Slayers (20 page)
Authors: C. J. Hill
W
hen Bess came back with Dr. B, everyone else was sitting in cabin 27, peppering Tori with questions. “You can
hear
what the dragons hear?” Dirk repeated as though he still didn’t believe it. For the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t look on the verge of smirking. His blue eyes widened as he studied her, but he didn’t look pleased, just surprised. Tori could only think of one reason why: he didn’t want to be her counterpart.
hen Bess came back with Dr. B, everyone else was sitting in cabin 27, peppering Tori with questions. “You can
hear
what the dragons hear?” Dirk repeated as though he still didn’t believe it. For the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t look on the verge of smirking. His blue eyes widened as he studied her, but he didn’t look pleased, just surprised. Tori could only think of one reason why: he didn’t want to be her counterpart.
Earlier that night as they jogged up to the Easter grounds, Bess had told Tori how the counterpart thing worked. “Counterparts have a connection,” she had said. “It’s like you can understand how your counterpart thinks. It helps when we’re fighting, because a lot of times you can anticipate what they’re going to do. And if they’ve been away from the simulator for more than half an hour and their power is drained but yours isn’t, you can touch them and some of your power will flow into them. It’s like jump-starting a battery.”
Tori had immediately thought about the time she’d flown with Jesse. “You feel a closeness to them?” she asked. “An intimacy?”
“Like you’d feel toward a brother or sister,” Bess said, and her voice had gone soft, sad. “Leo isn’t here anymore, and it feels like I lost a brother.”
Tori didn’t think of Jesse as a brother, which perhaps should have been her first clue that he wasn’t her counterpart.
But she didn’t feel sisterly toward Dirk, either.
Dirk’s eyes fixed on Tori’s. They seemed to look through her, into her, making her vulnerable in a way she hadn’t expected.
“You can’t
see
anything?” he asked. “There’s no split screen in your mind?”
see
anything?” he asked. “There’s no split screen in your mind?”
“No, but my hearing is split. When I’m listening to you, the sound gets fainter. It’s like background noise. But when I tried to sleep, or when I went outside and shut my eyes—when I wasn’t concentrating on something else—the heartbeat grew louder.”
Alyssa leaned forward on her bed. “Do you hear one heartbeat or two?”
“One,” Tori said, glad she could break Dirk’s gaze and look at someone else.
Rosa turned to Dr. B, who had just stepped inside. “Does that mean there’s only one dragon egg?”
Dr. B clicked off his flashlight and slipped it into the pocket of his worn bathrobe. “It could mean several things. Perhaps she can hear only one dragon at a time, or perhaps her mind connects with one dragon, and Dirk’s mind connects with the other. Or perhaps the dragons’ heartbeats are in sync with each other. Legend has it they hatch at exactly the same time. It prevents one from being bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to eat the other.” He smiled at Tori. “This is quite interesting, really. You have Dirk’s gift, but you don’t. It’s an odd double, isn’t it?”
She’d been so excited to have found her talent, it wasn’t until Dr. B said this that she realized how useless her gift was. Dirk would be
able to locate where the dragons were headed before they attacked by seeing the landscape through their eyes, but what good was hearing what the dragons heard?
able to locate where the dragons were headed before they attacked by seeing the landscape through their eyes, but what good was hearing what the dragons heard?
She leaned against the wall by her bed. “It’s a pointless talent. I already know what the dragons will hear when they attack. A lot of screaming people. How will that help us fight them?”
The other Slayers looked at her, but no one said anything. Apparently, they had come to the same conclusion.
“Maybe one of the dragons is blind,” Rosa said, “so you can’t see what it sees, and your hearing developed instead of your sight.”
Lilly let out a cough of disbelief. “Yeah, that’s it. One of the dragons will be feeling his way across the streets of D.C. with a cane clutched in its wing, terrorizing anyone who can’t shuffle out of its way in time.”
Rosa’s brown eyes flashed at Lilly. “Bats hunt by sound, and they manage well enough.”
Dr. B held up his hand to stop the fighting. “We shouldn’t disparage any gift. Every talent is valuable.”
Lilly said, “Except that one,” but she said it softly enough that Dr. B didn’t hear her.
Tori did and couldn’t even disagree. Compared to the others, her fighting skills were woefully undeveloped, and her genes had given her a nearly useless skill. Would she even be able to tell when the dragons hatched like Dirk would?
Though she continued to look at Dr. B, she felt Dirk’s gaze on her again, heavy with thought.
