by C. J. Hill
Why was I determined to use Village A? Well, if you look at the complex’s staircases and catwalks, you can tell that it’s a really cool place for a fight scene. Jumping between stairwells and from roof to roof—that’s Hollywood gold. And although there are currently no plans for a film adaptation, the writer in me just couldn’t let go of that awesome setting. Because maybe, someday…
Enter Greta who graciously drove half an hour to the campus and wandered around that maze taking pictures and video for me while I was on the phone with her. Twice. And then I sent her the manuscript and she drove to the university again and walked off the action to make sure I’d written things right. She even jumped across the stairwells and off the roof. Okay, I’m lying about that. She would have been arrested or hospitalized for such shenanigans. But still, it takes a true friend to meander around student housing with a camera. By the time she was through with the place, she knew it so well she was giving directions to strangers. The world needs more people like you, Greta!
Also thanks to Trent Reedy who answered my questions about the explosives needed to break through steel doors. Yes, I did try to research that subject online and I’m sure I have a new page added to my NSA file because of it but I needed info I wasn’t finding. Trent served in the military and so had firsthand knowledge of det cords and such. The world also needs more people like you!
Thanks to Leslie Ethington for not only making sure I crossed my T’s and dotted my I’s, but for being my friend, allowing me to talk her ear off, and for not minding that I named the villain after her. (Bonus points if you can find Greta in the series.)
And speaking of awesome friends, I also need to acknowledge Sandra Udall because when I wrote the acknowledgments to The Wrong Side of Magic, I included everyone from my writing group except her even though she was one of the early beta readers for the book. (By the time I was writing the acknowledgments, she was on temporary hiatus from the writing group and thus I missed her name when I went through the group email.)
Forget the world, I need more people like my friends!
And speaking of awesome friends (See how these acknowledgments just grow?) Thanks to my writing groups who give me feedback, make me laugh, and give me a reason to get out of my pajamas and join the real world.
I should also thank my beta readers. I won’t name them all because I know I would forget someone. But I appreciate those of you who are cheerleaders, those of you who gently point out problems, and even you, Ryan, (AKA Darth Beta) who tell me that sections sound like I’m writing drunken poetry. All sorts of feedback helps the book become better. And that’s the important thing.
Synopsis of the first three books
Brant Overdrake was a man of ambition and ego—always a dangerous combination. His family had kept dragons on the remote island of St. Helena for generations. He was a dragon lord, a man able to connect to a dragon’s mind and make the animal do whatever he wished. His family had cared for the dragons in secret, but Brant had other ideas. He planned to use the dragons’ electromagnetic pulses as weapons. When dragons screeched, they sent out an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) that destroyed electronics, rendering cars, phones, computers—most technology—useless. He moved to Virginia and started laying the groundwork for a future takeover of America’s government.
When transporting a pair of dragon eggs, his wife had unexpected early labor and he was forced to make an emergency detour to an airport near DC. (Labor comes at inconvenient times. If you don’t believe this, ask me about my last labor, which lasted eighteen hours. It was quite inconvenient.) While the dragon eggs were at the airport, the general population was exposed to their signal.
This was unfortunate for Overdrake because the dragons had a natural enemy—Slayers. Slayers were descendants of the knights who killed dragons in the Middle Ages. If a person with Slayer genes came in contact with a dragon or dragon eggs while in utero, the person’s genes were activated, turning them into a Slayer. The child then grew up with an innate interest in dragons and inborn athletic skill.
The summer before her junior year of high school, Tori Hampton, a senator’s daughter, enrolled in Dragon Camp in the hopes of understanding her obsession with dragons. (She was a socialite, yes, but not a spoiled girl, despite what the hardcover book flap of Slayers claims.)
Jesse and Dirk, the blessed‐with‐good‐looks captains of the camp teams A‐Team and Team Magnus, introduced themselves at registration and took her to the camp’s secret secondary location. (I’m not kidding about the good looks part. I based Dirk on Dirk Benedict. If you don’t know who that is, google his pictures from Battlestar Gallactica. You see what I mean?)
At the secret camp, Tori met six other teens, all close to her age. She found out that they were actually training to fight real dragons and that she herself was a Slayer.
When Slayers came within five miles of a dragon (or the dragon simulator that Dr. B developed to help the Slayers train and complete missions) their powers turned on. The Slayers always had highly attuned senses, but when their powers were triggered they had extra strength, night vision, and the ability to leap ten to fifteen feet in the air. They also had an individual skill. Jesse could fly, Bess threw shields up, Kody could throw both freezing blasts and fireballs, Dirk saw what the nearest dragon saw, Shang and Lilly extinguished fire, and Rosa and Alyssa healed burns.
Slayers who had the same skill set were counterparts, which meant they could read one another really, really well. Also, when in the same vicinity, Slayers could tell where their counterparts were without looking. It was a skill that helped while fighting and made the group more tight‐knit.
