Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  Mele snapped, “Nice, Auli, Dakota was kidnapped because she almost died to save all of our lives. You should be thanking her.”

  “Thank you, Dakota,” Auli said, though the look she leveled on me was anything but thankful.

  Keanu shot a disapproving look at his sister, then turned back to me to ask, “Where to?”

  “Your house, I still need to look at that bathroom,” I said.

  Auli and Keanu looked at each other for a long second before they each said out of sync, “We can’t.”

  “It’s a police zone.” Auli said, “It’s roped off, we can’t even get in. We’ve moved in to Mele’s mom’s house for now. Our parents are all there waiting for us.”

  “Yeah,” Mele said, obviously already briefed on this.

  “We need to find some way to get in,” I said, knowing that examining the scene of the disappearance was always the first thing Glacier did when he took a recovery case.

  “I would actually really like to change,” Mele said as she gave me a meaningful look and waved her hands to point out the outfit that she had borrowed. It looked like it might split its seams. “Why don’t we stop by my house and see if our parents know any way to get into Keanu and Auli’s house?”

  “I guess,” I conceded grudgingly. If Keanu’s clock was right, I had about four hours until I had to return and get ready for dinner. I had wanted to stop in and see Honua’s mother, but she lived on the east side and it took two and a half hours to get there. “Don’t you want to get your car?” I asked Mele as a last appeal.

  “Yeah,” she said, “It’s at home.”

  Well that settled that; I needed a driver for this investigative work, and for some reason I did not think it was a good idea to depend on Keanu or Wyvern. Plus, Mele was hot to play detective’s assistant, I might as well make use of her.

  I briefed them as much as I was willing to as Keanu took the familiar route to Mele’s house. It did not take long, there was not much I wanted to tell Keanu and less I wanted Auli to know. I told them that I made a deal, that I had to work with Wyvern and find Honua in the next three days or he would kill Keanu.

  They wouldn’t understand about the other things I bargained for, and I really did not want to tell them I was going to be paid. They just wouldn’t get it, and I knew how it would make me sound to humans.

  Auli asked the obvious question, “Why you?”

  I had an answer ready, “Because I care about both Honua and Keanu and because Wyvern can’t enter all the places he will need to investigate.” I told them about Honua’s friends: math club Brian, hypochondriac Rachel and Amy who I knew nothing about, but received only vacant confused stares. For all their social influence, the group was not much help.

  The drive was short, so I had not had a chance to go over the jobs I needed from them by the time we stopped on the road in front of Mele’s house. The house was a carnival. I had been to Mele’s house more times than I could count, and normally it was empty. I had rarely even seen the only other resident, Mele’s mother, there. Now, the driveway overflowed with cars, people in uniforms and people wielding cameras.

  Standing on the lawn was the cause of the eclectic crowd, Senator Hale. His arms flailed, his voice rose so that even we could hear and every camera tracked his movements. I squeezed my hands into fists, my nails pushed deeper and deeper into my palms. For the first time in five years I knew, without a doubt, my original mission’s main target’s location.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It might have been five years since I had last seen Senator Hale, but the memory never left me. That day was my turning point, the day that made me into who I had become.

  Without any effort I could flash back there, back to the room with three green couches and magazine covered coffee-tables, back to the quiet classical music playing over the speakers and the smell of cinnamon air fresheners and printer ink. If I closed my eyes, I could almost see the wink Lena Hale had given me. Lena, my father’s partner’s daughter, had been everything my eleven-year-old-self had wanted to be.

  I had been crossing the waiting room to get a paper-cup of water when Lena turned to a man who had just walked in.

  “Hello sir, do you have an appointment?” she asked, smiling.

  “Yes,” the man said, his voice dry-sounding.

  I had loitered by the water dispenser knowing in a second that the guy would be told to take a seat in the waiting area. My father had just wanted to pick up something quickly from his office and I knew he would only be a minute, but I wanted to tell Lena about my first day in sixth grade.

