Love of A Dragon (Exalted Dragons Book 1)

by K. T. Stryker

  Ashe waited for the answer but it didn’t come. “What is it?” she whimpered as Penelope pulled her hair harder.

  “I need you to call my brother and tell him you don’t love him.”

  “Why?” Ashe asked through tears.

  Penelope scoffed, “Why? Does it matter? I want you to break his heart so that he will never be able to love a human woman again. Your kind and ours aren’t meant to fall in love. All you bring is trouble; you are all pigs. You exist to be eaten by us and nothing more.”

  “The power’s out,” Ashe muttered, trying to ignore the words cutting through her like a knife.

  Penelope released Ashe’s hair. A puzzled look crossed her face and Ashe wondered if her knowledge of technology was as behind as her sense of fashion.

  “No power means no cell reception. The towers can’t send the signal.”

  Penelope crossed her arms in front of her chest, looking like she was suspicious of Ashe, but too unsure about the subject to contradict her. Ashe felt a little of her fear go away. Maybe she could use Penelope’s ignorance to her advantage.

  “No problem. There are plenty of things we can do in the meantime. It’s amazing how much blood a human can lose before they lose consciousness.” Penelope said, a fresh smile forming across her thin pale lips.

  There were four of them, one for every victim they hoped to find still alive in the basement. Mark handed out stakes with a leather-clad hand. There were studs of pure silver on each of his knuckles.

  “Now be careful with these,” he was saying to the group. “Don’t do something stupid like stick yourself with the pointy end. Also, you need to make them count. You’ve only got two each.”

  The men nodded. Peter palmed the round end of the stake, feeling its weight in his hand. He hated killing his own kind. It made him feel like a traitor, even when the vampires he was after would have done the same to him in a heartbeat. He focused instead on Ashe, on her beautiful light eyes and the way her dimples showed with every smile. He thought about the feeling of her in his arms, soft and warm and full of the energy of life. He always felt more human when he was around her and he needed to remember his humanity if he was to get through the night.

  Mark continued instructing the men: “You need to make sure your kills are silent. There are six in Landon’s group, more if he’s turned some of the humans. We have to get as many as we can while they’re sleeping. A well-placed stake will silence them before they can fully wake. But you all know that already.” He chuckled grimly.

  “I’d prefer to use bullets,” one of the men replied. He had a neatly trimmed beard and piercing blue eyes. “I can shoot them faster than they can wake up from the sound.” He pulled aside his coat to reveal a holster at his hip. The pistol grip looked like something out of an old Western.

  “No sound,” Mark grunted. “Silent as the graves we’re sending them to. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

  Peter looked at men around him. They were vampires who had made a living from doing away with the members of their kind that posed problems for the greater community. At best they were crusaders working to protect humanity from the monsters lying in the shadows, but at their worst they were hired killers, skilled at exterminating their own kind. Though now Peter was working side-by-side with these men, there was a time not all that long ago when they would have been after Peter, just as they now hunted Landon’s clan. Peter’s past wasn’t free from sin; he was no stranger to the dark lust for blood and the desperate measures a vampire could take to get it. He only hoped that what he had done since then—getting his family onto donor blood and making sure they didn’t take any new victims—was enough to make up for his past transgressions.

  “When we go down into the basement, don’t get distracted by the victims,” Mark was saying. “If they start to make a commotion, Bill, you know what to do.” The third vampire, a small man with sunken eyes, nodded in understanding at Mark. Bill had the same powers as Peter’s sister Penelope; he could manipulate the matter around him with his willpower alone. Of course there were limits to any vampire’s power and Peter hoped Bill was strong enough to silence a room full of desperate, suffering people. The success of the job may depend on it.

