Dragons on the Other Hand Read online

  Dragons, on the Other Hand...

  An Alfie Wimple Adventure Book 3

  Nhys Glover

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. With the exception of historical events and people used as background for the story, or those clearly in the public domain, the names, characters and incidents portrayed in this work come wholly from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

  Published by Belisama Press

  © Nhys Glover 2019

  The right of Nhys Glover to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is copyright. All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY NHYS GLOVER

  ANCIENT ROMAN HISTORICAL ROMANCES:

  Liquid Fire

  The Barbarian's Mistress

  Lionslayer's Woman (Sequel to Liquid Fire)

  White Raven's Lover (Sequel to Barbarian's Mistress)

  The Gladiator's Bride (Sequel to White Raven's Lover)

  WEREWOLF KEEP TRILOGY:

  Guardian of Werewolf Keep

  Imprisoned at Werewolf Keep

  Defiance at Werewolf Keep

  Insane (A novella)

  NEW ATLANTIS TIME TRAVEL SERIES:

  Nine Lives (Cara/Jac)

  The Dreamer's Prince (Jane/Julio)

  Savage (Faith/ Luke)

  Shared Soul (Maggie/Travis)

  Bitter Oath (Liv/ Rene)

  The Titan Drowns (Eilish/Max, Karl/Lizzie, Pia/Marco)

  The Key (Kat/Bart)

  Pieces (Krista/Dirk)

  Second Chance (Bree/Hakon)

  Watcher (Jin/Rafe)

  Vision of You (Ellen/Duke)

  Osiris (Takhara/Dan)

  Causality (Willow/Jarvidh)

  Gods of Time (Teagan/Jason, Lucien/Alba)

  Book of Seeds (Shay/Cy)

  SCORPIO SONS SF/SHIFTER ROMANCE SERIES:

  1: Colton 2: Connor 3: Cooper 4: Chase

  5: Cameron 6: Caleb 7: Conrad 8: Charles

  REVERSE HAREM ADVENTURES:

  THE AIRLUDS TRILOGY:

  The Sacrifice

  The Chosen One

  Goddess Unbound

  THE AIRSHAN CHRONICLES

  The Five

  Daemon

  The Devourer

  GLADIATOR

  1. Typhon 2.Asterius 3. Talos 4.Orion 5.Marcus

  Captive: An Alien Abduction RH Romantic Adventure

  OTHERS:

  The Way Home (Ghost Romance)

  Caught in a Dream (SF Sweet Romance)

  Labyrinth of Light (New Age Inspirational)

  For Love of Liam (A Sweet Romanic Comedy)

  Find out more about Nhys and her books here:

  www.nhysglover.com

  Chapter One

  The image before me began to form in all its horror: the flames; the living, screaming torches; the overwhelming terror; and the confusion. All there, reflected back at me, begging for release.

  This fiery conflagration was not the subject of my normal paintings. In those, I captured the ghostly presences inhabiting my everyday life. The last piece of its kind had been of my Aunt Daphne reaching for and yet unable to connect with a vase. The frustration and sadness of such a simple and yet impotent gesture had fuelled my creative juices for some time.

  What must it be like to be one of those who remained caught between this world and the next? To see without being able to interact with the things and people they had known so well. To never again be seen by a lover.

  A little under a week ago, after the horrific death of my solicitor Mr Andrews, I had dreamed that Mason Smart had looked right through me, as if he couldn’t see me. At the time I’d thought Mason was a Cambridge University professor here in the North Yorkshire Dales on sabbatical. It had devastated me that he had not seen me for who I was. Ultimately, though, it turned out that I had been the one unable to see him for who he was: a con-artist hired by Arthur Watkins to seduce me into selling my house.

  Every step of the way, Mason had attempted to undermine my belief in myself, my abilities, and my growing attachment to Jake Landers, an enforcer for a small-time crime boss in Leeds. At the time, I’d truly been challenged by his arguments, particularly about Jake’s true intentions where I was concerned.

  He’d even suggested the art exhibition Jake set up for me had been simply a money laundering scheme. That, at least, had been true. Or it was to start with. But then a serious buyer had taken one look at my work as it was being unpacked and bought a painting on the spot. Two more paintings were then sold shortly after they went on display. The gallery owner, Francois—or Franky as Jake called him—had declared my paintings a breath of fresh air in a currently stale art scene, and he’d immediately set about making a name for me.

  Some of how he did that was not completely ethical, to my mind. He’d created a whole portfolio of acclaim for my work in the States. It was on my To Do List to check out the false trail he’d created. But with all that was going on in my life right now, I had to admit that setting the record straight in that area was way down the list.

  Did that mean Jake and his illegal leanings were rubbing off on me? Possibly. However, as there were a great many more positive aspects to Jake that were also rubbing off on me, I couldn’t complain.

  It was hard to credit the change he’d wrought in me in just under two weeks. He believed, he too, had changed just as much as I had in that time, becoming ‘softer’. Unlike me, he didn’t think the change was a good thing, because it put him in danger. His hard shell had kept him safe since he was ten years old, after he’d witnessed his mother’s murder.

