Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  "Is she underage?" the vampire asked. I knew he stood directly behind me, though I had not worked up the guts to turn away from Rustom. Cold fingers wrapped around my arm.

  I turned but did not look up at the vampire’s face and when he began to tug on my arm, I followed meekly.

  "Guard the door," the vampire said to Rustom as he pulled me out of the hall into his office which I did not realize we were three feet from. The door clicked behind me.

  Out of the fire pit, into the volcano…

  I paused to compose myself while glancing around at the spacious sleek room; everything in it had a glassy, sterile look.

  The vampire kept his gaze on me as he circled to the other side of a possession-free black shiny desk. "I have to apologize for my manager’s rough treatment of you; he takes underage drinking very seriously."

  "I did not have a sip of alcohol," I said, standing up straight to look up and meet the vampire’s gaze. He looked so young; it was creepy, knowing that a century old sociopath looked out from that cherubic boy-next-door teenage face.

  He took me in too, hungrily. I did not need my powers or to touch him to know how he felt, I did dress for him tonight.

  I crossed to the desk. "Please, don't call the police," I whispered, pleading.

  "I don't break the law lightly." He narrowed his eyes on me. "What will you do for me?" he asked. After a hundred years of doing this, he could not have come up with a better line?

  I reached out to touch his hand, making him smile. Creep. His hand wasn't exactly cold, just cool and inhuman feeling.

  "This," I whispered, reaching up I unclasped my dampener.

  I could tell the moment he registered who I was, but it was too late; I had a good grip on his hand and forced my power to dive into his soul.

  Souls have layers, like onions, but the first few layers of his soul, of any soul, aren’t actually the true soul. Like a needle, I immediately drove my power deep through all the layers and uncoiled only enough true soul to keep his body paralyzed, but no more.

  Immediately, I retreated back three layers, and sorted through his surface emotions, the first layer of disposable surface emotions that were constantly used and shed.

  "Wait!" he shouted. In other circumstances, even the weakest vampire or were-animal could crush me with a little bit of their inhuman strength, however, it did not take too much soul to paralyze a person’s body and I had drawn enough.

  I had not drawn enough to paralyze his mouth though; unfortunately, I had been told not to do that.

  He started pleading, "I'll pay him, just stop!"

  With my power, I started drawing on the little pockets of happiness I found within his impermanent layers and his happiness trickled into me. When I had collected it all, there wasn’t much, I pulled it into me and burrowed deeper. I delved into the next layer, his deeper emotions. Like a damn breaking, the joy filtered into me and went from a trickle to a torrent.

  Unfortunately, though I pulled his emotions into me, I could not digest them or any other person’s emotions, they just filled me up like a balloon. I had back-up to help me with that.

  With a flick, I opened the ring I wore on my finger, my grandfather's ring, and fed Samuel’s emotions through me and into it. The ring was a portal that only emotions could pass through and it consumed the emotions greedily.

  "It's not about payouts this time, Samuel Brooke. This is about revenue,” I said, reciting the script I memorized. “There have been too many highly publicized deaths at your night club. Seven girls died here in seven months. For the first time in ten years, my grandfather's human Mabi resorts are at eighty percent capacity."

  My power examined his soul, picking and choosing, and then dragging every positive emotion from it, like a rake against his soul.

  I went off script and whispered, "Is this how you killed them, Samuel? Was I next?"

  I had seen the crime-scene photos; my grandfather always included the nasty details so I used my power without remorse. It never worked.

  The flare of fear that passed through the vampire might as well be his response, ‘well yes, you were.’

  After a hundred years and the supernatural upgrade that he received from being infected, the waste of space had more soul than he ever deserved.

  I raised my other hand to his forehead, and broke into the next layer, the emotional-memories, the final layer before the true soul. This was the part I hated the most, sorting through his memories, having them play in my head, living through his emotions.

  However, in his memories I found a lack of emotion, emptiness. He only felt satisfied when he was taking power, stealing innocence then throwing the remains to his pet tiger.

