Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  I let the video play forward. About two minutes passed with nothing, then the door pushed open and a pig walked into the room.

  “What the—?” I said.

  It wasn’t just a pig, it was a boar. A white boar, with no ears.

  After it gently pushed the door open, it ran into the room, knocking over boxes and hit the desk so the computer came crashing down. The video did not record audio, but my guess was that what the boar was doing had to be pretty loud. The boar ran out of the camera’s view only to run back a minute later. It ran to the door it came in from, stopped by the door and used its tail to slowly close it to only a crack. A minute later the door closed all the way, and then the lock turned back into a locked position.

  I paused the video and we both just sat there for a minute.

  “I think I’m going to need to see that again,” I said.

  After we watched the recording the second time, Wyvern said, “There was something in her mouth when she ran back into the bathroom.”

  Rewinding the video to the part where the boar ran past, I paused it and saw that he was right, there was something white that looked like a piece of paper sticking out of the boar’s mouth.

  We were both quiet for a long minute, and then I said, “We really need to talk to your mom.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I’ve never even heard of a were-pig,” Mele said from the back seat of the car Wyvern just bought.

  We had left the Vervari at the house. It took a little convincing, but when I told Wyvern that there was no way he could leave his Vervari out of sight for more than fifteen minutes on the other side of the island without it being at the very least keyed, he reluctantly agreed to buy, not rent, a less conspicuous vehicle.

  According to him ‘renting’ anything was just tossing away money. I wasn’t actually that surprised to learn that Wyvern owned the Vervari and had shipped it over for his vacation.

  Wyvern made a phone call to his steward and then twenty minutes later someone dropped the new car off at my house. The whole thing made me a little sick to my stomach.

  Less than an hour after Wyvern had decided to buy the car, we were driving through the seemingly endless cane fields that separated the tourist side of the island from the side of the island where tourists were not welcome.

  “Were-boar,” Wyvern corrected Mele. He did not look quite right in a just-plain sedan. Even though today he was as casual as I had ever seen him, wearing baggy-ripped jeans and a T-shirt, with his hair tied-back at the nape of his neck, he still would have fit better in the Vervari.

  I forced my gaze away from Wyvern. “I’ve never heard of a were-boar infection either,” I said, “And if she was a were-boar, how could she get past the water wards?”

  “Maybe she had one of those charms we’re going to go get from the witch?” Mele suggested.

  “No, she still wouldn’t have been able to change into a boar inside the wards,” I said. “Regardless, at the end of the recording she ran back into the bathroom. Nothing we found out explains how she disappeared from the bathroom. It just raises a million more questions.”

  “You say she broke into the office next to the bathroom and ran around crashing into things?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Honua was in there for a really long time, but I did not hear anything,” Mele said.

  “You were there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Keanu, Auli and I were waiting outside the door,” she said.

  “Who suggested that you use that restroom?” I asked, looking back at her.

  “Um,” her eyes looked up in thought, “Honua told Keanu she had to go to the bathroom, but said there was a line for the bathroom in the living room and basement. I think Keanu suggested they use the one in his room, but Honua said she had seen someone go in there. Keanu then said that we could use the guest room bathroom but he had to make sure that the water was still on because they were doing construction on it on Monday. I remembered as we walked there Honua was really grateful.”

  “So you went with her?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I remember I wanted to wash my hands, there had been something gross on my cup or something,” Mele said, looking down like she was trying to remember. “We went to the bathroom; we checked and the water worked. Honua went in and did not come out.”

  “Was there anything weird about the bathroom afterward?” I asked.

  “Actually, the water in the sink was running,” she said. “I thought that was a little weird.” After a second Mele said, “Do you think that’s important?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “Possibly.”

  “I did not really think that much about it at the time, but I had just used the bathroom in Keanu’s room and I did not see anyone go in after me. When she said someone was in there, I just figured she saw someone go in while I was grabbing my drink. So you think Honua was trying to get Keanu to take her to that bathroom?” Mele asked.

  “Yes,” I said before telling them in detail what Keanu had said about his father moving his office to the downstairs guest room. “Keanu said that Senator Hale’s office usually had a ‘fortress’ level of security,” I said, “however, as he had arranged for the doorway to be framed into the wall three days later, he had only turned the bathroom door around so that the lock was on the outside. Also, he did not know his kids were throwing a party. Honua broke into the office during a three day lapse in what sounded like near constant high security. She changed into a boar likely to mask her identity, trashed the office, and then took something. Which probably means—”

  “Honua was working for or with someone.” Wyvern said, he did not take his eyes off the road, “This was planned out, extensively.” What Wyvern was feeling did not show on his face.

  For a second, I considered touching him so I could read him, but I dismissed the idea.

  “I agree, it was planned over a long period of time, and somebody had to have given her inside information,” I said. “Maybe one of the people who helped moving the boxes or setting up the surveillance system.”

