by C. J. Hill
CHAPTER 37
“Dirk, no,” Tori said. The words were pointless. He couldn’t hear her. Still, she wanted to yell at him. How could he stand by and let this happen? How could he stay with his father when the man was trying to kill people—starting with Dirk’s friends?
Then she chided herself for forgetting so quickly. The Slayers weren’t really his friends. This warning was only thrown in her direction so Dirk could appease his conscience. He had taken his little sister with him to deliver the message as if it were all a game without consequences.
Tori opened her eyes and the sound in the plane immediately grew louder. The Slayers were all staring at her. “Bad news,” she said. The words sounded absurd even in her own ears. Getting a flat tire was bad news. Failing a math test was bad news. Finding out a dragon was going to attack your plane was something much worse. “Overdrake has a jet and a dragon. He’s coming after us. Dirk says we need to land or bail out.”
For a moment, the other Slayers stared at her in shock and then everyone spoke at once.
“We’ve got to turn the plane in another direction,” Rosa said.
“We can’t trust what Dirk says,” Lilly insisted. “It’s some sort of trap.”
“How long do we have?” Jesse asked.
Ryker’s gaze bounced between them. “How did Dirk talk to Tori? I thought you said counterparts don’t have psychic powers.”
Bess grabbed her helmet from off the floor. “How does Overdrake know where we are?”
Willow looked around the cabin nervously. “I really hope someone is about to tell me that there are enough parachutes.”
The next few moments were just as loud and jumbled as people grabbed their gear and spoke over one another to answer the first set of questions.
“I don’t know how long we have,” Tori said.
“Air traffic control tracks all planes.” Jesse handed Ryker and Willow bulletproof jackets, pants, and boots. Along with the extra pair Dr. B always packed for missions, he’d brought a pair for Alyssa. “Overdrake must have someone in ATC giving him information.”
Bess got out the extra helmets. “Tori hears what the dragons hear. When someone is near the dragons, she hears what they say. Dirk knows that.”
Willow kicked off her shoes and pulled the bulletproof pants over her jeans. “You know, when you asked if I wanted to be a Slayer, I thought I’d have a little more training before I faced a dragon. I’m seriously having second thoughts about my career plans.” She tried to put the Kevlar jacket over her own, then took off her jacket, tossed it on her chair, and slipped her arms into the Kevlar jacket. “And I never thought I’d say this, but Aunt Harriet was right. This was not a good idea.”
The floor tilted downward. Dr. B was lowering the plane. “Strap on your rifles and parachutes,” he called. “Bess, bring me mine. Rosa, turn on the simulator. Lilly, give me the first-aid kit.”
Most of the Slayers headed to the cabinets. Kody didn’t. “Parachutes won’t do no good. They’re too slow. If the dragon catches us with those things on, we’ll be nothing but a buffet of dangling Slayer kabobs.”
“What other choice do we have?” Lilly asked, handing Dr. B a small blue box. It seemed pointless to take a first-aid kit. Sort of like taking an umbrella into a hurricane.
“Can’t we make it to another airport?” Kody asked.
“If we have enough time,” Dr. B answered. “Right now we’re over the Catskill Mountains. Captains, what is our plan B?”
Tori didn’t speak. She wasn’t a captain. She snapped on her parachute even though it seemed meaningless. She could fly. Still, if the group bailed out over a populated area, people might wonder how she made it to the ground without one.
“Kody is right,” Jesse said. “Parachutes are too slow. If the dragon gets around the flyers—and it will—everyone will be ripped to shreds. We’ll only use them as a last resort.” They had learned last summer that shocks and force fields weren’t enough to hold a dragon back. “The flyers will carry the nonflyers,” Jesse went on. “One person rides piggyback. We carry the other. We find cover on the ground and fight from there.”
Fight? Hiding was a better option. Fleeing was a much better option. They didn’t have any powerful weapons with them—only their rifles and knives—just like all of those practices at camp where Tori died first off. She didn’t bring this up. When it came to fighting dragons, the other Slayers had an illogical optimism, a need to fight instead of retreat.
