The moment our group stepped out onto the white sand, Hunter ran past us, scooped up and sprinted off with Auli. From the way her mouth sucker-fished onto his neck, I decided I could rule out Mele’s theory, I am by far more Mabiian than Hunter and Auli seemed to have no problem with him.
“Oh, I don’t want to see that,” Keanu said, turning away and facing the ocean.
“Turn-around is fair play,” I said, then stood on my tiptoes intending to kiss his cheek but I wasn’t tall enough so kissed more his jaw-line.
The smile he turned on me was so radiant that I was literally stupefied for a second. He said, “You are absolutely right.” In one quick move he scooped me into his arms and charged for the ocean.
“Wait, wait! I’m wearing my swimsuit under my clothes,” I squealed, actually completely terrified. “Let me down!”
Running full out for the small shore breaking waves he carried me kicking and at some point laughing hysterically. I knew it was too late when I tasted the salty spray from the waves, then we were both plunged underwater. Only for a second, but since I was laughing, I had to spit out ocean water.
The water rushed out and so did we; I had to start swimming to stay above the water. Keanu surfaced next to me, popped up, kissed me hard and fast on the lips, and then dove under.
“Hey!” I said indignantly to no one, but I was smiling. The water was clear enough that I could see Keanu, but when I grabbed for him, he swam away quick and surfaced out of my reach. My stomach clenched as my mind screamed the same thought I had in the truck: ‘he’s not human’. He was too natural in the water, too fluid; my guess was that his soul would merge perfectly into the cerulean ocean.
Even though I could not really sense any bad effects from being in the ocean, thank goodness I had my dampener on, I started swimming for the shore.
He had to be human, didn’t he?
The water rushed back for a wave and I rode the small swell to the shore. Keanu was close behind me, and he wrapped me in his arms before I could wiggle out of my jeans, his hands wrapped around my hips.
When I looked at Keanu an unintelligible mess of emotions traveled from my head directly into my stomach. If you could believe it, the person whose emotions were the most difficult to read were… my own. I knew, irony, that merciless ass struck again.
Glacier’s voice seemed to scream in my head, ‘rule one: always stay in control of your target. If you lose power and cannot regain it within a minute, abort immediately.’ I haven’t had the power since I took off my charm. But, I did not want to abort. I did not even want to take off my bracelet and try to manipulate his soul again.
If there was a tally, all the points would be scrawled after Keanu’s name, none after mine. I wasn’t even naïve enough to believe I was making more than a fleeting impression on him: a pretty underclassman that a god like Keanu rolled around on the beach once with. The saddest part was that I wanted to make an impression on him; I had wanted to make an impression on him for a while now without leaning on my aspect.
As his lips descended, I closed my eyes to submit to my assignment’s ultimate failure. His lips just brushed mine, giving me the faintest taste of salt from the ocean, then he yanked away from me abruptly.
“Whoa, what was that?” he said.
I opened my eyes to see Keanu raise his hand to where a trickle of blood was running down the side of his forehead. At my concerned expression he said, “I think something hit me.”
Then he dodged, moving me back as a small white object hurtled where he had just been.
We both spun around to see two men and a woman approaching. One of the men flicked his wrist and a small shell came hurdling at us.
I knocked the shell out of the way, though it would have missed me anyway and turned to the jerks that were pestering us. Sheer terror gripped me. I recognized the men, how could this happen twice in a row? This assignment was over. I did not need Bobby to tell me this time, it was time to abort and fast.
I said, “Let’s go.” But when I yanked at the arm Keanu still had wrapped around me, he did not even seem to notice.
Braiden McCormick, his platinum haired friend, and a stunning dracon woman were closing the distance down the beach. The platinum haired man reached down, selected another shell and flicked it at us. Even though it was shooting straight for Keanu he pivoted me behind him and took the hit.
“I’m not looking for trouble, bra,” Keanu said, now bleeding from two places I could see, his arm and head. “You win. Just leave me and my girl alone.”
I stepped out from behind Keanu because I did not cower, ever.
“What the hells?” I heard the yell from behind us, and glancing back saw Hunter running up to join us with Auli close behind.
Braiden McCormick smiled; he looked as friendly and harmless as a giant panting dog. He said with the same accent I heard in the club, “No worries, friend.” He smacked the most recent shell out of the blond man’s hand. “My buddy, Vern, here just has a poor sense of humor.”
And a stupid name. Vern?
Last time I checked that was a name only fit for great-aunts and grandmas.
Vern turned, again sighting me with his dark eyes. He looked me up and down, taking in my sandy, soaked disheveled self. When he raised his eyes back to mine his look was so disapproving and haughty, my jaw clenched of its own accord.
When Vern spoke, it was clearly just to me, “Hello his girl,” he smirked, like the idea that I was ‘Keanu’s girl’ was funny to him. “Go away now and let us talk. I’ll talk to you later.”
Screw this. I did not care if I should have aborted a while back; this jerk visited my island and thought he could kick me out of two places in as many days. I did not think so; I had taken just about as much as I could stand from this jerk.
Before Keanu could stop me, I walked around him and stepped right up to the three dracons. I immediately endured the punch of their combined power, what a group, boy. Even with my dampener on, I staggered for a moment.
