The Angel of Elydria (The Dawn Mirror Chronicles Book 1) (6 page)

P
enny leapt from her chair, screaming. Professor Arlington scrambled up, looking about for what startled her. Seeing the man staring in at them from outside, he froze. Penny cowered behind her professor, clutching the back of his shirt. The man outside was too still. He didn’t blink, nor did his eyes move.

“Do you know that man?” Professor Arlington whispered.

Penny made a small noise to show she didn’t. Without warning the skin on the man’s face started to stretch. His teeth sprouted into tusks. Both eyes rolled back into his head, leaving two gaping sockets as the skull grew long and malformed. He put his hand up to the window as if reaching out for help, and bones burst through his fingers, becoming razor-edged claws.

Penny felt the world go black, and then a blast of freezing cold air as the window shattered brought her back to reality with a shock. The demonic creature leapt into the room with that awful inhuman wail. Penny was so frightened she could not manage to utter a sound. Her legs were limp as Professor Arlington pulled her to her feet and dragged her down the hall. The creature bounded behind them, snarling and gnashing its jaws. Professor Arlington turned back to face it, and with a sweeping motion of his hand, an arcane circle wreathed in gold light burst forth through his fingers, blocking off the entire hallway. The beast threw itself against the disc barrier and it began to crack like glass.

Noises of devastation sounded in the kitchen, followed by a furious pounding on the front door. Penny had a mere second to share a terrified glance with her teacher, whose hand she held with a vice-like grip. More abominations were coming.

“Hurry! This way!” Professor Arlington said, making a mad dash for the basement door. Behind them the arcane circle shattered and the beast thundered forward, jaws open wide, ready to sink its tusks into their flesh. The door slammed behind them just in time. An ominous thud sounded, followed by an enraged shriek.

“They’re everywhere…they’re all around the house. What do we
do
?” Penny panicked as Professor Arlington created a stream of silver runes, enchanting the door. Penny felt an intense rush of lightheadedness and wobbled in place.

Out of the trembling quiet, another crash resonated. They both stared at the door with fierce intensity. The basement was cramped and windowless, and the only light came from the faint glow of the arcane enchantment on the door. Penny could hardly see Professor Arlington as he turned around to face her, but she could tell from his silence and stony demeanor that something was very wrong.

“There must be…at least five of them…maybe more,” Professor Arlington sputtered.

“That will keep them out, though. It’ll keep them out, right?” Penny gasped and drew closer to him.

“Not for very long.” His voice was weak and Penny’s chest deflated when she saw the hopelessness on his face.

“You can fight them, though. You got that other one! These ones should be nothing,
right?
” Horror surged through her like a runaway train. Another deafening crash came, and they scurried farther away from the door rumbling and shaking with the force of the creatures behind it.

“Miss Fairfax, I―” Professor Arlington breathed, “―I was never trained in combative enchantments. I cannot act quickly enough to destroy this many.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Penny blanched. “You can’t be serious! You―”

With an ear-splitting crack, the door and the enchantment that barred it began to splinter. Penny watched in transfixed terror as a long, scythe-like bone pierced through the wood. Gripping Professor Arlington’s arm, she willed him to react, but he hung his head in despair.

“What are you doing?! Don’t just stand there! At least
try
to fight them!” Penny begged him. Paralyzed, her professor watched as huge chunks of wood splintered away from the door.

Her fear and frustration reaching a boiling point, Penny stamped her foot and cried out in rage,
“DO SOMETHING!”
She pushed him as hard as she could and he stumbled. Tears stung at her eyes, and Penny felt her knees give out as she saw something dark and snakelike forcing its way through the network of splinters that was once a door.

“Please,” Penny implored with a sob, fighting to stay on her feet, “please don’t let me die here.”

As if Professor Arlington had been jolted by electricity, his expression contorted into one of wounded anguish. Her words had stung, but they seemed to have gotten through to him. With a sharp gasp, he slapped a hand to his forehead. “Of course, why didn’t I think of―come here.” He grabbed Penny around the shoulders and she clung to him as the door exploded into bits.

The last image Penny saw before shutting her eyes was Professor Arlington’s hand reaching outward into the darkness of the basement in a dire grasp for nothing at all.

Expecting to feel needle-sharp fangs rip through her body, Penny screamed, but the burst of pain never came. Without warning it was as if she had been sucked into a powerful vacuum and was hurtling through space at several hundred miles per hour. Her eyes were pulled open by the sheer force of the pressure and she saw everything around her empty away into a void, like she had been riding atop a rocket that launched straight into a curtain of impenetrable darkness. The air was stolen from her lungs. A catastrophic nothingness stretched out around the both of them. Professor Arlington still clutched her and she clamped down on the folds of his shirt, sure that if she let go she would be torn apart by the powerful force that sucked them through the void. The deep pit of emptiness continued on for minute after excruciating minute.

Let it stop, let it stop, oh please, let it stop. Kill me, I don’t care, just let it end.

