The Dragon Factory Read Online Free PDF

the architecture,” said Hecate distractedly. “Two onions in the martini.” The girl was twenty, buxom, tan, with foamy masses of curly red hair. She had freckles and several ornate tattoos—Chinese characters and Celtic knots. She was everything Hecate was not. Although Hecate was beautifully made—tall and slender and ice pale, with snow-colored hair and eyes as dark as ripe blueberries—she wasn’t a California blonde. Her own breasts were small, her nipples the color of dusty roses. The only mark on her otherwise flawless skin was a small scar in the shape of a starburst that was the same dusty rose color as her nipples. That . . . and a small tattoo on her left inner thigh of a caduceus on which two fierce dragons—not ordinary serpents—coiled around the winged herald’s staff. The scales of the dragons and the symmetry of their bodies suggested a double helix.
    Paris had an identical tattoo on his left upper calf and the same starburst scar on his chest. The scar was their personal mark. A bond in theflesh, as their father often called it, a sign of their greatness and a reminder of what Dad called their celestial heritage. They had been marked at birth when the doctors performing the emergency C-section on their mother had discovered twins locked chest-to-chest in an embrace, their blood-smeared cheeks pressed together. At first the doctors had feared that the twins were conjoined in some surgically challenging way, but as they were carefully lifted out of their dying mother’s womb and laid in the incubator the infants rolled apart, an action that tore the fragile skin over their chests. That had been the only conjoined point, and it did them no harm except to leave a star-shaped scar on each child’s chest. The star never faded.
    The delivering doctor, a deeply Catholic obstetrician at the Cancún hospital where their mother had been rushed following a collapse at a Christmas party at one of the bigger resorts, saw the mark at the moment when the delivery nurse announced the official delivery time. Twelve-oh-one on Christmas morning.
    “
Milagro!
” the doctor had declared, and crossed himself. A miracle.
    The story made the papers worldwide. Twins, albinos with shocking blue eyes, born at the stroke of midnight as Christmas Eve became Christmas Day. The first birth of the holiday, and each child was marked with a star like the Star of Bethlehem. The story, nonsensical as it might be, was picked up by wire services around the world. The death of their mother and the coincidence of her name—Mary—fueled the story into one of beauty from tragedy. Before the Jakoby Twins were a minute old they were already legends.
    Hecate touched her scar with one hand and with the fingers of the other traced the smooth and unmarked valley between the sleeping girl’s breasts.
What would it be like to be ordinary?
Hecate mused. Not for the first time.
    Even deep in her sleep the girl felt the touch and moaned again. Hecate bent and kissed the smooth place between the girl’s breasts, paused, and then licked the skin, tasting the olio of sweat, perfume, and natural musk. Hecate wondered what her flesh would truly taste like if shecould ever work up the nerve to bite. She wondered how blood would change the taste.
    “Good God,” said Paris as he came over with the drinks, “are you
never
satisfied?”
    Hecate raised her head and smiled. Her brother never quite understood her, and that was okay. There were plenty of things about her she didn’t want understood. She accepted the martini and sipped it.
    “Mmm, perfect.”
    Paris sipped his drink, set the glass down on the deck beside the bed, and began pulling on his clothes. He put on black slacks, a charcoal shirt, and loafers without socks, his clothing choice conservative to suit the occasion. This was the second of their twice-monthly visits to their father’s laboratory in Arizona. It was really a prison, but they’d sold their father a line of propaganda