Slayers: Friends and Traitors (7 page)

“I’d like to see you answer a call if it did.” Dirk let out a low chuckle. “I’ll have to phone you frequently and see how that goes.”

“You’re only allowed to call in emergencies,” she reminded him.

“And I consider making your thigh ring at inappropriate times an emergency.”

“I’m relatively certain,” Dr. B went on, sending Tori and Dirk a reproving look for talking while he was, “that Overdrake doesn’t know the locations of your homes. I don’t keep that information written down anywhere, you have nothing with ID in your belongings, and none of you would have spoken your addresses out loud anywhere at camp. Still, be careful.” He emphasized each word. “Your Slayer senses will only keep you safe if you listen to them. Don’t become so distracted by your iPod, your friends, your studies—that you ignore your instincts. And if anything suspicious happens, call me at once.”

Tori nodded. Dr. B was really speaking to her. Overdrake hadn’t only seen her, he’d recognized her. She was the daughter of Senator Hampton, one of the front-runners for the next presidential election.

Tori pushed away the worry. No point in dwelling on it. Having a father who was a powerful senator had benefits. Her home, her neighborhood, her school—they had gates, security staff, and safeguards that protected her not just from stalkers and disgruntled constituants, but would also work to keep megalomaniacal dragon lords away.

At least she hoped they would.

CHAPTER 3

Tori flew out of the Dragon Hall, literally, and waited at the top of a nearby tree for Jesse to catch up with her. He spent the last part of most afternoons giving her flying lessons.

She had already improved enough over the summer that they could have discontinued the sessions a week or two ago, but neither suggested it. The lessons always seemed to end with the two of them hidden in some sunlit section of the forest, their arms draped around each other, while Jesse dropped kisses onto her lips.

It was all wrapped together in Tori’s mind: the magic of skimming through the trees, the enchantment of the wild growing forest around them, and the euphoria of being with him. She didn’t want it to end. And here it was already—the last day of camp. As she waited for Jesse, she felt a desperate ache twining around her insides. The two of them would have to find a way to see each other over the school year. Even if they weren’t supposed to.

One of Dr. B’s many rules was that Slayers couldn’t have contact with each other outside of camp. Tori understood the reasoning. If Overdrake caught one of them, he wouldn’t be able to extract information about the other Slayers.

She didn’t need Jesse’s last name, though. She just needed to persuade him to meet her someplace. Regularly.

Jesse soared up to her tree branch, six foot two of muscles and good looks. Even when his dark hair was mussed from working out and he was covered with singe marks, he looked kissable. He looked perfect.

Jesse hovered in the air in front of her and gave her a smile. He didn’t smile enough during the day. He was always too focused on training, on strategy—on keeping alert for possible attack. It made his smiles to her all the more meaningful. She felt as if she’d won a prize when he looked at her like this. “You officially made it through the last dragon-slaying practice,” he said.

“Just barely.” She stepped from her branch and joined him in the air. “I’m covered with bruises, I’ve ruined my last shirt, and it’s a miracle I still have eyebrows left.”

Jesse laughed—another prize—and glided slowly through the trees away from the main camp.

Tori followed after him, so seamless in her flight that she didn’t have to concentrate on how to move her body when they sped up or turned. She shadowed him, enjoying the lifting sensation of soaring through an ocean of sunshine and leaves. Everything around her was fresh, green, laden with the scent of life. This feeling, this freedom flowing through her fingertips, made the risk of being a flyer worthwhile.

For her lesson, Jesse went through all of the advanced moves, spinning, diving, flying straight at the ground and then pulling up inches before impact. Tori practiced, savoring the feeling of flight and wishing she had a way to keep it. Tomorrow afternoon she would be back home in McLean, back living her normal life. Or pretending to. Things would never quite be normal again.

When Tori was done going through the advanced moves, she and Jesse practiced speed flying. This was Tori’s biggest weakness. She couldn’t fly as fast as Jesse and wasn’t nearly as accurate with her turns when she tried.

She didn’t mind rocketing along at seventy miles an hour when she had a helmet or goggles on, but Jesse liked to remind her she might be caught in an attack without either of those things, so she had to practice without them. At high speeds, the wind tore at her face and made her eyes water. It was hard to see or hear anything.