  Landon’s house was a distant dark spot on the horizon, the details of its shape obscured by the falling snow. It didn’t look especially sinister from where Peter stood, but he knew that inside there would be horrors most people couldn’t imagine. He was glad Ashe wasn’t there, though he still worried whether she had gotten home okay in the snow. As Mark gave out more last-minute instructions, Peter pulled out his phone, as he had been doing periodically since leaving campus, to check if power had been restored to the signal towers. To his relief, there were two weak bars of reception, giving him the first hope he had felt in some time.

  “I need to make a call,” he said, stepping away from the group. He had heard most of what Mark was saying already on the drive over. Besides, he didn’t need any reminders of what had to be done. Landon was a threat to his and Ashe’s happiness, and as long as Landon existed, he and Ashe could never truly be together.

  Peter couldn’t wait to hear Ashe’s voice. He paced anxiously by the hood of Mark’s car, waiting for her to pick up. Her phone rang six, seven, eight times. Mark was motioning him to rejoin the group. Peter let the phone ring longer, but Ashe still didn’t answer.

  “Peter, we have to go.” Mark pointed towards the house where a small figure was just barely visible walking away from the house. The person appeared to be heading for a small copse of trees to the right of the property. “Someone’s on the move. That means one less of them to worry about. Now is our chance.”

  Peter cursed under his breath as he hung up the phone. He promised himself he would call Ashe as soon as he was done with Landon.

  The four men set off across the white expanse of fields between the road and the house in the distance. As they got closer to the house, Peter thought he recognized the figure disappearing into the trees. It was hard to mistake him even through the snow. His long, striding steps and the dark coat he always wore with the collar turned up were sure signs it was Landon.

  “Where are you going?” Mark asked, as he noticed Peter heading off in the direction that Landon had gone.

  “I’m going to do what I came here for,” Peter called back. The wind had picked up again and Peter had to raise his voice to be heard over it.

  Peter thought that Mark was going to try and stop him, but Mark only nodded at him gravely. He must have understood Peter’s need to go after Landon on his own. Peter turned to go towards the dark figure.

  “Wait.” It was the blue-eyed vampire; he was holding out his gun. “I can’t use it anyway. The blizzard might hide the sound out there in the woods, but then again it might not. Only fire if it’s your last option. You can give it back when you’ve done what you need to.”

  Peter ran back to take it. “Thanks,” he said, tucking the weapon into the back of his belt.

  “Good luck,” the man called out as Peter disappeared through the veil of falling snow.

  Peter couldn’t see anything beyond the trees ahead of him, but as soon as he stepped under the cover of their branches, the snow suddenly stopped and he found himself in a world cut off from the foul weather outside. Here and there a stray snowflake fell down through the thick tangle of tree branches above Peter’s head, but the wood was eerily silent all around him, as if even the wind was afraid to go where Peter had to. The ground was covered in a thick layer of fallen brown leaves that had been stopped in their decay by the freezing temperatures. Peter felt as if all time had stopped in these woods and they were just as they had been for centuries. He couldn’t see Landon anywhere around him, but knew the man had to be somewhere nearby. Peter set off to look for him.

  As Peter walked through the wood, he started noticing what looked like small piles of rocks littering the mulch-covered ground. After a while he realized the piles were actually made by crumbling tombstones
that had been broken to pieces by age. As he walked farther, the tombstones became more whole, until he could start to make out the inscriptions through the lichen growing on their faces. He stooped down to read one. “Mariana Alilovic,” it read, though the dates were unreadable.

  Peter was confused. Could Landon have human relatives buried out here? That was highly unlikely. Peter bent down and put his hand on the ground in front of the tombstone. Though he had no particular skill for it, Peter felt he could sense something deep in the dirt, biding its time until it was time to wake. With a shiver Peter stood back up. The pieces were starting to fit together. Peter jogged ahead to look at a few more gravestones. “Eloise Alilovic, Joanna Alilovic,” Peter muttered to himself. Each grave gave Peter that same eerie feeling that it was occupied. Mark had said there had been no sign of Landon’s female relatives. Peter knew that vampires were sometimes forced into a state of hibernation when they did not receive enough blood for a long period of time. Aside from their brief use of David’s stolen blood, Landon’s clan had largely been relying on hunting to survive. Could the women of Landon’s family be buried in this wood, waiting until they could be resurrected with a fresh supply of blood?