  “Who is your appointment with?” Lena asked the man.

  The man said, “I have an appointment with you, Lena Hale.”

  I had turned, clutching my paper cup of water and saw the man reach for Lena.

  It had all happened so fast, he had grabbed for her when she yelped and smacked him.

  The man had roared and his body exploded open, growing and expanding with loud cracking sounds. There was a tornado of movement, but it could have only have been a few seconds before the man had transformed in to a dragon the size of a horse.

  “Daddy!” Lena screamed.

  The dragon’s claws ripped into her shoulders as the creature tried to pry her out from behind the desk.

  Only feet away from them, Lena’s warm blood sprayed me.

  “Dakota!” My father ran out of his office. Seeing Lena and the dragon he pushed Lena out of the way.

  The dragon ripped its teeth into my father’s arm clamping onto him and shaking him ferociously.

  My father had multiplied, four doppelgangers appearing around the dragon. Three of the doppelgangers attacked the dragon, kicking it from all angles while the fourth reached down to catch Lena who collapsed in his arms.

  The dragon must have known that it had my real father in its jaws because it just kept shaking him by the arm in its teeth, scratching at my father’s side with its claws.

  “Lena! Lena!” Mr. Hale had screamed then, running in from his office. He ran to take Lena from my father’s doppelganger and lie her down on the floor. She started convulsing and retching like she was going to throw up.

  The fourth doppelganger kicked over Lena’s desk, and I could no longer see Mr. Hale and Lena.

  The dragon threw my father and his body smacked the floor right next to my feet. The doppelgangers all simultaneously vanished.

  Woken from my trance next to the water dispenser, I had fallen to my knees next to my father as the dragon sprang forward, descending upon us.

  Something had hit my senses like a meteor, an overwhelming…something I could not process; I had never felt it before. It had blinded me; all my senses just gave out and on some instinct my hands had come up and my fingers had smacked into the dragon’s flesh. It was like I had been plunged into a tornado and some instinct in me told me to pull it into me, and I had.

  I pulled and I pulled. Then I felt something different entering me, coils of something foul winding into me; I yanked my hands away.

  The dragon reared back, screeching. He fell onto his side, and then scurried away from us until he smacked the office wall. He rammed his head against the glass, shattering it. Pulling at the windowsill with his talons he ripped through the wall like it was made of gingerbread.

  With a dive out of the hole in the wall and a pump of his enormous wings the dragon flew away.

  I stood just staring at the hole that the terrified full-dragon had just ripped through in order to escape me.

  Emotions and coils of something foul and foreign, that weren’t natural or part of me, coursed through me with no outlet. I was too full. I was electric, like a fork in an electrical-socket.

  I turned down to where my father lay in an ever widening pool of blood. His wet breaths rasped in and out. He had survived, he was alive. Around him was a strange thick wispy mist. It flowed about him in waves. It was so…dense it was hard to look at it directly, but at the same time familiar and comforting.


  I blinked furiously, but the misty form around my father remained. “Help me,” I said, sobbing. I just wanted him to take away this feeling that had overwhelmed my entire body. But more than anything, I wanted him to get up and be okay and look like he normally did. “Daddy? What is happening? What should I do?”

  My father’s hand shifted ever so slightly to brush against my ankle. That too full, oversaturated feeling, like I could burst at any moment, drained away from me.

  A chill hit my body as the trade-winds gusted through the hole in the wall and over the blood that dripped down my entire body. I sagged, exhausted. I breathed in a huge breath as I looked down. That wispy mist still clung to my father’s body.

  He said a word, but it sounded more like a gurgle than anything else. His breaths came out stronger, more even.

  Mr. Hale came out from behind the receptionist’s over-turned desk. Lena did not emerge from where she must have still been hiding.

