Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) (17 page)

The teeth the dragon flashed when it continued its low guttural screeching were each foot long spears.

It was deadly from all ends.

Swinging its giant white body in a half circle, the dragon spun to thwack toward the water ward with its tail. There was no flash of light, but halfway through the swing the scaly flesh met the invisible wall and the dragon shot back, spinning end over end, crashing to the ground.

“See! He can’t get in!” Auli shouted, jumping up and down, “He can’t get in!”

After a minute with the dragon just lying motionless on the ground, a couple other people started cheering, though I could hear Ophelia’s continued wails.

The dragon sprang back into the air, and with one scaly claw peeled off of its stomach what looked like a giant crushed can, and from the metal’s cream color I realized it was the remains of my aunt Milda’s rental car. The talons came together; balling up the metallic remains of the car, the sound of the crushing metal was like a screeching countdown.

“Everyone get inside!” I shouted, “Keanu! Mele! Get everyone to the basement, now!”

Mele and the group started backing toward the open doors of the mansion; a few people turned and ran in.

But Auli whirled on me. “He won’t throw it,” Auli shouted back, “he thinks his sister is inside the house.”

I made my voice as calm as possible while still shouting, “Auli, if there is anything human in that thing left, it’s not in the driver seat. I know you hate me, but please get everyone—”

Turned around as I was, I just saw the end of the metal ball’s flight, the boom it made as it crashed into the side of the building was louder than anything I had ever heard before. Debris rained down.

The group around us broke up, half stayed, half ran in all directions. If the dragon was going to crush the house, maybe it was better if my friends weren’t stuck under it, but Wyvern had told me to get Honua into the basement so I had to think it was the best option. Hopefully for Missy it was.

“Everyone!” Keanu shouted, “Head to the basement!”

Listening to Keanu, all the people who remained with us, sprinted back to the house; I stayed where I was, visually planning out how I could reach the dragon without it having a clear shot at me.

“Dakota, come on! We need to run…” Keanu said from behind me. Arms wrapped around me, and in a strange repeat of yesterday, I was scooped into Keanu’s arms and he started running.

He ran into the house and did not listen when I yelled directly into his face to put me down.

I heard another earsplitting boom, and a cloud of dust flew in from one side of the foyer. Thankfully, about half the party had stayed and was ahead running down the stairs to the basement.

I grabbed Keanu’s shoulder and scrambled up until I could speak into his ear. “Honua told me how to calm him down,” I lied loud enough so he could hear me. “I’m the only one who can stop this!”

His grip on me tightened, his cheek pressing to mine. “No way,” he said firmly. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. We’ll wait it out until help comes.” Then he kissed me, it was more like him smashing his mouth on mine, but my insides still felt a punch of adrenaline.

He smiled, turning back to his route and said, “Just in case we die.”

“Put me down you big oaf!” I yelled.

He chuckled, still carrying me off to safety like a damsel in distress. Keanu did not know me at all. I considered kicking out of his grasp with my legs while punching him twice, once in the gut and once in the shoulder to make my escape, but stopped myself. However, the idea became more and more tempting as he neared the basement stairs.

When I was about to enact the moves that would probably immediately drain any feelings Keanu had for me, Keanu set me down at the top of the stairs, saying, “Go on, I’m going to wait until all the girls get underground to meet you.”

I looked down, seeing that at least Mele was halfway down the stairs with a crowd below her. I did not know where my other friends were, but it was probably the most I could ask for. The last of the crowd funneled into the stairs

Another loud boom resounded. Keanu whirled around; looking for the source, but the crash site must have been outside.

While Keanu was looking the other way, I jumped onto his back and grabbed on like a kid getting a piggyback ride as he bucked in surprise. I wrapped my right arm around his neck and grabbed my left bicep on the other side of his head as I snaked the back of my left hand behind his neck.

“Dakota?” he asked, surprised and grabbed my arm; but I cut off his air and anything he might have said next. He flinched back and forth, not really fighting me, but obviously wanting me off.

