“Who would have left that picture under my door?” she asked, brushing away his fingers from her face. “The shapeshifter is locked away, tied up and bleeding in Callahan's attic, so what else is after me?” Alexandra held out her arms and examined the scratches from her attack. The shapeshifter had wanted to kill her, but why?
What have I done?
she wondered to herself.
When did the universe decide to unravel around me?
Destiny. The word echoed through her head and she stared at Kraven. His lips did not move, but she knew he had spoken to her.
He wrapped his hands tightly around her wrists and bowed his head. The fiery touch of his palms made Alexandra gasp. Gradually the warmth dulled and spread to her chest and skull.
Kraven spoke to her, his words melting into her flesh and soaking into her mind. He could not speak his story aloud, and only Alexandra needed to hear it:
I am a monster, an abomination of all that is natural and right. One thousand years have passed since my mother bore me to a king. He rejoiced at my birth and built a castle for my mother near the bend of a mighty river. But my brave father had enemies jealous of his vast lands. From end to end, our forests and fields stretched a great many days' journey.
A coward struck my father in the back with an arrow while my father hunted. This happened when I was a small boy. So my mother ruled until I grew old enough. But as I became a man, I met a womanâa beautiful, auburn-haired maiden, the daughter of my kingdom's mapmaker. The morning of our wedding day, a long-distant cousin, a filthy man who had been jealous of my father and his lands, swooped upon my castle, Kilhaven, with his black magic and evil sorcery.
He brought a dragon. This was a mighty, towering beast straight from hell, meant to destroy me and my home. I defeated him at the cost of losing my bride. She tried to run, but the dragon killed her. So with sword and fury, I slew the dragon and my demon cousin in revenge. But my princess, Iselin, was already lost and my revenge did not bring her back.
To make sure that the dragon would never return, I ate his flesh and drank from his veins. I consumed him. In doing so, I became the dragon; the blood of the dragon ran through my body. I became the evil that lived within the beast.
For one thousand years, I have walked this earth. Good and evil have clashed for centuries within my flesh, but I hoped that one day, I would find my Iselin returned to life.
“You are Iselin,” Kraven said out loud as he released his grip of Alexandra's trembling wrists.
Alexandra gasped. Tears welled in her eyes. “But I am Alexandra Peyton,” she whispered in protest. “I'm seventeen years old. How can I be anyone else?”
Their knees touched and Kraven cupped her blushing cheek in his palm. Attracted and at the same time repelled, Alexandra stared into his face as the fiery touch of his hand spread warmth through her body. The heat felt lovely, but also sickened her.
A warm breeze blew his raven hair from his shoulders and across his face. She brushed the strands back with her fingers. When he clenched his jaw, she noticed the cleft mark in his chin. But of all his strong features, it was the deep blue of his eyes that she could not let go of. Their piercing gaze dug into her skull. Mesmerized, she listened to his voice, low and unwavering, as he spoke to her without moving his lips.
You are afraid, Alexandra, but you must believe me. You are Iselin. You have her beauty, her voice, the gait of her walk. You can believe that I am a monster. Then also believe that you are an angel.
Her reply flew from her head before she could hold her words back:
I believe you, Kraven.
His hand tensed on her cheek and Alexandra realized he had heard her. The girl's heart fluttered, and she tried again:
Are you really a monster? Have you ever hurt anyone?
Alexandra felt her skin burning and thought:
I am on fire.
No, you are transcending
, he replied.
Her eyes popped open. Kraven still held her chin in his palm and she gently cupped his hand inside of her own.
“Show me who you are,” she whispered aloud and squeezed his palm. “Show me your soul.”
A wildfire ran up her arms and into her chest. Pain seared her heart and the heat sunk into her gut. Her legs tingled; puddles of sweat broke across her skin. Diving into his skull, she braced herself to see his past.
Suddenly, she was Kraven. Darkness surrounded her. The dripping of water echoed through the pit. She was in a cave. Rock and sallow bone crunched beneath her bare feet. A hazy light loomed in the distance. As she stumbled toward the glow, a voice called out.
