by Jadyn Chase
Aroused in Fire
Curse of the Dragon
Jadyn Chase
Copyright © 2020 by Jadyn Chase
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
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Contents
1. Alexander
2. Alexander
3. Alexander
4. Alexander
5. Alexander
6. Rosie
7. Rosie
8. Alexander
9. Rosie
10. Rosie
11. Alexander
12. Rosie
13. Alexander
14. Alexander
15. Rosie
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1
Alexander
I was in the middle of the most delectable dream. I was at the high table in the King’s dining room at Dover Castle. The naughtiest serving wench had just laid a juicy mutton pie on the table in front of me.
Flaky, buttery crust winked in the candlelight. A trail of brown succulence bubbled through the slits in the top. As one so often does in dreams, I understood at a primal level that this pie, this glorious, magnificent pie, belonged to me and to me alone.
I picked up my fork in one hand and my knife in the other to do it due justice. I sawed a breach in the crust and stabbed a hunk of meat. I ferried it to my mouth and oh! What sublime intoxication! What stupendous delirium! I swam in rapture that seemed to last an eternity.
I must have swum in my bed, too, because at that moment, a thunderous crash startled me out of a sound sleep. For a sickening moment, I looked around for my treasured pie.
I couldn’t see it anywhere. Instead, I floundered to extricate myself from my bedding, only to discover I wasn’t in the King’s dining room at all. I was in a cold, dark cellar somewhere.
I flung aside the silken sheets and kicked my pillow away before I gained my feet. I stared all around me, but I could make out nothing in the faint gleam of moonlight coming through a window high overhead.
My heart pounded in my brain and I panted for air. The longer I stood there with the chill air freezing my skin, the more clearly I could think. How on Earth did I get here—wherever here was?
I took a step and cracked my shin against something solid. I roared in pain and whirled to face my attacker, but of course, there wasn’t any. I groped in the dark trying to uncover the slightest clue that would tell me what the devil was going on around here. I touched something rough and wooden, but I couldn’t see a thing in this gloom.
I waved both arms in front of me like a blind man petrified of barking his nose against the door. Indeed, I was blind but for that so unhelpful glimmer of brightness that did exactly nothing to shed any light on my accursed predicament.
At last, my fingers grazed an impenetrable surface of frigid stone. I knew that sensation of Dover Castle walls only too well. I patted down the wall. A few steps along, a glaring light pierced my brain and I squinted to protect myself.
When my vision cleared, I gaped at an enormous tunnel ablaze with the whitest light. I blinked several times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming again.
Well, this was a fine how-do-you-do! I was, to be sure, in Dover Castle, but no Dover Castle I could recognize. The white chalk tunnels extended as far as I could see in both directions, but I couldn’t make out the lights themselves. They didn’t flicker with flame. They just emitted a steady stream of glare. It didn’t come from candles. I was certain of that but not much else.
I wandered along in no particular direction. The farther I traveled, the more convinced I became that I woke up in the old pump chamber on the tunnels’ second level. The question remained how I got down here and sound asleep at that. I should have woken if anyone tried to move me.
While I walked, I cast my mind back in time. The last thing I remember, I was talking to my parents and my brothers and sister in the Great Armour Hall. Father was droning on to Thomas and James about some boring old letter he received in the post. Mother looked appropriately dismayed, but I didn’t pay any attention to that.
I was too busy listening to my brother William relating to me an escapade he just experienced with a local maiden from the Fox and Goose Tavern. He was mapping out a curious pattern of moles and blemishes he discovered on her back. He had just gotten to the most interesting part about how he traced a design of a partridge while he had this damsel in the same establishment’s upstairs bedroom.
I faltered in my advance and frowned to myself. How odd. I shouldn’t have forgotten a tidbit like that. I distinctly recall listening with the most rapt attention. I wanted to find out, not only what he was doing with the maiden and how the pattern itself moved with her actions but whether he could give me any indication if the maiden herself might be agreeable to a similar adventure with me.
I couldn’t remember the end of the conversation, though. I couldn’t remember anything after that bit about the partridge. I only remember waking up here—or rather, there.
I continued my peregrinations, but the more I looked around me, the more alarmed I became. Some fiend broke into the Castle and committed some mischief while I wasn’t looking. I remember the way it was when I…..when I last occupied this place.
Those curious lights lit up the whole edifice—all of it that I could see, at least. They left not one corner in shadow. Not only that, but some bloody fool put a bunch of strange furniture all over the place. Metal wires crisscrossed the ceiling and ropes cordoned off large collections of bizarre apparatus that made no sense to me.
Upstairs on the ground floor, the scene disturbed me even more. No servants bustled about the place as they always had done and always should have continued to do. None of the retainers or housekeepers worked in the usual places. Even the kitchens were empty.
