Love of A Dragon (Exalted Dragons Book 1)

by K. T. Stryker

  “It’s okay, I believe you,” Ashe forced herself to reply calmly even though she wanted so badly to leave the meeting. She hoped it was over.

  “Thank you,” Will said to her, and then to the whole group, “I believe we have something of immediate concern to discuss tonight.”

  There was a murmur through the crowd, but a sharp look from Will silenced them. “Is there something you want to say?” he asked Jerry, singling him out.

  Jerry’s hands shifted nervously in his lap as he found himself put on the spot. “Are you sure it’s okay for her to be here?”

  Will glanced at Ashe. “She’s part of the town. She heard our stories. She has a right to know.”

  “But—” Jerry began.

  Will clasped a hand on Ashe’s shoulder. “We’re meant to protect the members of this town, aren’t we? Though Ashe has only been here a short time, she deserves the same protection as any of us. Isn’t it better for her to know of the danger than to be left in the dark?”

  Jerry muttered something incoherent, but made no further rebuttal. Ashe had almost hoped he would, so that she would have a good excuse to leave the meeting. A cold sweat had broken across her brow and goose bumps prickled her skin. She was sure she had the flu, and being here was doing her no good.

  Ashe spoke up, “I can leave. It’s no problem.”

  Will shook his head. “It’s important that you stay.”

  “Let her leave,” Jerry grumbled.

  Ashe rose from her chair. It was becoming clear that she was still an outsider, and while Will did not seem to see it as a problem the other members of the meeting did. She started, “I appreciate you inviting me here, but I’m not feeling well and—”

  Will grabbed her arm and forced her to look at him. “Peter’s a vampire.”

  Ashe was stunned and stared blankly at Will. He let go of her arm.

  “We only became sure of it today, but we’ve suspected for a while. I know this must be a shock to you.”

  It wasn’t the fact that Peter was a vampire that had caught Ashe by surprise, but rather that the people of Morris had found his secret out so quickly. Had something given him away, or was Will simply singling him out because Ashe had rejected Will earlier? Ashe didn't want to believe that Will could be so cruel.

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Ashe asked.

  Will said, “Our biggest concern is keeping you, and everyone else, safe from him. It’s only a matter of time before he reveals his true nature to you, and I worry that he intends to turn you into one of his kind. We need to stop the vampire plague now before it spreads like it did twenty years ago.”

  Ashe could see the regret in Will’s eyes even before he replied, but his words still pierced through her heart like a lance. She looked around the room at the once-friendly faces now staring back at her with pity. They thought they were helping her, teaching her of the real dangers present in the world, but they were wrong.

  “Peter’s different,” Ashe said. “He would never hurt any of you.” Her fever was making her vision blur, and her legs felt like jelly underneath her. She hoped she would still be able to drive herself home. She needed to warn Peter and leave town as soon as possible.

  “How can you be so sure?” Will asked.

  Peter was no monster. He was a good man. But the look in Will’s face told her that there would be no convincing him of this no matter hard she tried.

  “I can’t,” Ashe lied, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “But I need a little time first. Time to say,” her voice cracked, “goodbye.”

  Will nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. We’ll give you the weekend, but that’s all we can afford.”

  Jerry spoke up, “But what if he decides to turn her before then?”

  Will cast him a dark look. “We’re giving her the weekend, that’s final. You of all people should understand how difficult it is to say goodbye to the one you love. Ashe has been warned of the danger and we can trust she’ll be careful.”

  Jerry looked at Will, then at Ashe, his expression troubled. He turned to the others in the group for backup, but their lack of support seemed to take all the fight out of him. The woman next to him who had comforted him earlier was now shaking her head as if to discourage him from even trying. Ashe could see the mix of pity, sadness, and fear the people of Morris felt for her. The fear was the strongest, and it was what troubled Ashe the most. She had learned enough about history to know that fear ruled reason.