The voice came from a man at the mouth of cave. He wore an army uniform and he trembled with cold as a light dusting of snowflakes fell on his shoulders. The man stared at her, wide-eyed. In the corner of her eyes, she glimpsed a pair of red wings rising from her back. The soldier fell to his knees and raised his arms above his face. She retreated into the cave, the soldier still kneeling. Her wings melted into her back.
Jack crawled into Alexandra's lap and nestled his head against her thigh, drowsy from the muggy morning heat. Kraven's palms dropped from her grip and a spasm shook her body.
She gasped for air, her chest panting in freedom. In her lap, Jack wiggled and snored.
On the playground, the shouts of the pumpkin-haired boy rang through the air. “Momma, look!” he said, plunging down the slide.
“That was my uncle?” Alexandra asked Kraven, with her green eyes wide open.
“Yes,” Kraven spoke. “He thought I was the devil, as I suppose anyone would.”
“I do not,” Alexandra said softly. “How did you not go crazy, though, living in a cave for a thousand years?”
A smirk spread across his handsome face. “No, I did not live there until later,” he told her. “I went there later only to hide, with the hope to die if I should find a way to kill myself. After walking the earth for a millennium, I had seen everyone and everything in the world. I was tired. I may be a liar, a scoundrel, and a cheat, but I am also a student and scholar. After a thousand years, I lost hope of ever finding any peace. What I mean by that is I lost hope of ever finding you. I tried to retreat to a cave in the heart of a dark forest at the edges of the land my father conquered when he ruled a thousand years ago. I hoped that doing so would keep me far from the burdens of civilization. I was wrong. Men like war. Men like to kill other men for what they have. Your uncle found my cave because he was soldier. He found me because of destiny.”
Alexandra felt as if a mudslide had washed over her shoulders and into her face. If she could only spit out the gravel binding her tongue, she could ask the first of a thousand questions to this unbelievable creature sitting in front of her.
Peeking into her mind, Kraven pulled the question from her lips before she could form the words. “Yes, I am cursed,” he said, “but not by immortality. Dragon blood made me this way, but the true curse of my life is my insatiable craving for the only thing I ever wanted as a mortal man. Until now, I was never able to claim what I wanted, even as an immortal. You will lift the curse, Alexandra. You will save me.”
Rubbing Jack's spotted belly, Alexandra let her eyes linger on the boy on the playground. “How can you be so sure?” she said. The question drifted to Kraven over the light breeze.
His fingers reached for the medallion dangling from the leather cord around Alexandra's neck. Etched into the bronze was a creature with the tail and wings of a dragon. The creature pictured spat a plume of fire, but from the head of a man. “This medallion was meant for you,” Kraven said. “Just as I am.”
Inside the pocket of her cut-off jean shorts, her cell phone buzzed. Alexandra ignored the ring until it stopped and rang again.
She glanced at the call screen and then at Kraven. A blush spread across her cheeks. “Hello,” she stammered into the phone.
At that moment, a police car was backing out the Woodward's driveway, with Taylor fuming, cuffed in the back seat.
Benjamin climbed into the driver's seat of his mother's BMW. “Alex,” he said calmly into his cell phone, “we have a problem.”
Alexandra rolled her eyes. “What did Taylor do now?” she asked, giggling. “Drown her stepmother?”
Silence.
“Hello?” Alexandra asked. “Ben?”
“Taylor's on her way to jail,” he admitted.
“Oh swell,” Alexandra sighed as she nudged Jack from her lap. Her legs wobbled beneath her as she stood and planted a hand on her hip. “What are we going to do?”
Benjamin grinned. “We'll figure something out. You want to come over to my house? I'm rolling up in the driveway now. With luck, Mom is asleep. Being pregnant has turned her into a whole different person. She likes to bake these days: apple pie, brownies, carrot cake, so there's lots to eat. She's turned into some kind of Suzie Homemaker all of a sudden. She even asks if I need help with my math homework.” He stopped, realizing that he was rambling because she made him nervousâa good type of excited queasiness, the kind of feeling he got in his stomach when he saw perfect, ten-foot waves breaking offshore under a pink and gold sunrise.
Alexandra winked at Kraven. “I would,” she said hesitating, “but my Jeep . . . ”
“I forgot,” Benjamin said before the girl could offer a polite excuse for not driving to the other side of the city. “You don't need to come over, Alex. Can I . . . ”
“Sure,” Alexandra gushed before Benjamin finished his question.
