by Zara Zenia
“What’s going on? Why are you back so soon?”
“We’re under quarantine and we can’t leave our room,” I said with a frown.
“Who are you calling?” She nodded at my phone.
“Tom, I need to tell him what’s going on, he’s helping me try to figure out this illness.”
“Okay, well, if I don’t have to go to class, I’m going back to sleep.” She rolled back over.
I dialed Tom’s number impatiently.
He answered on the third ring. “Marina, what’s wrong?”
“Hi,” I said. “There’s a situation going on here that I need to talk to you about.”
“What is it?” he asked, sounding worried.
“It’s the virus,” I said. “It’s spreading rapidly. There are over three dozen cases now, Tom, and Vlad has it.”
“I wondered why you hadn’t called or texted me, baby. You haven’t caught it, have you, baby?” Tom sounded horrified.
“No, I haven’t,” I said. “They’ve cancelled all the classes, and they are making people stay in their rooms.”
“You can’t go out?” he asked.
I shook my head and looked out the window. It was a ghost town in comparison to the heavy foot traffic usually going through the courtyard.
“No. We’ve been ordered to stay put.”
“I’m coming there.” Tom’s voice was defiant as if it wasn’t up for debate.
“What?” I laughed. “Tom. No. You can’t—”
“I can, and I will,” he said.
“It’s not safe for you. Besides, how are you going to get past security? They have men in hazmat suits—”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about any of the logistic details,” he stated stubbornly. “I’m on the way, and that’s final.”
I let out a heavy sigh and grazed a hand through my hair. “Okay. But please be careful.”
“I can handle it, baby,” he said confidently. “I’ll call or text you when I am close to the campus.”
“Okay, that sounds good,” I stated woefully. There was no arguing with Tom once he set his mind to something.
I hung up from him and sat there for several moments wondering how he was ever going to get past the quarantine. I hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble along the way.
I called Daniel and Colin on a three-way face time. It took a few minutes for Daniel to answer, being that it was still morning. But we needed to brainstorm ideas on how to figure out what was going on out there around the campus. I couldn’t just sit in here, festering in my own thoughts. It wasn’t healthy. I needed to do something proactive.
“How can we search for clues that the scientist and medical teams might have missed?” Colin asked.
“I think that once we get out there, we can maybe use some of our charms to our advantage,” I suggested.
“I’ve been practicing walking through walls,” Daniel said groggily and glanced between us. “I’ve done it a couple of times.”
Colin arched his eyebrows. “Really? That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah.” Daniel grinned at him barring his fangs.
Now wasn’t the time to play the competitive game. We had work to do. “After dark, when you’re up to your full strength, Daniel, let’s all meet up.”
Colin traced his hands through his long red hair. There was a measure of contemplation glowing in his silver eyes.
“Where do you want to meet?”
“I think we should start in the dining hall,” I said. “That’s where it seems to have all begun.”
“Yes.” Daniel nodded in agreement. “There are probably more clues there than anywhere, and in case we get caught, at least we can say we went there first.”
“As soon as night falls, meet me in the courtyard behind my dorm building,” I advised. “And be careful. Try not to make a single sound.”
“Got it.” They both concurred with a nod and we hung up.
My heart pounded with beats of trepidation in my chest, but we needed to figure out how to save Vlad before it was too late.
Hours later, Tom and I were able to maneuver down the back stairwell, the same way he’d managed to sneak into the dorm building. Luckily for all of us, there weren’t any alarm systems in place to prevent us from exiting the building, but I knew that it was only going to get harder to get to the dining hall once we started this venture.
“Psst.” I heard Colin’s voice from behind us.
I whipped around and saw him standing there like a lanky statue in a long black trench coat.
“You guys made it out.” I couldn’t suppress a grin as I lunged forward and hugged him and then Daniel.
“Barely.” Daniel cast a wary glance over his shoulder as if he was paranoid that we were being followed.
“We need to be as cautious as possible,” Tom whispered between our little team.
“Let’s just hope that once we get to the dining hall, that we won’t find anyone else lurking there before us,” I said.
“I’ll concur with that statement,” Daniel said and blew out a puff of air.
He looked beside himself with anxiety. I wasn’t used to seeing that trait in Daniel’s characteristics. He was normally exceedingly cool and collected. I knew though, he was afraid of losing Vlad, and so was I. His rattled condition only fueled my motivation to get to the bottom of this disease before it claimed any more lives, especially Vlad’s. It had already taken Boris away from us, and that was one too many in my opinion.
We arrived at the dining hall and sure enough, there were chains wrapped around the double doors, linking them together with a pad lock in the middle.
Daniel groaned. “I knew that this wasn’t going to work. I could break them, but then they’d know we were here.”
“Now hold on a second…” I said and looked at Colin. “Do you know any charms to break locks?”
“No, not really my specialty, sweetness,” he said and then looked at Tom. “What about you, Tom, you got anything?”
