by C. J. Hill
Tori glanced at the signs, noting the upcoming exits. “What restaurant are you taking me to?”
“We’re not going to a restaurant. I’m taking you to see Minerva.”
Chapter 19
Twenty minutes later, Dirk pulled into the empty Manassas National Battlefield parking lot. Minerva was close by. Tori could tell because her powers had turned on several minutes ago. She hadn’t argued with Dirk about going to see the dragon because having her powers working would help Tori if she needed to protect herself or get away. She’d be on more equal footing with Dirk. And besides, she was curious to see Minerva.
There was no harm in scoping out her enemy. Going to see the dragon didn’t mean she would go into its mind. She still had time to decide whether that was a good idea or not.
Dirk parked the car and the two of them stepped out into several thousands of acres of snow-covered grassland. A few trees lined the area, their lifting branches creating a lacy pattern against the night sky. Historic buildings, fences, and cannons dotted the area replicating what the land would have looked like during the Civil War.
Dirk took to the air, gliding a few feet from the ground, and motioned for Tori to follow him. She rose and skimmed along behind him, hair fluttering behind her. With her powers on, she no longer felt cold. The night air rushing over her skin felt as gentle as a caress and the moonlight that gleamed white on the snow seemed picturesque, not chill provoking. This was how flying was meant to be done—soaring, sliding, floating. No helmets and bulletproof jackets. No worrying that something was rocketing toward her, about to strike.
One small hill stood out against the field. No snow covered it. Tori’s senses prickled and adrenaline coursed through her. That hill was a reclining dragon, tail curled around its body.
Minerva shifted, revealing in silhouette an angular head with pointed ears. The diamond shape in the middle of her forehead had a covering on it, something that no doubt blocked the dragon’s signal from creating more Slayers. In the dim light, the dragon’s scales appeared to be the color of drying blood. Since darkness muted and blackened the color, her scales were most likely bright red.
A red dragon—called Y Ddraig Goch by the Welsh. In English lore, Merlin had seen a red dragon fight against a white one and from that struggle, predicted the future of Wales. And here was an actual red dragon. Too bad there wasn’t a wizard around to predict the future of this country.
The dragon turned two golden yellow eyes in Tori’s direction, giving her an inquisitive look.
Tori hadn’t known that dragons could look inquisitive. None of the other ones she’d met had. Or maybe she was just getting better at reading their expressions. She shouldn’t go inside Minerva’s mind. She’d already gotten to know this dragon as well as she should.
The thought made Tori slow in the air, pull up, and hover uncertainly. What in the world was she doing? Was coming here a good strategy or a terrible, terrible idea?
Although Dirk had been facing away from Tori when she stopped, he immediately flipped in the air and doubled back. He was in the dragon’s mind and Minerva had seen Tori halt, so he’d known too. She had to remember that—when a dragon was around, a dragon lord could watch her with two sets of eyes.
Dirk took her hand and slowly guided her downward. “You’re not afraid of Minerva, are you? You know I won’t let her hurt you.”
Tori didn’t answer. Any sane person would be terrified of a fifty ton, armored carnivore. The fact that Tori was merely afraid and not stunned with panic spoke well of her bravery.
She swallowed and let Dirk pull her closer to the dragon. A familiar oily smell wafted from the beast, a scent like spilled kerosene. It stirred memories of past fights—the way Tamerlane’s roar had cut through the night, his talons outstretched, jaws snapping at her. Kiha chasing Tori, gaining on her while burning trees cast jumbled shadows on the mountainside.
Tori took a deep breath and tried to slow her racing heartbeat. Dirk was right. As long as he had control of the dragon, she would be fine. Time to pull herself together and see what she could learn about dragons that might prove useful.
Dirk and Tori landed a few yards away from Minerva, their feet crunching into the snow. Still holding her hand, Dirk towed her to the dragon’s side.
