Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) (11 page)

Bobby did not just laugh; he bellowed a chortle that made all the valets jump.

“No smart-ass,” he said, “The best thing to do tonight is blend in with everyone else.” The comment was weird; underneath the laughter was a kind of seriousness, like a warning. A strange ripple spread across his soul; fear, the ripple was fear, I could almost taste it. Without a waver in his smile, he said, “Let’s catch up to your sisters, I’m supposed to escort all of you ladies.” And he turned away.

Fear was even more foreign on Bobby than it was on Glacier, I would not have even recognized it on him if it wasn’t so ripe.

I hesitated for one more moment, watching Bobby greet my sisters and mother in the lobby. A group of women always needed a male escort to social events, outdated, I knew, but dracons were old fashioned in the worst ways.

Bobby took my mother’s arm and the whole group turned back to me. I was holding up the party, but more than ever now I did not want to go in. What could possibly be scaring the pants off of all the scariest dracons I knew?

Before anyone could come and drag me in, I made myself walk forward. My heels seemed to echo loudly in the lobby, clicking across the gleaming floor. Clara took my arm as I caught up with her. I let her warm, innocent soul soothe me.

The Volcano Resort’s Reception Center was usually reserved for weddings or small private concerts for the super-rich. If the outside was a confused mix of modern meets classical architecture, the reception area took this idea to a new level. It had not changed in a single detail since I had last stood beside my grandfather on the dais which rose from one side. I had been eleven and wore pigtails and a dress more girly than Stacy’s.

The interior was a giant dome surrounded on all sides with clear acrylic columns. Within the columns were relief-statues of the one hundred and three immortal dragon kings. My great-grandfather, Pax, the dragon king of trickery was in there. Braiden McCormick’s Dragon father, Farris, King of the Dacain Dragons, was there as well; Farris basically looked like a giant werewolf with wings.

When you glanced around the circular space, the transparent dragons gave an ethereal haunted feeling; as if they were creatures of mist, never quite solidifying. The sculptures seemed to move in their clear pillars, as though they were always watching you. The black marble walls shined to the degree that they almost looked like walls made of mirrors.

The interior was packed with dracons.

No one could ever say that my grandfather did not do his duty to his dragon father, and there were only two real duties: produce lots of powerful babies and take as much power as you could hold. My grandfather had fifty-three living sons and more than as many daughters. The island chain practically wasn’t big enough to contain my first and second cousins, there were more than five hundred; this was how, without the need to travel, my grandfather ruled the entire Mabiian Island chain.

If my whole family scrunched into this reception center, we would barely be able to move. Also my grandfather would never bring us all together; it would be a stupid move. That would be tantamount to leaving the battlements unmanned because being a dracon means you’re always defending your territory from anyone who wasn’t directly blood related or allied by marriage. My grandfather just invited selective family members, seemingly at random.

Yeah, sure.

Also invited to this event were some of the wealthiest and most influential dracons who either lived on the island chain or were visiting the islands. Thankfully, I did not recognize any of the dracons I passed who were not part of my family; that would be awkward, ‘oh, hi, yep that was me who threatened to suck out your soul. Wanna dance?’

Bobby led my sisters, mother and me to the center of the room where I had a clear view of my grandfather standing on the dais, behind him my uncles and cousins made up an almost solid line of muscle. The one exception was…

“Bobby,” I whirled on my uncle, who was accepting a glass of champagne from a tray laden waiter. “Bobby, what the… what is going on?” I pointed to the front, so outraged and shocked, I finally felt the prick of tears.

“Dakota,” Bobby said as he looked directly into my eyes, no trace of humor touched his expression which made the sharpened teeth of what he said next bite down all the harder, “I know you have it in you to take this change with dignity.”

But I did not. Dignity was the last thing I could muster as I looked up at the dais, where my cousin Ashley stood in my spot pretending not to be smirking directly at me.

Ashley, why Ashley? Of all the cousins I had, why would grandfather pick her to replace me? Ashley was more prim and proper than a human nun, yeah the kind of nun that beat misbehaving children. We had once been close but then she inherited her aspects and she pretty much became a sadistic Miss Manners.