“How do I disconnect myself from the dragon’s heartbeat?” she asked, already feeling suffocated by its constant presence. “I don’t want to hear it all the time.”
Dr. B held a hand out to Dirk, giving him the floor.
He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “When I don’t want the
dragon sight, I concentrate on it, like I’m peering through an open doorway at it. Then I minimize the door. It doesn’t go away, but it shrinks to the point that I can ignore it.”
dragon sight, I concentrate on it, like I’m peering through an open doorway at it. Then I minimize the door. It doesn’t go away, but it shrinks to the point that I can ignore it.”
“You minimize the door?” Tori repeated. How could she do that? Dr. B smiled at Tori encouragingly. “I’m sure once you experiment with it, you’ll get the hang of it.”
She shut her eyes, concentrating on the heartbeat. Immediately, the sound grew louder. She tried to see a door around it, but couldn’t. How did you see a door around a sound? After a moment, she opened her eyes and concentrated on the people and sounds of the room. The heartbeat faded into background noise again.
“Any better?” Dirk asked.
“A little.” She was unwilling to tell him she couldn’t even control her own talent. She fiddled with the blanket on her bed, tracing the stitching with her finger. “My hearing has always been unusually good. Is that why? Because it’s part of my dragon skill?”
Dr. B inclined his head upward as he considered the idea. “An interesting theory. Do dragon talents carry over into normal life? Or perhaps Tori’s talent became hearing because she was gifted at it to begin with? Perhaps gifts follow the neuropathways that are already there.” His gaze traveled around the room. “Do the rest of you see any overlap of your skills in your normal life?”
“I douse fire,” Lilly said. “How would that carry over in my normal life?”
Bess blinked innocently. “Well, in your normal life, you’re not that hot.”
Lilly picked up her pillow and threw it at Bess. Bess caught it one-handed, put the pillow behind her back, then settled into it. “Comfy.”
Jesse was leaning against the wall by the door. “As a kid, I used to jump out of swings when they were at their highest point because it
felt like flying. I also used to leap from our balcony onto our trampoline.”
felt like flying. I also used to leap from our balcony onto our trampoline.”
Rosa stared at him and shook her head. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
“And in Rosa’s real life,” Bess said, making her voice sound like an announcer, “she tries to keep everyone from getting hurt or having fun. It’s sort of like healing people, but more irritating.”
“I’m a healer, too,” Alyssa said. “And I don’t try to keep people from getting hurt.”
Bess shrugged. “That’s because long ago you gave over your will and identity in order to become Lilly’s evil twin.”
Alyssa picked up her pillow and threw it at Bess—which wasn’t the best way to demonstrate her independence from Lilly. Bess caught the pillow, added it to Lilly’s, and leaned back again. “Supercomfy.”
Dr. B shot Bess a stern look. “Enough, or I’ll have to deduct team points. Remember, no house divided against itself can stand.” His bathrobe belt had loosened and he pulled it tight with a flourish.
Bess watched him and rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Dad, can’t you get a better bathrobe? That one’s embarrassing.”
Dr. B smoothed down the sides of his robe. “I’ve had this one since college.”
“Yeah. That’s one of the reasons it’s embarrassing.”
Ignoring his daughter, he pulled his flashlight from his pocket. “Well, it’s good to know what Tori’s gift is. Now I can plan how best to employ her abilities.”
Lilly leaned over to Alyssa and whispered, “She can hold our stuff while we kill the dragon.”
Tori shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but did.
Dr. B moved toward the door. “It’s late, and you need your rest. Big day tomorrow.”
This brought forth moans from several campers. Dr. B held up one
hand to fend off their complaints. “If you are prepared, you shall not fear. And as you ponder those wise words from the Bible, I will wish you a good night.” He waved a good-bye to them, flipped on his flashlight, and walked out the door.
hand to fend off their complaints. “If you are prepared, you shall not fear. And as you ponder those wise words from the Bible, I will wish you a good night.” He waved a good-bye to them, flipped on his flashlight, and walked out the door.
Alyssa watched him go. “Do you think that quote is really from the Bible, or does he just make up stuff because he knows we don’t know the difference?”
Lilly leaned back nonchalantly. “I’m not reading the Bible to find out.”
“Trust me,” Bess said, “if it’s an ancient text, he’s studied it, highlighted passages, and discussed parts of it with guys who came to pick me up for dates.”
Which, Tori supposed, was another disadvantage of having a father who was a medieval scholar. It sort of made senator look like a normal profession.
