by C. J. Hill
Next he somersaulted, switching direction and flew face-upward. After a few moments, he spun back onto his stomach and let go of her hand. “Okay, now let’s see you do a somersault by yourself.”
She weaved around the trees in front of her and tried to slow down. “I already have a huge bruise on my hip. Do I really need a matching concussion?”
He followed her, floating a few feet above her. “You can do it. Come on, try.”
“I don’t know how to stop yet and you want me to do tricks?”
“Try,” he urged.
She bent into a turn and ended up heading straight to the ground.
He dived after her, grabbed her hand, and led her through a flip so she flew upward again. Then he pulled her to a stop. They hovered in the air, and he led her over to a sturdy tree branch. In one graceful movement, he swung himself onto the bough, then motioned for her to follow. She pulled herself to the branch, much less gracefully, and sat between him and the tree trunk. The bark was rough and poked into her legs.
“You’ll get the hang of it soon,” he said.
She gripped the trunk and peered down at the ground below them. It looked so far away. “How did you manage to learn to fly by yourself?” she asked.
“It’s innate. Your problem is you’re overthinking it right now.” He reached out and took her hand from the trunk. “You don’t have to worry about falling, you know.”
“Right,” she said. She forced herself to stop looking down. It was better to look into Jesse’s brown eyes anyway.
Of course, as soon as she did, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“So,” he said, drawing the word out, “is something going on between you and Dirk?”
Her cheeks flushed. It wasn’t a question she wanted to answer. She had expected Jesse to talk about flying. “Why do you ask?”
Jesse hesitated. “He’s acting strange.”
“He doesn’t like the idea of me replacing him as captain.” Tori let out a sigh. “Which makes two of us, because I don’t want to be captain.” But the answer didn’t feel like the truth. She fiddled with the bark underneath her fingertips. “And well, okay, he did kiss me yesterday, but I don’t think it meant anything to him.”
Jesse arched his eyebrows, processing this piece of information. He shifted on the tree limb so he could see her better. “Why do you think it didn’t mean anything to him?”
She felt herself blushing. “Because it was a spur of the moment thing. He was trying to see if I could read his mind …” On second thought, she didn’t want to go into the details. “Dirk just seems like the kind of guy who kisses girls without thinking much about it; somebody who rotates through girls quickly.” She paused. “Am I right about that?”
Jesse shrugged. “He’s had a lot of girlfriends.”
“You’re not like that. I mean, about kissing girls without thinking about it.” Tori suddenly felt as though she’d said too much. She flicked a nearby leaf to give her hands something to do.
“I’m not like that,” he agreed.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Out in the forest, a pair of birds chased each other around the trees. The sun had gone down far enough that a pattern of mottled shadows spread out across the forest floor.
Jesse’s gaze didn’t leave her face. “Dirk came after you when Overdrake captured you. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t like you.”
“He was helping out a fellow Slayer,” Tori said. “You came after me, too. That doesn’t mean you like me.” She turned to see his expression, to see him agree.
Instead, Jesse stared back at her. “That might not be the best example to prove your point.”
“What do you mean?”
He regarded her without speaking. His eyes were warm. “I didn’t come after you just to help out a fellow Slayer.”
Her heart made several short, frantic beats. She hadn’t imagined everything between her and Jesse. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached out and put her hand over his. The feel of his skin made her fingertips tingle.
He looked at her hand and didn’t move. “Dr. B has always said we shouldn’t get romantically involved with one another. It could lead to problems on the team. Favoritism. Clouded judgment.”
“Oh.” She removed her hand and tried to pretend his sentence hadn’t sliced her to the core. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Plus, we’re only going to be together one month out of the year. We’re not supposed to keep in contact with each other outside of camp.”
“Okay,” she said, stung again.
“And we’re from completely different social spheres.”
How many reasons did he plan on giving her? “Okay,” she said. “I get it.”
