Love of A Dragon (Exalted Dragons Book 1)

by K. T. Stryker

  The restaurant was busy, so we were encouraged to sit at the bar while we waited. We filed into the narrow bar area, with me on one side of David; Tracy on the other, and Clay sandwiched between the two girls. On another day, I would’ve made a joke about how lucky they both were. Her persistent attention toward David and her inattention to Clay were getting under my skin.

  When I saw her hand on David’s thigh, my kettle reached the boiling point!! I felt hot rage rise in me like steam, ready to pour out of my mouth if I didn’t keep it closed. I grabbed David’s arm and forced him to turn towards me, making her hand fall away.

  “What the hell are you doing, David?” I hissed at him, trying to keep my voice low enough to avoid a scene. “You know Clay likes her! You know that you can have any girl you want! Why can’t you just once, just one damn time, tell someone ‘no’, and have a little integrity?”

  “Seriously? You’re going to do this here?” He jerked his arm out of my grasp.

  “I’m not doing anything. I’m asking you not to do this to your friend.” I looked at him, but hardly recognized the petulant, selfish boy in front of me.

  “Okay, you want me to say ‘no’. I get it,” he paused and glanced over his shoulder at Tracy, then faced me and looked me in the eyes. “No, Caroline. You need to let me go and understand that you and I aren’t here for a romantic getaway. Go find yourself a nice guy, no one is stopping you.” I felt cold. The color drained from my face and I felt lightheaded. I imagined knocking him from his barstool with a stiff right to his jaw, but instead, took a deep breath.

  “I hope she’s worth it, David,” I murmured, leaning in so he could hear me. “I can’t help but wonder what you’re going to do when you get home, without the friends you left with. Are you sure that her attention, her liking you, is really worth losing the two people who always have your back?” I slid off the barstool and stormed away without waiting for a response. I was too angry and hurt to pay attention to the niggling fear that still sat between my shoulder blades.

  Unfortunately, as every hunter worth their salt knows, anger is a great way to lose focus. It’s the one emotion that causes more stupid choices and deaths to our kind than any other outside factor. But I wasn’t a hunter yet. I rushed headlong through the garden of tropical flowers, trying to find the shortest path to my room.

  I strayed from the path and almost instantly stepped on a loose stone that kicked my already injured knee out at a bad angle. I cried out in pain and fell hard, sitting in the dirt, in the dark. I cursed David and my knee and the stupid idea to take a vacation in the first place.

  “What a great first day of vacation,” I said aloud to myself.

  “Are you talking to me?” replied a thickly accented voice far too close behind me. I whipped my head around, but could only see the silhouettes of flowers and palm trees on a canvas of shadows. My pulse sped up and I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “No, sorry, I was talking to myself. I tripped. Have a good night!” I called out lamely. The darkness shifted when I looked back over my shoulder. My stomach clenched and heaved. Something was there that didn’t want to be seen.

  “You shouldn’t be out here in the dark alone. Let me walk you to your hotel.” The voice was closer, but no matter where I looked, no one was there. Fear crept up my spine as psychic power poured over me. This wasn’t like Lady Borgia’s power, that I felt inside my head. The power I felt now made me blind to whatever it was I felt breathing on my face.

  “I am a student of the Venatores Lamiae. You will hear from them, if you touch me,” I gasped.

  “Venatores,” the voice in the darkness scoffed. “What use do they have for pretty, tiny creatures like you?”

  There was a whoosh of air and a disembodied hand grabbed my throat, squeezing tightly enough that I could choke out raspy whispers, but not scream for help. An earthy smell of sweat and mold and decay filled my nose and I struggled harder, to no avail.

  The monster held my throat and pinned me to his chest, his clawed hand over my heart, as though we were lovers. I trembled and he sighed, his foul breath moving my hair. In my last conscious moment I felt his papery, dry lips on my temple. Sheer terror swept through my mind as I threw up my psychic shields, my last defense against the evil that overcame me.

  Chapter 4

  My head was on fire. I was so disoriented that it took a moment to realize that I hurt almost everywhere else too. My knee screamed with sharp, stabbing pain when I shifted; it was hot and swollen to the touch. Even though I wasn’t bound; the darkness of my surroundings was so thick that I had the sensation of being all alone in a vast emptiness. My heart pounded harder as I automatically put my hand in my pocket for the little oblong pill; before I remembered it was gone!

  I began to hyperventilate, bright stars appearing in my vision against the pure black canvas all around me. I struggled to my knees and put my forehead on the cool stone floor to focus and calm down. I slowly erected my mental shields, picturing them shutting out the darkness and the stars, until I no longer felt blind. I reached out the way Signora Borgia had begun teaching us, visualizing my mind like fingers stretching out in front and around me. As I reached out with my mind I could feel; almost see; the wall ahead of me. Emboldened by my success I crawled forward; dragging my hurt leg behind me until my fingers met cool, dry stone. This stone was cut in blocks; I traced a line of mortar laterally until I found a corner and continued along that wall until I brushed a doorframe with my fingertips.

