The Dragon Lords

by C. J. Hill

  She hadn’t realized how much that door meant to her until it had been shut.

  Chapter 5

  Aaron woke up at six fifteen, even though he hadn’t set his alarm clock. Prisoners shouldn’t have to set alarms. He’d planned on making that point by still being in bed at seven when training time started, but in the end, he got up. No reason to tick off Overdrake, not when he wanted to earn the man’s trust.

  Once Aaron’s anger and fear had faded, the desire to learn about dragons became a tangible thing, an energy swirling through his brain that had kept him up long after his powers faded. Dragons were real: huge, powerful, flying beasts. And Aaron would be able to control them. Almost as cool—when dragons were nearby, he would have superhero strength and eventually be able to fly.

  Who wouldn’t want that? All he had to do was put up with his father’s enormous ego. The man obviously had plenty of that. Aaron still couldn’t believe his own father had men chase him through the Renaissance festival, drug him, and then set a dragon on him. Seriously, it was no wonder his mother left.

  Aaron wanted to talk to her now, to tell her he understood why she’d never let him see his father. But he couldn’t. Aaron was locked up and completely cut off from the rest of the world. No phone. No computer.

  Even though he didn’t want to escape, he went to the door and tried the handle. Still locked from the outside.

  He took a shower then rifled through the dresser for clothes. Several sizes of jeans were folded there along with an assortment of T-shirts, boxers, and socks. Whoever had stocked the thing, hadn’t been sure what size he was.

  He got dressed, then sat on his bed and watched TV. His gaze kept going to Bridget’s crayon drawing. Seemed so incongruous. His father was keeping him a prisoner, and his half sister was drawing him pictures.

  At seven o’clock, with only a short knock as a warning, Dirk unlocked the door and strode in carrying a plate with eggs and bacon. Aaron’s stomach flipped at the smell.

  Dirk set a glass of milk on the bedside table. “Sleep well?”

  “No.”

  Dirk handed him the plate. “Well, that doesn’t matter. I still have to teach you about dragons. I’m supposed to give you safety facts while you eat. Try to pay attention so you’re not killed quickly. If you die today, it will look like I have sibling rivalry issues.”

  Aaron picked up his fork and dug into the eggs. Waking up early had taken its toll and he was starving.

  Dirk dropped into the desk chair and watched him. “I’m also supposed to report on your anger level.” He cocked his head. “I’m not picking up as much hatred as I’d expected.”

  “I can hate you more if you want.”

  Dirk continued to stare at him, eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you going to ask me to help you escape?”

  “Nah, I’ve decided I want to study dragons. They’re kinda cool. And eventually I’ll be driving a Ferrari.”

  “Keeping up a brave front. Good. Dad respects that sort of thing.”

  “Maybe I really am brave.” Aaron had meant to sound tough. It came out petulant.

  Dirk just laughed. “Good. Because you’ll need all the bravery you can get.”

  Chapter 6

  On Monday, Tori tried to find Jesse before first period so they could talk, so she could apologize again. She’d called and texted Jesse the day before—overtures which he’d completely ignored. Perhaps she deserved his anger, but she also deserved more consideration than he was giving her.

  She’d bought Jesse a stuffed donkey—a politically themed peace offering. On Saturday before she ruined things between them, he had given her a stuffed elephant.

  Jesse wasn’t anywhere in the hallways. No sight of his dark hair or broad shoulders anywhere. At six foot two, he was tall enough that he was hard to overlook among the sea of students. She finally had to put the donkey in her locker and go to class.

  He came in late for journalism, didn’t ever glance back at her, and then made a beeline for the door as soon as the bell rang. By the time she followed the crowd out of the room, he’d disappeared in the hallway.

  At lunch, he sat at the table with the other basketball players, ignoring her.

  How long was he planning on acting this way? Hours? Days? The school week was short due to Thanksgiving, and she didn’t want to wait until the next Monday to work things out.

  After school, instead of heading outside to meet Lars, her driver, she waited for Jesse by his locker. She opened her phone to a social media site, but couldn’t concentrate on it. She kept scanning the crowd, kept trying to pick out his footsteps in the cacophony of others.

