by C. J. Hill
“How can you tell?” Jesse asked, gun still trained on Kihawahine’s quivering figure.
Blood streamed down the dragon’s stomach onto the ground. Red blood. It looked wrong to Tori, too human. It should have been turquoise, something as unique as dragons.
Tori knew Kihawahine was dead because she couldn’t connect to her at all. The dragon’s mind, its breathing, its raw energy, everything was gone. That emptiness left a hollow spot in the bottom of Tori’s stomach that felt nothing like victory.
“I don’t hear what the dragon hears anymore,” she said.
The music Overdrake always played next to the fledgling dragons was back in Tori’s mind now. Classical music. Something with scolding violins.
Tori caught a flash of movement in the sky and looked up. Overdrake flew by. He knew what had happened, knew Kihawahine was gone. “The next time I see you,” he shouted, “you’ll wish you had died here!” Then he disappeared over the treetops.
Ryker wasn’t far behind him. “Come on!” he yelled to Tori and Jesse, “We can catch him!”
Jesse flew upward to follow Ryker.
“Don’t!” Tori called to them. “Come back!”
Jesse hesitated, then relinquished the idea. “She’s right!” he yelled at Ryker. “Come back!”
Ryker nearly didn’t listen. He flew farther away, then turned around and reluctantly glided back. He held his hands out in disbelief. “We could have caught him.” The wound on Ryker’s leg looked worse now. It hadn’t stopped bleeding and a red trail made its way down his boot.
“No,” Tori said. “Overdrake would have stayed out of reach until our powers ran out. Then he would turn on us and we wouldn’t be able to protect ourselves.”
Ryker grunted. “We could have caught him before then.”
Jesse headed toward the other Slayers and motioned for Ryker to follow. “In a half an hour, you won’t even be able to see in the dark. We need to get everyone off the mountain before our powers fade.”
Tori followed after the two. They didn’t have far to fly to reach everyone else. The Slayers were running toward them, cheering. Kody held his hands above his head like he’d made a touchdown.
Ryker swooped down and gave him a high-five. “You were awesome!” Ryker said. “The way you kept Overdrake from shooting—you saved us all, man.”
Kody high-fived Ryker back. “Awesome is my job.”
Tori and Jesse landed next to Kody, and he wrapped an arm around each of them in a group bear hug. “You guys rock!”
Ryker turned to the other girls. In their body armor and helmets it was hard to tell who was who. Lilly and Rosa were both petite and Willow and Bess were both tall. If Tori hadn’t memorized the symbols on the back shoulder of their uniforms, she wouldn’t have known who was who either. “Which one of you extinguished the fire?” Ryker asked.
Lilly raised her hand. “That would be me. Lilly.”
Ryker picked her up and swung her around in a hug. “You saved my life. Thanks.” He set Lilly down, and his gaze returned to the other girls. “Which one of you shields?”
Bess took off her helmet and shook out her hair with a smile. “Me.”
With the same enthusiasm, Ryker picked her up and swung her around in a hug. “You saved my life, too. I owe you.”
Bess laughed happily. “I don’t mind that sort of debt.”
Ryker set her down, picked up Rosa, and twirled her. “You’re the one who healed Willow and Jesse. You’re amazing!”
Ryker turned to Tori next, sweeping her up in a hug. “The way you got the Kevlar off—you can be my soul mate anyday.”
As Ryker set Tori down, Willow put one hand on her hip and tilted her head at her cousin. “Don’t even say it.”
He gestured weakly at her. “And you did a great job, too, Wills.”
She stamped her foot. “I did not. I didn’t do anything. I don’t even have an extra power. I thought those abilities showed up when you’re under attack.” She waved her hand at the dragon. “You don’t get more under attack than having a huge flying carnivore chasing you.”
Dr. B had finally caught up with the others. “Well done, Slayers!” he called. Without taking a new breath, he added, “Bess, put your helmet back on until we’re in a safe location.” He hugged her, then looked around at the others proudly. “Very well done!”
Kody elbowed Jesse. “That was nearly your epitaph. The dragon practically cooked you.”
