Staring at the blank stone wall, he spoke that same guttural word I’d heard him utter that morning.
“Verrotix-offen.”
And as before, the solid wooden door magically appeared in the wall.
“Wow…” I murmured. I had been too out of it that morning to appreciate this display of power but it certainly impressed me now. I looked up at Ari. “I thought only the Sisters had magic powers—I didn’t know Drakes could do magic too.”
He smiled.
“We can’t. It’s not my magic that calls the door—it’s the magic of this castle—of Nocturne Academy itself. Here—you try it.”
He waved a hand over the wooden door and said, “Disparran.”
As he spoke, the door faded away, disappearing as quietly and suddenly as it had appeared.
“Now it’s your turn,” Ari told me. “Call the door. Do you remember the words?”
Actually, I did. Taking a deep breath, I looked at the blank stone wall and said, “Verrotix-offen.”
The strange language rolled off my tongue as though I had been born speaking it and the door appeared for me as quickly as it had for Ari.
“Oh, it worked!” I looked up at him to see him staring down at me thoughtfully.
“Indeed, it did. You pronounced the Drake mother-tongue surprisingly well.”
“Um…thank you.” I looked away from him, embarrassed by his intense scrutiny.
After a moment, Ari looked away as well.
“Anytime you come here, you only need to find the West Tower, go a few steps past it, and this corridor will appear,” he told me. “Face the wall and speak the words and the door will be yours to open.”
As he spoke, he opened the door and held it for me to enter the Drake’s Den once more.
I stepped inside and noticed that it had somehow rearranged itself. The huge brown leather chair was still in the middle of the room but now there was a fireplace in front of it with a cheery little fire glowing in the hearth. It reminded me a little of the Norm Dorm down in the dungeon and the association made me feel more comfortable than I had been earlier.
My feelings of comfort dried up, however, when Ari sat in the chair and patted his lap.
“Come, Kaitlyn—let me nourish you.”
I hung back from him, suddenly shy. That morning when I’d been in his lap I’d been too weak and out of it to even think about how close we were. Now I was much more alert and active and the idea of actually going over there and climbing into the big Drake’s lap was intensely embarrassing.
Ari seemed to see my reluctance because he frowned and lifted an eyebrow at me inquiringly.
“Is there something wrong, Kaitlyn?”
“Not exactly,” I hedged, although there certainly was. I kept thinking of the intense sensations that flew between us when I took his vein and the idea of repeating them was both scary and intriguing.
“Then why don’t you come to me?” Ari asked. “Aren’t you thirsty?”
I couldn’t deny that I was but I had a sudden thought.
“What about you?” I asked him.
He frowned. “Am I thirsty?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I meant, how is this affecting you? You can’t just keep giving me a pint of blood twice a day—you’ll get as anemic as I was this weekend!”
He laughed softly.
“Dios, of course you would think of such a thing and put my comfort before your own needs. Please don’t worry, Kaitlyn, I have immense resources to call on. You could drink a gallon from me twice a day and I would have no problems at all.”
“Immense resources?” I asked and then understanding broke over me. “Your Drake,” I murmured. “You can…can draw from him. Is that right?”
Ari nodded. “Yes, my Drake and I are one and so everything he has, I have as well. And since he is much bigger than I am, all I need to do is a minor partial shift in order to replenish myself from his resources.”
“A minor partial shift?” I repeated. “What…what’s that?”
“It’s like this.” Ari went very still in the immense leather chair.
I tensed, waiting for the awful thing that had happened to Sanchez out on the field to happen to him. I hadn’t been able to see much, since I’d been hit in the face with a football. But the hazy image of Sanchez’s face elongating into a scaly green snout and his eyes turning blazing yellow still haunted my dreams some nights.
But nothing seemed to happen to Ari at all—he just sat there. I stared at him uncertainly. His face was the same—high cheekbones, lush mouth, pale amber eyes…
No, wait.
As I stared at him, I realized it was his eyes that had changed. They were no longer amber—they were pure, brilliant gold. Also, the pupils were gone—there was nothing but a pure gold disk where his irises had been. As I watched, the gold spread out and flowed over the whites of his eyes too, until the entire surface area of each eye was just a deep, glimmering gold.
It was eerily beautiful and frightening at the same time. Because I felt—as I never had before—that there was something else in the room with us. A third party that Ari was holding back by main force of will—something huge that had an intense interest in me.
Then he blinked and his eyes went back to their normal clear amber.
“Do you see?” he asked.
“Was that…” I licked my lips, which were suddenly dry. “Was that your Drake I saw, uh, looking at me?”
He nodded.
“He has a high regard for you, as I told you before.”
“Why?” I asked.
Ari shook his head. “There is a saying in the Sky Lands—The reasons for a Drake’s regard are as many as the sunbeams in the sky and as easily held in the hand.”
“Meaning what?” I asked. “That nobody knows why a Drake, uh, takes a liking to someone?”
Ari shrugged. “Essentially.”
“But he’s never even met me!” I exclaimed. “Well, except for when he fished me out of the lake so the Guardian didn’t eat me, but that was hardly what you’d call a,
