Slayers

by C. J. Hill

  “Oh, grow up,” Lilly said.

  Bess stretched and shut her eyes. “I laugh in the face of growing up.”

  Tori smiled. She’d been expecting the camp director’s daughter to either be a prima donna or some sort of informer and was glad Bess hadn’t turned out to be either. It made Lilly and Alyssa seem bearable.

  The next moment, a wave of exhaustion washed over Tori, and she put her book on the floor under her bed.

  Rosa climbed on top of her bunk. “You can always tell when the simulator has been off for half an hour. It feels like you’re hit with a bag full of tired.”

  Alyssa grumbled an agreement, turned off the light, and the room went black.

  After seeing so clearly, the dark seemed unnatural, and Tori blinked as though she could refocus if she tried hard enough. When she couldn’t, she shut her eyes and forced herself to relax. She heard the sound of the other girls rustling into comfortable positions. Then the crickets outside. The smooth hush of branches moving in the wind. An owl calling in the distance. And the heartbeat. Just like last night.

  Tori propped herself up on one elbow, listening more intently. She wasn’t dreaming; it was a real sound.

  “If the simulator is off, where is that noise coming from?” Tori asked.

  Lilly grunted in annoyance. “What noise?

  “The noise that’s going tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Bess said.

  Tori gripped her blanket in annoyance. “Well, I’m not making it up. It’s there, and it sounds like the simulator.”

  “How come no one else hears anything?” Alyssa asked.

  “I’ve always had exceptional hearing. I can hear things other people can’t.”

  Lilly snorted. “You mean like voices in your head?” She and Alyssa both snickered.

  Rosa said, “Alyssa, turn on the light.”

  Alyssa gave a moan of protest, but Tori heard her slide out of bed and feel along the wall until she found the switch. Light washed through the room and Tori squinted, adjusting her eyes. As she did, the sound stopped.

  The other girls sat up in bed and stared at Tori, waiting for her to say more. She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It’s gone now.”

  Lilly lay back on her bed with a thump. “Along with five minutes we could have been sleeping.”

  But Tori wasn’t about to let it go. She thrust her covers off and got out of bed. “Is this some sort of prank?” She strode to the window and pushed the curtains aside. “The guys are out there making that noise, aren’t they? That’s why they stopped when the lights came on.”

  Rosa gave the other girls pointed looks. “Is it a prank?”

  “Not one of mine,” Alyssa said.

  Bess held up her hands, palms forward. “Don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with it.”

  Lilly put her arm over her eyes to block out the light. “There’s nothing there. Now, will you guys please be quiet so we can go to sleep?”

  Alyssa turned off the light, and the other girls settled back into their beds. Tori stayed by the window. She took her flashlight from the dresser, but didn’t turn it on. If she waited long enough, she’d be able to catch whoever was hiding outside the window.

  She waited. The sounds of the night surfaced again. The crickets. The wind.

  The heartbeat.

  The noise had to be right outside. She flipped on the flashlight and pointed it out of the window. She expected to see someone crouching by the cabin, or at the very least, running away. She only saw a scraggly bush and a couple of small boulders.

  Alyssa let out a groan. “What are you doing?”

  Tori didn’t answer. Alyssa’s words had drowned out the sound of the heartbeat, and she needed to focus to find it.

  There it was again.

  She made her way to the door, then stepped outside. The sound of her own footsteps nearly covered the noise, but she walked across the patio and down the steps, still able to keep hold of it.

  She swung the flashlight around, searching.

  Nothing.

  Fine. She’d find whoever was drumming the heartbeat by sound alone. She walked into the space that separated the cabins and shut her eyes. The heartbeat grew louder.

  Tori drew in a sharp breath and opened her eyes. It had been a mistake to come outside. Here, alone in the darkness, the sound took on a more sinister tone. The shadows drew closer. Things in the forest rustled.

  “Stop it!” she yelled. “It’s not funny!”

  She tried again to tell where the sound came from, but couldn’t. She jerked her head in one direction, then another. The heartbeat seemed to be everywhere—coming from the boys’ cabin, coming from her own. It was above her, beside her, growing louder. Now she wanted it to stop, but it wouldn’t.