Minerva’s breath rose, frozen in the winter air, and drifted upward. Her eyes—cat-like in shape—shone dimly as they watched Tori, tracking her every movement. One quick flick of the dragon’s head and she could bite a person half.
Tori hadn’t realized that she’d planted her feet until Dirk tugged her forward again. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
“You have an odd definition of beautiful.”
Minerva lowered her head to Tori, taking in her scent. Like a dog. Only dogs didn’t have teeth as sharp as scalpels. Minerva blew out a breath. White from the cold, it surrounded Tori in a shroud before dissolving away.
“She likes you,” Dirk said.
Tori was too tense to tell if he was teasing. “Do dragons ever like people?”
He shrugged, was definitely teasing now. “Stories from the Middle Ages say dragons had a thing for comely young maidens.”
“I’m pretty sure their thing was they ate the maidens.”
Dirk squeezed her hand. “We all have different ways of showing we care.”
His hand around hers felt nearly as dangerous as the dragon in front of her. She could tell he wanted to kiss her again. Should she let him? The last time she’d kissed him, it had ended her relationship with Jesse. Kissing Dirk again would be like admitting that Jesse was right and she couldn’t resist Dirk’s advances.
Then again, what was the point of resisting Dirk now? Jesse had broken up with her. Dirk still wanted her.
He lifted her hand and put it on the dragon’s side. Her fingers splayed out against the scale with a slight tremor. It was like touching a bomb: A calm hard shell that held something explosive.
“Here, feel how smooth she is.” Dirk’s hand stayed on the top of Tori’s, intertwining their fingers together. “In the light, these scales are Corvette red.”
An apt description. Minerva’s scales were as smooth as metal. Sleek and fast. As the dragon breathed, the scale moved under Tori’s fingertips. She was as aware of those breaths as she was of Dirk’s proximity. His hand still rested on top of hers, experiencing each breath with her. He didn’t want her to pull her hand away and she didn’t.
See, he seemed to be saying, this is what you could have.
When he dropped his hand and wound his arms around her waist, her awe for the dragon kept her fingers sliding across the Corvette-colored scales.
Touching a dragon stirred some genetic place inside her, some place that she didn’t want to awaken. But how could she move her hand away?
The feeling was like stroking the bottom of the ocean, like caressing something deep, mysterious, and undiscovered. A legend was beneath her fingertips. A dragon that had adorned the Welsh flag for centuries. Before the Welsh, the Romans had used the red dragon as their standard. Minerva was history and myth intermingled.
Dirk rested his cheek against Tori’s hair. “Tell me you don’t think she’s beautiful.”
“She’s…” It was hard to think while Dirk was holding her this way. The warmth of his arms was distracting. Tori had known Dirk would do this and she’d let it happen anyway. Was she a good strategist or just hopeless? “…powerful,” Tori said.
“Why don’t you want to admit she’s beautiful?”
“And captivating,” Tori added.
“You’re almost there. Keep the adjectives coming.”
“And…what is it called when you know you shouldn’t do something but you do it anyway?”
“Foolish?” Dirk supplied.
“Seductive.”
He tilted his head, considering Minerva for a moment. “Are we looking at the same dragon?”
“Maybe power is always that way,” Tori said. Or maybe the feeling stemmed from the way Dirk stoo
d close with his arms wrapped around her waist. Her heart was racing again, and this time not with fear. Dirk was her counterpart. He understood her. He had been there for her the last time Jesse broke up with her. It would be so easy to turn around, slip her arms around his neck and forget everything else for a few minutes.
She dropped her hand from Minerva and tried to rein in her thoughts. Forgetfulness wasn’t something she could afford. She had to use this meeting to the Slayers’ advantage. Should she go into Minerva’s mind and learn about controlling her or not?
She remembered one of Dr. B’s sayings, a quote from General Patton: Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
Was this a calculated risk or was it being rash?
Dirk’s arms had coiled across her waist and she rested her own arms atop his. “After you took me to see Khan, you told me that if I met Minerva, you would teach me more about controlling dragons.”
