by C. J. Hill
Now that Dirk was out of the picture, it had probably taken Jesse about thirty seconds to get Tori back. After all, she saw Dirk as a villain, and girls never went for those. Until the villains won, that was. Winning changed everything. That’s why Alexander of Macedon was known as Alexander the Great, instead of Alexander the Guy Who Decimated Persia, India, and Asia Minor.
Dirk walked into the living room and found Bridget sitting on the living room floor. He had expected her to be asleep. It was nearly ten o’clock. She had a jumbo variety bag of candy in her lap and was opening the candy bars and stacking them in front of her. She still wore her cat costume. The tail on her leopard dress was bent and the cat-ear headband was on crooked, making her costume look wilted.
“Did you get to go out?” he asked her.
She shook her head and ripped open a Baby Ruth. She laid it on top of the rest of the pile. “Mom was too sick to go. Nora said she’d take me, but she’s mean, so I said no and Mom gave me this candy.”
Which was why Bridget was ruining it all by making it into a pyramid. Dirk sat down beside her and picked up an Almond Joy from the stack. He took a bite. “Sorry.”
“What happened to you?” Bridget asked. “Your eyes are all red.”
He shrugged like he didn’t know the cause. “Where’s Dad?”
“Out,” Bridget said. “Mom went to bed.”
Dirk nodded, wondering if his father had personally gone to Rutland to oversee the search for Ryker.
“Do dragons eat candy?” Bridget asked. “I could give them mine.”
“You know they only eat meat—and naughty little girls.”
“Don’t the baby ones eat candy?” Bridget was used to Dirk’s threat about feeding pesky sisters to dragons, she didn’t even react to it.
“Do you have any meat-flavored candy?” he asked.
Bridget stopped ripping the wrappers off her candy stash. “Can you take me to see Vesta and Jupiter?”
Dirk didn’t want to, but Bridget had already had enough disappointments for the night. She was only allowed near the dragon enclosure when either he or their father was with her. “Sure,” Dirk said. “Climb on my back and we’ll fly over.” He might as well spend time with Bridget. It was better than sitting around thinking about how the Slayers hated him now.
Fifteen minutes later, Dirk and Bridget had gone through the security checkpoints and walked into the nursery’s observation room. A firmly locked door stood next to the window. It opened for only a few sets of fingerprints. Dirk’s, his father’s, and the head vets. The door led to another locked door, which opened for the same people. A desk and computer sat near the door. The vets recorded data there, checked schedules, and probably played a lot of games.
Bridget took Dirk’s hand, refusing to walk across the room to the observation walls. Jupiter and Vesta both raised their heads—transforming their appearance from two boulders into dark scaly beasts with glowing yellow eyes. Vesta hissed at Dirk, and Jupiter flung back his wings menacingly.
Bridget scowled at this behavior. “I should have named them Grumpy Face and Mr. Mean.”
“Yeah, Dad would have gone for that.”
Dirk’s father had scoured myths and legends with Bridget for an entire year before these dragons hatched, looking for the right names. Kihawahine was named after the Hawaiian dragon goddess and Tamerlane was named after the medieval ruler who conquered Asia. “Names shouldn’t be given lightly,” his father had said. “I named my daughter, Bridget, after the Celtic goddess of fire, poetry, and wisdom. The name Dirk means ‘dagger,’ and that’s what he’ll be: a knife to cut away the evils of society. A knife that will slice through any who oppose us.”
A knife in the back, too.
“Make the dragons nice,” Bridget told Dirk. Jupiter screeched and leapt toward the glass in a flurry of stone brown wings, teeth, and claws. Vesta opened her wings in warning.
“I’ll take care of Vesta,” Dirk said, already slipping into the dragon’s mind and calming her. “You try to reach Jupiter.”
“I can’t do it,” Bridget chided. “Girls never can.” In front of them, Jupiter bared his teeth in anger.
“Tori probably could reach into the dragons’ minds,” Dirk said, “and she’s a girl.” He had never talked with Bridget about Tori before—in fact, after the football game he avoided Bridget’s questions about Tori. He wasn’t sure why he was bringing her up now. Maybe speaking about Tori made him feel like she wasn’t completely gone.