  A loud, creaking noise sounded at her side. She swept the flashlight in that direction.

  Cabin 26’s door had opened. Dirk peered outside, with Jesse standing behind him. Dirk put his hand up to block the flashlight beam, then turned his face away. “You want to point that thing somewhere else?”

  Jesse stepped around Dirk onto the patio. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Is this some sort of practical joke?” she asked. “Because I’ve had a long day, and I want to get some sleep now. So just turn that thing off!”

  Kody and Shang joined Dirk and Jesse on the patio, staring at her cautiously. All of them wore pajama bottoms and sweatshirts. “What are you talking about?” Dirk said.

  “What’s going on?” Kody asked.

  Behind her, the door to cabin 27 opened. Lilly called, “The new girl is having a nervous breakdown. She must have got slammed into the ground one too many times.”

  They were all coming down the stairs now, filing out to look at her. Tori felt breathless under the weight of their gazes.

  She pointed the flashlight down so it wouldn’t blind anyone, even though she wanted to keep hunting for the source of the heartbeat. It couldn’t really be the heartbeat of a dragon. She would notice a dragon hanging about, and besides, if one came near, everyone would have their powers again. She wouldn’t need a flashlight to see in the dark.

  But what was it?

  Dirk ran a hand across his forehead. “Did Dr. B put you up to this? Are we supposed to assume Overdrake is attacking? Because if that’s what this is, you need to be more specific about what’s going on.”

  The heartbeat was so loud now that it reverberated in her ears. She looked from face to face. Their expressions were half-hidden in shadow, questioning. “I can’t be the only one hearing it.” Her grip tightened around the flashlight. “It sounds like the simulator. Why are the rest of you pretending it doesn’t exist?”

  Jesse took a step closer, a sudden understanding in his eyes. “You hear something that sounds like the simulator?”

  “Yes.”

  Jesse held his hand out for her flashlight. She wasn’t sure why he wanted it, but gave it to him anyway. He handed it to Bess. “Run and get your dad. I think we found Tori’s talent.”

  Tori looked at him questioningly. “And that would be what?”

  Jesse smiled, but it had an air of sadness to it. “You’re Dirk’s counterpart. You can hear what the dragons hear. And right now, all they hear is the sound of their own heartbeats.”

  CHAPTER 23

  When Bess came back with Dr. B, everyone else was sitting in cabin 27, peppering Tori with questions. “You can hear what the dragons hear?” Dirk repeated as though he still didn’t believe it. For the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t look on the verge of smirking. His blue eyes widened as he studied her, but he didn’t look pleased, just surprised. Tori could only think of one reason why: he didn’t want to be her counterpart.

  Earlier that night as they jogged up to the Easter grounds, Bess had told Tori how the counterpart thing worked. “Counterparts have a connection,” she had said. “It’s like you can understand how your counterpart thinks. It helps when we
’re fighting, because a lot of times you can anticipate what they’re going to do. And if they’ve been away from the simulator for more than half an hour and their power is drained but yours isn’t, you can touch them and some of your power will flow into them. It’s like jump-starting a battery.”

  Tori had immediately thought about the time she’d flown with Jesse. “You feel a closeness to them?” she asked. “An intimacy?”

  “Like you’d feel toward a brother or sister,” Bess said, and her voice had gone soft, sad. “Leo isn’t here anymore, and it feels like I lost a brother.”

  Tori didn’t think of Jesse as a brother, which perhaps should have been her first clue that he wasn’t her counterpart.

  But she didn’t feel sisterly toward Dirk, either.

  Dirk’s eyes fixed on Tori’s. They seemed to look through her, into her, making her vulnerable in a way she hadn’t expected.

  “You can’t see anything?” he asked. “There’s no split screen in your mind?”

  “No, but my hearing is split. When I’m listening to you, the sound gets fainter. It’s like background noise. But when I tried to sleep, or when I went outside and shut my eyes—when I wasn’t concentrating on something else—the heartbeat grew louder.”

