Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  Flicking the ring on my finger open, I reached for the woman’s hand. After getting smacked a few times, I managed to grab hold of her wrist. I immediately dragged her fear into me, funneling it into my ring. It came at me in a flood. She had been scared for some time now; there was a new overpowering fear in her surface emotions and an old stagnant rancid fear in her deeper emotions.

  “Dakota?” I heard Mele say from the doorway behind me. “What’s going on?”

  “Mele,” I said through gritted teeth, “She has a medical bracelet here; I’m trying to read it. I think she might have had some kind of fit, but she’s calming now.”

  Not only was the witch calming, and not fighting Wyvern anymore, she was starting to sag in Wyvern’s hand. He moved his hand from her throat to hold her by the shoulder instead.

  “I don’t want her to react to another person here, you should probably wait in the car,” I said.

  “Well... the thing is,” Mele said, while looking back at the street, “I hear a lot of revving engines, probably motorcycles…”

  “Just give us one minute,” I said. “It’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “Okay, but then we might need to go.” Mele stepped out of the store, letting the door of the store swing shut.

  “I did not kill them,” the woman sobbed, “It could not have been the charms.”

  “Then why are you so filled with guilt?” I asked, quietly, “I’m pretty sure innocent people don’t usually shoot first.”

  I had absolutely no idea who she was talking about, but I had learned early in this line of business that you always act like you know more than they do.

  After all the fear drained from her, all that was left of her emotions were guilt, sadness and so much confusion. Wyvern let go of her and she leaned forward onto the counter.

  He looked ready to grab her again, but it was a pretty good bet that she was no longer a threat.

  I released her as she began to sob.

  Immediately my phone buzzed with a text. I grabbed the phone, but did not even look who it was from, ‘I’m A-okay,’ I texted before stowing the phone again.

  “It sounds like the motorcycles are moving this way now,” Mele called from right outside.

  Peering back at the closed door, I noticed the shop for the first time. The entire big room was filled with rows and rows of jars of water. Light refracted throughout the room, it was a little like standing in a prism.

  “If the Hells’ Hogs show up, you’re going to let me do the talking, okay?” I said to Wyvern.

  “We should just go,” Wyvern said. “It’ll be a waste of time to deal with this motorcycle club. We’re wasting time here. This isn’t our problem.”

  As much as I felt kind of sorry for this witch and extremely disgusted by what she was saying, Wyvern was sort of right. It was cold, but right. However, Mele needed that charm, and soon, if she would ever be able to live a normal life again…

  “Um,” I said to the witch, “So what I learned from our earlier conversation is that the charms you’ve been selling are killing people, am I right?”

  The witch looked up, her cheeks dripping with tears and eyes wide with a new kind of confusion. “You’re not here to take my soul?”

  “No, actually, my father bought a water charm from you a while back, that made it possible for a dracon to pass water wards. Do you know any…other water witch that can make these in Mabi? Mabi island, preferably, not the whole state.”

  Mele popped her head back in. “So there are like thirty motorcycles driving down the street right now,” she said, “They’re stopping outside the shop.”

  The witch just kept staring at me like she did not speak my language or something.

  “We need to go,” Wyvern said.

  “But…that’s the charm…that’s why I thought you were…I thought your grandfather sent you because a dracon had died,” she whispered.

  “That’s the charm that’s killing people?” I asked, a horrible feeling of dread filled me. What was I going to do if I could never use my dampener again?

  “No,” she said, her voice almost pleading. “It’s not the charms…I swear it can’t be the charms, there’s not enough water magic in them to kill anyone. It might make someone who wasn’t Mabiian at the most queasy or pass out; but the people who died were Mabiian. It can’t be the charms.”

  “Then why do you feel so guilty?” I asked.

  “Because I only made five of those charms…four of the people I made them for died…people were saying their names. I knew all of them; all of them had bought that charm from me…”

  “So, Dakota,” Mele called in through the door, “There are some guys out here asking to talk to you.”