Tom narrowed his eyes in concentration. “I think I can come up with one. I’ve been practicing a few tricks.”
“That’s great, Tom!” I chimed vivaciously. “Go ahead and try it.”
Tom drew in a sharp breath and closed his eyes for a few moments, then he began muttering under his breath.
“What is he saying?” Colin leaned in and whispered to me.
“I hope he’s trying to get the charm to work,” I muttered back.
I held my breath and waited, staring at Tom as he intensely gazed at the padlock with a stare of doom.
After a few moments, something snapped and made a popping sound in the padlock. It let out a little hiss, and then the clutch broke off and the lock lever popped open.
I jumped up in the air, taking a little leap of achievement, but I was still trying to be the epitome of silence so that we wouldn’t disturb any surveillance of the campus area. I pushed up on my toes and kissed Tom’s cheek. “Perfect.”
Tom stared at the lock as if he couldn’t believe he had just popped it open.
“Good job, buddy.” Daniel gave him a brotherly swat on the back of his shoulder.
“Go in carefully,” I advised. “You never know what kind of trap might be waiting for us on the other side.”
“Good point,” Tom replied.
Colin and Daniel nodded in unison.
“If anything comes out of the shadows, I’ll use a freeze charm on them,” Colin assured.
I nodded, but I felt a little queasy on the inside. I didn’t want my trepidation to show on the outside, so I did my best to remain calm and focus on plateauing my internal forces.
I had my own set of curses as a witch that I could enact on a perpetrator if I was in enough danger, but part of me wondered if I would be able to enforce it under pressure in the rush of the moment. I was glad Tom was there, at least I knew he’d be able to if I couldn’t.
My powers mainly centered around luck, and I was going to use my luck charms to
our advantage tonight.
As we took a guarded step into the darkened entrance to the dining hall, I heard the rapid breathing of the guys beside me. I knew they were just as nervous as I was.
I turned my attention to them, attempting to focus on their faces and give them a little positive reinforcement.
“Remember, we’re doing this for Vlad.”
Daniel’s crimson eyes flashed with acknowledgement. “For Vlad,” he whispered back.
It was so quiet in the dining hall that you could have heard a pin drop. My pulse swooshed noisily through my ear drums.
We took cautious steps through the rows of tables and chairs. It was eerily silent. I kept envisioning that I was seeing things that weren’t there, shadows that danced and ducked around us as if taunting us in warning to not stray any further from safety.
Your luck, blessing and curse powers will kick in instinctively, I mentally reminded myself through hollowed, labored breathing. If I could protect myself, Colin, Tom, and Daniel to the detriment of other misfortunate supernaturals who posed a threat, then I would at least be doing something right.
“Where should we start?” Daniel’s voice was so low that it was barely audible.
“The kitchen,” I said with a nod in that direction.
Colin nodded approvingly and pushed a strand of his red hair behind his ear.
“I agree, if Boris was the first victim and he worked back there, then that’s where we should start,” Tom acknowledged.
“I can’t see anything,” Colin stated as he unintentionally bumped into the side of a table. “Ouch.”
“Are you okay?” I whispered, barely able to make out more than his silhouette through the darkness.
“Yeah…” he trailed off, rubbing his tender knee.
“I can cast an illumination charm,” Tom said. “It will give us enough light to maneuver through the kitchen but won’t call attention to us by switching on entire light bulbs overhead.”
“Good idea,” I said and shot him a grateful grin.
After lighting our path with a subtle blue glow, we slowly wandered around the kitchen, searching for nothing in particular but hoping to come across something that might point us in the right direction for a cure, or at least an illness origin.
After several minutes of coming up empty, the guys looked at me with frustrated expectancy.
“Do you think you could use your luck powers to find something useful?” Daniel asked.
“I can try,” I said and closed my eyes, ready to dive into full-fledged concentration mode.
The best way to use my luck charms was to concentrate on an object, but in this case, it was a little trickier because I didn’t have anything in particular to wish for. I tried to think about anything and everything that could be hiding in this room that could give us even the most remote clue that we could springboard from.
When I opened my eyes, I heard Colin gasp with excitement. My heart continued to eagerly.
“What is it?” I hissed.
“Look at this…” I heard paper crinkling as Colin took a few steps toward me. “It’s a roster for the kitchen staff,” he said.
“Where did you find this?” I asked and glanced at the names in awe. This was a golden find.
“Your luck found it,” Colin beamed, and I hugged him in joy.
The four of us studied the names on the list, which included three new hires. One of them was a witch named Dena Aylesbury. We didn’t recognize her name, nor any of the new hires, but something about her stuck out to us.
“Why does it say she has been out of the kitchen with no contact among the other staff members for two days?” Tom lifted his gaze and stared at us.
“Is she sick?” Colin asked. “Or does she know something, and now she’s gone into hiding?”
I squared my shoulders and gave them a determined look. “There’s only one way to find out.”