“I’m sorry Keanu,” I said. “I need to go face that dragon and I can’t have you following me. If you go out there, you’ll be his only target. I’m doing this to save your life; I hope you don’t hate me.” I added lamely, as his body collapsed forward. He fell to his knees first, arms on the ground. I counted the seconds only using the exact amount to knock a person out without causing brain damage, and then released him.

If Keanu had tried to fight me off of him, he probably could have, he had over a hundred pounds on me. So when he collapsed to the ground, and passed out, I knew that in some way he had let me. I would cling to that thought like a branch as I dangled over this abyss, maybe just maybe Keanu would understand after this was all over that I attacked him to keep him safe.

“Hunter! Someone!” I screamed as I climbed off Keanu’s back, “Help! Keanu collapsed!”

And he wouldn’t be out for long…

The moment I saw the faint outline of people ascending the stairs, from the basement back up to us, I turned on my heel and ran.

At the front entrance of the mansion, I stared out of the open doors. The scene before me was so different than the one I had left only minutes before. The front gate of the entrance of the estate was missing, as was large sections of the tall black lava rock wall that ringed the property. There were large gouges in the wall, as if it took heavy cannon fire. All around debris littered the lawn, rocks and hunks of cars gouged craters on what had been a smooth well-tended lawn. Three palm trees had been knocked over, their lights sputtering as they swung like flashing pendulums.

The dragon swung around twenty feet in the air and launched a palm tree, pulled up by its roots, flinging it like a spear into the lawn. It skewered a shed off to the side of the house like a shish-kabob; glass exploded out and rained down. I hoped none of the people that fled hid in there.

The claws came down, grabbing chunks of the road, scooping up concrete pieces and flinging them out like a spray of head-sized bullets. There were still probably over a hundred high school students running around the lawn, if I did not stop this now, many, maybe all of them would die.

Another spray of rocks flung from the dragon’s claws, some of them hitting the house around me.
Paintballs, they’re just really big paintballs,
I told myself
.
I could run half a mile without getting shot by my grandfather in our practice rounds, it was rare, but I managed it once or twice.
Giant paintballs.

I tore the already forming slit up my dress’ seam higher and sprang into a sprint. Trusting the remaining palm trees to catch some of the bigger debris, I zigzagged up the driveway, dodging to the right as a boulder crashed past my side and splintered a fallen trunk behind me. I was forced to run into the open by a fallen tree.

A flash of movement came at me and then my shoulder went instantly numb. I knew I had been hit, but my shoulder did not hurt so much as feel nothing. I did not pause to examine the wound, just used my good arm to launch me over a pile of rocks, ignoring how the porous lava rocks cut into my palm. Little rocks bit into my face, arms and legs as I pushed on, the closer I was to the source, the more I was getting hit. Though I did not think the dragon had really focused on me yet, I kept my eyes on my immediate surroundings enough to make sure. If the dragon wanted to take me out specifically, it wasn’t aiming well.

A rock missed my head by inches; I ducked as another larger one followed. Diving onto the rock strewn ground behind a fallen palm tree, I scraped every bit of skin that hit. Several rocks flew in my direction and when I peeked out from under the log, the dragon was hurling another palm tree as a spear and it came directly at my log.

I dove, and rolled, barely making it out in time; the two trunks collided and exploded like they were rigged with dynamite. A downpour of palm branches slammed into me crushing me on the grass. People think palm branches are light, just big fans, they’re wrong; palm branches can be heavy enough to crush a full grown man. Thankfully, I was only knocked down and lashed across my back and neck with the leaves.

Closing my eyes and inhaling slowly, I regained my calm and peeked out from under the palms.

The dragon was only about a hundred yards ahead. All its focus was back on the house. If it had been aiming at me it probably assumed I was down. I still doubted the dragon had noticed me really, it seemed like it was just throwing things wildly.

I took a mental inventory of my injuries, I could not move my left arm, it was either dislocated or broken, and the fact that it did not hurt was both a relief and terrifying, but it was my left arm and I did not need it for my self-appointed mission. I just wished I had something to tie it to my body, but there was nothing to do that with. In addition to my injured arm, I had more cuts and bruises than I could count and some hard lumps where rocks were probably lodged in my skin. My ankle protested when I rolled it in a circle, it felt more banged up than broken, maybe not even sprained.