Without answering, Jesse walked over to Rosa, picked her up, and twirled her in a hug. “Thanks for saving my life.”
Dr. B surveyed the group through his night vision goggles. “Does anyone have wounds that need attending?” He gestured to Tori’s legs. “Are you burned?”
“No,” she said, and then looked down to see why he’d asked. The bottom of her pant legs had melted away in places. The fire stream that had hit her earlier was stronger than she’d realized. She had been so intent on fighting she hadn’t felt anything, not the burn, not the cold air pressing against her legs. Now she bent down to check for burns. There was nothing. Not even red, tender spots.
Slayers had stronger skin than normal people. It took more to burn or cut them. But this—was this normal even for a Slayer? She thought of Overdrake after the fire blast. Jesse had fallen off the dragon, scorched, but Overdrake had calmly returned to his seat. And Dirk—he had never been burned at camp. The absurdity of that finally hit her. How could he have fought a flame-throwing mechanical dragon for years and never once have been burned by it?
Dr. B didn’t look at Tori’s legs or offer an assessment. Willow had drawn his attention to Ryker’s wound. “A bullet hit him,” she said.
Dr. B took the small first-aid kit from one of the pouches in his coat. “How deep is it?”
Ryker brushed his hand over his calf. Blood streaked his glove. “A bullet grazed me. It doesn’t hurt much so it can’t be too serious.”
Dr. B knelt in front of Ryker and moved his pant material to see the wound better. “It will hurt more after your powers wear off.”
Tori moved a few steps away from them. She didn’t want anyone noticing her legs, didn’t want anyone wondering how she’d escaped being burned. The enormity of the situation hit her—she had been inside a dragon’s mind. She knew its name. Dirk had told her the truth. She was a dragon lord and her unburned legs were proof for all the Slayers to see. Would they figure out that dragon lords didn’t get burns?
You weren’t born to be the dragons’ slayer. You were born to be their caretaker. That’s what Dirk had told her. Was it why she hadn’t been able to kill Kihawahine? Would she ever be able to pull the trigger on a dragon?
Jesse set Rosa down and picked up Lilly in one arm and Bess in the other. He spun both around—Bess laughing, Lilly halfheartedly complaining. “This is a good tradition,” Jesse said. “Thanks for saving my life.”
He set them down and walked to Willow next. “Don’t,” she said. “I didn’t do anything.”
Jesse picked her up anyway, lifting her off the ground like a bride as he twirled her. “You protected Dr. B and that meant the rest of us didn’t have to worry about him. Trust me, we know how much trouble he is.”
Dr. B wasn’t trouble—unless Bess was in danger. Then he became a father instead of a mentor. Since Bess hadn’t been wounded, Tori imagined the most troublesome thing Dr. B had done was give Willow a nonstop stream of condensed Slayer fighting strategies.
Jesse set Willow down and picked up Tori next. He spun her in a tight hug. “You are an incredible Slayer.”
I’m not, she thought, and was glad he couldn’t see her face. “You’re pretty incredible yourself. Thanks for saving my life.”
Jesse held on to her longer than he had the other girls, didn’t let her go right away. She thought he was going to say something else. Instead he let her go.
Dr. B finished cleaning Ryker’s wound and taped gauze over his leg. “It’s not deep. A few stitches should take care of it. Hopefully you�
��ll be able to walk on it without much trouble.” Dr. B glanced up at the rest of them. “I don’t suppose any of you have been to the Catskills and know where we are?”
Rosa, Lilly, Kody, and Jesse shook their heads.
Ryker shrugged. “I’ve been snowboarding at Windham Mountain and cliff jumping at Kaaterskill Clove. This isn’t either of those places.”
“I’ve been to the Mohonk Resort,” Tori said. “If anyone spots a castle by a lake, I know where we are.”
Lilly shook her head. “Rich people,” she muttered.
Dr. B he felt around his pockets. “I might have a compass in the first-aid kit.”
Lilly turned and headed toward the dragon. “I want to take a better look at the dragon. Who’s with me?”