  There was movement to Peter’s left and he stood up quickly, his fist closed around the handle of one of the wooden stakes Mark had given him. He didn’t want to reveal the gun before he needed to. Landon came out from the trees, looking smug as always. He slicked back his hair and gave Peter a smile.

  “I missed you.”

  Peter felt bile rising in his throat. This was the man who had threatened Ashe and tempted Peter’s own sisters into betraying their promise to him not to harm a living human. “Wish I could say the same,” he replied.

  Landon tapped the side of his head. “My visions told me you were coming, but I wasn’t sure when you’d arrive. It seems you’ve caught me a bit off-guard.”

  “I thought you’d have cleared the country by now, especially knowing what I was coming to do to you.”

  “We couldn’t leave without the whole family,” Landon replied, sweeping his arms out and looking around. Peter wondered just how many family members had been buried here and how many more of them waited in Europe. But it was too late for Peter to turn back now. He had already committed himself to this fight and would do whatever it took to keep Ashe safe. He gripped the stake tighter in his hand.

  “It was only going to be a few more days,” Landon said. “We’ve finally got enough blood stored up to bring the family back together, thanks to those warm bodies we’ve got chained up in the basement. Not including the sick one, mind you. The chemicals in her blood could burn a hole in your stomach. Believe me, I tried.”

  Peter frowned as he failed to make sense of Landon’s words.

  Landon chuckled. “Oh right, you probably haven’t heard. We ran into your favorite professor and his wife a while back. We still have the woman but we let the husband go after some... improvements.”

  “You turned Professor Sharp?” Peter asked with a twinge of anxiety. All semester Ashe had been taking his classes, sitting only feet away from a vampire under Landon’s control. She had even gone to his class right before the blizzard had hit! What if Professor Sharp had done something to her then?

  “Yes, and he should be on his way with my prize as we speak. My father said it’s about time I found a mate of my own. Ashe will be much happier as one of us, don’t you think?”

  Ashe was in danger. Peter could hear her calling for him, her voice an almost palpable noise in his head. It was much stronger than anything he had imagined before. He couldn’t stand the thought of Landon turning Ashe into a vampire against her will, or doing other things too horrible to even think of. The voice in his head was calling his name and begging him to save her, begging for the pain to stop.

  Without thinking, he lunged for Landon.

  Landon dodged out of the way with a humored look on his face. “You’re going to stick me with that splinter?”

  Peter lunged again. Landon blocked Peter’s blow with his forearm and punched him in the stomach, but Peter was too full of rage to even notice. He retaliated, sending Landon crashing backwards against a gravestone whose grave had been partially cleared out. Landon landed with a thud in the shallow hole and struggled to gain his footing in the soft dirt. His sick smile had left his face, replaced by a look of increasing panic as Peter approached.

  There was nowhere for Landon to run as Peter crashed his fist into his nose. Peter could feel the bones cracking under his knuckles, but it didn’t matter. There was only one way to stop a vampire. Peter raised his stake.

  “Wait!” Landon shouted; spit flying from his quivering lips. He had lost his entire swagger and was now just a sniveling bug about to be crushed out of existence by Peter’s boot. Peter was done waiting.

  All of a sudden Ashe’s cry for help came back, clear as a bell. Peter, please come home. She’s hurting me. I can’t stand it much longer; you have to save me.

  This time there was no mistaking that the voice was real. The raw fear in it shook Peter to his bones. Maybe her voice in his head had been real all along. He should never have left her at the college.

  There’s not much time.

  Ashe’s voice cut off and Peter was sucked back into reality. His head reeled as if he were drunk. He plunged the stake straight into Landon’s heart, feeling nothing as the vampire screeched and writhed. Peter let go of the stake and backed away as Landon clawed at the weapon lodged in his chest, his movements weakening with every passing second.

