Aroused In Flames (Curse 0f The Dragon Book 1) Read online

  “We could call the Pound.” The boy turned to his sister. “Remember how Dad called the Pound to come and take the cat away? He said they would give it a new home.”

  “Yeah!” the girl exclaimed. “We could do that. They’ll give you a new home, too.”

  Before I could say anything, the sound of scraping made me turn. The instant I did, I saw a woman sliding a glass door aside. She took a step onto a wooden veranda and raised her head. She started to say something and froze with her mouth open. She gaped at me in stunned silence for what seemed an awfully long time.

  I should have run then and there, but I remained rooted to the spot. I stared back at her in a stupefied trance. All these disastrous encounters started to wear on me. I couldn’t keep jumping and running. How many more of them would I have to endure before I changed into that dragon again?

  I didn’t want to move in case I frightened her into screaming. For some pathetic reason, that was the worst thing I could possibly imagine: her screaming. I couldn’t tolerate any more screaming.

  Without warning, she opened her yawning gawp and bellowed at me. “Fred! Fred!”

  A part of my brain protested against this. I wanted to tell her my name wasn’t Fred, that it was Thomas. Before I could get the words out, a huge man six feet around barreled up behind her. He tried to get through the door and collided with the woman. He knocked her forward, but he didn’t pay her any attention.

  His beady blue eyes locked on me. They flicked down my dressing gown and back up to my face. The next instant, he dove back inside and came back with a gun. I would have recognized that anywhere. Some things never change and this gun was very, very real.

  The sight of it snapped me out of my daze, but not soon enough. The man whipped the gun to his shoulder and I bolted for the garden door. The shot whistled above my head. I crouched under my arms—as if that could protect me from a rifle blast.

  The woman screamed again and my heart sank. Those screams dogged my heels no matter where I went.

  I heard the children shouting in the background, but I couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t care anymore anyway. I had to get out of here if I hoped to survive this catastrophe.

  Another report blasted across the garden. Woodchips splintered from a tree next to my head and spattered my face. I blinked to clear my vision and my bare heel skidded in the damp grass.

  I lost my footing for a second and went down on one knee. I fixed my gaze on the door leading back to the alley. My one thought at that moment was getting somewhere safe, somewhere no one would shoot at me or attack me in any way. I couldn’t think of any other place to take refuge except Allison’s.

  I tried to launch to my feet, but before I could leverage my body up, the boy rocketed across the lawn and hit me with all his great weight. He strapped his thick arms around my shoulders and leaned against me.

  For a moment, I thought he was trying to restrain me, to stop me from fleeing. The next minute, his father thundered up to me and leveled the gun at my head. He crammed the muzzle into my neck and snarled down at me. “Get up, you son of a bitch, before I blow your head clean off!”

  “No, Dad!” the boy shrieked. “Don’t shoot him! We have to call the Pound! Please, Dad! We have to call the Pound!”

  The man paid no attention. He jabbed the gun deeper into my neck. “I told you to get up, now get up, or so help me God, I’ll take you out right here and now. I’m not kidding, Mister. On your feet!”

  I raised both hands, but I dared not move. “Don’t shoot. I was only trying to….”

  The woman trundled up next to her husband. “Shoot him Fred, before he tries something!”

  “No, Dad!” the boy squealed. “We have to call the Pound!”

  At that moment, the girl hurtled into view. She took one flying leap and caught hold of the gun wrestling it out of position

  The father yanked it back. The woman lunged for the weapon and all three of them got into an almighty tug-of-war over it while screaming at each other. The muzzle whipped from side to side. The barrel swung around to point at my face one more time before it veered sideways to teeter over the garden.

  The boy let go of me to help out and I saw my one and only chance at freedom. I hopped to my feet and made a headlong plummet through the door and away.

  4

  Allison

  I tapped my pencil eraser against my teeth trying to get my thoughts to form some coherent order. I watched way too much science fiction not to recognize the signs of a time traveler when one happened into my backyard at six o’clock in the morning.