  Mr. Hale had been my father’s friend since before I could remember, a partner in his law firm, a Sunday afternoon football comrade. So when Mr. Hale came out my first thought was he would fix everything. My second thought was that there was something very off about him as well, a second self around him, as strange and dense as my father’s. I almost could not look directly at him, as though his second-self overwhelmed my senses. As he was my only hope to save my father, I fixed my gaze on him, though it almost hurt me to do so.

  He crossed to his office, opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a pistol and a box. He did not pick up the phone, instead I saw him loading his pistol. He said something so low I could not hear it.

  “Mr. Hale!” I shouted, thinking that maybe he did not realize how badly hurt my father was, “My dad needs a doctor, Mr. Hale. Please.”

  Mr. Hale exited his office to walk to us, but stopped a few feet back, not moving toward any of the office’s phones. He just stared down at me, eyes scanning my blood covered face and body slowly. Standing next to him was like standing under a waterfall, I felt beaten down by his nearness.

  “Did the dragon scratch or bite you?” he asked, his voice so calm it sounded cold.

  “No, not me, just my dad and Lena,” I said, feeling like I had to sit down, “I’m going to call… an ambulance.”

  “No,” Mr. Hale said, “I’m the adult, Dakota. I’ve already taken care of it.”

  I turned to where Lena had been hiding with her father, behind the overturned desk.

  “Lena?” I said, intending to shout, but the word came out more of a whisper because Lena’s shoe and her ankle poked out from the desk, unmoving. I turned back to where Mr. Hale stood, gaze still crashing down on me. He was covered in blood yet I did not remember him being attacked.

  Mr. Hale asked, “Let me see your hands.”

  Obedient as any eleven year old in shock, I showed Mr. Hale my unscathed palms. I had touched the dragon’s skin, but the reptilian flesh had been soft, like the underside of a snake.

  When Mr. Hale kept examining me, I said, “It’s Lena’s blood.”

  “Good,” he said, “The police and ambulances should be here any minute, go lead them up. Quickly now, Lena and your father need doctors if they’re going to survive.”

  Even though my first impulse was to obey an adult, I did not want to leave my father with Mr. Hale and his loaded pistol. I looked down at my father; his dark brown hair was a wet red mop. His open brown eyes looked clouded and glassy, but his lips moved. I was not sure if he was speaking silently or if his mouth was just having spasms. My father was without a doubt bitten and scratched and worse, he had shown his powers in front of Mr. Hale. My father had been in deep hiding as a human my whole life and he had broken his cover.

  I started to crouch toward my father and said in a quiet voice, “Shouldn’t we—?”

  “Do you want him to die? Go lead the paramedics to him!” Mr. Hale shouted at me.

  I turned to Mr. Hale and seeing his expression, overwhelmed with his waterfall second-self crashing over me, I did exactly as he commanded; I ran. I did not even look down to check on Lena as I fled the second story office. I had not reached the first steps of the stairs before I heard the first gunshot. I froze and listened to the sound of four more gunshots.

  At that point, I just kept running.

  Here in the car, staring at Senator Hale, who had changed so little in five years, I realized that at this very moment I had a clear shot and a gun on me.

  Fingers caressed my hand, then thread through mine making my still healing left arm twinge with pain. “What do you want us to do?” Keanu asked as he pulled my hand and attention toward him.

  “What?” I asked as the pain forcibly broke my concentration from Senator Hale’s wildly gesticulating figure. “Here, take this hand instead. The left one still hurts,” I reached my right hand over and pulled my left back.

  “Oh, sorry,” Keanu said, looking at me with a little sheepish smile on his face; he did not look anything like his serious faced father. Keanu’s resemblance to his older sister Lena was remarkable, though. She had the same spark in her eye as Keanu, and was always easy to smile or laugh. I wondered if they had been close before she died, I had never even heard Keanu or Auli mention Lena’s name. I wondered if he knew I was there at Lena’s funeral. That day was the first time I had ever seen Keanu’s face, it had been stained with tears.

