Slayers (22 page)
Authors: C. J. Hill
W
hile Tori ate lunch, she heard noises near the dragon eggs—not voices or sounds she could distinguish, just muffled, scraping sounds. What could the eggs be doing? Rolling over? The scraping sounds ended, replaced by a soft humming. The noise seemed vaguely familiar, like she ought to recognize it.
hile Tori ate lunch, she heard noises near the dragon eggs—not voices or sounds she could distinguish, just muffled, scraping sounds. What could the eggs be doing? Rolling over? The scraping sounds ended, replaced by a soft humming. The noise seemed vaguely familiar, like she ought to recognize it.
She listened until she grew frustrated. She couldn’t pinpoint the sound. Besides, Tori had only understood what she’d been hearing for half a day. She had no idea what constituted normal dragon egg sounds. The hum was probably air-conditioning or something.
After lunch she joined the others in fighting the mechanical dragon. Shang showed her around and gave her weapons: a wooden sword, a rifle that shot plastic pellets, and a compound bow that shot arrows with suction cups on the end. “Be careful shooting,” he told her as he motioned to silhouettes of people painted on the walls. “If you inadvertently kill a pedestrian, it’s minus a hundred points. If you kill another Slayer, your team loses two hundred.”
Well, it was nice to know her life had value.
Shang pointed out the office in the upper corner of the building that housed the mechanical dragon’s control center. Then he took her to meet Theo, who ran the controls and was also in charge of all technology-related aspects of camp. He wasn’t a Slayer, but was still some sort of techno genius that Dr. B had recruited when he opened camp.
Theo barely looked college-age. He had uncombed brown hair, a nose that looked like it had wandered off of a larger face, and skin so pasty white she wondered if he ever went outside.
“Hey,” he said when Shang introduced Tori. “Welcome, new dragon chick. Good luck on your first encounter with the dark side.” He laughed as though he was trying to scare little kids on Halloween. “You’d better keep an eye on Bertie, because she’ll keep an eye on you.”
“Bertie?” Tori asked. “You named the dragon?”
“Had to call her something so I named her after Albert Einstein. You know, because she’s so wicked cool.”
Theo laughed and put his hands in his pockets. Even his arms were skinny. Or maybe they just looked skinny because she was used to the guys in cabin 26. “Bertie’s got a new hydraulic system this year. It’s totally sweet. I swear, one of these times, I’m going to have Dr. B run the controls, and I’ll sit on Bertie’s back and be the dragon lord. That would be awesome.”
“Oh,” she said, because she didn’t know how else to react. He acted like this was fun, like it was some glorified game.
“Well, gotta go to the control room. It’s party time.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, then turned and ambled up the two-story metal staircase at the end of the building. A few minutes later his face appeared in the window of the control room. The dragon hummed to life, and foot-long beams on the end of its legs twirled menacingly. As it turned, two glowing, yellow eye sockets peered across the room. A
white diamond sat on the dragon’s forehead, reminding her of a star marking on a horse.
white diamond sat on the dragon’s forehead, reminding her of a star marking on a horse.
Team Magnus spread out along one wall. The A-team spread out against the opposite wall. Without warning, the dragon swung across the room at high speed. A spray of fire shot from its mouth, leaving a searing streak of smoke. It looked too strong for practice, and Tori wondered if Theo was taking advantage of Dr. B’s absence and amping up the flames.
Kody let out a wallop, ran forward with his rifle drawn, and shot the dragon. The bullet made a soft ping as it hit against the dragon’s chest. With a metallic grind, the dragon flipped in the air and turned to face him. Kody ran sideways, then jumped into the wall so he could push off from it, narrowly avoiding a burst of flames. “Lilly!” he yelled, “Wake up!”
“Sorry!” She ran around the side of the dragon so she faced it. “I’m getting in position.”
“Leo’s not here, and Shang can’t be everywhere, so pay attention!” Kody called back. It was the sharpest tone Tori had ever heard him use.
