𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 ― j. grace ¹ ✓

four

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ELECTRIC LOVE

CHAPTER FOUR
[ L E O ]

╚═══*.·:·.☽✧ ✦ ✧☾.·:·.*═══╝

LEO HAD OTHER plans than staring at Piper after she got claimed. Sure, she looked great and all, but he had to go into the forest and find that dragon. Leo knew this idea was insane. He knew that it probably wouldn't go according to plan, but he promised Jason a flying ride. If he was going to be on this quest, he needed to do this.

The woods weren't like any place he'd been before. Leo had been raised in a north Houston apartment complex. The wildest things he'd ever seen were that rattlesnake in the cow pasture and his Aunt Rosa in her nightgown, until he was sent to Wilderness School.

Even there, the school had been in the desert. No trees with gnarled roots to trip over. No streams to fall into. No branches casting dark, creepy shadows and owls looking down at him with their big reflective eyes. This was the Twilight Zone.

He stumbled along until he was sure no one back at the Cabins could possibly see him. Then he summoned fire. Flames danced along his fingertips, casting enough light to see. He hadn't tried to keep a sustained burn going since he was five at that picnic table. Since his mom's death, he'd been too afraid to try anything. Even this tiny fire made him feel guilty.

He kept walking, looking for dragon-type clues — giant footprints, trampled trees, swaths of burning forest. Something that big couldn't exactly sneak around, right? But he saw nada. Once he glimpsed a large, furry shape like a wolf or a bear, but it stayed away from his fire, which was fine by Leo.

Then, at the bottom of a clearing, he saw the first trap — a hundred-foot-wide crater ringed with boulders.

Leo had to admit it was pretty ingenious. In the center of the depression, a metal vat the size of a hot tub had been filled with bubbly dark liquid — Tabasco sauce and motor oil. On a pedestal suspended over the vat, an electric fan rotated in a circle, spreading the fumes across the forest. Could metal dragons smell?

The vat seemed to be unguarded. But Leo looked closely, and in the dim light of the stars and his handheld fire, he could see the glint of metal beneath the dirt and leaves — a bronze net lining the entire crater. Or maybe see wasn't the right word — he could sense it there, as if the mechanism was emitting heat, revealing itself to him. Six large strips of bronze stretched out from the vat like the spokes of a wheel. They would be pressure sensitive, Leo guessed. As soon as the dragon stepped on one, the net would spring closed, and voilà — one gift-wrapped monster.