Dragon Lessons

by Eve Paludan

  DRAGON LESSONS

  by

  EVE PALUDAN

  Tammy Moon, Daughter of the Vampire #1

  Dragon Lessons

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2018 by Rain Press

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  (Dragon Lessons is based on the characters created by J.R. Rain; the use of story situations and supporting characters from the “Vampire for Hire” universe is authorized by J.R Rain.)

  Dedication

  For my children, Chrissy and Mark

  Acknowledgments

  J. R. Rain, thank you for creating Samantha Moon, Vampire for Hire, and her children, Tammy and Anthony. This novel is an expression of my love and admiration for your amazing series.

  Tracy Seybold, you are the editors’ editor! Thanks for your hard work, as always.

  Cover art: SelfPubBookCovers.com/Viergacht

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Books by Eve Paludan in J. R. Rain’s Vampire for Hire World

  Other Books by Eve Paludan

  About the Author

  Dragon Lessons

  Chapter 1

  TAMMY MOON, DAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRE

  The copper-hued dragon beckoned me closer. With his mind.

  I heard his thoughts in my head as clearly as if they were my own: “Do not be afraid, Lady Tam. Just climb on and hold tightly to my crest quills—hold on for dear life. For we shall rise up into the night sky and go far and fast, like quicksilver. Then, when your breath is taken away by the heights, you shall see for yourself the world as I see it: a dragon’s-eye view of land, sea, stars, and planets.”

  “Planets?” I exclaimed.

  I could still hear him talking in my head: “Yes, I shall fly higher and higher until we see the curve of the earth.”

  “Wow.” I stepped closer to him and reached out to gingerly touch his strange skin. To my surprise, it was covered in warm, soft scales in a pattern of concentric circles, which made him quite shiny, as if new pennies were overlaid. Hot pennies. “Your body temperature is toasty. I assumed all dragons were, well, cold-blooded.”

  He chuckled a deep, throaty dragon laugh aloud and then spoke in my head again. “I assure you I am a warm-blooded creature. Sitting on me will feel as if you are sitting on a hearth with a pleasant ring of fire under you. All the world around us, high in the sky, will be cold, even icy—my warmth alone shall keep you from freezing to death.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “That all sounds really exciting, but is there oxygen up that high?”

  “Is there what?” the dragon asked in my head.

  “Oxygen. Before I agree to go, I just want to know if I can breathe at that altitude.”

  “What is this ‘oxygen’ of which you speak?”

  “It’s an element of the earth that humans and other living things need to breathe. Just like you hold your breath underwater when you swim, when you go high up in outer space—up high—the oxygen gets thin. Human jet pilots can pass out if they go too high and they aren’t wearing their oxygen masks.”

  “I know what a pilot is: a navigator. But what is a jet?” he asked in my mind.

  “It’s something you need to look out for when you’re flying in my world. Jets and planes are flying metal machines. Manmade aircraft. They pack a lot of force. If you hit one, you won’t just get knocked out of the sky, you could be torn to pieces. And, likewise, if the jet crashes from the impact of you, the people riding inside will die.”

  “I shall be careful to avoid these machines. How do they fly?” he asked.

  “They have fuel in them that creates thrust and the fixed wings are designed for lift,” I patiently explained. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain thrust to him because I was about out of my league with explaining science to a magical dragon.

  “Do they run on wood fire?” he asked.

  “No, the fuel is made from petroleum that comes from fossils…well, from the byproducts of dead dinosaurs.”

  He let out a roar of anguish that vibrated my eardrums and was terrifying in its sorrow.

  “Sorry,” I apologized through ringing ears. “That was insensitive of me.” I paused. “Are dinosaurs your ancestors?”

  He nodded and bowed his head. Then he looked up again and those topaz eyes burned right through all my walls and into my heart.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, a little daunted. “You’re not going to eat me, are you? Because I wouldn’t eat you. That wouldn’t be very nice.”

  “Come with me now,” he said. It was not a question.

  I climbed on his back and was instantly warm. I cuddled up to his neck and held onto the crest of his head quills, as instructed.

  He rose up into the sky, flapping his great wings while I screamed in terror, and then shouted with joy because…well, I was a teenage girl riding a dragon. It was a ride to end all rides…

  And then, suddenly, I woke up because Mom was frying bacon in the kitchen and that meant it was Monday morning—bacon smells and crackling sounds were how she made sure that Anthony and I woke up early on Mondays and got our acts together for school.

  However, I lay still because I knew if I moved around too much, the dream would dissipate from my memory and I wanted to remember every detail. I lay there, willing myself into a sort of lucid half-trance. I remembered my screams of terror and then, my shrieks of laughter and joy as the dragon took me for a wild sky ride that was a million times more exciting than any amusement park ride.