Bridget blinked at him, confused by this information.
“Girls might be able to reach into the dragons’ minds if they have an ancestor who was a dragon lord and an ancestor who was a Slayer,” Dirk clarified. Vesta tucked her wings at her side and settled back down on the ground, eyeing Dirk and Bridget suspiciously.
“What’s a Slayer?” Bridget asked. She still hadn’t let go of Dirk’s hand, wouldn’t until both dragons were subdued.
“They’re people who are born to hunt dragons just like we’re born to protect them.”
Bridget wrinkled her nose. “You mean like those bad people who killed your dragon?”
“Yeah,” Dirk said. Their father told Bridget that bad people killed Tamerlane. By an unspoken agreement, Dirk’s father didn’t mention that Dirk was there helping the Slayers. In return, Dirk didn’t tell Bridget that their father used the dragon to attack him and his friends.
Bridget tilted her head. “How can people be protectors and hunters at the same time?”
It was called internal conflict. Dirk didn’t say this. He shrugged instead. “I guess eventually they have to choose which to be.”
Vesta lowered her head, laying it limply on the floor. Dirk had made her so drowsy she was half asleep and completely tame. He disconnected from her mind.
Bridget tugged on his hand to get his attention. “Does Tori have her own dragons?”
“No.”
“Then what’s the point of being a dragon lord?”
“There isn’t one,” Dirk said.
Bridget sighed as though this were a great waste. “Tori could come live with us and help you with the dragons.”
Yeah, she could. But she wouldn’t. Dirk reached into Jupiter’s mind. It felt like a storm of aggressive impulses churning around him: Hunt. Pounce. Catch. Eat. Nothing is threatening you, Dirk told the dragon. You don’t need to fight. Lie down and relax. The dragon obediently did, lowering the lids on his golden eyes while he preened the scales on his tail. His oversize talons clicked on the ground absently.
Bridget went to the glass then, putting both hands on the wall as she peered at the dragons. “Eventually they’ll know I’m their friend.”
“Dragons don’t have friends,” Dirk told her. It was something he and dragons now had in common. He would have to move again, have to cut all ties with his friends from Winchester so the Slayers wouldn’t be able to track him down.
It would be easier for Bridget. She was homeschooled. Their father wouldn’t let her go to a public school until she was older, until she could keep secrets.
Bridget turned away from the glass. “Can you take me for a ride on Kiha?” Kihawahine was more dangerous than her children, much faster and more powerful. She was easier to handle, though. It was simple to slip into her mind, and she didn’t fight Dirk’s control. Bridget liked Kiha because she was prettier and more elegant then the fledglings. Her deep blue scales changed to purple at their tips, making her look exotic and beautiful.
Bridget wasn’t allowed anywhere near the baby dragons. They were still too unpredictable, but Dirk could take Bridget for rides on Kihawahine.
“It’s not a good night for rides,” Dirk said.
“Why not?”
Dirk didn’t have a reason he could tell her. “Kiha doesn’t feel well.”
Bridget cocked her head in disbelief. Dragons were rarely sick. “What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s tired.”
“You’re just saying that ’cause you don�
��t want to take me.” Bridget turned from the wall and flounced over to the computer on the desk. “I bet she’s not even sleeping.”
Well, she would be by the time Bridget checked on the cameras to that enclosure. Dirk reached his mind out to the dragon, severing the link he had with Jupiter and searching for Kiha’s mind.
He couldn’t reach her. His father must be with her, controlling her mind.
“Kiha is gone,” Bridget said in confusion.
“Gone?” Dirk repeated. He felt a rush of dread. His father had been sure that the Slayers would head to Vermont to find Ryker. Although Dirk didn’t say so, he thought the Slayers would get their families to safety before they did anything about Ryker. But what if they had come to the dragon enclosures instead? Tori could have stolen the dragon.
No, he told himself. The Slayers had no way of knowing where the backup enclosures were, and he had disabled his cell phone so they couldn’t trace that.