The guys got up and sauntered out the door, talking to one another about what sort of thing Dr. B might have planned for them tomorrow. Before they left, Kody called back to them, “Good night, y’all,” and the door thunked shut behind them.
Tori didn’t move from her sitting position. She had thought of another question. “How come no one else’s gift works when the simulator is turned off, but I can still hear the dragon’s heartbeat?”
Bess climbed into her bed. “It’s the same for Dirk. The simulator tricks your body into thinking a dragon is around so your night vision and strength turn on. You can’t connect with the mind of the simulator, though, because it doesn’t have one. You, girlfriend, get to listen to the actual dragons.”
“But aren’t they somewhere far away?” Tori asked. “I thought the dragons had to be within five miles before they triggered our abilities.”
“Not for the mind connection you and Dirk have.” Bess pulled back her covers and lay down. “You have a wider range. We don’t know
how wide, because we don’t know where the eggs are. It could be a hundred miles. It could be ten.”
how wide, because we don’t know where the eggs are. It could be a hundred miles. It could be ten.”
A hundred miles. Tori felt insulated by that number until she remembered that dragons could fly fast. How long would it take them to travel a hundred miles? An hour? Two? Not long enough.
“If I can be far away from the dragon and still connect to it, how come I never heard the heartbeat before I came to camp?”
Bess slipped her arm underneath her pillow, adjusting it. “You finally got a strong dose of the simulator wavelength and it kick-started your inner eye. Your body knows what it’s supposed to be doing now.” She sent Tori an apologetic look. “Things will never be the same. It happened to all of us. You’ll notice things you automatically blocked out before. Like, you’ll be in school trying to focus on a test while in the background your mind is simultaneously scanning the room for movement and calculating the speed of every car that drives past the window.”
Rosa rolled on her side and pulled up her covers. “The guys love the added awareness because it makes them better at sports—and okay, it’s sort of nice that no one can sneak up on you—but most of the time it’s just annoying.” She shut her eyes and yawned. “Don’t worry, though. You get used to it.”
Alyssa turned out the light, and darkness swallowed the room again.
Tori lay wide awake on her bed. Sleep was impossible with the sound of a dragon heartbeat ticking away in her ears. She might as well have tried to doze off with a serial killer breathing down her neck. She kept thinking relaxing thoughts like
It wants to eat me
, and
They’re the size of lions when they hatch.
It wants to eat me
, and
They’re the size of lions when they hatch.
How was she ever supposed to get used to any of this?
A
fter an hour or so of trying—and failing—to banish both the sound of the heartbeat and the happy thoughts that accompanied it, Tori drifted into a fitful sleep. Her dreams were filled with dragons whose roars sounded like drumbeats. They stretched their scaly wings over her bed, creating a canopy she couldn’t escape from. And the next moment she saw Dirk, sitting across the room watching her, his blue eyes serious, deep, brooding. He seemed sad about something, and she wanted to take his hand to comfort him. In her dream, she kept walking toward him, but never reached him. Little creaks from the forest would shoot her back into breathless wakefulness. She had to keep concentrating on the sounds in the cabin to make the heartbeat fade into the background again.
fter an hour or so of trying—and failing—to banish both the sound of the heartbeat and the happy thoughts that accompanied it, Tori drifted into a fitful sleep. Her dreams were filled with dragons whose roars sounded like drumbeats. They stretched their scaly wings over her bed, creating a canopy she couldn’t escape from. And the next moment she saw Dirk, sitting across the room watching her, his blue eyes serious, deep, brooding. He seemed sad about something, and she wanted to take his hand to comfort him. In her dream, she kept walking toward him, but never reached him. Little creaks from the forest would shoot her back into breathless wakefulness. She had to keep concentrating on the sounds in the cabin to make the heartbeat fade into the background again.
Around 3:00 a.m., voices woke her. A man said, “Look, right there—it’s at least two inches.”
Tori’s eyes flew open. She sat up, trying to figure out who was in the room.
Another fainter voice said, “Check the other one.”
The first voice faded, now sounding like it was far away. “I don’t see any cracks on this one.”
People’s voices didn’t normally go from loud to faint like that. The voices, she realized, weren’t in the room. They were in her mind.
Tori shook her head as though she could shake away the noise. This was bad. She was hearing voices. That was the sort of thing that happened to crazy people.
And then Tori understood why she was hearing the voices. The men were talking next to the dragon eggs. The dragons’ ears could pick up the noise, so she could, too.
Tori hugged her pillow to her stomach. She could spy on Overdrake. She was a living wire tap and these men might say something that the Slayers could use to fight the dragons.