I wandered the halls in a daze until I found my way outside. At least the corridors and passages didn’t change. I could be grateful for that.
The instant I crossed the main gate and emerged into the open air, I stared in stupefied shock at the town of Dover spread out below me. A mass of lights radiated the glow of a million candles into the night. They cast a halo of golden-white several miles into the dark sky. Only the gloomy black wall of the ocean stopped them from spilling to the farthest horizon.
The distant churning groan of the great heaving sea spoke to me out of my own soul. At least that didn’t change. It would never disappear. In the bathing moonbeams, I could make out the White Cliffs winding away to the south. Thank Heaven for them.
I ought to have gone down to the town to find out what in the name of God was going on, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to walk toward those terrifying lights. I wanted nothing to do with them.
Northward, a swath of darkness followed the Cliffs out of sight. I would go that way. I could slink off into the night and hide until I sorted out what to do.
I wound my way down the hill to the road. By constantly putting that blazing glare behind me, I wended my way north and away.
Within a mile, the dark closed around me and I began to relax a bit. Farmland lay slumbering on either side of the road. That didn’t change, either, but some more weird moving objects kept humming out of the dark and threatening to plough into me. I had to dive clear into the ditch each time in ord
er to save my own life.
After several miles of walking and thinking and not coming to any very useful conclusions, I spied another collection of lights ahead. A sign by the roadside read, Guston. I knew that town and I didn’t want to go there, either.
All I really wanted to do was sit somewhere quiet and think—or not think, as the case may be. I wanted to be somewhere none of this happened. I wanted to be back in the Great Armour Hall hearing about……. whatever her name was. Let’s call her Petunia. She presented a much more agreeable subject for my consideration than how the world turned upside down in the middle of tracing the feathers on her back.
After another quarter of a mile, I spied a farmhouse south of the road. Acres of pasture surrounded it with a few sheep asleep in the grass. A single light shone in the house window, but the barn loomed dark and alone to one side. I could hide there and rest my fevered brain.
I hopped the fence. The sheep didn’t give me a passing glance when I trespassed on their territory. I approached the barn on tiptoe, but no one accosted me.
I found the door and slid it back. I eased inside and the comfortable smell of hay and horses enveloped me. I pushed the door closed with a grateful sigh. I turned around in search of somewhere to sit down, I froze when I noticed another light eking under a different door not far away. Voices murmured beyond it.
I froze stock still. My mind went into a tailspin trying to decide what to do. I traipsed all the way across that field hoping to get somewhere alone. I didn’t want to venture out into the night and the uncertainty and the strangeness again. On the other hand, I didn’t want anyone finding me here, either. They might alert the Constable—or worse.
In the end, I made up my mind to retire. I couldn’t face an unpleasant confrontation right now. How would I explain myself, anyway?
I turned back, but at that moment, the second door burst open and a glaring flash of light washed over me. I really began to dread light in all its forms. It splashed across the barn in a torrent of unmitigated exposure that left me nowhere to hide.
Without thinking twice, I whipped around. “I can explain everything!”
Two young lads faced me in the clear brilliance of the room beyond. They stared at me under two identical shocks of white-blonde hair. At first glance, I couldn’t make out any difference between them. They looked exactly identical expect that one appeared slightly taller than the other.
On second glance, I noticed the shorter one seemed slightly stockier and had a stouter, firmer jaw while his companion looked leaner and wirier. The shorter one tossed his hair aside to reveal startling blue eyes. When he did, I spotted a pink strawberry mark on the side of his neck.
“Eh, plonka!” the tall one said. “The fancy dress party’s not ‘til next week.”
I waved both hands at them in a fit of excited anxiety. I could only fixate my mind on one object: to stop them calling the Constable or anyone else. “I’m not interested in any fancy-dress party. I just want to…. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just…..I didn’t mean to intrude. So sorry. I’ll be one my way.” I lunged for the door.
“Hold hard!” the shorter one blurted out. “If you’re not for the fancy-dress party, what are you doing wearing that mufti?”
I cast a glance over my shoulder hardly daring to enter into conversation with these pedestrians. “I never knew about any fancy-dress party. I just wanted somewhere to sit down for a minute. I never intended to trespass, so I’ll just be….”
“If you want to sit down, why don’t you come into the cave?”
I halted. Then I scowled at them. “Cave?”
The tall one jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “We was just fixin’ to have a nice cup of tea. You can join us while you’re sittin’ down.”
The shorter one’s eyes lit up. “There’s cake. Mum made it.”
I really should have bolted and run, but the invitation to tea and cake cast an uncanny spell over me. The thought of sitting down in a warm, well-lighted place with a nice, hot cup of tea in my hands and a slice of cake at my elbow….