  I remembered snatches of the city lights of Orange County and the dragon banking and swooping us out of the way of the planes taking off and landing at John Wayne Airport in Ontario and even more aircraft near busy LAX. And then, when I gave him directions away from the city, he took on a straight-up zooming toward the stars that flapped my cheeks from the G-force of it. And suddenly, seemingly in an eye blink, we were over the coast and heading away from highways and manmade lights into darkness and starry oblivion. Besides the thumping flapping of his great wings, I heard the sighs of waves that thrummed in my ears like soulful music exhaling from the earth.

  When I was so breathless from his speed and altitude that I couldn’t even scream, I’d sent the dragon a mind message to reduce elevation and slow down, which he did. And then, we were soaring lower and slower, so I could breathe easily again and enjoy what he’d promised.

  The sea spray salted my lips and stung my eyes as we flew low over the Pacific, the roiling sea rife with its schools of black-and-white orcas leaping up to try to look at us. And the clouds above the ocean were full of so much moisture that when we flew through them, the wetness plastered my clothes to my body and be
aded off my face like cold, salty tears that stung my eyes.

  But most of all, I remembered him. The dragon, who had talked to me in my head the whole time he flew. He’d said he had things to show me, things that were ancient and sacred. I kept seeing this vision of a sword with a lot of writing on it that I couldn’t decipher. And then, a vision of a Cup; deep within it swirled a vortex of shimmering light that drew my eyes in awe. It seemed that he was in my world desperately looking for that Cup. He asked if I knew where it was. I didn’t.

  I tried to remember everything from the dream and analyze it, but I became very confused. What did it all mean? Since I had inexplicably come into my powers as a mind reader, all my dreams now meant something profound. And the dreams were usually literal, but not always. Was riding a dragon who was looking for a Cup some sort of metaphor for drinking my own teenage angst?

  I shifted, and my leg crackled on a piece of paper. I’d fallen asleep doing my chemistry homework. I glanced at what I had written, just before I’d passed out with my light on: Oxygen is a diatomic element made of two molecules of the pure element. Hydrogen is an element, too. Water is a compound made of two elements.

  What utter crap I had written, like a fifth-grader instead of a seventeen-year-old honor student. Well, in honors English class anyway. Not honors chemistry. Not by a long shot.

  With my left foot, I shoved my unfinished homework on the floor, knowing that kind of work would earn another zero in Hardesty’s class. I was not doing well in any science class, but I pushed that all to the back of my mind. I didn’t want to forget all that had happened in the dream.

  Especially this: the pure love I’d felt from the dragon. And surprisingly, for him.

  I’d never been in love, certainly not with a copper-hued dragon with violet-colored smoke curling from his nostrils and eyes that looked like two glittering topazes glowing in the dark. His deep, masculine purr of a voice had been in my head, heating me to the core with its warmth and sincerity, even as his body heat had kept me toasty warm in the upper atmosphere.

  Becoming more awake, I slowly noticed that my right hand had a cramp. No, not a cramp. A wound. I opened my hand and was very surprised to see something in it. At first, I mistook it for the reddish-brown stick of a headless, thorny, long-stemmed rose and I cried out softly from the pain in my hand.

  But then, I realized what it truly was: A dragon quill from my dream.

  Yes, it was a thorny, porcupine-like barbed quill that I had accidentally pulled out from a dragon’s head during the wildest ride of my life. I hoped I hadn’t hurt him!

  I stared in shock at the blood drops in my palm that clutched the quill.

  I’d known that my mind-reading powers were expanding lately. But this had never, ever happened before to me: Something tangible had now crossed over from a dream into my awakened world.

  Tears slipped down my cheeks, not because I regretted that this strange, scary thing had happened—I had in my hand actual proof that my dreams could now manifest themselves in the physical world. That proof even drew blood from my palm with the thorny quill. No, I cried because I wanted it to happen again.

  I clutched the dragon quill to my chest in wonder, then gingerly pulled it out of my flesh and put it in my school backpack, wrapped in a scarf, until I figured out a safer place to keep it.

  Mom banged her cast-iron skillet around in the kitchen, on purpose, and called out, “Tammy, if you want any of this bacon, you’d better hurry. Anthony already ate his, and he’s now eyeing yours.”

  “Coming, Mom!” I said. Still wearing my same clothes from yesterday, and with my hair tangled from my restless, amazing Technicolor dream-soaked sleep flight, I scrubbed off my tears on my rumpled sheets and got up to claim my bacon before my stupid brother hogged it all—like he always did with everything I wanted.

  When I got to the table, Mom, a vampire, turned around with sizzling bacon in a pair of tongs and said, “Who’s bleeding? I smell blood.”

  She eyed me sharply.

  Wordlessly, I held out my wounded hand.

  She might have licked her lips greedily, but instead of diving into the drying drops of blood in my palm, she asked, “What did you do to yourself, Tammy?”

  “I hurt myself in my sleep, but it’s quit bleeding already.”

  Mom plopped the bacon on my plate next to a couple of scrambled eggs and toast and advised, “You’d better cut your nails if you’re going to clench your fists in your sleep.”

  “Never,” I said. I loved my nails long. I painted them wild colors and blinged them up with fake gems and decals.

  Mom plopped more bacon on my plate.

