Don't Slay the Dragon (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 1) (14 page)

The train of the dress was longer than I remembered and I was having a hard time getting it all back into the cramped closet. How had it all fit in there to begin with? I moved a few other clothes aside to make more room then
froze in shock.

A pair of glowing red eyes stared back at me
through the darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“
Logan,” I whispered, crouched down in front of the closet.  I couldn’t say more.

He must have noted the tone in my voice.  Before I knew it, he was bent to one knee beside me in the cramped space.  I pushed the hanging clothes off to one side as far as I could. 

There, along the back wall of the closet, was a vicious-looking black dragon staring back at me with glowing red eyes.  His jagged teeth looked razor sharp, his long talons deadly. He had wide, sleek wings, opened fully as if about to take flight. It looked as though he a climbing up out of a volcanic area with glowing red and orange lava surrounding him and rising steam.  Molten rivers crawled around it, oozing liquid fire so bright you could almost feel the heat.

It was either the bowels of a volcano or the depths of hell.
It might as well have been climbing right out of the closet and coming for me, as much as my hands were shaking. 

I didn’t think
, after all I had seen and been though in my life, that I would be that easily frightened by a painting.  But there was something in the evil eyes that sent shivers up my spine. 

“What the hell?” 
Logan pulled back a fraction once he saw the picture. He knelt frozen in place beside me as his eyes tried to register what he was seeing.

I was already gingerly reaching into the closet, feeling my way for the edges on the picture.
I was almost afraid to get too close, as if those fierce talons would reach right out and claw me.

“Is it painted on to the wall or is it separate?”  He asked
quietly. 

I couldn’t feel a matt or a frame.  I thought at first it had been painted right onto the wall until my clumsy hands felt a slight edge.

“I think I feel the edge of the canvas.”  Logan was finally in action, reaching up and pulling clothes out of the closet, draping them across the bed and giving us more room to see.  Musty clothes gave off dust clouds as he stacked them up. By the time the bed was piled high with clothes, we still had only a partial view of the dragon.

Without a word, Logan began removing the sliding closet doors from their railing, placing each door against the back wall of the small bedroom. One he was done, a more complete picture of the dragon was revealed. Logan could see where I was searching for the edge of the canvas and knelt beside me.

“Let me help.”  Side by side we peeled the canvas away from the wall.  It had been taped on with an electrical tape so dark and thin you could hardly see where the picture ended and the tape began.  “Careful.”  He cautioned, neither one of us wanted the canvas damaged. It was a pain-staking process, inch by inch, trying to be so careful not to tear the aging canvas. My hands felt even more inept and clumsy through the awkward latex gloves.

Once the last of the tape came away from the wall we lifted the canvas and came to our feet, each holding two corners of it.  Without a word exchanged, we both looked around for a large enough
surface to spread it out on, but with the bed full of clothes our options were limited.

“Front room floor,” I suggested as we gently rolled up the canvas and headed down the narrow hall. 

Once in the front room we knelt down and spread it out face up on the carpet between us. The room was so small, there was hardly enough space for the canvas to be laid out.

I looked closely over the details of the painting, noticing how intricate she had been with the smallest things such as the individual scales on its back
, the graceful yet powerful arch of its neck, the sharp thorns sticking out from its tail. The blood-red eyes had such depth you almost thought they were real.

I carefully tried to look over every inch of the painted canvas, looking for anything out of the ordinary. To my naked eye, I couldn’t see anything more than the vivid, frightening painting.
  I ran a gloved hand over the surface, frustrated that I could feel so little through the latex.

“Let’s check the back,” Logan suggested.

We carefully flipped it over face down then, with delicate fingers, we each started at opposing corners of the canvas and searched the textured surface for any words, pictures or symbols.  The canvas was eggshell white and at first glance it was just one plain field. 

There had to be something here.  There had to be.
I hoped Slayer hadn’t just told me about this to throw me off. What else could he have been talking about? How had he even known about it? Could I really even trust him?

I was almost finished searching my side
, trying so hard not to feel frustrated at not finding anything, when Logan spoke. 

“There’s a raised area right here,” he ran his
gloved fingertips over an area in the bottom corner.  I leaned over and felt the same area.  He was right.  I pulled the canvas back and looked at the front of the picture.  Nothing obvious stood out that would cause a raised area in the back.  There was nothing there but a black background.  Flipping over to the blank surface I again traced the area.  I could swear there was writing. It was almost in the area where an artist would put their signature. I hadn’t noticed Barbara’s signature on the front anywhere. What could it be?

“Wait, I have an idea.”
Without another word, Logan jumped up and walked into the small office.  I could hear him rifling through the desk drawer.  After another moment he was back and kneeling on the floor again.  He’d found a basic lead pencil and was using the side of the lead to rub it lightly over the raised surface. 

Carefully, back and forth he rubbed, using only subtle pressure with the pencil lead, trying not to damage the surface below.
After a few moments, like magic, words started appearing.  I gazed down at the words in a hand-written calligraphy.

