Conjuring Dragons by Chante Francis (surface ebook reader TXT) 📕

“Turns out Chad and this girl were worse than we had thought…” We paused, debating on how to tell them the rest, wondering about their reactions when they find out about the real Chad. Everyone gave us encouraging looks as if to say go on. Downing the rest of our cups we finally did.

“Well apparently Chad had lied, he told us he was 15. Turns out he’s actually 31 with a baby face and his name isn’t really Chad Thomason.”

“It was really Troy Dorian.”

The women gasp and their faces slip into masks of shock and horror before my father speaks up, “Baby you know him?”

“Not personally of course,” my mom answers, “but I have heard of him… He pops up all over the news all the time, although it’s not as bad as it used to be four— oh my goodness!”

“Four what?!” Gregory yells, “Why can’t you women ever just finish your sentences and tell the whole story before you start freaking out and yelling ‘OMG!’ We could have been fully informed by now if you would just keep on track and for once in your lives…” All the women glare at him and he quietly trails off, while the other males slowly shake their heads.

“I know what you mean man, but it’s best not to say anything, you know how testy women can be.” My father unwittingly says to him, slowly falling into the hole Gregory had apparently dug for both of them.

“What was that?” My mom, Gianna, asks turning to her husband.

The blood drains from his face and fear sparks in his eyes, before he swallows his distress. He clears his throat, looks into Gianna’s eyes and answers with an innocent smile, “I love you. I love you so much baby. I just love you.”

“That’s what I thought.” She narrows her eyes at him.

Carter cuts in impatiently, “So who the hell is this Troy Dorian guy?!”

“Troy Dorian, is one of the worst serial rapists in this country.” Rebecca starts, “But that’s not all, he’s also the right hand man to the second in command of a very large human trafficking organization. His boss was found and arrested 3 years ago thanks to an anonymous tip.”

“He’s an extremely dangerous person, and you girls are lucky to still be alive.”

“He’s been charged with murder multiple times, he’s kidnapped and sold hundreds of young girls on the black market for years, he’s also been suspected of working for one of the biggest drug lords in Europe and no one’s been able to stop him.”

“That is, no one was able to stop him until four years ago, and now unfortunately, it’s apparently become harder.”

“That’s what she said.” Jason whispers in my ear and I pinch his leg.

Gregory sighs exasperatedly, “You girls said you dispatched him, hid his and his accomplice’s bodies, and then rushed home right?” We bite our lips and nod at him, “You went home, got in trouble found out more about ‘Chad’. Then what?”

“We ate dinner, swallowed some pain meds and went up to our room. After locking the door, we sat at the old desktop and immediately went on google.”

“I don’t know what I would do without google, it keeps me going.” I say completely serious. “I use it every day for practically everything.” I sighed thinking about it lovingly.

“Yes, well… We looked up some things and got a whole bunch of useless crap. I opened this bullshit magic site, searched it and upon exiting it another window popped up.”

“It was a chat screen with one of the site moderators.”

            “Jyps and I had a very interesting conversation with her. We found out that she believed herself to be an oracle, and her name was Philomena. We didn’t give her any details about our situation, but she seemed to know a lot about it and spoke to us in this creepy cryptic way.”

“After a really long time she asked us a question, although I can’t for the life of me remember it, I do remember feeling like we could change the fate of the world with our answer.”

“We probably should have listened to that feeling and thought through our answer, but we didn’t and after we told Philomena our choice she gave us the address to a store on the outskirts of town. She gave us some specific directions and then she shut down the chat window. Thankfully we had written everything on a piece of paper.”

“Quick as lightening we changed into all black clothing, borrowed Paul’s keys and rushed out the door to our foster dad’s car like escaped convicts. We drove straight to where the lady told us, only getting lost about three times before finally pulling up in front of the old dilapidated building. Thank god it was so late that only a handful of people were on the streets. The only perk to living in a small town.”

“The directions led us around the old store to the back were we found this equally creepy, old, dirty looking demon head thing, which when kicked, opened up to be a book.”

“There was a sticky note stuck between the empty eye sockets of the demons cranium with a note wishing us luck and hoping we stayed on the correct path through our journey.”

“Whatever the hell that meant,” Roni mutters to herself.

“Basically, we sat on filthy crates in the dimly lit alley thumbing through the oddly cased book. We had been kind of detached since the incident at the park so although tired and hurting, the day’s events hadn’t fully hit us yet.”

“Anyway, we looked through the book and found our way out, we found the spell that would help us. A revival spell.”