“Go inside her mind and I might.”
“Might?”
“Life is always a gamble.”
Was he teasing her or using her? The amusement he felt didn’t let her know. Maybe he was amused she was so easy to use. She loosened his grip on her waist and stepped away from him. “You want me to go into Minerva’s mind so I’ll have a harder time killing her.”
“True,” he said, unrepentant. “But you’ll do it anyway in the hopes that it will help you save the Slayers.”
Perhaps he knew her better than she knew herself. She’d been debating the issue since she got here, but he was right—when it came down to it, she was willing to do whatever she had to in order to help them.
Without responding to Dirk, she let that ever-present thread of hearing she had with the dragon grow and strengthen until it pulled her into Minerva’s mind.
Her senses immediately expanded, joining with the dragon’s. It had been so effortless to split her consciousness into two. She was both standing on the grass beside Dirk watching Minerva and also peering out of the dragon’s eyes at the expanse of the deserted battlefield.
Tori could feel Minerva’s thoughts, her casual surveillance of everything around her. Tori smelled the scent of the forest and tasted the blood on the dragon’s tongue. Earlier, Minerva had spotted a deer in the park, flushed it out and devoured it. Now she was lounging in triumph and satisfaction.
Dirk’s voice came from within the dragon’s mind. “Welcome to Minerva. You won’t find a gentler dragon.”
That only meant the rest were even more fearsome.
Outside, he took her hand and smiled. She smiled back at him. “What are you going to teach me about controlling dragons?”
He spoke inside the dragon’s mind again. “Spend some time getting to know Minerva. Ask her anything. Although, I’ve already told her not to give you any locations, so don’t bother requesting those.”
Tori didn’t want to get to know Minerva. She wanted to find her control center and see if she could knock Dirk out of it.
Aaron had said that going along Minerva’s path was like wading through a dark, thick river. Overdrake had shown him the path at first, but once Aaron had seen it, he only had to picture it again to get there.
A dark, thick river. She pictured the Potomac. She’d seen it at night from above.
Nothing happened.
“Don’t you have any questions?” Dirk asked.
The Potomac had probably been too big. You couldn’t wade through it. She imagined a creek she’d seen in a picture, small and winding through trees. Still nothing.
“Is Aaron okay?” She asked the question inside the dragon’s mind, directing it to Minerva.
The dragon only felt confusion at her words.
Dirk ran his thumb along the backside of Tori’s hand. “You can’t ask a dragon to make judgments about someone’s well-being. They don’t have that sort of understanding.”
Was she going to have to imagine an exact picture of a river she’d never seen? “Do you like Aaron?” she asked Minerva.
A scene flashed in front of her: Aaron tossing a lamb carcass into the air to the dragon. Tori felt Minerva’s appreciation. So apparently that was a yes. Another scene of Aaron appeared. In this one, he’d brought a bag of thawed turkeys and dumped them out at her feet. More appreciation. The way to a dragon’s heart was definitely with dead animals.
Picturing rivers wasn’t working. With Khan, she hadn’t visualized anything. She’d just been afraid and desperate. She’d instinctively reached out for anything that could help her, and she’d suddenly been in the next level of Khan’s mind.
Fear and desperation. Instead of imagining rivers, Tori thought of Minerva bearing down on her school, talons outstretched. It could happen. Overdrake could attack that way. She envisioned the horror on her friends’ faces. She saw herself there, unarmed, unable to stop it from happening. Her desperation blossomed into a sharp, frustrated need.
And then she was in the next level of Minerva’s mind. She stood in a river of flowing colors: dark greens, blues, and reds. Not wading depth. The colors washed by all around her, over her head. They were the dragon’s impulses, desires, instincts, pushing against her so firmly, Tori had the ridiculous urge to hold her breath. This wasn’t real water and her avatar didn’t need to breathe.
