Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ripley Harper

  I pull her to the floor, drag her out the door and down the hallway. But I don’t have enough strength left to support her shoulders, so I grab the back of her dress and drag her that way. She’s lighter than the other two, but my body is exhausted and my head is throbbing with pain. My hands slip a few times and I drop her head against the floor, hard.

  I’m too exhausted to care. I feel as if I’m swimming through syrup. My back is burning, my shoulders are on fire, my legs are almost numb. I drag her past the labs. I feel my mouth fill with blood, spit it out. I drag her past the office. I can see the front entrance. It seems miles away. People are still calmly leaving through the front doors. I focus on staying upright. On moving. On not letting go of her dress.

  As I get closer to the entrance, a group of students come over, look at me curiously, and ask if they can help. They’re a year or two below me and I don’t really know them, but I nod, let go.

  A boy lifts Chloe’s unconscious body from the floor into his arms. He makes it look easy. The girls are concerned about her but I don’t have the strength to explain, so I tell them she took some pills and passed out. They widen their eyes at each other but don’t say anything to me. The boy carries Chloe through the front doors like Rhett Butler carried Scarlet o’ Hara up the steps in Gone with the Wind. He’s smiling from ear to ear.

  By now almost the entire school is outside, chatting and laughing and standing around. I don’t know what Jonathan has told them, but he obviously hasn’t said they must run for their lives. I see Amanda stumbling around on the grass outside. I lean against a wall, try to get my breath back. My head is on fire and my vision is blurry. I close my eyes, allow myself to sink to the floor...

  It hits me like a bucket of cold water.

  We’re way over time. Longer than five minutes. Maybe ten. Longer than that even. Jeffrey’s bomb should have exploded by now. It was a perfect plan, worked out to the last second.

  He lied.

  I let my breath out in a harsh laugh, overcome with relief and exhaustion and anger. I look at the chatting students standing around in their pretty dresses and their fancy shirts, safe and sound. Totally oblivious.

  He’d been lying all along. There never was a bomb. Of course there wasn’t.

  He wanted to frighten us. To make him seem like this evil genius. He was bragging, that’s all.

  I close my eyes, rest my head against the wall.

  And then I feel the blast shake through my body as the night explodes into a fiery chaos of screams and flames and terror.

  Chapter 26

  In the surviving mythology, the oldest mention of the name Lilith is found in the epic Sumerian poem of Gilgamesh, written approximately 2 000 years before the birth of Christ. A winged wild spirit associated with death, dark sexuality and open spaces, she later appears in the legends of the ancient Hittites, Egyptians, and Israelites, and makes one appearance in the Bible as a demon shunned to a desert wilderness.

  During the middle ages, Jewish tradition paints her as the first wife of Adam, a destructive symbol of female assertiveness, who leaves Eden rather than submit to Adam’s rule. Later, Kabbalistic sources goes even further by making her the partner of Satan, nothing less than the female embodiment of the face of evil.

  Throughout, she is the one who cannot bend and will not break, who represents not only chaos, death, and seduction, but also the fiery spirit of unpredictable, untamable, rebellious womanhood.

  From the abstract to a paper presented to the Annual Assembly of the Order of Keepers by Sofia Rodriguez: The Names of the Ten: Ancient Wisdom or Deliberate Misdirection? (2010)

  It takes a long time for the emergency services to arrive. I see a surprising number of wounded kids: some bleeding, some limping, some being carried out. I don’t have any idea where the bomb exploded or what exactly happened or who alerted the sheriff and the fire department.

  For now, all I know is that everyone seems to have made it out alive.

  *

  I am away from the action, sitting on our little patch of grass next to the parking lot. It’s dark. Nobody knows I’m here.

  I stumbled to this spot about twenty minutes ago. I didn’t want to leave before I knew that Daniel was safe and being taken care of. I watched as he was loaded, still unconscious, into an ambulance, and I haven’t found the strength to get up yet.

  I am not thinking. Everything hurts.

  I watch as a firefighter helps two students stagger out of the building. I didn’t know anyone was still in there. As they walk into the light, I recognize them—it’s Henry and Eve. Henry’s whole face is covered in blood and his one eye seems to be missing. He’s being led by Eve, his body supported by the firefighter, as if he’s drunk.

  I don’t feel anything.

  The ambulance is back, just in time, and I watch as they both get in.

  I don’t think about Henry’s missing eye. I don’t think about Eve’s distraught face. I don’t think about anything because if I do, I’ll have to think about everything.

  *

  Everyone did not make it out alive.

  I know that, of course.

  *

  My headache is now a constant, pressing band of pain around my eyes rather than the throbbing agony of earlier. My mouth is raw and bloody. My forehead burns, for some reason. My back aches and my hands are trembling.

  Maggie woke up a few minutes ago. Chloe too. I saw it from over here, but I can’t bring myself to go to them. I’m not ready to talk to anyone yet.

  I wouldn’t know what to say.