  “I think that’s all we’re going to discuss for tonight,” Will said. People got up from their chairs and milled about the room, seemingly hesitant to leave. A few headed in Jerry’s general direction and hovered there silently. Ashe suspected that they wanted to discuss matters themselves once Ashe was out of earshot. She knew it would be easier for them to make their decision on what to do without the human consequence of their actions staring them in the face.

  Ashe headed for the door and Will followed. He called for her but she didn’t stop for him. She had wanted to say goodbye but she couldn’t now. Will mustn’t know that she and Peter planned to leave.

  Will caught up with her at her car and put his hand on the door to stop her from getting in. It wasn’t a threatening gesture, but one of supplication. He wanted her to hear what he had to say.

  “I wish all of this could have turned out differently,” Will said. “I really do.”

  Ashe kept digging for her keys.

  Will continued, “I’m not upset about what happened today, and I’m not going after Peter because of jealousy. The only reason I think we need to do something about him is because I don’t want to see you hurt. I care about you.”

  How did Will expect things to turn out after all of this? Even if it went how Will planned, with the town taking down Peter and saving Ashe from the threat of vampirism, it wasn’t like Ashe was going leap right into his arms once Peter was out of the picture. Ashe felt some of her old self coming back to her, the girl who preferred to shut the world out rather than deal with all of the stupidity of other people. Will was just another person trying to get what they wanted with no regard to the feelings of others. He had tried to bait her with the heartbreaking stories about the night in the theater, but it wouldn’t work. Ashe too had lost her father when she was young, but it hadn’t turned her into a murderer. Will had no excuse.

  “I liked you. I really did,” Ashe replied, leaning a little against the car for support. Sweat rolled in sheets down her back and she was starting to shiver. “You were a good friend when I didn’t know anyone here, and you welcomed me as part of this town. But you know I can’t stay, not after...”

  Ashe choked on her words. Though she trusted that she and Peter would be long gone from Morris before the angry mob came for them, just imagining the alternative was almost too much.

  Will hung his head. “You don't have to say anything. I understand.” Then, after a pause, “I guess this is goodbye, then.”

  “Goodbye,” Ashe replied, getting into her car.

  She had gotten her goodbye after all, she thought as she pulled blurrily out of the parking lot. She knew why those few words with Will had been so important to her. They had both suffered a loss early in life, and knew what it was like to feel abandoned without even a simple farewell. Though they had only known each other for a short time, Ashe felt a kinship with Will in the pain that lay in their pasts. She only wished she could have gotten to know each other better, and that Will’s attraction to her hadn’t gotten in the way. He could have been a good friend.

  Peter’s hands shook as he dialed Winnie’s number. The jealousy he had previously felt was now a distant memory to the fear threatening to consume him. He had managed to open and close the door with his mind several more times, as well as rearrange items around the house. Though Winnie had reassured him that the acceleration of his abilities was nothing to be worried about, Peter knew that the manifestation of this new power was well beyond the scope of normal. Even for
vampires.

  A shattered glass lay in the sink, having slipped from his grip when he had been testing out the scope of his new power. Unlike the mind reading, his telekinesis was easier to manipulate. It was different, too, from his mental conversations with Ashe. With the telekinesis, he could almost feel the power pooling in his mind and reaching out to the objects around him. It was like a muscle he could flex at will. It was hard for him to put into coherent thought, but it seemed like his telepathy was more like an external force, something he had no agency over. Though he had only been aware of his telekinetic power for a few minutes, he already felt that it was much more a tangible part of him than the telepathy ever would be.