Two days into camp, Tori discovered she could hear what the nearest dragon heard. It seemed like a useless and disappointing skill as dragons didn’t generally hear much that would help the Slayers fight them. She also found out that she was Dirk’s counterpart. Their skills weren’t exactly the same, but close enough to give them the counterpart abilities.
Dirk developed feelings for her; she developed feelings for Jesse. (I did mention that Jesse was hot too, didn’t I?)
When Tori overheard vets near a dragon give information about the dragon eggs’ location, she realized her skill was not as useless as she first imagined. She and the other Slayers planned a surprise attack on the location in order to destroy the dragon eggs. Because, as the old saying goes, it’s easier to kill your dragons before they hatch. Okay, that isn’t actually an old saying, but it should be.
Where was I? Oh yes, telling you about the ill‐fated surprise attack. It was a surprise, although mostly the Slayers were surprised because they were ambushed. If you haven’t read the first book (and you should, because it’s awesome) I’m going to have to disappoint you here and tell you that Dirk is actually Brant Overdrake’s son, a traitor who was sent to camp to spy on the Slayers.
However, as the Slayers were being ambushed, and were trapped in Overdrake’s enclosure, Dirk had a change of heart about betraying his friends. He then double‐crossed his father by helping Tori save the others. At this point Tori found out she could also fly.
It was a surprise to her, but not to Overdrake, because he already knew what readers won’t learn until the second book—that Tori is actually part dragon lord. Her ability to hear what the dragon hears—that’s not really a Slayer skill, it’s a dragon lord one.
This, by the way, was supposed to be the big reveal in Slayers: Friends and Traitors. And would have been quite a surprise to many people if the publisher hadn’t given away that plot twist on the back blurb. Which they did. Yeah, authors generally don’t have any control over what goes on the back of the book.
Anyway, I keep getting off track. So after the Slayers escaped, Overdrake set a dragon on them. Dirk’s dragon. He had to help his friends fight and kill it in order to save their lives. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Overdrake isn’t a very nice person.
In book two, camp ended and the Slayers went back to their homes. Tori heard the eggs
hatch, got together briefly with Dirk, and had her father search for Ryker, the missing Slayer.
I haven’t mentioned him yet, even though book one starts out and ends with him. (Hey, it’s hard to summarize hundreds of pages.) When Dr. B first told Ryker’s parents that their son was going to be a Slayer, instead of letting Dr. B train him, Ryker’s parents moved without a forwarding address. Well, you can’t blame them, really. Would you let your son fight huge, flying carnivores that breathe fire?
Tori’s father was able to track down Ryker’s address, because he worked for the government and let’s face it; you can’t disappear from the government. They know where you are.
On Halloween, Overdrake kidnapped Alyssa as a way to lure the Slayers into another ambush. He knew they’d go after her. As the Slayers met for the mission, Tori let Dirk know that her father had tracked down Ryker and she told Dirk that he lived in Rutland, Vermont. While Dr. B prepped the Slayers for the mission, Tori sensed Dirk’s anxiety about the mission—he was plagued with guilt for betraying his friends—and she figured out who Dirk was.
What follows is an awesome chase scene through DC, which you should read sometime. Plus, you should visit DC because it’s a cool place. (And when you go to the Jefferson Memorial, you can imagine me stepping off the area between the columns to see if a dragon would fit through them. This is the sort of dedicated research authors do.)
The Slayers retrieved Alyssa, although sadly, her memories and powers were gone. Slayers had an Achilles’ heel, so to speak. If they were drugged to the point of unconsciousness, the pathways in their brains that gave them powers were destroyed. The Slayers not only lost their powers, they didn’t even remember being Slayers.
It was a sad and yet funny scene because Alyssa thought they were all crazy.
Moving right along. Tori realized she had put Ryker in danger by revealing his address to Dirk. This is probably a good example of why you shouldn’t trust hot guys. Just saying. The Slayers then flew to Vermont to find and convince Ryker to join them. Overdrake’s men reached Ryker’s house at roughly the same time and a fight ensued. When you read that scene, please appreciate it because I had to rewrite it like, six times.
The Slayers found out that not only was Ryker a Slayer, but his cousin Willow was too. Their addition was especially good news because the Slayers’ numbers had been dwindling. They just lost Alyssa, and in the backstory of book one, they’d lost two other Slayers, Leo and Danielle. You need to know about them because they come into play in book five. At this point, you may be wondering if I regret writing a book with so many characters. Yes. I mean, of course I don’t—although I will never ever write a series with so many people in it again. The poor audiobook reader had such a hard time doing different voices for them all.
Back to the storyline. Dirk realized that his father was going to attack the Slayers’ plane. As they were flying home, he warned Tori. The Slayers were able to jump out of the plane before the dragon ripped the thing apart. Another author’s note here: I wanted to make that scene as authentic as possible, so I went skydiving. If you read that book, imagine me thousands of feet above the ground trying to convince the skydiving instructor that I’d changed my mind and didn’t want to jump after all. They don’t listen to you at that point. You’re strapped onto them and they just pull you right out of the plane. But I digress.
