A Dragon's Heart: (Dragons of Paragon - Book 1)

by Jan Dockter

  She turned a blind corner and smashed right into something solid but with a little give. The wind was knocked out of her and she tumbled to the floor. She rolled over in pain and saw the stern face of Professor Wheatley staring down at her.

  “Get up,” he said. “We have to go.”

  He grabbed her hand and yanked her up with a strength she had not thought possible for a man of his age. But to her relief, his palm was warm in hers. He was not one of them.

  He pulled her into a nearby classroom and closed the door behind them.

  “We can’t stay here,” Ashe whispered through heaving breaths. “He can smell us. He’ll find us.”

  Professor Wheatley put a finger to his lips and took something out of his pocket that looked like a small square of burlap tied into a bundle. He handed it to Ashe, telling her, “Keep this in your pocket. It's nothing special, just a strong mix of herbs. It’ll mask your smell long enough to get us away from here.”

  “You knew what he was,” Ashe panted.

  The professor shook his head. “I had my theories, but we can talk about it later. Right now we need to get you somewhere safe.”

  He moved over to one of the classroom windows and lifted it open. A blast of cold wind blew into the classroom, along with a flurry of snow. Ashe could barely see anything beyond the open window through the snow. She didn’t want to imagine what Peter was thinking right now; he was likely worrying himself sick if he wasn’t out braving the blizzard trying to look for her.

  As the professor clumsily climbed out the window, Ashe took out her phone. She wanted to send Peter a message telling him she was okay and that she would be home soon, but she saw with disappointment that she had no signal. The blizzard must have knocked out power citywide, if not further.

  “Get the lead out,” Professor Wheatley snapped, having made it successfully over to the other side of the window.

  She slid her phone into her pocket and hoisted herself out after him. The snow drifts outside were nearly a foot deep and were only growing deeper the longer they waited. Professor Wheatley set off into the blizzard, in the general direction of what Ashe guessed was the parking lot. Ashe wondered how he expected to be able to drive in all this snow.

  Within minutes, Ashe could already feel the cold seeping into her bones. The bottoms of her jeans were clinging wetly to her shivering calves and she couldn’t feel her toes or fingers anymore. Her wool coat was doing little to discourage the snow from finding its way down her back, though she thought she had wrapped her scarf securely enough. The snowflakes must have been melting and dripping down into her clothes from the gaps in her scarf. Professor Wheatley was bundled tightly in a waterproof down jacket, having been on his way out when Ashe had run into him in the hallway.

  Finally the dark hulking shapes of cars became visible through the blizzard. Professor Wheatley stopped at a station wagon— the kind often seen outside the city, with ski racks on top— and started clearing the snow off the windshield. Ashe went over to help. Their movements were fast and furtive, as if at any moment Professor Sharp could come leaping out of the whiteness and spirit Ashe away before Professor Wheatley could save her again. Once the windows were cleared, they got in and the professor started the engine.

  “Is it safe to drive in this?” Ashe asked, watching nervously out the front windshield as the professor pulled slowly onto the road. It was hard to determine exactly where the road ended and the sidewalk began. For all Ashe knew they were driving across the campus green and would smash right into the student center at any moment.

  Professor Wheatley held the wheel in both hands, his shoulders hunched stiffly forward. “Safer out here than in there,” he said. “Where am I taking you?”

  “To my friend’s house,” Ashe said, not yet sure how much she should trust the professor. They passed through an intersection and Ashe saw an office building on the corner that helped her orient herself. “It’s straight past here, take a left on 13th, and I’ll tell you where to turn again when we get closer.”

  “By the way, thank you for helping me,” Ashe added after a pause.

  The professor only grunted in recognition. “You’re not new to this stuff, are you?” he asked.

  Ashe had not known about the existence of vampires until mere months ago, but she had been through quite a lot since then.

