“There’s even less chance of that,” Harrison said.
“You could always have her be your second wife,” my words came out more biting than I intended.
“I don’t believe in second wives. Would you have a second husband?” Harrison asked, disapprovingly.
“I’m never going to have any husband. Someday, I’m going to be in control of my own life, and I won’t let some dracon take that from me,” I replied before I rolled over, turning away from him.
He didn’t respond, though after several minutes, I heard the sound of him turning the pages in his book. After a long time, I fell back to sleep.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was looking directly at Wyvern’s sleeping face. I must have rolled in my sleep, and he was in the chair that Harrison had been in before, head resting back on his arm.
Heavy curtains were pulled over large windows on one side of the room, but light peeked in from their sides. The room was too dark to see any details still, but light enough for me to make out Wyvern’s features.
When I began to sit up, Wyvern startled, looking around. When his gaze found me, a sleepy smile crept across his face.
“Go back to sleep,” I whispered.
“Not a chance,” he said, reaching up, stretching and yawning.
“Did Harrison go back to the ship?” I asked, glancing around.
“No, he’s still here. Well, he’s not in my room, but he’s still in my house,” Wyvern said.
“This is your house?” I looked around the room, interested, but it was still too dark to see anything.
“Technically.”
“Is my family here too? What happened while I was out? How long was I out?”
Wyvern grinned at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Your family is at your uncle’s for now. You were out for about thirty-six hours, way less time than Harrison predicted,” he said.
“He told you what happened?”
Wyvern nodded.
“Are you mad?” I asked.
“I’ve never been more furious in my life,” he growled.
At my flinch, Wyvern startled. He climbed forward onto the bed. “Not at you Dakota, no, never.” He settled in beside me. Wrapping one arm around my back, he reached forward to run a thumb over my cheek with his other hand. “If you’re dying, you do whatever you have to survive. That will always be what I want, for you to survive.”
“I guess I was pretty close,” I said. I looked up into Wyvern’s earnest face. “Did your friend tell you that I read through his memories?”
“He didn’t.”
“He didn’t betray us,” I said.
“I would never believe he would. I am starting to have doubts that it was his brother either. He’s trying to send his family in to exterminate the vampires that attacked you.”
“Is he going to?”
“Your uncle doesn’t want any of his men on the islands,” Wyvern said.
“Good call. Reeves doesn’t have enough soldiers to protect the island, they’re all in Mailua. Joseph could easily take Mabi island with thirty dracons. With my grandfather out of commission and the vampires across all the islands hating me, and transitively my family, they might be able to take the whole island chain with the help of the vampires.”
“You forgot about me,” Wyvern said, quirking an eyebrow. “I let your grandfather govern these islands without outside interference because of an agreement my father made with him. But if a foreign dracon attacked domestic soil, let alone one of my allies, I could have ten thousand dracon soldiers here in twenty-four hours.”
“I see your point,” I said.
“Still, that’s most likely your uncle’s line of thinking and why he doesn’t want the Oceania dracons here. Reeves grudgingly gave permission for Harrison to stay on as my personal guest if he remains unarmed and I assume full responsibility for his actions.”
“Why would Harrison stay? We need him on the ship, we need him to protect and steal the Regina’s body,” I said, sitting up further.
“Joseph assigned Harrison the mission of finding who set up the attack on you.”
“You and I can do that. If the Regina is restored, the vampires won’t attack again. Problem solved,” I said.
“I don’t think it would be. Someone knows where we’re going to be before we’re there, how our powers work and how we can be used against each other. First we were attacked by humans, and then by vampires. They’re not going to stop. Also, I think the humans might be a bigger threat than the vampires.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’ve been talking to Harrison about your sister. It got me thinking about what you said to me before I went to Mailua, that those humans might have used magic on the dracons there and on your family.”
“Yeah, to make them lose control of their aspects.”
“Harrison has something we don’t, he can smell active magic.”
“I thought you—you can’t sense magic?”
“I can tell what a creature is, but if a witch cast a spell, I’d be as blind to it as anyone.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Your sister didn’t just lose control of her aspect, she still had no control days later. Then there’s your uncle Robert’s disappearance and the fact that he hasn’t reappeared. The dracs in Mailua, and the way they just kept secreting their poison long after everyone was dead.”
“What do you think it is?”
He looked away. “It could be a lot of things…”
The silence dragged on between us and my stomach clenched tighter and tighter. Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I whispered, “Did my sister have a charm on her, something that could have kept a spell going?”
“No, there’s no outside active magic on her. Harrison already checked. Whatever is happening to her, it stopped when she put on the dampener.”
“It’s engrained into her magic?”
“It seems that way,” Wyvern gave me a heavy, sympathetic look.
“You think it’s a curse,” I whispered.
He sighed, looking away. “Not necessarily. It could be a magical infection, if such a thing exists, it could be a lot of things that have cures,” he said quickly, meeting my gaze again. After another long silence he whispered, “There were only two dracons in the world who were ever able to curse, it seems very unlikely that a human would have that ability.”
