by C. J. Hill
“I don’t think—” he started.
She didn’t let him finish. “Do you know the reason I got together with Dirk?”
“Did it have something to do with his Porsche?”
She ignored that. “Dirk took the time to write to me. He wanted to see me. He texted. He called. I knew he cared.” As Tori said the words, they sliced through her. “Well, at least I thought he cared. Okay, maybe using Dirk isn’t the best example, but my point is, I want someone who’s going to be there for me. That wasn’t you.”
Jesse still didn’t want to be there for her. He wanted a hiatus. Tori looked out the front window at the autumn leaves that littered the street. She hated that being a Slayer meant more to him than she did, and she hated that she felt that way. He was so much better at being self-sacrificing than she was. Maybe dragon lords were naturally more selfish.
Tori could feel Jesse watching her. Finally he said, “I came to the Natural History Museum on the second Saturday in August. I told myself I wouldn’t, but I did anyway.”
She tilted her head at him in disbelief. “No, you didn’t.”
“You wore a white skirt with a red-and-white-striped shirt.”
She blinked at him, stunned.
“I was watching you from the second-floor balcony. I nearly went down to meet you a dozen times.”
He had been so close and hadn’t gone to see her? “Why didn’t you?”
Jesse paused. Whatever the answer was, she wasn’t going to like it. “I figured if I couldn’t control myself enough to stay away from you in a museum, there was no way I could be objective enough to fight dragons with you and not let my emotions get in the way.”
And then it made sense to Tori. It was Jesse logic. If he couldn’t fight alongside her objectively, then he couldn’t be her boyfriend. She forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I guess you managed to do both just fine.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “Every time you got close to the dragon last night, I couldn’t concentrate. It made me sloppy. After I cut through the last Kevlar strap, I didn’t get out of the way when I should have. I knew if I didn’t blast through the chains, you were going to come back and do it. So I stayed and managed to get myself caught in the dragon’s tail.”
Tori took a sharp breath. Jesse getting caught—that happened because he was trying to protect her? He nearly died. He would have if Overdrake hadn’t decided to make Tori’s death the dragon’s first priority. Back at camp when Jesse told her they shouldn’t let their feelings get in the way of their job, she hadn’t thought his feelings ever would. For the first time she understood it was a real danger.
“You don’t have to worry about me while we’re fighting,” she insisted. “I can take care of myself.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Before I shot the dragon, it was about to catch you.”
“But it didn’t,” she said.
“Earlier in the night, you lost your powers and nearly fell to your death.”
“But I didn’t,” she said, frustrated that she wasn’t making her case very well.
“Do you know what it was like hearing you scream and not being able to do anything to help you?”
She put her hand on top of his. “All right, I made a few mistakes, but you still don’t need to worry about me.”
Jesse wrapped his fingers around hers, and as quickly as that they were holding hands again. “If tonight proves anything, it proves I can’t be objective even if I want to. So there’s no point making myself stay away from you.” He squeezed her hand. “I want to be there for you. I want to call and text and meet you at the Natural History Museum.”
She stared at him, didn’t answer.
He pulled her closer. “And what was the other thing Dirk did for you? Something about an activity in a car…”
She meant to come back with a retort to that, but he leaned over and kissed her. His lips were soft against hers, gentle. He let go of her hand and his fingers slid around her waist, pulled her closer. She had kissed him dozens of times at camp. It should have felt familiar. Instead, it felt like the first time. Her heart pounded in her chest. A breathless sort of happiness filled her. It was hard to think at all while he held her. They sat like that in the truck for a few minutes, despite Tori’s fear that one of her parents might come out of the house and see her. Kissing him outweighed fear.
Finally Tori pulled away from him. “You want to see each other outside of training—date like a normal boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yes.” There seemed to be an unsaid “if that’s what it takes to make you happy,” attached to his answer. She knew he still thought it was dangerous.
She ran one of her fingers along his hand, tracing the curves of his knuckles. “And when the next attack happens you’ll be able to concentrate on fighting instead of worrying about me?”
“I’ll worry about you either way.” He turned his hand to capture her fingers with his, then brought her hand to his lips. He softly kissed her fingertips.
He would worry about her either way, but if they dated, if they let their relationship grow more intense, it would be harder for both of them. It would be especially hard for Jesse because he thought he had to protect her.
Last summer at camp, he tried to tell her all this. But she hadn’t understood it.
Tori took her hand from his and ran her fingertips down the side of his cheek. “We’ve spent so much time training, and now your family will have to move, start new lives—because we’re trying to do what’s best for the country. How can we endanger it all just because we want to see each other?”
Jesse let out a breath of exasperation. “Tori…”
She slid a finger over his lips to keep him from saying more. “I know. I was the one who got mad at you for saying the same thing at camp. But if I can sacrifice what I want most—you—to fight the dragons, then I know I’ll be able to overcome any feelings I have about sparing the dragons while we’re fighting. I’ll be able to be A-team’s captain.”
She dropped her hand away from him, then leaned in and kissed him. She had meant it to be a quick good-bye kiss. Somehow she didn’t move away from him, though, and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him. His hands twined through her hair. Good-byes apparently were hard for both of them to say.
