The Blood Race

The early morning sun cut bright streaks across the sky, chasing the last traces of night away. It was quiet, the town just starting to wake up and get their coffee. Alex stood in the middle of the town's vegetable garden, hands on her hips, looking down at one-hundred dead plants in disgust.

Yesterday they’d been green and healthy.

Thick green lush plants with healthy foliage. Flowering and preparing to fruit.

Today they were wilted. Laid across the ground like they’d given up hope.

Bean vines were crispy and stick like. Tomato plants had shriveled and given up hope. Even the raspberry bushes had lost their leaves, leaving its prickly skeleton behind.

They’d been fine last night. How had she killed every single one of them in less than 24 hours? Wasn’t this supposed to be something she was good at? Her Elemental Heritage? Ancient powers woven from earth, air, fire, and water?

Well plants counted as earth. Right?

“Oh no! Wha happen?” Ms. Chen asked from the fence behind her. The little old ladies voice was heavy with the Chinese accent of her heritage.

“I don’t know Ms. Chen.” Alex sighed. Hands on her hips she kicked at the dirt in frustration.

Stupid dormant abilities were going to make them starve. Maybe she was just a dragon. Meant to fight and kill things. She was good at that.

Obviously.

Shoulders sagging Alex turned away from the massacre.

“Is ok. We go market.” Ms. Chen assured waving her wrinkly hand in the air. “You come. Breakfast ready.” She was the tiniest little old lady Alex had ever seen, probably about a million years old. Skin paper thin and wrinkled. Hair so gray it was white, frizzy, and sticking up in every possible direction.

“You don’t have to make us breakfast Ms. Chen.” Alex reminded. Ms. Chen took Alex’s arm, her grip around the crook of her arm stronger than it should have been, considering she shuffled her feet in the slowest walk on the face of the planet.

“David go get milk. Lou make waffle with Sir Cole.” Ms. Chen said with a smirk.

Alex snorted. “You keep calling him that, he’s going to get a big head.” The little boy was already sassy and opinionated.

Their little town was quiet. Dirt roads and little single-story houses. Most were pretty rustic, they weren’t within city limits, and no one had bothered to run any electric or gas lines out to them. They were just a small town of elderly and lower class powers. Not worth the Hierarchy’s time. Not worth taking care of.

There were a few families that had generators. Their quiet hums a constant in the background. Most had wood burning stoves and fireplaces. A few newcomers were still in tents. Still building their homes.

The neighbors were out Sitting on their porches, sweeping their walkways. Children ran through yards, playing games that only they knew the rules too. There was a chorus of good mornings and lifted hands in greetings as they walked down the street toward her cottage.

It wasn’t much. But it was home. Comfortable and safe. A little stucco home her father had built from the ground up. A little patch of grassy ground. The Enchanted Forest between them and the Gilded City.

The front yard was bordered by lavender bushes their purple blossoms bright against the dark green foliage and grass backdrop. Chickens clucked around scattering dramatically when they walked past. A calico momma cat was stretched out on the front porch nursing her kittens. Perfectly content and unafraid of the dog that sat at the edge of the yard desperately wanting to chase her.

The sounds of Lou’s soothing creole filtered through the open windows. Talking nonsense, his deep baritone, and three-year-old Coles bright, thin timbre. Musical in the way the two contrasting tones mixed with each other.

Cole had been an accident but was in no way unwanted. A drunken night at a bar that had ended in a motel room with a man Alex didn’t know but couldn’t forget. It hadn’t been long after her father had died. She’d been overwhelmed with grief and the heaviness of his confession.

She was the Princess. The missing Princess. The one the entire world had been looking for for twenty-one years. Stolen from her crib in the middle of the night not long after she’d been born. Destined to take over the throne. Destined to be a slave to the Hierarchy and the King.

Everything about her childhood had fallen into place. The stupid amounts of training. The hiding. The fear. There was a reward for anyone who found her and returned her to the King. To her birthright. They wanted her powers. Her lineage.

It had been to much. And as her father took his last breath, she’d run.

Run from their safe little community. Run from the man who she had thought was her brother. Run from everything she knew.

By the time she’d stopped all she’d wanted to do was forget. So, she’d stopped at the first bar she’d come to…and drank. Heavily. Concoctions of alcohol and fairy dust. She drank so much she didn’t even remember the man approaching her. She just remembered him being in front of her. Bright silver eyes that seemed to glow in the dim light. The breath stopping desire to have him.

Almost four years later her skin tingled when she thought about his strong hands on her body. How they’d been firm and demanding, but velvet soft and gentle. Her skin had been on fire. Everywhere he touched lit up.

She remembered the curl of his dark hair over his forehead. The feel of the cheap sheets at her back, his rough palms against her thighs. The way he’d held her eyes when he’d pushed into her, and how it had felt like it had completed a part of her she didn’t even know was incomplete.

He’d groaned into her neck with an edge of desperation. His hard body shuttering with every move like he was struggling to wait for her. The feel of his lips and tongue possessively claiming hers. How it felt like she had broken into a million pieces. She didn’t even know his name. She hadn’t stayed to ask. Slipping out with the early morning sun streaking bright yellows across the sky.

But she saw him every day. In the curl of her son's dark hair. The way his gray eyes flashed silver when he was excited or angry. That little sassy smirk he got when he knew he was getting away with something.

Alex let the screen door slap shut behind her with a soft, thwak. Cole sat at the bar, his little legs swinging in the air. His eyes flashed brightly when he saw her. He stuffed an enormous bite of syrup dripping waffle into this mouth and grinned up at her.

“Mommy!” He said, his voice muffled. “Lou made waffles.”

“I see.” Alex laughed. Running her hand over his hair she kissed the top of his head.