  Alyssa leaned forward on her bed. “Do you hear one heartbeat or two?”

  “One,” Tori said, glad she could break Dirk’s gaze and look at someone else.

  Rosa turned to Dr. B, who had just stepped inside. “Does that mean there’s only one dragon egg?”

  Dr. B clicked off his flashlight and slipped it into the pocket of his worn bathrobe. “It could mean several things. Perhaps she can hear only one dragon at a time, or perhaps her mind connects with one dragon, and Dirk’s mind connects with the other. Or perhaps the dragons’ heartbeats are in sync with each other. Legend has it they hatch at exactly the same time. It prevents one from being bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to eat the other.” He smiled at Tori. “This is quite interesting, really. You have Dirk’s gift, but you don’t. It’s an odd double, isn’t it?”

  She’d been so excited to have found her talent, it wasn’t until Dr. B said this that she realized how useless her gift was. Dirk would be able to locate where the dragons were headed before they attacked by seeing the landscape through their eyes, but what good was hearing what the dragons heard?

  She leaned against the wall by her bed. “It’s a pointless talent. I already know what the dragons will hear when they attack. A lot of screaming people. How will that help us fight them?”

  The other Slayers looked at her, but no one said anything. Apparently, they had come to the same conclusion.

  “Maybe one of the dragons is blind,” Rosa said, “so you can’t see what it sees, and your hearing developed instead of your sight.”

  Lilly let out a cough of disbelief. “Yeah, that’s it. One of the dragons will be feeling his way across the streets of D.C. with a cane clutched in its wing, terrorizing anyone who can’t shuffle out of its way in time.”

  Rosa’s brown eyes flashed at Lilly. “Bats hunt by sound, and they manage well enough.”

  Dr. B held up his hand to stop the fighting. “We shouldn’t disparage any gift. Every talent is valuable.”

  Lilly said, “Except that one,” but she said it softly enough that Dr. B didn’t hear her.

  Tori did and couldn’t even disagree. Compared to the others, her fighting skills were woefully undeveloped, and her genes had given her a nearly useless skill. Would she even be able to tell when the dragons hatched like Dirk would?

  Though she continued to look at Dr. B, she felt Dirk’s gaze on her again, heavy with thought.

  “How do I disconnect myself from the dragon’s heartbeat?” she asked, already feeling suffocated by its constant presence. “I don’t want to hear it all the time.”

  Dr. B held a hand out to Dirk, giving him the floor.

  He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “When I don’t want the dragon sight, I concentrate on it, like I’m peering through an open doorway at it. Then I minimize the door. It doesn’t go away, but it shrinks to the point that I can ignore it.”

  “You minimize the door?” Tori repeated. How could she do that? Dr. B smiled at Tori encouragingly. “I’m sure once you experiment with it, you’ll get the hang of it.”

  She shut her eyes, concentrating on the heartbeat. Immediately, the sound grew louder. She tried to see a door around it, but couldn’t. How did you see a door around a sound? After a moment, she opened her eyes and concentrated on the people and sounds of the room. The heartbeat faded into background noise again.

  “Any better?” Dirk asked.

  “A little.” She was unwilling to tell him she couldn’t even control her own talent. She fiddled with the blanket on her bed, tracing the stitching with her finger. “My hearing has always been unusually good. Is that why? Because it’s part of my dragon skill?”

  Dr. B inclined his head upward as he considered the idea. “An interesting theory. Do dragon talents carry over into normal life? Or perhaps Tori’s talent became hearing because she was gifted at it to begin with? Perhaps gifts follow the neuropathways that are already there.” His gaze traveled around the room. “Do the rest of you see any overlap of your skills in your normal life?”

  “I douse fire,” Lilly said. “How would that carry over in my normal life?”

  Bess blinked innocently. “Well, in your normal life, you’re not that hot.”

  Lilly picked up her pillow and threw it at Bess. Bess caught it one-handed, put the pillow behind her back, then settled into it. “Comfy.”

