“My friend Maddox said something like that to me,” Kaylee said. “He said I have to embrace what I am to truly let it be a part of me.”
“True enough,” Randy said. “You’ve been thinking for too long. It’s time to start feeling.”
Kaylee looked him up and down. “The six-foot-three tattoo-covered biker dude is going to train me to embrace my feelings?”
“Hey, I’m a sensitive guy. Which is why…” Randy took three loping steps back and spread his arms wide, “I want you to hit me. Ice, electricity, heck, even a storm. Bring it on.”
Kaylee hesitated for only a moment. She’d seen enough outlandish teaching techniques from Baba to know when to just roll with it.
She shifted her arms and drew a ball of lightning in her hand. She’d been working to summon it as a continuous power around her, much like what Randy had done, able to lash out at her command. So far…the ball was all she could manage.
“That’s it?” Randy said.
Kaylee hurled it at him. Randy brushed it aside like swatting a fly. The ball fizzled out behind him like a defective firework.
“I like how you attacked an electric dragon-kin with electricity. That’s critical thinking right there.”
Ice came next. Sheets of it. At least, that’s what Kaylee tried to do.
Instead, small stinging flakes erupted from the center of her palm and rocketed towards Randy in a powerful stream. He sidestepped it. He scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot and a jolt of electricity zapped up Kaylee’s legs, making her yell in surprise.
“Move your feet,” Randy ordered. “This isn’t target practice. This is you versus them, and the more you stay stationary the easier it’ll be for them to hit you.”
Kaylee circled him, still trying to keep up her assault all while avoiding the occasional ground attack. It wasn’t working. Every time she tried to focus on her hands, her feet would stop and Randy would shock her. But when she moved she couldn’t use any magic.
“This isn’t training!” Kaylee said when another painful jolt caused her left foot to temporarily go numb. “You’re not teaching me how to fight, just how to take hits! If I wanted abuse I would have stayed with Baba!”
“I am the crucible through which you will be forged,” Randy intoned. He held both his hands up and slowly brought them together like he was piecing together two halves of a coconut.
“You have two parts right now, and neither one knows what to do. That’s why you can’t get a hit on me. You’re thinking too much and trying too hard. I bet you’d have no trouble with moving and using magic in a real fight, when all your sense is gone and you’re left with nothing but instinct. Come back to that. Use it. Bring your two sides together as one.”
“I don’t even know what that means!”
Randy leapt towards her. Kaylee found herself forced back as Randy swiped and kicked at her, exchanging physical blows for bursts of magic seamlessly. Dust swirled around them. The air sparked as Kaylee pulled on every fighting technique she knew to stay one step ahead of him.
If Kaylee had any doubts that Randy was as strong as he claimed, it vanished in that instant. It vanished again every second he shifted to counter her attacks. Every time he easily dodged. Every time her fist met his stomach and merely clanged against hard scales. Kaylee was forced to duck as a tail whipped out from behind him, nearly taking her off her feet.
“Hit me!” Randy yelled. “Stop holding back! Hit me with what I know you can do!”
Pressure built behind Kaylee’s eyes. The smell of thick ozone clogged her nose. But she forced it back. If she lost control here—
“Why are you stopping?” Randy bellowed. Kaylee tried to duck again but she was too slow this time. Strong claws gripped her forearms, trapping her in place. The magic inside her yearned to unleash, but almost as quickly images flashed through her mind:
The barn up in flames, skeleton timbers collapsing.
no.
A spell glowing a hellish blood red, men chanting, the wrongness of the magic the Slayers forced through her.
No.
Brendan’s final expression before death. His eyes resigned and tired and regretful in his last moments.
NO.
“Kaylee!”
Kaylee jolted back to herself as Randy shook her again. His dragon-slitted eyes changed back to normal. She was lying flat on her back, staring at a clear gray sky tinged with the final remnants of a sudden storm.
Had she done that? No, she would have realized it. Wouldn’t she?
