Slayers: Friends and Traitors

by C. J. Hill

  “Don’t drug her. I don’t want her to lose her abilities.” He didn’t want her to lose her memories. He wanted Tori to remember that she sought him out tonight, that she kissed him, and that while her arms were wrapped around him, they were perfectly in sync.

  “Your counterpart,” his father muttered. “She’s your enemy, and by this point, one of you should realize that.”

  Vesta lifted her head, saw Dirk, and opened her mouth. Probably shrieking. She stood—her back arched—and readied herself to pounce. It made Dirk miss Tamerlane. Dirk had grown up with that dragon, had spent so many years training him, that Tamerlane knew him by sight. Tamerlane had stopped challenging Dirk when he came into his enclosure. He’d been downright domesticated for a dragon.

  These dragons would keep trying to attack him for months—at least until they were full grown. Dirk’s father cast a look at Vesta, and then turned and headed toward the door. “If you want the dragons to stay quiet for Tori, you’ll have to keep them quiet yourself.”

  Dirk quickly slipped into Vesta’s mind and murmured assurances to her. Everything was fine. She was sleepy. She needed to rest. “When are you attacking the Slayers?” Dirk called after his father. He was nearly to the door.

  His father paused, considered. He hadn’t given those details to Dirk before. In fact, he’d pointedly told Dirk he wouldn’t tell him. Just in case you’re tempted to double-cross me again and warn your friends, he’d said.

  Dirk finished calming Vesta. “Tori told me she’s close to finding Ryker’s location. He’s either in San Diego, Denver, or Crown Heights, New York.”

  Dirk’s father smiled. “That’s good to know. I’ll have some men check those locations.”

  “You’ll want to wait until after we find Ryker to attack the Slayers,” Dirk said. “Otherwise you’ll have to find a way to take him out, too. It will be harder once he knows you’re coming after Slayers.”

  Dirk’s father rested his hand on the doorknob while he weighed these words. “The dragons will be ready to attack by this spring.” That was another way ignorance was helping them. Dr. B thought it took a year until the dragons were full grown; it was closer to six months. “Some of the Slayers might evade my men during the first attack so I need time for a second, maybe a third or a fourth.”

  Dirk wasn’t sure why he wanted his father to postpone the attack on the Slayers. No, that wasn’t right, he did know. Years of going to camp had turned him into a Slayer. During the summer, days would go by when he would completely forget that he was a spy, a traitor. He didn’t just pretend to be a team captain, he was one. He trained, fought, and strategized with the other Slayers. Sometimes that part of him still surfaced. That part always hoped that if he delayed the inevitable, it wouldn’t happen.

  “You shouldn’t drug the Slayers until we’re ready to attack,” Dirk said. “Otherwise Dr. B might find a way to restore their powers.”

  The loss was reversible, or at least the stories the dragon lords passed down said it was. Given enough time away from the effects of drugs, the pathways in a Slayer’s brain could regrow—the abilities and memories could flow through new passageways again.

  It didn’t usually happen. If a person didn’t remember they had to abstain from alcohol and other drugs, they didn’t. And those pathways were eventually completely destroyed.

  According to the old stories, Slayers could regain their powers in another way, something fast. In the Middle Ages, there were accounts of fights where a dragon lord thought he had neutralized Slayer knights—only to have them flare back into battle, their powers restored.

  Dirk’s father opened the door, then turned back to him. “Isn’t Dr. B already looking for a remedy? He must want to help Leo and Danielle.”

  Leo and Danielle were two Slayers who lost their powers and most of their camp memories sometime before last summer. The ironic thing was that they did it to themselves. Both started drinking. They must have turned into quite the partiers since at some point they’d drunk themselves unconscious.

  Dirk shrugged as though it weren’t important. “If Dr. B was looking for a cure, he never told us about it. He thinks he has enough Slayers to do the job.” This was only partially true. Dr. B was searching for a cure. All summer, his office was littered with books and printouts, old documents he scoured for clues. But he also thought the Slayers left were capable of killing dragons. That was one of Dr. B’s problems: He always thought people were better than they really were.

