Chapter Twenty-Two

Tatsuya moved slowly and cautiously down the stairs. He was slightly unsure who was at the door, but he had a theory.
“Maybe it’s your mom or something,” Maddy said, following Tatsuya down the stairs. “Like, maybe she forgot something and she just came back to get it?”
“No,” Tatsuya said. “She wouldn’t have to knock if it was her. I don’t think it’s my mom or my sister.”
Tatsuya opened the door slowly so that it creaked until it was opened all the way. In front of him stood an odd man. He was tall, and his hair was kind of spiky, and it stuck up in an odd angle. But instead of being a shadowy silhouette from far away, Tatsuya could see all of his features now. His eyes had massive bags under them, but other than that, he looked perfect in every way. He wore dark clothes, and he stood with his arms crossed across his chest.
“Oh, I had an odd feeling you were coming,” Tatsuya told the stranger.
The stranger smiled, but stayed perfectly still. “Might this be a home of a certain Joseph Gray?” he asked, his voice scratchy and deep.
“Why yes, it is,” Tatsuya said.
“I would like to speak with him.”
“He’s not here.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He’s dead. He died ten years ago.”
“How unfortunate.”
“Yes. How unfortunate.”
“Who might you be, then?”
Tatsuya narrowed his eyebrows. If I tell him I’m his son, Tatsuya thought to himself, then he is going to kill me. The power will become his. I can’t let that happen. “I could ask you the same question,” he said, trying to avoid by all means to tell this stranger his identity.
“I’m trying to avoid answering that question just as much as you are,” the stranger answered, even though Tatsuya already knew who he was. Tatsuya felt Kaida twitch slightly next to him, which indicated that she knew who he was, too.
“You must be a popular young man,” the stranger said, looking at the two girls on either side of Tatsuya. “Lots of friends. Never worrying about having to be… alone.”
Tatsuya glared at him. “I guess maybe you could say that. Though there have been times where I have been alone.”
The stranger chuckled. “But with such pretty girls at your side,” he said with a sinister tone, “I just can’t imagine ever feeling lonely.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I am,” he said, his dark eyes moving ever so slightly to Tatsuya’s left. “I’m quite interested in this girl. What a beauty.”
Kaida glared at him more than Tatsuya did. It looked like she was about to burst out into an angry fit, but she was trying her hardest to keep under control.
The man lifted his arm and gently placed his hand on Kaida’s face. He moved slowly down until he reached her neck, and he picked up the pendant with two of his fingers.
“This piece is also very beautiful,” he said. “What would you call this?”
“It’s just a pendant,” Kaida said.
I don’t think he knows who I am, Tatsuya thought, otherwise he could have killed me already. But it’s obvious he’s already figured out who Kaida is.
“Hm,” the stranger said to himself. “Yes. Of course. I’m assuming the other girl is just a friend. Or a girlfriend, perhaps?”
“I’m his best friend,” Madison Anabel Fisher snapped at him. “And I’m there for him through anything.”
“I didn’t need the details, but thanks for that,” he said, continuing to gaze at the pendant around Kaida’s neck with such hunger in his eyes.
“Um…” Tatsuya said. He needed to think of something to get this guy to leave. He didn’t want him to linger around her any longer. “Well, as you can see, Joseph Gray obviously isn’t here. I’m sorry you couldn’t get him, but I think it’s better if you leave now. You see, my mom and my sister aren’t home, and it’s not exactly smart of me being a teenage boy to open the door to people I don’t know.”
The stranger chuckled. “Yes, of course. But where is your father.”
Tatsuya held his breath. “My father is at work,” he said. “And he’s not here, either. It’s just my friends over right now. They’re supposed to be keeping an eye on me. My parents don’t trust me, you see.”
“Yes, I do see,” he said, continuing to stroke the pendant around Kaida’s neck with his two fingers. “But do you mind if I ask you one more quick question before I depart?”
“I guess,” Tatsuya said reluctantly. “What might that be?”
“Ever hear anything about dragons?” he asked.
Though Tatsuya had expected this, he pretended to be appalled by such a random comment. “Dragons? No, nothing in particular. Why?”
“Oh, no reason. I was just wondering. It seems like you would know a mighty load about dragons.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because,” he said with his sinister grin growing, “you’ve got one standing right next to you now.”
Tatsuya didn’t move.
