Continued from Part 1.

* * *

“You don’t have to come with me,” Travis said, starting the engine on the black sedan. Xiv smiled and buckled his seat belt. The dragon boy could look freakish to those who had not seen him before. His snow white skin had a sheen that made it look wet despite being dry. His face was dominated by massive eyes with tiny pupils. He had no overtly visible nose, his nostrils hiding behind tiny flaps of skin. His mouth sat low on his face, coming close to crowding out his chin. His smile exposed blunt conical canine teeth. Swept-back ivory horns framed his white hair. His arms were connected by a membrane to his sides, forming a simple wing. This wing continued along the last finger on the hand, which was much longer than any of the others, but folded back against his forearms. Buckled into a normal car seat, his long tail hung between his legs and coiled by his feet.

“Do you want me to stay behind?” Xiv asked.

Travis shook his head. “No, it’s all right. If you want to ride along, you can come. I’m not sure I’m going to find anything.”

“Then lets go,” Xiv said with a grin.

“You just want to get out of the base, don’t you?”

“…Maybe?”

Travis sighed and started driving. He didn’t start listening to the voice of the GPS until they got into the vicinity of Wellerby. Wellerby was only officially outside of New Port Arthur. The only sign that one had left the city and entered the suburb was the street sign declaring it so. It was largely residential and small retail, packed with detached houses of myriad ages. Nothing particularly stood out about the street the device directed him to. It was lined with older houses, some of which had been renovated more often and more recently than others. The most run-down example had a large white truck parked out front. It also turned out to be the address from the record. Travis parked across the street, and the two got out of the sedan. A quick glance showed no other traffic on the street, so they crossed and approached the building. The wood-frame Victorian house had once been stately and respectably middle class, but had sat abandoned for a long time. It looked more than a little sad, with faded, flaked paint, and sunbleached wooden shingles. The front door sat wide open.

Travis climbed the porch steps, Xiv a few steps behind him. The interior was unlit, and there was no sign of a light fixture to change that. There was plenty of sunlight spilling in and neither of them had difficulty seeing the staircase, or the open doorway to the back room. In the back room, the floor had been ripped up to the joists, and a woman in jeans and t-shirt was trying to finagle a sheet of plywood into place. Helping her was a lanky young man in similar, though looser fitting, attire. He was the first to glance up. At the sight of Travis and Xiv, he gave a start and stepped back. Being on a piece of plywood their laid earlier, he avoided sticking his foot between the exposed joists. The girl yelped as the plywood began to topple. Travis caught the edge of the board, keeping it from falling too far. Her green eyes moved to his hand, then up his arm to the mask on his face.

A scowl crossed her features.

“You can’t just barge in here,” she said.

“Your front door was open.”

“So what?”

“Are you Erin O’Shea?”

“Yes. What is this about?”

Travis gave an inquiring look towards the young man. Erin followed his gaze and got the message.

“David, would you be so kind as to give us a moment so I can get rid of this guy?” She beamed at him, and David gave a sheepish grin back.

“Uh, sure, I’ll be at my house.” David picked his way over the bare joists, and slipped past Travis, shrinking under his scrutiny. Xiv watched the young man hurry across the street and into the house their black car was parked in front of. A girl with mahogany hair stared out the front window of that house, meeting Xiv’s gaze with a look of utter fascination.

“I thought the Community Fund was supposed to be discreet,” Erin said. She jabbed a finger at Travis’ chest. “I miss one payment and you guys come goose-stepping in here to harass me?”

“I’m not here about Community Service,” Travis said.

Erin’s bluster deflated. “Um…”

“Have you lived here long?” Other than the work on the flooring, there was no sign the house had been touched in ages.

“No, I just started moving in today.”

“Where did you live before?”

“What’s with the personal questions?”

“There is an anomaly with your Fund membership records. There’s no sign they existed before today.”

“Don’t give me that, I’ve been a Fund member since I got my sidekick permit when I was fourteen,” Erin said.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s gone amiss,” Travis said. “Maybe your parents can help shed some light on the matter. What were their names?”

Erin glared at Travis, then her face slowly slackened. A moment later, a look of horrified realization built in her eyes. “I… can’t remember.” She met Travis’ gaze, her body starting to tremble. “I can’t even remember their faces… What sort of person forgets her own parents?” Pushing past Travis, Erin ran from the house and across the street. The door was unlocked, and she disappeared within.

