Kraven rested his palm on her forehead as she slept against his chest in the cramped front seat of the police car. With only a few hours left before sunrise, the car sat tucked away in a dark corner of the airport deck’s top level, far away from the glare of any overhead lights. He slowed his breath and strained his ear to her lips as she mumbled softly. He could barely hear her, because a plane rumbled overhead.
“No secrets,” Alexandra murmured. “Tell me the truth.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Kraven whispered.
Outside, the rain that had pounded the city into submission during the night began to retreat, leaving behind a thick fog that wrapped itself heavily around the airport parking deck.
In the parking spot across from the police car, the blaring horn and bright lights of a yellow Porsche 911 honked and flashed in Kraven’s face. A tall redhead in spiked heels navigated the parking lot toward her Porsche, pulling a pink-and-white, polka-dot suitcase behind her. A security patrol truck eased out of the shadows and slowed to pass her, while she maneuvered the bag into the passenger seat.
Climbing into the driver’s seat, the woman turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful engine roared to life. The Porsche’s headlights illuminated Kraven’s face. Easing out of the parking spot, she winked in his direction before revving the engine and shooting across the lot toward the exit.
Alexandra stirred against his chest. “Where am I?” she drawled, sitting up slowly in the seat and rubbing the back of her head.
“You need to leave,” Kraven told her, as a plane engine roared overhead in the dense, heavy clouds.
“No,” said Alexandra calmly, staring at the side of his face. “Look at me,” she ordered.
Kraven turned his head slowly toward her, his dark eyes fixed upon her trembling lips. Alexandra’s eyes swept across his rugged face and studied the worry hiding in the deep furrows of his forehead.
“Where do I know you from? Or am I crazy for thinking I’ve seen you before somewhere?” she asked him.
Turning his head away to the window, Kraven stared into the foggy sky, his eyes trailing the lights of a jet’s underbelly as it climbed into the heavens and disappeared behind the clouds. “It is true. We have met before,” he said. “And I have met your father as well.”
The words took Alexandra’s breath away. I’ll see for myself, she thought, biting her lip in determination. Prying his hand from its tight grip around the steering wheel, she closed her eyes and held his palm. A familiar warmth spread from her fingers and raced up her arm.
“Show me,” she whispered, as she entwined her fingers in his and raised his hand to her racing heart.
“Concentrate,” he advised. “We will find what we seek.”
Alexandra’s eyes opened. She saw a dresser mirror. Kraven’s face stared back at her, as if his face were her own. In the mirror’s reflection, her father stood at the foot of a bed, a suitcase standing open before him as he hastily shoved clothes and papers inside the bag. Shifting her eyes downward, she saw a flimsy cardboard gift box on top of the dresser. It was undoubtedly the necklace, the gift from her father. She heard her father’s voice. “What if it does not reach her?” he asked.
“It will find her,” said Kraven. “Believe. But you must hurry now. I will shadow you to the train, but you are being followed closely.”
Behind Kraven, Alexandra’s father stopped throwing clothes into his suitcase and looked at Kraven. Their eyes met in the mirror’s reflection.
“You will protect my daughter?” Jonathan Peyton asked. “With my life,” Kraven answered.
Alexandra retreated from the vision. She stared motionless at Kraven beside her as the roar of another jet shook the car. “You can’t make me go anywhere,” she told him. “You made my father leave, and he never came back.”
Kraven winced. “He was in danger, as you are now.”
“What a coincidence,” Alexandra hissed. “You seem to be the cause of it.”
“No,” he said, dropping her hand. “You do not understand.”
“So where am I supposed to go? Did you think about that? I’m seventeen. I’m a senior in high school,” she said searching for the door handle. “Where did you send my father?”
“Calm down, Alexandra,” he said, pulling her away from the door. “Please,” he pleaded. “I was foolish for bringing you here. I should have known better. You are not a coward. I understand that now.”
“You’re not a policeman,” she whispered. She pointed to the name sewn on above the pocket on his uniform. “I know Marion, and you’re not him. You’ve been following me.”
“I’m not the only one,” he said.
Alexandra rubbed the back of her head and winced, as if the wolf still held her long hair in his mouth as he dragged her across the wet road. “Does he want this?” she asked him, rubbing her thumb against the dragon medallion dangling against her chest.