Atrus Dracona

We looked at each other in curiosity.  What did it mean? 

“Does it mean anything to you?”  He asked. 

I shook my head.  Why go to such lengths to hide these words?  What was their importance? How would anyone have ever been able to find them without Slayer’s hints?

“It may be Latin, but I’m not sure.  I need my computer to search it.  Maybe we should head back to the department and….”

I was already on my feet and heading for the office area.  By the time I was sitting at the computer desk and pushing the power button he was at my side.  The screen blinked to life again and we each held our breath as the password screen came up.

“How was it spelled again?”  I asked

“A…T…R…U…S,” He spelled out as I typed it onto the keyboard.  “D…R…A…C…O…N…A.”

I pushed the “enter” key and watched as it accepted the password. 

“Yes!”  Logan let out and we both smiled at each other.

The computer was slow, sluggish. The operating system was outdated to the point of being archaic. I thought it would be nightfall by the time it completely booted up.

Once it did, I saw that her background wallpaper was another picture of a fierce looking black dragon, obviously done by another artist.  It was breathing blue-red fire and had large, veined wings. It would have been nice to see a happy family portrait on the wallpaper instead of another frightening black dragon. 

“Could Atrus Dracona be Latin for Black Dragon?”  I guessed.

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” he answered.

“Where should I start? 
Documents?  Files? Internet?” 

“My guess is that the internet isn’t working,” I double-clicked on the Explorer icon and he was right.  “No one paid that bill.  Try her most recent documents.”

I went to the menu then to documents.  There were several on the list.  I opened the first one entitled “September Dawning”.  It looked like a short story of science fiction/fantasy.  I skimmed over it, noting magical creatures and mystical worlds.  Nothing really jumped out at me.

The next document seemed to be a book section from another author down-loaded from the internet.
  This one was fictional about the medieval time period.  It was well written and maybe fifty pages long.  It was about ancient rivalries and powerful kingdoms. 

The next few documents were similar.  She had always had a love of fantasy, so none of it surprised me.

The last few documents at the end of the list seemed out of place, though.  There was a definite shift in the subject matter. Gone was the fantasy and the fiction, in its place were articles and documents with a definite religious theme to them. 

It seemed to be research down-loaded from the internet.  There were pages full of the history of Baptist beliefs and the mainstream offshoots of it.  There was the life of Martin Luther and hi
s impact in religious ideology.  There was information about Buddhist beliefs, reincarnation, and Muslim traditions. There were articles about Judaism and excerpts from the Talmud as well as Jewish prayers in what looked to be Hebrew. What a strange mixture of religious history and theory.

I knew about Barbara’s strict religious upbringing, but I thought she’d left all that behind her many years ago
. She had always been the first person to scoff at anyone weak enough to rely on some kind of religious superstition. She would much rather believe in nature and Mother Earth, mysticism and magic. I couldn’t imagine why she would have all of this down-loaded onto her computer.

The last document was about Catholicism and its history. 
It was quite lengthy and I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to skim through the entire thing until Logan stopped me.

“Wait.”  I stopped scrolling down the pages as he pointed to the screen.  We were in a section about rites and prayers.  “That’s Latin.  Some of the words seem familiar.”

His hand covered mine on the mouse.  It was the first time he’d touched me and to be honest, it was a struggle not to be distracted.  He moved the cursor down to a section and high-lighted it.

“
Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu Christi Filii ejus, Domini et Judicis nostril, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti, ut descedas ab hoc plasmate Dei, quod Dominus noster ad templum sanctum suum vocare dignatus est, ut fiat templum Dei vivi, et Spiritus Santus habitet in eo.  Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum, qui vesturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem.”

“What in the world?” I looked it over.  “What do you think it means?”

“I’m not sure, but I have an idea.”  He started exiting out of all the documents and programs and began the shut-down process.

“What are you doing?”  Just when we might be on the verge of finding out something important he was shutting it down.

“Just a second.”  He was in ‘detective mode’, I could tell.  He left the room and then the trailer.  I looked through a crack in the boards and out the small window and watched as he went out to the back of his car, opened the trunk and began rummaging through it.  A moment later, he came back in with what looked like a few large plastic bags and a long tube then he started dismantling the computer. 

“What are you doing?”  I repeated myself.

“I’ve got a friend in our IT department, he’s a genius.  I want him to look at this hard drive.  We need to check out her internet history. We also need to go back over any other files she has in here and see what we can retrieve from her recycling bin.” He was bagging up the hard drive, leaving the rest of the computer in pieces.    “I want to take the Black Dragon picture with us too.  There might be more on there.  Would you mind starting to get that secured too?”  He handed me what looked like a large poster tube.

I nodded and walked into the front room.  Kneeling down, I started rolling up the
canvas and placing it carefully into the tube.  Before I was finished, he was standing next to me, helping me seal clear tape along the lid.

“We can come back later and search more if we need to.  I want to get back to the precinct before Travis leaves.  If anyone could find what we need on this hard drive, he could.”