  Finally Jesse appeared. He walked over with an air of determined nonchalance, said a curt, “Hello,” then twirled his combination, keeping his attention there.

  Tori slid her phone into her pocket. “I realize you’re angry with me, but it would help to know whether you’re angry because of Dirk or because of Aaron.”

  “Both.” He still didn’t look at her.

  “I’d like to remind you, that in each situation, I was aiming for a better strategic position for all of us.”

  Jesse let out an incredulous huff. “The kid is twelve.”

  She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You were eleven when you became a Slayer. You still knew what you were doing, didn’t you?”

  Jesse opened his locker with more force than the task required. “If Overdrake brainwashes Aaron like he brainwashed Dirk, we’ll have to fight three dragons at the same time. You didn’t think the rest of us deserved a say about that?”

  “Aaron won’t join Overdrake. He wants to protect his brother by helping us. I could tell that about him.”

  Jesse turned to her, disbelief in his brown eyes. “I’m not sure I trust your judgment when it comes to knowing what guys are like.”

  She decided to ignore that jab. “Overdrake has more dragons than we could ever fight. If I can learn to control them, that knowledge could save us. Isn’t that worth taking some risks?”

  “And what about the fact that going into a dragon’s mind makes killing them harder?”

  Dirk had let her use her dragon lord powers to explore Khan’s mind, encouraged it even. The knowledge had cost her. “Harder doesn’t mean impossible.”

  “Even hesitating could cost lives.”

  Couldn’t he at least try and see her point of view? She picked up her backpack from the floor and slid the strap onto her shoulder. “When I made decisions about Aaron and about Dirk, I did what I thought was best. I’m sorry if I was wrong. Really. I am.”

  He considered her silently for a moment. Some of the hardness left his expression, pushed away by emotion. “Do you have feelings for Dirk?”

  “He’s my counterpart. Of course I have feelings for him.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “But only counterpart feelings.” Was she blushing? Why did her cheeks suddenly feel hot?

  Jesse looked far from convinced. “So, you’re saying you didn’t enjoy kissing him?”

  “No,” she said too quickly. The answer was a knee-jerk denial.

  “No, you didn’t enjoy it, or no you can’t tell me you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t…” He was staring at her with so much scrutiny she couldn’t help but flush. “I was…it was just…I mean…” She was speaking gibberish. She knew that, but she was suddenly having flashes of memory—Dirk’s arms around her. And the last time she’d kissed him, she hadn’t needed to. Not really. Did that mean she had enjoyed kissing him? “It wasn’t like…it was just, I mean…” and now she was repeating the gibberish she’d already said.

  Jesse folded his arms, his open locker forgotten. “That’s convincing.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It should be.”

  The words stung because he was right. She still had feelings for Dirk and she shouldn’t. But that didn’t mean she’d been lying to Jesse about her feelings for him. It didn’t mean she’d wanted any of what had happened last Friday to happe
n. She’d stopped Dirk at first and then only let him kiss her for strategy sake. “Jesse…”

  He put up a hand to stop her. “Until you figure out what you want—who you want—the two of us should go back to being just teammates.”

  All of the air fled from her lungs. “You’re breaking up with me?”

  “No, I’m pretty sure you did that on Friday when you made out with another guy.”

  That wasn’t fair. He couldn’t mean it. “You know very well why I kissed him.”

  “Yeah, because you haven’t decided whether you’re a Slayer or a dragon lord. That’s another thing that you ought to figure out.”

  He turned and strode away, leaving her staring after him, stunned.

  He didn’t think she’d decided she was a Slayer? He’d broken up with her because she’d been trying to get information from Dirk?

  Okay, so maybe she had enjoyed kissing Dirk a little, but she hadn’t kissed him because she wanted to cheat on Jesse. She’d done it to save lives. Could she help it if Dirk was a good kisser? Jesse should be more understanding. She could have kept the whole event a secret, but she was trying to be honest.