Shutting her eyes, she concentrated on their voices to make them grow louder. Part of her wanted to wake up the others and tell them what was happening, but it was the middle of the night, and what did she have to report? Two strangers were talking about something she couldn’t understand.
“Are you sure that’s a real crack?” a man asked, “It’s only a couple inches.”
“A two-inch crack is still a crack.”
Tori gripped her pillow tighter.
“It might just be an irregularity in the shell.”
Sarcasm dripped from the first man’s voice. “Let’s ignore it, then. When bacteria gets through the crack and gives the dragon an infection, we’ll say we thought it was just an ‘irregularity.’”
“So what do you want?” The second man said. “You want to try gluing it back together? A few superficial cracks are normal at this stage. Or … maybe they’re hatching ahead of schedule.”
There was a silence in which all Tori could hear was the thump of the heartbeat.
Hatching?
Then the first man’s voice grew louder, as though he’d leaned closer to the egg. “We should do a scan to see whether the crack goes all the way through the shell.”
The second man scoffed. “We can hardly see the
dragon
through the shell. How are we going to detect whether the crack goes all the way through?”
dragon
through the shell. How are we going to detect whether the crack goes all the way through?”
“We need an MRI. We should take it to Arlington—”
The second man let out an exasperated grunt. “The worst thing we could do to a cracked egg is haul it down the interstate for an hour.”
“We’ll make sure it’s insulated.”
“Don’t you remember the last time we took an egg to Arlington? That’s just asking for trouble.”
“But what do we do about the crack?”
Someone sighed. Perhaps both of them. “We’ll have to wake up Overdrake and ask what he wants done.”
“You can go wake up the king of the cathedral. I still have temperatures to record.”
Tori heard footsteps, and then the only sound was the constant thumping of the heartbeat. She dropped her pillow, went to her dresser, and felt along the top for her flashlight. The men hadn’t given her a lot of information, but she didn’t want to forget anything they’d said. She found the flashlight and flipped it on.
Bess pulled the covers over her face, Alyssa groaned, and Rosa turned over and squinted at her. “What now?”
“I need a pen and paper.”
Lilly peered at the clock on the dresser. “Do you mind? We’re trying to sleep.”
Tori ignored her. She found a pen on her dresser and the report she’d written for dragon class. Tori scribbled the conversation on the back as fast as she could.
Lilly said, “Next meeting, I’m proposing a new rule. Anyone who wakes up other Slayers in the middle of the night gets thrown in the lake.”
“I second,” Alyssa said.
Tori underlined: “An hour to Arlington on the interstate.” Then wrote down the last bit: “Overdrake, king of the cathedral.” An address would have been more helpful, but at least they’d given her some information.
“I’m done.” She folded the paper and slid into her flip-flops. Dr. B needed to know this information right away. Only a limited number of places in Arlington could do MRIs. If Overdrake decided to move one of the eggs there tonight, perhaps the Slayers could track down the egg’s position. Tori headed to the door, the information churning in her mind.
Overdrake couldn’t just show up at a hospital and ask someone to scan a huge egg—especially when it contained a dragon. He must have a contact at one of the medical places, someone who was working for him. Tori took three steps out of the door before she realized she had no idea how to get a hold of Dr. B. He wouldn’t be at his office.
She walked back into cabin 27. “Can somebody show me where Dr. B’s cabin is?”
Lilly squeezed her eyes shut. “I can show you where the bottom of the lake is.”
“I’ll take you.” Bess swung her legs out of bed. “I might as well. I’m awake now anyway. But why do you want to talk to my dad?”
Tori half listened for the men’s voices to come back. “I heard some guys talking near the dragon eggs. We might be able to narrow down their location.”
“Really?” Bess asked, eyes blinking. “You’re sure you weren’t dreaming?”
“I was wide awake.” Tori held out the paper to Bess. “This is what they said.”
Bess read it, shaking her head in amazement. “Wow. You either have an amazing ability or you’re completely insane.”
Lilly pulled her covers up higher. “Do you want my opinion on that?”
Tori didn’t. She walked to the door and Bess followed. Before they’d made it down the porch stairs, Rosa came after them. “Now I’m too curious to sleep. What exactly did you hear?”
As they headed up the trail, Tori told her everything she remembered. The cold night air seeped through her thin flannel pajamas and she couldn’t help shivering. She should have grabbed her jacket when she’d gone back inside. That was the problem with being kept up all night—you couldn’t think clearly.
Bess and Rosa both wore sweats. The camp literature had failed to tell Tori what the others already knew, that in this camp sometimes you had to go outside in the middle of the night.