  "I want to die," he moaned.

  "You won't. My grandfather respects your business sense; he's not ready to dispose of you. You will serve him faithfully." I fed a little of his own joy back into him. "Setting stacks of bills into my grandfather’s palm will be the only thing that ever brings you joy." I feed a little more of his happiness back in, training his deeper emotions to follow my commands. "If another girl dies and my grandfather suspects you ever even glanced at her, he won’t send me, he'll send one of my uncles."

  Samuel’s gaze met mine and I saw terror there, of me, of my uncles, it flowed through him thick and viscous, but it was nothing to the feeling of hatred he had for me.

  And like every other time that I've delivered this message to the dangerous men and women in my grandfather’s employment, I knew this was just one more way that my grandfather owned me, and would always own me. The only thing that would ever keep me safe from his enemies or even the people who worked for him was his protection.

  With a concentrated effort I gave Samuel the coil of his true soul that I had held within me back to him. I stepped away as I lost control of his body.

  I always gave every drop of the true soul back.

  He slumped onto his desk.

  "I'm texting my uncles, Glacier and Bobby, that we’re finished with our chat," I fastened the charm bracelet dampener back on my wrist. "They’re probably getting worried. Bobby is ready to slice his way through your club in about…" I glanced at my watch, "…thirty seven seconds. Tell your tiger to escort me safely to my uncles, they’re waiting out front. Or they'll both come in."

  Without hesitating, Samuel Brooke called in his tiger and I was escorted out.

  Chapter Two

  I fought the urge to sit on the curb of my driveway as I waited. Glacier was late. Well, he wasn’t actually late but for the first time ever my uncle Glacier wasn’t ridiculously early to drive me to school.

  I looked back over my shoulder at my mother's ‘ocean-view’ mansion. The mansion monstrosity, as I liked to think of it, was by far the most luxurious house I had ever lived in. It was two stories, almost entirely made up of windows with an eastern-flare to its tiered roofs; it stretched out along a cliff overlooking one of the popular west-side beaches. When neighbors or people who we did not know came over, my mother claimed she had it built after my father died.

  This was a lie.

  The house was a rental and we could not even afford it. Not a single eastern-style end-table in there belonged to us.

  Finally, the silver minivan pulled into the driveway that led up to where I waited. When the van stopped and the door slid open I was shocked to find my uncle Bobby in the car with Glacier. This was another first.

  "Happy Friday, Dakota," Bobby said as he scooted over in the back seat.

  Though I usually sat in the front seat, I crawled in next to him, pushing my backpack under the seat and sliding the van door shut. "Happy Friday Bobby…” I said suppressing a groan, “What are you doing here?"

  He swung his arm around my shoulders. Bobby's soul was even larger and warmer than he was, and Bobby’s body-builder body always seemed to take up the majority of the room, whether he was in the bench seat of a minivan or in an indoor shopping mall.

  I settled onto the seat and let the tendrils of his b
right soul brush against my own.

  When I did not wear my charm bracelet, my power dampener, I saw souls. Beyond being able to gage someone’s level of power, it was actually a pretty useless part of my ‘aspect.’ Seeing someone’s soul was the equivalent of ‘seeing’ someone’s personality, too abstract and complex to give me much of any readable information. Just because I could see a person’s soul, did not always mean I could tell what emotion that person was feeling. Sometimes it was obvious, if the person had an emotion so extreme that it overtook the whole surface-area of their soul. I might see, for example, it sparking with anger or lighting up with amusement or buckling into itself with grief.

  However, if I wanted to get an accurate read on a person’s emotions, that was their surface, deeper or memory emotions, I always had to touch the person and dive into them with my power.

  It was hard to explain really, even now I had a hell of a time explaining it to my grandfather who immediately saw the practical application for my abnormal ‘aspect.’

  What I told him was that I saw a second body made of light—though that was not exactly it, more like colored mist— wreathing the person. Human’s souls were a little smaller, less dense than those who were born with or infected by dragon blood. The more magic a person had in their blood, the denser, larger, and, often times, overpowering their soul was.