Anyway, another fight ensued and in this one, Tori was briefly able to enter the dragon’s mind. She couldn’t influence the dragon at all. Overdrake had too firm a control on it, but he was angry that she tried and told the dragon to ignore the rest of the Slayers and kill her.
As you may have guessed, the dragon wasn’t successful. Because if the dragon was, the book would have ended very badly, and I would have gotten angry emails from readers. I’d rather not get those.
In book three, Slayers: Playing with Fire, we learn that Bianca—Overdrake’s first wife and Dirk’s mother—was secretly pregnant when she left her husband twelve years ago. She didn’t want her second son sacrificed to Overdrake’s upcoming war the way Dirk would be. She knew if she left with Dirk, Overdrake would hunt her down to get him back—but her second son would have a chance to live if she separated from her husband and hid the baby’s existence.
Poor Bianca. Her secret doesn’t stay a secret because when Aaron turns twelve and his family is in financial straits, he sells some of the dragon scales that his mother had absconded with.
I will not go into detail about the scenes where the Slayers track the dragon scale back to Aaron, but I will say that I posted this question on Facebook: How would you get an unconscious body out of a Renaissance Festival? And I was surprised and a bit worried when many of my friends immediately had complete, workable plans for that venture. This should tell you something about the quality of people writers hang out with.
By this point in the book, the Slayers suspect that in order for Dirk and Tori to be counterparts, not only is Tori half dragon lord, but Dirk is half Slayer. Since his Slayer power is flying and dragon lords can also fly, neither he nor his father realized this fact. But Bianca definitely passed down Slayer genes to her sons—evidenced by the fact that her third son by a different father has Slayer powers. (Overdrake doesn’t know about him either.)
Aaron realizes that when Overdrake attacks the nation with his dragons, his younger brother, Jacob, will be drawn into the fight. He wants to do everything he can to stop Overdrake, and asks Tori to leak his location to his father. That way, he can live with Overdrake and work as a mole for the Slayers.
Tori tells him absolutely not. Which means you know this is going to be an important plot point. Aaron tells her that if she doesn’t help him, he’ll find a way to see Overdrake on his own—and Overdrake may suspect his intentions then. She tells Aaron she’ll give him a week to change his mind.
After a conversation with her father, Tori suspects that Senator Ethington may be working for Overdrake. In what are the funniest scenes in book three, Jesse and Kody bug the senator’s phone. They get information about an incoming arms deal, and tip off Tori’s father so he can put a stop to it. Which he does.
Understandably displeased, Overdrake wants to send a message to Tori. (Or perhaps he’s doing his own version of matchmaking, I’ll leave it to you to decide, Gentle Reader.) He steals Tori’s dog, Brindy, then feeds a dog to a dragon while threatening Tori that her family will meet the same fate if she interferes with him. (I never said he was a good matchmaker.)
Tori calls Dirk, more than a little upset, and Dirk confronts his father—because his father had promised he would leave Tori and her family alone. Overdrake then reveals that Tori’s dog is fine. He hadn’t needed to kill Brindy to make his point.
Dirk tells Tori he’ll give Brindy back if she’ll meet him late at night in a deserted location. She agrees. Yes, he’s the enemy, but you can’t blame her for being an animal lover. And besides, Dirk is good looking, so there’s that too.
Dirk takes the opportunity to slightly kidnap Tori and brings her to see Khan, one of his dragons. Dirk believes that if she sees a dragon when it isn’t attacking, she’ll appreciate her dragon lord side. He tries to convince her to leave the Slayers and join him.
Tori enters Khan’s mind because she wants to learn how to control dragons. The knowledge could help her the next time one attacks. When Dirk starts kissing her, she doesn’t stop him because she wants to stay in the dragon’s mind. Personally, I would totally kiss a Dirk Benedict lookalike if it meant saving the country. Wouldn’t you? No? And you call yourself a patriot…
At the end of the night, Tori sends Dirk a message about Aaron and his location. The next morning, she also tells Jesse that she kissed Dirk. He isn’t very understanding about her patriotism.
The last scene of the book is Overdrake’s men chasing down Aaron at the Renaissance Fair. And that’s how it ends. On a cliffhanger. Which is why I’ve been getting emails since Aug 2016 asking me when the next book is coming out.
By
the way, this was my second book where I’ve had to use the word Renaissance repeatedly and I still spell it wrong. Every. Single. Time.
So, that pretty much should bring you up to speed. Oh, one more piece of information you need. Dr. B lived on St. Helena with Overdrake. In fact, his father worked for Overdrake. His younger brother, Nathan, was a Slayer who was killed by Overdrake’s father.