Aaron had said to wade through it, not follow it upstream or downstream. She pushed that way, cutting across. The colors parted revealing Dirk’s avatar standing in a round dark room. He looked exactly as he did in real life and was even wearing the same clothes. One hand held something rectangular and black. His control object. As long as he held onto it, he controlled Minerva.
“Well,” he said and the word came out with an echo. “That was too fast. If I hadn’t caught you, you would have pitched face-first into Minerva’s side.”
“Thanks.” Tori had lost contact with her body outside, didn’t feel it anymore. She still could see out of Minerva’s eyes, though. The dragon was considering the snow-covered field and the frosted fences stitching through them. Tori didn’t want to pull back from this level to check on her body. She was afraid doing so would take her from this room.
She held out her hand and touched one of the dark walls. It gave way beneath her fingers as though it was made of a sheet of water. So it was more of a boundary than an actual wall. The floor felt solid enough. She wasn’t sinking through it.
“If I come to the control center more slowly, will I be able to keep consciousness in my body?”
With her fingers skimming the wall, she stepped around the room, circling to see what was behind Dirk. As far as she could tell, just more dark wall.
Dirk turned as Tori walked, making sure he always faced her. He didn’t answer.
“You said you would teach me something about controlling dragons,” she reminded him. “Were you telling the truth or should I stop trusting you?”
“Fine. I’ll answer your question to show you I keep my word.” He cleared his throat and put his hands behind his back, impersonating one of Dr. B’s stances. “Controlling dragons is about balance. Think of it as riding a bike. You got on, leaned way to the left, and instead of straightening yourself, you kept pedaling harder.”
She took another step around him. “How do I learn to do it right?”
“The same way you learned to ride a bike. Lots of practice.”
“Will you let me practice a lot?”
“I will if you leave the Slayers.”
She’d made a complete circle around Dirk without seeing anything else in the control center. Just the black walls surrounding the two of them. “As far as mind palaces go, this one is in need of serious décor help. Would it have been too hard to provide some chairs?”
“Tori,” he said, his hands back at his sides, “You need to pull back from here and go into Minerva’s senses.” He raised his eyebrows for emphasis. “It’s not safe to be unconscious.”
“I know you won’t do anything you shouldn’t to my body.”
“I meant it’s not
safe to be unconscious around a dragon, but good point.” He gave her a mischievous grin. “It’s not safe to be unconscious around me either.”
“I trust you to be a gentleman,” she said pointedly.
He let out a scoff. “In the time you’ve known me, have I ever been a gentleman?”
She surveyed the object in Dirk’s hand, tried to see it more closely. What was his control object? A remote of some sort?
“What do you have in your hand?” Tori asked.
“Tori,” his voice was firmer, “leave, or I’ll have to throw you out.”
“Can we hurt each other in here?” They were, after all, avatars. Was it possible that she could hurt Overdrake inside a dragon’s mind or vice versa?
“Well, I’ll probably bruise your ego,” Dirk said.
He was taller and stronger, but in a place like this, physical strength didn’t matter, did it? This was all a mind game. Besides, even if she couldn’t match him in muscle, she could take him down with a well-placed kick.
She ran her fingers across the wall again, watching the image shift like black oil. “You’re the one that brought me to Minerva and told me to go inside her mind. You should be a better host.”
He shook his head. “Don’t think I won’t toss you out of here. I will.”
She smiled back at him. “Not if I can toss you out first.” Without a pause, she sprang forward, leveling a roundhouse kick at his chest.
He stepped out of the way easily enough. Her momentum carried her past him, out of his reach. She caught herself before she went through the wall and spun to face him.
“You’re not thinking this through,” he said.
“But this is all thought, isn’t it?” She lunged at him, pivoting and kicking at his arm.
He barely dodged her in time and had to take a step sideways to keep his balance. “Stop it, Tori.”
“Why? So far, my ego isn’t all that bruised.”
She leaped upward, striking her foot into his chest. A normal person would have gone down. Dirk only staggered backward.