  There was a click on the other end of the phone as Winnie answered, and Peter immediately started on his explanation of what had happened with Ashe and the argument, and the manifestation of his new power. Winnie apparently realized the gravity of the situation right away and did not attempt to interrupt him. Peter left out nothing except the nature of the specific memory that had sparked his sudden outburst. As upset as he was, he didn’t think Ashe would have appreciated his sharing of such a personal matter. Peter himself didn’t even know the truth behind what he had seen, and the more time passed the greater his doubt became. Peter hadn’t seen the kiss itself. He had only assumed there was one before the door had slammed and the memory had cut out. It was quite possible that Ashe had rejected Will’s advance. Not only possible, but almost certain. Peter knew the bond that he had with Ashe could not be broken so easily.

  Peter waited for Winnie’s response.

  The old woman sighed heavily. “I was hoping you wouldn’t call me with something like this. It’s apparently much worse than I thought.” She sounded regretful, with none of the usual playfulness in her tone.

  “But you said the powers would drain me, make me hungrier. I feel fine apart from the new powers. Nothing has changed,” Peter said, more to reassure himself than anything else.

  “Of course you’d feel fine,” Winnie replied. “It’s Ashe I’m worried about.”

  Peter gulped. “Why Ashe?”

  Winnie countered with another question. “Has Ashe been feeling sick lately? Maybe looking more tired than usual or acting strangely, out of character?”

  Peter thought about the dark circles under Ashe’s eyes and the drawn look to her face that had concerned him recently. She seemed to have lost an unhealthy amount of weight in the span of days. He then remembered the way she had choked while trying to drink water, as if swallowing had hurt her throat. Peter had written it off as the onset of a flu, but Winnie’s concerned tone made him think it was something far worse. Peter relayed this to Winnie.

  “It was my mistake,” Winnie said. “I never should have given you those earrings without knowing what they truly were.”

  “The family heirlooms,” he said. “The ones I gave to Ashe for Christmas. But what do they have to do with Ashe being sick?”

  “You knew what they meant when you gave them to her.”

  They meant that Ashe was part of his clan. She was under their protection for as long as she lived. He thought that by giving Ashe the earrings he was keeping her safe, not endangering her as he apparently had.

  Winnie replied, “By giving Ashe those earrings, you were bonding her to your family by more than just your word. What I didn’t know was that those earrings carry the very blood of your clan’s matriarch. They are, in essence, a vessel containing her power, a means to pass down her abilities to future generations in order to create a line of vampires stronger than any other. In this case, your matriarch’s ability to project thoughts and emotions at will.”

  Peter listened uneasily as Winnie explained. “You’re telling me that Ashe is the one manifesting the powers?”

  “The telepathy, yes,” Winnie replied. “I’m sure you’ve found that your efforts to stem the flow of thoughts coming from Ashe have been useless. That’s because Ashe is the one controlling the power. Just as you have found that you can control your telekinesis at will, Ashe has the ability to stop projecting her thoughts to you. She can’t control the power because she doesn’t know she has it. It’s also what’s making her sick.

  “Had Ashe been a vampire herself, the earring’s power, the telepathy, would have been added to whatever power she already possessed and she would have become a quite powerful vampire indeed. However, Ashe is a human. She is not compatible with the vampire blood, but the vessel doesn’t know this. It is only doing what it’s meant to do. The earrings are essentially turning her into a vampire, though they alone can’t complete the transformation. Only the fresh blood of a vampire can do that. If things are left to progress as they are, I fear that Ashe will not last much longer.”

  “But she stopped wearing the earrings months ago,” Peter said. He couldn't believe that a pair of old earrings was to blame for all of this, ones that he had given her himself.

  Winnie sighed again. “The act of giving her the earrings was enough. By doing so, you made her the next in line to rule your clan. The magic concerning the line of succession is strong and not so easily broken. Even if you wanted to, you could not take it back.”

  “What will happen to her?” Peter asked, cold fear filling his insides.

  “The blood in her veins will slow, then stop,” Winnie replied in a quiet voice. “She will not be able to gain sustenance from regular food and drink, and blood will do nothing to but make her sick as she is not yet a proper vampire. She will enter a trapped state between life and undeath, where the only way out is to turn her or let her die.”

