Slayers: Friends and Traitors (17 page)

Dr. B’s father had worked as the cattle boss on the Overdrakes’ plantation in St. Helena. That’s how Dr. B had gotten most of his information. After his family fled the island, Dr. B’s father told him everything he knew about dragons.

“To ignorance.” Dirk’s father held up his hand as though offering a toast. “And the never-ending supply of it this nation has. It works in our favor again.”

Dirk didn’t say anything. He couldn’t celebrate the fact that he had just lied to Tori. It was for the best, he knew. He had saved her from being freaked out every time she heard a screech. Eventually, though, she would know the truth. All the Slayers would. Dr. B—who trusted Dirk as much as he trusted his own daughter—he would know that Dirk had been a traitor all along, a bomb waiting to go off. The thought made Dirk feel like he’d swallowed acid.

“Oh, come on,” his father said, turning away from the nursery wall. “Tori is pretty, but not nearly as pretty as power.” His father walked past the desk where the vets recorded their data and went to the cupboards filled with medical equipment. Well, mostly medical equipment. One held liquor and glasses. “The White House has one hundred thirty-two rooms, thirty-five bathrooms, a swimming pool, a movie theater, and its own bowling alley. I don’t even bowl, but I’m going to use it, anyway.”

His father took out a bottle of red wine and poured himself a drink. “Take extra care that the dragons don’t damage anything in the building when we attack. You can destroy the president, but not the rose garden.”

Cassie, Dirk’s stepmom, had banished most of the alcohol from the house. She couldn’t drink it now that she was pregnant. She was almost three months along—had gotten pregnant after the Slayers’ attempted break-in last summer. She said she hoped it was a boy this time. Dirk didn’t have to ask why. The threat was implicit. When his father attacked a city, he needed another dragon lord to help him control the dragons. If Dirk didn’t cooperate, before long he’d be expendable.

His father poured a small amount of wine into a glass. Alcohol didn’t affect a dragon lord’s abilities like it did a Slayer’s, but his father hardly ever drank much. He didn’t want to dull his mind or cloud his reasoning. He liked to have a tight control of everything, including himself. He swished the dark liquid around to release its scent. “There’s no shortage of pretty girls,” his father said, refusing to let the subject of Tori go.

“You promised you wouldn’t hurt her,” Dirk reminded him. Dirk had already had more than one talk with his father on that subject.

His father kept swishing his glass. “Your mother was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. But when she couldn’t appreciate my vision for the future, I had to let her go. It hurt. I don’t mind admitting it. It was a year before I could even entertain the idea of trusting someone enough to start another relationship.” He took a slow drink. “And now I have Cassie. A beautiful woman who’s my partner in every way. Eventually, when you’re old enough, that’s what you’ll need. A partner, not a rival.”

Dirk didn’t like hearing about his mother. Not this way—with his father using her as an object lesson of failure. It made him wonder what she had to say on the subject of her ex-husband and son. Was she telling some other child about Dirk as if he were an experiment that didn’t turn out right?

Dirk’s father took another sip of wine. “I’m going to take this country from the ashes of its own impotent uselessness, and I’ll make it great again.” He gestured with his glass, emphasizing his point. “What the people need is a decisive leader, one that demands respect. I’ll be that leader, and”—he favored Dirk with a meaningful nod—“I’ll train you to take the reins the same way I taught you to ride dragons.”

This was probably not the best analogy his father could have used. The first time Dirk rode Kihawahine solo, he slipped from the saddle during a backward dive. In his confusion, he broke his mind link with the dragon. She nearly ate him before he could get control of her again. Still Dirk nodded back at his father. His father wanted to fix the country’s problems: the corruption, the gridlock, the staggering debts Congress had amassed that would bankrupt the people. The country’s real problems came from 535 self-invested people in Congress, trying to lead the nation. What it needed was someone who could get things done.

Dirk’s response must not have been enthusiastic enough. His father walked over to him, an unsaid tsking hanging on his words. “You worry too much. This revolution will be mild compared to others.” He made a motion with his hand like a broom sweeping away little puffs of concern. “I won’t have to destroy many cities before the people agree to my terms. The burning buildings, the dragons wiping out a few military combatants, my men marching through the streets—that’s all for show. Once the fighting is over, the people will realize they’re better off.”

