Dark Fangs: Forbidden Fugitives

Chapter Thirty-Three

"Oh, so you like my dog?" the child asked, smiling innocently.

    Drake's bones rattled inside him, and a sudden rage boiled in his gut. She's my dog...he thought rigidly, feeling abruptly overly defensive. Even with the pain that accompanied the movements, Drake reached out to grab at Swifty's silky face and shoulders, attempting to urge her closer to him, his hands shaking with disbelief and fear of losing her all over again. Swifty leapt up into the cave and nuzzled her head into Drake's shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her, drawing her into a weak embrace.

     "I call her Patches. Don't you think it fits her?" the young child said happily, crawling into the cave as well, his smile brighter than ever. Coco squawked at him acutely. 

     Drake curled his lip. "No." He growled, not meaning for the animalistic growl that suddenly echoed off his words to enter his throat. Where did that come from? he wondered sharply, before discarding the worry and bringing Swifty closer to his aching chest. "She has a name. It's Swifty. And she's mine." Drake barked, his breath rasping in his jaws and burning his lungs. Coco flitted his wings towards Drake in an uneasy manner.

     The child raised his brows and sat down cross-legged, fluttering his eyelashes in slight confusion. "You really knocked your head in the waves didn't you?"

     Drake scowled. "What? What's wrong with you?" The dialogue was starting to make his head pound like a horse's hooves on hard ground. 

     "Well you didn't fly over here. You obviously swam." The kid smirked, crossing his arms. "Unless you were on a raft..." he muttered with a swift, unconcerned glance at Coco.

     Drake clenched his jaws and Swifty whimpered quietly, licking at his nose. "You've got some nerve....Where are you parents?" Drake eased his hold on Swifty's shoulders and began to caress the dog's spine and cheeks with shaking, bruised hands.

     The kid raised his brows again, but his eyes glinted with haughtiness. "Nice to see your parents, too."

     Drake rolled his eyes. "Seriously. Where the heck are your parents."

     "I'm Timmy. I don't need parents." The child apostrophized the word 'parent' with his small hands. "And Patches is my new scavenging buddy. She'll take care of me for now."

     Drake bit down again, hard enough to evoke an aching throb in his jaw bones. "You're not taking my dog." He snickered, still hardly believing this small child thought Swifty was his now. "And you being named 'Timmy' does not give you, as a six year old, the legal ability to be out here alone. Understand?" he added sharply.

     Timmy frowned, crossing his arms tightly. "I'm ten! Get it right!...Scales and blight, you're terrible at guessing age, as well as pet ownership." 

     Scales and blight? What does that even mean? Drake rolled his eyes, and let a ghost of a smile cross his stonily wry expression as Swifty settled in between his legs, resting her slim black and white head on one of his knees. He eased his stiff limbs into a cross-legged seat, so Swifty's already aching build wouldn't be crushed between them. With a content, soft sigh he rested his hands on her back, slowly rubbing circles into her slightly damp, silky fur. 

     "All right, you've had enough fun, infant." Timmy declared crossly, shooting a withering look at Drake. "Give my dog back, now please." Timmy held out a hand expectantly.

     Drake raised his eyebrows, the motion pinching a slight ache into his forehead. Coco cocked his little grey head up at Drake, and Drake tilted his head to meet Coco's glassy beads of black eyes. "Nah. We're both good. I think my dog would rather to stay with me, not you, child." Drake punctuated his sentence with curt nod, though it made his neck cramp dully.

     Timmy stood up, crouching slightly, as the ceiling of the tunnel was just a shy of a foot from his height. "I'm not leaving here without Patches."

     Drake smiled dryly. "Oh, well, thank God. I'm not either. I guess we have the same goal." Sarcasm is not my thing, Drake thought, biting back a look of embarrassment. This was a ten year old child he was talking to, alone on an islet, far away from society, after all.

     It wasn't like this kid had any town or village he could drag Drake back to just to humiliate him. A cult, maybe...maybe a cult. 

     That would fit him, for sure. 

     "Listen, guttersnipe. That dog, whether you and your screwy bird like it or not, is coming with me. She's mine, I found her, I rescued her, probably from you two donkeys, so she's mine. I am keeping her." Timmy finished with a hard scowl setting in his face, blue-purple eyes flashing in the dark with a shadowy glint of fury. 

     Drake could barely contain himself; laugher bounced against his ribs, but he had to keep it in. The pain in his spine, lungs, and dry throat was too pressing. Coco made some indignant twittering-squawking noises, flaring his sharp-feathered wings, but Drake guessed he hadn't a clue what Timmy had just said; He was only reading off Timmy's anger, and attempt to quip Drake. 

     "You aren't getting my dog." Drake was chuckling now through the pain. "You're a ten-year -old boy. I am a sixteen-year-old teenager, who has literal legal ownership of this dog. What part of 'she belongs to me, you're not taking her' don't you get?" Swifty accentuated Drake's speech with a whine of assurance.

     Timmy scowled with a cold, steely blaze in his multi-colored eyes. "You don't understand what I am, do you?" He turned silently back to the cave exit and hopped down, back outside into the dark, sparse jungle of the key, his footfalls fading silently into the wind.

     Drake made a face, staring at Timmy's no longer existent form in the cave. He stroked Swifty's remaining ear with a slightly trembling hand and allowed his discomforted muscles some respite for the moment.

     "That was ridiculous." Drake told Swifty and Coco in a quivering, giggling tone of voice. Maybe I'm going crazy. Maybe the pain and dehydration's really got to me, and I had a conversation with no one but the air just now....

     Coco leapt gracefully onto Drake's knee, opposite Swifty's resting head, and fluffed out his soft little feathered body. He trilled something softly and rubbed his head against Swifty's flank, as if greeting her from her short departure. Swifty cooed to the tiny parrot and sighed long and softly into his face through her big black nose.

      Drake smiled, but the peace he felt quickly dissipated when Timmy's footfalls resumed their mad dash for the cave. This time, as he approached, there was the distinct dancing of firelight through the tiny island's vegetation, and up onto the walls of the butte, then into the tunnel.

     Swifty began to growl, and Drake latched onto her, his muscles once more throbbing with a cramping agony as he flexed them.

     Timmy was not bringing that fire to aid Drake in lighting the cave, that much he knew, with a sinking dread in his stomach. 

     Where's Indominus when I need her...Drake sighed helplessly in his mind.