Beautiful Magic: An Urban Fantasy Story (Must Love Dragons Book 1) Read online

  Enzo nodded. "Yes, vampires and shifters do not have the best relationship. Your entertainment industry has got that right at least. You'll learn to fight all manners of supernaturals. But to start, you'll have to learn to fight against your own."

  Enzo's gaze traveled over us and landed on Leire. "You. Choose someone to challenge in the ring."

  Without missing a beat, Leire turned and pointed. "I want to fight her."

  She pointed straight at me.

  Eleven

  Leire wanted to fight me.

  I still wasn't sure how my presence antagonized her, but it had and now she had chosen me to fight in the ring.

  Enzo looked back and forth between us. "Get inside the ring."

  The two of us followed his instructions. I faced her as she prowled back and forth like a tiger. The rest of the group had moved to form a circle around us. Beatriz and Maribel were frowning. They knew Leire was out to get me. The rest of the group were interested in what would happen next. We waited for Enzo to give us further instructions.

  Leire looked away from the group and I saw that her glance fell on the blue-eyed dragon shifter who had talked to me earlier. I scowled. She was doing this to impress a dragon shifter, and I was the unfortunate accessory to her show of vanity. If she thought she could beat me, she had another thing coming. I was suddenly thankful for all the self-defense classes my mother made me take.

  Enzo spoke loudly so that everyone could hear. "There's only one rule when it comes to ring fights." He paused and examined all of our faces before he went on. "The fight remains within the ring. No exceptions. Step out of the ring and you're disqualified. Anything in the ring goes. That's the fighting of dragons. Your goal today is to get your opponent on the ground and have them tap out. The last one standing wins the fight."

  Enzo nodded at each of us in turn. "Ready, go!" he barked.

  Leire rushed at me with her head lowered and tackled me to the ground, knocking the breath out of me. Before I could recover, she threw her full weight on top of me.

  She straddled my waist, but I was able to shove her off-balance. She made a grab for my arms, but I used my shoulder to wrench free of her grip.

  I kicked at her and managed to knock her sideways, enough for me to shove her completely off of me. Breathing heavily, I scrambled to my feet. Leire crouched, watching me, trying to calculate my next move. I wasn't sure what to do.

  "Attack," Enzo called out.

  Oh. Right.

  Leire lunged at me and I twisted to the side to dodge her. She was ferocious. I thought about my options. She lunged for me again and grabbed my shirt. I grabbed her right hand with my left and twisted her fingers. She cried out in pain and her knees buckled. I thought about reducing the pressure, but I continued and shoved her to the ground. I did not sit on her like she did to me, but I was sorely tempted to.

  "Tap out," I said.

  She gritted her teeth. "No."

  I made a grab for her other hand. She twisted away causing her to put more pressure on the hand I held, and she cried out in pain.

  "Tap. Out," I repeated.

  This was a trick I had picked up from wrestling with my brothers growing up. The two of them always outnumbered me but I knew that if I could get ahold of their fingers, I was sure to beat them. It got to the point where they would use boxing gloves when they wrestled with me just so that I couldn't grab them.

  "I'll break your fingers," I warned her.

  Fury in her eyes. "You wouldn't dare."

  I put some more pressure on her fingers and she let out a wail of anguish. "Try me."

  She used her leg to kick at me. I was ashamed to say it worked. I stumbled to the ground.

  Leire came at me angrier than before.

  She loomed over me and I saw her foot coming down toward my face.

  But I don't remember what happened next. All I knew was suddenly Enzo's arms were around me and he was pulling me off of a crying Leire. She was laying on the ground, tearful eyes wide with fear, blood running down her face.

  I blinked, breathing heavily. What had happened?

  "I knew I said there weren't any rules, but I hadn't expected this level of viciousness." Enzo was staring at me. His face was a mixture of shock and fascination. Two of our group ran to Leire and helped her to her feet. She whimpered in pain, horrified every time she met my eyes. I looked around. Everyone in the group mirrored the same horror.