  Peter had finished what he needed to do. He felt no remorse for killing one of his own kind, or for leaving the others to clean up the rest of Landon’s clan without him. Mark and his men were professionals; they would be fine. Peter’s only thoughts were for Ashe.

  The way back out of the wood was a blur. Peter’s mind was focused on trying to reach out to Ashe so he could hear her voice again. He didn’t like the way her voice had cut out so suddenly, as if something had happened to silence it. Though he had never heard anyone’s thoughts before, he didn’t think the lack of signal was a problem with his newfound telepathic ability. The reason he couldn’t hear Ashe was because she was no longer crying out to him.

  As he sprinted across the field to Mark’s car, Peter could see through the still-falling snow, one of the vampire hunters. He was followed by a limping trail of Landon’s victims coming out of the house. Another hunter brought up the rear of the group. Peter counted five people total, not nearly as many as he had hoped. He wondered if there were more still inside.

  He reached the road and got into Mark’s car, taking the spare key from above the sun visor where it was hidden. The tires squealed against the icy road as he pulled a sharp U-turn towards the town. With one hand held tight on the steering wheel, he dialed Ashe’s phone with the other. He hadn’t heard her voice since leaving the woods and he was starting to wonder if it had been a hallucination brought on by what Landon had said and Peter’s own desperate need to keep Ashe safe.

  This time she answered.

  “Peter.” Her weak voice quavered with tears. Just hearing it made Peter’s heart ache for her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his mind battling visions of Professor Sharp holding her hostage as he drove the car down the snow-covered highway as fast as he could go.

  “You shouldn’t have called,” Ashe replied.

  Ashe’s odd reply made Peter uneasy. “I was worried about you,” he said. “Did you get home okay? Are you safe?”

  There was a long pause, then finally, “I—I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  “I can’t keep being afraid of you.” Ashe was crying.

  Peter felt as if he had been slapped in the face. “What do you mean?” he said. She wasn’t leaving him, was she? No, she couldn’t. Not now, not after everything he’d done to keep her safe.

  “I pretended for so long because I thought you’d hurt me. Everything I said to yo
u was a lie. I can’t be with you. I don’t—”

  Ashe burst into sobs as Peter swallowed back the bitterness rising within him. Why was she telling him this now? It wasn’t him she should have been afraid of. It was the others—Landon, Professor Sharp, even Penelope, though Peter still hated to acknowledge what his sister had done while starving for blood. Peter wasn’t like the others. He would have died for Ashe in a second; he would have done anything for her.

  Then, out of the murky depths of his thoughts came a whisper. Peter strained to listen, blocking out the painful sound of Ashe’s crying from the phone pressed to his ear. The whisper was frustratingly far away, like a dog whistle just above the range of human hearing. He could feel its vibrations, but could not hear what it was saying.

  “I don’t love you,” Ashe sobbed into the phone.

  Peter only half-registered it, his mind still hung up on the phantom signals. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t say anything.”

  “But it’s true,” Ashe sobbed harder. “You have to believe me. Please.”

  The voice in Peter’s head was getting clearer, fighting its way through the conflicting noise. Peter gunned the car engine faster, only paying the minimum attention to the scenery whipping by as he fought his breaking heart with every word Ashe said.

  “Please, Peter. You have to believe me. I said I don’t love you. I never loved you.” Ashe’s voice was desperate as she shouted for him to reply, but the signal in Peter’s brain started to overpower her spoken words.

  I love you Peter. I always loved you.

  Peter nearly dropped his phone. The words sounded the same as they had in the wood. He tried to send a message back.

  I know, he thought back.

  Ashe’s crying on the phone abruptly stopped.

  “Are you there?” Peter asked out loud.

  “I—I—”

  Someone’s there with you, aren’t they? Peter thought. They’re making you say these things to me.

  Peter? Is it really you?

  Yes, and I’m on my way. Where are you?