Luckily the two of them couldn’t fly fast for long. The simulator had a range of about five miles, which meant it only took a few minutes to get out of its range. After that, they had half an hour to get back in range or their powers would disappear and they would fall from the sky—or in the very least have a long walk back to camp.

Jesse had some sort of internal clock that let him know how much time had gone by. He said all Slayers did, but if that was true, the feature had never kicked in for Tori. She was supposed to signal Jesse when they’d flown for ten minutes, so they could turn around and fly back with plenty of time to spare. She was usually off by a few minutes in either direction.

Today she signaled early on purpose. She wanted to spend time lazily floating through the treetops with Jesse. She wanted to ask him to break another rule.

When they got back in range, Tori took hold of Jesse’s hand, and they glided around a few trees until they found one with enough space for both of them to stand in. The tree had an empty spot where a few of the upper branches had been knocked off; probably victims of Tori’s maneuvering attempts earlier in the summer.

Jesse leaned against the trunk, still holding Tori’s hand. It was also against camp policy for the Slayers to get romantically involved with each other. Dr. B didn’t want those sorts of distractions while the Slayers trained. So while she and Jesse were with the others, they pretended none of this was happening. Jesse was better at that than she was. During practices, Jesse always concentrated on being Team Magnus’ captain so intently, Tori doubted he thought about her at all. She, on the other hand, needed frequent doses of stolen glances. She was an addict.

Now Jesse surveyed her with his warm brown eyes, eyes that had depths she could fall into. Tori leaned into Jesse and kissed him lightly. She didn’t feel bad about breaking the camp’s dating rule. If she had to risk her life fighting dragons, she was entitled to one perk. Jesse.

Jesse didn’t kiss her back. Instead he wound his arms around her waist and held her in a loose embrace. She could feel the tension of the muscles in his chest, a rigidness that ran through him. He was thinking about tomorrow, too, about all of this ending.

She rested her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat and wishing she could sever the connection she had to the dragon eggs so she didn’t have to hear that noise, too.

Part of her Slayer powers was the ability to hear what a dragon heard. Like Dirk’s eyesight link, she seemed to connect to whichever dragon was closest. Since her Slayer powers had kicked in at camp, she’d had a constant pipeline to a dragon egg.

At first, Tori thought this new Slayer ability was pointless and would most likely send her into bouts of insanity. Curled up in its shell, the loudest thing the unborn dragon heard was its own heartbeat. And worse still, the noise didn’t fade away every night after Dr. B turned off the simulator. Her strength, night vision, and power of flight all disappeared at bedtime, but the sound of the dragon’s heartbeat remained: a creepy thump-thumping in a corner of her mind, a relentless reminder that dragons were out there, somewhere, waiting to hatch.

Then Tori had overheard some of Overdrake’s men talking nearby the eggs. They inadvertently gave away their location. That’s what led to the failed raid earlier in the summer. Now to keep Tori from overhearing anything else that might be useful to the Slayers, Overdrake played a constant stream of music next to the eggs. And he wasn’t nice about it, either. The first week, he’d played nothing but the Bee Gees greatest hits. Apparently one week was as long as his vets could listen to nonstop Bee Gees because after that the music changed. Now it was a mixture of music from the eighties and nineties. Tori could turn it way down, but not completely off.

At moments like this, her head resting against Jesse’s chest, the music bothered her the most. She didn’t want to hear anything except the sound of Jesse’s heart underneath her ear. Instead she heard the faint sounds of M. C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”

Overdrake knew how to ruin a moment.

Jesse stroked Tori’s hair, letting the breeze pick up pieces and flutter them around his fingers. “Next summer seems so far away.”

Tori lifted her face to see Jesse’s expression. “We don’t have to wait until next summer to see each other. We can find a way to meet during the school year.”

Jesse’s hand moved from her hair to her back, caressing a soft path down her spine. Even then she could tell it was an apology. “It’s too dangerous to contact each other outside of camp.”