  Actually, as I had already come to that conclusion before I left the house, I forced Lorelei to promise to spend all of her free time watching the security footage of the office. I also told her to capture images of everyone who had stepped into the office since last Thursday. Lorelei had grumbled about the work, as she grumbled about doing almost anything, but I knew she would do it.

  “I don’t get it,” Mele said, disbelievingly, “Honua has been going to our school for at least a year. Do you mean that she’s infected and has been pretending to be human for that long just to be able to break into Keanu’s father’s office?”

  “She’s human,” Wyvern said, saving me from blustering through a response.

  “Can you really be sure—?” I asked.

  “Yes, I can,” Wyvern said, “It’s one of the aspects I inherited, I can read dracon power levels, and that includes infected humans.”

  “Yes, but is it ever faulty? Like, say, she was wearing something like we’re going to try to get for Mele,” I said, giving him a significant look.

  “Yes, it’s possible,” he said, “But I have another aspect that would not ever be faulty. I can read what aspects a dracon has and what infection an infected human has. If she had something that masked her power, I would still be able to read her ability. She would just look like an infected pretending to be human…or a dracon pretending to be human.”

  My jaw slackened and I stared at him. This explained so much. He knew from the first time he saw me that I was pretending. No wonder he reacted the way he did.

  Everything my grandfather did to hide me was for nothing.

  “Is that aspect… known?” I asked.

  “That my father and I can read power levels is well known, yes. But not many know I can read what aspect or infection someone has, that is my own, I did not inherit it.”

  Like me.

  I had never heard of another dracon inheriting an aspect their
parent or grandparent did not have. “Honua is entirely human,” Wyvern said, throwing yet another impossibility into this case.

  “Am I?” Mele said.

  “No,” Wyvern said.

  “I’ve been infected?”

  “Yes.”

  Her tight expression looked as if she was fighting emotion, but was determined to not show any. She swallowed hard, and then asked, “Do you know what type of infection I have?”

  “No. I’ve never infected anyone before,” he said, “I would never infect anyone intentionally.”

  “What do the humans your father infects turn into?” Mele asks.

  “Have you ever heard of the white hags?”

  Mele gasps, “Oh. My. Gods…”

  “You are not a white hag,” Wyvern said. “I don’t know what you are; I’ve never seen another one like you.”

  “But you have all the same powers as your father?” she asked, not sounding convinced.

  “I have the same level of power as my father, but only half his aspects, and some of the aspects I have are different from what he has. I don’t know if that means something to you... But it does mean that you’ll probably be very different from the white hags.”

  “How can you have the same power level as your father?” I asked in a low voice.

  “I asked him about it once. He says he discovered a well-kept secret,” Wyvern responded with a lowered voice. He looked at me, “Can you guess who was keeping that very well-kept secret? My guess would be a dracon who valued his hoard above his pride.”

  My head was reeling. I turned to look out my window.

  “What would that dracon allow to keep his secret?” Wyvern whispered.

  The sugar cane rose and fell in waves. From this view, it appeared like the cane fields stretched on forever, as if we were adrift on a sea of sugar cane.

  Besides that we both had way more power and ability than we predictably should have had, Wyvern and I, in my mind, only had one other thing in common. To make sure, I asked. “You said your mother is Mabiian?”

  “One hundred-percent,” Wyvern said.

  “You don’t look Mabiian,” Mele said, leaning in from the back seat, “Honua doesn’t either.”

  “Honua is one hundred-percent Mabiian also,” Wyvern said, “My mother said I must have bleached her womb, because of who my father is.”

  “Turn left here,” I said as we came to a fork in the road. “We’re almost there.”

  The cane fields ended abruptly about three miles up the road. Houses of varying sizes lined the street, the majority of them white stucco. In most yards clothes on laundry lines blew gently from the wind.

  “Drive slow,” I said, touching Wyvern’s arm.

  Slowing just in time, a group of kids ran into the road and past our car. A group of women sat on the stairs of one house, singing and leaning on each other.

  “Turn right after the school,” I said. “We need to go all the way through this town, the witch we are visiting lives in the next town over.”

  A group of older Mabiian men that were standing around a truck in front of the school watched us as we passed. After staring straight at me, one of them turned to say something to his buddies.

  “That man just said ‘dracon,’ and his friend is calling someone,” Wyvern said.

  “How good is your hearing?” I asked, amazed. Wyvern’s window was open only a crack and the men were on the opposite side of the car to him.

  He glared at me, “We could be walking into some sort of a trap.”

  “Relax,” I told him, “The people around here only answer to one authority and it isn’t the government.”

  “I don’t know about you, Dakota,” Mele said from the back seat, “But I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about the idea of being surrounded by the Hells’ Hogs.”

  “My family has…connections with them,” I said, meaningfully to Wyvern. Then to Mele, I said, “Bobby rides with them.”

  “You’ve hung out with a motorcycle gang?” Mele said in a tone that would have come off as disgusted, if there wasn’t a little bit of interest in it.

  I said, “When I was little, my dad used to represent the club before he died, so I knew most of them from back then. Bobby rides with them still, but he’s not part of the club. I see them around only once and a while these days.”