I mean, sure, in raw power she had quite a punch, she had two aspects. Like my brother and sister, Ashley inherited supernatural beauty, but she also inherited the ability to control other people’s bones; yeah, it was good for torturing people, but it was a parlor-trick beside my power. There was no subtlety, no art to it. To add torture to injury, her adopted mother, my aunt Glenda, stepped into my line of sight and made a busy-bee-line for me.

I looked around for an escape, bathroom, maybe, but my champagne toting mother stepped back and put her arm around my waist.

“Stephanie, Robert, ladies,” Glenda said. Her high and girlish voice was always the most disturbing thing about my quarter dragon aunt, and that was saying something.

“Glenda,” My mother said a bit stiffly, “How lovely of you to join us. I should probably thank you; Stacy tells me that you are very diligent in her lessons.” My mom says
diligent
like it means something awful, which I’m sure it does.

Glenda smiled a chilling smile at Stacy, and Stacy stepped behind my mother. “I expect to have all your daughters, soon, with the recent changes.” She smiled at me and it was probably supposed to be a sweet expression, but she reminded me more of a giant spider sizing up a particularly tasty fly. “I’ve been waiting for so long and finally father will give me permission to train you, Dakota.”

I swallowed. My Aunt looked like she would be at home hosting a cooking show, matronly as they come; but her soul was a dark spindly thing, a hungry mass of cords always trying to ensnare more into her web. And my grandfather gave her all but free reign over us dracon-wives in training.

Glenda turned her attention to my mother, “Oh Stephanie, doesn’t my Ashley look right on the dais. Ashley is finally getting the favoritism
she
deserves.” The emphasis she put on the word ‘
she’
left no question as to her meaning.

“You’re right,” my mother said, “This view makes your daughter’s puckered expression almost pretty. Don’t you think so, Dakota?”

The surge of pride I felt for my mother in my heart made me reckless, so even though Glenda was the scariest dracon I knew, I tilted my head to the side and said, “Yeah, I can see it, her chin looks shorter and her nose looks less…you know.” I smashed down my nose with my finger.

It was ridiculous, really, like so many of my cousins, Ashley’s birth father was Lorien and birth mother was some human; Ashley looked so similar to Clara and Deagan that people had mistaken them for triplets more than once. However, though they looked nearly identical, almost everyone agreed that Ashley wasn’t as beautiful as Clara, something that irked Glenda to no end.

My mother tapped my back, smiling too-widely at Glenda. My mother said the next question as calmly as if she was asking about the weather, “So if Ashley is working for your father then who will be torturing your students?”

“I am perfectly able,” Glenda said then she gave one more hungry examination of my sisters and me. “I should probably take my place at the front of the reception center before the guests of honor come. Robert, Stephanie, girls,” she said, nodding to each of us in turn.

“I always feel so honored, big sister,” Bobby said and mockingly raised a glass. When Glenda turned her back, Bobby said, “You just can’t screw with that level of creepy.”

My mother nodded and whispered so low I could barely hear her, “If that psycho touches my baby again…” She trailed off. But I knew what she would do if Glenda hit Stacy again, or any of my sisters: nothing.

My mother squeezed me as she tipped up her champagne flute and drunk the whole glass in one gulp. Her soul tucked tighter into herself, and for some reason it looked shameful and obscene.

I felt an immediate need to look away.

The excitement that hummed through the crowd was physical, a current that I could not stop from soaking into me. When one emotion was so thickly emitting from all the souls around me, it was almost as though I was swimming through it, and even if I was trying not to, I always felt it.

“Do you see Deagan?” My mother asked while she tried to peer over shoulders, “He should be standing with us when we meet the guests…”

I had seen him slipping past us to go stand with a group of my cousins, but I pretended to look around for him anyway. “No mom, maybe he’s late…?”

“Your brother never arrives late,” my mother said, sounding offended by the very idea. She sighed. “He’s probably looking for us, but it’s too late now because the guests have arrived.”