Kody, Ryker, Jesse, Bess, and Rosa all went with her. Kody insisted that they make sure the dragon was “all the way dead, and fixin’ to stay that way.”
Willow and Tori stayed with Dr. B while he searched his things for the compass. Willow stayed because Dr. B was asking her questions, and Tori stayed because she’d already seen as much of the dragon as she wanted. In fact, she knew she would see it over and over in her dreams for nights to come.
A minute later, Dr. B found his compass. “We need to go!” he called to the group of Slayers, who had congregated at the dragon’s side. When none of them called back, he headed in their direction. Tori and Willow walked beside him. “Are you sure you’re not overlooking something?” he asked Willow. “You didn’t have any strong desires?”
“Let’s see,” Willow said, thinking. “We already went over my desire to scream hysterically and my desire to commandeer any passing armored vehicles. Besides that, no, not really.”
Classical music was still playing near the fledgling dragons. The violins were insistent now, like a wail cutting through the melody. She wondered if Dirk was still there listening to the music. Was this a song of mourning? If so, who did he think he would be mourning?
“You wanted to heal Jesse,” Dr. B reminded Willow.
“But I couldn’t,” she said. “When I tried to help Rosa, nothing happened.”
“Maybe you just need more practice.”
“I want to heal Ryker,” Willow said.
Dr. B brightened. “Perhaps you’re a different type of healer. Perhaps you heal something besides burns. Ryker!” he called. “Come here!”
Ryker flew back to them, hovering a foot off the ground.
Dr. B motioned for him to come closer. “We want to see if Willow can heal lacerations. Willow, see what you can do.”
She walked over to her cousin, placed her hand over the wound, and shut her eyes. She stayed that way for an entire minute, her brows drawn together in concentration. Then she peeled off the top part of the bandage.
Tori couldn’t see the wound, but she could tell from the way Willow’s shoulders slumped that it hadn’t worked.
“It’s all right,” Ryker told her. “I’ll be fine.”
Willow hung her head and let out a sigh. “For a moment, I was so sure I was a healer.”
Ryker put his hand on her shoulder. “I know what will make you feel better.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but unfortunately no one brought chocolate.”
“This is better than chocolate.” In one swift motion Ryker lifted Willow into his arms. “Let’s go poke the dragon with a stick. It’s got wicked long claws. You’ve got to see them.”
As they flew toward the dragon, Willow said, “You seriously underestimate chocolate.”
Tori was finally able to smile. She was glad to have Ryker with them, and equally glad to have Willow.
CHAPTER 40
Tori didn’t like seeing the dragon’s limp form on the ground, seeing it drained of beauty and power. The whole time the group stood around examining it, she averted her eyes. Luckily, the Slayers didn’t have much time to stay around and poke at the dead dragon. It was cold, they had no shelter, no protection, and they knew Overdrake would be back.
He had to come back and get his dragon. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could leave around the mountainside for hikers to run into. If the Slayers could persuade the authorities to come up here before Overdrake could haul the dragon away, the government would have physical proof that dragons were real.
With that goal in mind, Dr. B put his battery back in his watch and made a call to 911 about a large violent creature up on the mountainside. The problem was that he wasn’t exactly sure where they were. “You’ll know you’re in the right place,” Dr. B said, “when you get to the middle of the spot where the electricity stopped working. Oh, and there are scorch marks on some of the trees.”
He paused. “I don’t know. Maybe a campfire got out of control.”
Dr. B didn’t dare tell the police it had been the work of a dragon. They would think he was a prank caller. They probably thought it anyway. Still what else could Dr. B say? Whoever went up the mountain needed to be armed in case they ran into Overdrake’s men while they were there.
Dr. B also made a call to Booker telling him what happened. Booker would drive in the direction of the Catskill Mountains and trust that they could give him a better idea of their location by the time he got close to New York. The good news was that all the Slayers’ families were safe and accounted for. After those calls were done, Dr. B disabled his watch again. He didn’t want to give Overdrake any clue about which direction they’d gone.