“And political spheres. You’re dad’s a Republican senator, my parents are Democrats.”
Tori folded her arms, angry enough that she forgot she was perched high in a tree. “Do you really need to keep listing reasons why I’m not right for you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “If I keep going, maybe I’ll convince myself.”
His answer instantly dissolved her anger. She smiled and put her hand over his again, this time tracing the length of his fingers with one of her own.
“You’re not making this easier,” he said.
“Good.” After she made lazy circles on the back of his hand, she twined her fingers through his.
He let out a sigh that was almost a groan, then took her hand and pulled her closer. Time slowed. The wind whipped a strand of hair across her face, and he brushed it away, letting his fingers linger on her cheek. Then he leaned over and kissed her.
It felt like victory.
She melted into him, forgetting they were in a tree, forgetting about the work ahead of them, forgetting everything except the fact that his lips were on hers. She wound her arms around his neck and leaned closer, letting her fingers brush against the back of his hair. She wished this moment could go on forever. Jesse holding her. The soft caress of his lips.
Finally, he lifted his head. “You should be glad you can fly.”
She smiled back at him. “Why?”
“Because if you couldn’t, you would have fallen out of this tree.”
She looked down. She wasn’t sitting on the branch anymore. Sometime during their kiss, she’d slid off and was hovering in front of him, unsupported. She reached out, grabbed hold of the branch, and pulled herself back over. “Yeah, that would have been awkward to fall to my death while you kissed me.”
He took hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m going to have a great time teaching you how to fly.”
“Good,” she said. “I liked my first lesson.”
He pushed off the branch, pulling her with him. They glided hand in hand around trees and through patches of sunlight. This is wonderful, she thought, and the next moment she heard a voice in her head, near the dragon’s heartbeat. She enlarged the sound while she threaded through a maze of branches.
“Hello, Tori,” Overdrake murmured. “I know you can hear me. Isn’t that convenient? I can chat with you whenever I want. I can make you listen to whatever I want. So many possibilities. I’m deciding which is better—my CD of fingernails scraping blackboards, or the Bee Gees’ greatest hits. Maybe I’ll play them both.
“But here’s the thing I want to say first. You killed one of my dragons. I’m not going to forget that. Granted, in the long run you did me a service. You showed me that the dragons have a weakness I didn’t know about.” He let out a laugh that held no amusement. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s weakness. So rest assured, I’ll fix that problem. You won’t be able to choke any more of my dragons. And here’s a message to pass on to all of your little friends: Stay out of my way from now on, or I’ll crush every single one of you.”
Then the beginning verse of the song “Staying Alive” jolted into her ears.
Wow, a bunch of guys singing falsetto badly. She could see Overdrake’s point about that CD.
She minimized the sound, but Jesse must have seen the effect Overdrake’s speech had on her. He slowed down, waiting for her.
“What’s wrong?”
She was not about to let Overdrake’s threats ruin this outing with Jesse. There would be time to pass on Overdrake’s message later. “Nothing,” Tori said, and let go of Jesse’s hand. She was getting the hang of flying now. She didn’t need to propel herself through motions. It worked through vision and a part of her heart wanting to go a certain direction; that’s what steered her. She grinned over at him. “I bet you can’t catch me,” she said, and darted off into the forest.
Jesse followed after her, and proved her wrong.
CHAPTER 45
Ryker Davis was finishing up work on the simulator when his cousin, Willow, walked into the basement. She had been at his house since the start of summer, but he still wasn’t used to having her pop in and talk to him. Most of the time she stayed holed up in her room reading, and he forgot she was around. Then she would finish a book and be there, a flurry of chattiness, until she started a new novel and disappeared again.
Even now, she carried her Kindle in one hand, absently fingering it while she walked toward him. She was tall and graceful—willowy—which was a good thing, because it would be hard to live down a name like Willow if you were short and dumpy. She sat down on the step-stool next to him.