She pulled away from him and let out a breath. “I guess we’ll have to finish this discussion later, after the dragons have been killed.”
He leaned back against his seat, gave her a long look, then turned the keys in the ignition so he could drive through the gate to her house. “After we’ve killed the dragons, we’ll discuss this a lot.”
CHAPTER 42
Dirk sat in the living room watching a movie on his laptop. He’d been up all night waiting for his father to get home. Every few minutes he scanned Tori’s social website looking for an update from her—anything that would give him a hint of what had happened. She never posted anything. She hadn’t blocked or unfriended him either. Some of the Slayers could be dead. All of them, maybe. How would he know?
If anything had happened to his father, he would have heard about it by now. Someone would have called and woken up Cassie. She would be wailing around the house. So his father was safe. Probably.
As light was breaking, Dirk’s father strode inside. He smelled of smoke. His clothes and hair were covered in soot and dried blood. Dirk put down his laptop and stood up. “Are you okay?”
His father glowered at him. “It’s not my blood. Your friends killed Kihawahine.”
Dirk’s stomach fell. He stared at his father, not knowing what to say. Kiha—always so easy to handle, so beautiful—she was gone. At the same time, relief seeped through Dirk. The Slayers hadn’t all been killed then. Had any of them died? Could he ask his father about it without it seeming like he was more concerned about their lives than Kiha’s death? “What happened?” Dirk settled on.
His father grunted, then headed across the living room to his den. Dirk followed him. “What happened
?” he asked again.
Dirk’s father went to the liquor cabinet in the back of the room, opening it with quick, angry motions. “The Slayers reached Ryker before we did. He’s a flyer and his cousin is a Slayer, too, although an untrained one. I never saw her do anything except stand by Dr. B.”
While Dirk’s father took out a bottle of scotch, he began a terse rundown of events. He drank wine or sherry when he was celebrating, scotch when he was mad. He downed a glass while he related the play-by-play—adding lots of dark commentary. “Then your lovely little girlfriend shot off the chain straps and your BFF blasted Kihawahine. He didn’t stop firing for a long time. He got a kick out of it, seeing her bleeding and helpless on the ground.”
So Tori and Jesse were both still alive. None of the Slayers died. The worry that had tightened Dirk’s insides all night loosened. He could breathe again without feeling like something was stabbing into him.
Dirk’s father took out the scotch bottle again. “After that I flew back to the Catskills and spent the rest of the night getting rid of the evidence. We had to cut into Kihawahine’s underbelly, plant explosives inside her, and then hack through parts of her scales. We moved her piece by severed piece.” He poured himself another drink. “I’ve decided not to gun down Tori and Jesse. I’ll capture them, drug them so they lose their powers, then throw them in the nursery and let the fledglings tear them apart.” He put the bottle back into the liquor cabinet. “I’ll wait until Jupiter and Vesta have already eaten so they’re not hungry. That way they’ll do it slowly.”
Dirk eyed his father to see if he was serious. His father swirled the liquid in his glass, then took a drink. He didn’t seem to be joking.
“You won’t,” Dirk said. “In return for my cooperation, you promised you wouldn’t kill any of the Slayers.”
His father slammed his glass down on the desk so hard the glass cracked and little splinters skidded across the wood. “Don’t tell me what I’ll do to my enemies!” He stepped closer to Dirk. The smell of the scotch on his breath mingled with the scent of blood and smoke. “That’s what they are—my enemies—not your friends.”
“It doesn’t matter what they are,” Dirk said softly. He knew he was treading on dangerous ground. “You made a promise to me, not them, and I’m your son.”
His father turned back to the cabinet and took out another glass. He set it down on the desk with a thud and got the scotch out again. “Look, in the unlikely event that you can’t find a girl you like at your new school, I’ll drive you to a modeling agency, you can pick out whoever you want for your next girlfriend, and I’ll buy her for you. But you’ve got to forget about Tori. Do you understand?”
“You can’t buy a girlfriend,” Dirk said.
His father took a drink. “Yes, I can.”
“Well, you can’t buy one who’ll be my counterpart.”
Dirk’s father whirled on him. “Tori was in the dragon’s mind tonight. I felt her in there, trying to wrest control away from me.”
“Really?” Dirk was so surprised he didn’t mask his admiration. It was hard to get inside a dragon’s mind when another dragon lord was there first. Tori had done it without practice, without ever being in a dragon’s mind beforehand.
His father waved his glass at Dirk, irritated he was missing the point. “She. Is. Dangerous. Do you understand that? The other Slayers can kill the dragons. She can take control of one and make it kill us.”
“She could also be a powerful ally,” Dirk said.
His father let out a huff of exasperation and took a drink. “I think we can deduce from the two dragons she’s already killed that she’s not interested in being an ally.”
“You said Tori got Kiha’s shield off but Jesse was the one who killed her. Why didn’t Tori kill her? She had to be close enough.”
“The dragon turned on her too fast.” Dirk’s father said, but his voice had a tone of hesitation to it, as though he wasn’t quite sure.
