The Dragon Lords

by C. J. Hill

  She pressed her advantage, following up with another kick aimed at his hand. He regained his balance in time to sweep her standing leg out from underneath her. She hit the ground with a thud that knocked the breath from her lungs and sent a slap of pain through her back.

  “Ouch,” she muttered. “That felt real.”

  “I never said you couldn’t be hurt in here.”

  She rolled back onto her feet again. Before she’d completely straightened, he plowed into her and flung her over his shoulder. The room was suddenly upside down and his shoulder was pushing into her stomach. In one smooth motion, he turned, spun, and tossed her at the wall.

  She hit it with a smack and then felt it give way. The sensation was like doing a back flop into a pool and she instinctively gulped in a breath of air.

  The next moment she was outside, blinking and looking up at a sky full of dizzy stars. Not only out of the control center, out of the dragon’s mind altogether. And she was still holding her breath. She let it out in a whoosh.

  Dirk’s arms tightened around her. He was sitting on the ground and she lay on his lap, her head cradled in one of his arms. Minerva sat not far away, twitching her head. The dragon growled, then glared at Dirk and Tori reproachfully.

  Apparently, dragons didn’t appreciate people bar fighting inside their heads. Well, that was one more thing she’d learned tonight.

  Tori wanted to sit up but couldn’t. She felt weak, spent, and the fact that Dirk was holding her sent tremors of guilt through her. While she’d been in the dragon’s mind trying to kick him, he’d been here, tenderly watching over her.

  Dirk shifted her in his arms, checking on her, and all the tenderness in his expression vanished. “That was completely suicidal. Did you bother to think what would’ve happened if you had managed to wrest control of Minerva away from me? She could have attacked us both, and you wouldn’t have even been conscious enough to fly away.”

  “You would have flown me away from her.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You fight me in one plane and expect me to protect you in another?”

  She managed a shrug. “I told you we didn’t have a very well-defined hero-villain relationship.”

  “That’s the truth.” He brushed a strand of hair away from her face, letting his fingers linger on her cheek, then bent down and kissed her. She didn’t stop him. In fact, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. And she wasn’t going to feel guilty about this later.

  Jesse had no claim to her and she was doing this to gain a strategic advantage. Sort of. Mostly. At any rate, Dirk had made it harder for Tori to fight Minerva, so now Tori would make it a little harder for him to fight her.

  Chapter 20

  Tori flew toward home, skimming through the air high enough to be unseen, but low enough that she wouldn’t be picked up by radar. With her powers turned on, the stars shone so brightly, the sky looked like the entire galaxy had drawn closer. She would have liked to drift and loop and slowly glide with her hands stretched out, but she had to speed back to her house before her powers wore off. Otherwise she’d find herself walking. Or worse, falling.

  Dirk had offered to drive Tori home, but she hadn’t accepted. She couldn’t let him know where she lived. He’d refused to drive her back to the school because he was convinced the Slayers would be waiting there for him. And they might be. He was still her enemy, despite the fact that she’d spent part of the night making out with him.

  Granted, it hadn’t been her best Slayer moment, but she’d also spent part of the night fighting with him inside the dragon’s mind, so maybe those two events canceled each other out.

  Man, what was wrong with her? When had her relationship with Dirk gotten so complicated?

  The answer came to her even though she’d only been asking in a rhetorical way. Her relationship with Dirk had always been complicated, she just hadn’t realized it at first.

  Dirk had ended up flying her to Fairfax on Minerva’s back so she’d be able to make it the rest of the way without losing her powers. While she soared over the highway, she texted Jesse on her phone. I’m fine and on my way home. Were you able to get my watch?

  She knew he would answer right away, and she knew he would lecture her about going off with Dirk.

  A few seconds later he called. Holding conversations was hard at high speeds since the wind had a way of blotting out words with its roar. Tori slowed. “Hello?”

  “I can’t believe you willingly left with him.”