Dirk strode over to the computer, telling himself it wasn’t possible. Even if Dr. B had brought along some sort of tracking chips for the rescue mission, he hadn’t handed out any supplies. The Slayers had no way to track Dirk. If anyone took Kihawahine, it was his father.
Dirk checked the cameras, hoping Bridget was wrong. When dragons slept, their scales darkened. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, they could appear to be rocks.
Bridget wasn’t wrong. From every camera angle, the room was empty. The dragon was gone. Dirk pushed the intercom button that connected him to the keeper on duty.
“Keeper One,” the man answered. It meant he was the keeper assigned to enclosure one, where Kihawahine lived.
“This is Dirk. Where’s Kiha?”
“With your father,” the keeper said.
Dirk’s father took the dragon out for rides some nights, but only when it was very late and never for long. This didn’t seem like the night to give Kiha exercise. “What’s my dad doing with her?” Dirk asked.
The man hesitated. “Taking care of some business.”
“What sort of business?”
“I don’t know.”
He wouldn’t tell, more likely. Dirk felt the sting of the man’s refusal. It was another reminder that Dirk’s father didn’t trust him. “When will he be back?”
“Don’t know.”
Dirk grit his teeth in aggravation. “How long has he been gone? You were there when he left, weren’t you?”
The man hesitated, then must have decided that it wouldn’t hurt to tell Dirk. “About a half an hour.”
Dirk cut the connection without saying good-bye.
What was his dad doing? Some sort of an attack? Where? Dirk ran his hand through his hair, noticing as he did that one of the computer screens showed information from the Federal Aviation Administration registry. He looked at the screen more closely. His father had been looking at flight plans from Rutland to Dulles. Somehow Dirk didn’t think his father was checking on his men’s flight home.
Bridget wandered back over to the glass wall to look at the fledglings. She leaned her head against the wall and sang to them. She liked to think she was a maiden from a fairy tale taming unicorns.
Dirk scanned the flight plan. A Gulfstream from Southern Vermont Regional Airport was slated to land at Dulles tonight. It wasn’t one of his father’s planes. The Slayers must have gone to Rutland and this was their flight back. Dirk glanced at the time. The Slayers would be so easy to attack—all together on a plane. His father must have seen it as an irresistible opportunity.
To check and make sure, Dirk accessed the security codes for the cameras in his father’s hangers. Over the years, his father had amassed a collection of planes—a jet for personal travel, some retired C-130s for moving his private troops, and six cargo planes capable of moving dragons and releasing them midair.
One of the cargo planes was missing.
Earlier tonight his father said, You can’t be completely loyal to me as long as part of you is loyal to them. Do I need to get rid of the competition so I can depend on my son again? Is that what it will take?
Dirk had thought it was a threat to keep him in line, not the next item on his father’s to-do list.
In a horrible rush of understanding, Dirk knew what his father planned. His father would get close to the Slayers’ airplane, then have Kihawahine intercept them. One burst of directed EMP and the plane’s electric systems would be useless. A hit from the dragon, and the plane would plummet. It wouldn’t even look like murder, just an unfortunate malfunction.
Would any of the Slayers have time to bail out? If they did, the dragon would be there to take care of that, too.
Dirk picked up the phone on the desk and called his father. He didn’t answer. Dirk gripped the phone hard, listening to it uselessly ring. His father had promised he wouldn’t kill any of the Slayers. That had always been Dirk’s condition for spying. Apparently that promise didn’t mean anything now that Dirk couldn’t spy anymore.
He slammed the phone back onto the desk. He couldn’t call Tori. She disabled her cell phone. He looked around the room, pointlessly searching for some way to stop this from happening. His gaze landed on the sleeping dragons.
Dirk’s father would give Tori as little warning about the attack as possible. Last summer she knew a dragon was coming because, when Tamerlane got close enough, Tori automatically connected to his mind and heard what he heard. If Tori knew too soon that Kiha was coming after the Slayers, she would warn Dr. B. He would turn the plane around and land back in Rutland. To prevent that from happening, Dirk’s father would take firm control of Kihawahine’s mind and put her into a comalike sleep while she traveled in the plane. With the dragon’s mind nearly an inanimate object, Tori wouldn’t connect to it. Not until his father woke Kiha for the attack.