  Even though Keanu was an innocent teenager sentenced to death by a half-dragon, there was no trace of panic or self-pity in the way he looked at me. He either wasn’t taking this threat seriously or he faced every challenge with the same easy-going attitude he lived his life in; I suspected both.

  I forced my thoughts back into the challenge at hand, “First, we need to find some way into your house.

  “We’ll be right back,” Mele said as she and Auli hurried to climb out of the back seat.

  “Then?” Keanu prompted.

  “Then, you find a safe place to hole up until I find Honua.”

  His mouth curved into a disbelieving smile; however, the narrowed eyed expression he gave me was more teasing than angry. “You have to be kidding,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said, seriously, “Wyvern might have agreed not to attack you for a certain time frame but he will try to find any way around the specific terms of his promise. It’s in his nature, he takes the promise he made to me as a challenge.”

  “How do you know?” Keanu asked.

  I swallowed, keeping my gaze anywhere but at him. What was wrong with me? I had been pretending ignorance about dracons for so long and now I was just slipping my cover left and right.

  “I could just see it in his eyes when he talked to me,” I said and turned to the crowd on the lawn.

  Mele’s mother, who had been standing on her raised entrance watching Senator Hale talking to the press on the lawn, turned to where Mele and Auli were walking up the driveway. Mele waved to her mother and her mother’s response was to hold a finger up to her lips in a sign for silence.

  I added, “And Mele’s house isn’t safe enough for you, it’s not even warded.”

  “It is now,” Keanu said, “They’ve had people digging, filling and pumping a water ward all morning you just can’t see it because all the cars are in the way.”

  “What?” I said, while shaking off Keanu’s hand and grabbing for the door handle. I was about to shout Mele’s name but it was too late. I opened the car door just in time to see Mele step onto a sheet of plywood that must have been a makeshift bridge, and walk straight into what looked like an invisible wall. Exactly as she had done last night, Mele bounced off the water ward and hit a parked car. She slid down the red car’s door, unconscious.

  Mele’s mother’s scream was just audible over the blaring alarm that rang into the air.

  I leapt out of the car, running to where Auli stood confused staring down at Mele.

  Everyone on the lawn had turned to either where Mele’s mother was screaming or to what she was screaming at, Mele, lyi
ng unconscious just outside the invisible ward line.

  I reached Mele before anyone had reacted to the scene. Even though Mele probably had twenty pounds on me, I had been trained to carry heavier people. Scooping up her limp, awkwardly-positioned body into a fireman’s hold, however, proved a bigger challenge than it should have. My left shoulder was mostly mended by the magic but it was still sore.

  Auli just stood still, motionless and shocked.

  I yelled, “Auli, get her legs.”

  Auli looked up at me with panic written all over her expression. She whirled to face her father and the crowd of reporters staring at us and then glanced back at Mele awkwardly held in my arms. Auli stepped back onto the plywood; it was only a small step, but it might as well have been a world away, because Auli stepped back onto the water ward.

  What did I really expect?

  I dragged Mele back, slowly.

  “Mele?” I heard Mele’s mother sob. “Mele!”

  “Whoa,” Mele said as she shifted in my arms. “What the …? What happened?”

  “We have to get out of here, Mele,” I said yanking her up.

  Mele scrambled to get her feet under her, and then trudged along, letting me drag her to Keanu’s car.

  Keanu looked like he was about to exit the car, but I called, “Stay in the car!”

  As I shoved Mele into the back seat and slammed the door behind her, I glanced back at our audience. They were not running at us with pitchforks and torches, that was a good sign, I guess. A few of the cameras had turned our direction, and unfortunately, that was not such a good sign.

  Without further delay, I climbed into the passenger seat and said, “Drive!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Hale estate was a mess. I had not been in the right mindset to gage the damage the night before, but as I lifted the police tape to step through the gateless entry, I had a clear view of the ruin.

  A ‘ruin,’ to put it mildly.

  “I’ll just stay out here,” Mele shouted unnecessarily from the SUV.