“Dracon portal makers are rare and Keanu had that ability,” I said.
“Rare, but I know of at least twenty portal makers alive now,” he said. “Did you see anything strange about your sister?”
“No, but I don’t see magic, just souls and emotions. Did Harrison?” I said.
“He only examined her magic after she attacked the Regina; she had been impersonating a human when he first examined her magic. He doesn’t know what’s her magic and what, if anything, is foreign.”
“We need something to compare it to,” I said.
He smiled, though not happily and said, “Exactly my thought. I was going to take Harrison to Mailua to examine the scene and the bodies. I seriously doubt the magic stayed after they died, but I have nothing else to go on.”
“But you think these humans are just another tool?” I asked.
“The extinction humans could be behind all of it, or like the vampires, they could just be another group being used. There’s no doubt in my mind that someone on that ship is definitely involved,” he said.
“And someone in my family… and, it doesn’t all add up, like if they’re endgame is a war between Oceania and New Anglo, then why attack Mailua?”
“Their endgame might be war, but their primary target is—”
“Me.”
His body stiffened next to me. “I could not have asked more from your security team, but they ultimately failed to protect you. They failed, I failed, if Harrison hadn’t been there…”
“The vampires outnumbered us by more than twenty to one, and they had guns,�
�� I said, feeling very protective over my security team.
“Precisely my point. And after they’ve fumbled the assassination with such drastic odds in their favor, whoever is planning this, will attack with a stronger smarter method next time. How many vampires are there living on the islands?”
“Thousands. Which is all the more reason for us to fix the Regina ASAP,” I said.
“We need to fix the Regina, I’m not denying that, but it’s not only the vampires we need to worry about. These humans might be even more dangerous, and who knows what else the group behind this will throw at us with if we restore the Regina? We need to find out who is behind these attacks and how they are able to make dracons lose control.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’d like to send you to the high court in New Anglo, where you would be safe, but I know you won’t go,” he said.
“Very astute of you,” I said.
“So, instead, I’m going to ask that you stay with me at all times,” he said.
“You say ‘ask’, but that wasn’t a question,” I said.
“Will you stay with me at all times?” he asked articulately, looking down at me. “I don’t trust that anyone else can protect you.”
“For now,” I said.
“That’s the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Well, I’ll take it…for now. We should call Harrison in here, we need to discuss this the three of us,” Wyvern said.
I shook my head. No way was I inviting Harrison in here for a little meeting of the minds while Wyvern held me on a bed. “Can we wait to talk to him until I get some coffee in me? I know he’s your friend but he’s so moody, and there’s no way I’ll be able to deal with him not caffeinated.”
Wyvern’s mouth twitched with a little amused smile.
“What?” I asked, narrowing my gaze on his amused expression. “Is he—” I looked over at the front door of the room we were in.
Wyvern’s grin grew big across his face.
“He’s guarding the door, isn’t he?” I smacked Wyvern’s arm. “Thanks a lot.”
He only started chuckling.
I crawled off the bed and glanced down at my T-shirt and workout shorts to see if I was decent. “Harrison, could you come in here please?” I said in a low voice.
The doorknob turned and framed in the light of the doorway was Harrison’s silhouette.
I turned to glare back of Wyvern, who was just lounging lazily across the bed, grinning.
I sat down on the only chair in the room, giving Harrison the choice of the bed or just standing. Crossing my legs, I propped them up on the bed. Yes, I felt a little twinge of guilt about calling him moody behind his back, but one of them should have made his presence known.
And he was moody.
Harrison chose to lean against the wall, and turned a cool expression on me. “You called?”
I put my feet back down on the ground, and said, “Yep, need to caffeinate.” Standing up and ignoring Wyvern’s soft chuckling, I crossed the room.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Mom, Mom,” I said, trying to interrupt her.
“I just don’t understand why he’s not invited!” her words slurred together as she spoke. “It would be a wonderful opportunity to spend time as a family.”
I surreptitiously glanced around the car, Harrison and Sophie were staring out opposite windows in the back seat and Wyvern drove with an impassive expression on his face. His expression might have been placid, but I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. I would have liked to have this conversation not in this car with three people with supernaturally enhanced hearing, but I didn’t get much of a choice.
“Deagan is invited, Mom,” I lied. “He’s busy working for Reeves right now, working toward a promotion.”
“Honey, your brother will work himself to death if someone doesn’t insist he take a vacation,” her voice was hard to understand at this point, more blubbering than talking. “No honey, no, I’m putting my foot down. Stacy, Lorelei and I are not going on vacation to New Anglo unless Deagan is going too.”
“Mom! It’s not vacation, you are in danger—crap!”
She hung up.
I glanced at the clock, nine o’clock in the morning. Either my mother woke up this drunk or she’d started especially early.