  Dirk’s father mused on that for a moment. He seemed to know why Dirk wanted him to hold off the attack. He smiled coldly. “Within a month, my men will drug the Slayers. I’ll tell them to take out Jesse first—my gift to you. Less competition for Tori.”

  Dirk stared at his father, unsure how he meant the statement. Did his father really think Dirk wanted his best friend in the Slayers attacked first—that Dirk would appreciate having Jesse out of the way? Or was his father being sarcastic? Did he know how much losing Jesse’s friendship meant to Dirk and that’s why Jesse was first on the list?

  Dirk supposed the fact that he didn’t know the answer to these questions said something about his father. “When?” Dirk asked. “When will it happen?”

  His father just nodded vaguely. “You don’t need to worry about that.” He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Dirk alone.

  So, his father was setting plans in motion, but he didn’t trust Dirk enough to give him details. Even if Dirk wanted to warn the Slayers, he couldn’t have told them anything except to be careful. And they already knew they were supposed to be doing that.

  CHAPTER 12

  Over the next few weeks Tori and Dirk texted each other every day. He addressed her as C, for “counterpart.” Tori called Dirk G for “glasses.” It was her own code name for him because he had four eyes in his head. His and a dragon’s.

  It probably shouldn’t have made her day—seeing the letter G pop up on her screen, but it always did. It wasn’t just because he was good-looking, knew her inside out, and could make her laugh anytime he wanted. Talking to him was a reminder that the secret part of her was real, that it had all happened, that she wasn’t alone in carrying the burden of being a Slayer. And it was sweet the way he always checked up on her, the way he worried about her safety.

  When he found and friended her on an online social site, she felt only a twinge of guilt accepting him. She didn’t post identifying information so there wasn’t really any harm in it.

  Tori’s dad came home one night and handed her a slip of paper. “If anyone asks, you didn’t get this from me.” It had Ryker’s address on it. He lived in Rutland, Vermont.

  “Vermont?” she asked.

  “Turns out none of those other Allen and Harriet Davises were the right one. Ryker’s father’s name is actually Charles Allen Davis. Don’t ask how many staff hours it took to figure that out.”

  After Tori finished hugging her dad, she locked herself in her bedroom and used her watch-phone to call Dr. B. She was too excited to sit down. She paced back and forth, a bounce of happiness in each step.

  “I know where Chameleon is,” she said, as soon as Dr. B answered. Chameleon was Ryker’s code name because he’d hidden for so many years. She knew Dr. B wouldn’t want her to give his address over the phone so she said, “I’ll overnight the address to you.”

  Dr. B made all the Slayers memorize his P.O. box number in case they ever had something Slayer-related to send him. Tori folded the paper carefully so she could put it in an envelope. She had already memorized Ryker’s address and now it was scrolling on her heart with looping, triumphant script. “I recommend the team captains go with you to meet Chameleon,” she said. “It will be easier for him to believe everything if he sees us in action. And since I’m going to be a team captain one day, I think I should—”

  “T-Bird,” Dr. B interrupted her. “We have to proceed carefully.” He let out a reluctant sigh. “Perhaps I should have told everyone this before now.” There was
a pause, one that clearly didn’t understand her impatience. “Chameleon contacted me over the summer.”

  “He what?” She didn’t think she’d heard right and turned up the volume on her watch.

  “He confronted his parents about the website.” The Slayers knew about the Ryker Davis website. Theo had even mentioned that it had consistent hits, but there was no way to know who was reading it. They had all figured it wasn’t Ryker, or he would have commented, contacted Dr. B, done something.

  “Unfortunately,” Dr. B continued, “His parents forbade him to communicate with me. Chameleon won’t be able to train with the rest of you until he’s eighteen. Then he’ll come.”

  “Eighteen,” Tori repeated. She was one of the younger Slayers. She didn’t turn seventeen until January. But even the older Slayers like Jesse, Dirk, and Bess didn’t turn eighteen until nearly the summer. “By then it might be too late.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Dr. B said.

