The morning brought with it a fog over my thoughts. I had assumed at first that I would burst into fire upon contact with the sun. A vague explanation had been given then, about the difference between vampires and psychic vampires; something that my mind seemed incapable of comprehending.

“You should probably get some rest, though,” There were still tear-stains around her eyes, and I tried to tell her to do the same, but my tongue wasn’t catching up to my brain, “Your body is, in essence, forcefully Nocturnal. You can train against it, but it will be difficult, and I wouldn’t recommend doing it after reaching your limit,”

Questions flooded my mind, none of them in a particular order. The first was about the car; we’d stolen it from a junkyard, and some… interesting sounds had risen from it recently. All of these questions faded rather quickly when the suggestion of sleep turned into a demand from my body.

My eyes opened to the setting sun, with the car frozen in-place, and the barest amount of stars twinkling overhead. I rubbed the bleariness from my vision as I grappled with the seatbelt blindly. The car door jammed for a moment, and it took a shove to get it to pop open. The fluorescent neon lights of a gas station met my eyes as I stumbled out.

“Where are we?” I asked as I glanced towards a blinking neon sign.

“A day closer to getting your answers,” She replied.

I thought about that for a moment, “Why are we still heading towards the vampires? I mean…”

She shook her head, “I don’t know everything there is to know about your kind. Only bothered to learn the basics when I had my first run-in with them. You’ll need to go to them to learn anything else,”

That… Made sense, “Right, well I’m running in to buy myself an energy drink, or two,”

After running in for that, it was my turn to take over the wheel. The drive was silent for a little while, which of course, wasn’t going to last.

A patch of fire jumped from one end of the street to the next. I hit on the breaks and nearly swerved into a tree. As we both sat still within the car, the line of fire trailed from that strange beacon was the only thing left behind.

“Do we…” Her voice was hesitant, and all I could do was stare towards the forest.

After a minute of blinking the light from my eyes, I glanced towards each end of the street, “I don’t think we have a choice,” The fact that we hadn’t been attacked immediately was a good sign, anyways.

The car door slammed shut behind me, and I moved towards the flame. It had settled upon the street, but refused to let up. Behind me, she was drawing a wand from her backpocket.

“So the wands are a real thing?” I asked, trying to make polite conversation.

“Not quite the way they are in the stories, but yeah. We use them to sense magic, not do magic,”

“Like… a radiation detector?”

“Basically. Except ours tells us what kind of radiation, and how it might’ve been caused,”

“So, what’s that telling you?” I replied, as I looked towards the forest.

“It’s telling me that…We might have a visitor,”

I wouldn’t have needed a wand to tell me that. In the center of the underbrush was a man, his eyes glowing a violent yellow. For a moment his teeth were bared, sharp and impossible rows of fangs glinting in the moonlight. Then, as if he were a puppet with his strings cut, he flopped onto the grass below him.

Without thinking I dashed across the road. As my body fell to a halt, I stared towards the man laying against the grass. The first thing I couldn’t help but notice, was the pool of blood where his stomach should be. My mouth was agape as I fell onto the floor beside him.

“How do we help him?” I asked, desperately glancing over my shoulder.

“You want…You want to help him?” She choked, and I stared towards her, stifling the anger that begged to rise from my chest and into my throat, “That’s a dragon,”

I glanced back towards the man, and then towards her, “I don’t care what the fuck he is, he’s bleeding out. You don’t leave a person to die for no reason,”

She blinked, and I could see the fear leaving her expression, “Get him to the car. I’ll try to magically heal him. Maybe… Could you try drawing some of his soul out? I’ll try to steal it and funnel it into my casting,”

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I looked towards the dormant body of the…Dragon, and delicately wrapped an arm around his leg. It was perhaps one of the heaviest things I’ve tried to lift, but somehow I managed to get him all the way to the backseat. For a moment, as I delicately dropped him into the back, I was terrified that I might drop him.

“Okay… So how do I… Steal his soul or whatever, from range?”

Her bangs fell over her eyes as she said, “I figured that came naturally… Umm, just try picturing his soul falling into yours or something?”

I did as she said, imagining a white-ball of energy slipping away from the body against the seat. Nothing happened. In a panic, I reached my hand out towards their chest. That was when I felt something give. Like a tidal wave of static, with a pinprick of total darkness in the middle. I almost took the entire thing in my excitement, before I contained myself, and just barely managed to cut off a sliver.

“There… There isn’t much of him left,”

“That’s fine, even the smallest amount of a Dragon’s Mana should be enough,” I felt the soul fragment seep away from my grasp and had to physically resist the urge to grasp back onto it.