Bess shot an arrow into the dragon’s neck. The dragon turned on her, swooping downward with a screech as she sprinted out of the way. Shang came up from behind the dragon, trying to get underneath it, but had to leap away before the dragon’s swinging tail bludgeoned him.
For the first few minutes of the game, Tori mostly stayed out of the way and watched. Her sword slapped into her leg, unused, but it was easy enough to hit the dragon using her bow or gun. She learned quickly, however, that shooting the dragon didn’t do any damage. The dragon’s attention just turned to whoever shot it, then lunged toward them at an alarmingly fast rate. So Tori shot the dragon only when it charged someone on her team, and then she made sure she could leap out of the way before it got her.
Every few seconds the dragon blasted out fi fteen-foot-long streams of fire. Shang and Lilly generally managed to quench these before they reached anyone. The two tried to stay on opposite ends of the dragon so that one of them could always see its mouth. A few times it swiveled so quickly they didn’t have time to position themselves, and then Bess would throw up a shield to protect the others. The Slayers were good at protecting themselves from fire. They had to be, otherwise being in the same room as this mechanical dragon would have been insane.
Once Tori nearly got the full force of the blaze. She could see flames hitting the invisible wall of the shield. Yellow, orange, and red churned in the air inches in front of her. She leaped backward, shaking, and more thankful for Bess’s gift than she’d ever been for anything in her life.
She mourned Leo’s absence then. He could have been throwing up shields, too. How could he have walked away from his responsibility, knowing what would happen?
Someone hit the dragon and it swung away from her. She tried to get her concentration back, but it took a while until her breathing steadied. The exercise went on.
If the dragon hit someone with its tail or twirling claws, they were considered dead and had to sit out the rest of the round. The other Slayers always yelled out, “Well done!” when someone was killed.
Shang had explained that the phrase was one of Dr. B’s favorite compliments, but it also worked as an insult because it described how you were cooked once the dragon was finished with you.
Tori was the first person killed during the first round. And also the first person killed during the second round. She found the humiliation—“Well done!”—hurt worse than the beams slamming into her. But after the third round, she was just happy to be dead. It meant she could go off to the far side of the building and work on leaping without getting burned or pummeled.
The leaps came easier now. She could pick a location and jump right to it. She’d finally gotten her sea legs—or rather, leaping legs. As the air rushed by her, she felt graceful, powerful, like she was skating on the ice with the rink whizzing by. She even tried Kody’s move—running and jumping against the wall to push off. It was fun, and after a few practices, she could do it without breaking stride.
Each round took a long time. Without Jesse to fly up and pierce the dragon’s heart, the Slayers had to wait for the dragon to come low enough so that someone could manage to leap up underneath it and stab it.
Still, the Slayers were expert with their talents. Lily and Shang doused fire while they were leaping. Bess threw shields up even when she couldn’t see the front of the dragon. Kody could not only push away the fire stream with his freezing shocks, he leapt across the dragon’s tail and legs as though playing jump rope. Alyssa and Rosa hung back farther than the others, not wanting to risk getting too close. But when Bess got a burn on her arm, Rosa was at her side in seconds, healing the wound while keeping an eye on the dragon.
Then Kody misjudged one of his freezing shocks and was hit by a blast of fire. The entire front of his shirt sizzled off his chest. He fell backward onto the ground, convulsing, gasping in pain. Both Rosa and Alyssa ran to him.
Even from where Tori stood, she could see Kody’s skin was bubbled and bleeding—parts of it charred white. It didn’t resemble skin anymore. And Kody’s face had lost all color. His jaw was clenched in a silent scream.
He’s going to die,
Tori thought, and wondered if Alyssa and Rosa could heal even half the damage. His wound looked too severe. They should call an ambulance—only an ambulance would take too long to get here. It had been foolish to practice with flames that big. Dr. B shouldn’t have left Theo in charge, and he never should have put a bunch of teenagers, including his own daughter, in so much danger.