  She pushed her way through the crowded hall, walking fast and blinking back tears. No, she wasn’t going to cry about this. She would let herself be angry instead. She had new plans for the stuffed donkey in her backpack. It was going to become Brindy’s next dog toy.

  ***

  On Tuesday, Tori didn’t try to talk to Jesse and he didn’t talk to her. She felt as though she was walking through water. Everything felt slower and more difficult. On Wednesday, his gaze wandered to her a few times, but he always looked away before she had a chance to speak to him. In journalism, he seemed happy enough to chat with Tacy, the class’s residing ultra-blonde cheerleader. He smiled at her as they talked, the sort of smile that usually just belonged to Tori.

  Fine. Let him be that way.

  She didn’t need him. She could function just as well with half her heart torn away.

  On the ride home from school, she got a text from Aprilynne with an address. Tori read it, puzzled, and then texted Aprilynne asking if she’d sent it by mistake.

  It’s the Richardsons’ address, her sister replied. I told you I could get someone at the school to give it to me. Now you can go see Jesse and work things out.

  No, now she could call Dr. B and tell him she’d inadvertently found out Jesse’s address. If Overdrake ever captured her, his family needed to move again.

  On Thursday, Tori helped her mother make Thanksgiving dinner. A nice leisurely dinner with her family would have been nice—the sort where everyone played a few card games or watched a movie afterward, but Thanksgiving was never that way at her house. A lot of the staffers and interns at her father’s office didn’t have family close by, so her parents always invited at least a dozen people over. And her mother prided herself on providing a home-cooked meal.

  The visitors couldn’t all fit at one table, so her parents dragged the kitchen table into the dining room and then Tori and Aprilynne were supposed to play hostess for all the people that hadn’t managed to get seated at her parents’ table. This was never fun because the guests wanted to sit near her father, so basically, Tori spent the meal trying to make small talk with a bunch of disappointed social climbers.

  It wasn’t like she had anything in common with her father’s employees anyway. They saw her as an uninteresting high school kid and usually talked among themselves and ignored her.

  This year, since Aprilynne had started working at her father’s office, she was bound to know all their inside jokes and gossip, and Tori would be the only one silently waiting for it to end.

  Usually Tori didn’t mind the work that went into Thanksgiving dinner, but right now the last thing she wanted to deal with was hours of cooking, cleaning, and then eating with strangers. Couldn’t her family for once be like all the other families, slobbing around and just being with each other?

  When her mother cheerfully called her into the kitchen, Tori stood in the doorway and didn’t take the apron her mother offered. “Please, can we go to a restaurant, buy the stuff, and pretend we made it? I’ll drive.”

  Aprilynne snorted. She was at the far counter turning sweet potatoes into a dish that more closely resembled a brown sugar casserole than an actual vegetable. “Nice try. Like I don’t suggest that every year.”

  Tori’s mother strolled over and draped the apron around Tori’s neck. “We need to get the mashed potatoes going.”

  “It’s a holiday. We’re supposed to relax.”

  “Our guests work hard for your father. This is the least we can do for them.” Tori’s mother stepped behind her, took hold of the apron strings and tied them. “You’re a Hampton. That should mean something to you.”

  “Yeah, it means Thanksgiving dinners always suck.”

  Tori’s mom hefted a bag of potatoes off the counter and handed them to her. “We give our guests our best. The work is part of the gift.”

  Tori had heard this before. Sometimes this little truism even convinced her that the work wasn’t so bad. Today it just seemed like a trite excuse to make her suffer. “After I go to college,” she announced, “I’m never coming home for Thanksgiving. I’m going to enjoy a peaceful meal in the cafeteria.”

  “The peeler is by the sink,” her mother said and breezed off to cut up celery for the stuffing—her homemade specialty stuffing. Because, obviously, the kind from the box wasn’t good enough.

  Tori peeled, cut, and boiled the potatoes. Maybe her mother would let her pretend she was sick so she could watch a movie in her bedroom. Surely there would be enough fake smiling and mindless flattery going on that hers wouldn’t be needed. But of course, she was a Hampton and that meant there could never be enough fake smiling and mindless flattery.