  But somehow I’d wriggled under that shell and found a spot for myself there. Now he admitted he no longer wanted me gone from that place. The change had happened. There was no going back. For either of us.

  Sometimes, when I wanted to add more fuel to my worries, I thought about what life would be like when Jake went back to Leeds. Back to his old life. To be honest, I rarely let myself imagine that time for long. It tied me in knots. Better to focus on an invisible fire-breathing dragon from the underworld and my job to capture and return it to its home. At least that seemed possible. Making a permanent life without Jake... not so possible.

  “Ohhh Alfie, I’m not sure about that one,” Aunt Daphne said, popping in behind me to study my current painting.

  I knew what she meant. It was a semi-abstract, depicting the inferno I’d witnessed—no, been involved in—several nights ago. At that time, I’d been captured—or recaptured if you wanted to be exact—by the Watkins Clan, who were one of the local Pagan families. They wanted to use me to help capture and enslave the dragon.

  Even though their Gifted Seers had warned it would end in flames, Arthur Watkins, his son William, and many other members of his criminal organisation, had gone ahead with their plan to capture it. The fiery devastation predicted had therefore come true.

  And I had come close to dying with them. If not for Jason Smith’s vision of the event and his directions on the night, Squib’s quick action in knocking me over—ghost that he was—and Jake’s dash into the inferno to get me, I would be dead. The realisation of that was what was fuelling my need to capture the time on canvas.

  If I could process what had occurred, including my fears and confusion, I might be able to let it go. As it was a technique I’d used for many years to deal with the blows that came my way, I hoped it would be helpful with this one, as well.

  “You don’t like it?” I asked, cocking my head to one side to see it from a different perspective.

  “It’s brilliant, as all your paintings are. But it’s so... dark. And I don’t mean tonally. It frightens me. Especially as I know you’ll soon be going up against that creature again. Next time, you may not be so lucky.”

  At that moment, Squib, the little man who had attached himself to Jake, popped in. For weeks after his heart attack—he literally died of fright when Jake threatened him—Squib had been in Jake’s ear with every vitriolic thing he could think of. And he’d been slowly driving the enforcer mad. That was until I saw him and explained to the beleaguered Jake that he wasn’t hearing voices in his head, he was just hearing ghosts.

  When Jake moved in with me to protect me from the bully-boy tactics Watkins was using to get me to sell, I’d agreed to help move Squib on for him. Unfortunately, getting dead people to move into the Light was not as simple as it looked on Ghost Whisperer. I’d only been able to do it with one ghost so far, and that had taken a solid year of ‘therapy’ to get him to a place where he accepted he deserved to go into the Hereafter.

  Squib, it turned out, had remained caught between worlds because he believed he’d neglected to perform one selfless act in his life. When he was a child, a fortune-teller at a fair had told him he needed to perform the act if he wanted to go to Heaven. The prediction had stuck with him over the years, but he’d put off fulfilling it until it was too late.

  Somehow, me pointing out that t
he fortune-teller was probably a con-artist, seemed to have helped. He didn’t seem any closer to moving on, but he was changing. And during that process of change he’d carried out, not one, but two selfless acts. The first time had been when he attempted to stop an intruder entering my home and kidnapping me. The second was to knock me down so the flames from the dragon passed harmlessly overhead. As far as we were all concerned, Squib was a hero. And somehow, being seen that way by us, instead of the selfish lowlife he’d been all his life, was shifting his perspective of himself.

  Having my aunt’s affection didn’t hurt either. Although, they were a rather odd couple. She’d been a tall, beautiful, upper-class wild-child during her lifetime, before dying in the late Sixties during an LSD trip. Squib... well, Squib had been an annoying little creep from the wrong side of the tracks not even his own mother could love. They were as unlikely a couple as Jake and I were.

  “Did you just vomit red paint?” Squib asked me, turning himself completely upside down to look at my painting from the reverse point of view.

  Though Squib was greatly improved as a person, he was still not always nice.

  I growled and made to touch him. He jumped back out of the way, which was quite a feat considering he was on his head. It might be one of the better aspects of being ethereal: the ability to defy the natural laws, like gravity.

  I grinned impishly at him, and after he realised I’d been teasing, he huffed out an indignant grunt. “Be careful, woman, or I might not be so quick to rush in to save your pathetic life next time.”

  I grinned and blew him a kiss. “Oh, you don’t mean that. You’re my guardian angel, after all.”

  Squib shuddered.

  Since Jason had called Squib Jake’s daemon at the gathering, and Daphne had explained that a daemon was a form of guardian angel or spirit, we’d been teasing Squib with the idea. He didn’t like it one bit.

  “Truce!” Squib called out, turning right side up, linking his arm through Daphne’s, and resting his head on her shoulder.

  I laughingly agreed.

  “Where’s Jake?” I asked him.

  “Reading that damned book. He’s got it into ‘is head that ‘e can find a way to catch this dragon without you ‘aving to be present.”