“Apparently Alastair didn’t tell me everything,” Randy growled. “Up you go.” She took his offered hand and pulled herself up to sitting. “Hands on your head. Breathe slowly.”
“Did I—?”
“Lose control? Yes.” Randy sighed. “Alastair failed to mention it, but Baba told me this would be your greatest struggle. You’ve never been able to control your strongest elemental magic.”
“I’ve been trying. It’s not like any of you have to control a freaking storm!”
“It’s not the storm I’m worried about.” Randy’s face was tilted to the sky. “You handled that well enough. Kept it together and dispersed it when it grew too big. A storm—a dragon-kin’s main elemental magic, really—draws on the user’s physical energy and reserves of magic greater than that of any other type they use. If you had lost control of that it would have continued to pull from you until you were empty. Or dead.”
Kaylee shuddered. “Then why didn’t that happen? What did happen?”
“Hold still.”
Randy placed his hands on her back. A numbing pulse of energy—strange, but not unpleasant—rippled through her. He frowned.
“Physically, there’s nothing wrong. I can’t use healing magic like Merlins, but my electrical impulses can sense irregularities in magic and physical structures within someone. There’s nothing out of place inside you.”
Kaylee pushed off the ground. She dusted her hands on her pants, ignoring the alarmingly large, Kaylee-shaped dent in the ground. “I know that.”
“Of course you do. Which means the reason you’re losing control now is your body is using its magic to attack something your mind sees as a threat. My question is,” Randy stared hard at her, “since I know very much about traumatic experiences, why don’t you tell me what really happened that night with the Slayers.”
“Alastair already—”
“Told me what he knew, and his report of those events came from you. But I’m not buying it.”
“You think you know—”
“I know I know, Kaylee. But I can’t help you get better, control your magic, even accept your magic, until I know what I’m dealing with. I’m not asking as your mentor, I’m asking as a concerned uncle.”
Kaylee looked up at him. His arms were draped at his sides, his face a mask of concern. This wasn’t the uncle she’d seen so far. This wasn’t even the uncle her parents had told warning stories about for the last year.
“What did you and my mom talk about last night?” Kaylee said.
“Mostly about none of your business. And don’t try to change the subject. I know about dark magic, Kaylee. I know that whatever those Slayers did couldn’t have been easy to handle. I also know you can tell me about it.”
It was that last way he said it, so raw and honest, that made Kaylee relent. Once she started talking it was as if the words were a faucet she’d broken the handle to. She told him about how she’d discovered her powers, about how Brendan had attacked her, and what the Slayers had done since then. About that night when she’d brought the barn down.
Randy didn’t interrupt once. By the time Kaylee finished they had migrated away from the dirt patch to the front porch of the house. There were no chairs so Randy leaned on the half-rotted banister while Kaylee sat on the steps.
“You’ve got a pretty great group of friends there,” Randy said after she’d finished. “That Edwin kid seems pretty sharp, too, to figure out their plan like that.�
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“Yeah. He’s great.”
Randy fell silent again, and Kaylee looked up to find him staring off into the distance.
“We get to choose a lot of things in life. Being a dragon-kin isn’t one of them. I don’t know much about this Brendan kid, but it sounds like he made his choice and you made yours. I’m not saying he deserved what he got, but what they did to you—what he’s still doing to you—that’s not your fault.”
“I don’t think it’s my fault.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence, kid. Your magic just went haywire trying to attack what I’m guessing is his ghost or something.”
“How did you know that?” Kaylee snapped.
Randy chuckled. “Because you just confirmed it for me. Am I right?”
Kaylee wrapped her arms around her knees. “Yes—not just now, but yes. I’ve seen him a couple times. I don’t even know why it bothers me, after what he—they—tried to do.”
“It bothers you because you’re a human with feelings and not a monster. I told you to embrace your dragon side. To truly accept it. But there is such a thing as too much of either. It’s about balance. And as for Brendan…” Randy sighed. “I’ve made some mistakes like that, too. Mistakes that cost people everything. Some who deserved it. Some who didn’t.”
