I’ve found another fragment of what I’m beginning to think of as the Rose Red manuscript. As with previous stories, I’ve updated this one to reflect current technology and culture.

One bright, sunny afternoon, Rose Red drove to the local grocery store for her weekly shopping trip. List in hand, she strolled through the produce aisle, filling her buggy with a rainbow of vegetables and fruits.

In the deli area, she paused beside the display of freshly cooked rotisserie chickens, pondering which variety might work best for that evening’s supper and the salad she planned to make from the leftovers. Would the traditional flavor be best, or should she branch out and try lemon-pepper?

Something bumped into her buggy, pushing it into her hip, and she looked up into the grinning face of a lean young man sporting a buzz cut. He wore cargo shorts and a black, short-sleeved t-shirt emblazoned with gold letters reading USMC. Colorful tattoos encircled his arms from his wrists upward, disappearing under the sleeves of his t-shirt, and more tattoos scrolled down his legs to his ankles.

“Sorry,” he said and held up a brown, plastic basket half-filled with produce. “I was trying to decide which chicken to get and wasn’t paying attention to where I was swinging this.”

Rose Red smiled and pushed her buggy out of his way. “I was just having that same discussion with myself.”

“It’s tough, yeah? I mean, how can anybody possibly choose between Italian and barbecue?”

“I was waffling between traditional and lemon-pepper, but now I wonder if I shouldn’t try the Italian.”

He laughed and his deep brown eyes twinkled. “You pick one flavor and I’ll pick another, then we can taste test the other with a good wine. What do you say?”

Rose Red tilted her head to one side. “I say that would be great, except I don’t generally share wine with strangers.”

He held out a square palmed hand. “I’m Jackson. Most folks call me Jax. I’m up visiting my grandparents for a couple of weeks between deployments. They have a summer house on the lake.”

“Rose Red. I live nearby.” Rose Red took his hand. It was strong and warm and calloused, and engulfed her smaller hand, dwarfing it. “You’re in the Marines?”

“Yup, for a decade now. I reckon I’ll get out when they kick me out and not a minute sooner.” His hand tightened around hers and his smile warmed a fraction. “Now that we’re not strangers, how about that wine?”

She laughed and slipped her hand out of his. “I have plans this evening.”

“Tomorrow. A picnic at the lake and a movie after, since you’re putting me off tonight.”

Rose Red considered his smile and his confident stance and the warmth pooling in her stomach, and thought, why not? He was handsome and had good manners, and he’d offered her wine.

“Ok,” she said at last, and he grinned and exchanged phone numbers with her, and they arranged to meet the next day on the lake’s public beach.

The next day dawned bright and warm. When the time came, Rose Red packed a picnic basket with the fixings she’d made the night before, added utensils, plates, and napkins, then gathered it and the bag she’d already packed with beach accessories and hurried out the door.

Jax was waiting on her in the public beach’s parking lot, leaning against an older green and tan 4Runner. She parked opposite him, and when she got out, he was standing at her trunk, smiling at her.

“Need help?” he asked.

She shut the door and grinned. “You must be hungry.”

“How did you know?” He leaned down and bussed her cheek. “Ready to have some fun?”

In spite of herself, Rose Red placed a hand over the lingering warmth of his kiss and the blush stinging her cheeks. “Absolutely. Just let me get my stuff.”

They ate first, on an old quilt Rose Red spread out across the frothy sand, sharing chicken salads (Jax had brought one with apples and pecans, Rose Red one with almonds and grapes) and conversation. Jax told her about joining the Marines and the places he’d been, and Rose Red told him about her own work and what had drawn her to the area.

Midway through the conversation, she asked him about the many tattoos inked into every inch of skin along his arms and most of his back and legs. “What inspired you to get your first tattoo?”

His fingers brushed a dragon tattoo covering his upper right arm and he glanced down and away. That tattoo was an intricately detailed Japanese dragon, long and thin with twisted horns. It was coiled into an attack position with its fanged mouth open wide as it glared out at the world, and was vividly inked in a striking combination of deep red, black, and gray.