“Tori couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not after she’d been inside Kiha’s mind. I was with Tori after Tamerlane died. She felt horrible about it and she hadn’t even connected with him.”
“She’s a Slayer.” His father gripped his glass harder. “And that means she needs to be stopped.”
“She’s a dragon lord. And you promised not to hurt her.”
His father scowled.
“She can be turned,” Dirk insisted.
His father swallowed the last of his drink, slammed the glass down on the table and stalked out of the room. He hadn’t agreed to leave Tori alone, but then again, he’d stopped threatening to make her dragon food. It was progress.
Dirk returned to the living room, picked up his laptop, and went to his room to get some sleep. Before he crawled into bed, he checked the computer one last time. Tori had written him a message.
Dirk,
I suppose you’ll count this as the fourth time you saved my life. Thank you. There, I said it, even if I’m still mad at you. How can you do this? You can’t. Don’t. Come back to our side.
C
Dirk deleted the message so his father wouldn’t see it. Tori was naive if she thought the other Slayers would ever take him back. They wouldn’t forgive him, let alone trust him again.
It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going back.
He didn’t write Tori. That was the nice thing about having her connected to the fledglings. Later on when Tori and he weren’t so tired, he would visit Vesta and then Jupiter and explain in detail why he’d done what he’d done. You couldn’t argue with history. Conquerors always won by using force. You had to get rid of the dead growth in order to have new growth.
Tori could be part of the new growth, part of the new world, instead of being cut down while she tried to protect a decaying system. She had to realize that.
Because she was the last person in the world Dirk wanted to cut down.
CHAPTER 43
Tori was grounded for two weeks. It could have been worse, especially since her parents weren’t amused by all the videos on the Internet that showed her flying around the Washington Monument with Jesse and Dirk.
Tori told them she had rushed out of the Halloween party at the hospital because she’d forgotten she promised some of her camp friends that she would help them with a stunt project they were working on for a film class. They’d rented expensive equipment and had to get the project done right away. Then Tori told her parents that she’d fought with Dirk because he dropped her phone in the reflecting pool and ruined it, which was why she couldn’t answer any of their phone calls. She ended up breaking up with Dirk and was so upset she spent all night talking with her other camp friends.
It was a lame excuse and Tori was lucky that her parents believed it. They spent so much time lecturing her about leaving without permission, and about not letting them know where she was, and about doing things that ended up going viral on Internet, they didn’t ask her a lot of questions about other things. Her parents made several new rules including ones about what sort of videos she was allowed to be in. As if she needed to be reminded not to put on the Supergirl outfit again. Nearly everyone at Tori’s school had left comments on the Internet videos—critiquing her performance, her outfit, and the obvious Photoshopping that had occurred when Dirk and Jesse had wrestled on the side of the Washington Monument.
Really, when had the public become so jaded?
Dr. B mailed Tori her old watch back with a note saying it was now secure and safe to use. She had been hoping that Theo would come up with something new and less tacky, but was glad to have it back anyway. It made her feel more secure to know she had a way to contact the other Slayers. She called Dr. B right away for an update. She hadn’t heard anything in the news about a dead dragon being discovered in the Catskill Mountains and hoped the authorities were just keeping it under wraps.
Unfortunately, Dr. B’s sources hadn’t turned up any news about the dragon being found, either. “Overdrake most likely removed the telling e
vidence,” Dr. B said, and then after a pause added, “at least I hope that’s it. I hope Overdrake doesn’t have people in our government who are covering up for him.”
It wasn’t a happy thought.
“In better news,” Dr. B went on, “since the other Slayers’ parents think their children are working with the FBI on a secret drug case, I’ve been able to hold several practices. Chameleon and Aspen are coming up to speed quickly.” Aspen? Tori supposed that was Willow. “The group meshes together nicely,” Dr. B added.
“That’s good.” Tori hadn’t meshed so well with everyone when she first joined. And now she couldn’t help but feel left out. All of them were together. Jesse was getting to know his counterpart and Willow.
Perhaps her feelings came through in her tone. Dr. B said, “We wish you could be with us, but of course it’s a little harder to get you out of school.”
“Which team will Chameleon and Aspen be on?” Tori asked.
“We’ll decide later. Right now we’re practicing as one team.”
Tori heard Bess in the background, talking and laughing with someone. Was it Ryker? Willow? Maybe Jesse?
“I need to go,” Dr. B said. “I’ll call you as soon as we plan any weekend practices. Let me know if you hear anything new from the dragons.”
He told her good-bye, and then Tori was alone in her room. Disconnected from the Slayer world again.
* * *
Tori hadn’t meant to drive to the Natural History Museum on the second Saturday of November—her first official day of being ungrounded. In fact, when she thought about the day at all, it was only to reflect how sad it was that she and Jesse couldn’t meet. Still somehow she found herself driving to downtown D.C. that morning.
It was just to reassure herself that Jesse wouldn’t be there, she told herself. It was closure.
She parked her car at L’Enfant Plaza and walked to the museum. It was only eleven thirty, and she didn’t want to stand around looking at the elephant for a half an hour—she’d already done that in August—so she went up to the balcony on the second floor and walked around while she waited. For closure, nothing else.