Slayers (27 page)

Read Slayers Online

Authors: C. J. Hill

BOOK: Slayers
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“J
esse,” she said into her mouthpiece. “I don’t hear you.”
“I’m fine,” he said, then added, “Theo, check Tori’s radio.”
“No, Jesse.” She tried to push away the panic that clawed at her. “I hear
you
, and I hear a
dragon egg
, but you’re not in the same place.”
“Do you hear this?” he asked. A smack sounded in her earpiece. He’d hit something, probably the stone eggs, but the dragon’s heartbeat went on beating in the silence that surrounded it.
“Those aren’t the eggs.” Tori’s words tumbled over each other in their hurry. “It’s some sort of a trap. You have to get out of there.”
Kody sounded indignant. “We didn’t come all of this way to leave these—”
But Lilly cut him off, “Up there—the doors are closing!”
Someone swore. Tori stopped pacing around the van and looked toward the property as though she could see something if she strained hard enough. After a few moments, someone let out a sound halfway between a grunt and growl. Inside the van, Dr. B stood up. “What’s happening?”
“The doors slid shut,” Lilly said. “Jesse tried to keep them open until we could get to them and nearly got smashed.”
“Break them open,” Dr. B said. “You’ve got the jackhammer with you.”
Jesse didn’t answer. Another voice came over the line—not one connected to their radios—but one coming from a speaker inside the dragon enclosure.
“Welcome, Slayers,” a man said. He had the same sort of almost-British accent that Dr. B had. Only it was thicker, more pronounced. It had to be Overdrake. “Or perhaps I should say, welcome Dirk, Kody, Lilly, Alyssa, Jesse, Shang, Bess, and Rosa.”
A cold dread spread through Tori. Overdrake knew who they were. Had he tapped into their radio transmissions? No, that couldn’t be it. They hadn’t used their names while they were talking. Besides, he hadn’t called her name, and Jesse had said it over the radio just a few moments before.
“You wanted to take something away from me tonight,” Overdrake said. “Something I care a great deal about. You won’t blame me if I return the favor.”
“Dirk,” Dr. B said, “What’s going on outside of the enclosure. Do you see reinforcements?”
“No—wait, yes. A bunch of men on motorcycles came out of the barn—looks like about fifteen. I think they’re heading to the gate.”
“Take out as many as you can,” Dr. B said, “then follow defense procedure two. Alyssa and Rosa, keep the gate open.”
Tori didn’t know anything about defense procedure two, but she knew the goal of this mission had suddenly and drastically changed. Now they were just trying to get everyone out alive. Her mind raced in that direction. Only Rosa, Alyssa, and Dirk were outside of the enclosure. How could three of them fight off Overdrake’s men and free the other Slayers from the enclosure?
They needed Tori’s help.
She didn’t move.
Without trying to, her mind ran through a list of reasons why rushing into the compound was a bad idea: She hadn’t trained with the others. She didn’t know how to fight armed men. Jesse and Dr. B had both told her to stay at the van. It was foolish to go in, dangerous.
You’re a coward,
she told herself.
You care more about protecting yourself than helping others.
Overdrake was right about people. Only heroes and stupid people rushed into hazardous places. Everyone else avoided them.
She sighed and ran to Booker’s trailer, where a couple of extra motorcycles waited. She climbed onto one, hoping she was being heroic and not stupid, then spoke into her neck mike. “I’m going to help them.”
She turned the ignition, hit the kickstand, and rocketed down the ramp.
Dr. B didn’t answer her, perhaps because Overdrake spoke again.
“ … the walls are made to keep full-grown dragons inside, I’m afraid you’re not going to be able to break through them, even with your jackhammer. And I’ve moved the eggs. They’re safely out of your reach.”
Tori thought of the familiar humming sound she’d heard around the eggs earlier. Now she realized what it was. The sound of a truck driving down the road. Why hadn’t she figured it out before? She should have known the eggs had been moved.
Overdrake went on, “Now that you’ve found me, I’m faced with the choice of relocating everything or getting rid of you. You forced me into this, remember that. It wasn’t my choice to destroy you. I don’t enjoy doing it.” Tori didn’t detect any regret in his voice. He sounded chiding, like a teacher who’d caught a student cheating on a test.
“That hissing sound you hear—well, perhaps you can’t hear it. If Tori were with you, she’d be able to pinpoint it, but you left her behind, so you’ll just have to take my word. It’s dimethyl ether coming through one of the air vents.”
Tori jolted. How had Overdrake known about her hearing? What else did he know? “I’ve added a few other drugs for good measure,” he went on. “You’ll be unconscious soon, and I don’t need to tell you what happens to your powers then.” He gave a small, chilling laugh. “Of course, your powers will be gone in half an hour anyway. The simulator signal from your van can’t penetrate these walls.”
Jesse had taken off his mouthpiece, but even though he whispered, Tori still heard his voice through the other radios. “Ether is flammable. We need to find every vent in here. Kody, you shoot fire at them. Bess, throw a forcefield at the one that’s not pumping air.”
Kody’s voice came over the radio, ragged with anger. “How did he know we were coming? Who tipped him off?”
A sharp jab of regret twisted in Tori’s stomach. She had told Dr. B about this place. Did everyone think she’d betrayed them? She was the newest Slayer, the unknown. It stood to reason they would suspect her first.
Tori pressed down on the gas pedal. Helping the Slayers escape would prove it wasn’t her fault.
She drove past Rosa and Alyssa at the gate and kept on going. Tori was afraid if she stopped and tried to coordinate a plan, they might tell her to go back to the van. So she would head toward Overdrake’s men and try to take out as many as she could before they got to the gate. Since her motorcycle hardly made any noise and the headlight was off, Overdrake’s men would have a hard time seeing her.