“Tradition,” he said at last.

“Did it hurt?”

A small smile curved his mouth and he peered at her out of the corners of his eyes. “Ever eaten hot peppers or something really spicy?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“You know how the first bite isn’t so bad? Maybe a little hot, but nothing you can’t handle.”

“But the second one’s heat builds on the first.”

“Exactly. So when you’re sitting for a lot of color or a really large, intricate design, it can get intense.”

Rose Red brushed her fingertips against the dragoon tattoo gracing his upper right arm, the one he’d touched himself just moments past. “What about this one?”

Jax’s smile disappeared and his eyes went flat. “That one’s a long story.”

She drew back and folded her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was an honest question.” He dropped a hand over hers and squeezed gently. “How about some beach ball volleyball after we eat?”

“Sure,” she said, and the mood morphed into the relaxed, casual fun they’d enjoyed earlier.

After they packed away their meal, Jax pulled out a humongous, striped beach ball and challenged Rose Red to a game of water volleyball, and they wore themselves out chasing the ball and laughing.

The sun was halfway down when they decided it was time to get ready for the movies. Jax helped her carry her picnic basket and other assorted items to her car. Halfway across, a light breeze blew up, whirling around them in short, cooling eddies. Jax stiffened beside her and sniffed the wind.

“What is it?” Rose Red asked.

He glanced around, peering intently at their surroundings for a long, tense moment, and she could’ve sworn the dragon tattoo on his right upper arm shifted. She blinked, then peered intently at it. No. It must’ve been her imagination. Tattoos didn’t move. Being permanently and indelibly inked into the skin, they only held life when the bearer moved.

Jax relaxed and grinned down at her. “Sorry. Thought I heard something.”

Rose Red took a last look at the completely stationary tattoo and shook her thoughts off. “Probably my stomach growling. I’m ready for some popcorn.”

“Me, too,” he said, then they loaded up their cars and drove in their separate vehicles to her house to get ready for the matinee.

Jax drove them to the local cinema, and they arrived fifteen minutes before their chosen movie started. Popcorn in hand, they settled side by side into seats in the middle of the theater.

When the first preview came on, Rose Red leaned closer and, in a voice just loud enough to carry, said, “This is my favorite part.”

“The previews?” Jax asked.

“Yeah. Silly, I know, but they’re as much fun as the movie.”

“No, I get it. I like the previews, too.” He handed her the tub of popcorn they’d gotten and draped an arm across her shoulders. “Here. If I hold this, I’m liable to eat it all.”

She glued her eyes to the screen, and prepared for the onscreen fun and adventure with a grin on her face.

Later, they strolled across the parking lot and ate at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and their conversation rambled from the movie they’d seen to others like it, to books and childhood dreams, and so many other topics, Rose Red lost track of the time. When they paid for their meal and left the restaurant, night had long ago fallen and the parking lot was empty of all but the cars of late night movie goers.

A light breeze blew up, chilling Rose Red, and she shivered. Jax wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her against his larger, warmer body as they walked toward his 4Runner on the other side of the lot.

“Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t talked like that in a long time.”

“Me, neither,” she confessed. “It was fun.”

“It was. We should do it–”

He stiffened beside her, suddenly alert, and something shifted against her shoulders.

She glanced up at his tense expression. “What is it?”

“Nothing good,” he murmured, and dug out his keys. “Get in the car. I’m right behind you.”

“Jax?”

He glanced down, and in the shadows thrown across the parking lot, his eyes were flat, alert, and very, very cold. “Get in the car, honey,” he said gently. “Don’t run, but go now, ok?”

Fear rippled down her spine, like a finger lightly scraping her skin, and her heart skidded into a rapid patter. “Sure.”

She took the keys and began walking on legs that felt more like Jello than bone and flesh. Behind her, Jax was silent, but the breeze whistled between them, faster now, louder. She put one hand out as she navigated around an aging Camry and glanced over her shoulder. Jax had taken his shirt off. His muscles were bulging and his jaw was clenched tight, and his tattoos were rippling along his skin.