“Huh,” Travis said. He took out his phone and dialed.

“Voiceprint Identify.”

“Identify Shadowdemon.”

“Confirmed,” Shiva said.

“What can you tell me about the parents of our Erin O’Shea?” Travis asked.

“Searching. No data found.”

“Elaborate.”

“The inserted record contains no information about parents or guardians.”

“If she had joined as a sidekick there would have to be.”

“We are not legally permitted to accept a minor without the permission of their legal guardian. The fields are simply blank. Expanding scope of public records search. Please wait.”

Travis rolled his eyes, but waited.

“There is another anomaly.”

“Elaborate.”

“All current records that should exist, do. BHA, DMV, Community Fund, all have the same Erin O’Shea on file. No past records exist. No records of birth or education which match with the individual in question.”

“If you were going to create a fake identity, the first thing you’d do is secure a birth certificate.”

“And yet none exists.”

“Thank you, Shiva.” Travis hung up and turned to Xiv, who was still looking across the street. “We’re going to very obviously leave, then find a nice quiet spot to watch this house.”

Pale blue nictitating membranes wiped the dust of the old house from Xiv’s eyes as he crossed the street. Carol watched the two heroes climb into the black sedan and drive off. Being home to the headquarters of the Community Fund, New Port Arthur and its surrounding suburbs saw more activity by costumed heroes than most places, but she hadn’t seen any this close before. Having finally gotten a look at him in-person, Carol decided Xiv was actually kind of cute, even if he did look a little odd too. Behind her, David made softly cooing noises as he comforted a distressed Erin. The redhead had her face buried in David’s upper chest and her arms tight about him. He had one arm about her shoulders and reassuringly stroked her hair with the other hand. Carol walked past them, up the stairs, and back to her room. The spiral bound notebook was still sitting on the corner of her bed, open to a page of neat penmanship in red ink. Picking it up, Carol’s eyes snapped to the first instance of a name in the text.

“She was Skyline – Erin O’Shea.”

Carol flipped back a page and found the first words below the doodles.

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

It had rained last night, hadn’t it? Positively torrential as she recalled. But not before she’d written those words. Before she’d penned that line, Carol had been looking out the window at a clear night and the glimmering lights of the city. It had only started after she’d written that and gone to go to the bathroom. There was a simple way to test if she was right about what had happened. Carol flipped forward through the notebook until she found the end of the red text. Picking up the strange pen, she sat down and began writing.

“Xiv wanted to have a chance to speak to the girl he’d seen through the window, but decided to wait until dark to seek her out, so there would be less chance of being seen.” She paused and decided to add a bit more detail. “Carol’s parents had decided to go out, and stumbled on to a cozy and inexpensive bed and breakfast where they could spend time together without their children. With David on a date with Erin, Carol was alone in the house when Xiv arrived, determined to speak with her.” Carol re-read the short text and nodded in satisfaction. If it did work, she wanted everyone out of the house, but there was no reason they couldn’t be happy while out of the house. Now she just needed one thing she had a short supply of – patience.

* * *

It was boring watching people eat. Erin and the guy they’d first seen her with had parked themselves in a booth at a diner. The diner was only notable for being cheap and not too far away. So while the two had parked themselves in a booth, Xiv and Travis were parked a block away. Travis had filled a few of the past hours asking Shiva about the house Erin had fled to earlier. It was registered as owned by Floyd Hardtop, a sales rep for a local distillery with ambitions of national distribution. His wife was Joy, a retail clerk at a florist. They had two kids, David, seventeen, and Carol, fifteen. Absolutely nothing anomalous had turned up. Except, Erin had run into their house when distressed by Travis’ questioning.

So, they sat, watching Erin and David alternate between looking at menus and staring into each other’s eyes. When they’d left the old house, Xiv had hoped something might happen. But this was not what he’d expected, and certainly failed to hold his interest.

“I’m getting a bit of a crick in my tail,” Xiv said. “I’ve been sitting on it too long.”

“Why don’t you get out and stretch. Just don’t let them see you.”

Xiv took another look down the street. It seemed unlikely the two would notice anything in the diner with them, let alone a block down a dark street. The dragon boy climbed out of the car and stretched his spine, including down the length of his tail. In the process, he bent almost double backwards, tail reaching high above him. In this odd posture, he began to wonder about the third person he’d seen that day. She’d been watching their arrival. Had she seen something else? Straightening up, he glanced at Travis. He was seated quite stilly behind the wheel of the sedan, staring off into the distance. Anyone unfamiliar with him would think he was looking at nothing. Xiv knew he had an artificial eye which could zoom in on distant details.