  The web page lay open in front of my eyes. Thomas Tierney Shelton. Born, 1815. That part made perfect sense to my historian brain. What came after that made my head spin.

  The page listed Thomas’s immediate family: Henry Mackenzie Shelton, born, 1780. Elizabeth Margaret Shelton, neé Tierney, born 1797. William Ashworth Shelton, born 1814. Alexander Lincoln Shelton, born, 1817. Mary Emily Shelton, born 1818. James West Shelton, born 1820.

  Henry Shelton, his wife, Elizabeth, and their four sons vanished under mysterious circumstances from the Great Amour Hall on 28th July 1840. Their daughter Mary was left alone at the age of 22, but she denied any knowledge of her family’s whereabouts or their fate. Their bodies were never found in spite of several Royal investigations into the matter.

  So how did Thomas Tierney Shelton wind up alive and well in modern-day America with no clothes on? I did a quick mental calculation. He would have been twenty-five years old at the time he disappeared. That meant he hadn’t aged a day since he vanished.

  He called himself Sir Thomas Tierney Shelton, too, but the page didn’t list him as a KBE. That designation didn’t come into existence until 1917, which meant he must have been knighted before that.

  I could buy the time travel theory, but that left the obvious question unanswered. What happened to his family? He said he woke up in the second level of the Dover Castle tunnels.

  I knew the Castle well enough that I didn’t have to pull up a schematic on the building to know that didn’t make sense. The second level, known as the Bastion level, became lost to modern knowledge prior to World War 1. No one knew where it was or how to get into or out of it. Yet Thomas claimed to know all about it. Could the Shelton family have been hiding in there all this time?

  I shook those thoughts out of my head. Time travel! Come on, Allison. You really need to get out more and stop spending so much time with your face plastered to your computer screen.

  Still, all the evidence pointed to him being from another time. The way he drank his tea out of a saucer came straight out of the 1800s. His strange accent also indicated he came from some time before the modern era.

  His features haunted my mind and distracted me from the puzzle. He certainly was handsome even in that girly bathrobe. The more time passed since he ran away from my house, the more I could admit that to myself. He was by far the most attractive man I’d ever met and I’m not even talking about his privates.

  I shuddered with an inner thrill. Those parts of him looked pretty good, too, come to think of it. He certainly had a nice chest….and nice legs. His sparkly eyes gave me a twinge of…something.

  Cut that out, Allison. I didn’t have time for a guy in my life no matter how hot he was. Besides, I had a paper to finish.

  I turned back to my computer, but I didn’t switch over to my project. I entered something into my internet browser. Dover Castle tunnels.

  The very first search suggestion popped up: Police In Search of Dover Castle Tunnel Flasher. Now why did that sound familiar?

  I clicked it and a news story appeared: Police are still searching for the man who surprised a Dover Castle tour group last week. Witnesses say the intruder came out of nowhere in the famous Castle tunnels and attacked the visitors touring the castle. The tour guide described the intruder as tall with wavy brown hair and a goatee. He spoke a high-society form of English with a clear Kentish accent. He was wearing what appeared to
be a period costume from Victorian times. Security personnel tried to subdue the suspect with a taser, but without effect. They also state he turned into some kind of huge winged creature and flew away. Some of the witnesses are being treated for shock. The investigation continues.

  I scowled at the screen. That was definitely odd. The description matched Thomas in every detail. The man came out of an unknown part of the Castle tunnels. All of that fit with what he told me.

  That part about the creature didn’t really jive with what I knew, though, but maybe the witnesses imagined it. Maybe someone concocted that story to cover up what really happened. Maybe instead of Thomas attacking the tour group, the security personnel attacked him. Maybe they did something illegal and invented some implausible tale to cast the public’s attention away from themselves. Hey, it had been known to happen before.