  *

  It’s a lovely evening, unseasonably warm. Or perhaps it’s the fire that’s warming up the night; the firefighters haven’t managed to bring the blaze under control yet. It’s kind of spectacular, actually, to see a fire this size. All those pretty bright yellows and oranges and reds, subtly shaded by a deep, ominous, underlying black. The fire seems alive, pulsing and breathing, devouring the night around it.

  As I watch the thick cloud of smoke rising up from the flames making swirling gray patterns against the black sky, I understand for the first time why people commit arson. A fire this size is something profound and elemental: weightless and dense and beautiful and terrifying.

  I stare, hypnotized.

  *

  “If you look at the flames for long enough, they’ll start speaking to you.”

  Jonathan Pendragon sinks down on the grass next to me.

  I glance at him briefly before looking back at the fire.

  “Are you okay?” he asks after a few minutes of silence.

  “I never knew a fire could be so beautiful.”

  “There’s a lot about yourself you don’t know.”

  We stare at the flames, neither of us saying anything for a long time.

  “I killed someone tonight.”

  “I figured.” His voice is gentle. “Thank you.”

  “You shouldn’t thank me.”

  “You saved my life. Everyone else’s too.”

  “Miss Anderson is dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  We sit in silence. The flames are beginning to die down; the firefighters finally seem to be winning. It makes me sad, in a way.

  “I should’ve seen it coming,” I say. “I should’ve realized Jeffrey was a ticking time-bomb.”

  “I didn’t see it either. Nobody did.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, gently. His touch makes my entire body sing. I feel my muscles relaxing, my aches and pains fading. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  I want this to be true. I long for this to be true so bad that I almost reach out and take his hand and pull him closer. I have an overwhelming need to drown myself in the comfort he is offering.

  But I take his hand from my shoulder. It’s distracting me in a way that feels too easy. Too comfortable.

  Dishonest.

  “I do blame myself. I knew something was seriously wrong with Jeffrey. On some level, I knew it days ago. I had this feeling deep inside me that some
thing was off, something was badly wrong, but I was distracted, looking in all the wrong places.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “Rather too hard than too easy.”

  We watch them put out the last of the flames.

  After a few minutes, Jonathan sighs. “You should probably know something. Jeffrey didn’t get those photos by hacking into our phones.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to admit the truth to Chloe.”

  “The truth?”

  “It was supposed to be a bit of fun. A way into the club. We shared photos of our girlfriends. Ty was the only one who wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “It was a private group, so we didn’t think it was so bad. But Josh left his laptop in the gym once; maybe he forgot to log out. We deleted everything the moment Chloe told me the photos had leaked. But by then it was too late.”

  I look at him. It would be so easy to blame someone else for this mess.

  “We all made mistakes.”

  “I’m sorry though.”

  “Okay.”

  Now that the fire’s been put out, people are starting to drift toward their cars. We’ll be discovered at any minute.

  “How do you want to play this?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want to be the hero? The brave young woman who single-handedly prevented a mass tragedy? Or do you want to disappear?”

  “You can make that happen?”

  He shrugs.

  “I want to disappear.”

  “You sure?”

  “Please.”

  “In that case, you’d better go. You can take my car.”

  There’s no way I can drive in my condition. My head is spinning, my hands are trembling, and everything feels deeply unreal, as if I’m stuck in a bad dream.

  “I think I’ll walk. It’s not far.”

  He narrows his eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He helps me up. My body is stiff and sore and my head is on fire. I feel sick, like I might throw up at any moment.

  “Lie low for a few days,” he tells me. “Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll smooth things over on this side.”

  “Okay.” I start walking, away from the lights and into the darkness. “And Jonathan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for getting everyone out so quickly and so calmly. Nobody else could’ve done it.”

  “So, once again, Jonathan Pendragon saves the day.” He gives me a bitter half-smile. “What a fucking prince.”

  *

  I’m limping home wearing only one shoe. I’ve already thrown up next to the road, twice. I’m hurting and I’m cold and I’m miserable. I miss my mom. I’m not far from Ingrid’s house, but I feel the sudden need to lie down right here on the sidewalk and wait for the sun to come up.

  Perhaps I should’ve seen a doctor after all. I might be suffering from concussion. People die of head injuries, sometimes.

  I sit down, wait for the world to feel a bit more stable.

  A car draws up next to me. It’s a big yellow BMW. The doors open. Two guys in suits get out. Both of them are carrying guns.

  I laugh out loud.

  *

  I’m sitting in a car that smells like money and new leather. I’m leaning back against the headrest and looking out the window, far into the night, to the stars shining in the inky black sky. From the sound of the engine I suspect we’re going really fast, but the pattern of stars outside the window stays the same. We’re on a long, straight road.

  If you look up at the night sky and you think of stars as pretty little lights decorating your life, your own existence seems big and important and the things that happen to you seem scary and significant. But if you look up at the night sky and you think of stars as colossal, luminous balls of gas, the fundamental building blocks of galaxies that manufacture and distribute the elements that everything you know is made of, your own life starts to feel ridiculously small. Less than the tiniest little blip against the unthinkably vast backdrop of the universe we live in.

  It’s a comforting idea, in a way.