  The Hells’ Hogs Motorcycle Club did not work for my grandfather, exactly, but he and they were allies. There was no love lost between the club and the Mabi government or police, as that the club ran every illegal industry the island chain had to offer. My grandfather had seen the profit in good relations with the club when their ancestors had been running moonshine. It was a perfect marriage because my grandfather could remain in good standing with the law on the surface, while secretly backing and profiting from industries that did not. In return, my grandfather kept the club members rich, powerful and for the most part, out of prison.

  The human-police might give out a speeding ticket or respond to an emergency call in the tourist areas across the island chain; but in the places the tourists did not visit, it was the club that Mabiian’s turned to for protection. Their leader, Ailani, was the second most revered and feared person on the island chain after my grandfather.

  Even though it was a Monday morning, the parks were always full of families and groups of men and women eating or just talking story.

  We drove through the main area of town and into the rainforests at the base of the West Mabiian Mountains.

  “I can’t believe that Honua drives this far everyday just to go to school,” I muttered. “What is it…a two and a half hour drive?”

  The town the witch’s house was in, was well into the jungle that clung to the series of ridges that made up the mountain range. The West Mabiian Mountains took up half of Mabi but only those who took the helicopter tour over it ever saw it. There were no roads that led into the mountains, only a dense jungle that carried a deadly reputation. Even the towns that sat at the bottom of the mountains surrounded in jungle were vastly less populated than the five towns that clung to this side of Mabi’s coast.

  The town Baawe had maybe a hundred or so houses and the witch’s store was close to the coffee shop, library, restaurant and the general store that made up the downtown.

  I was not sure of the witch’s name; I had only been to her store once before. After my father died and I inherited his dampener, Glacier took me here to have the witch make sure the water charm was safe for me to use. Aside from my father purchasing the dampener, my visit was the only time I knew that my family went to this witch for anything. My grandfather employed many witches, but she was not one of them, she was just the only witch I knew of that worked with water magic.

  The store was on a raised foundation, as most of the houses in the town were. White paint chipped off the wooden walls and the railings around the wraparound porch. It looked almost intentionally rustic. Water Magic was painted in black ink across a placard over the door.

  As with every other building I had seen in this town, thick ferns surrounded the store as if the jungle was plotting to take the land back.

  Stepping out of the car, I inhaled air thick with the scent of flowers and wet dirt. I said to Mele and Wyvern, “I’ll be just a moment.”

  Ignoring me, they both just climbed out of their car doors and walked up the stairs to the porch.

  “Seriously guys,” I said, a little panicked, “Let me go in first.” I had to get my story straight with the witch so she wouldn’t blow my cover with Mele.

  “No way, Dakota,” Mele said, “He isn’t going to wait out here with me no matter what you say and I’m not waiting in the car like a wrapped little present for the Hells’ Hogs. You did not tell me that we were going to Baawe. You know this is where their gang-house is, right?”

  “Motorcycle Club,” I said, “Yeah, but they’re not going to bother us, trust me.”

  Mele glared; she looked more frazzled than I had ever seen her. She wore Lorelei’s cl
othes that fit a little better than mine, but her usually effortlessly-polished appearance was replaced with a stressed, tired and a little ill look.

  She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and leaned by the doorframe, “I’ll just be right here,” she said.

  While I opened the door, I said, “Cigarettes are-”

  “I will smack you if you finish that sentence, Dakota,” Mele said.

  Raising my arms in surrender, I walked into Water Magic. That was why my hands were raised in surrender, as someone literally shot me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As a streak of pain burnt across the side of my arm Wyvern shoved me to the floor. I had planned on heading there anyway, but the shove had me hitting my shoulder before I managed to tuck, roll, and get to my feet.

  Across the store, Wyvern held a middle-aged Mabiian woman I recognized as the water witch by her neck. She was not a thin woman but Wyvern looked like he was holding up all of her weight with one hand. Wyvern held the gun she tried to shoot me with in his other hand. He looked the same deadly calm that he had in the car before he turned into a dragon. I could sense his control unraveling at its seams.

  “Dakota?” Mele yelled from outside, “Are you okay? What was that?”

  “We’re fine!” I called back, “Just knocked something over. Don’t come in!” To Wyvern I said, very calmly, “Wyvern, she’s disarmed.”

  He did not let go of her throat as he set her down, but he must have loosened his hold because she gasped in a breath. The witch’s brown-eyed gaze fixed on me and she started kicking and punching Wyvern while breathing in ragged breaths.

  “Stop it,” Wyvern growled. “You are getting very annoying.”

  The witch started sobbing. “It’s not my fault they’re dead!” Still kicking and fighting, she screamed at me, “I’m not letting you take my soul!”

  I sighed.

  My reputation had preceded me.

  “It’s fine, Wyvern,” I said, “This… happens sometimes. It’s an easy fix now she’s disarmed.” I closed the distance to where the witch was now having an all-out fit.