A pulse of fear smacked into me, but it was not my fear. I glanced at Bobby, his soul buzzed with alarm, but with magnificent speed, Bobby extinguished the fear.

My grandfather sighted Bobby like a shark sensing blood in the water. The look that passed over his face was quick and terrible. If I had not sensed the fear, I would have missed the entire interaction.

I staggered. My stomach squeezed and my teeth clenched. I did not need to turn to know what kind of creature had entered the reception center. I had only been in the presence of one of them once before, but I would never forget what being near one of those felt like.

My head swam as I turned to realize that one of the most powerful beings to have ever walked this world was less than a hundred feet from me. And this dragon was immeasurably more powerful than the one that had ripped my life apart five years ago.

Chapter Seven

There was nothing else in the world comparable to a full-blooded dragon, and I had been in the presence of almost every creature out there. When I turned all I saw was its soul, so big and dense, it literally pushed aside the souls of the wait-staff that stood by the reception hall’s open doors.

I blinked over and over again, but my sight just became blearier by the second. Air resisted being dragged into my lungs and my head immediately pounded with a headache.

I had only ever seen one full-dragon before, but I immediately knew this one was not just any dragon; this one had to be dragon royalty.

“Give it to me,” Bobby whispered, “Give me what you’re feeling now.” I turned to realize that Bobby was literally holding me up. He wanted me to give him my… what? My emotions?

He did not get it, I wasn’t swooning from fear, it was more just the immensity of the soul. If seeing my grandfather’s soul was like stepping into the sun, seeing this dragon’s soul was like standing in an inferno. Looking at the being was like trying to comprehend every thought that every dracon in this room was thinking at once; it was threatening to disintegrate my sanity.

I squeezed my eyes shut trying to numb myself to his soul, to let the power settle as it always did with my grandfather. With shaking fingers I reached down into my purse, fishing for my dampener, but fingers grabbed mine and squeezed so tightly it hurt. Bobby’s voice whispered close by, again saying, “Give me what you can’t handle—”

He still did not get it, and he wasn’t letting me put on my bracelet.

Bobby placed his hand on the back of my neck and gently pushed my head down, so I was bent forward, probably thinking I was going to throw up or something; a few seconds later he lightly guided me back up by my shoulders.

It took me—I don’t know how long, but I settled into the power of the dragon, adjusted to it in slow increments like I did with my grandfather; staying afloat only by struggling above the waves of his power. When I had the courage to open my eyes the dragon was not where I had last seen it, he had walked up to the dais to stand beside my grandfather.

He wore an enormous fur coat, and above the folds of fur I saw luminous white hair. The dragon stood talking to Ashley and my grandfather, and beneath the dragon’s outstretched arms were two half-dragons I recognized.

Wrapped in the embrace of the being that had almost unintentionally ripped my mind into shreds were Braiden McCormick and his ‘friend,’ Vern.

Vern was craning his neck over his shoulder to look straight at me.

If I could manage confusion or shock, I would, because the expression on Vern’s beautiful cold features as he stared down at me was loathing. I could not care enough to even wonder why he would glare at me with such hatred in his gaze. The first chance I had, I planned to run to pray to the black marble throne in the ladies room.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered, to no one in particular.

“What’s the matter?” Clara turned to me, a smile dropping off her face in confusion. She did not know; it really had not occurred to me that probably almost no one else recognized what the thing that just entered our midst was.

The dragon wore a heavy fur coat on a warm day, which might be a dead giveaway for some. However, if the winter garb did not expose what he was, most would probably assume he was Vern’s brother. He was colder than Vern, less human and more predatory, but otherwise they could be twins. And even though the dragon looked like a teenager, there was no doubt in my mind that this was Vern’s daddy.

“She’s fine,” Bobby said, unconcerned-sounding as he pinched me hard on my arm. He smiled as if nothing was wrong while flagging down another glass of champagne. “You’re fine,” he said. He gave me a meaningful look.

I rubbed my pinched arm. “Yeah, sure,” I said.