The upside of that was Tori was still connected to one of the fledgling dragons. At least Dirk hoped she was. He had no idea how long her range went. “Stay right here,” he told Bridget. “I’ve got to go inside the nursery.”
She brightened. “Can I come?”
“No. Cassie would kill me if I let you inside.”
Dirk went over to the computer, put in one of the keepers’ passwords, and opened the screen that controlled the nursery settings. His father didn’t usually check the fledglings’ day-to-day logs. Still, Dirk didn’t want to leave any more evidence than he had to. He turned off the piped-in music, and hit the command that raised the wall between Vesta and Jupiter. He watched the dragons for signs of aggression. He didn’t know which fledgling Tori connected to, so he would have to give his message where both dragons could hear him.
Vesta stayed asleep. Jupiter raised his head, sniffing the air. Dirk plunged into the dragon’s mind and took control of its thoughts. There was no prodding this time, no gently directing Jupiter’s thoughts to ease his resistance. Dirk told the dragon to stay down, stay calm, and stay quiet.
Jupiter bristled, fought Dirk’s control, and then went limp on the floor. His mouth hung open as though he’d been hit.
Good. Dirk would be able to speak to Tori without worrying about a fight erupting. He hurried to the nursery entrance, put his hand on the lock pad, and impatiently waited for the scanner to identify his fingerprints. Bridget frowned at him, pouting.
Dirk turned away from her. He didn’t have time to argue with her about this. He didn’t know how long he had until his father’s attack. It might already be too late. The door clicked open. He hurried through it, barely noting when the door closed and relocked. He didn’t realize Bridget had snuck into the hallway behind him until his hand was on the lock pad of the second door. Then he heard her feet half tiptoeing, half running toward him.
Dirk swore and glared at his sister. Her blue eyes filled with tears. “I never get to see them,” she protested. “How will they be my friends if they don’t know I’m a nice person and not a nasty Slayer?”
The second door was opening. Bridget folded her arms stubbornly. Dirk didn’t want to take
the time to haul her back into the observation room. Instead, he picked her up and held her securely to his side. “You have to stay in my arms, and you can’t make any sudden moves. Promise?”
She nodded, happy again.
As he strode into the room, he added, “And you absolutely can’t tell Dad or Cassie I took you in here.”
“Promise,” she chimed.
The room smelled of raw meat, droppings, and cleaning detergent. Vesta surveyed him languidly. She was still in a lazy stupor, mollified by his earlier thoughts. Jupiter’s eyes followed him, but he didn’t move. Couldn’t. Dirk still had a tight control on his mind.
Dirk didn’t let himself think about what he was doing or what his father would say if he found out. “Tori,” he said. “It’s me, Dirk.” Nearly as quickly he added, “Stop minimizing the sound to block me out. You’re in danger.”
“Why is she in danger?” Bridget asked.
Dirk made a shushing motion. With Bridget here listening, he couldn’t tell Tori that his father was trying to kill her, so he used his father’s real name. Bridget didn’t know it. “Overdrake has a jet and his favorite weapon. He’s going to intercept you in the air. If you’re all on a plane somewhere, land or bail out because your plane won’t be working for long.”
Bridget eyed him over. “You don’t have a phone,” she whispered. “How are you talking to Tori?”
Dirk ignored his sister. “When you stop connecting with the fledglings and hear wind and wings—that means you’re out of time.”
Bridget leaned closer to Dirk’s face, as though he had an invisible phone she could access near his lips. “Tori, you can come to our house and help Dirk with the dragons. They’re nice.”
“Shh,” he told Bridget so she wouldn’t elaborate on that plan. He stared at the ground, wanting to say something else, wishing he had a way to hear Tori’s voice in return. He didn’t, though. And he didn’t know if he would ever hear her voice again.
“Don’t try to fight,” he told Tori, “just get someplace safe.”
“Look,” Bridget said, pointing. “Vesta is waving her tail at us.”