Her prayers were answered as the terrible sensation came to an abrupt halt with the feeling of being ejected from the end of a long tube. They were tossed through the air and Professor Arlington was thrown from her grip before she landed hard on her shoulder, her head bouncing onto a hard surface. All her senses were swept from her body, and there was only deep, visionless sleep.

CONSCIOUSNESS CAME BACK to Penny in shallow levels. She was aware that she was rocking back and forth, her legs dangling and her head rolling from side to side. With a groan, Penny forced her eyes open and found herself staring up at the strained face of Professor Arlington.

Realizing that he was carrying her, Penny kicked up her legs and cried out in protest. Her sudden reaction startled him into dropping his hold, and she tumbled onto a dirt road. Still gasping, Penny scrambled to her feet and steadied herself. She looked around and the intense dread returned.

An unfamiliar, rustic setting stretched out behind them, and before them stood a high-walled town cluttered with buildings, steeples, and roofs ornamented with stone carvings.

“
Where are we?”
Penny turned on Professor Arlington, spitting with rage and fear. He held out his hands and she backed away, trembling in her pajamas in the center of the dirt path, looking like a bedraggled mouse that had escaped disappearing into a sewer drain.

“Miss Fairfax, try to stay calm,” he pleaded and crept toward her.

“Explain this.
All of this,
” Penny snarled, balling up her fists.

“I suppose I―I should....” he tried, his face ashen. “Perhaps you had better prepare yourself. This might come as something of a shock, Miss Fairfax,” he warned and Penny’s body stiffened.

“What do you mean?” she urged. “Tell me where we are
now
.”

Professor Arlington let out a dejected sigh and his shoulders dropped. “You’re not going to accept this straight away, I’m sure. But if you want the simple facts of our situation, it
appears
that in my struggle to escape from the basement—” he hesitated for a moment and winced as he looked at Penny, “—that I may have
unintentionally
brought us to―to another world.”

Penny stared at him and shook her head. “You—you’ve got a really bad sense of humor,” she said.

“Please, I know it’s hard to come to terms with. I responded the same way when I first came to Earth.” Professor Arlington reached out to touch the side of her arm. “We can make the best of things if we only just―”

“Don’t you
dare
touch me, you creep!” she screamed, slapping his hand away and dashing toward the cobbled road of the town. Wherever she was, there had to be someone sympathetic to her plight. She could borrow a cell phone to call her mother, or the police. Someone would help her reach safety.

Professor Arlington’s footsteps scraped behind her as he tried to catch up and Penny quickened her pace. Bursting through the gate and onto the street, Penny staggered to a stop and gaped.

The gables and towers spiraling up toward the sky looked as if they belonged in another time period. The people that bustled by on their busy ways wore frock coats, silken gowns and tall hats, gold-rimmed spectacles, goggles with lenses the color of wine bottles, frilled bonnets, stockings with boots, and all manner of strange clothing. Gas lamps lined the tightly-wound streets. Fair ladies sported feathered hats with tiny fake birds that almost looked and sounded alive. All around them the alluring scent of baking goods wafted, coming from a warm bakery with an ornate crafted crystal window. Further down the street, huge piles of alien, jewel-like fruits were stacked high, while a man with a bowler hat and wild mutton-chops shouted at the passing crowd in a language Penny couldn’t even begin to identify. Penny choked back a yelp as a small collection of fuzzy brown bird-like creatures with huge orange eyes hopped past in a little flock. A child in a lacey headdress and pinafore chased after the flock.

“Miss Fairfax! Please wait!” Professor Arlington’s voice called from close behind her.

Penny turned away and bumped into someone. She turned to apologize, and felt the blood drain out of her face as she looked into the eyes of a creature she had no name for. It had needle sharp teeth glittering under a snake-like nose and two round golden eyes that looked just like a toad’s. Though its face was monstrous, the creature stood upright and wore a smart suit. It spoke to her in a foreign tongue, using a polite but scolding tone.

Penny did an instant about-face and shot past Professor Arlington, biting her tongue hard enough to stop from screaming aloud in hysteria. Through the narrow, crowded street she went, colliding with townsperson and signpost alike. The afternoon sun had stained the town an orange-red, adding to the surreal nature of what she was seeing.

She hurtled around the corner of the street, anxious to put as much distance between herself and the creature she’d bumped into as possible. Weaving through a line of carts in an alleyway selling what she hoped were just a collection of bizarre souvenirs, she burst onto another main street covered in flags and iron archways. Penny stumbled back until she felt a wall behind her, and pressed herself up against it, gawking at what lay before her.

Penny no longer needed convincing that this was a different world. Only a few feet away, an eight-foot-tall, black-scaled dragon wearing a cravat and a long coat purchased a fine cut of a meat from a bald butcher with a robust mustache. Penny stared shamelessly in its direction.

Black scales. Huge talons, a pair of wings. That…that’s a dragon. I’m actually looking at a dragon right now,
she thought as a whine escaped. Another one of the short, toad-like creatures played a flute in the center of the street, busking for spare change. Penny slid down the wall, transfixed and horrified all at once, when a voice beside her made her look up.