“I don’t think so,” Kraven surmised. “It holds no power,” he said, closing his eyes to a vision. In his mind’s eye, an auburn-haired beauty with brown freckles and green eyes grinned at him from across a wide, flowing river. A soft breeze rustled the yellow-and-white wildflowers tucked into a loose braid that flowed down her back. She was waving goodbye. Around her neck dangled the dragon medallion, a wedding gift for his princess bride.
“You are more powerful than any trinket,” he said.
Alexandra rested her palm against his cheek and turned his face to her eyes. “Tell me what happened to my father,” she said.
“I promised him that the necklace would find its way to you—that I would protect you,” he whispered earnestly.
“Protect me from whom?” Alexandra asked.
“Your father is a good man and an honorable scholar. Not all men are so reputable. Your father discovered that people he had trusted were selling artifacts illegally to private, powerful collectors. These people would go to great lengths to keep their transactions a secret.”
“They would kill him?” Alexandra asked, shaking. “What did he do to hurt anyone?”
“He merely stumbled upon the truth. Men have died for less,” Kraven answered. “But I don’t know that he is dead, Alexandra,” Kraven hastened to say. “He may be still be hiding.”
“You really think so?” she asked in hope, reaching her fingers to his chin. “I don’t like secrets,” she said, holding his face gently.
“I know,” he said, bending his face closer toward her.
“You owe me some explanations,” she said, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. “Start with what attacked me,” Alexandra said, wincing as she shifted her scraped and bruised legs beneath her.
Kraven sighed and answered, “A shape shifter.”
“A what?” she asked. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”
“Did his bite feel ridiculous?”
“No,” Alexandra shook her head and wrapped her arms around her shaking body.
“The beast is part man and part wolf,” Kraven tried to explain. “He phases by necessity; but even when he looks like a man, his soul is that of a beast. It governs his entire being.”
“Why did he want me?” Alexandra asked, clutching her necklace tightly in her fingers.
“The filthy dog does not think for himself,” Kraven spat the words. “He simply does what his master commands him to do. As for his own needs, the beast only desires to feed.”
Alexandra stared out the windshield at the foggy shroud surrounding the car. “The journal,” she mumbled to herself.
“What did you say?” Kraven asked, grabbing her shoulder.
“I stole . . .” She paused. “I mean I borrowed a book from my grandmother’s house. It is a journal that her brother kept in the Army. It’s full of crazy things that he saw in some cave. He kept saying he saw a devil, and that he knew where he lived.”
“The beast wants the book,” Kraven said definitively, shoving the car keys into the ignition. “He probably has been promised you after he brings his master the book.”
Alexandra gulped and hugged her knees to her chest. “Where is Callahan?” she asked, looking out the window into the fog. “Did you leave him alone out there with that thing?”
“It was his idea for me to take you to the hospital for some help.”
“It wasn’t his idea for me to run away, though,” she pointed out.
“No,” sighed Kraven. “I took you here to the airport because I want to protect you.”
“If I have somehow dragged Callahan into this mess, then I’ll drag him out of it,” Alexandra declared, staring into Kraven’s dark eyes.
“I will do whatever you ask of me, Alexandra,” Kraven told her with a note of jealousy in his voice. He turned the key in the ignition.
“Tell me one thing,” Alexandra said as Kraven revved the idling engine. “How do I know this isn’t all a dream, or that I am going crazy?”
“You are not like other people, Alexandra.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have already discovered one of your gifts,” he said, stretching his palm up toward her eyes.
“This doesn’t happen in real life,” Alexandra muttered.
“Cast away your fear, Alexandra,” Kraven said. “There are truths in the world beyond the walls of your school and your life—truths that are incomprehensible to you right now. But in time, you will come to accept and understand.”
“My life is never going to be the same,” she said ruefully. Her stomach twisted into a thousand tiny knots. On the floorboard, her toe kicked the clear plastic bag. “Would you excuse me?” she asked Kraven, her fingers already fumbling with the door handle.
Nodding, he stepped from the idling car and followed the lights of the lifting jet planes above him while Alexandra shed her hospital gown. While dressing her bruised and battered body with her stained and tattered uniform, one word danced through her head: destiny, she thought to herself, her dragon medallion rising up and down with the heaving of her chest.