by C. J. Hill
“Positions!” Jesse yelled to the others. Before he left, he turned back with a half-smile, the teasing sort he used to give so freely. “Hey, if you’re going to be mad at me, at least put your anger to good use. Show me up. Kill your dragon so fast that you put me to shame.”
That had been her original plan. She wasn’t about to admit she’d failed miserably at enacting it. She tugged Bane’s reins, turning him to the field. “Thanks, but I don’t need tips on how to be angry at you.”
“Good,” he said, his smile turning into a full blown smirk. “Now channel that resentment at the dragon.”
She would have told him what he could do with his advice but he rode off, focusing on the heli-dragon.
She put her helmet back on, leaned forward on Bane, and the horse was off before she even tapped his flanks. A-team was heading south to circle the dragon. Time to concentrate. The worst part of Jesse’s advice was that if she did manage to kill her dragon first this round, she’d look like she’d followed his counsel and he’d been right. If she didn’t kill hers first, she’d look like she hadn’t managed the art of mastering her emotions.
Man, it was going to be such an uncomfortable ride back to Jesse’s house.
Across the field, Kody whooped and charged the dragon.
Ryker, who seemed to be in his own personal competition to determine who had the most testosterone in the group, answered with his own war-cry. Guys. Seriously.
Tori did a quick search of the sky for the second helicopter. Didn’t see it. Once it arrived, A-team would break off to engage it. She urged Bane into a cautious trot. Training with horses always made Tori feel like she was playing a game of polo—with things that wanted to kill her.
Dr. B claimed the Slayer horses were descendants of the stallions bred by the original Slayer Knights and used to defeat the dragons of the Middle Ages. They were fearless, obedient, and strangely willing to charge at large carnivorous beasts. To Tori’s mind, this made the horses more foolish than the regular, more cowardly variety. Animals should instinctively know to run in the opposite direction of fire-breathing death.
As they rode across the field, Bane actually snorted angrily at the helicopter. It spurted a stream of fire at Tori as if answering the horse’s challenge.
Ryker rushed at the helicopter from the opposite direction. He was close enough that he should have flown off his horse and gone after the copter in the air. Instead, he rode under it. “Behind you!” he called to Tori. “A-team, split!”
Tori still wasn’t used to Ryker calling the commands and he’d been doing it for three rounds.
Tori gave Bane two taps on the haunches. This was the signal that she was leaving him and he should go to a safe place and wait. She was fairly certain Bane understood the direction. The fact that he usually wandered around eating shrubbery instead indicated that he was either too smart to be fooled by the mechanical dragon or not smart enough to avoid danger when food was around. She had no idea what he’d do in an actual attack on a city. Perhaps rummage through the garbage cans for leftovers.
Tori flew upwards, twisting mid-air to follow the helicopter. She felt weightless in the sky, as though gravity had lost its grip on her. Moving became instinctual here, more thought than effort.
She took note of each member of her team below. In their dark suits, they were hard to distinguish from each other, but if Tori hadn’t recognized their horses, the symbols on the back of their jackets would let her know who was who. Kody rode to the south of the dragon. Lilly trailed behind him. Willow and Rosa waited with their horses by trees on the sidelines, watching.
With Rosa in reserve, Jesse and Bess were left to handle the first dragon by themselves. Two people. It wasn’t enough. A-team had four fighters, five if you counted Willow. Dr. B would have to rearrange the teams soon. Probably the only reason he hadn’t done it already was that he wanted to see what Jesse and Bess could do against impossible odds.
Today, they’d done pretty well. Or maybe it just seemed that way compared to Tori’s dismal performance.
Ryker reached the helicopter first. He flew above it, diving toward the section that represented the Kevlar straps. He had to press the buttons that represented cutting them. The machine tilted upward, shooting a stream of fire that arced at Ryker.
A moment later the flames disappeared, leaving only a trail of smoke. Lilly had extinguished it.
Ryker swooped downward, in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. The helicopter swung that way, following him.