  Just then, Shelly’s radio barked from the next desk. “This hour’s top stories: Eastborough residents claim to have surprised a flasher in a girl’s bathrobe breaking into their backyard and assaulting their two children while they played on the family swing set. When the parents tried to intervene, the perpetrator escaped capture. Police are cautioning parents to monitor their children’s whereabouts and keep them indoors if necessary.”

  I didn’t wait around to hear anymore. I shot out of my chair so fast I knocked it over. I snatched my handbag and made a beeline out of the building.

  I raced for the parking lot and dove into my car. I turned the ignition and hit the highway burning rubber for Eastborough. If that story was about Thomas, I had to find him.

  I got to Eastborough. Wichita isn’t that big, but now it was just a matter of driving around one identical neighborhood block after another hunting for a guy who would almost certainly be trying to hide.

  Where could he be? If he had any brains at all, he’d be crouching under a bush somewhere doing his best to turn himself invisible. That was what I would do in his situation.

  I made several circuits of the neighborhood and came up emptyhanded. I started to lose heart. I would never find him. I would probably never know who or what he really was.

  Oh, well. All that BS about time travel and Dover Castle had to be my over-active imagination at work. No way could he really be from 1840. The last thing I needed was to get myself saddled with a freak in a bathrobe.

  I hit the turn signal to head back to work when, without warning, a tall figure burst out of a side yard and blundered into the street. He staggered right in front of my car. I almost plowed right into him and barely hit the brakes in time before I recognized that bathrobe. I would recognize it anywhere.

  It flapped open to reveal his chest and legs. Only the flimsy tie around his waist prevented it from falling completely open to expose his naked body.

  The instant he appeared, two more men shot into view hot on his tail. They wore baseball caps, work boots, and faded jeans like just about every other man in Wichita—every man except Thomas Tierney Shelton, that is.

  My squealing brakes startled Thomas. He spun around and his eyes popped when he recognized me through the windshield. Before either of us could act, the first man leveled his gun at Thomas’s head and pulled the trigger.

  Christ, I hate to think what Thomas must have been up to this morning! He ducked under his arms and the bullet smashed into my windshield. Sheer blind luck guided it through the passenger side or I would have been dead meat.

  Broken glass sprayed into the driver’s compartment. I winced and shut my eyes against the onslaught.

  Thomas didn’t miss a beat. He bolted for the other side of the street. The two men gave chase and I saw my last chance slipping away from me. Without thinking, I hit the gas and yanked the wheel. The tires screeched and the car spun around.

  The rear fender hit one of the men out of the way. He ran straight into it and the car’s momentum sent him hurtling backward. He sailed right into his friend and the two of them went down in a heap.

  They struggled to untangle themselves and their guns. They alternately tried to aim at Thomas and stand up, only to get distracted by their own efforts.

  I lunged across the passenger seat and flung open the door. “Get in, Thomas. Quick!”

  He stared at me in a daze and blinked his big brown eyes. “Allison?”

  The men grunted behind the car. I heard them muttering to themselves and each other. “Get up! Don’t touch me! Screw you!”

  “Get in the car, Thomas,” I snarled. “Now.”

  He gave a little jerk of comprehension. Then he dove into the passenger seat, but he didn’t know enough to shut the damned door. I couldn’t take the time to do it for him and I sure as hell wasn’t going to lean across the seat with only a thin strand of terry cloth separating me from his bare flesh.

  I plastered my foot to the floor and aimed the car’s front end for the corner. I fishtailed down the street with blue smoke rising from my tires. The door slammed closed and Thomas screamed at the impact.

  I did my best to block that sound out of my ears. One thought occupied my whole attention: get him off the streets and behind closed doors before the lynch mob found him.

  I motored back to my house and checked both ways before I got out of the car. My heart pounded. I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I should have, but I had to do something.

  I made another brief check of the neighborhood just to make sure no one saw us. Then I marched around the car and pulled the door open. Thomas just sat there staring at everything like an idiot.