“Just so you know, you need a better password on your Web site.”
He attached a transmitter circuit on the simulator’s bread board, barely looking at her. “I don’t have a Web site.”
“What you mean is, you don’t want your parents to know you have a Web site. You’re going to be in trouble when they find this.” She flashed her Kindle screen at him, showing the Internet home page for RykerDavis.com. The title proclaimed: All You Ever Wanted to Know About Ryker Davis.
Oh. That Web site. He should have known that was what she was talking about.
Ryker’s dog, Griffin, trotted over to Willow and nudged her hand, a clear request to be petted. Griffin—named because he was a mixture of who knew what—hated most people, but adored Willow. Probably because she couldn’t resist cooing and petting him anytime he was around. She scratched his ears as she scanned RykerDavis.com.
“So, do you have any juicy secrets you reveal on your not-so-well-hidden Web site?”
“It’s not my Web site,” he said, checking the simulator’s power output. He needed more power, better batteries, and made a mental note to buy some the next time he went out. “There’s more than one Ryker Davis in the world, you know.”
“Yeah, and your parents might buy that story if you had a better password.” She tilted her chin down patronizingly, making her dark blond hair spill over her shoulder. “I mean, come on. The hint is: What animal does Ryker dream about?” She let out a disparaging grunt. “It took me two tries. Once ‘hot women’ didn’t work, I knew it had to be dragons.”
He placed the circuit board inside the simulator’s chassis, centering it perfectly. “For your information, I mostly dream about snowboarding, or if it’s summer—hang gliding.” He shot Willow a grin. “Okay—I confess—sometimes I dream of hang gliding with hot women.”
Willow nodded philosophically. “Well, that’s all I ever wanted to know about Ryker Davis.” She scrolled down the page and paused to read some of the entry titles. “Although you’re unaware of it, you belong to an elite group called the Slayers … .” She stopped petting Griffin and looked up at Ryker. “Dang. I was hoping it would tell me your secret to acing math tests.”
“My secret is I’m smart.”
She silently read for another minute, then said, “What is this anyway? Some kind of interactive novel?”
He looked around for his toolbox. “Seriously, Will. I didn’t write any of it. I’ve read it, but I didn’t write it.” He spotted the box next to the step stool and held his hand out to Willow. “Can you give me the Phillips screwdriver?”
She gazed down at the tools. “You named one of your screwdrivers Phillip? That’s a clear sign you’ve been working on that thing for too long.”
“Phillips is a type of screwdriver.” Instead of explaining what kind it was, he walked over to the toolbox himself. Really, how could a girl reach the age of sixteen and not know what a Phillips screwdriver was? Granted, her parents weren’t handy, but neither were his, and he’d been taking things apart all his life. “If I was going to name a screwdriver,” Ryker said, “I wouldn’t call it Phillips. That sounds like a butler. I would name it something manly, like Rodrigo.” He picked up two screwdrivers from his toolbox and showed her the difference. “This is a flat one and this is Rodrigo, the screwdriver of doom.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just make one kind of screw?”
He didn’t have an answer for that, so he said, “Come, Rodrigo. It’s time to make some screws do your bidding.” Then he began attaching the circuit board to the card slot.
Willow went back to reading the Web site. He knew what she would find. He had read it enough times himself. He’d discovered the Web site two years ago when he’d Googled his name, and since then it had become a secret hobby of his to check and see what the mysterious Dr. B had posted. Dr. B updated it the first Sunday of every month, usually with some sort of message for Ryker. Well, not really for him. For a magical Ryker Davis that this Dr. B had invented. Still, it was pretty cool having a superhero named after him. Where else could you get personalized entertainment like that?
“Dr. B,” Willow said, testing the name in her mouth. “I wonder what the B stands for. Batty? Bonkers? Bored beyond belief?”
Ryker didn’t answer. He’d finished attaching the circuit board and was now screwing the panel in place.