Which, Tori suddenly realized, might be one more indication that she wasn’t really one of them.
“How will we know if we need to bail out?” Rosa asked, adjusting her straps. “We might make it to an airport. We can’t jump out of our plane and let it crash just because we’re spooked.”
“You have a point.” Bess handed a parachute to her father. “It’s a long walk home and Tori is already out past her curfew.”
To reassure herself, Tori listened to the sounds in the dragon enclosure. A dragon was shrieking angrily, the high-pitched sound like ripping metal she’d grown accustomed to. “Dirk said when I connect to Overdrake’s dragon, we’re out of time. I still hear the fledglings.”
Lilly rolled her eyes. “And we can trust what Dirk says.”
Jesse went to a window and peered out. Even though their night vision was working now, it was hard to see anything outside. “By the time we’re sure a dragon is attacking us, it might be too late. If it comes at us from above … if the plane starts tumbling, we might not be able to open the door, let alone get out in time.” He straightened and moved away from the window. “Team Magnus, get in formation by the door. I want to be ready.” Everyone moved toward the door, including Tori.
“Tori?” Dr. B called from the cockpit. “What do you recommend for your team?”
“I recommend Jesse leads them.”
Dr. B let out a frustrated sigh. But really, what was the use of putting Tori in charge of calling the plays for Lilly and Kody? They both knew the plays, strategies, and tactics better than she did.
“I’m not a captain,” Tori said. “Call a vote if you want. Willow and Ryker aren’t officially Slayers, and even if Kody sustains me, Lilly doesn’t. It’s a hung verdict.”
Jesse was too busy arranging people into groups to follow Tori and Dr. B’s conversation. He sent Willow and Kody to Ryker. “People who can block fire will be carried in front. People who can’t, hang on to your flyer’s back.”
“It’s not a hung verdict,” Dr. B, called over Jesse’s instructions. “You cast the deciding vote, Tori. You’re on A-team, too.”
“And you know how I vote,” Tori said.
She already felt sick and jittery at the thought of facing another dragon. How many times in practice had she asked her team for a distraction and one of them had been killed doing it? She couldn’t ask that of any of them now. She couldn’t risk their lives to protect her own.
Lilly was in front of Tori’s line, Rosa in the back. Jesse had given her the lightest people to carry. He was taking Bess and Dr. B. He had given himself the most dangerous job—Dr. B was the farthest from the door and would therefore be the last person out of the plane.
“Remember to slow down before you get close to the ground,” Jesse told Ryker. “We’ll be falling around one-hundred miles an hour. You don’t want to take turns going that fast.”
“Don’t worry,” Ryker said. “I’ve been doing this for five months.” Rosa had given him a switchblade. He tested the catch. A five-inch blade appeared.
“Tori and I will stay on opposite sides of the dragon,” Jesse went on. “When it turns on one of us, the other will go for the straps. We need to cut those and then blast through the chain underneath. Don’t put yourself in danger unless you have a clear path and Tori and I aren’t around to take it.”
Ryker shut the switchblade and put it in his jacket pocket. “Don’t you have any heavy artillery? Something in the way of a sticky grenade?”
“We do back in D
.C.,” Jesse said. “Right now we only have the stuff we thought we’d need for a rescue mission.”
Bess nervously tightened her parachute straps. “Overdrake always catches us unprepared. Which is why I’m going to start carrying explosives in my purse.”
Kody adjusted his helmet. “We don’t know if grenades would even work. People hurled Greek fire at dragons back in the Middle Ages. Didn’t do ’em any good.” Greek fire was the medieval version of a firebomb.
The sound in Tori’s mind changed. The screeching turned off as if someone had pulled the plug on it. She heard the whoosh of the wind rushing by and a sound she recognized from last summer. The rhythmic beat of dragon wings.
“I can hear the dragon,” she called. Her words hung in the air. Everyone looked at her, somberly taking in the news. This was it then. Dirk hadn’t lied to them about his father’s attack.
“Give me ten seconds,” Dr. B said. “I’ll lower the plane as much as I can.”