  “Tell them I’ll be out in one minute,” I shouted over my shoulder. “Do you know who died? Were they dracons?”

  “No,” she said, “three vampires and a witch.”

  I had to force myself not to sigh in relief. I did not know of any of my cousins, aunts or uncles that wore dampeners, but that was my first thought.

  “Okay,” I said, “We’re going now. Sorry for… scaring you.”

  Wyvern turned with me, trying to take the lead. “Stay behind me,” he said.

  “Don’t be crazy,” I told him, sliding in front of him, “Just look pretty and let me handle this—”

  “That’s what I was going to say,” he said trying to grab me and push me behind him.

  “That is because you are a sexist,” I said, swerving around his arm and exiting the store into the bright day.

  The sun blinded me for a second and I had to blink the light out of my eyes. When my eyes cleared, all I saw was leather, metal and hairy faces.

  Mele stepped up beside me. She put another cigarette to her lips and lit it with shaky fingers.

  “You don’t need to chain smoke. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” I told her.

  “I’m good,” she said.

  I searched the faces of the thirty or so bikers that clogged up the street, all idling their bikes and looking up at me.

  I don’t know how they breed bikers in the Mainland, but on Mabi the Hells’ Hogs were no less than three hundred pounds each. Some were all muscle, some all fat, most of them somewhere in between, and they were all huge.

  I amended my thought when I looked over them one more time, one of the crowd wasn’t huge, and he did not look as scarred as the rest either; he was probably new, I had definitely never seen him before and he could not be much older than me and Mele. Obviously, he had not had time yet to grow as large or scruffy as his buddies.

  The scruffiest one of them all, had pulled up right next to the gate and funnily enough, he was known as Scruff. Scruff wasn’t thirty years old yet, but his scarred face and wind-worn skin made him look fifty.

  Scruff said, “When someone called me to tell me that there were some of your folk down here causing trouble and making people shoot at them, I thought it must be your uncle Bobby.” He shook his head. “I should have known.”

  “Hey Scruff,” I said. Smiling, I walked down the steps.

  “How come I never see you these days, baby girl?” Scruff said.

  “Bobby said to stay away from you because you’re a dirty old man,” I said, smiling.

  Scruff’s face cracked into even more wrinkles when he smiled. “Bobby would know. My boy looks nineteen, but what is he…fifty?”

  “Forty, but I’ll tell him you said fifty,” I said. “Hey Hani, hey Fatso.” I waved to a couple of the bikers.

  “Dakota,” Fatso said, his double chin wobbling. “You get shot in there?”

  “Skimmed,” I said, showing him my arm. The bullet skim-line was only half an inch long, but it did have a little blood dripping down in a slow stream. “I actually forgot all about it.”

  “I’d give you something to wrap it up with but my boys don’t know what a clean shirt looks like. You would probably catch something worse,” Scruff said. “Why was that water bottle witch shooting at you?”
r />   “She thought I had come to punish her for my grandfather, said something about three vampires and a witch dying.” I gave him a questioning look, “She just crazy or not?”

  “Not.” He gave me a hard look. “Where are you going to now?”

  “Do you know Kali Alaniu?” I asked.

  Scruff gave out a loud snort of laughter. “That’s my aunt,” he said.

  “Your real aunt?” I asked because all older women were called Auntie, when he nodded I said, “Because…” I started to turn back to Wyvern who looked like he was eye-fighting the entire motorcycle club from a few steps up.

  “Yeah,” Scruff said, “I know. Dragon boy is my cousin, you see the resemblance?” He laughed at his own joke then said. “But he doesn’t know so let his mama tell him, you know?”

  “He can probably hear us,” I said in a low voice.

  “Oh well, that is what it is. We’ll take you to Kali; the people around here aren’t feeling that friendly to dracons right now. Get that boy inside, then we’ll talk.”

  “Thanks Scruff,” I said. “We would appreciate the escort and I would love some information.”