  I used the frame to inch myself into a standing position, grateful that the ceiling was high enough above my head that I couldn’t touch it. Exhaling the breath I’d been unconsciously holding in a heavy sigh of relief, I ran my hands over the door. The door was made of a thick steel frame with wooden slats. I felt air move against my face, and as I slid my hands up the center of the door to the slight breeze, I found a barred window trimmed in the same cold steel as the door itself. I decided if there was a door and a window; then at least I wasn’t in a stone box. I’d found my exit! I sank to the floor with relief as my legs, which were like useless wet noodles; collapsed under me.

  I was in trouble obviously; but I wasn’t sealed in a crypt. A crypt wouldn’t have doors with windows; just stone boxes for dead, or undead, bodies. It seemed a ridiculous thing to want, but I half-hoped I’d been stolen by organ thieves. I was barely a student of the Venatores lamiae, but I still knew how to fight a human and win; even injured.

  Even I as I dared to let that hope form in my head; logic, and the sheer blackness around me shot me down. I breathed in deeply and reached out with my other senses, trying to get a clue as to where I was despite my blindness. The walls around me were dry, but the air that whispered over my face was musty and damp.

  It was impossible to tell the time of day. After finding the corner farthest from the door; I put my back into it and listened for anything approaching through the corridor outside my cell. It was only going to be a matter of time before whomever, whatever, had taken me was going to come back. I had no intention of being caught off-guard again.

  In my cell, the darkness and silence felt like an endless night. I couldn’t imagine what perverse creature could find comfort in a life underground. If my captors returned and tried to turn me; I swore to myself that I would force them to kill me.

  “Kill or be killed, I guess,” I said to myself, jumping at how loud my voice sounded in the darkness.

  “Oh my God, hello?” A young, female voice floated back to me in the darkness. I jumped again, my heart racing. Why hadn’t I considered I wasn’t alone?

  “Hello!” I called out. “Who’s out there?”

  “I’m Becca. I’m in a dark room, it’s so black in here.” She sounded distant, like she was at the other end of whatever hallway joined our cells.

  “Yes, there’s a window in the door of the cell. But it’s so dark. The entire corridor must be sealed off from light.” Silence enshrouded me again, and in a panic, I called out to her, just to hear her v
oice. “Becca, can you guess how long you’ve been here? Or tell me how you were taken?”

  “I was staying at the Fairfield resort in Malibu. I went to a beach party with my friend. A man grabbed her, I screamed, and that’s the last thing I remember before waking up here.”

  “Okay, can you move around? Try measuring your room with steps. Find the door.”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  I stopped talking for a few seconds, trying to stay calm in the heavy silence so she could concentrate. I counted out thirty seconds in my head, then forty, before she screamed.

  “Becca! Becca, tell me what happened!”

  “Kenzie? Kenzie?” I heard her repeat a name. It sounded like she was crying, but not immediate danger.

  “Becca!” I called out again, “What happened. What’s going on?”

  “Kenzie isn’t answering.”

  “Are you sure it’s your friend?” I thought fast. If they were putting more than one girl in a cell, maybe we were due for more company.

  “Yes, she had her hair in a braid.”

  “Okay, good. Touch her face. Can you feel her breathing?” I waited.

  “Yes, yes, she’s alive!” Becca sobbed, her voice thick with emotion. “Oh, God, Kenzie, wake up!”

  “Becca, how long have you been awake?”

  “Only since right before I heard you.” I thought for a moment. I must have been taken long before the others, and whatever they’d done to put me out had worn off, but not before they’d come back with Becca and her friend.

  “Becca, I’m sure she’ll wake up soon; okay, just stay calm and we’ll figure this out together,” I reassured her, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of my own stomach. I’d been awake for at least a couple of hours; but who knew how long the effects would last.

  In a panic, I ran my fingers down the line of my neck on both sides, following the carotid artery and jugular veins. I did the same with my arms, checking the veins at my elbows and wrists. I was almost afraid to continue, but I undid my pants and slid them off. I felt over my hips, down my thighs, and down my legs to my ankles. No bite marks; I hadn’t been bitten anywhere on my body.

  I started shivering; I had no idea if it was from relief or shock! Tears formed a lump in my throat; I hugged my knees to my chest and rocked while I cried until I could speak again. Becca and I had been silent for a few minutes as she tended to her friend, but I had to know if either of them had been bitten either.

  “Hey, Becca, are you still there?”

  “Yeah, are you all right?” She paused before continuing. “It’s okay if you’re crying; I was too. I just meant are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine. I do need you to do something for me. I need you to check your veins for puncture marks.” I sighed, waiting for the questions that would lead to her telling me I was crazy.

  “Do you think the guys that took us injected us with drugs?” It was as good a reason as I could give without sounding like a lunatic, and she was already in a black hole with no idea if her friend was hurt or sick. I was worried a vampire had put her under so deeply that she might never wake up.