  Cue the lecture.

  “You put yourself in danger,” he went on. “Do you realize what could have happened to you?”

  “Dirk was worried because he kept trying to contact me through Vesta and I wasn’t answering. Turns out, after I went into Khan’s mind in November, I stayed linked to him. Dirk was checking to make sure I was all right.”

  “He could see you were all right. Why did you leave the school?”

  “He wanted to talk and I could tell he didn’t plan on hurting me. He’s helped us before— saved our lives. We can’t afford to cut off communications with him. He might warn us of something again.”

  Jesse didn’t speak for a moment. She wished she could read his silences on the phone as well as she could in person. Was he considering her viewpoint or was this one of those times when he was fighting for patience? Below her, rows of townhouses looked like abandoned boxcars. She checked her direction and flew past them.

  “So what did Dirk want to talk about?” Jesse finally asked.

  “Um…” She struggled to remember their conversations. The kissing had pushed most of it from her mind. “We talked about Aaron. Dirk says he’s happy with Overdrake. So that’s good.”

  “Actually, that’s not good.”

  “Good in that Overdrake trusts him. Aaron’s giving us information, so he’s obviously still on our side.”

  “Or he’s setting us up for a trap. That is Overdrake’s specialty.”

  She ignored this comment and picked up more speed. The wind fingered through her hair, occasionally whipping it into her face. “We also talked about what a horrible father Overdrake is—well, that was mostly me talking, but Dirk said that when he becomes a parent, he wants to be like Dr. B, so that means something.”

  “Yeah, it means he wasn’t paying attention to any of Dr. B’s teachings on fighting tyranny.”

  “It means Dirk isn’t as far gone as we thought.” She stared at the city spread out beneath her, so much civilization everywhere. Streetlights, window lights, car headlights, all dotting paths into the darkness. “If we could find a safe place for the dragons—”

  “A safe place?” Jesse repeated. “As long as people like Overdrake can use dragons as weapons, there isn’t a safe place for them. They’re ticking time bombs, and we’ve got to diffuse them.”

  He meant kill them. Maybe Slayers couldn’t see dragons differently. Maybe she’d have better luck teaching a bird dog to ignore pheasants.

  She glanced at her phone’s map, making sure she was still going the right direction. “Jesse, when dragons are controlled, they’re amazing.” This was probably the wrong angle to take with a Slayer. “They’re an endangered species and a part of our history. Shouldn’t we at least—”

  “Dirk took you to see a dragon, didn’t he?”

  Was her opinion of dragons changing so much that Jesse could tell when she’d seen one? “Yes. I went into Minerva’s mind and was able to learn a few more things. I couldn’t push Dirk out of her control center, but at least now I have an idea how to do it.”

  To have a chance at pushing out a dragon lord, she would need the element of surprise on her side. She would need to appear and attack suddenly, pushing Overdrake through a wall before he had a chance to fight back. Getting to the control center undetected would be the hardest part. She would need to know the pathway there so well, she could zoom through it.

  “I just need more practice,” she said.

  “And Dirk will never let you prac
tice enough that you could become a threat to him. Why can’t you see that? He’s compromising your ability to fight. Now you won’t be able to kill Khan or Minerva.”

  “I will,” she said. “It will just be harder.” She had been emphasizing this to herself ever since she went into Minerva’s mind. She would do whatever she had to do to protect the other Slayers, even if that meant killing a dragon when she didn’t want to.

  She went on to describe her skirmish with Dirk inside Minerva’s mind and what she’d learned. She left out the details about the kiss at the end. Since Jesse wasn’t her boyfriend anymore, he didn’t have the right to know that part.

  When she finished, Jesse sighed unhappily and she wondered if he suspected anyway. “Look, I know you mean well, but please don’t go off with Dirk again. He understands strategic manipulation as well as the rest of us, and when he realizes he can’t persuade you to join him, he’ll decide to take you out of the game like he’s already done to Alyssa and Shang. Don’t make it easy for him.”