“But I thought you told Alastair you’d never—”
“I lied.”
“Oh.” Kaylee let this revelation process. Randy had killed people. Maybe not intentionally, but he had.
But when she opened her eyes, Randy was the same as he’d been before he’d told her. “How’d you deal with it?”
“Day by day,” Randy said. “Just like I dealt with accepting I was a dragon-kin. I did it, and you will too. But, Kaylee?”
His sorrow-filled tone made her meet his eyes. “As a dragon-kin, I can promise you that by the end of your life—whenever that is—you’ll see more people get hurt.”
Chapter Seven
Kaylee was being followed. She was sure of it.
Although it was nearly impossible to pick out any one person in the massive crowd that had assembled for the lacrosse team’s first game, a couple times she’d felt a tingle in the back of her neck; a prickle of unease. And it wasn’t just from all the times Randy had shocked her during their training that week.
“Kaylee?” Jade had already bought their tickets and stood waiting for her on the other side of the gate. Kaylee scanned the parking lot one more time. Parents, couples, (lots of couples, most of them hanging off each other like their skin had fused together), and kids. Nobody suspicious.
Except…there. The brief flash of a figure slipping between the cars. The furtive movement of someone trying to see without being seen. Kaylee glimpsed them for only a moment, but she was sure they’d been looking right at her.
“Trouble?”
Jade had joined her side. One hand clutched their tickets, the other had disappeared up the sleeve of her Scarsdale Lacrosse Team hoodie. Maddox had practically forced each of them to buy one as part of his team’s fundraiser. Kaylee was sure Jade had already sewed her concealed knife sleeve onto the inside of it.
“It’s nothing,” Kaylee said. “I thought I saw something.”
“Hey, kids, move it through the gate. You’re holding up the line,” The attendant grouched.
“You can’t ever assume it’s nothing,” Jade said. “Not when you’re dealing with Slayers.”
“They’re still out west,” Kaylee said.
Jade didn’t say anything.
“Jade? They are still out west? Plus, they wouldn’t attack us with all these people around.”
“They’re out west for now. And remember the djinn giant at the mall? I wouldn’t put it past them to unleash something else nasty just to draw us out.”
“Hey!” The attendant snapped. “I said scooch!”
Kaylee gave a sheepish wave to the growing line of annoyed ticket holders and together she and Jade hurried through the concrete tunnel to the stadium’s inner ring. Ahead was the playing field, and to the right and left concrete columns and overhead strip bulbs led the way to more upstairs stadium seating. Lines of patrons shivered their way to buy hot chocolate and cider, their breath fogging the corridor. Outside on the field, an announcer had begun booming an advertisement about Dave’s Lumber.
“The Slayers don’t want me anymore,” Kaylee said, following Jade up a flight of stairs to the spot where Edwin had texted them he’d be sitting. “My magic can’t help them power that spell again.”
“Doesn’t mean they don’t want you dead,” Jade said. “The Slayers will do anything to target dragon-kin, and Alastair doesn’t let on how much you could be used by them. Remember what Edwin told us about your magic?”
“Er…vaguely. To be honest, when he gets into research mode he doesn’t make sense half the time.”
Jade laughed. “I know what you mean. Maddox doesn’t get into research mode at all and he still doesn’t make sense half the time. Edwin said your magic was both destructive and constructive. You can store it to be used for anything they want. That means you could be a high priority target. And that means if you think you see someone suspicious, you tell me.”
They reached the second floor. Kaylee was surprised to see Josh in a group of guys huddled outside one of the gates. Tygus wasn’t with him, though Kaylee supposed—Tamer or not—having a twelve-year-old hanging around would have cramped his style.