Dirk’s father leaned in to him, sniffed, then pulled back. “You smell like perfume. Must have been an interesting talk you had with Tori.”

Dirk rolled his eyes like it didn’t matter. “Interesting enough.”

His father finished his drink and put his cup on the desk. His gaze on Dirk was crisp now, penetrating. “I know you couldn’t help becoming friends with the Slayers at camp. It’s only natural that you don’t want to hurt them. That’s why I’m doing things the way I am. You have to cooperate this time, though. You can’t switch sides when your friends are in danger. If they don’t lose their memories now, they’ll lose their lives later.”

“I know.” It would be better if his friends couldn’t fight, better if their Slayer thoughts and experiences faded away like smoke from a fire that had been put out. They would be safer that way. “But leave Tori out of it. Don’t drug her.” Any dose of drugs that was strong enough to cause unconsciousness always carried the risk of permanent brain damage or death for Slayers. That’s how Dr. B’s younger brother was killed. When Dirk’s grandfather found out the kid was a Slayer, he drugged him and ended up killing him.

“We have to drug Tori.” Dirk’s father looked upward and his voice took on a weary tone as though he was already tired of arguing this fact. “She’s the most dangerous Slayer to us.”

“She’s not a Slayer,” Dirk said. “You know as well as I do that she’s a dragon lord. You practically told her she could fly before she knew it herself. Drugging her won’t do any good.”

Dirk and his father had disagreed about the subject before. Tori flew, heard what the nearest dragon to her heard, and didn’t burn. Last summer she’d been hit with a fireball that seared though her jacket and shirt but only left a red mark on her shoulder. Dragon lord qualities.

The evidence that she wasn’t a dragon lord, however, was equally strong. Girls were almost never dragon lords. The only female dragon lords ever recorded were so far back in history that they might have only been fiction—might have been the creation of disgruntled dragon lord sisters who wanted a heroine who could do what they couldn’t.

Tori seemed to have Slayer instincts. She wasn’t drawn to dragons, she feared them. And equally as telling, her powers faded when the rest of the Slayers did. Dragon lord powers lasted longer. Dirk could be away from the dragons for hours and still fly.

Dirk’s father held up a hand as though conceding a point. “All right—Tori might be some sort of Slayer and dragon lord hybrid. I talked it over with a few of the scientist ilk and they think girls might actually inherit dragon lord powers but are—for whatever reason—unable to access them. Those powers are like an underground river. There, but unreachable.

“Because Tori is also a Slayer, her brain made new pathways, developed new abilities and those pathways cut right into the underground river of dragon lord powers. That’s why her powers fade at the same time the Slayers powers do. So”—Overdrake clapped his hands together as though he were at the start of a new project—“if we destroy the Slayer pathways in her brain, her dragon lord powers will probably disappear at the same time. Problem solved.”

The theory made sense. It explained everything. Even the long-ago female dragon lords. They could have been dragon lord–Slayer hybrids, too. And yet Dirk still didn’t like the idea of drugging Tori. Dragon lords didn’t react to drugs like Slayers did, which meant his father might have to give her larger and larger doses as he tried to blot out her memories.

“She’s not a threat to us,” Dirk said. “She’s only had one summer of training and doesn’t know anything about controlling dragons’ minds. She doesn’t even know she can do it. And even if she could do it, she couldn’t take control of our dragons during a fight.”

Once a dragon lord was inside a dragon’s mind, it was somewhere between difficult and nearly impossible for another dragon lord to enter the same dragon’s mind and give it instructions. By the time Jupiter and Vesta were full grown, they would be so used to taking instructions from Dirk and his father that they would do it without resistance. Entering their minds would be like walking down a familiar road, something that didn’t take much concentration. Tori wouldn’t have that advantage.

“That doesn’t mean,” Dirk’s father said stiffly, “that Tori can’t break in here some other time and steal a dragon, or worse—turn it on us. Do you really think she won’t figure out that you’re my son after the rest of the Slayers are neutralized?”

“She won’t if you do the job right.”

“And then what?” His father raised a hand in frustration. “I hate to put a damper on your romance but I think she’ll realize something is wrong when she shows up to fight the dragons and sees you riding one of them.”

