Beep, beep, beep. The sound of my alarm clock woke me up. Groaning I turned over and slapped the sleep button. “Five more minutes,” I mumbled as I pulled the covers back over my head. Let my wallow in disappointment, I thought. Last night had been a bust. All the locations Dad had supplied where empty of Fae. They were empty of any living creature really. Abandoned warehouses and forgotten homes filled with nothing but dust, as if no one had lived in them for a few hundred years. Of course, that didn’t mean anything since magical creatures were well adapted in hiding themselves and making sure their tracks were covered. Still, I should have been able to find something that could have giving me a clue who was staying.
I sighed and rolled over. Forget about it, I thought to myself. Just relax and let yourself go back to sleep, and sleep I did.
*
The sound of slithering woke me up. I jerked out of bed and took a fighting stance against the unknown enemy, only to discover it was Synophi.
“Synophi! I was having a good dream and you ruined it,” I faked a kick at her, straightened out of the fighting stance and made my way back to bed. I fully intended to go back to sleep and return to the really hot guy that had been taking home in my dreams for the last few days. Black spiked hair, bright silver eyes, and a body any guy would have to spend years trying to perfect, this guy oozed sex appeal and charm. Too bad I could never get past his eyes, though. Every time I looked into those eyes I got lost in the feelings he invoked. Even when I tried to pull my mental shield down, his feelings where still there, lingering and pulling at my emotions as well. It was thrilling and annoying at the same time, since it showed my obvious lack of control in where Dream Boy was concerned. Yep, Dream Boy, that fit him. It was better than Mr. Hottie or anything else equally embarrassing.
Something wound its way up my arm and I let out a startled scream. See what I mean! Just thinking about him made me lose concentration on what was going on around me. I lifted my arm up and saw it was Synophi. Her small yellow slit eyes stared back at me. She reared her head back and opened her mouth. Two long, sharply pointed fangs gleamed in the sunlight as she lightly nicked my skin. Synophi was a snake, a Fierce Snake to be precise but with a little dragon blood within her. She was a scientific experiment done by James to see what would happen to animals if we injected animals with our blood. James dabbled in the sciences, a lot. Synophi was what came from one experiment. Though it didn’t go as he planned. He planned to make a protector of sorts. An animal that can control be controlled telepathically, by thoughts alone and can be told what to do. One he could control, yet when it came down blood, he used mine instead since his wasn’t compatible with the species of snakes, he had learned after a few failed experiments. James was a Fae, one that had had helped my mom escape when her mom had sealed her away who knows where. Mom doesn’t like to talk about those days, so I don’t really know what happened. She did tell us though that James had been one of her best friends and when he figured out what happened, he set her free and escaped along with her. James wasn’t what my mom thought. He was malicious coated in everything sugar and spice, and the only way i knew that was because of Synophi.
We had been staying with James when I was eight years old. It was at night while i was sleeping that i felt James enter the room I was sleeping in. I had been a late bloomer in dragon terms so I hadn’t known what was going on, and I was a deep sleeper. Everything I know now about that night came from Synophi. Well, apparently James had a syringe and had stolen some of my blood and injected it into Synophi when she was a baby snake. The result? A volatile Fierce Snake that had the capability of changing into a variety of animal forms and that could grow and shrink at will. James tried to control her but what he got was a snake that was as big as the one in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Synophi had destroyed the house and was ready to eat James alive (my family had gone out to look for a new place to move) until I came back from doing some recon. As soon as I got within viewing distance of the house, her gaze locked with mine and she shrunk down to her true size and slithered her way to me to wrap around my legs and began to nuzzle me. Trust me, I yelled, flailed, and screeched like any normal person would and she just continued to nuzzle my leg.