  Jesse was leaning against the wall by the door. “As a kid, I used to jump out of swings when they were at their highest point because it felt like flying. I also used to leap from our balcony onto our trampoline.”

  Rosa stared at him and shook her head. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

  “And in Rosa’s real life,” Bess said, making her voice sound like an announcer, “she tries to keep everyone from getting hurt or having fun. It’s sort of like healing people, but more irritating.”

  “I’m a healer, too,” Alyssa said. “And I don’t try to keep people from getting hurt.”

  Bess shrugged. “That’s because long ago you gave over your will and identity in order to become Lilly’s evil twin.”

  Alyssa picked up her pillow and threw it at Bess—which wasn’t the best way to demonstrate her independence from Lilly. Bess caught the pillow, added it to Lilly’s, and leaned back again. “Supercomfy.”

  Dr. B shot Bess a stern look. “Enough, or I’ll have to deduct team points. Remember, no house divided against itself can stand.” His bathrobe belt had loosened and he pulled it tight with a flourish.

  Bess watched him and rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Dad, can’t you get a better bathrobe? That one’s embarrassing.”

  Dr. B smoothed down the sides of his robe. “I’ve had this one since college.”

  “Yeah. That’s one of the reasons it’s embarrassing.”

  Ignoring his daughter, he pulled his flashlight from his pocket. “Well, it’s good to know what Tori’s gift is. Now I can plan how best to employ her abilities.”

  Lilly leaned over to Alyssa and whispered, “She can hold our stuff while we kill the dragon.”

  Tori shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but did.

  Dr. B moved toward the door. “It’s late, and you need your rest. Big day tomorrow.”

  This brought forth moans from several campers. Dr. B held up one hand to fend off their complaints. “If you are prepared, you shall not fear. And as you ponder those wise words from the Bible, I will wish you a good night.” He waved a good-bye to them, flipped on his flashlight, and walked out the door.

  Alyssa watched him go. “Do you think that quote is really from the Bible, or does he just make up stuff because he knows we don’t know the difference?”

  Lilly leaned back nonchalantly. “I’m not reading the Bible to
find out.”

  “Trust me,” Bess said, “if it’s an ancient text, he’s studied it, highlighted passages, and discussed parts of it with guys who came to pick me up for dates.”

  Which, Tori supposed, was another disadvantage of having a father who was a medieval scholar. It sort of made senator look like a normal profession.

  The guys got up and sauntered out the door, talking to one another about what sort of thing Dr. B might have planned for them tomorrow. Before they left, Kody called back to them, “Good night, y’all,” and the door thunked shut behind them.

  Tori didn’t move from her sitting position. She had thought of another question. “How come no one else’s gift works when the simulator is turned off, but I can still hear the dragon’s heartbeat?”

  Bess climbed into her bed. “It’s the same for Dirk. The simulator tricks your body into thinking a dragon is around so your night vision and strength turn on. You can’t connect with the mind of the simulator, though, because it doesn’t have one. You, girlfriend, get to listen to the actual dragons.”

  “But aren’t they somewhere far away?” Tori asked. “I thought the dragons had to be within five miles before they triggered our abilities.”

  “Not for the mind connection you and Dirk have.” Bess pulled back her covers and lay down. “You have a wider range. We don’t know how wide, because we don’t know where the eggs are. It could be a hundred miles. It could be ten.”

  A hundred miles. Tori felt insulated by that number until she remembered that dragons could fly fast. How long would it take them to travel a hundred miles? An hour? Two? Not long enough.

  “If I can be far away from the dragon and still connect to it, how come I never heard the heartbeat before I came to camp?”

  Bess slipped her arm underneath her pillow, adjusting it. “You finally got a strong dose of the simulator wavelength and it kick-started your inner eye. Your body knows what it’s supposed to be doing now.” She sent Tori an apologetic look. “Things will never be the same. It happened to all of us. You’ll notice things you automatically blocked out before. Like, you’ll be in school trying to focus on a test while in the background your mind is simultaneously scanning the room for movement and calculating the speed of every car that drives past the window.”