A shining yellow flame lit up the back of the car, as she funneled it back into his body. Nothing physical seemed to happen, but she sagged back against the driver’s side seat, and stared with dark brown orbs towards his body.

“It should be working,” She said into the silence of the night, “The effects will probably take most of the night to be visible,”

“Okay,” I replied, pulling myself out of the car, “We need to get going then. Whatever attacked him is probably nearby,” And I had no intention of sticking around to find out what it was.

The fire had died down by then, luckily, meaning it was far too easy to peel out of there as fast as possible. With the lack of cars on the countryside, and the lack of police cruisers waiting to catch us in the act, I didn’t have any problem ramping the car up to seventy; of course, the rattling was something I was certain was a ticking timebomb.

By the time daylight came, I could feel myself starting to fall asleep at the wheel. When I tried to wake up the witch, who I’d come to learn was Sarah, she mumbled something about needing more sleep. So, without any other option, I parked us into a motel. Sarah bumbled up into the room, leaving me to carry our newest friend myself. Luckily the bleeding had stopped, otherwise I wasn’t certain either of us would’ve survived the endeavor.

Naturally, when all was said and done, I was the owner of a blanket, a pillow, and the floor. The decision had come after a simple realization; the dragon had seemed rather hostile upon first seeing us, and if I wanted to die when he woke up, I’d rest easy knowing I had a slightly rickety sleep on a bedbug infested bed. So, he got the bed, and I got the floor.

When my eyes opened back up, it was again to the gentle glow of the evening. I rubbed at my face, and quickly pulled myself off of the floor. The dragon was still asleep, although now with a strange yellow light illuminating off of his skin. Sarah was also awake, and staring towards the dragon.

“Anything you know about this?” I decided to ask, as I sat down on her bed.

She shrugged, “I assume it’s just his body healing itself. He’s a fire dragon, I think, so that’s something he should be able to do relatively easily,”

I refrained from asking why he hadn’t done that when he’d collapsed on the side of the road. Chances are it had something to do with how close to death he’d been. Instead, I glanced out the window. We still appeared to be the only car in the motel, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything; there was every chance that the vampire hunters had found us at some point, and were actively waiting for the right moment.

Suppressing the urge to rush towards the car, I looked back down at our newest companion, however unwitting they happened to be, “Do you think we should carry him out to the car?” I deferred to her, considering she knew more about things of a magical nature then I currently did.

She went silent for a moment as she considered, “Probably not. It seems like an unconscious spell, and if it were to become conscious that might disrupt it,”

Likely meaning that he’d stop healing, or he’d start attacking. I rubbed at my arm as I stood up, and moved over to the window. A few cars drove by here and there, but nothing of overt suspicion. My only hope was that he’d wake up soon.

After what felt like an hour, a cough erupted from behind me. I turned around right as his eyes opened. As soon as they did, he shot off of the bed. For a moment, a fiery light seemed to seep into the room, smoke billowing from a frame that was difficult to look at. Then, in the next, he stumbled backwards, panting.

His eyes darted towards the door, which I was quick to move away from. We locked eyes for a moment as he glanced towards the entrance, the window, and then swiveled his head back towards Sarah.

“You won’t stop me from leaving?” Suspicion was laced into his tone.

“We only wanted to help you,” I replied hesitantly.

Two blazing yellow eyes shot back onto mine, “I could’ve killed you when I awoke,”

I took a moment to figure out what I was going to say, “I’ve been close to death at least three times in the past couple of days. I saw someone that needed help and took the risk to help them,”

He considered that for a moment, the yellow in his eyes fading back into a vibrant green, “I was betrayed by my people,” He began as he sagged back onto his bed, “They wanted me to stay with the Colony, I wanted to explore the world. They said I was too young, that I didn’t understand the dangers. So I fled, but… My sisters, my brothers; they found me, and refused to let me leave,”

When the sound of cars and the hum of electricity condensed fully into the room, I broke the silence, “Why wouldn’t they let you leave?”

His eyes glanced up at me, before staring back towards the floor, “Dragons are solitary creatures. We do not ally with humans unless it is necessary. The only reason we take your form is for survival. I do not believe in this; I wanted to see the world as it is, to meet your species, and interact with this world. They didn’t like that,”

It didn’t take a moment of thought to say, “You could come with us. I mean, we’re headed towards a settlement of psychic vampires; chances are we’ll find interesting things to do along the way,” I didn’t say anything about the people hunting us, or the danger he’d probably run into; if he could transfer that healing to us, he’d be infinitely useful.

Consideration flashed through his eyes, before he replied, “You’ll know my name then. To both of you, it is Sam,”