Once I regained my breath I said directly into the platinum haired man’s face, with a voice low enough for only him to hear me, “This is a human beach, dracon, you are not welcome.”
This close I could tell that at least two of them were half-dragons if not all of them. The girl could be Braiden’s sister, I remembered hearing that he had a couple.
If I could, I would tell them that they were spitting on my grandfather’s hospitality by trespassing and picking fights with humans, but I obviously could not say that.
My grandfather was the one who advocated for ‘human’s only’ beaches and forbade infected from entering them.
Half my grandfather’s revenue came from his human-only resorts and the humans came to the island specifically for the human-only beaches. His dracon and vampire resort guests vacationed here for the active volcanoes on the other islands and the famous dormant volcano on Mabi. It was this very fragile segregation of his various resort patrons that kept gramps, rich, rich, rich; bottom-line, it would be bad for business.
Not to mention, if the wrong people, like Keanu and Auli’s dad, found out about this infraction of the fragile truce that humans and dracons shared on Mabi, could snap, this would also be bad for business.
Vern stared down his perfect nose at me, probably deciding whether or not to crush me with a swat. I bet he could, too. He said, “I told you to go; I’ll find you later.”
My immediate urge was to do just that and go, go somewhere he could not find me later. I suppressed my fear, knowing that depending on which aspects these dracons had inherited it was very possible one or all of them could sense it. I wished I could manipulate my own emotions, but the best I could do was pretend.
I said, “You first.”
A big warm arm wrapped around me, pulling me back into what I assumed was Keanu’s wide body, right as Hunter ran up, arms flapping and shouting, “You wanna scrap, bra?”
What happened next happened too fast for me to stop it. Hunter’s lean
muscled arm swung at Vern’s chin. The woman dracon stepped in the way and with seemingly no effort she pushed Hunter’s arm, which knocked him off balance; as he stumbled she backhanded him. Hunter flew up; he was airborne for way longer than a human should be. He came down with only one arm braced to break his fall, and that is exactly what it did, break, with a sickening snapping sound.
Auli screamed and ran for Hunter. Keanu tried to pull me toward Hunter but when I did not budge, he stayed and tried to maneuver in front of me.
“Hunter?” he shouted, over his shoulder, “Auli, call dad.”
“Go help him,” I said, pushing Keanu toward his friend. He walked two steps toward Hunter but stayed within my reach.
Never again would I ever believe my situation could not get any worse. In moments my companions and the thirty or so humans around us were going to realize that these three people were absolutely not human. I needed to crowd control, fast.
I shouted, “I thought people trained in martial arts are not supposed to attack people who aren’t trained? You’re obviously some sort of trained fighter; you should not have attacked him. Why don’t you get out of here before we call the police!” As far as explanations went, it was weaker than peanut-brittle, Hunter attacked Vern and we all saw it, but the majority of people will accept the first simple explanation given to them.
Let’s hope.
The dracons weren’t leaving. Of the three, Braiden McCormick was the only one who looked concerned and stepped toward Hunter.
I stopped him by saying, “Please leave, before this gets out of hand.”
He turned to me and said, “We are so sorry. Yeah we’ll leave. Let me give you my information so I can pay the hospital bill.”
“No!” I said emphatically. The last thing I wanted was for these adversaries to find out any more about each other. “Please, just take your friends and go,” I whispered the next part, “And stay out of the human-only zones.”
The hypocrisy of my words was not lost on me.
Braiden gave me an apologetic grimace and started to pull his companions away; by the looks of it, the girl went willingly, Vern did not. He just stood there, his dark eyes aiming at me like the barrels of two rifles while his friend ineffectually pulled at his shoulder.
I gritted my teeth and stared right back, trying not to think about how quickly he could kill me and how little it would matter to him. It was about as effective as staring down a meteor. I wasn’t scared.
Yeah, sure I wasn’t.
Whatever point he had been planning to make with his flying sea shells had not been made. In my experience, half-dragons were too dragon to do anything senselessly. Pure dragons always had a point, some hoped-for result.
“Soon,” Vern said to me. He broke our eye contact by turning and walking away with his companions.
Soon. That was… terrifying. I swallowed an exhalation he might have heard.
I turned from the man I had been so fixed on to Keanu. Though he was still close enough to scoop me up and ferry me away to safety, he was looking at his sister. She was on her cell phone.
Hunter still lay on the sand; his face was white. I walked to him slowly, Keanu close beside me, making sure I did not kick up any sand.
Hunter said, “I’m okay brother, no worries, just an arm. Might be doing one-armed push-ups on my board for a while.”
“Don’t move, Hunter,” I said.
“Duh!” Auli said, spitting the word at me. “The ambulance is on their way. And the police, Keanu, go stop them! They should be arrested.” She pointed down the beach at the dracons, who were almost to the other parking lot.
“You’re kidding, right?” I said to Auli, “Those people are psycho. Keanu is already bleeding from the head.”
“They aren’t people, stupid,” Auli said, her voice cold.
“You don’t think they were werewolves or something do you?” I said, hoping to plant that idea.
