by C. J. Hill
Allen’s eyebrows dipped. “The Bible doesn’t talk about dragons.”
Alastair picked up Harriet’s laptop and handed it to him. “Check. Run a search.”
While he did, Alastair turned his attention back to Harriet. “I became a professor of medieval civilizations specifically so I would have access to early documents about dragons. Trust me when I say I’m an expert. The reason you dreamed of a dragon, the reason your body was so sure one wounded you that your skin blistered in response, is that your mind already knows dragons exist. It’s genetic memory.” Alastair tapped one finger against his temple. “Your subconscious is warning you that dragons are near, that you need to prepare for when they come back.”
Harriet grew pale. She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “Come back from where? How?”
Alastair leaned forward, going automatically into professor mode. “Medieval records report that dragons can choose one of two gestation times for their eggs: a short span—which lasts between fifteen to twenty years, or a long span—approximately one hundred and fifty years. It’s their way of escaping predators.” He kept his eyes trained on hers. “Unfortunately, viable dragon eggs are somewhere in the D.C. area.”
“You’re sure?” Harriet’s voice came out low, like a stone dropped into the silence of a pool. “Where do we go to escape from them? How do we get away?”
“We don’t escape,” Alastair said. “We fight.”
Harriet gripped her blanket. “It picked up a van like it was a toy. It breathed fire. We can’t fight it. You’d need missiles or military jets—”
He shook his head. “Dragons can outmaneuver planes and missiles. Their skin is radar absorbing, which means that they can’t be tracked. They also have another advantage. When they roar, they send out an electromagnetic pulse that fries all electric components in the area.” He went on shaking his head. “It’s almost as if they were preparing, even back then, to fight us in the future.”
Allen broke into the conversation. “This is what the Book of Revelations says about dragons: ‘And she being with child cried, travailing in birth and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon.’” He looked up at his wife and some of the color drained from his face. He skimmed the verses on the screen. “‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child …’”
Allen turned to Alastair, his eyes wide. “This isn’t literally describing something that will happen, is it?”
“Those verses are probably symbolic of the Christ child. But the point is that even the Bible referenced dragons, so—”
Allen waved a hand at the computer. “I don’t remember ever seeing a dragon at the Christmas nativity scene. One did show up in my wife’s dream, though, and it tried to kill her and our baby son.”
“Let me explain some more,” Alastair said soothingly. “Do you remember back in the Middle Ages, how the alchemists tried to find a way to create gold? History got that wrong. They sought to create liquid gold—a substance that would give people the powers needed to conquer dragons. Luckily, they found it. Those superenhanced knights would have destroyed dragons altogether if some of the dragons hadn’t used their long gestation periods to outlive them.”
Allen wiped his palms on his jeans. “You know how to make this liquid gold stuff?”
Alastair realized he hadn’t explained that part. “I don’t need to. Once the knights drank the liquid gold, it changed their DNA. They passed that DNA down to future generations. When a dragon is close to hatching, its heartbeat emits a pulse that turns on the DNA of any of the dragon knights’ descendants who are within a mile radius.” He leaned over and put his hand on top of Harriet’s arm. “You had the dream because you’re a descendant of a dragon knight. At some point, you went near a dragon egg in the D.C. area.”
She yanked her arm away and let out a half-strangled gasp. “That’s why the dragon was searching for me? It knew I was a descendant?”
“Yes.”
She stood up so quickly her blanket fell away and her chair toppled to the floor with a sharp crack. She didn’t bother to right it. “I’m not fighting that thing. I don’t have any special powers.”
“You don’t,” Alastair agreed. “But your son does. The pulse can only turn on the DNA of babies.” He gestured to her stomach. “Those who are still in the womb.”
Allen stood up, joining his wife. “Our baby is not going anywhere near a dragon.”
“Not when he’s a baby,” Alastair said. “We could have a decade or two before the eggs hatch—but not longer than that. Otherwise the dragon embryo wouldn’t have been developed enough to trigger your son’s DNA and your genetic awareness of it. But when your child is old enough, I’ll need to train him to use his powers. The new generation of slayers are our only hope for defeating the dragons when they come.”
Allen stepped in front of his wife, making a protective barrier between her and Alastair. “Wait. We’re not agreeing to any of this.” His hands clenched and unclenched at his side. “You can’t walk in here and tell us you’re taking our son.”
This was the problem of getting ahead of yourself while trying to explain things. Alastair took a step back, to appear as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m not taking your son. He’ll still live with you. I’ll teach him when he’s older—during the summers so he won’t miss school. He won’t be alone. There are other descendants. I’m not sure how many, but I know of one—my daughter. My wife had the dream, too.”
Harriet’s head shook so quickly she looked like she was having a standing seizure. “If there are other children, then you don’t need our son.”
“Of course he’s needed.” Especially since Alastair didn’t know where any of the other children were. After Shirley’s dream, he had gone on the radio show hoping for a flurry of calls from pregnant women who had dreamed of dragon attacks. So far, Harriet was the only one.
“No,” Harriet said. “Absolutely not. We’ll leave. We’ll go someplace where it won’t find us.”