  “That explains your papers,” Professor Wheatley. “All this time I thought you weren’t taking the class seriously. You always write as if there’s a possibility the folklore is real and can be taken at face value. I tried to get you to be more serious, to dig deeper, but you already were. You know the importance of what I teach, more than most. I’m sorry for giving you a hard time.”

  Ashe didn’t know if it was the residual fear from being chased by a vampire leaving her system, or the cold, or her exhaustion, but she felt her eyes stinging with tears at the professor’s words. Under everything he was a good man and she would likely be dead if he hadn’t been there to save her.

  “But how did you know about Professor Sharp, or any of this?” Ashe asked as the car rolled slowly along the empty streets. The stop lights at every intersection were dead from the power outage.

  “I’ve studied mythology and folklore for all of my adult life,” Professor Wheatley said. “Once you start opening doors, it’s easy to come across information that isn’t meant for your eyes. As for Professor Sharp, he has been chasing after a cure for vampirism ever since he came back from winter break. He has been so single-minded in trying to find the answer that he hasn’t bothered to cover his tracks. At first I thought that his sick wife may have been turned somehow, but recently I started watching the professor more closely and today I got the confirmation I needed to know that the cure he was seeking was for himself.”

  Ashe took a moment to take it all in. Professor Sharp had become a vampire and Professor Wheatley had saved her. She thought back to all of those meetings in Professor Sharp’s office that year. He had been a good man, Ashe thought with regret. He had believed in Ashe when no one else had, even introducing her to the young man who had become the most important person to her in this world. Landon had taken all of that and destroyed it; Ashe burned with rage. Landon had known that Ashe wouldn’t have suspected the professor. She had trusted him. She had been blind to all the signs until it was too late.

  If only Peter had gone in to see Professor Sharp after the break, he may have picked up on the signs and Ashe wouldn’t have been in danger. But Professor Sharp had also said something about Ashe being a key to end his wife’s suffering. His wife wasn’t dead, and some vampires were keeping her. Ashe had no doubts as to the identity of the vampires in question. Landon’s clan was behind this; she would have to tell Peter. They were no longer safe in the city.

  “The house is the dark grey one with the tree out front,” Ashe instructed as they pulled onto Peter’s street.

  The car rolled to a natural stop beside what Ashe assumed to be the curb. Professor Wheatley looked at her with the same stern expression as always, though Ashe could perceive a glimmer of compassion behind it. “Don’t stay in one place too long, okay? I’ll do what I can about the professor, but you have to keep moving.”

  Ashe nodded.

  “You’ll be all right.”

  Ashe stepped out of the car and into the blizzard. She ran half-blindly to Peter’s front door. The door was unlocked and she opened it herself, not wanting to wake his family, who she knew was sleeping downstairs. The hallway was dark and the heat wasn’t on, though it wouldn’t have been even if the power had been working. Peter’s family only warmed up the house when Ashe was coming over, as she was the only one who needed it.

  Ashe hung her damp coat and scarf on the coat rack by the door and tossed her backpack underneath. Peter wasn’t in the living room or kitchen so Ashe went upstairs. She hoped he wasn’t out in the storm looking for her. Maybe he had been snowed in at the student center. Either way, he would be worrying about her, just as she was worryin
g about him. She went back to the hallway and dug through her backpack until she found the ruby earrings Peter had given her. She slipped the posts into her earlobes feeling the comforting weight of the jewelry on her ears. She wanted to be close to Peter in any way she could. If only she knew where he was.

  Peter didn’t like the idea of Ashe going to class with the coming storm. After she left the student center, he struggled to stay focused on his homework. He shifted restlessly on the sofa, every once in a while looking out at the quad. The wind was picking up and the snow had covered the ground in an even blanket. There wasn’t a soul outside and few remained in the student center. The lights flickered once but remained steady for a while after that. Peter stood up and took a walk around the building to calm his nerves. It was just a storm, he told himself.

  As he was circling the first floor snack bar, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He thought it might be a message from the administration cancelling classes, but it was a message from Mark instead.