  Peter couldn’t bear the thought of Ashe turning into a vampire, but even worse was the prospect of her dying. He had faced a similar situation before, and at the time his decision not to turn her had proven to be the correct one. But this time there was no other way out. This time things couldn’t be solved with blood transfusion and a few days’ bed rest. David wasn’t going to burst through the door and fix her this time. There was no other choice.

  “It’s the only way.” Winnie sounded truly sorry.

  “I understand,” Peter replied and hung up the phone.

  Ashe barely survived the drive home, her vision swimming and her head feeling like it was going to burst in half. She was desperately thirsty, but knew in the back of her mind that anything she consumed would make her sick. She parked the car haphazardly in the driveway and stumbled up to the front door. Her sweaty hands slipped on the doorknob once, twice, and Ashe felt her consciousness flagging. She needed to get inside and warn Peter before she completely passed out. The doorknob slipped once more in her hands. She wasn’t going to make it.

  Suddenly the door swung open and Peter was there helping her to the sofa in the living room. He was pushing something into her hands, a glass, then helping her lift it to her lips. The liquid was warm and salty, with a familiar taste to it that Ashe couldn't place. Her first impression was to spit it back out, but found that her body was craving whatever the liquid contained and she drank the whole glass. Only when she had finished did Ashe notice the tinge of red, and the iron smell of blood in the air. She dropped the glass and it rolled to a stop on the carpet. Ashe was shaking, terrified. Whose blood was it, and why had it tasted so good?

  “There’s something wrong with me,” Ashe muttered. She felt a white-hot heat burning through her veins. Her senses were growing sharper, more attuned to everything around her. But the effect came in waves, like trying to catch a radio station while driving through the mountains. It was maddening.

  “It’s okay,” Peter said, though his voice and expression did not convince Ashe. “I know why you’re sick, and I can make it all better. You just have to trust me.”

  “No,” Ashe protested. “We don’t have time. Will knows about you. The town. They’re vampire hunters. They want to kill you.”

  Peter seemed troubled, but he ignored her and pressed on. It was hard for Ashe to follow what he was saying, but caught something about earrings and the blood o
f Peter’s clan. Peter was trying to tell her something important. Ashe fought to understand, though she could tell her body was giving up. This was no flu she had. It was something far worse.

  “I need to turn you,” Peter said suddenly.

  Ashe thought she had misheard him. When she failed to reply, he repeated, “I need to turn you, to make you a vampire.”

  “You can’t,” Ashe said. The words escaped her before she could take them back.

  Peter’s green eyes wavered. Ashe had only seen such a look in Peter’s face once before, on the steps of the college cathedral when Ashe had professed her hatred for his kind. Peter probably thought that she was rejecting him, that deep down she still feared the vampire part of him and did not want to become like him even if it would save her life.

  Peter ignored her protest. He took a knife from his pocket and flicked the blade open. “If you drink my blood,” he said, holding the knife to his wrist, “you will survive. It’s the only way. The blood I gave you earlier won’t sustain you forever. Your body is still human. If you don’t complete the transformation you’ll die.”

  Animal blood, Ashe thought, recalling the taste of the liquid that had brought her back from the edge of unconsciousness. It had been meant to tide her over until Peter could turn her fully. Whether she liked it or not, her transformation had already started. She was no longer human and there was no way back to what she once was. Embracing this new part of her was the only way.

  “I’m scared,” Ashe said. She didn’t know who, or what, she was anymore. She wanted to cry.

  “It’s okay,” Peter repeated over and over. The calm in his voice lulled Ashe like a drug as he slid the blade against his pale skin, leaving a thin black line that quickly beaded with blood. The inky liquid spilled from his vein down his arm, pooling at his elbow before dripping onto the carpet below.

  He held his arm out to her, offering her his blood. Ashe didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it, but Peter was already bringing his arm up to meet her lips.