The plane sloped sharply downward. Tori took a step to adjust her balance. She vaguely remembered hearing that if an aircraft was up too high, you couldn’t skydive from it. The oxygen would be too thin. That would be just what they needed—to jump from a plane and then lose consciousness from too little oxygen.
Tori bent down so Rosa could wrap her arms around her neck. Then Tori picked up Lilly. In a few more moments Tori would be responsible for their lives, for keeping them safe while they fell. Her heart was already pounding with fear and adrenaline.
Jesse stood in front of the door. He hadn’t picked up Bess yet, and Dr. B was still at the plane’s controls. Hurry and get ready, Tori thought silently. You need to be safe, not noble.
Even if he could have understood her through some counterpart sense, he wouldn’t have listened to her. He was too invested in being noble. “Stay as close to us as you can,” Jesse told Ryker. “If the dragon comes at you from the side, use a zigzag pattern so it can’t predict where you’re going.” On his way to Bess, Jesse leaned toward Tori. In a voice so low only she could hear it, he said, “If any part of you is dragon lord, keep the dragon away from us until we reach the ground.”
He walked over to Bess before Tori could answer. She didn’t know how to answer him anyway. She had no idea how to control a dragon’s mind, or even if she could.
Dr. B stood up. “Time to go.”
As Jesse reached for the door handle, he turned to Tori. “Do you have anything to say?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t care that everyone was listening, staring. She had to tell Jesse this. “I didn’t get together with Dirk at camp. I only saw him once in September when we met to talk about the dragons. Dirk wanted to be a couple, but I told him no.”
Jesse barely registered a response. She should have expected that. He was already in captain mode. “I meant, did you have anything to say as a captain.” He opened the door and the wind screamed by. Without waiting for further instruction, Ryker stepped toward the opening, then jumped from the plane. Tori’s last sight of his group was Willow clinging to his back, eyes shut.
“I know,” Tori said, walking toward the opening. “But something might happen to one of us.”
Holding on to Lilly tightly, Tori leapt out of the plane. She was immediately swallowed in a noisy rush of cold air. They were so high up it seemed like she could see the curve of the earth. The hills and mountains below them were only shadows.
Tori knew she was falling fast. The wind ripped at her. The cold found every exposed opening in her jacket and whipped into it. At the same time, she didn’t feel as if she were moving at all. She had nothing to check her speed against. The ground didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
She looked up and was relieved to see that Jesse had jumped with his passengers. He was angling his fall, moving closer to her and Ryker. The plane wouldn’t last long unmanned, but right now it was gliding peacefully across the sky. She hoped when it went down, it only crashed into trees and not somebody’s cabin. Tori took Jesse’s lead and pushed herself closer to Ryker, all the while searching for a dragon shape against the canopy of stars. She didn’t see one. Maybe they would reach the ground before—she didn’t finish the thought.
The dragon swooped down on the plane, a large dark figure, wings outstretched so they blotted out the stars. It had a long clubbed tail that moved up and down, serpentlike, while it flew. Tori knew what the dragon looked like even without seeing it clearly. She still saw the last one, vividly, when she dreamed.
It had an angular head, pointed ears, and a diamond on its forehead that would look like a horn because Overdrake had covered it in order to block the dragon’s signal from reaching any pregnant women. The dragon’s face was reptilian except for its glowing golden eyes. Those were the eyes of a cat—a lion, a tiger, something that wanted to eat you and would then lick its paws disdainfully afterward.
The plane suddenly looked small and vulnerable, toylike. This dragon was bigger than the last they’d fought, Tori was sure of it. The dragon grabbed the front of the plane with its talons, smashing the pilot’s window. Tori heard the sounds as the dragon heard them: glass shattering. Claws ripping through the hull. Metal crunching, screeching like a living thing in pain.
She minimized the sound in her mind as much as she could. She didn’t want to hear anything the dragon heard right now. It wrestled with the plane for another moment, tipping the hull over, then smacking the back end with its tail. Sparks and bits of metal exploded into the air. A fin broke off and tumbled away, disappearing into the night.
