Dracul (27 page)

And my sisters do my hair and my mom does my makeup, and I might have kind of fallen asleep while my eyes were closed for the eyeshadow because did I mention I just flew across the Atlantic earlier?

Well I did.

Then we get married.

And it turns out there’s a big feast ready in the dining room, with tons of food and plates and cups and everything (except silverware—I mean, it’s a celebration, why not act like it?). And then my sister-in-law Nia gets out a set of hand drums and starts playing and singing, and we all dance until my feet hurt.

Constantine feels bad that my feet hurt, so he carries me up to his tower, the one place in the castle I’ve never seen before, and it’s really cool up there with exposed beams and stone walls and books and huge windows that look out over the mountains of Romania in every direction.

And I love it.

And he loves that I love it.

He loves me.

And I love him.

THE END

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed the fifth installment in the Dragon Eye series. There is one final book remaining, told from the point of view of the youngest of the Melikov siblings, Felix. Its title is
Basilisk
, and I have an exclusive sneak peak of the first two chapters here for you.

There is also another related series I’m working on. It’s called The Lost Dragons, and the first book in that series is called
Foundlings
. You can find an excerpt of
Foundlings
at the end of the e-book edition of
Vixen
, the fourth book in the Dragon Eye series. The Lost Dragons series takes place in the same world as the Dragon Eye series, but it actually takes place in a slightly earlier time period. You could think of it as a sort of prequel to the Dragon Eye books.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey! As always, I’m delighted to hear from readers. You can sign up for my newsletter on my website,
www.finleyaaron.com
. I’m also hugely thrilled when readers take the time to leave reviews of my books. Thank you to all of you who’ve done so. Readers like you make this journey worth it.

Tremendous thanks,

Finley

As promised, we’ll now join Felix for a peak of
Basilisk
:

Chapter One

Four years.

It’s been four years since I recovered the
Book of the Wisdom of the Magi
from the Alpine cave of the evil mad scientist Jean Lombard, a.k.a. Hans Wexler. It’s been almost five years since my sister destroyed Wexler’s lab—the place where he used to make yagi.

And yet, in those four years, I have yet to crack the code. I’ve translated the entire book, parts of it multiple times over in case I missed anything the first few times, but I still don’t know how to make gold. I
have
the secrets of the magi, but I don’t
know
the secrets of the magi.

There is a difference.

Depressing as all that is, it gets worse.

You see, that lab my sister destroyed? Wexler used it to make yagi, which are creepy soulless dragon-tracking mutant crossbred creatures, half cockroach, half mercenary soldier. With the lab destroyed, we no longer have to fear yagi. For the first time in my life, I and my family members can travel freely without worrying about yagi coming upon us and killing us as they killed my grandmother and other innocent dragons.

I haven’t seen a yagi in four years.

Until last night.

Okay, technically, I didn’t really see it. First, I smelled it—an odorous stench like a squashed bug, but with heavier, almost burnt undertones. It’s a distinct smell, one not easily confused with other things.

Still, the yagi are supposed to be extinct.

Gone.

Eliminated.

Un-smell-able.

So when I was walking down the streets of Prague last night, my thoughts traveling their usual paths of how to make gold and why haven’t I been able to, I didn’t really understand what I was smelling.

Oh sure, my nose recognized the stench immediately, but my brain refused to accept it. My nose was clearly communicating,
I smell yagi, get ready to fight or run
. But my brain was in fits trying to override that impulse with,
yagi are extinct, you can’t possibly smell them. There is no point looking behind you, don’t bother looking
—

Fortunately my head is on good terms with my nose, so I looked.

It was evening, that hour of twilight when it’s neither properly dark nor still light, but the streetlamps are still just flickering to life, and the walks are still filled with people scurrying home from work, so when I looked behind me, I first saw only people.

But one of those people was wearing a trench coat with the collar up, and a fedora pulled down low, so I couldn’t see any of his face and also, I don’t think he had a proper neck.

Yagi don’t have proper necks, just a seam between their bodies and their heads. They also have antennae which, in public places, they keep hidden under their hats until they need to use them.

It ducked quickly into an alley, and when I followed and looked to see, it was gone.

Like its cockroach predecessors. That is, assuming it was a yagi. I can’t say for sure what I saw was a yagi, but my nose was convinced and my eyes nearly were, too.

There’s just the part where yagi are extinct and the lab where they were made was destroyed by explosions and burning flame, with nothing left of it.

More than that, it’s been such a relief to have yagis gone—to not have to live in fear of them anymore.

So I really don’t want that to have been a yagi I smelled and saw. I want it to have been a trick of the light, a fluke of fetid fragrance. An overwrought delusion, even, as long as it’s not what I fear.

Because if it really was a yagi…

All the peace we’ve known for the last not-quite-five years, all the progress we’ve gained, will be gone.

So I’m strolling the city this evening, searching for yagi smells, breathing deeply, slowly, pulling in all the scents of the city and cataloging them in my mind.

Food, mostly. It’s evening and people are cooking dinner.

Exhaust fumes, flowers, trees, damp stucco, a cigar shop, and—in a crowd of people clustered at a tram stop—that mixture of humanity at the end of the day, faded perfumes, sweat, and exhaustion.