Tori wheeled upwards. She and Ryker had a system worked out. She flew in front of the dragon to draw its attention. Since her dragon lord abilities made her immune to fire, she could be hit by a stream that melted her flame-resistant suit and she still came out unblistered.
Hot, yes. Sweaty, definitely. And if she was really unlucky—naked. So far the naked part hadn’t happened, but she worried one day it would. Anyway, when fire hit her, she felt like she’d walked into an oven, but she emerged from the flames unhurt.
Tori soared in front of the dragon, gun raised, and shot at it. Her airsoft rifle didn’t damage the helicopter, just as a real rifle wouldn’t do more than irritate a dragon. Its scales were bulletproof. The only part of a dragon that was unprotected was a soft spot on its underbelly, and Overdrake covered that part with Kevlar.
Theo had painted an angry face on the machine, complete with fangs. Tori took an extra shot, hoping to knock off some of the paint.
Fire spurted from a nozzle underneath the helicopter. She spun to the left but was too slow to avoid the reach of the flames. They hit her on the side, making her suit sizzle. The acrid scent of burning plastic enveloped her.
Well, that lovely smell was going to be hard to explain to her parents. Study group had just taken an ugly turn.
“Are you paying attention?” Tori called to Lilly.
“Sorry!” Lilly chimed back.
No, she wasn’t. Since Lilly had found out that Tori couldn’t be burned, she’d become slow to extinguish the flames that came in Tori’s direction.
“I couldn’t cut the strap,” Ryker called, his frustration evident. “Sequel.” That meant he was going to try again. Risky, as the dragon was no longer paying attention to Tori, but had turned to Ryker.
Instead of darting away, Ryker hovered in the air, letting the machine come nearer. She knew he would stay there, a stationary target, and then right before the dragon reached him, he would dart upward, putting himself above the dragon so he could take a shot.
But Theo and Dr. B knew the move too and would likely be planning for it. As would Overdrake when he actually attacked with dragons. Dirk had told him all their moves, strategies, and tactics.
Did Ryker not understand this? He had no caution when it came to fighting, which made Tori twice as wary. She felt like she had to watch out for him.
She pulled a paint bomb from her vest and called “Trident!” to tell Ryker she was about to use a sticky grenade.
If a paint bomb landed near the straps, they blew off both the chains and the Kevlar, and best of all, the flyers didn’t have to get as close to the dragons to use them.
Ryker wheeled away from the dragon and out of the trajectory of Tori’s grenade in case she missed. Which happened occasionally. Tori had good aim, but dragons were fast. If a grenade missed and exploded on the ground, it would most likely splatter a few of the people-shaped wooden cutouts.
She decided not to worry about civilians today. Life was hard, after all, and they should have noticed the dragon and taken cover somewhere else besides the playing field.
The dragon jerked downward to get away from her. Using explosives was more dangerous when the dragon flew low to the ground—higher chance of casualties even if the grenade stuck to the dragon—but Tori wanted to win this round quickly. She flung the grenade, fast and hard. It hit the target with a clang that made the copter shiver. Instead of sticking, it bounced off—right toward Kody.
“Freeze it!” she c
alled.
His arms were already drawn back. “Got it!”
He hurled an icy blast to knock the grenade away.
Since A-team didn’t have a shielder, Kody’s bursts were A-team’s only defense against rogue grenades. Usually he managed to swing the grenade away from the team. This time his first blast missed, and he had to shoot a second. A concentrated stream of cold air hit the grenade, sending it to the ground a few feet away from him.
Too close. An explosion of red paint splattered Kody, his horse, and a couple wooden civilians. He was dead until the round ended.
Kody wiped paint from his helmet. “I reckon that’s another messy death.”
“Happens to the best of us,” Ryker called.
Kody rode off the field muttering. Tori muttered too. She couldn’t afford to kill off anyone else.
The helicopter swooped low, focusing on Lilly. She urged her horse into a gallop, in an effort to keep out of range. She could avoid the dragon’s fire but not its teeth or claws. Tori and Ryker flew over the machine’s back, managing to push the buttons that signified they’d cut the Kevlar straps.
