Captured By The Dragon
Episode 45

Erik – third

Erik had never seen his friend so out of it. Dylan led wars and won battles, yet the moment he was off the field it was like he was a shell of the person he used to be. Before he lost that girl.

Sure, she was beautiful and all that but was she worth this much heart ache? Was she worth all of this? Erik didn’t think so, not in the slightest. But his friend sure did and he couldn’t seem to get his thoughts off of her.

There wasn’t a doubt in Erik’s mind that Dylan should forget her and move on. Even if she did need him like he claimed, it was only a matter of time before she left him again and did anything she could do to escape—including burning his next house down too. What would he do then? Would he kill her for what she did to him twice? He’d killed many men for much less than that. But he couldn’t seem to do that to her.

Still, Erik wanted to do his part and help his friend get back the one slice of happiness he had. Even if it meant that he would lose it again in the future. It was what Cindy would have wanted too if she knew any of this. She liked Patara a lot and asked about her daily—but of course he couldn’t tell her any of this.

Patara’s address was rather easy to find. She was a rich girl with a well known daddy. His contact found the school, her house, even the house her parents had before they had money. It was all so easy to find when the family wanted to be known. They were obsessed with their image and trying to keep it clean. Not many had even been aware that Patara was taken in the first place.

How strange. Erik would have thought her face would have been front page in all of the newspapers but someone kept it quiet. Was it her family that cared more about their image rather than the safety of their own daughter? Hard to believe it if it was the case.

The only hard part of the plan was trying to find a way to get in and out of a nice house like that when it was behind large gates and in a safe, protected neighborhood.

“There’s no way you’re getting in and out of this place undetected.” Erik tossed the paper on the desk covered in maps of the neighborhood. “You’ll have to show up in a cape and mask like some comic book character and pray they don’t connect you back here.”

“You’d be surprised at the things I can do.” Dylan muttered. He gazed down at the pages with observant eyes as if he was trying to capture every detail and imprint it on his brain. “She won’t make noise when she sees me.”

“How can you be so sure of that? How the hell would you figure that from a gut feeling?” Erik rubbed his eyes. It was hard to support his friend when he said such ridiculous things. “She might set off alarms the second she sees you and they will shoot you dead for trying to take her.”

“She needs me, I feel it.” Dylan muttered. He acted so calm and controlled as if he had no worry in the world that anything could possibly go wrong. “She won’t alert them.”

Erik sighed and leaned against the table. “We both know you can’t do this alone. Let me go with you and get her.”

Dylan finally lifted his eyes from the pages and gave him a long look. “If I let you come with me, we have to plan all this out.”

“Great. Let’s get started.” Erik clapped his hands loudly before he rested his fists against the table. “Lay it on me, what do you have first?”

“We can take this road out of this territory here.” Dylan traced his fingers along the back roads that lead into the human world. Not many people knew it existed, and Dylan liked to keep it that way. He knew they could be used for evil if it was let out.

“After we get through, I have a contact that will let us use one of their cars. It’s discreet enough that no one will look twice. We’ll also need to change into more human attire. Hunters always target those that ever try to dress similar to us. We don’t need to get stopped because of a stupid mistake like that.”

“Right.” Erik nodded. He was sure that every shifter hunter in the country knew who Dylan was and what he looked like. If they got stopped for any reason, it would take one look for them to know it was him.

“Once we’re through, we drive to her town but not to her neighborhood. That place has cameras everywhere.” Dylan scratched his jaw in thought. “We need to figure out how to get past them and inside. We’re going to have to stack out her house and find a pattern.”

“A pattern for her?”

“No, for her family.” Dylan pushed away from the table and took a breath. He was always good at strategy and finding the perfect plan to take down the enemy. Erik had fought beside him many times, he was no fool. Every move was calculated and perfect. It always made Erik forget that he was just a kid.

“What about this.” Erik said. It drew Dylan’s attention back to him. “What if you just slip through the backyards and into her window? No one will see you and you wouldn’t need a ladder.”

“Erik, if someone saw an inch of my wings I would be dead—“

“No, look at this.” Erik pointed to the pictures of her house. He didn’t ask his contact how he had so many pictures of the house and neighborhood in such a short time. The man worked in quick, but creepy ways.

“If you pass through the back areas here.” Erik gestured to the backyards. “There’s a blindspot behind her house. None of the neighbors face this side and if you do it at night, no one will see you.”

Dylan studied the picture for a long moment. “If you slip into her window and get her, you’ll be out of there in seconds and her family won’t even know she’s gone until morning. And by then—you’ll be back here where they can’t catch you.”

“It might work…” Dylan said quietly as if he was talking to himself. “Though, it might just send whoever took her back here too.”

“They’ll come no matter how you take her. She’s not going to walk back here herself, they would stop her and throw her into an insane asylum before they would let a pretty girl like that come back here.”

Dylan rubbed his eyes. Erik wasn’t sure when the last time his friend had had a full night of sleep. Probably not since that damn girl left.

“Alright. We leave tomorrow.”