Allen’s lips thinned into a tight line. “You can’t seriously ask our son to fight—”
Alastair took a step toward Harriet. “You’ve seen a dragon. You understand what it will do to the city if we don’t stop it.”
She winced and took hold of her side. Pain, maybe labor pain, flashed across her face. Allen put his arm around her shoulder. “Go lie down,” he told her. To Alastair, he said, “It’s time for you to go.”
Alastair opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t know what to say. His own wife had been so much more understanding. But then, his wife had known dragons were real before she got pregnant. She’d realized having a slayer for a child was a possibility. “We’re all tired,” Alastair finally said. “You need time to process this.”
Allen stared. Harriet pressed her hand to her lips while tears pooled in her eyes.
I’m asking a difficult thing of her, Alastair realized. She’s just in shock. But now she knew lives were at stake. She would eventually do the right thing.
“You have my phone number,” Alastair said. “Call me when you want to talk again.”
Harriet didn’t call. After two days, Alastair drove to their house. He would address their worries. He would appeal to their sense of duty. He would beg, if necessary.
A FOR SALE sign stood in the middle of their yard.
Well, that was a bit drastic, wasn’t it?
He strode to the door, noticing a lock box already on the handle. He rang the doorbell. No one answered. He peered into the front window, his frustration growing. The furniture was gone. The whole place had been cleared out except for miscellaneous papers and books, things scattered on the floor that Harriet and Allen hadn’t bothered packing.
The disappointment felt like a puncture wound in his chest. They were running away from the dragon instead of staying to help to fight it—instead of helping h
is daughter fight it.
I’ve failed, he thought. I knew where another child was, and now he’s gone. How could Alastair possibly find this boy when it was time to train him? And what’s more, how could he find any other children without producing the same results from their parents? Going on the radio again might turn up more pregnant women with dragon dreams. But when he told them the truth, what would keep the rest of them from bolting?
The children needed training; without it, they’d probably all end up dead, victims of their inexperience. Like Nathan. Alastair pushed the thought away. This wasn’t the time to think about his brother.
Alastair trudged around the outside of the house, checking each window. Looking for … well, he wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He just had to make sure they were really gone.
He came to a small room, which, judging from the Noah’s Ark stencils, was the nursery.
All his years of research and piecing things together. They meant nothing if he couldn’t train enough heirs of the dragon knights. And now he had nothing to help him find this one.
Except for the child’s name. Because there it was, stenciled on the wall. His name would be Ryker. Ryker Davis.
Alastair leaned against the window, staring at the name. “I will find you,” he whispered. “I’ll think of a way to find and train all of you.”
CHAPTER 1
Seventeen years later
From the passenger side of her sister’s BMW, Tori surveyed the camp parking lot. It was dirt, with no white lines, so cars were parked at odd angles. True, the surrounding forest had a picture-perfect beauty to it. The oak and maple trees crowded together, their thick branches perfectly still in the early summer sun. But the buildings seemed shabby. The paint was faded in places on the main lodge, and even if it hadn’t been, it still would have looked boxy and spare—rundown, really.
The sign read ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, with the word CAMP tacked up underneath the other words like it was an afterthought.
Tori made sure she had her registration confirmation, then slid her purse onto her shoulder. Her mom was supposed to have driven her here, but ended up having to host a party for senators and their wives instead. The job had then fallen to Tori’s older sister, Aprilynne.
Aprilynne lowered her sunglasses enough to consider the stream of people making their way through the parking lot. “It’s just what I thought. Riffraff, gangster wannabes, and probable orphans.”
Tori refused to be disappointed, at least yet. “They’re normal kids,” she said.
“Exactly my point.”
“It will be fun.” Tori opened the car door, stepped out, and swatted at some gnats. Two teenage boys with squirt guns darted past and chased each other into the forest.
Aprilynne wrinkled her nose. “They’re not even clean now, and camp is just starting.”
“They’re campers, not doctors performing surgery on me.”
Aprilynne pushed a button on the dashboard and the trunk popped open. Tori slid out of the BMW and went around to the back to get her luggage.
Through the open window, Aprilynne said, “Why come here for a month when you could be at a good camp? What about that one you went to in Cancún last summer? I thought you liked it there.”
“That was a finishing school at a resort, not a camp.”
“I bet the mattresses here aren’t clean. You’ll come home with lice or something even more disgusting.”
Tori hefted one suitcase and then the other out of the trunk. Each weighed a ton. She had probably brought too many shoes and books. She had packed some romances in case camp turned out to be boring, and then had thrown in a few classics from her English reading list in case camp turned out to be really, really boring. She shut the trunk of the car with a thud. “Tell Mom I’ll call her later.”
It was probably better that her mom wasn’t here to see the camp, Tori decided. She undoubtedly would have found several reasons why it wasn’t suitable.
Aprilynne hung her head out the window. “You realize your friends have a bet going to see how long you’ll last here. Now that I’ve seen the place, I think I’ll wager a hundred dollars on three days.”