“On second thought,” Willow went on, “he probably used the letter B because X and Z had already been taken by the cool supervillains.”
“Dr. B isn’t the villain,” Ryker said. “He’s the good guy. Overdrake is the bad guy.”
Griffin nudged Willow’s hand, reminding her that he was still in need of a dog massage. She stroked his fur again. “There’s a ‘contact me’ link after every single entry. What’s that about? Does he ask for money to tell you how the story ends or something?”
“I don’t know,” Ryker said. “I’ve never contacted him. You know how my parents are about that kind of stuff. They think everybody is out to commit identity theft or worse.”
Willow went back to surfing the Web site. When she drew in a sharp breath, he could guess which page she’d landed on. Her gaze ricocheted between the simulator and the specs on the Web site. “Are you actually building this guy’s machine?”
“Maybe.” Ryker hooked up the patch antenna, suddenly wishing he had gone with a cavity-back antenna instead. The specs said either would work and the patch antenna was cheaper, but maybe the cavity-back worked better.
Willow stood up to get a better look at the simulator. “Okay, I thought I was the ultimate dragon geek because I’ve written fan fiction for so many fantasy novels, but this …” She nodded at the machine. “This means you win.”
Ryker straightened, pointing the screwdriver at his chest. “Excuse me, I’m not any sort of geek, dragon or otherwise.”
“Says the guy who names his screwdrivers and is building a superhero machine.”
“I was just curious to see if I could follow the specs on the site and actually build the thing.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the real reason he’d spent the last few weeks buying and constructing parts for the machine. As farfetched as it seemed, Ryker had begun to believe—well, maybe not believe, but at least entertain the possibility—that the Slayer and dragon stuff was true. He was the same age as the Ryker on the Web site. His parents had lived in Virginia when his mother was pregnant with him, just like the Web site said. It didn’t add up to coincidence.
Who Dr. B was, what he wanted, and his level of sanity was another matter. Building this machine would a
t least rule out, or possibly confirm, the sanity issue.
With the antenna secure, Ryker stepped back and surveyed his creation. It was done. A simulator following the instructions that Dr. B had put on the Web site. “Are you ready to see what this thing does?” he asked. He hadn’t expected to feel nervous about it and yet found that he was fidgeting with the screwdriver.
“Turn on the switch,” Willow said.
Ryker did. Nothing noticeable happened. He couldn’t even be sure it was actually running.
Willow pursed her lips. “I was expecting a little more magic.”
Ryker turned it off, turned it on again, then picked up the printout of the specs and reread them. When he finally looked up at Willow, she was typing something into her Kindle. “There,” she said.
“There what?” he asked.
“I just e-mailed Dr. B and told him that if he was going to save the country from the clutches of the dragon lord, he needed a better superhero machine.”
Ryker nearly dropped the specs. “You e-mailed him?”
“Yeah. I told him I was the real Ryker Davis’s cousin, and if he wanted you for a Slayer, you needed equipment that was more along the lines of the Batmobile.”
She smiled at him, but he didn’t return it.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I’m sure the guy has a sense of humor.” She motioned to her Kindle’s screen. “I mean, look at the stuff he writes.”
“Exactly,” Ryker said. “He could be anybody. He could be some psycho.” He could be Overdrake, and the whole Web site is a trap to find me.
It wasn’t the most comforting thought. Even his subconscious was beginning to believe the Slayer stuff.
Willow tipped her head to the side. “It’s not like I told him where I lived, or what my Social Security number is. I didn’t even tell him my name.”
“Yeah, you told him my name.”
His words came out too sharply and she fluttered her eyelashes at him, hurt. “Well, he kind of already knew your name.”
Ryker didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how to explain.
She shrugged and her voice was soothing, the same tone she used to calm Griffin down. “It’s not like anyone is going to grab you off the street and shove you into a van. You’re what? Seven feet tall? They don’t make vans with that much headroom.”