother had found him, beside the remains of the body. Even then, before he learned to speak as humans did, he had known that the boy, Merritt, had not reacted as others would have. He had stood, and stared at the naked form of his brother crouched beside the bloody remains of his own body. And then he had approached with soft kind words, and utterly ruthless practicality.

Merritt had removed the clothes from the body and dressed him in them. By the time the body had been buried, he'd known the name of Merritt's brother, Roland. His name.

Later, when he had learned to speak, he had discovered how far Merrit had gone to cover for him. A blow to the head had knocked the sense out of him, his brother had told his family. Knocked the demon out of him, Roland's mother had sworn in later years. Changeling, the grandmother had insisted, but no one except the new Roland had listened to her fearful warnings.

A few years later, when Roland remained unchanged, and Merrit had begun to look like he was the elder brother, they had finally talked of the day that he'd taken Roland's place. When he'd asked why Merrit had accepted him, Merrit had not answered, instead he had asked the same question that Anne asked, "Why do you live in his image?"

He hadn't been able to give his brother any good answer then either, but Merrit had simply looked him in the eyes and insisted, "You are my brother. You are a good man, and I have no regrets."

Chris looked at Anne. "I think… that it was because I was accepted by a good man." He told her a bit about those first years, and about his brother, Merrit. A kind man, practical, and ruthless against those who threatened what he protected. A man who had educated himself far above his station in order to answer the endless questions asked by the brother he had claimed as his own.

Merrit had been no ordinary man, and his strange non human brother had not been the only one who noticed. He won recognition by the crown, he strengthened everyone who was allowed the benefit of his friendship, and he had taught his brother how to pass as human. He lived a long and full life which was far more difficult to do than most people seemed to realize.

Chris had outlived him by centuries, but except for not being a human, he felt that he had always been far more ordinary than his brother and first friend. Amaru's guess that he'd shaped himself to Roland's echo seemed accurate, but Merrit had shown him how to live as a man, and shaped the being who still carried his memory.

--

The red haired woman clutched the phone in her hand with a greedy expression. Acquiring it had been a far more complex task than she'd ever expected. She looked up as a car passed.

The girl on the boat, Victoria, had not mentioned cars, but she had since learned the identity of the new kinds of vehicles that moved through the streets of the great cities. More than a month later she was still amazed whenever she saw one moving around. They were short and fat compared to the carriages that had rattled through the streets a couple of centuries ago, but they were also much faster.

London and Venice had been much the same as Paris when she'd flown to each one in turn. Rome, Milan, and Berlin had also shared the incredible growth and ominous quiet of the others. It was the small places, the ones where the constable put on his hat, or pulled his badge out of his apron pocket when someone required that he set aside his day job and perform his public duties, where people still walked the public streets and nodded to each other.

Even in those quiet backwaters, the people kept a wider distance between neighbors, and veiled their faces with cloth more often than not. Even in places where life usually moved slowly, the new plague had brought social changes. One thing hadn't changed though, strangers were still regarded as being far more dangerous than the worst of one's neighbors. There was no anonymity in a village, and the red haired woman still drew the attention of every eye that passed.

She didn't care. Her hands caressed her prize and she smiled. She had acquired the device that would let her learn as much as she wanted. It's only flaw was that she could not carry it back to her garden at the bottom of the sea. Although the 'contract' required for maintaining its connection to the libraries might also be viewed as a flaw, she simply viewed it as evidence that even magic had a price.