  "Who pissed in your corn flakes?” Bobby said to me, chuckling. “I thought you'd be happy to see me." His massive bulk easily took up two thirds of the bench seat even after he scooted over.

  Looking at Bobby you automatically thought ‘biker,’ he had it all: the girth, sloppily greased back hair and a concealed weapon bulge on his back, all he was missing was his usual leather jacket, his big gleaming motorcycle and one of his biker mamas to ride off into the sunset with.

  Him- in the minivan- it just wasn’t right.

  "I am happy to see you," I said, yawning. "I need coffee. Lots of coffee."

  I did not sleep last night. Even after releasing all the emotions that I had drained into my grandfather’s ring, I still had that vampire’s emotional-memories stuck in my head. They slimed their way through my thoughts, foreign and wrong. What really kept me up was when I remembered feeling what gave that waste-of-space joy-energy, and that the residue of those acts had passed through me.

  The thought that I could somehow still have tiny remnants of that creep in me gave me shudders now, or it could be Glacier’s sub-zero air-conditioning.

  "Can you turn down the freezer?" I asked.

  Bobby squeezed my arm and gave me a warning look.

  I glanced forward to my other uncle. And, not for the first time, I realized I was completely oblivious to Glacier.

  Bobby's presence was just so... big, sometimes it over-shadowed everyone else around. But just glancing Glacier’s way, I knew that he was pissed off.

  His appearance, as always, was impeccable; his black hair was glued back into little dark comb lines leading from his temple to the perfect line at his nape. His dark blue suit was pressed to the point that it looked unnatural and I knew that poor suit lived under constant threat of being burned if it dared to snag or brush against a fleck of dirt.

  You could never tell from my uncle Glacier’s expression or tone what he felt yet my uncle Glacier was an emotional-broadcaster. I could read his feelings like he wrote them out for me in a live journal. He was actually one of the only broadcaster’s I had ever come across.

  "He is not happy." Glacier said. He did not need to clarify who he was talking about; by 'he' Glacier meant the big 'he', the 'he’ of all of our lives, my grandfather.

  "What did I do now?" I asked, a little defensively.

  "If I have to tell you, you don't deserve to be on my team." Glacier's voice did not ever change, not in pace or cadence, not from the happiest statements to the bleakest. However, it was chill from his soul, not the air conditioner that gave me shivers.

  "I’m sorry, Glacier. I'll never do it again."

  "What is the fourth rule?"

  I shifted, uncomfortable that after five years of working for my grandfather under Glacier's lead, he was again reviewing basics. Swallowing any retort, I said, "If any change that has not been taken into consideration while preparing for the job occurs then immediately abort and regroup."

  Bobby sighed and squeezed my shoulder, "She reported, I told her to keep going."

  If possible, Glacier's temperature lowered.

  "Bobby," Glacier said in the exact voice I would use to tell a very irritating person to ‘shut up’. "The only thing you're proving is you're incompetent back-up. Dakota knows her orders."

  "Bobby told me to—”

  Bobby pinched my arm really hard.

  “Friggin’ hells,” I hissed under my breath, I slugged Bobby back, but because of the angle it did not have much power behind it.

  Glacier stared at us in the rearview mirror for longer than I thought was really safe while driving. "Dakota, you're doing reconnaissance and back up for Deagan only—“

  “You’re demoting me to a grunt?” I said, shocked.

  “It is a temporary demotion; you will only be a collector for three months."

  "Three months!" I want to cry. "Grunt work and back up for Deagan? That’s what? Like five hundred a job? And why Deagan?”

  “He’s your brother,” Glacier said.

  “Half-brother and he's a no-talent ass clown," I said.

  Bobby chuckled. “Yeah he is.”

  I can’t keep the pleading out of my voice this time. "Why can’t I work with you, or Bobby? I’m a soldier, I’ve earned it."