Josh saw her. He gave a subtle nod. Kaylee hadn’t seen him since the night of the scarab mission. Alastair oversaw both Convocations in Scarsdale, including the Northern one Josh was part of, but the relationship had been strained since last year when she and Edwin had broken into the other high school to protect a magical object from the Slayers. They’d gotten it anyway, and the Northern Scarsdale Convocation had gotten pissed.
“I think the game’s about to start,” Jade said. The noise growing from the field seemed to agree with her. The two of them weaved through the crowd to their seating section. Kaylee spotted familiar curly brown hair and glasses and filed in beside Edwin.
“’Bout time!” He yelled over the roar of the crowd. Below, small black and white figures carrying sticks were taking the field. “You can help me interpret.”
“Interpret what?” Kaylee said.
Edwin held up a small booklet: Rules of Lacrosse. “Read it twice. Still can’t make sense of it.”
“Our team puts tiny ball in opponent’s goal,” Jade said.
The crowd cheered louder. A sea of Scarsdale’s black and red flowed over their side of their stadium. The other side looked lonely and bare in comparison. Kaylee wasn’t entirely sure who the team they were playing was, but Maddox had told her they were from somewhere out of their district.
A whistle blew and the game began. At first Kaylee tried to keep up, but between others yelling conversations around her, and Edwin trying in vain to shout the rules to her, it wasn’t long before she was lost. The marching band played through a slew of songs. The cheerleaders on the track chanted and flipped, and Jade scoffed as the nearest one did a front handspring.
“That is so easy. And she’s not even holding a knife.”
“How forgetful of her,” Kaylee said.
“Just saying, it’d make things more interesting.” Jade suddenly waved over Kaylee’s shoulder. “Dani! Hey, Dani!”
Dani broke away from the group of friends she was with and clambered over to hug them.
“I think we’re winning!” She said cheerily.
“I’ll take your word for it!” Jade said. Edwin frantically flipped through the rule book.
“I think that’s a foul—no, that means a penalty, which is the same thing as a foul, isn’t it? Or is that a goal?”
“To me, they’re still boys running around with sticks,” Kaylee said. Dani grinned, and Kaylee was glad to see that most of her usual cheeriness was back, though there was still sadness behind her eyes; a porcelain doll with cracks showing through.
“Who cares what the rules are?” Jade said. “We’re here, that’s all that matters.”
“Just supporting Maddox, huh?” Dani said, and Kaylee could tell she’d noticed the rest of Jade’s outfit, as Kaylee had earlier.
Jade had told Kaylee all the merchandise was helping Maddox’s fundraiser, but Kaylee was pretty sure buying a lacrosse sweatshirt, keychain, wristband, button, and commemorative season schedule was a little excessive.
An hour passed in no time. Despite having no clue what was happening below, Kaylee was having a blast. She and Edwin shared the rule book between them, him pointing out players and movements, and Kaylee content with listening and pretending—if only for a moment—that this was just like how their lessons used to be. An easy camaraderie and banter between them. A sudden swell of loss welled from inside, but she squashed it. There was no point in moping about the past.
“Is it halftime?” Jade yelled as the marching band picked up with their school’s fight song and moved onto the field.
Kaylee blew into her hands. “Not sure, but I’m going to get some hot chocolate. You guys want some?”
“Totally,” Jade said.
Edwin grunted, absorbed in reading, which Kaylee took as a yes.
“Dani, how about—you okay?”
Dani had been furiously scratching at her left arm, wincing.
“Dani?”
Dani jumped. “What? Sorry, didn’t hear you.”
Kaylee nodded to her arm. “Chapped skin?”
“Cha—yeah.” She nudged her head back up the stands. “I’m going to get back to my seat. See you guys later!”
She clambered back over the bleachers. Kaylee watched her go for a moment, then took the stairs to the concession stand.
Apparently, everyone wanted hot chocolate. The line near their entrance was ridiculously long, so Kaylee followed the signs to one of the more secluded concession stands on the ground floor. She took a spot in line just as two more people slipped in behind her.
Dragon's Curse (Heir of Dragons: Book 2) Page 6