  *

  I am sitting in an enormous marble bath while two really tall women wash my hair and soap my body. This is not as creepy as it sounds. It feels pleasant, actually, and reminds me of being young, and loved, and looked after.

  They dry me with soft towels and put soothing creams on my burning face before dressing my wounds. They give me something sweet and warm to drink that takes away my aches and pains within minutes, leaving me feeling pleasantly floaty and tired. Then they help me into a clean white robe and take me to a big, airy, white bedroom. I get into the bed. The sheets are fresh and soft and welcoming. I place my head on the pillow and I close my eyes.

  *

  Ingrid is telling me, very clearly, that I must wake up.

  I can’t open my eyes.

  *

  I am very thirsty. Fortunately, there’s a big jug of water next to me. I pour myself a tall glass, drink the whole thing. Then I turn to the mirror.

  I’m wearing a simple, clean black dress and black ballet slippers. My hair is hanging straight and loose. I have several deep scratches above my right eye, neatly dressed with surgical strips. My bottom lip is swollen, my cheek is raw and bruised and I have mottled blue-and-black marks around my hands and feet.

  Apart from that, I look exactly the same.

  I don’t feel the same.

  *

  I am back in that cavernous dark hall lit by hundreds of candles.

  The lords and ladies are all seated on their colored thrones. I’m sitting in front of them on a little black bench. Ingrid and Gunn are nowhere to be seen.

  I am constantly thirsty. There is a glass of water on a small table next to me, from which I take a sip every so often.

  We seem to be in the middle of another trial. People are called to the front to give witness, like you do in court. They are talking about me.

  The witnesses do not swear on the Bible. Instead they walk to one of the lords and ladies, kneel down before them, kiss their rings, and tell their stories while still on their knees, their heads bent.

  I watch and I listen, but I can’t force myself to care.

  *

  The first witness is Principal Sweeney.

  He kneels before the Green Lord. He says he’s been monitoring me faithfully, as instructed. It’s been a great honor to serve his lord in this way.

  He reports that he has not seen any evidence of earthmagic in me. He’s been disappointed not only by this lack of power but also by my reckless nature and my unconventional lifestyle. He believes me to be a danger to myself and has had many a sleepless night over the way my keepers carelessly allow me to mix with ordinary humans. All his attempts at preventing me from attending school have failed, he admits, mainly because he could not stand alone against the combined might of the Waymonds and the Pendragons.

  He says that he is deeply concerned about the way my keepers are fulfilling their duties. He suspects that what little power I might’ve had has been warped under their care. I put him in a peculiar kind of trance not too long ago, an unconventional and unpleasant magic he has never heard of before.

  His heartfelt recommendation is that I be removed from my keepers and placed directly in the Order’s care. If the correct mate is chosen for me, I might be able to produce a more powerful daughter in time. Until then, I should be closely watched: I am the last of my kind and the rare magic in my blood might be lost forever if I’m not carefully controlled.

  He is thanked for his service. He leaves without looking at me.

  I take another sip of water.

  *

  The second witness is Mrs. Hector.

  She kneels before the Blue Lord. She says that she’s been monitoring me faithfully as instructed. It’s been a great honor to serve her clan in thi
s way.

  She reports that she has seen some evidence of seamagic in me; however, she believes my power to be mundane and raw, without real flair—some basic manipulation of water, nothing more. A disappointment, in view of who my mother was.

  She tells them that as a person I am simple and rather uncouth.

  When asked, she says that she feels unable to give an objective verdict on the Waymonds’ performance as my keepers. Her loyalty to that family goes too far back; she cannot be unbiased. When pressed, she admits that she has seen me socializing with the Pendragon boy. She acknowledges that I should probably be removed from the Pendragons’ sphere of influence as soon as possible.

  She is thanked for her faithful service. She leaves without looking at me.

  I take another sip of water.

  *

  Something is wrong. My inner voice is trying to send me a message, clearly and plainly, but I cannot make out the words. There is a loud white noise in my ears, a deep coldness dulling my senses.

  I stare out in front of me.

  *

  The third witness is a wizened old man I don’t immediately recognize. Then he starts speaking and I realize it’s old Victor, the alcoholic caretaker of the town pool. The reason I didn’t recognize him is because he’s neatly shaven, and clean, and wearing a suit.

  He kneels before the Red Lady. He reports that he’s been monitoring me faithfully as instructed. It has been a great honor to serve his lady in this way.

  He has witnessed hardly any signs of bloodmagic in me, he says. Although I am gifted in speed and agility, my performance still falls within human range. My strength is barely above the ordinary. I have shown no signs of Seduction or Enthrallment, in spite of the hair.

  When pressed, he confesses that he was not there on the day I allegedly escaped the White Witch’s attack. He begs his lady’s pity for this unforgivable lapse. He admits that he has fallen victim to certain human vices; living undercover for so long has taken its toll.

  He says he finds it hard to believe that there’s any truth to my rumored clash with the White Witch anyway. I’ve always seemed rather ordinary to him; not my mother’s daughter at all. He believes my bloodline must be protected nonetheless, and that I must be mated very soon. He has no further suggestions.