She stumbled to a halt and squinched her eyes shut. No. Hadn’t she already reminded herself that tattoos couldn’t move?

“Go!” Jax shouted, and her eyes popped open just as an amorphous, winged shape swooped down on him.

“Jax!” she screamed, then his right arm slung out and the dragon peeled off his upper arm and leapt into the air, meeting the winged beast head on. She froze as another tattoo slithered off Jax’s leg and became a flesh and blood wolf, baring sharp, white teeth to the night. Both the dragon and the wolf resembled the tattoos they had been, only sharper, three dimensional, and much, much larger. As she watched, the dragon stretched out until it was at least twice Jax’s height in length, and the top of the wolf’s head easily reached his waist.

A shadow passed overhead. Rose Red glanced up and gasped. Another winged creature was circling overhead, slowly spiraling toward her. Her hand trembled against the Camry and the keys rattled against metal.

Jax had told her to get in the car. Why hadn’t she listened?

She forced her legs to move, leaning against the Camry and the other cars she passed as she hurried across the parking lot toward Jax’s 4Runner. Behind her, the battle raged on in near silence. The wolf growled, something shrieked, and Jax’s grunt drifted to her in the humid air.

Don’t look back, she told herself. He knows what he’s doing. He has to.

And still, when she was a scant twenty feet away from the 4Runner, she couldn’t resist a peek back.

Two other creatures she recognized as tattoos whirled around him, facing at least three of the winged beasts with their compatriots. She still hadn’t gotten a good look at the attackers, but from the little she’d seen, she didn’t want to.

Above her, wings swooshed and, without thinking, Rose Red looked up, straight into the red, glowing eyes of a leathery skinned demon.

She screamed and broke into a run, and behind her, heavy footsteps raced toward her. Just when she thought she’d be run over, she reached the 4Runner and shoved the key into the driver’s side lock, and whatever had been behind her leapt over her head. She caught the briefest glimpse of stylized fur, then it landed on the 4Runner’s roof with a sickening crunch of metal and launched itself toward the creature.

The wolf, she realized as she yanked open the door and fell inside, then scrambled between the two front seats into the back floorboard where she huddled and waited for the battle to abate.

Outside, the grunts and screeches and howls slowly subsided. Something thunked into the parking lot near the 4Runner, then the wolf’s head appeared outside its windows. Its tongue lolled, for all the world like a domesticated dog, as it smeared its nose against the window closest to her. Rose Red awkwardly pushed herself onto her knees and pressed a palm flat against the window, and the wolf butted its head there, then twisted around and loped back toward Jax.

He was clearly outlined by a flickering street lamp, swords in hand, his arms flashing in sweeping arcs as he cut down one winged demon, and another. The dragon coiled on the ground around yet another of the leather-skinned monsters, and beyond that, Rose Red refused to look. She slumped against the door, eyes closed, forehead pressed against the glass, until at last a triumphant howl split the night.

It was over then, whatever it had been.She breathed out a long sigh, fogging the window with her breath, and fumbled for the door handle. Jax was limping toward her. The swords were gone, but the creatures that had somehow twisted off his skin into life walked, crawled, or flew around him, as if guarding him.

She managed to push the door open and tumble out of the car, then she ran across the parking lot toward him and threw herself into a hug. “My God, Jax.”

He hissed in a breath as his arms came around her, and he rested his chin on the top of her head and held her so tightly, it was hard to breathe. “You’re ok.”

“Yeah, but you. You’re hurt. Let me get you home.”

A long pause, then, “You must have a million questions.”

If she did, they were hidden beneath the aftermath of the desperate fear that had engulfed her, fear for herself, and for him. “It can wait.”

He breathed out a laugh and let her wrap one of his arms around her shoulders and help him into the car. One by one, his creatures diminished and slicked themselves onto his skin, and each time, he grunted softly and his steps slowed.