The Slayers traveled the same way they’d left the airplane. Each flyer had two passengers and glided over the treetops. Dr. B figured if they kept going straight, eventually they’d run into civilization.
Rosa was happily optimistic about the night. “If the authorities find the dragon, they’ll have to act. They’ll study it and look into ways to protect the population.”
“Or,” Tori pointed out, “the government could track us down and arrest us for killing the most endangered species on earth.”
Kody let out a scoffing sound. “No way. It was self-defense.”
“Tori’s right,” Lilly said, bringing the total times she’d ever admitted this to … uh, once. “The public won’t care that the thing is the world’s largest and most dangerous carnivore. People love dragons. They’ll be calling for our blood.”
“I blame Christopher Paolini,” Bess agreed.
After every mission, real or practice, Dr. B held a review session where he went over what had worked well and what needed improvement. Even though he was hanging off Jesse’s back, he didn’t abandon the practice. This time, most of what he said was praise. His only criticism, delivered in his usual mild tone, was that next time the Slayers needed to keep in mind that Overdrake might have the dragon shoot fire in his own direction. “His suit apparently protects him from more than just bullets.”
Tori probably should have said something then, should have told them her theory about dragon lords being immune to fire. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, though. One of them would point out that it wasn’t just Dirk who had never been burned during practice. What would the Slayers do once they found out the truth about her? Would they question her loyalty—her sanity? Should they? At some critical juncture would she fail to kill a dragon again? If she couldn’t be trusted to slay a dragon that was attacking her, could she be trusted to slay one that attacked anyone else?
With his only reprimand out of the way, Dr. B said, “Both times we were attacked, we were unprepared and underarmed. However, by working as a team and improvising with the tools we had, we were able to kill the dragons. Excellent use of the parachutes, Tori.”
“Thanks,” she said, and didn’t say more.
“The parachutes helped us this time,” Jesse said. “But you can bet Overdrake won’t give us anything to attach them to next time.”
“We’ll look into self-adhesive designs,” Dr. B said. “Theo should be able to come up with something.”
Jesse veered left, heading toward a break in the tree line. It might be a river or, hopefully, a road. �
��If any one of us hadn’t been there,” Jesse said, “we would have had casualities—would have failed, probably. The problem is, we’re still in the preliminary round. How can we manage against two dragons and Overdrake’s men?”
“Leave Overdrake’s men to the military,” Dr. B said, “and fight one dragon at a time.”
Lilly kept shifting in Tori’s grip. It couldn’t be comfortable to be carried this way. “When we start to fight one dragon, Overdrake will call the other over.”
“We need two teams,” Bess agreed. “We need our lost team members back.”
Dr. B sighed. His voice grew softer, sad. “I wish I could tell you that I’ll find a way to restore powers before the dragons attack. Unfortunately, we have to make strategies based on what we have, not on what we wish we had.”
Tori felt she had to say something then. “There might be more than two fledgling dragons.”
The other Slayers turned to look at her. “Did ya hear more than two?” Kody asked.
“No,” Tori said, “but we don’t know how many eggs Overdrake started with. The others might not have hatched yet.”
This theory didn’t seem to worry anyone. The group began discussing which city Overdrake was likely to attack first, and how the Slayers could get there. D.C. was out. Overdrake knew that’s where they expected him to strike. He would hit somewhere else first. New York or Boston. Maybe even a place on the West Coast.
Tori didn’t press the subject of dragon numbers. She couldn’t very well say, “When I was using my dragon lord powers to connect to the dragon’s mind, I got the impression that Kihawahine had laid more than one clutch. It might have been my imagination, though. I didn’t really ask her about it.”
But that was what had happened. And it did worry Tori.
* * *
The Slayers were gliding along a paved road, heading toward the lights of a nearby town when their powers faded. They walked the rest of the way, stowing their weapons behind a tree before they reached the city limits. They didn’t want to frighten the residents or give the police a reason to detain anyone. Tori felt vulnerable without their rifles, but the general consensus was that Overdrake would have all his available men working on getting the dragon off the mountain and keeping everyone away from the site until then. His men probably weren’t scouring the nearby towns looking for another fight.