  She was draining the potatoes when she heard noises in her mind, a voice in the dragon enclosure. She maximized the sound, letting it grow louder.

  “I shouldn’t need to remind you,” Overdrake said, “but I will. You should watch what you say.”

  Was he speaking to Tori? Was this some sort of threat?

  “Why do I have to watch what I say here?” Aaron’s voice.

  She relaxed. Overdrake was talking to him.

  “I thought Tori only heard what Vesta heard,” Aaron continued.

  Tori heard what Vesta heard? That was news. And apparently wrong. Which dragon was she listening to now? Khan still? She’d been connected to him when Overdrake had introduced Aaron last Saturday.

  “We can’t be certain Tori will always be linked to Vesta,” Overdrake answered. “Do you need a refresher on the necessity of precaution?”

  “No.” And then as though Aaron was repeating a motto, he added, “If I make a mistake around a dragon, it might be my last.”

  “Precisely. Don’t ever treat them like pets. They’re not.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Tori put the drained pot back on the stovetop and went to the fridge for the butter and milk.

  A pair of footsteps approached the dragon and Overdrake murmured, “Here you are, boy. We saved the bones and dark meat for you.”

  Ah, even though Khan wasn’t a pet, he still got Thanksgiving leftovers. Tori supposed that was better than feeding the dragon stray dogs. One faint crunch sounded in her mind—the noise of Khan biting into bones. Didn’t take much effort for a dragon to swallow something as small as a turkey.

  Tori dropped a cube of butter into the pot, measured out the milk, and waited for Overdrake and Aaron to walk out of the enclosure. Instead, Overdrake spoke again. “I’ve been giving your inability to fly some thought, and the only reason I can see for it is that you need an added incentive.” Words with a cool sharp edge.

  “I’m making progress,” Aaron protested. “I can fly twenty feet at a time. Sometimes thirty.”

  “That’s not flying; that’s leaping. Perhaps the problem lies in your practice sessions. You haven’t sufficiently felt yo
u were in danger. There is, of course, an easy way to remedy that.”

  Aaron groaned.

  “Look,” Overdrake said, “Khan is staring at you and he doesn’t seem pleased.”

  “Oh, come on,” Aaron said, his voice picking up anger. “I’m trying to fly. It’s not my fault I always land instead.”

  “Your choices are the same as when you were here last. You can throw the boulders—a bad choice. Control the dragon—which won’t happen as long as I’m in his mind. Or fly to that hole in the ceiling.”

  Overdrake was setting a dragon on his own son again? Wow, Aaron was having an even worse Thanksgiving than she was.

  The dragon made a low rumbling sound in his throat, a warning.

  “I’ll check back in a half an hour and see how you’re doing,” Overdrake said.

  “Don’t!” Aaron said. “You can’t—” He didn’t finish, and for a horrible moment Tori wondered if the dragon had killed him. No, Overdrake wouldn’t let it go that far.

  Tori stood in front of her pot, the masher gripped in her hand like a weapon and breathlessly waited.

  The next thing she heard from Aaron was a stream of swear words. For a twelve-year-old, the kid had a mouth on him. And he had some creative ways to use his swear words. Not necessarily grammatically correct ways, but creative.

  Overdrake made a tsking sound. “You’ve already forgotten to watch what you say. I hope my other instructions are more firmly rooted in your mind.”

  She heard the door clang closed. Overdrake had left Aaron alone in the enclosure with Khan.

  She felt sick for him, wished she had some way to talk to him. Overdrake told you he had control of the dragon, she wanted to say. That means he won’t let it kill you.

  Of course, that didn’t mean the dragon wouldn’t hurt him. It had probably been instructed to do just that.

  “Tori?” Her mother walked by on the way to get a mixing bowl. “Are you all right?”

  Tori startled and realized she’d been standing there frozen, the potato masher still lifted like she was going to stab something with it. “Yeah. I’m fine.” She pushed the masher into the potatoes, half stirring them, while she listened for Aaron.