  “One of us should go meet with him. If we could convince him—”

  “He called me from a disposable cell phone and told me not to contact him again. He doesn’t want to talk to us, and I can’t force anyone to join us.”

  Pinprick words. Ones that deflated her. Tori didn’t know what to say. It hadn’t occurred to her that Ryker might refuse to even talk to them.

  “I didn’t tell everyone about Chameleon’s phone call,” Dr. B went on, “because I didn’t want anyone to hold it against him—that he knew what he was and didn’t come.” Dr. B waited for Tori to say something. When she didn’t he added, “You won’t hold it against him, will you? We can’t expect him to run away from home.”

  Yes, they could. If it meant saving lives, why shouldn’t he leave home a few months early?

  She stayed silent, let the words seethe inside her head.

  “Tori, sometimes it takes time for people to realize who they are.”

  More pinpricking words, this time stabbing her with guilt. Dr. B was reminding her, in his ever gentle way, that she hadn’t wanted to be a Slayer when she first found out what she was. “I won’t hold it against him,” Tori said slowly. She would give him the benefit of the doubt, at least until camp started next year. If he didn’t show up by then, she would personally take a trip to Vermont and have a long talk with him about patriotism while dragging him from his house.

  “It’s best not to tell the others about this,” Dr. B said, “so keep it a secret.”

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh. Dr. B was right. The other Slayers had barely forgiven her for leaving camp one day to repair fireball damage to her hair. They weren’t going to forgive Ryker for skipping out an entire year—for waiting until it might be too late—to show up to camp.

  The next day she sent the address to Dr. B anyway. She hoped Ryker didn’t change his mind and disappear again.

  A few days later, Dirk asked her if she’d learned anything about Ryker’s location. She hesitated, then texted back. “My dad ran into dead ends.” She didn’t like lying to him, but really, Dirk would be Ryker’s biggest tormenter if he knew the truth. Last summer, Dirk routinely had Kody freeze Bess’ belongings into giant ice cubes—and he and Bess were friends.

  So Tori would let Ryker stay hidden for a while longer. As long as the eggs hadn’t hatched, the Slayers still had time left.

  CHAPTER 13

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31

  Jesse sat in front of a computer in the White Oak Library and wished his mother wasn’t his Honors English teacher. Seriously, the woman assigned essay topics just to pry into his life. This one was on leadership and what sort of qualities the next president should have. “The election is only a year away,” she had told the class cheerily, “and most of you will be of voting age by then. You need to start paying attention to the candidates’ messages.”

  The class was supposed to write about issues that were important to them, and then list the candidates’ views on those issues, citing at least three references such as newspapers, transcripts, or magazines in the bibliography. A freaking bibliography. It was enough to make Jesse miss the essays from last year where he only had to do things like talk about the symbolism in The Scarlet Letter.

  But no. His mom had noticed him following news stories about Senator Hampton’s campaign and she was afraid he was defecting. She was such a Democrat that she’d had a donkey tattooed on her rear during some protest in college. Not after the protest, not before—during. Must have been a really boring protest if tattoo artists had been milling around selling their services.

  Jesse could have told his mom that politics had nothing to do with his interest in Senator Hampton. Jesse was only looking for Tori. Sometimes she was there in the pictures. Sometimes the camera panned to her during one of his speeches.

  Jesse had put off writing the essay because reading political speeches was the most boring thing on earth. Unfortunately, the paper was due on Monday and his mom had already told him no paper—no Halloween party. So he was spending his Saturday afternoon flipping through stuff in the library.

  He picked up one of the newsmagazines and skimmed through an article on presidential hopefuls, looking for some concise, bullet-point lists about where they stood on the issues. No such luck. Ditto for the next magazine. And the next.

  Jesse grunted, dropped the pile of magazines next to the computer, and wrote the title of his essay.