When they had all returned to him and he was safely ensconced in the passenger seat, eyes closed, his skin pale and thin, she drove carefully back to her house and helped him out again and into her home. She sat him down in her kitchen, under bright lights, and examined him from head to toe, and patched up what she could.

The fatigue was beyond her, and the nightmare scene she’d just witnessed, the battle he’d endured? She shook her head and wiped the last trace of blood off his shoulder, just above the dragon’s head.

“Do you have any juice?” he asked, and his voice held so much weariness, her heart squeezed tight in her chest.

“Yes,” she said. “Cookies, too, or would you prefer a sandwich?”

“Sandwich, thanks,” he murmured, so she fixed them both a stack of sandwiches with chunky peanut butter and homemade grape jelly, set a large glass of orange juice in front of him and scrounged up some chips, then sat beside him in silence as she picked at the food on her plate and he devoured half a bag of chips and three of the sandwiches, one after the other.

“It takes a lot out of you,” she said after a while.

He nodded and set the half-eaten sandwich he was holding down, his fourth. “It’s not usually that bad.”

“This happens a lot?”

“Not too often.” He eyed her for a minute, took a bite of his sandwich, and when he’d chewed and swallowed, added, “You’re taking this awfully well.”

“Oh, you know. I’m used to demons popping up out of thin air and attacking me and my date.”

He arched a single, black eyebrow and the first hint of a smile curved his lips.

She shook her head. “This was my first encounter. Not yours, though.”

“No.” He polished off the fourth sandwich, drank the rest of his juice, and pushed his plate back. “No, it’s not my first time.”

“Not your second either, I’d guess.”

“Long way from it. It started when I hit puberty.”

“And I thought puberty was rough on me.”

He snorted out a laugh and slumped against the back of his chair. “I had some guidance. My dad, his dad, some old journals. That sort of thing.”

She remembered the way he’d wielded his tattoo-derived swords. “And some training.”

“That, too.”

A huge yawn overtook him then, and she took pity on him. “Come on. You can take a shower here and crash in the spare bedroom, and tell me all about it in the morning.”

Both eyebrows popped up. “Seriously? After everything that happened, you’re not kicking me out.”

“This is the South,” she said firmly. “We’re too polite to kick demon killers out in the middle of the night.”

He watched her for a minute more, then his expression melted into a sleepy grin. “I’m so glad I bumped into you at the grocery store.”

“Just remember that when the hot water runs out on you halfway through your shower.”

She showed him the spare bedroom and guest bathroom, pointed out the soap and shampoo and spare toiletries she kept for guests, then closed the door on him and scrounged some old clothes of her dad’s for him. Those she left outside the bathroom door, behind which the shower was already running. Fatigue washed over her then, and she stumbled to her own room and changed into night clothes and, foregoing her usual nightly routine, climbed into bed.

Darkness closed in around her. She curled into a ball on her side, facing the open door, and tucked the sheet under her chin. Every time she closed her eyes, the red, glowing eyes of the winged demon appeared and she shuddered under the fear clawing its way through her.

The shower cut off, and a few minutes later, bare footsteps padded softly down the hallway, clearly audible as Jax’s feet fell against the hardwood floor.

“Jax?” she called.

A deeper shadow appeared in the doorway. “You ok?”

She shivered and bit her lip, and finally said, “No.”

“I can sit by you until you fall asleep.”

“Yes, please.”

She scooted over in the bed, making room for him, and held a hand out for him, and he sat beside her and took her hand and smoothed her hair away from her face. Something broke in her then, under the warm certainty of his touch, and a sob rushed out of her.

“Red?’ he said gently, and she said, “I was so scared, Jax,” and he murmured to her and lifted her into his arms, and held her as she cried all her fears into his chest and the tattoos covering so much of his beautiful skin.

Eventually, she fell asleep, still held tightly against him, and dreamed of a warrior passing through the centuries, facing the kind of evil most people never knew existed, and she reached out to him and held onto him, and somehow slept better knowing he was there.