  “Yeah,” I replied, rubbing my face with my hands. “So, you know, anything like that. It might not even be noticeable, except for a sore spot over a vein, like… like a bruise you don’t remember getting.” I took a shaky breath. “I checked myself, and I didn’t find anything, I just want us all to be sure. Your friend,”

  “Mackenzie.”

  “Right, Mackenzie. When she wakes up, we’ll have her do the same thing to herself.”

  “I’m doing it now.” Stuck in the dark halfway from nowhere I couldn’t see or hear her moving, so I had to take her word for it. Maybe all the time in the dark or the time in the Venatores lamiae had made me paranoid. “The only bruise I have is on my butt. Maybe that’s where they stuck the needle. It’s pretty sore.” I grinned. With no easy access to major arteries or veins, it was unlikely she’d been bitten on her butt. Her voice was as giddy as I felt.

  We were stuck in the dark, hungry; I was about to have to pee in a corner. But we were alive, and fang-free; at least for the moment. I felt fresh tears sting my eyelids, but I was okay. Becca was okay and hopefully Mackenzie would be okay. The next step was to figure out how to get free. We had to get word to David and Clay in order for the hunters to come for us.

  There was so much I didn’t know yet, so many things that weren’t taught to us until we’d been initiated. So I started with what I did know: the truth and the lore of vampires.

  Chapter 5

  Becca and I chatted for a long time about where we came from, who we were, and how we were taken. We talked so long that I started to worry about her friend, Mackenzie. The upside was that we’d been gone long enough for David and Clayton to notice, and that meant hunters were already looking for us. I hated that my own stupidity and jealousy had left me alone and off-guard. I’d practically begged to be taken by naively wandering off on my own. David and Clayton had probably been happy to be rid of me, the fifth wheel of the group.

  Before dating had become a focus of their lives, we’d been inseparable. I should have known it was inevitable that I’d be the one who didn’t fit in the group anymore. It was gut wrenching how easily David had chosen flirting with someone new over our lifelong friendship. I wondered if he’d ever thought we were family, or if that was just forced on him too.

  I mentally slapped myself out of my self-pity and started thinking about the monsters instead. They could have killed us or infected us on the spot. That was unless we were being given to a master, as a gift or maybe food. Hopefully the master was old enough that he couldn’t pretend to be human anymore. I shuddered, and bile rose in my mouth.

  The ancient ones; the oldest of the vampires; had thin, papery skin stretched over their skulls and their teeth were so prominent that they appeared lipless. Their eyes burned like coal in braziers and their hair receded to mere tufts at their temples and ears. The illustrations in our textbooks, of the few ancient ones the hunters had been able to capture, were horrific and nightmare inducing. The textbooks said that masters that old were almost impossible to catch or kill; especially since they retreated from humanity.

  If the master still needed to eat, where were they getting their food? The thought made me nauseated as I leaned my forehead against the wall to cool off and change my thought process. Hunters and vampires killed each other, but we tried to keep it civilized. We knew the consequences of war for the human world.

  If the vampires that took us (if they were vampires and not organ thieves after all) could fly; they had access to hundreds of years of wealth and the toys that came with them. I had done some research on the geography of the California coast and most likely we’d been taken because we were convenient. The pitting I felt in the stone of the walls could be from proximity to the ocean; where salt spray and ocean storms would have broken the stone down faster than in drier locations.

  “Becca, Becca, how is Mackenzie doing?” I called out, becoming more alarmed that she still wasn’t awake.

  “Her breathing is shallow and uneven. I can touch her face; I even pinched her arm! She didn’t wake up or even make a sound.” That one statement turned my blood to ice in my veins. If they hadn’t bitten us to put us under, then we’d been “glamoured” or charmed to knock us out, which meant that the vampires that took us had gotten inside our heads.

  My shields hadn’t been enough to protect me. I wasn’t surprised, but I was still ashamed of my weakness. Perhaps Dominique had been wrong about my ‘raw talent,’ as she’d called it. Maybe I was in a cell about to be drained of my blood by an impossibly terrifying predator; maybe that was just my fate. The vampire that killed my mother and father hadn’t bothered to kill me. Now, my destiny to die as fang-feed had caught up to me.

  For a moment, I’d imagined myself as “the girl who lived”. Now, I just felt stupid. My lip slid between my teeth to stop me from biting my fingernails, which would be the next thing in my
mouth if I couldn’t come up with some sort of solution. I might not have been much of an expert, but I was the closest thing Becca and the still-unconscious Mackenzie had to a hunter.

  “Becca, slap her. Hard,” I ordered. “Hit her as hard as you dare with your open hand. We’re running out of time, and we need her awake.”

  “I’m not going to hurt her.”

  “Really? What chance do we have to get her out of here, if she’s still unconscious?”

  “You think beating her up will help us get her out?”

  “I think getting her awake gives us a chance to fight together, or at least negotiate for our lives. Right now, she is dead weight we can’t carry and she can’t argue for her freedom if she’s unconscious.” I didn’t think vampires had a parlay system, but I was willing to bet if we were all awake, we’d stay together; whereas if Mackenzie was still asleep, they’d take her first, because she’d be easier for them to feed on.