“I’m not asking for your address. We’ll meet someplace. On the second Saturday of the month, I’ll just happen to be at the Natural History Museum, admiring the stuffed elephant in the main lobby. Let’s say noon, so we can go somewhere for lunch.” She said all of this as though it had just occurred to her, a butterfly of an idea that had just fluttered in. Butterflies were harmless.

He didn’t answer. His hand was still making apologies on her back.

“Or,” she added, “we could meet
every
Saturday, if you’d rather.”

Jesse let out a sigh. “I’m a team captain. I’m supposed to enforce the rules, not find ways to break them.” His hand made its way back to the tangle of her hair again. “I know. Call me a hypocrite. I’ve been kissing you all summer.”

“I’m not going to criticize you for that.” She smiled and threaded her fingers together against the small of his back. “Go ahead and break another rule.”

She felt like Eve right then, luring Adam to take a bite of the forbidden fruit—wicked, but too desperate to care. The rule was stupid. Anything that kept them apart was wrong. He had to see that.

Jesse didn’t move, didn’t even bend down to kiss her. He would have done that yesterday—joked about her corrupting him and then pressed his lips to hers. Tori searched his eyes, trying to read her future in them. She only saw flickers of gold, patches of reflected sunlight.

It was doubly frustrating. She and Jesse could both fly; that made them counterparts. Or at least it was supposed to. Slayer counterparts could sense things about each other—moods, feelings. If they were close enough, one could tell where the other was without looking. It helped them while fighting.

Sometimes Tori was sure she sensed what Jesse was thinking and feeling. Most of the time, though, the ability completely abandoned her. She had no idea what was going on in his mind right now.

She would have thought that her romantic feelings messed up her connection, but her other counterpart abilities with Jesse were sketchy, too. She couldn’t tell where Jesse was without looking. Not like she was supposed to. Sometimes Tori could feel Jesse watching her, and when all the Slayers were in a group, a part of her automatically kept track of where he was. It wasn’t quite the same as counterpart-knowing, though.

Tori knew how it was supposed to work, because she was also counterparts with Dirk. In Slayer genetics, apparently seeing what the dragons saw was close enough to hearing what the dragons heard to give she and Dirk counterpart abilities.

When Dirk came within a radius of a dozen yards, she knew where he was, could feel his presence without seeing him. When they were together, she felt his moods in the same way she felt the sun warming her shoulders or a cloud moving to blot out the light. It was just there, obvious.

She hadn’t told Dirk that Jesse kissed her, but after the first time it happened, Dirk had looked at her and known. He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t needed to. She had felt his sharp disapproval easily enough.

Counterparts were supposed to have one other ability. If Slayers were away from the simulator for more than half an hour and lost their powers, they could recharge their powers by touching a counterpart who still had them.

It didn’t work on Tori, not with Jesse or Dirk. Once she lost her powers, she didn’t get them back until she was within five miles of the simulator again.

Tori stared at Jesse, watched him standing against the rich green backdrop, and tried to sense what he was thinking. She couldn’t. Or maybe she could and didn’t want to accept it. “We both live in the D.C. area,” she pointed out. “We could easily run into each other. It would be like coincidence … but with a helping hand.”

Jesse dropped his arms from around her. She felt the distance in that movement before he even stepped away. “Tori, there’s a reason for the rules. We shouldn’t … We can’t…” He let out another sigh. “My feelings for you are already getting in the way of the mission. We’ve got to be careful.”

She blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Today at practice,” he said, as though it proved his point. “You called out for help and I completely lost focus. I can’t afford to make those sorts of mistakes. I can’t let my feelings get in the way of my judgment.”

A stone of dread formed in Tori’s stomach: a hard piece of reality that she didn’t want. She shifted away from Jesse. “Okay. If a dragon captures me, I’ll try not to distract you with my screams for help.”

“Tori,” he whispered. It was as though he hated saying the words even at a low volume. “Unless we stop the dragons, people will die. Cities will fall, maybe the entire nation will. With the dragons helping him, Overdrake might have enough men and weapons to pull it off.” Jesse paused, still trying to make her understand. “If today’s practice was the real thing, how many people would have died because I didn’t want to lose you? We need to be better—at least, I do.”