The instant I hesitated, the younger one dove past me and disappeared into the dark. In the space where he once stood, I looked into the room and beheld the most astounding sight imaginable.
Three long tables lined the opposite walls. Five odd glowing rectangles perched on the tables. Masses of trailing wires and other nameless rubbish crowded the surfaces all around them.
The rectangles themselves blinked and changed their appearance every few seconds. I couldn’t keep track of them all. One moment, a person’s head flashed across one surface. It immediately vanished to be replaced by a picture of a waterfall.
I stared at the scene in utter, flabbergasted horror. For a brief moment when I first entered this barn, I thought I was safe. Now I faced the awful prospect of going into that room full of all those horrible alien monstrosities.
I didn’t want to go in there, but I couldn’t leave now, either. I couldn’t turn down a blatant offer of tea and cake after I had already accepted. My manners allow it.
At that moment, the short one came hustling back balancing a large white table plate between his hands. A frosted cake towered on top of it. He barged right into that room and set the dish down amid the jumble of obscenities.
The tall one waved inside. “It’s lemon cake.”
That clinched it. I stepped across the threshold and the tall one slammed the door behind me. The dark and the cold and the night and the sheep and the Constable all vanished.
2
Alexander
The short one got out a knife and starting stabbing into the cake. Saliva spurted under my tongue anticipating the flavor. The tall one fetched mugs and spoons from a shelf behind the door. The short one pushed out a chair for me. “Take a seat. The jug’s just boiled.”
I didn’t see the teapot until I sat down. The shelf behind the door contained cups, a pot, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t recognize. The tall one took a large pitcher of some kind and poured boiling water into the teapot. He spooned sugar into the mugs and carried the lot to another chair next to…..I could only assume it was his brother.
I stared at everything around me. “What…. what are these things?”
The short one cast a glance between me and the blinking squares. “Eh? Aw, bugger that! Tell us what you’re doing out here in that get-up at this time of night, and don’t give us none of that codswallop about not meanin’ to trespass and all, ‘cuz we don’t want to hear it. Where did you come from and where are you going?”
I furrowed my brow. Not for one instant did I think to lie about my situation. “Well, I can’t exactly tell you that. I was in the Castle and…..it’s curious, but I didn’t recognize much of it. Then I walked here. I supposed I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”
The two of them exchanged glances. “The Castle!”
I nodded. “I remember I was…..” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “It couldn’t be.”
The tall one studied me for a moment. Then he turned away to pour the tea. The short one scowled searching my face. “Now, you listen here, mate. What’s this all about? Who are you? Who are you really?”
“I’m Alexander Lincoln Shelton,” I returned. “And who might you be?”
“Me!” He squared his shoulders at me. “I’m Jake Whitlock and this here’s Jackie. Me dad was born and raised on this farm, so you mighta known that if you’re anywheres from around here.”
I scratched my forehead trying to make sense of everything. “Indeed, I didn’t know that. My deepest apologies for offending you, but no Whitlocks ever lived in this area when I….”
He stared at me. “When you what?”
I shrugged. What in the name of Holy Mary did I have to lose by telling all? “When I lived here. I lived in the Castle for the better part of twenty-three years. I ought to know everyone around here and I never knew any Whitlocks. What is your father’s Christian name?”
“Henry,” he replied. “Henry Whitlo
ck.”
I shook my head. “I never heard of him.”
Jackie interrupted by placing the longed-for cup of tea in my hands. “Look here, Mister…..”
“Shelton,” I corrected. “My name is Shelton.”
“You said your name’s Alex,” Jake cut in. “How’s about we just keep it short and sweet and call you Alex?”
My eyes drifted closed over the tea. What was the use in standing on ceremony? I was at their disposal. “Very well.”
“Now here’s what strikes me, Alex,” Jackie went on. “You says you come from the Castle. You says you lived there for the better part of twenty-three years.”
“That’s right.”
“No one has lived in Dover Castle in over a hundred years,” he told me. “It’s a historical monument. You says you know everyone around these parts but you don’t know the Whitlocks when we’ve owned this land since the turn of the century. Then here you come around dressed like you just stepped out of a fancy dress shop all dolled up for the ball. You can understand we find this a little…. shall we say highly unbelievable.”
He handed his brother a cup of tea before taking up his own. The two of them reclined their chairs in an attitude of complete equanimity. They sipped their tea in no particular hurry and let the words sink in.
And sink in they did. I stared at the two of them in profound astonishment. I hesitate to say I stared in confusion or unease because I simply did not think at all. My brain went into a perfect blank. For the life of me, I couldn’t put their words together into a coherent pattern.
After an eternity of endeavoring to make sense of all this and failing miserably, I marshaled a response I hoped would prove sufficiently stern to erase everything he just said. “Look here, chaps! What exactly are you driving at?”