Maybe the dragon would destroy the plane and then leave. Maybe they would escape notice altogether. Even as Tori let this hope stir around inside, she knew the empty plane wouldn’t fool Overdrake. It was what the dragon didn’t hear that would give them away—no screaming, no human sounds at all.
The dragon released the jet. It plummeted downward, broken and spinning toward the mountains below. The dragon circled in the air, wings beating as it searched the darkness. It was looking for them.
It saw Jesse first. The dragon dived toward him—wings pressed against its body—like a hurtling comet. It was hard to maneuver while falling this fast, but Jesse wheeled to the left, avoiding the dragon’s snapping jaws. As the dragon turned to go after Jesse again, Tori got a better look at it.
It was navy blue with luminescent eyes, a narrower face than the other dragon they’d fought and taut muscles rippling with every movement. A man in a black suit and helmet rode on its back. Overdrake. He didn’t use a saddle like a horseback rider. The dragon was too wide for that. This saddle looked like a metal chair with compartments on its side for ammunition. The other thing Tori noticed was that the dragon’s neck was covered in some sort of flexible plastic.
Tori couldn’t read Overdrake’s expression through his helmet, but she knew it was smug. The Slayers wouldn’t be able to kill this dragon the same way they had killed the last one. Overdrake didn’t think they had a chance now. And he might be right.
The dragon pushed toward Jesse a second time. Tori tried to connect to the dragon’s mind, to feel something, to reach in and take control. She couldn’t do it—didn’t feel anything except frustration.
Bess threw a shield up between Jesse and the dragon. The dragon’s head hit it, and the dragon went sideways for a moment before the shield gave way. The shield couldn’t stop the weight of a dragon, but it had given Jesse the time to move farther away out of the dragon’s immediate reach.
The ground still looked impossibly far away. The Catskill Mountains seemed like rolling hills, dark waves that were frozen in place. Tori didn’t dare slow down yet for fear that the dragon would catch up to her.
The dragon plunged toward Ryker next. He dodged to the right, closer to Tori. Through the rush of the wind she could make out Willow chanting, “I need a power! I need a power!”
The dragon turned effortlessly in the air and made another lunge at Ryker, teeth bared. The dragon was so large. It could have snapped anyone of them in ha
lf. It could have eaten them whole. Ryker shot sideways, avoiding the dragon’s mouth. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid the dragon’s tail. As the dragon went by, it lashed into Ryker, sending him careening. Willow was knocked from Ryker’s back. She screamed and flailed, arms clawing at the air. Whatever power she had, it wasn’t flying.
Tori sped in her direction. She had no way to grab hold of anything, and had to hope that if she got close enough to Willow, Lilly would grab her.
Ryker dived faster and reached Willow first. He tossed Kody upward a bit, grabbed Willow with one arm, then took hold of Kody’s falling form by the other.
Impressive flying. He could be A-team’s captain. Tori would nominate him herself.
Tori was close enough to the ground now that she had to fight against gravity and slow her speed. As she did, the dragon shrieked toward her. Her little group had no way to protect themselves against teeth and claws. Rosa healed burns and Lilly quenched fire. The dragon wasn’t using fire yet. Tori supposed flames didn’t do much good while they were all falling so fast.
Tori jerked to the left, flying that way. The dragon lunged toward her again. It was closer this time. She wouldn’t be fast enough to get away, not while holding so much weight. She could escape if she dropped Lilly. It seemed the logical thing to do—save herself and Rosa instead of letting all of them die. Wasn’t that what Dr. B had told the Slayers to do—the logical thing?
Maybe Lilly was thinking about this, too. She tightened her grip on Tori’s arms.
Tori didn’t let her go. She swerved as much as she could, staring at the dragon’s nearing golden eyes. “Stop!” she yelled. The word was swallowed up in the rushing wind. “Leave!”
The dragon hesitated for a moment, tossing its head as though her words were bothersome flies. The hesitation let Tori slip out of the way of the dragon’s passing jaws. It overshot her and she zipped off in the opposite direction.
Had her words worked? Had they made the dragon hesitate, or had it been something else? Coincidence maybe? Tori hadn’t felt any sort of connection to its mind.