Now they had to shoot the buttons to show they’d blown through the chains. That was easier to do. They didn’t have to be as close.
Willow rode downfield toward A-team. Jesse must have noticed Kody’s untimely death and sent her to help out.
The helicopter noticed her. It rose with a lurch, then dived at her, zigzagging to prevent Tori and Ryker from getting a clear shot. Before the machine reached Willow, she bolted into the trees. The copter skimmed over the canopy, searching for her.
Tori and Ryker both tailed the helicopter. Before they reached it, the machine careened back to the playing field, going after Lilly again. Ryker followed, but Tori hesitated. A low buzz was coming from the direction of the road.
A motorcycle. She groaned. That noise meant Dr. B was sending in camp personnel to pretend to be Overdrake’s men. Couldn’t be a stranger. The fence kept out anyone who didn’t know the gate code.
Now Tori would have to worry about guns and nets and whatever other devices Dr. B wanted to spring on them. And this after she’d already lost Kody, their only protection from guns. He could blast the weapons out of the owners’ hands.
The motorcycle was far enough away that only Tori, with her more sensitive hearing, could pick up the sound. She looked over at Team Magnus’s side of the field. Bess was still in play. Tori switched her mic to Team Magnus’s frequency. “Bess, we’ve got an incoming motorcycle. He’ll be armed. Can you help us out?”
Technically, Tori wasn’t supposed to ask for help from Team Magnus unless they’d already killed their dragon, but Tori was hot, tired, and didn’t feel like playing by the rules.
“Negative,” Jesse called back on her earphone. “We’ll have incoming over here too.”
He was probably right. What one team got, they usually both got. But couldn’t Bess help them out until another one showed up? In a real battle, Bess wouldn’t be told to protect her own team and leave A-team to be picked off by a gunman.
Tori bit back that reply. She wasn’t going to press Jesse for help. The motorcycle was louder now, closer.
Willow rode out of the trees, the bike trailing after her. A big man sat there, his identity hidden by his helmet and coat. Since the Slayers didn’t use armor piercing bullets—they accidentally shot each other on occasion—she wouldn’t be able to take the biker out of play with gunfire. Overdrake’s men, on the other hand, used armor-piercing bullets, so a hit from this motorcyclist’s pellet gun would still count as a kill.
The biker hadn’t pulled out a gun yet, but Willow was so close, she was bound to be shot within seconds.
Killing the dragon was Tori’s first priority. She should concentrate on that—but she didn’t like leaving everyone vulnerable to gunfire. Hadn’t she told Willow she wouldn’t let her die this round? Ryker could deal with the dragon for a few minutes.
Still high in the air, Tori circled behind the man to get out of his sight. She didn’t recognize his build. He wasn’t one of the regulars who played Overdrake’s underlings. Probably some new sniper Dr. B had added to his cadre to show the Slayers they weren’t invincible.
As though Tori’s repeated deaths hadn’t already taught her that.
Her choices in battle were always fight or flight. But flight meant something different to her and she chose that option.
She dived to the bike, wrapped her arms around the man’s chest, and plucked him from his seat. He jerked in surprise, hadn’t seen her coming.
His problem. She shot upwards. The bike teetered then fell, wheels spinning while the engine uselessly hummed. The man thrashed in Tori’s grip, then went still as he realized how quickly the ground was receding beneath them.
“I wouldn’t recommend struggling,” she said. “I might drop you.”
His words came out as a growl. “Put me down!”
Dr. B’s voice pinged in her earpiece. “T-bird, what’s going on?”
Yeah, he was bound to be unhappy about this turn of events. She’d abandoned her main priority—dragon shooting—in order to protect her team. “I’ve never had my own prisoner,” she said cheerily. “Maybe this could work out for me.” She shifted the man in her arms slightly. “What kind of information, my captured minion, can you give me about Overdrake’s location?”
“Take me to Alastair, immediately!” the man said, the growl still in his voice. He was not afraid and not amused by this.
Tori had never heard Dr. B swear, but he did then. It was an uttered exclamation of disbelief. “T-bird, don’t hurt him. He’s not part of the game.”