Yes, exhaustion has a smell. It’s like a cross between dust and garlic.

The tram stop folks are blocking most of the sidewalk, with other harried pedestrians squeezing past to get by. I’m in no hurry, so I step to the edge of the cluster and wait. The tram is coming up the street, windows open to the April evening.

The tram has nearly reached me when I smell it.

Not the tram itself.

Not yagi.

Most definitely not yagi.

Something captivating, almost magnetic. What is that smell?

The crowd before me moves forward and I surge into the tram with them, inhaling purposefully, following the scent. The smell is coming from somewhere on the tram.

From some
one
on the tram.

But it’s not a smell, not properly. It’s not something I can name, like a gardenia aroma with woody undertones and an orange peel finish. But for all its indescribability, it’s a strong thing, an undeniable thing.

The tram car is crowded and I can’t find the source of the scent. It’s coming from further in. I’ve moved as close as I can without making a nuisance of myself trying to push past standing people, but I can’t get any closer until more people leave.

It’s coming from my left, several rows up.

We reach another stop, and this time, as more people move off than get on, I’m able to inch through the shifting crowd to get closer to the source.

There’s an older couple holding hands. They’re adorable, but I don’t think they’re the source of the smell.

A handful of guys in ties, probably heading home from work. I don’t think they’re it, either.

A smallish girl with pale hair tied back in a braid. I can’t see her face. I can’t tell much of anything about her.

But I think she might be the source of the scent.

That’s troubling.

I mean, she doesn’t look very old, at least not from the back. Maybe that’s because she’s so tiny. Granted, I’m a smidgen under two meters tall, which is quite tall for a man, but I’ve always felt short because my brother, Ram, is a smidgen
over
two meters tall. He’s always been bigger than I am, and now that I’m twenty-four years old, I haven’t grown any taller in a couple of years, and it seems he always will be taller than I am.

All of which is to say, even though I’ve spent my lifetime feeling short in his shadow, I really am quite tall, so the fact the pale-haired girl is half a meter shorter than I am doesn’t mean she’s just a kid.

She could easily be a short young woman.

Which is kind of what I’m hoping for right now because that smell—

That. Smell.

How do I put this?

It’s gotten inside my head. I have to see her face. Even if she gets off at the next stop, I will push past people if necessary just to get a glimpse of her.

There’s a thing that’s famous among dragons, something all the other male dragons I know, save for my preschool-aged nephews, have experienced.

The mate scent.

Having never smelled it myself before now, I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty that’s what I’m smelling.

But I can’t shake this scent or its pull or the uncanny need to see what the pale-haired girl looks like.

To my relief, she does not get off at the next stop, and the crowd shifts enough I’m able to get close to her, so even though more people get on than off this time, and we’re crammed in to the point where no one has to hold the rails or handles because we’re propping each other up through sheer congestion now, I can see her because we’re standing tight together, so that she’s almost under my arm (I’ve got my arms up, fingers light on a handle, not for balance, but just to keep my shoulders out of peoples’ way (I have enormous shoulders)).

At least, I can see the top of her head. She hasn’t looked up at all. It turns out she’s holding a book and is absorbed in its words, which is unfortunate because there doesn’t seem to be any chance she’ll look up on her own.

But it’s also fortunate, because I can see just enough of a corner of one page to recognize the book she’s reading is in English.

This is extremely helpful to know.

I’m good with languages—I’ve picked up several in recent years—but because my mom was raised mostly in England and my sisters went to school for eight years in the United States, which was something they’d planned on and prepared for since they were little, English is our default language back home, and I speak it better than any of the others.

So I can talk to her. I
should
talk to her. She probably won’t look up if I don’t.

But what can I say?

The tram rounds a corner and the crowd leans with the sway. I take advantage of the motion and shift one foot forward. From this angle, I can see more clearly the open pages of the book the girl is reading.

It’s not a novel, as I might have expected. Instead, it appears to be a non-fiction book, a specialized encyclopedia of sorts. The heading on the page she’s reading says
Basilisk
, and I catch a few lines, something about how the basilisk is a monstrous serpent, and anyone or anything that looks into its eyes will fall dead on the spot.

Interesting reading for the commute home.

It’s also promising, because if the smell I smell is really the mate scent, then it stands to reason that the girl in front of me is a dragon. So why shouldn’t she be reading up on monstrous creatures?

I still haven’t seen her face, and it’s about driving me insane. What can I say that is witty and charming and won’t freak her out (because it can be alarming to have a stranger talk to you, especially on the tram where there’s no quick escape, and especially more, I’m told, when you’re a female—which effect I would imagine would be even stronger since this particular female is small)?

We’re coming up on another stop. There’s every chance she might leave the tram. If I don’t speak soon, I’ll have to follow her off or risk losing her, and neither of those sounds like a good idea, since lurking strangers following her home is probably even more alarming to small females than strangers taking to her on the tram.

And losing her isn’t an option. Not when I haven’t even seen her face.

Maybe that sounds crazy given the circumstances, but here’s the deal: I have been searching my entire life for a female dragon. Part of the reason I’m so obsessed with making gold is because thus far, I have failed to find a mate, and making gold seemed like a goal I’d have more control over, something I could actually work toward instead of just putting myself in the right places and hoping for the best.