  “Sure thing. Now go back to that dracon because he looks like he’s about to make pork chops out of me, ya?”

  I turned back and walked up to where Wyvern was glaring down. Mele and he still stood on the porch.

  I said to Mele, “They’re going to escort us to Wyvern’s—”

  “Mele Alana,” said a very nice male voice.

  The young biker revved his engine and maneuvered around his fellow bikers to drive up on the sidewalk, next to the store.

  “Oh my gods,” Mele said, under her breath in disbelief. “Why is he here?”

  “You’ll be riding with me on my bike,” The biker boy said, giving Mele the kind of grin that should be illegal.

  “He looks like he recognizes you too,” I said, “Does he have a name?”

  “Unfortunately, and it’s Alika.”

  “The Alika who—?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then—”

  “Disappeared, yeah,” she said.

  “He’s way cuter than you described him,” I said.

  “Shut up,” she said.

  “No wonder he’s looking at you like he’s imagining you sans clothing.” I smiled at her.

  “Yeah, let’s see if I can do something about that,” she said.

  Mele walked down the stairs, slowly. Even in her present disheveled state, Mele was absolutely beautiful and several of the bikers felt no shame in gawking at her walking down to Alika.

  By the time Mele walked to Alika, that boy had the biggest smile I had ever seen on a biker, he looked like Yule and his birthday had just landed on his lap.

  Mele leaned forward and whispered something into his ear, making the bikers around him hoot and cat-call. If it was possible, Alika’s smile grew even bigger.

  Then Mele stepped back, smiled, made a fist and punched Alika in the face. It must have been a pretty decent punch, because Alika’s head rocked back and when he righted himself a little blood trickled from his lip.

  All the bikers were cheering and cat-calling now.

  After rubbing his chin, Alika smiled a wicked smile at Mele, which was even more wicked because of the fact that his mouth was bloody. “I knew you missed me,” he said.

  “I did not. I hate you.” She stomped off toward Wyvern’s car.

  “Unlock the car,” I said, “Now, before she gets there.”

  The smirk Wyvern gave me was full of mischief.

  “You dragon-infected her, the least you can do is help her make a good exit,” I said.

  He grabbed the keys and clicked the car, unlocking just in time for Mele to open the car door, climb in and slam the door behind her.

  Wyvern’s hand brushed against mine as he dropped his key back into his pocket and even that little contact sent tiny tingles through my hand and up my arm. His hand did not move away and I did not want to acknowledge the touch, but I wasn’t quite ready to break from it either. I stayed very still and so did he, our hands barely brushing.

  “If we wait much longer, she’ll look pretty ridiculous,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, but neither of us moved.

  The back of his hand lightly moved up the back of mine. Ever so gently, his fingers made their way around my wrist. The touch was so light, his fingers barely brushing the inside of my wrist and then they crept lower slowly down my palm.

  I considered for a second, maybe we could hold hands; I could just walk around holding his hand and it would mean nothing. I could do it because I wanted to and it felt amazing and for no other reason.

  His fingers finished their crawl down my palm and started to web their way through mine.

  I stepped away. “You’re right,” I said, “We should go.” And then I quickly walked down the stairs and climbed into the car.

  No one spoke on the short drive to Wyvern’s mother’s house, but the revving of the engines on all sides of us made more than enough noise. As Wyvern parked outside a two story blue house in nice condition, my phone rang in my bag.

  “That’s probably one of my uncles wanting an update,” I said. “You guys go ahead.”

  Wyvern just gave me a smirk.

  “Or you could stay here,” I said. When I looked at the caller ID it was not one of my uncles, it was Keanu.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hey beautiful,” Keanu said.

  I swallowed because now Wyvern was giving me a very different kind of look.

  “Hey Keanu, can I call you back? I’m kind of—”

  “I’m looking for you, are you at school?”

  “No. I’m on the east side, looking for Honua. You know, to help you,” I said, a little snappily. I don’t even know why I was snappy; maybe because I was hoping he would be going into hiding, instead he was going wave-riding and to school, just going about his daily life as though having a dracon planning on killing him was no big thing. Then, I probably wasn’t giving him enough credit, school was as safe a place as any to be for him.