  Quick as quicksilver, Anthony stole one of my bacon strips and swallowed it whole.

  I squealed, “Mom!” and then, it was game on between Anthony and me, as usual, with Mom refereeing. I was pretty sure she was sick of all our one-upping. I knew I was.

  I shot my brother a look of pure hatred that made him yelp, “Mom! Help! Tammy’s doing something evil to my mind!”

  Mom gave me the death stare. “Stop it, Tammy. You’re not the mind-control police.”

  “Not yet, I’m not,” I shot back to Mom.

  “She’s still giving me the creeps!” Anthony complained. “And, she’s probably prying into my private thoughts!”

  “Are you?” Mom asked.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “I am telling him to have a rotten headache to go with his filthy wish to see what Miniskirt Monday brings to his school.”

  Mom looked sharply at Anthony. “I’m not sending you to alchemy school to ogle the female students. You’re there to learn.”

  “Aww, Mom! She’s making that up!” Anthony protested. “It’s Mage Monday, not Miniskirt Monday. We all have to bring something to the table at lunch, something we made out of thin air.”

  I laughed evilly because I’d gotten him good with Mom.

  “Well, that’s a relief, Anthony. That it’s Mage Monday. Tammy, keep your mind on a shorter leash, would you?” Mom said, clearly frustrated with us. “What is it with you two? Can’t you ever get along?”

  “We will when I graduate and get a college scholarship and move out,” I said.

  “Promises, promises,” Anthony added.

  “Don’t get fresh with me,” Mom said to me and then she didn’t even look at Anthony to scold him for adding his two cents.

  Typical. Anthony could do no wrong in her eyes.

  I swallowed my snappy retort and shot her what I hoped was a mild apologetic look. Then I scarfed the rest of my breakfast while I ran a search for something on my phone.

  “No phones at the table,” Mom said and sat down with her plate to join us. Even though she’s a vampire, she can eat regular food because she has a special alchemy ring that lets her do that.

  I clicked off the screen and put down my phone. “Sorry, I thought it was important enough to break the rules.”

  “What are you Google-ing?” Mom asked.

  I didn’t answer, just shrugged.

  Anthony piped up. “I saw it. She was searching for: How do you pull an object out of a dream into reality?”

  “Anthony, stop stalking your sister’s phone display screen at the table.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” He got up and, as usual, put his empty plate in the dishwasher without rinsing it first. Anthony turned to me. “I don’t know what Google told you, but the only way to do something like that is alchemy.”

  I felt a spike of anger. “You’re so full of yourself. You always think your alchemy powers are greater than my mind-reading powers.”

  “That’s because they are,” he said smugly and left the kitchen.

  “It’s not a contest,” Mom said. “Those talents are gifts to each of you.”

  I ignored that. “Flaming-arm alchemist freak!” I called after him down the hallway and followed him to the door of his room. “I’m gonna start calling you Five-Alarm Boy.”

  “Right back at you, mind-reading freak who wants to rip stu
ff from a dream and make it come true. It must be a cute guy from your typical dumb romantic teenage fantasies to cause you this much anxiety.” He came back into the hallway to goad me some more and look at my face.

  For once, I didn’t have a comeback. I felt my face heat up with a blush. “Shut up, Anthony. Just shut up.”

  “Look at your face. I don’t even have the power to read minds, but it is a guy!” Anthony laughed and laughed. “And you didn’t even shower this morning. You stink, sister, like sweaty feet and stale Cheetos. Aren’t those yesterday’s clothes? With Cheetos mashed into them?”

  “Are they?” Mom asked me, her eyebrow cocked in disapproval.

  “Yes. I was studying late and fell asleep with a bag of Cheetos. I’ll take a shower and change clothes after gym class in first period.” Shame washed over me, and I felt like I was going to cry. But I didn’t want Anthony to win this round, so I held back my tears. I thought of the dragon quill in my backpack. “He’s not a fantasy, Anthony. He’s real. You’ll see!”

  Mom said, “Stop it, you two. We don’t have time for this teasing nonsense every morning. I’ve had it. Get your schoolbooks together. The minivan leaves in ten. I’m not kidding. This breakfast is officially over.”

  As I ran to my room to gather up my books and homework and throw fresh clothes into my backpack for after gym class, I realized something pretty weird: I didn’t know my dream dragon’s name.

  Chapter 2

  SAMANTHA MOON, VAMPIRE FOR HIRE

  It was later that day when I put the finishing touches on an invoice and emailed it to my client, trusting that the final half of my fee would be paid later today by PayPal.

  Yay, another mortgage payment earned.

  Although surveilling cheating spouses and getting the evidence on them was a bit boring, there was a steady supply of those sorts of private investigation jobs and they weren’t difficult for a vampire who could fly. This niche market was slowly becoming my bread and butter. And as much as I had once mocked my now-dead husband Danny for his ambulance-chaser law practice, I was now also semi-dependent on the dregs of humanity to secure my financial future. Though the routine of cheating-spouse chasing almost had me wishing for a murder case. Almost.