The man pushed Kaida with a great enough force that made her fly to the back of the room, but because of her incredible strength, she was able to stay standing up.
Maddy screamed, and hid behind Tatsuya as the man grabbed Kaida by the arm and dragged her outside of the house. Kaida desperately tried to break free from his grasp, but she surprisingly couldn’t find the strength to get away from him.
“Kaida!” Maddy screamed.
The man pulled the pendant off of her neck completely, and Kaida fell to her knees onto the hard concrete.
The man cheered into the open, empty street.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Finally, after decades of searching, I finally have the power of a dragon!” He looked at the pendant in his hand and grinned before laughing sinisterly. “The magic on this is low. Yes, it hasn’t been to its shrine in much too long. Maybe it’s a good idea if I take it there now. Oh, however will I get there? Well, traveling to places will no longer be a problem now that I’ve got my own dragon to control!” And with those last words, Kaida had morphed into her dragon form before the man began to climb on her back.
“Come on!” Tatsuya called to Maddy. He held her hand, and ran after Kaida. They grabbed onto her tail the second before she left the ground.
“I don’t think he knows we’re here,” Tatsuya told Maddy once they were high above the ground and into the clouds. He held onto Kaida’s tail with dear life, and held onto Maddy for her dear life. “If we just stay here until we get to the ground again, we can try to get the pendant piece back from him then.”
Maddy nodded, and held onto Tatsuya even tighter. Even though this made the whole breathing thing difficult for Tatsuya, he continued to hold on with all of his strength and more.
After who knows how long, Kaida finally landed. Tatsuya didn’t recognize the area at all. It was mostly dark with strange, old looking buildings that seemed almost like ruins. By the time Tatsuya and Maddy let go of Kaida to go hide behind one of the buildings, the strange man had already forced Kaida back into her human form and began to walk with her towards the gargantuan moon in the sky.
“Let’s just follow him,” Tatsuya said.
“Tatsuya, what’s going to happen if he gets that pendant all charged up?” Maddy asked. “He’ll be able to fully control Kaida, right? And then what?”
“He’s going to use Kaida’s power to try to get the other three pendants,” Tatsuya said. “And once he has all four…”
“Oh, I don’t even want to think about it,” Maddy squealed, burying her face into Tatsuya’s good shoulder.
“I don’t want to think about it, either,” Tatsuya said. Once he noticed the man was out of sight and out of ear shot, he pulled Maddy out from behind the old building. “We’re going to have to stop him if that happens.”
“Let’s follow him,” Maddy said.
Tatsuya tip-toed and meandered between the old ruins with Maddy closely following him. He felt like such a creeper or a ninja sneaking up on someone like this. He tried to avoid the fact that the situation he was in was life or death, or that he was going after the man who had killed his father, or the fact that if they failed this, then he would have failed the whole world. He shook the thoughts out of his head, and continued on.
It was extremely difficult to sneak through these old ruins because even though there were very few trees around the area, there were a lot of fallen leaves, so Tatsuya tried his best to avoid stepping on them because they would make that every so slight cracking noise, and he would be heard, and everything would be ruined.
“We’ve got to be really careful, Maddy,” he said. “If we get seen by him, I have a feeling it’s not going to end well for us.”
“You honestly think he would kill us?” Maddy asked.
“Well, he killed my father,” Tatsuya said. “I doubt he would mind killing off a couple of pesky kids.”
Tatsuya heard Maddy swallow a lump in her throat, but he couldn’t think of anything to make her feel more comfortable at the moment. Instead, he continued to follow the shadowy figure of the man named Lance.
Lance stopped in front of the largest building in the ruins. It was made of stone, and it looked completely deserted. Tatsuya and Maddy hid behind a nearby building, and watched what Lance did. He turned to Kaida. “Do you remember this, little dragon?” he asked her.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t move at all. She was completely under his control.
“This is where you came from,” Lance said to her again, laughing his sinister laugh into her ear. “This is where we can make this little contraption full of magic, and I will use it to get the other three, and we’ll make sure the world turns in the way I want it to. And it will all be thanks to you.”
The two of them walked into the building, and vanished almost instantly in the darkness. Tatsuya and Maddy came out from behind the broken down building, and faced the big stone one that Lance and Kaida had just disappeared into.
“S-so this is…” Maddy stuttered.
Tatsuya nodded. “Yeah. This is Kaida’s shrine.”