  “Is Mele with you?”

  “Yeah, she volunteered to help, she cares about you,” I left the ‘too’ out, as we had a very attentive audience, I was pretty sure Wyvern could hear both sides of our conversation.

  “I would really like to help too; could you and Mele meet me after you’re back from the east-side?”

  “I’m not sure…” I said, looking over at Wyvern, “It might be best if we just stick to phone calls for now.”

  “I would really like to see you,” he said in a low voice.

  Glancing at Wyvern’s expression, I said, “I’m going to need to call you back.” I hung up. “I’m done with my phone call, so…let’s go.” I opened the door, finding only enough space to squeeze out of the car to avoid hitting Wyvern’s mother’s fence with the car door.

  By the time we had all exited the car, a beautiful Mabiian woman had stepped outside of her house. Kali Alaniu looked like the Mabiian women you saw painted in the art galleries that tourists spent thousands of dollars for. Kali did not look anything like Honua or Wyvern. Knowing they were all related I could fish out a couple similarities, their brown eyes, perhaps how plump all their lips were, but that was it.

  I had noticed a long time ago that all the bikers had similar souls to each other; they had a distinctive wild quality about their souls. It had seemed plausible to me that being a biker made your soul wild, yet, Kali had that exact same quality and shape to her soul.

  Kali looked maybe forty, but dark circles ringed her eyes and from their redness, it was obvious she had been crying. As if she did not notice the thirty bikers surrounding her house, her gaze zeroed in on Wyvern, “Vern, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said crossing the distance and hugging him.

  “How are you holding up?” Wyvern asked while embracing his mother gently as if he was afraid of breaking her.

  “I don’t know…I can’t even think righ
t now,” she said.

  “You need to relax, Auntie, Honua is tough shit,” Scruff said, “She’ll be fine.”

  “You watch your mouth Kahula, and don’t come here telling me my daughter’s fine. You don’t know where she is, mama doesn’t know where she is.” She was yelling and crying at this point, her words slurring together with emotion. “You don’t even know why she was at that house, no one does, Dakota wasn’t even there until after she disappeared. Now four women are dead, and so many girls are missing and my girl is one of them…don’t tell me she’s fine!”

  “Hey,” Scruff barked at Wyvern with a nod, “Get your mama inside and get her a glass of water. Auntie needs to calm herself down.”

  “Mele, can you take Kali inside?” I asked, quickly. As much as Kali probably needed the comfort of having her son, three huge pieces of information just dropped from what Kali had said. I needed to act fast if I was going to get the information from Scruff. I had a feeling even suggesting to Wyvern that I stay out here alone with the Hells’ Hogs was wasted breath.

  “Yeah, I got this,” Mele said, taking Kali from Wyvern’s arms, “Do you want me to make you some tea Ms. Alaniu?”

  “Wyvern?” Kali said, sounding worried.

  “He’ll be right in,” I said.

  “You better get your boy inside if you don’t want to be shot at again today,” Scruff said. “People around here are feeling a lot of hate for his father and I’m betting they can’t tell the difference between this boy and his father.”

  “Why? Because of the missing girls?” I asked. “What girls are missing?”

  I felt Wyvern’s hand again grabbing mine, but unlike before, this time it was all business, however, that did not stop the tingles from shooting all throughout me. Wyvern pulled me toward the door. To Scruff he said, “We’ll talk inside the house.”

  “If I go in there my Auntie will probably kill me,” Scruff said with a huff of laughter.

  “Talk to me Scruff, what girls are missing?”

  “Nine girls went missing on Friday, even more than that on Saturday and Sunday. Island girls, all of them.”

  “Humans?” I asked.

  “The ones we don’t find dead are, yeah. The people are saying it’s your father, trying to find himself an island girl again,” Scruff said, looking at Wyvern.