Slayers: The Making of a Mentor

by C. J. Hill

  “Brant is more determined than ever to carry out his father’s plans,” Bianca said. Was she warning him? Blaming him?

  “Do you know what those plans are?” Jamison asked.

  Instead of answering, she said, “Am I ever going to see you again?”

  Jamison felt an angry sort of resignation then. He had lost his brother, his home, his identity, and Bianca was on Saint Helena no doubt comforting Brant. “Do you want to see me again?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Well, the problem is that Brant sees me as a threat. If he knows where I am, he’s likely to kill me. If you’re going out with him, that puts a damper on our relationship.” Jamison hadn’t meant it to come out cutting, but it did.

  She let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t want it to end this way.”

  “Given the circumstances, I guess it could end in a few worse ways. Death comes to mind.”

  “Jamison…”

  Then more silence. Was that the only thing that was left between them—silence?

  “I’m going to miss you,” she said.

  He leaned his head against the radio. The truth of it was, he was going to miss her too. “I hope things turn out better for you than they did for Helena,” he said, and ended the call.

  Later that night, when Jamison was alone with his father, he relayed the news about Mr. Overdrake’s death. “Did you have anything to do with it?” Jamison asked.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Daniels replied, and then added more slowly, “It wasn’t just about revenge, you know. The United States should thank whoever did it. Two dragon lords might invade, but one probably won’t.”

  Probably. Or Brant Overdrake might show up in an undisclosed amount of time with dragon eggs. He was determined, after all, to carry out his father’s plans.

  Epilogue

  Jamison spent the next several years earning a doctorate in medieval studies. Even after he became a professor at George Mason, he continued to pore through century-old records. In various pale and fading documents, he found confirmation of the things his father had told him about dragons.

  Dragon eggs lay dormant for at least fifteen years before they hatched. Being within a mile of either dragons or their eggs activated Slayer genes in any unborn babies who were descendants of the original Slayer knights. The only signs the children exhibited at first were a talent for fighting and an obsession with dragons. But once they reached the age of eleven or twelve, anytime they came within a five-mile radius of a dragon, their powers turned on.

  Jamison also learned things his father hadn’t known. Several medieval ballads said that women who were pregnant with Slayer children dreamed of dragon attacks. The nightmares were so intense that a few women woke up with claw marks slashed across their bodies.

  Obtaining injuries from dreams seemed like an impossibility until Jamison talked to a psychology professor. “Sometimes a person is so convinced she’s injured,” the professor said, “her body reacts as though she is.”

  Jamison was happy to learn this interesting bit of Slayer history, that is, until his pregnant wife dreamed of a dragon.

  Jamison was sound asleep when Shirley woke up, gasping and clutching her stomach. “A dragon came after me!” she exclaimed. She shifted her night shirt. A long red welt crossed her stomach.

  She and Jamison both stared at the wound. They knew what it meant.

  It wasn’t a surprise that Brant had brought the eggs to the DC area, but Jamison had expected him to take steps so Slayers weren’t created in the process.

  Jamison did what he could to calm his wife, then went to the living room and called his father with the news.

  Mr. Daniels let out a string of curse words.

  “Brant is here,” Jamison said with more calmness than he felt. “We’ve got fifteen to twenty years tops before he unleashes the dragons.”

  “What was Brant thinking?” Mr. Daniels asked. “There’s likely to be dozens of unborn Slayer descendants in the DC area. Why create people who will have both the power and the desire to fight your dragons? It’s sloppy. That’s not like him.”

  “You mean it’s not like Langston. Brant is a different person.”

  “True. Brant was always more impulsive. He probably didn’t plan well enough while bringing the eggs to America. Or,” Mr. Daniels added with a note of bitterness, “maybe Brant thinks it will be easy to kill off any Slayers. After all, his father had no trouble killing Nathan.”

  Jamison glanced back in the direction of his bedroom. He felt a sudden desire to recheck the doors in his townhouse, to make sure they were locked. “We need to find and protect all the Slayers. They’re the best chance of stopping the dragons. If we can keep the dragons from destroying the country’s electric grid—”

  Mr. Daniels’s voice came out fast and harsh. “You’ll keep my granddaughter away from dragons—away from Brant Overdrake too.”

  Jamison sighed impatiently. “I’ll put myself in front of a bullet or a dragon for my family. But you know as well as I do how a sheepdog acts when it first sees a sheep.”

  Sheepdogs who have been raised away from sheep still try to herd things, and once they first see sheep—well, there is no stopping them from doing what they were born to do. “What will those teenage Slayers do when the dragons attack? Do you imagine they’re going to sit around hiding in their homes?”

  “People aren’t dogs. They choose whether to fight.”

  “Yes, and everything I’ve learned about Slayers tells me what sort of choices they’re likely to make when a dragon is nearby.” Even Nathan, who never knew that dragons were real, still read about them, knew every myth of dragon lore. He loved horses and swords, any sort of weapon, really. Nathan would have fought.

  “The best way to protect the Slayers,” Jamison went on, “is to train them to use their powers. I’ll teach them who and what their enemies are. Overdrake won’t be able to trap them unaware like he trapped Nathan.”

  Mr. Daniels made an unhappy grumbling sound. “If Brant knows you’re training anyone, he’ll kill you and the Slayers you’re training too.”

  “I won’t let him know.”

  “How will you advertise for Slayers without letting Brant know?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  More unhappy grumbling. “You’ll end up getting yourself and my granddaughter killed.”

  “I won’t. I’m smarter than that.” Just to irk his father, Jamison added, “I’ve got a PhD, you know.”

  “If you want to get yourself killed, that’s one thing, but your mother has already bought enough dresses to keep your daughter clothed until she’s six. You should see the hair ribbons she’s stacking up around here.”

  Jamison imagined his daughter, not as a six-year-old, but as a teenager. He pictured her standing before him, tall and athletic. She had Shirley’s black hair, his blue eyes, and Nathan’s mischievous smile. Somehow knowing that his daughter was a Slayer made her seem more Nathan’s child than his own.

  Jamison had fifteen, maybe twenty years to train his own daughter, and just as important, to find and train other Slayers. Hopefully dozens of them.

  “I won’t fail her,” Jamison said. “I won’t fail any of them.”

  Copyright (C) 2013 by C.J. Hill

  Art copyright (C) 2013 by Sam Burley