“I can arrange it with your uncle,” Wyvern said.
After a prolonged silence, I whispered, “Thanks.”
There was really no point in calling my mother back until he did, so instead I called the office of my school.
“Hello, you’ve reached Kala,” a woman’s voice said.
“Hello Kala, this is Dakota Kekoa, we talked earlier this morning,” I said.
“Oh, yes, hi Dakota,” she said.
“So, my mom isn’t feeling well, and she’s not going to be able to come in to sign those forms for me and my sister. Is there any way that you could fax them to her, and she could sign them from home and fax them back?”
“Well, we don’t usually do things that way,” she sighed then said, “But as this is a pretty extreme situation with your lives being in danger, I suppose we could make an exception. I will need to speak to your mother on the phone.”
A hand appeared in my peripheral vision, and I turned to see that Sophie was holding her hand out for the phone.
“Sure, she’s right here,” I said to the woman.
“Hello,” Sophie said, her voice sounding scratchy. “Sorry, I’m losing my voice.” Sophie gave the woman our information, including our social security numbers off the top of her head. After answering a number of yes and no questions, she gave the woman our fax number then hung up.
“Thank you,” I said, before taking the phone back from her.
I dreaded making the next phone call, but I did it anyway as we pulled off the freeway and toward the airport.
“Dakota’s errand girl service, what more can I do for you today, ma’am?” Lorelei answered.
“Hardy, har, har,” I said, dryly. “Is everyone all packed up?”
“Almost. You are, Sarah is meeting you at the airport with your clothes, I guess,” she said.
“Thank you! Okay, so I actually do have something else for you to do.”
“Of course you do,” she said, I could almost hear her eyes rolling at me through the phone.
“Oh my gods Lorelei, stop whining. The papers to switch us to online school should be faxed to the house at any minute. If you can’t get Mom to sign them, will you forge her signature and fax them back?”
“This sucks,” she said.
“It’s only until we figure out who’s doing all this, okay? And you get to go to the dracon high court, that’s cool.”
“Yippee. I get to go be studied by dracon snobs, and in my spare time, I can babysit Mom. I should be out there with you.” She sounded defeated.
I knew how she must be feeling, if the situation was reversed, I might take it with even less grace, but honestly, if Lorelei was here with us, she would be my biggest vulnerability. She’d be everyone’s vulnerability.
“I have an assignment for you,” I said.
“Another one?” Though her voice was loaded with sarcasm, I could hear the spark of interest.
“I’m sending you a picture. It’s a tattoo based off of a painting titled The Extinction and from unknown Europan origin. The people who attacked you, the humans pretending to be servers, they had these same tattoos. Find out everything you can about the painting, but only use your own laptop for research, okay? Don’t let anyone see you research it. The humans might have infiltrated the High Court as well, so be very careful. Don’t tell anyone, not even our family, about what you’re researching.”
“Got it,” she said.
“If you can’t reach me by phone, email me any results through our family’s secure server. Be really careful,” I said.
“I will,” she whispered. “On a lighter note, Mom is passed out on the dining roo
m table. I’m not sure we’re going to make our flight.”
“You will, Wyvern’s security team will carry her out if they have to. It might be better, really,” I said.
“Maybe. Okay, signed the papers, faxing them back now. Done. We’re officially no longer attending high school. Yay us!” she said.
“Yay you, except for two days, I haven’t been attending high school for months. Okay, we’re pulling up to the jet now. Later, be safe.”
“You too,” she said, then the line disconnected. Wyvern parked in a parking lot at a part of the airport I had never visited before. Several cars interrupted the otherwise deserted space. Parking lots were not my favorite place in the world right now, so I focused on my phone and sending my sister the picture.
I didn’t have much of a choice since I’d never be alone until we figured out who was behind all of this, but airing my families very dirty laundry in front of this group wasn’t making me very happy.
To make matters worse, Wyvern leaned in and whispered, “Andrew will try harder to get your mom to quit.”
I glared at him. A hot surge of anger flared through my body. “Is that what he’s doing? Well, tell him to stop. Ever since he’s been trying to force those nasty green drinks down her throat, she’s been drinking earlier and earlier. It’s not any of his business. It’s not any of your business either!”
I tried for the door handle but it was locked. I turned my glare back on Wyvern.
He glared back, but his finger pressed the unlock button.
I climbed out of the car, I wasn’t stupid enough to storm away, though I really wanted to. Sophie had climbed out at the same time, and she regarded me coolly.
She could take her self-righteous judgment and shove it. Wyvern and Harrison waited beside the car.
“Go on,” Sophie said, nodding toward the parking lot.
Sighing, I started walking toward where a single large jet sat on a landing strip. It was a matte white and had no emblem or writing on it. A long ramp led up to an already open door in the jet’s side.
My phone rang and when I saw who it was on the screen, I cringed before opening.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Mele yelled into the phone.
Rex (Dakota Kekoa Book 2) Page 19