  My half-brother Deagan was a grunt through and through—the official term was ‘collector;’ basically, the job of a glorified bill collector, and Deagan loved his work.

  "Bobby is suspended and I need someone reliable at my back, not a soldier who decides to follow the rules at her convenience.”

  I gave Bobby an apologetic look. I got him suspended? And what would have happened if he had admitted he told me to ‘abort’? I would be much more than re-assigned. I turned to Glacier and said, "I'm sorry, okay?"

  I knew I had very little time before we arrived at my school and I wanted to make my case. The real reason I did not abort wouldn't melt his heart—pun not intended— but my unique aspects and ability to talk myself out of trouble was why I was the first girl in the history of our family allowed to be a soldier. Well, I might also be the only girl who ever wanted to be a soldier- also lovingly referred to as a henchman.

  Hey, it was better than being a grunt or worse yet, a wife.

  I spouted off the first lie I could come up with, "I know I broke the fourth rule, but I was doing it hoping to put in practice your recent lesson on quick thinking and improvisation in evasion in hostile situations. Rustom had already spotted me--"

  Glacier did not even let me finish. "Three months shadowing someone who follows the rules to the letter will be good for you."

  "And by ‘good,’ he means boring as all the human hells." Bobby said, mussing up my hair.

  Glacier chose to ignore the comment and threw back a bag.

  Opening the bag I stared in at the real reason I did not abort.

  Bobby reached in and grabbed a stack of bills. "Give me some of that," he said.

  Grabbing the bills back and smacking his head, I zipped closed the bag.

  Glacier sighed and his soul lost some of its chill. "Do you want me to deposit your money into your college account?"

  I glanced at Bobby, and without me needing to ask, he said, "I'm going to the bank, I'll do it." He took the money, and leaned down as if he was setting it down, but stuffed it into my backpack instead.

  "I'll pick you up at three thirty today; he wants to take you to the shooting range," Glacier said.

  "Today?" I said, swallowing down the nervousness and excitement that flashed through me every time my grandfather took time out of his schedule to spend time with me. This presented a little bit of a problem si
nce I had an essential errand to run. "Wait, doesn’t grandfather have a very important guest coming tonight?"

  I knew exactly who was coming tonight. That was what the whole family had been preparing for for weeks. I knew way more than I wanted to about the famous half-dragon Braiden McCormick, Celti in origin, but now lived in New Anglo. He was leader of the Celti-New Anglo Dracon Union, the inheritor of the VDWFH insurance corporation and all the riches of— one of those Mainland New Anglo states. And he was buying a vacation mansion on the base of the Volcano, and coming with a full entourage.

  There was also a lot of talk of him having connections to two of the four high dragon Rexes, the high dragon kings, which I guess was a big deal. Braiden McCormick had been just about all my family talked about. I was already a little tired of Braiden, and the poor dracon had not arrived yet.

  "Braiden and his entourage arrived Wednesday," Bobby said.

  Even with the meaningful stare Bobby was leveling on me it still took me a minute to catch up.

  "Not…that Celti-punk band?”

  “Yep,” Bobby said, giving me a sympathetic pat on my shoulder.

  “By all the dragons," I said, throwing my head back. "No wonder grandfather is pissed at me! Why in all the kingdoms would they go to the Midnight Club to perform?"

  I had not even considered it could be my grandfather’s very important guest on the stage. What was wrong with me? I saw their ridiculous shoes and the way Rustom kicked that techno vampire DJ they usually featured off stage for them, a random Celti werewolf punk band that showed up and felt like playing. And Rustom obeyed that fiddle-player-guy without a twitch of his eye.

  But that guy wasn’t Braiden, he spoke with a New Anglo accent, he must be just one of Braiden’s entourage.

  It all made perfect sense now, why the dracons had so much power, that Celti-sounding lead singer must be Braiden, the only living son of one of the dragon lesser-kings. He was the son of the wolf dragon, Ferris, who started the werewolf infection with a single bite. Actually, as far as humans were concerned, Ferris was one of the most famous dragons in the world.