  What had happened? Why couldn't I remember? What had I done?

  I stared at the blood flowing down Leire's battered face.

  Enzo's mouth was set in a grim line.

  I searched for Beatriz in the crowd and even she looked at me like I was a monster.

  I couldn't take it anymore.

  I ran.

  Twelve

  I ran blindly and somehow managed to find my way back to the main part of the Center. I ran through the halls trying to get to my room. My mind kept screaming in panic. What had I done? Was I turning into my mother?

  I ran faster. Suddenly a door ahead of me opened and a man stepped out. I couldn't stop in time. I crashed into him and bounced off as if I had run into a brick wall.

  I fell to the ground. My breath was knocked out of my body. I gasped for air, my eyes widening. I couldn't catch my breath. My body was shaking, still reverberating from the shock of slamming into him.

  I clawed at my throat in panic. I couldn't breathe.

  The person I had crashed into bent down and stared intently at me. "Relax, you're fine. You can breathe. You're fine," he repeated.

  My brain struggled to understand him. My body was still in panic mode and trying to get oxygen.

  He reached out with both hands and grasped my shoulders gently. "You're fine, you're fine. Breathe. Relax."

  He repeated the mantra as I focused on his brown eyes. He had thick black lashes. I couldn't help but realize what a strange thing to notice when I couldn't breathe. I gasped and gulped the air. I felt sick and light-headed, but my heart rate slowed and my body relaxed. His grip on my shoulders loosened. "Better?"

  I gave him a shaky nod. As the adrenaline left my body I sagged. His hands tightened around me and he picked me up as if I was a child. I was as limp as a noodle. He crushed me against his chest and stroked my head like I was a cat. "You're fine," he repeated. "The shakes will go away soon."

  I took deep, gasping breaths until I calmed down and regulated my oxygen intake. As the panic receded once and for all, I realized I was in the embrace of a stranger who was petting me like a house cat. It was soothing, but with my mind now thinking clearly I suddenly realized how strange it was.

  Okay, now it was awkward.

  I shifted to move away, and he released me from his grip.

  "Where were you headed?" He looked down at me. He appeared ready to catch me if I began to droop, so I made sure to stand tall.

  "My room." I winced at how weak my voice sounded.

  His gaze dropped to my chest and I realized he was looking at my charmstone pendant. His lifted his eyes to meet mine again. "You're a participant? DRIP?"

  I nodded.

  "I'll take you to your wing," he said.

  "It's okay. I can get there myself," I protested. I was too embarrassed to be near this man anymore. I just wanted to be alone.

  "You know your face is bloodied?" He tilted his head.

  I raised a self-conscious hand to my face.

  "Why is it bloodied?" he asked gently.

  Before I could answer him, Enzo appeared. "There you are. I was coming to get you. I don't know what you were thinking, but we don't run away from our problems here."

  Enzo turned to my helper. "Thanks for catching her."

  "I didn't catch her. She caught me." He appeared bemused.

  "Thank you," I muttered.

  I couldn't help but glance back at him as Enzo and I walked away. My savior waved at me. I flushed and looked away.

  Enzo told me off as soon as we were out of sight. "Trust you to c
ause trouble and then invite more problems by running into the Enforcer."

  My head snapped up. "That was the Enforcer?" The man who had calmed me down and treated me with such gentleness and tenderness was the big, scary dragon shifter who everyone whispered about? He wasn't what I pictured the Enforcer to be.

  "Yes," Enzo said sharply. "Of all the people you had to run into, it had to be Diego's second. Now I'm going to have to write a report about why I have a bloodied participant running around the Center." Enzo sighed as he resigned himself to the thought of all the additional work I had made for him.

  "I'm sorry," I said

  Enzo snorted. "Not yet, you're not, but you will be once you see what the punishment is for running out of training like that. It's off to the Dungeons for you."