  Was Jesse right about that? Maybe. Probably. “I won’t make it easy.”

  There was another pause, then Jesse said, “I’ve worked out details for the mission tomorrow. Dr. B’s already approved them.”

  “You’re going with me?” That was a surprise.

  “I need to keep you safe.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

  “It’s a deep-seated fear of your untimely death. But I mean it in the most complimentary of ways.”

  “Oh. Then, thank you.” She glanced at her phone. Ten more minutes until her powers wore off. She adjusted her altitude, flying higher.

  “Tomorrow when we meet up for the mission, I’ll give you your watch back. Location epsilon. Standard time plus five.” Which meant five o’clock at the Manassas Regional Airport.

  “Great,” Tori said. “I’ll contact Theo with a list of supplies we’ll need.”

  “I already did that. That’s how I kept busy while you were off with Dirk. That, and Ryker and I flew around looking for your discarded corpse.”

  Tori had expected a lecture, but not one so peppered with references to her demise.

  “Dr. B made one stipulation,” Jesse continued. “I have to be the one in charge of the mission. Are you okay with that condition?”

  “Yes.” Whatever would make the rest of them feel better about her chances of survival.

  “Good.” Another pause. Then his voice came over the phone, soft and earnest. “Tori, please be careful. If not for your sake, then for mine. If anything ever happened to you…”

  “You’d be fine,” she said. “You always are.”

  “I wouldn’t be.” His voice went low. “I really wouldn’t be.”

  Just when it was becoming easy to put up walls between her and Jesse, one sentence like that could tear them down, could make her feel like the two of them might have a chance together after all. “Don’t worry,” she said, "I’ll be careful.”

  Chapter 21

  When Dirk got home, he put Minerva in her enclosure, made sure she had enough water, and removed her saddle chair. Khan and Minerva were now about the same distance from Tori, but since she’d gone into Minerva’s mind last, Tori was most likely still connected to that dragon.

  “Send me a message,” he said out loud. “So I know if you can hear me.”

  He used his new phone to check the site. A few moments later her message appeared. I hear you. Home safe?

  Without seeing her expression or hearing her voice, he couldn’t tell whether she was asking the question out of concern or whether she was fishing for information about where he lived. Probably the latter.

  Talk about your doomed relationships, and yet he still smiled when he thought of her flying with him across the snow-covered battlefield.

  “I’m glad you can hear me. I’d hate to have to show up to another basketball game and make Jesse look bad again.”

  Yeah, she wrote, don’t do that.

  “Next time, we’ll have to meet somewhere more private.” He was really asking if she would consent to another meeting.

  A minute went by, then a message appeared. Maybe.

  He grinned. Maybe was as good as a yes. “Maybe I’ll let you practice again.”

  Inside the house, he found his father sitting in the living room simultaneously writing on his laptop and watching coverage of the Democratic candidates’ debate. Dirk braced himself for some sort of reprimand. He’d told his father he was taking Minerva out for some exercise and then stayed out much longer than the task required.

  His father didn’t seem to notice the time. He was intent on the debate, shaking his head with disapproval. “Ethington is going off script again. I’ve paid the best consultants in the country to tell him what to say, and he continues to disregard them.”

  Dirk padded tentatively over to the couch. He ought to warn his father that Tori was connected to Minerva now, not Vesta. But how could he do that without admitting what he’d just done?

  His father probably wouldn’t mind that he’d seen Tori, even though he hadn’t gotten permission beforehand. Dirk had already said he was working on winning her over and his father hadn’t objected. And by letting Tori go inside Khan’s and Minerva’s minds, Dirk had made it harder for her to kill them during future attacks. But he didn’t want his father micromanaging his relationship with Tori. He didn’t want to give him details about the evening.

  It wasn’t as though Dirk had compromised their security by switching the dragon Tori was linked to. His father never spoke of classified information near any of the dragons. He wasn’t that careless.