Not part of the game? Impossible. This area was fenced off, locked up tight. No one got in here without knowing the gate code.
Out on the field, both helicopters descended onto the ground, signaling the round was over. That also never happened until the dragons or all the Slayers were killed.
Tori was so surprised that she just stood there, hovering a hundred feet above the ground, holding the stranger. “Wow. Who are you?”
The man let out a laugh. Not the happy kind. “You know me as Sam.”
Chapter 12
Sam? Oh crap. The man who funded the camp. The man behind the Slayer operation, who Dr. B wouldn’t talk about. He’d driven onto the playing field, and Tori had ripped him off his bike and held him hostage in the air.
Definitely not her best moment. Although on the plus side, at least she hadn’t pulled him from his motorcycle and beaten him up.
“Sorry,” she said. The word seemed inadequate. She suddenly wasn’t sure whether she was holding Sam too tight or not tight enough. She began a slow descent, so gradual she wouldn’t startle him further. “We were in the middle of a training session. I thought you were one of Overdrake’s men.”
“In a real attack,” he said icily, “are you going to assume that every person you come across is one of Overdrake’s men? Will you pull random fleeing strangers from moving vehicles and threaten them?”
“In a real attack, I imagine people will be fleeing in the opposite direction of the dragons.” Tori was halfway to the ground. “Do you want me to take you to Dr. B? He’s in the control tower.”
“Tell him to meet me down here. I want to talk to all of you.”
And by the sound of his voice, he wasn’t delivering good news. Or maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe his voice only sounded disapproving because he was angry at her.
Dr. B had undoubtedly heard the instruction through Tori’s neck mic, but she repeated it anyway. “Dr. B, Sam requests an audience.”
“Yes,” Dr. B said. “Tell him I’m on my way.”
Tori relayed that message as well.
A-team had also been listening on their earpieces and had overheard everything that had transpired. Seen it too. All of their heads were tilted up, watching the scene play out. Whatever questions or comments they had, either awe or worry was keeping them silent.
&nbs
p; Willow dismounted and went to Sam’s bike to set it upright. Lilly rode across the field toward the spot Tori would land, watching. Team Magnus was moving downfield as well, must have switched to A-team’s frequency.
Dr. B used an override signal that broke into both teams’ channels. “Please assemble midfield.”
He didn’t mention that their visitor was Sam, but Kody had left the dead zone and joined Team Magnus on their way across the field. He was pointing to Tori, most likely filling them in on any details they’d missed.
Tori set Sam gently on his feet, then stepped to his side, giving him space. “I’m Tori, but I suppose you already know who all of us are.”
He glanced at her long enough to nod, then straightened his coat, pulling it down where it had ridden up. He didn’t seem to have more to say to her. Was it better to apologize again or just pretend the whole thing never happened? Well, Sam might go for the latter, but the other Slayers were never going to let her live this down.
Ryker and Jesse landed not far from Sam, standing as straight as soldiers meeting a general. Kody, Bess, and Rosa rode over and joined the others forming a half circle. Across the field, Dr. B was speeding toward them in the golf cart, still a few minutes from reaching them.
Jesse removed his helmet, something the Slayers weren’t supposed to do around anyone but Dr. B, Theo, and Booker. One by one the rest of the Slayers followed suit. It was an honor they wouldn’t have bestowed on any other outsider.
Sam surveyed them silently but left his helmet on. Perhaps he meant to keep his identity a secret. Perhaps they would never know exactly who he was.
Had it been a mistake to take off their helmets? Instead of seeing the gesture as an honor, maybe Sam saw it as an indication they didn’t take rules as seriously as they should have. Tori fiddled with the ridge of her helmet, wishing Dr. B was here already.
Jesse stepped up to Sam. His brown hair was mussed from sweat and smoke, and he’d managed to get a streak of dirt on his cheek, but his bearing was solemn, one of utter respect. “I’m glad to finally meet you, Sir. I’ve wanted to thank you for a long time for what you’ve done for us and for the nation.”