  “Call me,” it said, as Mark’s messages always did.

  He dialed the number and waited for Mark to pick up. He wondered if Mark had found something new. There had been a lull in communication for a while now as Mark focused on staking out the house Landon’s clan had holed up in. They needed to know what they were up against before they went in for the kill.

  The lights flickered a second time just as Mark picked up. Peter glanced at the snack bar’s wall clock: it was just after 3:00pm. Ashe would be coming back any second now. The snow outside was coming down in clumps.

  “I’ve been watching the house for three days now and I’ve finally got everything figured out,” Mark shouted over the loud rumble of a car engine in the background. His voice crackled with static, “There are six vampires in the house including Landon. Four seem to be Alilovics—Landon, his father and older brothers. There are two young women with them who don’t seem to be part of the family. There’s no evidence that Landon’s mother or any other female members of his clan are there with them.”

  “And their victims?”

  “That’s been harder to determine,” Mark replied. “There should be four of them. I haven’t seen any bodies being dragged out, but they may have disposed of some before I started surveillance.”

  Peter counted in his head. “Wait, there should be three. There was the old man and the couple who crashed their car. Who’s the fourth?”

  “I haven’t had time to call you about the last one. It’s hard to determine when the incident happened, but I think it lines up with Landon’s clan leaving the city. It took a while for the police to find out about this one because the woman lived alone. By the decay of the food left on the counter, they estimated she’d been gone a week before anyone noticed she was missing. There’s no sign of where she could have gone, but her house is only a couple of miles from the one being used by Landon’s clan.”

  Peter felt sick thinking of all the victims. He wondered how many of them were still alive. He recalled the blood-draining setup he had found in Landon’s basement. Any one of those victims could have been Ashe. One could still be Ashe, if Peter wasn’t careful. A powerful rage burned beneath his skin. He needed to wipe out Landon’s clan.

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?” Peter asked.

  Mark replied, “No, I was leading up to the most important part. Now that we know how many vampires there are, everything’s set for the extermination.”

  “You’re going to strike tonight?” Peter asked.

  “No, in a couple of hours. We want to catch the clan while most of them are still sleeping. The guys I called in to help us are all here, and with the blizzard coming, the clan will have nowhere to run.”

  “You’re going to have to give me more time,” Peter said. He still had to walk Ashe home, and more importantly, hold her one more time before he went to battle. He was no stranger to fighting and he knew Mark and the others were good at their job, but there was always that slim chance of a slip-up. His last encounter with Landon had been close enough. If Ashe hadn’t been there...

  “I’m in the city,” Peter said, snapping back to the present. “It will take me a couple of hours at least to get out there and that’s not accounting for the snow.”

  “It’s now or never,” Mark warned.

  Peter watched the clock out of the corner of his eye. Ashe was running late. “I’ll leave as soon as I can. Just hold on until I can get there.”

  “Too late; I’m parked outside,” Mark said casually. “I can see you through the window.”

  Peter turned slowly to the wall of wide windows across from the snack bar. He could barely make out the black car parked by the curb; it was the only car on the street without a thick covering of snow on its hood. Puffs of white were coming out of the exhaust pipe.

  “I told you. I can’t go now.”

  The car outside honked. Peter could hear it through the phone and its echo outside at the same time.

  “We’re not going to get out of the city if you don’t get your ass out here,” Mark growled. “We’ve only got one chance at this. You want to keep your loved ones safe, don't you?”

  Peter thought about Ashe and what was best for her. He had promised to walk her home, but what was a little snow compared to the larger threat of Landon looming over her head? If he insisted on waiting for Ashe, he might mess up his chance to get rid of Landon’s family.

  She was almost twenty minutes late now. Peter couldn’t stall much longer. He had to make a decision. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’m coming out.”