“Or something,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If they were arrested maybe they’d—”
“Be quiet, Auli.” Keanu said; it was a command. “Did you call dad?”
She nodded.
“Then that is the end of it,” he said.
To my shock, Auli just shut up. I had no urge to break the tense quiet that fell among us until the ambulance came. There was nothing that I could say, Keanu and Auli knew that the group weren’t human, probably most of the beach did.
When the ambulance did come they all but forced Keanu to ride with them. He objected, but the cut on his head wouldn’t stop bleeding. I told him I would be fine and he finally agreed to leave me with Auli.
The assignment was already dead in the water.
My best estimation of the lasting impression I was able to make on Keanu was as the girl who was too stupid to listen to him when we were attacked by dracons.
When Auli insisted that I should ride in the bed of Hunter’s truck as to not mess up his upholstery with my wet clothes, I told her I would find my own ride home. She did not argue and just waited for me to grab my phone and wallet from where I stashed it in the truck. She peeled out quickly as though to avoid the possibility of my changing my mind.
Bobby rode up on his motorcycle thirty minutes later when my clothes were mostly dry, stiff and itchy, but I did not care.
“Just call me your ferryman,” he said when he halted beside me, “I keep finding you up shit creek.”
“I’m not sure there is any way of coming back from this one, Bobby.” I was serious, but to lighten the mood, I looked down at my clothes, and said, “Look, I already went under.”
“That’s probably the worst way I can think of to go.” He smiled, “Wow, your little charm you have sure does work. Now I’m going to brag to everyone that my niece goes swimming in the ocean for fun. Climb on.” Bobby handed me the helmet he brought for me.
“You could not have teleported us out?” I said.
“Nearest spot is five miles up at Kapii Beach,” he said. “Climb on. And go ahead and cry the jacket is waterproof.” Bobby, as always, saw my unshed tears heavy in my eyes.
I wasn’t far enough gone to cry, not yet.
Chapter Six
“I have an idea,” I said as Clara lifted my hair up, she was trying to find some hairstyle that would make me more elegant. I suggested, “Let’s try for frumpy. Like I’m trying to look good, but it’s just not possible.”
She smiled, her reflection almost lighting up my vanity mirror. Unlike the majority of women on most days Clara used make-up to hide the fact her skin did not have a blemish, she clipped her long thick black lashes short and lightened her rose bud colored lips. She dampened her beauty the way I dampened my powers, and fittingly too, as her beauty was her dracon aspect, the only one she inherited.
She wasn’t dampened today.
“Actually,” I said with a smile, “Just stand near me and I’ll look frumpy no matter how dressed up I am.”
“Don’t be silly,” Clara said while her golden sunlight soul tickled along my scalp. “No one will think you’re frumpy.”
“Then could you paint on a couple wrinkles, maybe a wart?”
She laughed, thinking I was kidding.
I wasn’t.
Clara did not really understand it; no one understood it, no one could fathom why I would rather get punched in the face regularly than be married off. And how could I explain it to her, or any of my family? Marriage was what my sisters had been trained for since birth.
Marriage was what all women who were lucky enough to be ‘blessed’ with one-eighth dragon blood were trained for, they were the best breeding stock to contribute to the strength of their offspring and the chance of more aspects developing, while not having too much dragon blood and losing their fertility. Having one-quarter dragon blood or more made dracon women barren. On the other hand, dragon men, at any level of blood did not face reproductive problems.
So the bottom line was this: in the partial-dragon-men-of-the-world’s eyes, we one-eig
hth-blooded women were a precious commodity, born only to breed and make alliances between families. And there was no limit on how many wives a partial dragon could have, most could afford at least one, but the rule they usually followed was that they would have as many as they could afford and protect.
I would rather be punched in the face every single day for the rest of my life than become some dracon’s wife.
I had escaped that fate, or I thought I had, until today.
Stacy ran into the room, she looked like a baby doll, her dress and ringlets making her look like a ten year old trying to look six years old. She settled on my lap, but pivoted to hug me. I could feel her quivering yet her soul was crackling with excitement.
“Stacy, you’ll wrinkle Dakota’s dress. Come on; up,” Clara said.
“No, it’s okay,” I said, squeezing my little sister, “Wrinkle me.”
Clara sighed, her voice had equal parts amusement and disapproval when she said, “Dakota, you are so dramatic. Stop acting like you are marching to your doom.”
“Doom—that’s a good word, but I think the better description would be damnation.”
“Just be this whiny and no one will want to talk to you anyway,” said my third and last sister, Lorelei, as she entered my doorway. Of my three sisters Lorelei and I looked the most alike, our chestnut hair almost identical, our faces the same oval shape and dark tan color. The biggest difference was that while my extra-special-aspects upped my metabolism to the point where I was underdeveloped, Lorelei was barely fourteen and her large chest and height made her look like my older sister.
Even though the average age for inheriting an aspect was twelve, Lorelei had yet to inherit her aspect; so unlike the rest of us who slowed aging when we inherited our aspects, Lorelei kept going full speed ahead. Lorelei usually looked about seventeen; right now the silky scoop dress she was wearing made her look twenty-five.
Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) Page 7