Tori thought, and wondered if Alyssa and Rosa could heal even half the damage. His wound looked too severe. They should call an ambulance—only an ambulance would take too long to get here. It had been foolish to practice with flames that big. Dr. B shouldn’t have left Theo in charge, and he never should have put a bunch of teenagers, including his own daughter, in so much danger.
The dragon still hummed, swinging over them. Lilly had put out the fire, but the dragon made a whooshing sound, as it built up fuel for more flames. This time it would hit Rosa and Alyssa, and then who would be left to heal them?
Tori glanced up at the control room. Did Theo not see what had happened to Kody? He must. He just didn’t care. Dr. B wasn’t here, and Theo was too much of an idiot to know when to stop the game.
Tori sprinted across the room to the control center. She decided against the stairs. It would take too long to climb them. Instead, she jumped up until she was even with Theo in the glass.
She grabbed hold of the edge of the window, hanging there for a moment. “Turn it off!” she yelled to Theo’s startled face. But he didn’t. As she fell back to the ground, she could still hear the hum of the dragon behind her, and then the roar of another fire stream. The jerk had tried to fry someone else while Rosa and Alyssa were busy saving Kody’s life. And maybe Theo had succeeded.
He had to be some sort of psychopath.
Tori leapt back upward with trampoline height. This time she banged on the window with her fists. It wasn’t glass, but some sort of clear plastic that buckled and shattered. Large chunks of it flew into the control room.
She went down, then came back up again, this time at an angle. She sprung through the window and landed on a desk inside the control room. Several of the knobs and levers crunched beneath her feet.
Theo stood at an adjoining desk swearing loudly as he brushed pieces of plastic off the equipment. Feeling more like a cat than a human, Tori leapt to the floor in front of Theo. In two seconds she’d grabbed hold of his shirt and pushed him up against a wall.
Tori had never gotten into a fight in her life, never threatened anyone, yet she didn’t hesitate to lift him off the ground. “I told you to
stop,” she said annunciating every word. “Did you not see what happened to Kody?”
stop,” she said annunciating every word. “Did you not see what happened to Kody?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Theo choked out. He sounded breathless, compressed, so she let go of him. He slid back to the floor.
“What’s wrong with
you
?” she yelled. “Kody is hurt!”
you
?” she yelled. “Kody is hurt!”
Theo smoothed out his shirt from where she’d grabbed him. It was ruined, stretched apart and mangled. “Kody is fine!” he yelled back at her. “Man, look what you did to my shirt—and the window! And I bet you broke something when you landed on the controls.”
Tori couldn’t muster much concern over his shirt or workspace. She had stopped him from doing more damage. That was the important thing. She turned back to check on Kody and the others.
The dragon had been killed. Its lights were off and it lay limply from its cables. This wasn’t a surprise. As soon as she’d distracted Theo from the controls, the others had been able to shut off the dragon.
She expected to see her teammates huddled around Kody. She was afraid Rosa and Alyssa might be on the floor, too, burned and writhing.
But Kody stood up. The color had returned to his face, and he took off what was left of his shirt, revealing perfect, new skin. He high-fived Rosa and Alyssa, then put one burly arm around each of them and pulled them into a hug.
The other campers weren’t paying attention to him, though. They were making their way over to the control room, looking up at the window in amazement. And what’s more, Jesse, Dirk, and Dr. B were back.
Dr. B peered up at her. “What’s going on up there?”
Theo leaned out the window, pointing to Tori. “She tried to kill me!”
Shang called over, “She thought Kody’s burn was serious.”
Lilly cocked her head and stared up at the control room. “Didn’t she see Rosa and Alyssa taking care of him?”
Tori blushed brightly. Apparently it wasn’t Theo who had been acting like a psychopath—that part had been Tori’s. Yep. Her. The new psycho dragon chick.
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