That conversation with Amanda sparked my interest in my fellow chimerae though
I quickly discovered that we with the secret knowledge of our eventual fate kept it a
secret.There were 33 of us who had actually performed the transformative dance.
That meant 33 had had tasted prey and knew what it felt like to have a forked
tongue slide over ones sharp teeth.We considered ourselves the " truebloods"
Amanda only had let me in on it in order to obtain further evidence of our temporal
abilities.
Most of the young chimerae ladies born in 1904 were unaware of their
serpentine heritage,the serpent dance or their eventual fate.
They had stayed eternal 12 year olds for the last
15 years.but brilliant successful 12 year olds who seemed immortal and had
revolutionized the world with science,art and medical breakthroughs.
There were 330 of those,whom I viewed as little more than immortal humans.They
didn't know the joy of stalking human prey like I .
Its the 330 that the world noticed.
Naturally humans took an interest in such brilliant creative young girls.I and the
other chimerae "in the know" on the other claw immediately recognized that the
discoveries being made could be applied to evil ends as well as good.Germ warfare,
nuclear holocaust,bloody revolutions would be some of the unwanted byproducts
of the creative genius of the chimerae.
I started keeping a dossier on the unnatural 12 year olds,as well as on the humans
who were involved in their affairs.
I shuddered when I got reports that humans involved began referring to their
charges as " dragons".
However I ignored the warning signs and continued to dabble with my
reptillian heritage in the dark allies of the cities I and the other 32 truebloods hid
ourselves in.
When I visited Drumheller reports started to surface of a mankiller small dinosaur.
When I visited Brazil the natives started talking of a baby snatching boa constrictor.
Over in Deadwood on one vacation I brought a rattlesnake to town.
The others did the same.We didn't know why we couldn't control ourselves
since the transformation required our consent and active participation in order to bring
the reptile beasts into the world.
Then one morning I awoke to a searing pain as a jack booted German officer
drove a ironstake through my chest.I shrieked as I gushed out blood and suddenly
felt my neck stretching and my body lengthening and thinning as I went through
a involuntary transformation into a reptillian snake thing.
I gushed out gouts of bright red blood and writhed about growling and hissing
and ignoring the silver cross that had been thrust in my snout by Igor,the hunchbacked
apeman who stood beside the impeccably dressed German officer.
Then the hissing stopped and the pain began as my mutated body fell limply and
lifelessly to the bloodstained bed.
Yet I was still aware and knew that my snaky remains,still impaled by that
burning iron stake,had been loaded in a coffin,rolled over the tarmac and loaded aboard
one of the earlier Junkers bombers.
It was 1925 and 32 other dead snake things also lay in coffins destined for
a Eifel Mountain retreat in Germany owned by Baron Richtoven.
The good Baron had been following our activities for years and had decided to
go into dragon slaying.
We lay in a castle dungeon in our coffins for nearly 15 years,aware of the squeaking
rats that crept over the 33 coffins but dead to the bigger world events taking place.
Everyone wanted to get their hands on the 330 " dragons".
Nations began positioning themselves to obtain more of these valuable immortal
commodities.
Small conflicts sprouted up here and there.
Japan invaded part of China.
In Germany misguided breeding programs to produce the perfect
" Aryan Girl" led to inflation,riots and many dissident right wing political parties.
In the American South the discovery of brilliant young unaging coloured girls
led to sweeping " Coloured Laws".
The girls became hot commodities for rulers and leaders who liked the notion of
immortal 12 year old girls in the family tree.
There was the Imperial Emperor of China,who sent his eldest daughter
Fu Apnarg over to
find the two missing princess's Lady Jacqueline and Lady Haley.and with orders not to
return to the Imperial Court till she found them.
She did and on Jan 01 1940 boarded Flight 810 in New York with the two kids.
There was Governor Zebulah Walker
whose main claim to fame was a 1936
photo of a sullen faced hogtied Sheriff Walker glowering at the camera on the hood
of a Buick V8 while on one side stood a diminutive girl with a big BAR while on the other
stood a grinning coloured girl with her hands up in surrender.
Then Walker got elected Governor of Oklahoma in 1938 and learned his mortal
enemy Paula
Parker was a brilliant 12 year old who'd been having trouble with the law for 34 years.
He boarded Flight 810 on Jan 1 1940, under a assumed identity.
There was the " dragon" bank robber girl Paula Parker and her partner the
coloured girl Machine Gun Tucula.
True to form Paula would go through a bank daintily looking for "pretties"
to fund social reforms in the deep south,like a busty young Robin Hood
while Tucula just blew everything away with her BAR that didn't look culturally
significant.
On Jan 1 1940 they boarded flight 810 under assumed identities somewhere
in Newfoundland.
There was the famous bounty hunter Manny Hunt,who'd helped Fu Apnarg to round
up the meandering Imperial princesses and later got involved in a diplomatic mission
to ease the tensions which erupted on September 30 1939 into The Great Dragon World
War.
He boarded flight 810 that day in January as well,reputely with a valuable
diplomatic pouch.
There was Cleopatra Dark,a 12 year old painter whose revolutionary paintings
had caused volunteers to take part in the Spanish Civil War four years earlier.
There was the millionaire heiress Samantha Manson,whose birth records
had been sealed ever since her mother had died in childbirth.She was a chimera
alright and had helped her dad develop the science of Magical and Temporal Physics.
There was her socialite playbunny girlfriend Danielle " Bambi" Fenton.
They both boarded flight 810 at Amity Park Airport,Wisconsin on Jan 1 1940.
The flight had taken off with 47 humans and 8 probable "dragons"
They'd been last spotted by a distant P-47 which had been under orders to shoot
them down before they left Labradors coastal waters.
A flight of Junkers bombers led by Baron Richtoven intended to intercept
the Ford trimotor float plane and round up the valuable " dragon" cargo for a
expansionist Germany.
After locking his Manson Industries
air to air missles sensors onto the " dragons" magical heat signature
he'd fired the missle at the distant speck on the horizon.
He followed that with a long burst of the eight 50 calibres the plane
was armed with.
Then he heard the frightened squawks on his radio from a fellow allied pilot
who was part of a 50 fighter plane squadron that had been sent to shoot down
Richtoven's Junkers before they got near flight 810.
They were just over Greenlands west coast and
had been lining up their gun sights to blow away the German bombers when they
had come under attack from 33 DC-3 sized big boned monsters that were spitting
flame and acid at them.
There the legend began.