Leaping into the air, Xiv flew back the way they’d come. His wings were not big enough to carry his weight through aerodynamic forces alone, but they gave him a great deal of control. Looping around a telephone pole, he appeared to glide, even when climbing. Since he did not flap his wings, his flight was silent as he passed over rooftops and trees. A single light was on in the house he was headed for. The glow emerged from a gable window overlooking the roof of an enclosed porch. Xiv landed quietly on the porch. The window was open, and Xiv could smell someone inside. Despite his almost nonexistent nose, Xiv had an abnormally acute sense of smell. No one else he knew of would have been able to smell anyone inside the room.

At the sight of movement at her window, Carol looked up. She fought the urge to squeal at Xiv’s arrival. She hopped up out of her chair and motioned Xiv inside. “Sit down.” Xiv looked at the chair. The slats that made up the back had enough space for his tail to hang out the back, so he wouldn’t end up sitting on it. It would make it hard to get back up quickly, so he decided against threading his tail between the slats and simply looped it under himself.

“I’m Carol,” she said.

“I’m Xiv.”

“I’ve always wondered, does that stand for something?”

Xiv paused, debating if he wanted to actually say, but he was aware that with his appearance, he didn’t have anything resembling a secret identity.

“It was originally ‘fourteen’. Now they’re my initials.”

“Really? So you have another name?”

“I don’t use it,” Xiv said.

“But what is it?”

“Xavier Isaac Vogel,” Xiv said.

“It’s not a bad name,” Carol said.

“It doesn’t feel like mine.”

“A lot of dragons showed up around the time you did.”

“Most of them were demi-dragons, people who can turn into dragons.”

“But you’re different.”

“Yes.”

When he didn’t elaborate, Carol asked, “In what way?”

“I’m a dragon with some human genes patched in.”

“So can you turn the rest of the way into a person? Or into a dragon?”

“No,” Xiv said.

“Why not? That doesn’t sound right.”

“I am just the way I am.”

As Carol picked up a pen and a notebook, Xiv tried to figure out how to steer the conversation away from himself and to the house across the street. She wrote something on the notebook.

“Earlier today,” Xiv started, his mind still churning through the potential conversational detour. A woozy feeling welled up inside him as Carol’s eyes went a bit wide. As the disorientation swept through Xiv, he screwed his eyes shut. He raised a hand to his face to steady his head. Something scrunched uncomfortably as the heel of his palm pressed against it. The disorientation was already starting to clear, but confusion was setting in. He opened the eye not covered by his hand and knew immediately something was wrong. There was no wing membrane blocking is view of Carol, and something pinkish was intruding on the corner of his vision.

Slowly drawing his hand away from his face, Xiv stared at it in horror. Instead of being the longest, his last finger was now the shortest, and the wing membrane was gone. The color had gone from snow white to slightly peach. Looking up, he caught sight of his reflection in the vanity mirror. The boy he saw had handsome, well defined features. His platinum blond hair nearly fell into his eerie blue eyes. His irises were the same pale blue as his nictitating membranes had been.

Xiv let out a horrified shriek and scrambled out the window.

Unable to get the grip he was accustomed to, he rolled down the shingles and thudded to the lawn. He scrambled to his feet and ran. Sticks, stones and other random debris bit the soles of his bare feet as he ran. Regaining a modicum of sense, Xiv made for where the car was parked. It was not far away. Travis had stepped out of the vehicle and was looking about. Running over to Travis, Xiv fought to catch his breath.

“Can I help you?”

“It’s me, Xiv.”

Travis got the look that came over him whenever his mind was churning through unexpected data. “You know I have to be sure of that,” he said.

“You haven’t been able to sleep since you lost your eye.”

Travis was quiet for a long moment. “So what happened?”

“I don’t know.” Wincing, Xiv leaned against the car and looked at the bottom of his foot. He prised a shard of glass from his sole, drawing a rivulet of cyan blood. He squeezed his foot to try to staunch the flow.

“That looks a little deep, we should probably get that checked out.”

Xiv nodded.

“I’ll tell Ixa to meet us at Vanguard. We can try to figure out what happened.”

* * *

Continued in Part 3…