  I repressed a shudder.

  Thirteen

  It turned out that the Center didn't have dungeons.

  The Dungeons actually referred to two sisters who worked in Maintenance. Enzo dropped me off with a simple, "She's all yours."

  Three hours later, I was laying on a couch in the reading room. I didn't want to be cooped up in my room, but I didn't want to socialize with the others, so I hid out there.

  My whole body ached. Those women made me do disgusting tasks that I never knew a building required to function properly. Three hours of scraping off the built-up grease behind the kitchen fryolators and scrubbing the grout in the bathroom tiles made every inch of every muscle tighten up and ache.

  I heard the door open. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. I heard the door close and footsteps making their way toward me.

  "Vanessa?"

  I opened my eyes and Beatriz's face peered at me in concern.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "No. I feel like I'm broken." I groaned as I moved up to a sitting position.

  "What happened?" I knew she was asking about my fight with Leire, but I pretended to misunderstand her. "Enzo made me go to these women who put me up to a zillion tasks. You will not believe how nasty it is to clean out a drain pipe. There are the strangest things down there. I thought I saw something move."

  Beatriz went along with it and sat down on the couch.

  "I can believe it." She shook her head. "This is a strange place. It's crazy to think we've only been here for two days. It feels much longer."

  "Tell me about it." It had felt like a century after the Dungeons got through with me.

  Beatriz was silent for a moment before she spoke again. "I know you might not want to talk about it, but seriously, what happened out there in the ring? One moment Leire was knocking you about and the next, you started smashing her face in."

  I felt a twinge of shame. "Is she okay?"

  "Well, she had to be taken to the infirmary. She still isn't back, but I heard from Kevin that she'll be okay. She's just in a lot of pain."

  "I don't know what happened." I cradled my head in my hands.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I honestly don't know. I don't remember. It was like you said: one minute she was beating me and then all I could see was her foot and she was about to step on me and the next thing I remember is her screaming and her face was all bloody."

  "You must have just snapped," Beatriz said.

  "No." I shook my head. "It felt like it was more than that."

  I raised my head from my hands and looked her square in the eyes. "I think enjoyed it."

  Her eyes widened. "What you mean by that?"

  "I... Something inside me was thrilled that I was beating her," I confessed.

  "That doesn't seem like you. I know we don't know each other very well, but you come across as a gentle soul."

  I smiled at her kind words. "It isn't like me, but what if this place is changing me?" I voiced my fear aloud. I had thought that entering this hidden world would be amazing but what if it brought out the worst in me? I was terrified that I was slowly unraveling like my mother had. I dropped my head, ashamed to look Beatriz in the eye.

  "Well, I still think you just snapped and you're just not thinking straight. Give it a day, but ignore what people say, okay?" she assured me.

  "Why? What are they saying?" I looked up at her.

  "Well, Pol thought it was the coolest thing," Beatriz grinned. "Most of the guys think that, actually, except for Kevin."

  "He's Leire's friend," I said quietly.

  "Yes, but some of the girls were secretly happy because she had been lording over them. They all wish it was them beating on her."

  "Really?" I rubbed my shoulder.

  "Yes. Does that make you feel better?"

  "No, it actually kind of makes me feel worse."

  "Don't worry about it. I expect we'll go through a few more things like this and people will start talking about something else." Beatriz stretched her legs.

  I lowered my head again. "People already think I don't belong here."

  "That's not true. That was just Leire. We're all the same here. A few days ago, we didn't know any of this existed." She paused. "I'll confess something to you. That class scared me. I started the day thinking all of this was amazing and that getting to see this beautiful magic around us that other humans will never see was incredible. I forgot about the scary part." She saw my expression and quickly said, "Not about you, it wasn't you. I mean the vampires. Think about it: we have vampires as enemies now because we've aligned ourselves to the shifters. We didn't know this coming in. We came in and we saw all the pretty things and now they're telling us that we have to learn enemy attack combat before self-defense combat. What are they really training us for, and how dangerous is this hidden world?"