“I wish I could tell you that you’d been worthy opponents,” Overdrake droned on, “but you’ve been pathetically easy to capture.” He let out a content sigh. “Now I’ve got to see to your compatriots outside the cathedral. They’re all visible through my cameras.”
“If you can see me,” Dirk said, “I have something to show you.”
Tori imagined but didn’t ask if Dirk was giving Overdrake the finger. She didn’t have time to talk. Men were coming her way. The buzz of their motorcycles grew louder.
A light pole up ahead was making her an easy target.
That had to go. She swung her rifle into position, aimed, and shot. With an offended crack, the light extinguished. “Dirk, take out any lights you see,” she said into her mouthpiece, then drove to the right, out of the motorcycles’ path. She made a sharp turn and stopped her bike so she could shoot them from the side.
The motorcycles came into view, their headlight beams bouncing in front of them. Perhaps twelve bikes in all.
On the way up, Dr. B had reminded the group they couldn’t shoot moving tires. Something about the physics of spinning objects. Tori aimed for the lead motorcycle’s engine block, fired a couple of times, then set two more motorcycles in her sight and did the same.
For a few moments, she thought the bullets hadn’t penetrated the engine blocks. All the motorcycles kept going. Then one of the motorcycle spun out, crashing into the bike behind it. The sound of metal clanged angrily, and the bikes thudded to the ground. Another motorcycle skidded right, out of control, and fell spinning on its side. A fourth bike simply slowed to a stop while its rider kicked at the gas pedal. The rest of the motorcycles swerved around the downed bikes and kept heading toward the gate.
Well, she’d given Rosa and Alyssa four less bikes to deal with.
No, make that seven, because three of the bikes had turned around. She was silhouetted in the glare of their headlights and they were coming after her.
She stepped on the gas, zooming away from them. The barn was the best cover around so she headed in that direction. Bullets hissed past her. One, she could tell, hit the back of her Kevlar jacket.
She didn’t return fire. Instead, she shot out every lamppost she drove by. The darker it was, the better chance she had of losing her pursuers.
In her mind, she ran through all the possible outcomes of this chase. If she drove to the gate, she would run into more of Overdrake’s men, but how long could she drive around the property? The men
chasing her would keep shooting, and their bullets might find a place not protected by Kevlar. Or they might disable her bike. With her extra strength, she could beat one, maybe two men in hand-to-hand combat—but three? And they could be radioing to more men right now, setting up an ambush. She needed to disable their motorcycles before any more showed up.
Tori rounded the side of the barn and turned in her seat, aiming the rifle backward over her shoulder. As soon as the men turned the corner, she shot out each of their headlights. With those gone, they wouldn’t be able to follow her for long.
She turned back around to see a couple of wooden posts up ahead, one on either side of her. If she had realized what they were, she could have swerved her bike in time, or even tried to jump over them. But she was concentrating on the men behind her so intently that she didn’t question why random wooden posts were sticking up from the ground five feet away from one another. She was already making plans to lose the men and double back on them.
By the time she saw the wires stretched between the posts and realized it was part of a fence, it was too late. Her motorcycle slammed into the wires. Metal and wood let out a screech of protest and a section of fence wrapped around her bike, holding it back, while she flew over the top of her handlebars. She tumbled onto the pasture in front of her, gasping.
The sting of hitting the ground didn’t hurt nearly as badly as her frustration. She had run into a fence. A fence.
In her earpiece, Dr. B said, “Tori, are you all right?”
She didn’t answer. It took her a moment to catch her breath, and by then she saw the three men who’d been chasing her. They’d heard the crash and were off their bikes looking for her. And they weren’t that far away. Each held a rifle with the precision of a soldier and each took a flashlight from his belt.
That wasn’t good.
Tori’s bike was tangled in the remains of wire and posts. The only advantage she had right now was that the men couldn’t see her.
She rolled onto her stomach, pulled her rifle into position, and prayed the fall hadn’t damaged her weapons. She fired at the closest man’s flashlight. The gun worked perfectly and the flashlight exploded out of his hand. She aimed and shot the next and the next, turning them all into plastic shrapnel.
Two men grabbed their hands and let out streams of curse words that were occasionally peppered with the words “sniper,” “Slayer,” and the phrase “I’ll kill you.” The other man just shook his hand and kept looking around.
Into her earpiece, Dirk whispered, “Tori, are you okay?”
She didn’t answer, couldn’t risk speaking. The men were too close and she was crawling as quietly as she could away from her downed motorcycle. The man nearest Tori stopped shaking his hand and held his rifle out again. He took a few tentative steps forward.
“Where are you?” the man asked in a breathless, angry voice.
Tori pulled out her tranquilizer gun.
The men wore helmets that protected their faces, and body armor that protected just about everywhere else. It didn’t leave much in the way of an accessible target. A small space on their throats between their collars and helmets was her best bet.
She aimed the tranquilizer at the closest man and shot. He slapped his hand against his throat—a good indication she’d hit her mark—then he let out a yell and riddled the ground to her side with bullets.

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