When Tori finished her description, Rosa’s eyebrows drew together in discontent. “It’s not enough information to pinpoint the eggs’ location.”
Bess was more optimistic. “There can’t be that many places an hour away from Arlington that you could hide dragon eggs away from the general population.”
“An hour going at what speed?” Rosa asked. “And what if the man meant they had to take back roads for half an hour and then the interstate for a half an hour. Besides, he probably rounded the number. The trip wouldn’t take exactly sixty minutes—it might take fifty or seventy. That’s a difference of twenty miles.”
Tori tried to keep her flashlight beam straight even though her hands were cold. “But if they go to Arlington with a dragon egg, we can tip off the police. It can’t be legal to harbor something that dangerous.”
Bess grunted. Her long legs ate up the distance on the trail so she hardly had to hurry to keep up. “The way people think about dragons now, if the public found out about an egg, they’d build a zoo for it and coddle the thing until it grew big enough to eat a few tourists.”
“It’s a shame we have to destroy the dragons,” Rosa said. “I mean, people have been fascinated with them for so long.”
Bess swept her hand at Rosa as though presenting her as evidence. “You see my point?”
Rosa lifted her chin. “If the dragons were in the right hands, think what science could learn from them.”
“But they’re in Overdrake’s hands,” Bess said, “and he wants to use them as weapons. It won’t help to feel sorry for them. The dragons aren’t going to have any qualms about skewering us.”
The thud of Tori’s footsteps intermixed with the heartbeat that kept intruding in her mind. It sounded like a stopwatch now, counting down the seconds. “How is Overdrake going to take over the whole nation?” Tori asked. “Even with dragons, he couldn’t threaten more than a few cities at a time.”
“That’s the magic of EMP,” Bess said. “Every time the dragons screech, they’ll do damage. A few flybys and a city’s cars, computers, TVs, refrigerators, and cell phones will stop working. Farmers will have a hard time planting and harvesting their crops without machinery, and even if they do manage to grow a decent amount, they’ll need trucks to get it out to people. And you can imagine what EMP would do to a nuclear reactor. How many cities will Overdrake have to cripple before people decide it’s better to have him as their ruler than their enemy?” Bess shook her head grimly. “It’s one of those subjects we discuss a lot while sitting around the campfire. Most of the A-team thinks that if we don’t manage to kill the dragons, the government will fold quickly. When D.C., New York, and a couple West Coast cities are taken down, the country will surrender. Dirk thinks that all
Overdrake will have to say to Arizona is, ‘Hey, do you still want air-conditioning? ’ and they’ll not only accept him as America’s leader, they’ll rename their state in his honor.
Overdrake will have to say to Arizona is, ‘Hey, do you still want air-conditioning? ’ and they’ll not only accept him as America’s leader, they’ll rename their state in his honor.
“We on Team Magnus believe America is a bit more resilient. People will fight for freedom even if it means losing modern conveniences.”
Tori shivered in the night air. “I don’t want to find out who’s right: A-team or Team Magnus.”
“Oh, you won’t,” Bess said. “If it comes to that point, we’ll be long dead. But who knows, maybe one or two of us will survive.” Her voice took on a wistful note. “Maybe Leo and Danielle will get their powers back in a real attack.”
“Do you think so?” Rosa asked hopefully.
Bess hesitated, then said, “No, I doubt it.”
They walked silently for a minute. The trees stood along the path like dark sentinels, their leaves rustling angrily every time a breeze went through them. Tori kept wondering about Brant Overdrake. How did a person become so power hungry, so devoid of decency, that he didn’t care about killing innocent people? And how had he gotten other people to help him? Was it all about money like it had been with Dr. B’s father?
Tori wished she could talk this over with her own father. He would know what to do. But even as she thought about it, she knew she couldn’t share any of what she’d learned in the last forty-eight hours with him. He would yank her out of camp and send her to the best mental hospital money could buy. She’d be sedated, her memory wiped clean.
“I wonder why Overdrake hasn’t found and attacked the camp?” Tori asked.
“Maybe he hasn’t thought to look for us in the obvious places,” Rosa said.
“Or maybe he doesn’t think we’re a big enough threat to risk murdering us,” Bess said.
But Tori supplied her own reason. Maybe he was waiting until the last moment—waiting for all the Slayers to show up at camp so he could wipe them out in one swoop. No sense leaving around people who could fight him.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the way to Dr. B’s cabin. But with every footstep she took, Tori wondered if Overdrake knew she’d come to camp.
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