  The damned book in question was the Logos. An instruction manual for Guardians of the Gateway, hidden for centuries in the secret chamber under the house. Mason had been in charge of reading it, before I’d taken over after dismissing him. I’d finished reading it, absorbing as much of its complexity as I could. Now Jake was taking his turn.

  I sighed in frustration. “There’s no way. I’m the Guardian. Only I can work the spell to send it back where it belongs.”

  “The bastard’s way too stubborn to accept that answer. He’s determined to find a loop-hole.”

  Daphne patted Squib’s head as if he was a beloved child. Technically, had she lived, she would have been old enough to be his mother or even grandmother. That thought, given the sexual vibes that came off the pair, was rather blurk.

  “You should try convincing him there are better ways to occupy his time,” Daphne told him.

  “Me? As if ‘e’d ever listen to me.”

  “Look, if it makes Jake happy to try looking for a different answer, we have to let him. At the moment, we’re all just spinning our wheels waiting for the dragon to turn up again.”

  “What about that gadget the Watkins Clan used. Surely it wasn’t the only one in existence. That could help a lot in locating it,” Daphne said, as Squib finally lifted his head off her shoulder and started flitting around the solar.

  “Jason is looking into it. The police in Bradford have raided the properties owned by Watkins’ organisation, based on Mason Jordan’s evidence, but so far a Black Magic Research and Development facility hasn’t been among those searched. Arthur will have hidden most of his activities under shell companies that will take ages to find, if they ever can be.”

  I felt the fear and distress rising inside me, yet again. Going over this time and again did me no good. Painting was what I needed to be doing now, not worrying about things I had no ability to control.

  “I need to get back to my painting. Can you two leave me be for a bit?” I asked.

  Daphne looked momentarily concerned. “Of course, of course. You need your alone time, I understand that. Come on Squib, let’s go do some more training.”

  “What kind of training do you ‘ave in mind?” he asked, wriggling his brows.

  Her trill laughter filled the glass solar. “You know very well: the PTA kind. The Poltergeist Training Academy.”

  My snigger of amusement was suddenly the only sound in the solar as the two ghosts vanished as suddenly as they’d arrived.

  Turning back to my easel again, I studied my painting. But the mood was gone. Sighing heavily, I began putting away my equipment and washing my brushes.

  Chapter Two

  After putting together a chicken salad for lunch, I went to let Jake know it was ready. I found him where I expected him to be: in the library, his head buried in the Logos, hair mussed from multiple finger-combings. Or attempts to pull hair out by the roots, more likely.

  Whatever the cause of his rumpled appearance, it only served to make him more attractive to me. With a couple of days of stubble on his cheeks, muscles straining at his black tee-shirt and tattoos running down his arms, he would have looked good on the cover of a motorcycle gang steamy Romance. He was not handsome, in the strict sense, but his sexual energy was palpable. Any red-blooded female could feel it.

  It was therefore an amazing thing to me that someone like him would have feelings for someone like me. I was the quintessential overweight wallflower type. Most of my life I’d been shy and retiring, and way too willing to put everyone else’s needs before my own. At least in that respect I’d been changing. Now I recognised I had the right to be selfish on occasion.

  Sending Mason away when he was upsetting the peace in my home was my first attempt at putting my needs first. It had proven the right choice, as Mason had turned out to be working against me. I was now learning to trust my instincts where decision-making was concerned. But it wasn’t easy.

  “Hey,” I said, drawing Jake’s attention to me.

  He looked up and smiled that sexy, wolfish grin of his. My nipples hardened, and I caught my breath.

  “Firecracker,” he said, by way of greeting.

  The first time we’d made love, I’d come fairly quickly and explosively. Or so Jake, from his vast experience, had concluded. Not that I would know. Up until I met him, I’d been a twenty-four-year old virgin who’d never been so much as kissed before. He’d said I’d gone off like a firecracker, and whenever he wanted to see me blush, he’d use that nickname.

  On cue, my cheeks began to burn and memories of that morning’s love-making rushed up to meet me.

  Jake chuckled and motioned me over. I moved into the room fully and came to his side at the roughly hewn desk that had seen better days. It was one of the few pieces of furniture left in the house. I’d sold all the good pieces in an estate sale I’d held to raise enough cash to pay the interest on the inheritance tax I owed on my Grade II Heritage listed manor house.

  As I drew close enough, Jake pulled me into his arms and dragged me onto his lap. I always worried I’d cut off circulation to his legs sitting this way, but Jake didn’t seem to see it as a problem. I was coming to realise that maybe I wasn’t the huge elephant I’d always imagined myself to be. Certainly, I was no stick-figure. But I wasn’t a blimp either. Curvy, Jason Smith had called me. And Jake agreed with that description. He’d even said I was one of the rare women he’d known who looked better without clothes on.

  Wrapping my arms around his shoulders, I leaned in to kiss his cheek. Not willing to accept that paltry attempt at affection, he turned his head to claim my mouth with his. The kiss was searing, leaving me panting when we finally came up for air.