  On the other hand, maybe he should tell his father. Aaron practiced with Minerva. His father should know that Tori would be able to hear what Aaron said. The kid didn’t have information about the revolution—their father didn’t give those sorts of details to Dirk, let alone Aaron—but still, he might say something he shouldn’t.

  Dirk walked closer to the couch. How should he phrase this?

  His father waved a hand at the screen. “Ethington is promising too much. Even as stupid as the population is, they won’t believe the government is capable of solving every societal problem. He’ll lose credibility.”

  “I don’t know,” Dirk said. “You might be overestimating the population.”

  His father grunted. “You’re probably right. But still, when he disregards my instructions, he disregards me. I don’t tolerate that. Not from anyone.”

  Then again, maybe Dirk shouldn’t mention Tori was connected to Minerva. The less he brought her to his father’s attention, the better. The best solution would be for Dirk to take Vesta out the next time he met Tori. Then she’d be joined to the right dragon again and Dirk wouldn’t have to worry about Aaron messing up and saying something he shouldn’t around Minerva. Problem solved, and his father wouldn’t have to know any of the details.

  “Politicians,” his father said with disgust. “I won’t mind destroying them all.”

  “All of them except Senator Hampton.”

  His father grumbled something that may or may not have been agreement.

  Dirk didn’t bother pressing the point. With his father in a bad mood, reminding him that he’d promised to leave Tori’s family alone wouldn’t do any good.

  Still, as Dirk went to his bedroom, his father’s response irked him. A promise was a promise. It shouldn’t change every time his father got angry. He’d promised before that he wouldn’t hurt Tori and then he turned a dragon on her plane.

  A memory from tonight flashed through his mind: Tori lying unconscious in his arms. Even though he’d known she was fine, seeing her body so lifeless—hair spilling onto the ground in a brown tangle—it had bothered him more than it should have. She’d looked like she’d died, not fainted, and holding her had seemed like a bad omen, a premonition of things that might come.

  Dirk pushed the image from his mind. He still had time to convince her she was more dragon lord than Slayer
. He might not ever have to fight her. And even if he did, he would never kill her. He couldn’t do something like that.

  Of course, this thought led to the question: What was he willing to do in a fight? Although he tried to banish the question, it followed him around the rest of the night. “A war half-waged is a war lost,” his father’s voice echoed through his thoughts. “Empires have a cost, and the price will be paid with the blood of everyone who defies us.”

  His father had quite a few sayings about crushing the opposition. He probably made them up in his spare time.

  How many people would die during the attacks? Ten thousand men had died during the Revolutionary War, forty thousand during the French Revolution, and six hundred and twenty thousand during the Civil War. Dirk’s father had assured him their revolution wouldn’t be nearly as deadly, but any unnecessary deaths were too many.

  He wouldn’t think about that. During the attacks, he was only going to fight people who were coming after him. Self-defense. No one would die by his hand unless they asked for it.

  Before Dirk climbed into bed, his gaze fell on his nightstand and his phone plugged in there. For a moment, he had the irrational desire to call his mother. Not to ask her advice, just to hear her voice.

  A ridiculous idea. What would he say to her?

  Besides, if he called, she would ask for help getting Aaron back, and he wasn’t spiteful enough to tell her that Aaron didn’t want to leave.

  Chapter 22

  On Saturday, road construction delayed Tori and she was ten minutes late pulling into the Manassas Regional Airport. When she walked into the Slayers’ jet, she found Dr. B sitting in the cockpit, laptop open, going over mission details with Jesse, who stood nearby.

  Jesse nodded in greeting, his brown eyes lingering on her. She probably shouldn’t read too much into that look.

  “You’re here,” Dr. B said in the cheerful voice he always used during missions. “I’ll get the door and we’ll be on our way.”

  Tori checked to see if any of the other Slayers had come. Only one other person was onboard. Bess.