  I grabbed his arm and wrangled him out of the car. “Come on. Get out.”

  He obeyed me, but when he got upright, he turned around and blinked at the car. “Your cab, Allison! It’s ruined.”

  I gave him a shove. “It’s not a cab, dude. It’s a car. Now get in the house and don’t give me any lip.”

  He didn’t comply. He stood there gaping at the god damned windshield. “But your window! That man destroyed it with his gun.”

  “It’s insured.” I pushed him again. “Now will you get the hell in the house before someone calls the Police?”

  He swiveled all the way around and confronted me. When I saw that superior expression on his face, my heart sank knowing what was coming. “Allison, I really must take this opportunity to thank you for….”

  “Not now!” I thundered. “Get in the god damned house before I shoot you myself!”

  I gave him one more strong push. I would have kicked him for his trouble, but I stopped myself in time.

  5

  Thomas

  Allison prodded and goaded me into the same office. This time, however, she steered me through the rest of her house on the way there. I got a good look at most of the rooms. It resembled a museum packed with antiquities. I didn’t have time to examine them all, but they certainly attracted my notice.

  When she succeeded in corralling me into the office, she slammed the door and jabbed her finger at the couch. “Sit down there and don’t you even think about running off this time.”

  I dutifully sank into the seat. “I wasn’t thinking of it, Allison.”

  She rounded on me bristling mad. “Why did you do it then? What did you really think was going to happen? Did you think you were just going to take a stroll around the city streets dressed like that?”

  She waved her hand up and down in front of my chest. The gesture made me realize I was standing before her half-naked—unlike last time when I was fully naked. I snatched the dressing gown closed and tightened the belt.

  “I wasn’t thinking then, either, Allison, if you must know,” I replied with all the dignity I could muster under the circumstance. “I was simply…..I was simply trying to prevent whoever was ringing your bell from finding me.”

  “Well, this is a fine pickle you’ve got us both into now,” she snapped.

  I frowned at her and glanced around the room. “Pickle? What do you mean? I don’t see any pickle.”

  She flapped her hands, closed her eyes, and spluttered in confusi
on. “Oh…. you! It’s an expression, you idiot! It’s a colloquial saying. Understand? It means you got us both into a complicated mess that it’s going to take us a lot of…. of bother to get out of it.”

  I straightened up. “Rather. I can well understand that.”

  “Well, do you also understand that it’s not you who will be getting us out of it, but me?” she thundered. “Do you understand that much?”

  I bowed my head in shame. “I do, indeed Allison, and I cannot express my gratitude to you for helping me, not just once but twice. You have saved my life today. I sincerely thank you.”

  “Oh, will you shut the fuck up?” she shrieked. “You really are the most exasperating person I ever met. Do you hear me?”

  The more irate she got, the more I calmed down. I did in fact understand now the full gravity of the situation into which I dragged her. I would have spared her that if I could have done so without getting my head blown off.

  She gathered herself into a compact little dynamo. She really was strikingly pretty, now that I got a chance to see her in the light of day, as it were. She wore a tight-fitting blouse and close-fitting trousers. For the first time, I realized that trousers on a woman could be rather fetching.

  She tied her long brown hair behind her head with a ruffled band, but it came loose in the kerfuffle surrounding my escape. Now wisps of it trailed around her face. She no longer wore those over-sized spectacles to hide her glowing green eyes. Only a hint of makeup set off the red of her lips.

  She narrowed those eyes at me and pierced me to the bone. “Now you listen to me and you listen real good. Understand?”

  I pursed my lips. “Really, Allison. You’re far too intelligent to use that common way of speaking. I expected better grammar from you.”

  A black cloud darkened her features and I realized too late I may have made a social blunder.

  She lowered her voice to a menacing hiss. “Listen to me very carefully, Thomas. I’m the only thing keeping you alive at this point, so I suggest you stop critiquing my grammar and listen to what I’m about to tell you.”