“Of course there was a warning on the page--”

Gregory cuts me off, “Because you can never be sure of what you’re bringing back when you use one of those spells. It goes against the laws of fate and nature.”

“Yes, the warning also said that what you revive might not be what was lost. The being brought back would come back as something dark, unnatural, possibly someone else entirely. When you revive that person they bring back a piece of evil with them, the size of that piece depends on how bad they were before they departed.” Veronica sums up the warning.

“Of course we didn’t really think it through, we just ignored it and skipped straight to the ingredients and directions.”

“A lot of the stuff we had never heard of and others, we had no way of getting.”

Veronica says, “So we got up and started walking back to the car when Jyps tripped over a box. Of course being the uh, curious adolescents we were, we had to open it.”

“All the ingredients were inside, and after going through the box and reading the spell again, we rushed back to the car like world renowned sprinters.”

I closed my eyes and kept talking, finding that it was extremely easy to tell them the story that way. “After a quick stop to a few stores, we went back to where we left them, to find the whole place surrounded in yellow crime scene tape. There was a huge crowd of people all around the entrance watching the police comb the scene because apparently there was blood or something.”

“Long story short, we snuck around, found a way to get to the bodies and pull them further into the trees. We surrounded them in salt, because one of the websites we checked out said something about a salt and sand circle. Cast the spell on ‘Chad’ first to see if it would actually work, but when he didn’t move or even show signs of reanimation we decided to stop halfway through and just pack up and come clean to the cops.”

            “I turned to blow out the candles when an arm grabbed my leg and I screamed.”

            “Her hand accidentally knocked over the candle and the forest caught fire. I pulled her out of the salt circle, and ‘Chad’ stood up growling at us.”

            “We were scared shitless, standing outside the circle hugging each other and shaking.”

            “His eyes were pitch black and he had this fierce murderous look on his face. He opened his mouth to say something and we turned tails and ran.”

            “I looked back at him once and saw him pounding on some invisible barrier screaming something, it looked like the salt served its purpose because he couldn’t follow us.”

            “We heard the cops coming and made a split second decision to turn back grab all the incriminating stuff and drive home in our borrowed car.”

            I opened my eyes and looked around at everyone’s shocked faces. No one said anything until Gregory opened his mouth and then they were all talking at once. He shouted for everyone to be quiet before he could question us, “So what exactly does he want? And where’s the book now?”

            “We’re not actually sure how he got out of the circle, but he did tell us what he wanted after he slaughtered our entire foster family and burned the house to the ground.” Veronica says with a grim smile.

            “He wants to be whole. He wants us to complete the spell, and bring back his dead girlfriend, so they can rule the world together.”

            “Apparently he has her body on ice.”

            The room goes quiet again until Matthew whispers, “Whole?”

            “He looks solid but he isn’t, and he’s actually trapped in the visible world between life and death. He wants us to finish calling his soul back to this world, but if we do he’ll get stronger.”

            “If you think he’s scary now, wait until he’s whole again and has who knows what kind of demonic powers in addition to what he stole from us.” Silence.

            Matthew gets up and dusts his clothes off before reaching for Gianna’s hand, “Come on my love. Its past 1 in the morning and you shouldn’t be up this late.” She takes his hand and he helps her up, she kisses both of our heads and follows her husband to the door where they stop and look back at us looking completely shaken.

            “Don’t worry girls, we’ll find some way to stop him. You’re not in this alone anymore.” Rebecca says before she takes her husband’s free hand and they join the other adults at the door in shock. “Honey, I think we should have prissy sleep with us for the rest of the night. It just doesn’t feel right letting her sleep alone after hearing about Troy Dorian.”

            They leave the room in different directions, “Come on then V, I think it’s time I got you to bed.” Carter says lifting my shaking sister from his lap and into his arms so he can carry her out the room. “Night guys. Hope you get some sleep.” He calls to us quietly over his shoulder.

            I slip out of Jason’s arms and grab the jug of juice from the floor, I raise it to my lips and drain its contents. “Damn.” Jason calls before he rifles through one of the drawers for something. He takes a shaky breath before grabbing what he needed and walks into the bathroom. “Will you be alright without me for a few moments? Or would you like to join me in the shower?”

            “I’ll be fine.” I attempt to lie, but can’t hold on to it, “hurry up please.” He nods at me from the door way, then disappears back inside the bathroom. With him gone, I take the time to change my clothes and start putting my things away. Anything to get my mind off the hell my life has been the past