Tori grabbed her matching shoulder bag from the backseat of the BMW. “I’ve got my stuff. You can go now.”
Aprilynne started up the car, then glanced back again. “You know, there’s no point in being rich if you act poor.”
Tori ignored the comment. She should have never told Aprilynne that some kids came to Dragon Camp on need-based scholarships. Aprilynne wasn’t impressed by that type of largesse. She had only rolled her eyes and said, “You mean, not only is dragon camp made up of Renaissance Faire rejects, but they’re all broke, too?”
The BMW pulled out of the parking lot going too fast—Aprilynne’s normal driving speed—and soon nothing was left of her sister but a trail of dust and designer perfume hanging in the air.
Tori walked slowly toward the main building and the hand-printed sign that read REGISTER HERE. She pulled her two suitcases, wishing too late that she hadn’t brought the good luggage. The dust would probably ruin the canvas by the time she made it to her cabin. Still, she couldn’t very well pick them up and haul them around; they were too heavy. Several kids streamed around her, jostling by with backpacks and duffle bags.
How had they managed to fit everything they needed for a month into a duffle bag? Tori’s shoes alone took up that much space. Still, it had been a mistake to pack so much, or maybe just a mistake to come. Maybe Aprilynne was right. That occasionally happened. The beds would be hard, the food bad, and the stuff about dragon classes that had made her want to come in the first place—a bunch of hype to attract little kids.
Besides, she was too old for a camp like this. She was sixteen and a half, and most of these kids didn’t look much older than the required entrance age of eleven.
Tori pulled her suitcases harder. They bumped along on the uneven ground, nearly falling over.
She thought about the cell phone tucked into her shoulder bag. Aprilynne probably hadn’t even reached the main road yet. If Tori called her now, the car would be back here in minutes. They could be somewhere shopping by early afternoon.
Tori stared at the road leaving camp and wondered who would win the bet. Had anyone wagered she would only last five minutes?
As Tori pulled, her biggest suitcase gave a shudder and tipped over. A cloud of dust rose from the ground at the point of its demise. She bent to straighten it, and as she did, her shoulder bag slid down her arm, knocking into her other suitcase, which then joined the first one on the ground. She let out a huff of exasperation, set the shoulder bag down, then righted her suitcases.
Stupid dirt parking lot. Fine, it was a camp, but every camp Tori had ever attended had paved parking lots and sidewalks between the cabins. By the look of it, this one had neither. A worse thought came to her: What if this camp didn’t have real toilets? What if it had outhouses?
She walked slower, searching for a restroom among the rustic log cabins that were scattered through the forest. The words from the brochure came to her mind: Step into the world of dragon slayers. Campers will practice fencing, horseback riding, archery, and everything a young dragon slayer needs to save the world. Older campers can apply what they learn in medieval history class for college credit.
The college credit part had been new this year and had finally sold her parents on the idea. She had wanted to go to St. George for the last four summers, but every time she’d asked, her parents had sent her to a camp they deemed better. One with a wider range of facilities. A higher camper-to-counselor ratio. More exclusive clientele. Ones for horseback riders, ice skaters, or debutantes.
But Tori had wanted knights, or answers, or perhaps magic. She had wanted a place where people understood her and her crazy dragon obsession, because then maybe she could understand herself.
Tori looked from the dirt parking lot to the huddled log cabins and gray trash cans. This place had nothing even rem
otely magical about it. Probably all she’d get out of the summer was a succession of sunburns, a few rashes, and a healthy appreciation of bug spray.
Did any decent restaurants even deliver out here?
And did any of these kids really have lice? None of the kids who poured past her seemed to be scratching, but if Aprilynne mentioned it, then it might be a real concern. After all, Tori had never even been to a public school.
The thunking of her suitcases suddenly stopped, and the next moment she felt them lifted away from her.
She turned to see two guys about her age hefting her suitcases off the ground. Both wore mirrored sunglasses, and both were tall, perhaps six two. One was blond, with muscular arms covered in a layer of dirt. The other guy had wavy dark brown hair, or perhaps it was just uncombed. His biceps were equally impressive, or at least they would have been if they weren’t holding onto her luggage. With the sunglasses hiding their eyes, she probably wouldn’t even be able to identify them once they made off with her possessions.
Tori held onto her luggage straps fiercely. “There’s nothing of value in here—only my clothes—and if you don’t let go, I’ll scream.”
The brunet set her suitcase down and turned to the other guy. “I don’t want her on my team. You get her.”
The blond shook his head. “No way. It’s my turn to choose, and I’ve already got Lilly. You get this one, pal.”
The brunet peered over the rim of his sunglasses at Tori. “We’re not stealing your luggage. We’re carrying them to your cabin—unless you want to drag these things across camp by yourself.” He picked up her suitcase again, moving it from one hand to another. “What do you have in here anyway, your lead collection?”
Tori blushed and let go of the luggage straps. “Sorry. I didn’t know the camp had bellhops.”
The blond groaned and walked past her. The brunet forced a smile in her direction. “We’re not bellhops. We’re campers who happen to be doing you a favor.”