Kraven tensed beside her.
“Um,” she hesitated, “You don't mind if we have company?”
“Sure,” Benjamin said gruffly. “No problem.” He paused, the silence awkward. “Your friend might come in handy if we have to break Taylor out of the pokey.”
“Okay,” Alexandra said, laughing and yanking on Jack's leash. “I'll text you the directions.”
Benjamin wasn't sure what he had gotten himself into now, but the thought of seeing Alexandra's face warmed his mood. She wasn't like other girls.
A little deeper yet. Almost there. Another good stab or twoâthat will do it, surely.
Pausing to gauge the size of the hole that his shovel had clawed into the earth, Sean Callahan grinned smugly. Almost perfect, he thought.
Three feet wide. Three feet long.
He nodded his head in approval.
But not three feet deep; not yet.
His forehead glistened and a glance to the sky told him that midday approached. Towering cypress trees and long-limbed, ancient oaks surrounded the shady backyard of his rented Victorian mansionâbut even in the shade, it was, after all, high noon in late August in Georgia.
Bloody hell
, he thought.
This infernal heat!
His bones ached for the sharp winds of the Irish Sea.
Adrenaline and three cans of Red Bull raced through his Irish veins. Letting the wooden handle of his shovel rest against his bare chest, he wiped his brow with the back of his hands. A pair of dark-gray surgeon's scrub pants clung to his long legs.
If anyone should ask, I am raising a garden, he decided.
He threw a glance over his shoulder to the back door of the house. The telephone rang inside, but he ignored the call.
No, thank you, I already told you that I do not want super-galactic, high-speed, three-dimensional Internet for a mere hundred dollars a month. Can't you see I have more important tasks at hand, such as digging graves for deadly, shapeshifting wolf men?
“Another inch or two,” Callahan mumbled, raising the wooden handle above his head. The sharp tip of the steel blade dug fiercely into the hard, red soil.
I do hope I don't actually have to bury the beast here.
He threw a heaving helping of earth to the side of the deepening pit.
Surely he will not make me kill him. What a shame to have to cut him up into nasty bits, when he could be so useful to me and to the Order.
The Order of the Dragon King was a society whose existence depended upon the supreme secrecy and sacrifice of its members. The Order had found Sean Callahan when he was twenty and on the cusp of manhood. At the time, he had not yet understood his power to see the past and to read the souls of his fellow humans. Then a member of the Order (a recruiter disguised as a history professor) stumbled upon the young student at Oxford University and recognized Callahan's abilities and vast potential.
For the last fifteen years, Callahan had studied and battled in the shadows, the dark alleys on the fringe of reality. He had traversed the world to investigate the supernatural, all in the hope of discovering the ultimate prize: the existence of an immortal time walker. Perhaps, in meeting Kraven, Callahan had now found a time walker, by the most fortunate of accidents. Or was it inexplicable destiny that had brought to his doorstep the world's most elusive mystery? Alexandraâ was she a beautiful reincarnation? Kravenâwas he truly an immortal who had waited a thousand years to find her?
Callahan swept his shaggy black bangs from his eyes and tucked them behind his ears. He poised the blade of the shovel for another jab, his weary arms straining as they held the wooden handle steady above his shoulders. He glanced briefly at his signet ring, a sign of the Order. The ring was engraved with the symbol of the Dragon King.
In the attic, three stories above Callahan, Cyrus yawned wide. His ribs ached terribly, but breakfast had settled well inside his gut.
“Ack,” the shapeshifter coughed and spat out a wad of brown fur. His ears cocked, he listened for the humans who had imprisoned him. He sensed no movement in the house below him.
Dem cowarts
, he thought.
Me gonna show dem when dey come back in here.
He rocked his naked body slowly and rhythmically against the dusty wooden floor.
Me gonna learn dem a lesson.
Below in the backyard, the steel blade of Callahan's shovel plunged into the hard clay soil, when he abruptly heard an odd, unexpected crunch. “Bloody hell!” he shouted (his favorite words of the morning). He threw aside the shovel. Hurling his body to the ground, his hands dug frantically at the dirt around the cracked treasure that was taunting him from the bottom of the hole.