16
Vlad
I woke up and I couldn’t make sense of my surroundings. I didn’t know whether it was day or night. My eyes were too hazy to focus. My brain felt like it was cloaked in a fog. A searing pain shot through my temples and made me woozy and nauseated.
I clutched my stomach and retched, but nothing would come out. I couldn’t empty the contents of my belly if there was no food or drink in there in the first place.
I gripped the side of the bed with angry, balled fists and twisted my legs in the sheets. I arched my back and felt the veins in my neck bulge. I knew I was shifting in between dragon and human, and unlike usual, I had no way to control when that happened.
I had lost all control over my body. I broke out in a cold sweat. The sheets were drenched underneath my body. I attempted to sit up, but the room was spinning too much and I was afraid I would start to violently heave again if I did.
I stared up at the ceiling, blinking and not moving a single muscle in my body because when I did, everything ached.
I heard voices in the room, but they were muffled, almost as if they were intentionally whispering for my benefit. I craned my neck to the side, panting hard to see if I could capture any of the conversation, or at least focus in from the blurry delirium to make out faces. I wanted to determine whether I would recognize any of them or not.
It was clear to me now that I was slipping in and out of consciousness. Delirium was getting the better of me.
“The more ill he gets, the more he will continue to stay in his dragon form as the human inside of him slips away…” I heard a male voice say.
He was dressed in a white lab coat. I assumed he must have been my doctor.
“Thank goodness we had this special fire retardant, fireproof room to put him in,” a female voice said.
She was wearing grey nursing scrubs and her hair was pulled up into a loose and sloppy bun. Tendrils of hair fell lazily off her neck. She sighed heavily and propped one shoulder up against the wall.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out but a croak, and then I sneezed. I felt the excruciating pain blind my senses as the sneeze rippled through my body. My skin felt like it was on fire and ripping apart as I painfully shifted into a dragon again.
The nurse and the doctor yelped and jumped backward, staring at me with worry.
“He isn’t hostile,” the doctor said. “He’s too sick to hurt us anyway. His stream of fire is in a weakened condition due to the illness.”
At the exact moment when he said that, I coughed, belched and then another spray of fire shot up into the air, but it wasn’t nearly as bright and magnificent as it would have been had I not been sick, just like the doctor said.
It hurt my throat with a burning sensation to expel the flames, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t help myself. I began to thrash in the bed, ripping the sheets in the middle as the nurse and the doctor looked on with worried gazes.
“Try not to tense up,” the doctor whispered. “He can sense that you’re frightened. He is more of a danger to himself than anyone or anything else.”
I was panting hard. I suddenly felt dizzy. The room went black for a moment, and then everything in my mind went blank as if it was being erased. After that, I passed out.
When I woke up again, I still couldn’t make heads or tails of whether it was day or night. I didn’t care. What did it matter anyway? It wasn’t like I could leave the confinements of this room.
I forced myself to peel open my eyes, even though they felt heavy and swollen, like little wounded slits in the middle of my face.
When I noticed the fuzzy shape of Marina standing in front of me, I managed to give her a scanty smile.
She clutched my hand and squeezed it, helping me to realize that I had shifted back to my human form, but who knew how long it would be until the dragon burst its way to the surface once again.
“It’s okay,” she whispered and gently stroked my sweat drenched hair. “You don’t have to move or speak. Just rest and listen.”
I tried to nod in und
erstanding, but it was difficult.
“We’re fairly certain that we’ve found the witch who started all this illness chaos in the first place,” Marina said, her hand going to my flushed cheek.
I attempted to focus on the features of her face. I wanted to breath in her beauty and swallow it whole. Her hair was down and feathered around her shoulders. It looked smooth and soft. I longed to have the energy to reach out and touch her as she did me, but even a simple wiggle of my finger exhausted me.
Before she could go on, I heard a male voice behind us.
“Is everything alright in here?”
I watched Marina’s reaction as she whipped her head around to see who was coming into the room. She seemed surprised, which alarmed me. She behaved as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear what she was telling me.
“Professor Chiu?” She tried to keep her voice even and unstartled.
“I can tend to him now if you would like…” he said as he approached the bed and gave me a curious, sideways look.
I held back a cough. I was afraid that if I let it out, I would explode into a fire breathing fit.
“I was just keeping him company,” Marina said and looked at me with partial pity, partial adoration.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Professor Chiu stated. “It’s too dangerous.”
Marina continued to stare at me as if she was hesitant to leave me alone with anyone who wasn’t her.
“I am not afraid of him,” she stated with resilience that made my heart gallop for something other than dread and pain for once.
“I know, but when he is in his dragon form, he is a danger to everyone, including himself.”
I had heard that one before from the doctor and the nurse and it was beginning to make me feel spitefully sour.
“He shouldn’t have to be alone.” Marina’s voice was melancholy. It broke my heart to hear the sadness trickling through.
“He isn’t alone, he’s getting the best treatment we have to offer,” Professor Chiu said.
Marina glanced up at him. “Can we speak, privately over there for a second?” She pointed across the room.