A hundred yards and functional legs, it was doable.

The dragon picked up a truck that I recognized as Hunter’s silver truck; it must have been parked on the road. The dragon flung it toward the house, but the truck hit the ward line and rebounded directly into the dragon’s chest, knocking the dragon back.

I could not ask for a better opportunity. If I survived to see Hunter again, I was buying him a full roasted pig for getting his truck magically enhanced. I wiggled out from under the palms and used the last of my energy to race for the gateless entrance to the estate.

The dragon threw the truck off itself with a screech and thwacked it with its tail. The truck went flying again, bounced off a lamppost bending it and came back hitting the dragon on its side. When the truck tumbled to the ground again the dragon wielded its tail to smash the truck with abandon.

When I slowed to climb over the fallen gate I saw that though the dragon was only a dozen feet from me, just on the other side of the bridge that crossed the water ward, it did not even notice my approach. The dragon destroyed the truck with a single-minded ferocity. It struck me again that this creature had no humanity, it had gone berserk. If Wyvern was in there, he had no control.

The moment I stepped off the bridge, I stopped near the dragon’s left rear flank. This close I could smell its reptilian skin and even with my charm bracelet on, I could feel the menace throbbing in waves off the dragon’s soul. Its size was overwhelming so close; all I could see was moving limbs made up of white scales.

Using my teeth as my left hand was useless, I unclasped my charm bracelet.

The impact of the palm branches falling on me was nothing to the palpable, almost solid cloud of rage that slammed into me. My vision narrowed to two pinpricks and all I could see was an all-consuming whiteness. I felt my limbs start to convulse, and just managed to use my thumb to flick open my grandfather’s ring before my knees slammed into the pavement. I reached my hand with the ring forward blindly and felt cold scales.

The rage that had overwhelmed me to the point of nearly making me offer myself up as a tasty little human sacrifice to the dragon, sucked into my fingers and straight into the ring and then in slow increments my vision came back to me. The whiteness started to have form, shadows, movement, and then the definition of scales.

Needing to paralyze the dragon and quickly, I sent out my power, diving through the first layers of its soul searching for its true soul, but it felt as though I kept diving endlessly, the layers were so immense.

Not noticing me, a little human leech sucking out its overwhelming current of surface emotions, the dragon thwacked the destroyed carcass of Hunter’s truck with its spiked tail, making sure it was well and truly dead.

I concentrated on the rage, trying to avoid pulling any of it into me yet this was impossible. It felt almost like solid smoke, hot and rough, burning through my body. The ring hungrily took all that I could funnel into it, but there was just so much.

I’m sorry grandfather. I hoped the rage did not feel the same to him that it did for me, as if I was funneling hot coals into him. I hoped he could digest the quantity I was giving him.

The dragon turned its head, looking straight at me and I realized, I was screaming. I might have been screaming for a while now. Its basketball sized eyes fixed on me.

My hand still grabbed onto its leg while I knelt with my head lolling; I probably looked a lot like a human sacrifice.

The leg I was touching shifted under my fingers and with a horrible dread, I realized I could not lock its body into place in time. I still had not dived deep enough to get to its true soul. Even when I found the true soul, it took a certain amount of soul, a soul divided, to be able to paralyze my target’s body.

It swung its head down, its eyes focused on me. I wasn’t sure if its giant open jaw was about to snap me up and swallow me whole or if the dragon was just getting a better look at me.

I grabbed a handful of its cheek just below its eye. Beneath my fingers its facial skin was rough like sandpaper while at the same time feeling fleshy, like a lizard’s skin.

While I had the ring take as much rage as it could possibly funnel I focused all the power in me and plunged toward the dragon’s true soul. Again, I could barely even sense the true soul deep within the flow of rage, but I dove for it knowing my life depended on getting to it. The moment I encountered the first tendrils of true soul, I yanked them into myself with all my remaining strength.