  She was right.

  What did we get ourselves into?

  Fourteen

  Beatriz's words echoed in my head long after she left. What had we gotten ourselves into?

  I found myself growing restless. I looked at the clock: I had one hour before curfew. That was just enough time to go for a walk and return. I needed to clear my head.

  I stood up, walked to Beatriz's room, and knocked on the door. "Come in," she called out. I pushed open the door. She was laying on her bed reading a book.

  "Do you want to go out for a walk with me?" I asked.

  Beatriz raised an eyebrow. "At this time?"

  "Yes, I can't seem to sit still. I need to move or something."

  "I thought you were exhausted from the Dungeons."

  "I am, but I hate feeling trapped. It's how I feel right now." From time to time, this feeling would come over me and I'd always followed the compulsion to escape. Back home I'd had to sneak out of the window sometimes just to get out of the place. Luckily, I didn't have to do that now. I glanced out at the balcony.

  "Sorry, I'm feeling lazy. I'll stay behind. Maybe next time. Don't get locked out," she warned.

  "I won't," I said.

  I made my way down the three floors and to the front desk. The boy there waved lazily. "Be back by eleven. You don't want to be locked out."

  I briefly entertained the idea of what would happen if I was locked out. Like Beatriz's room, my room had a balcony. I wondered if I would be able to scale the building if it came to that. I'd have to check it out one day. It never hurt to have a back-up plan.

  I walked out of the Center and inhaled the fresh air. The streets were winding down, but there were still plenty of people out and about. Barcelona was a city that never really slept. It only had brief siestas in the evening and then things would start up again.

  As I walked, I reflected on how quickly my life had changed over the past few days. My hand reached for my pendant. I could slip this off and be blind to the new wonders around me. I had passed a few pointed-ear people. There had also been some short creatures that resembled goblins. The awe I felt seeing them overcame the fear that I had been harboring inside me.

  Mother always told me that life would be scary but amazing. She wasn't wrong. Ever since her incident, she would issue cryptic warnings every time I visited her. Her warn
ings didn't seem so cryptic anymore. She had always told me life was an amazing and awful place. I thought she meant the facility she was in, but now I knew that I was wrong. I wondered if she had known about this world all along. I'd have to remember to ask her that.

  I wondered if I would be able to tell the different types of shifters after some more training. It was embarrassing to admit but all the shifters I had seen seemed really attractive. I wondered if that was true of all shifters or if I was just focused on the beautiful ones. What did vampires look like? Were they traditionally fanged creatures like in the movies? Did their reflections disappear in mirrors or could they turn into bats?

  A man walking ahead of me would have fit the vampire role in my musings. He moved lightly and had dark hair and a lean figure. I could imagine him turning into a bat and flying away. Without realizing it, lost in my thoughts, I started following him. Luckily, his path was similar to mine and led to the park. He turned off the main street onto a smaller one, and I decided to continue following him. It was still the direction I was heading anyways.

  I was so busy creating vampire theories that I didn't see that he was following someone himself. I only noticed after the woman ahead of him took a turn and he did too. Unsure if my suspicions had any foundation, I decided to continue walking behind him. I had to drop back some pace. The streets had less traffic here and there were fewer people rather than the hustle-and-bustle of the main streets. If the man glanced back, I would have nowhere to hide.

  Thinking myself a fool for indulging this theory, I continued tracking him regardless. I was so cautious at keeping a distance that when I turned a corner I knew he had taken, I didn't see him. I nearly laughed at my foolishness. He must live in the area and slipped through a door.

  Then a sound caught my attention.

  I stilled, trying to identify where it came from.

  I moved forward until I reached the entrance of a narrow alley.

  I made it in time to see a woman bring down her dagger right into the man's heart.