“She’s my counterpart,” Dirk said. “I can change her mind about the rest. I can make her understand about the revolution.”

His father rubbed his forehead and groaned. “Why do you insist on making this harder than it is?”

“Don’t drug her. I don’t want her to lose her abilities.” He didn’t want her to lose her memories. He wanted Tori to remember that she sought him out tonight, that she kissed him, and that while her arms were wrapped around him, they were perfectly in sync.

“Your counterpart,” his father muttered. “She’s your enemy, and by this point, one of you should realize that.”

Vesta lifted her head, saw Dirk, and opened her mouth. Probably shrieking. She stood—her back arched—and readied herself to pounce. It made Dirk miss Tamerlane. Dirk had grown up with that dragon, had spent so many years training him, that Tamerlane knew him by sight. Tamerlane had stopped challenging Dirk when he came into his enclosure. He’d been downright domesticated for a dragon.

These dragons would keep trying to attack him for months—at least until they were full grown. Dirk’s father cast a look at Vesta, and then turned and headed toward the door. “If you want the dragons to stay quiet for Tori, you’ll have to keep them quiet yourself.”

Dirk quickly slipped into Vesta’s mind and murmured assurances to her. Everything was fine. She was sleepy. She needed to rest. “When are you attacking the Slayers?” Dirk called after his father. He was nearly to the door.

His father paused, considered. He hadn’t given those details to Dirk before. In fact, he’d pointedly told Dirk he wouldn’t tell him.
Just in case you’re tempted to double-cross me again and warn your friends
, he’d said.

Dirk finished calming Vesta. “Tori told me she’s close to finding Ryker’s location. He’s either in San Diego, Denver, or Crown Heights, New York.”

Dirk’s father smiled. “That’s good to know. I’ll have some men check those locations.”

“You’ll want to wait until after we find Ryker to attack the Slayers,” Dirk said. “Otherwise you’ll have to find a way to take him out, too. It will be harder once he knows you’re coming after Slayers.”

Dirk’s father rested his hand on the doorknob while he weighed these words. “The dragons will be ready to attack by this spring.” That was another way ignorance was helping them. Dr. B thought it took a year until the dragons were full grown; it was closer to six months. “Some of the Slayers might evade my men during the first attack so I need time for a second, maybe a third or a fourth.”

Dirk wasn’t sure why he wanted his father to postpone the attack on the Slayers. No, that wasn’t right, he did know. Years of going to camp had turned him into a Slayer. During the summer, days would go by when he would completely forget that he was a spy, a traitor. He didn’t just pretend to be a team captain, he was one. He trained, fought, and strategized with the other Slayers. Sometimes that part of him still surfaced. That part always hoped that if he delayed the inevitable, it wouldn’t happen.

“You shouldn’t drug the Slayers until we’re ready to attack,” Dirk said. “Otherwise Dr. B might find a way to restore their powers.”

The loss was reversible, or at least the stories the dragon lords passed down said it was. Given enough time away from the effects of drugs, the pathways in a Slayer’s brain could regrow—the abilities and memories could flow through new passageways again.

It didn’t usually happen. If a person didn’t remember they had to abstain from alcohol and other drugs, they didn’t. And those pathways were eventually completely destroyed.

According to the old stories, Slayers could regain their powers in another way, something fast. In the Middle Ages, there were accounts of fights where a dragon lord thought he had neutralized Slayer knights—only to have them flare back into battle, their powers restored.

Dirk’s father opened the door, then turned back to him. “Isn’t Dr. B already looking for a remedy? He must want to help Leo and Danielle.”

Leo and Danielle were two Slayers who lost their powers and most of their camp memories sometime before last summer. The ironic thing was that they did it to themselves. Both started drinking. They must have turned into quite the partiers since at some point they’d drunk themselves unconscious.

Dirk shrugged as though it weren’t important. “If Dr. B was looking for a cure, he never told us about it. He thinks he has enough Slayers to do the job.” This was only partially true. Dr. B was searching for a cure. All summer, his office was littered with books and printouts, old documents he scoured for clues. But he also thought the Slayers left were capable of killing dragons. That was one of Dr. B’s problems: He always thought people were better than they really were.