But in the morning when she awoke, the space where he should’ve been was empty, and she knew somehow that the rest of the house would be, too.

After a long shower and a bowl of cereal, Rose Red texted Jax, asking if he was ok.

Fine, came the reply. We’ll talk soon. Text if you need me for ANYTHING.

She spent the next two days working when she needed to, puttering around her house, and generally grappling with the one date she and Jax had had. Why had those demon things attacked them? Where had the dragon and wolf and other tattoos really come from, and why did he wear them? Most of all, how could they come to life the way they did?

No answers came to her, only more questions, so many she finally texted Jax and asked him those questions directly.

He never answered back.

On the morning of the third day, a knock sounded on her door. She hurried to answer it, swung it open wide, and there was Jax, dressed in sharply pressed camouflage, his expression somber.

He pulled off his cap and twisted it in his hands. “May I come in?”

“Of course.” She stepped back, allowing him entrance, then shut the door and showed him into the living room. “Please, have a seat. Can I get you anything?”

He shook his head and sat down in the lone recliner. “I’m sorry I didn’t text back.”

She sat down on the couch and folded her hands in her lap, waiting him out. There was nothing she could add, after all. He’d told her to text, she had, and he’d ignored her. What if those winged things had found her? Would he have bothered to answer then?

“You’re mad,” he said slowly.

Her hands clenched tight against each other. “No, not mad.”

“Upset, then. Look.” He scrubbed a palm over his buzz cut, let out a deep breath, and his dark eyes met hers across the small space separating them. “You were safer here without me around.”

She snorted out a laugh that sounded hysterical even to her ears. “Those things–”

“Only come after me and mine,” he said. “They’re attracted to the magic embedded in the tattoos. Where I go, they follow. Usually not like the other night, though.”

“Oh.” Questions pressed against her, crowding her mind, but all she could manage was, “Why you?”

He twisted the cap between his hands, rolling it up, unrolling it, twisting it some more. “It’s a family thing. Long ago, my great-something grandfather’s village was attacked by those demons. A dragon offered to help fight them off in exchange for one thing: immortality.”

“The tattoo.”

“Exactly. He somehow figured out how to imprint the dragon’s life force into a figure on his skin, only instead of the dragon leaping back to life when he died, it transferred to his oldest son, then to his oldest son, and so on down to me.”

“But your father and grandfather are still living.”

“Yes. Eventually, the dragon smartened up. Instead of waiting for its wearer to die, it would transfer to a stronger host when the old one weakened. My grandfather was in his forties when my father was born.”

“And your father?”

“Was in a car accident just before I turned thirteen.” Jax glanced down and away, and his jaw tightened. “My mother died. Dad was paralyzed from the waist down.”

She stretched a hand out and touched his knee. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”

“It still hurts to lose a parent.”

“Yes.”

Rose Red let her hand slip off his leg. “You could’ve shared this at any time. I would’ve understood.”

“I needed time, time to sort everything out. Time to think about the consequences.” He shook his head and glanced away. “I’m not ready to have kids. I’m not ready to burden my son with the responsibility of fighting off demons.”

“It was just a date, Jax,” she said gently.

His eyes met her, and in them resided an emotion she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “It wasn’t just a date, Red. That’s why so many demons came after us that night. They sensed how much I want you, and they attacked where I was weakest.”

She sat back, nonplussed. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” He stood then and looked down at her, his expression so intense, she could nearly feel his gaze on her skin. “I’m heading back to base now and I won’t be back.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, hurt in spite of the short time she’d known him. “Jax.”

“It’s better this way. I can’t risk you, won’t risk you.”

“So you would rather forget me than date me and…” She lifted a shoulder, uncertain what she really meant.

“I won’t forget you.” He traced a finger along her cheek, then stepped back and slapped his cap on. “Goodbye, Rose Red. Take care of yourself.”

He turned on a booted heel and strode out of her home. The door shut softly behind him, and Rose Red sat on her couch and tried not to cry as the engine of his 4Runner started and she listened to him drive away.