  He quickly hung up the phone and typed out a message to Ashe, telling her to go home without him. Before he could send it, the lights went out in the student center and his phone lost its signal. The bluish light from his cell phone became the only illumination in the entire room. Peter could almost hear Ashe’s voice in his head telling him to come get her, but he ignored it. He knew that constantly worrying about her like this was unhealthy for him, though the echo of her voice nagged him not to go. He hoped that Ashe wouldn’t waste time trying to find him; her house wasn’t far from campus. She would be okay

  CHAPTER 5

  Ashe walked around the entire house trying all of the light switches though she knew they wouldn’t work. Peter’s house was drafty and old, but she needed to stay here in case he came back. She thought about waiting out the storm at her own house, but it was too far to go on foot in such weather. Her coat and scarf still hadn’t dried out from the afternoon and she didn’t want to catch pneumonia or lose her toes to frostbite. She contented herself with roaming the halls of the quiet house, peering into half-empty moving boxes and tracing her name in the dust on the banister.

  When that lost its charm, Ashe dozed for a while in a leather armchair in the living room. She was exhausted from running and trekking through the snow. Her fragmented dreams brought back visions of Professor Sharp in his office, staring at her with gleaming eyes that told Ashe of a broken, desperate man who do anything to get his wife back. He lunged at her and Ashe jerked awake.

  It was hard to tell through the storm where the sun had gone, but Ashe’s phone told her it was nearing six. It also told her its battery was about to run out. She hadn’t meant to sleep nearly so long. As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, she noticed the bundle of herbs Professor Wheatley had given her. She brought it to her nose and could still smell, though faint, a mix of flowers and the piney scent of juniper. She smiled to herself, remembering the professor’s words of encouragement about her work in his class. She stretched her legs and got out of her chair. She walked over to the coat rack by the front door and carefully placed the bundle of herbs inside her coat pocket.

  Though the house was still and blizzard had quieted back down into gentle snowfall, Ashe felt the urgency of her need to find Peter. Professor Sharp was still out there somewhere, and even if he couldn’t get to her in all this snow, he would be waiting for her. As Ashe was contemplating whether or not to brave the cold a
nd head back to her home, she heard a door creak open somewhere inside the house. She stopped and turned slowly.

  “Hello?” she called out quietly. There was no response. An image of Professor Sharp popped into her mind’s eye and she had to remind herself that the house wasn’t actually empty. Peter’s family were all sleeping downstairs. It must have been one of them.

  She turned back around and took her coat from the rack. The wool was still slightly damp on the outside, but the inside was thankfully dry. She decided she would leave a note for Peter, telling him that she was back at her house, in case he came here looking for her.

  As she scrawled her note, Ashe noticed the soft padding of footsteps behind her, but thought the sound was a figment of her frightened imagination. She only turned to look when she could no longer deny the feeling that there was someone in the room with her. Her pencil clattered to the floor.

  “Penelope,” she said with a tone of surprise. Peter’s eldest sister was standing just inside the room, her dark hair pinned up in its usual manner, though looking messy from her recent slumber. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  Ashe started backing up towards the door, her hand feeling for the doorknob.

  “You’re looking for him, aren’t you? He’s not here,” Penelope said, taking a step closer. Ashe’s hand closed around the doorknob.

  “I was just leaving,” Ashe replied, trying not to sound nearly as scared as she was.

  “No, you’re not,” Penelope replied.

  Ashe tried turning the doorknob, but found it was stuck. It was like a sickening instance of déjà vu from Professor Sharp’s office, only this time the lock wasn’t the problem. The door was simply stuck.

  Penelope took another quiet step closer, gracefully, as if she were gliding across the hardwood floor.

  Ashe rattled the doorknob violently but it was like the door had been glued in place. Ashe realized with horror that Penelope must have telekinetic powers to some degree, similar to how Landon could see future events. Maybe even Peter had psychic powers of his own; Ashe had never thought to ask him. Ashe gave up her struggle and let go of the doorknob.