  What I Did This Summer and How It Relates to Politics

  This summer I went to camp with Senator Hampton’s daughter. Even though camp has a strict rule against pairing off, we did. A lot. No guy who has ever seen Tori Hampton would blame me. I have no idea where her father stands on this issue.

  Jesse deleted the paragraph almost as soon as he wrote it. He considered calling Tori on his watch-phone, asking her about her father’s views on a few issues, and then writing his paper about why he agreed with those things. It would make his bibliography much easier. Primary source all the way.

  Dr. B wouldn’t approve of Jesse using the emergency channels for homework questions, and besides, Tori was probably still mad at him.

  Jesse minimized his paper and went back to his Internet search of the candidates.

  “Dude, are you still stalking that Hampton chick?”

  Jesse only knew someone was walking up behind him a few seconds before he heard his friend Diego’s voice. Not a good thing and more proof he should stop obsessing about Tori. Part of being a Slayer was having heightened senses. It never really wore off, even after being away from the simulator for months. People usually weren’t able to sneak up on him.

  “I’m not stalking anybody,” Jesse said. “I’m researching Senator Hampton’s political positions.”

  Diego sat down in the chair next to him and leaned closer to the computer. A picture of Tori and her sister, Aprilynne, was framed on the screen. Some posh fund-raiser. Tori wore a dress that showed off her long, well-defined legs. “Right,” Diego said with a laugh. “I doubt those are the positions you’re thinking about.”

  “Shut up,” Jesse said. He exited out of the screen. Another one of Tori was underneath it. In this one, she stood with the rest of her family at a convention.

  Diego shook his head. “Bro, she’s way out of your league. Besides, you shouldn’t even think about messing with girls whose fathers can set the secret service on you.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Jesse noticed a man in a suit cross the room. The man looked at Jesse, watching him for a couple seconds longer than was normal. When Jesse glanced at him, he awkwardly looked away. The man walked over to an empty chair on the other side of the room and self-consciously fingered the book he was holding. Jesse kept staring at the guy, maybe because Diego’s comment made him wonder if Senator Hampton really would send somebody to check out Jesse. Did Tori’s father know they had gotten together at camp?

  Jesse dismissed the thought. Tori wouldn’t have told her parents about him, and even if she had, she couldn’t have given them his last name. She didn’t know
it.

  The man in the suit held his book open, staring at it as if he was reading it. One hand was hidden behind the book, and Jesse could tell from the shivers of movement in the man’s wrist that he had his cell phone out and was texting someone.

  Weird.

  “So what brings you to the library?” Jesse asked Diego.

  “Same thing as you. Finding some BS for your mom’s essay. I hate to say it, bro—especially since the woman has given me more cookies than my own mother—but this year, I seriously hate your mom.”

  “Join the club. Oh wait, you already did. It’s called Honors English.”

  Diego pulled his car keys from his pocket, proof that his ancient Camry had made it through yet another day. “You got a costume for Bailey’s party yet?”

  “Right now, I’ll be the invisible man. I can’t go until my paper is done.”

  “Just write some crap about Senator Ethington. That’s what I did. Your mom wants him to be the next president. Easy A.”

  None of Jesse’s As from his mom were easy. Still, Diego was right. His mom was always more forgiving of sentence structure when she agreed with your topic. “I’ve got my iPad in my backpack,” Diego said. “You can work on your paper while I drive home. You gotta come with me tonight. You’re my babe magnet.” Diego motioned to Jesse and then to himself. “They come over to talk to you, yes, but I’m by your side to pick off the leftovers. I’m fine with that.”

  “That’s sort of … what’s the right Honors English vocab term?”

  “Cunningly resourceful?”

  “No … lame.”

  Jesse exited out of the last screen and stood up. He might as well go. He wasn’t going to get anything done here. Not with pictures of Tori one click on a search engine away. Jesse noticed as he picked up his backpack that the man in the suit stood up, too. He carried his book in one hand, holding on to it oddly—like he was concealing something in the pages. Another guy who had just come into the computer area turned and sauntered slowly in the direction of the door. He wore a hoodie pulled up so it concealed half of his face.