Slayers: Friends and Traitors (22 page)

“I never—” Jesse didn’t finish the sentence.

Rosa’s voice called over to them from the doorway, “Is this where the Justice League is meeting?” She grinned and headed toward the group. “I must have missed the memo about our new superhero outfits.”

Rosa wore faded jeans and an oversize jacket that made her look even more petite. She eyed Tori’s outfit, shaking her head so that her long brown hair swayed around her shoulders. “Only you could make bright red, calf-length boots work.” She gave Tori a hug, then turned and hugged Jesse and Dirk.

When she was done, Rosa said, “So, what did I miss?”

“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I just got here. Apparently I missed a whole lot.”

Dirk ignored Jesse’s comment. “Dr. B only told me a few things. He wants to give everyone the mission details himself.” Dirk didn’t have to explain why. Dr. B didn’t want the captains giving their opinions and swaying the vote. “I can tell you this, though, it will be an offensive.”

Rosa nodded, suddenly business-like. “We should review offensive protocol for Tori.” Tori only had one summer to learn the stuff the other Slayers had worked on for years. It wasn’t second nature to her yet. She tried to pay attention as Rosa listed rules and procedures. She needed to wrap her mind around the mission and stop glancing at Jesse and Dirk to see if they were still glaring at each other.

Which they were.

Tori felt surprisingly horrible about this. Jesse and Dirk had been good friends before she came to camp. Now she was standing between them, figuratively and literally.

After another fifteen minutes of listening to Rosa talk about what constituted a need to use force, when property damage was justifiable, and which laws could be broken, Lilly made her way to the group.

Lilly was only an inch or two taller than Rosa, but she didn’t come off as petite, or doll-like, or anything remotely soft and cuddly. She looked like the compact version of a roller derby queen. Lilly’s bleached-blonde hair with dark roots seemed to be a lifestyle rather than a fashion choice. She’d worn nothing but tank tops and cut-off jean shorts all summer, kept her nails painted hooker red, and had a way of standing with one hip jutted out that indicated if you messed with her, she’d happily yank off one of your limbs.

Now she wore a pair of old jeans and a beat-up black ski jacket. A couple of bright red streaks ran through her hair. She walked over to the group while checking texts on her phone. “Do you guys know what’s going on?” Her red fingernails tapped against the keypad. “I can’t get a hold of Alyssa. It’s worrying me.”

“You can’t get a hold of Alyssa?” Jesse repeated incredulously. “How are you trying to get a hold of her?”

Lilly flashed her cell phone at him. “We exchanged phone numbers a long time ago. Yeah, yeah, I know.” She held up her hand to stop Jesse’s protest. “It’s against the rules. Dirk can make me run extra laps later. The point is, she’s not answering her phone. We texted after the first warning and she was fine. She was on her way shopping for a costume and said she’d call me when she got to the store. She never did.” Lilly went back to texting. “When Dr. B called the meeting, and I still hadn’t heard from her, I called her watch-phone. She didn’t answer that either.”

“Did you tell Dr. B?” Rosa asked, her worry ratcheting up. She was Alyssa’s counterpart.

Lilly nodded. “He said we’d talk about it once he got here.” She looked between Dirk and Jesse. “Is this a drill or is it for real?”

“It’s not a drill,” Jesse said.

Lilly let out a long breath and put her phone in her jacket pocket. “Great.” She looked around again. “Where’s Shang?” Shang was her counterpart and the only Slayer besides Alyssa that Lilly ever listened to.

“He hasn’t come yet,” Rosa said. “Neither has Kody. Maybe they can’t make it.”

None of them asked where Bess was. She would be with Dr. B.

Tori’s cell phone rang again. Her parents’ ring tone. She still didn’t answer. She was going to be in so much trouble when this was over. Her watch read 4:18. It felt like it had been longer. It felt like time was purposely dragging its feet and would keep them here, strung with suspense, forever.

“Dr. B is close,” Jesse said at the same time Tori felt a surge of energy course through her, fill her. During missions, Dr. B hauled the simulator in a trailer behind the van. It was on and in range. She felt stronger, lighter, not cold anymore. Her senses grew even crisper. The room was brighter, louder, and she could smell whiffs of stale cigarette smoke coming from a couple of passing tourists.

Jesse’s and Dirk’s watches simultaneously beeped with new instructions. They both looked down and read their messages.

“I’ll answer him,” Dirk said.

While he called Dr. B, Jesse told the others, “We need to head to location two.” That was the Lincoln Memorial. “Dr. B wants to meet privately.”

At the Lincoln Memorial? The monuments weren’t as crowded as they usually were on a Saturday. People were getting ready for Halloween. Still, any monument was a long ways from private.

Without questioning the logic behind this decision, the other Slayers headed toward the closest door. Tori followed. Lilly glanced behind them. “What about everyone else?”

Jesse was at the head of the group. “Kody will meet up with us later. Shang is out of the area.” Dr. B apparently hadn’t said anything about Alyssa. Tori wondered if that hinted at bad news. Lilly seemed to think so. She muttered unhappily and pushed ahead of Tori and Rosa to talk to Dirk.

The group made their way along the tidal basin toward the Lincoln Memorial. A few clouds had wandered in front of the sun, dimming the light and making the water even darker than its usual muddy green. There were no hints of the bright pink and white cherry blossoms the trees were famous for. That season was past. Now the trees stood about, average and unremarkable, waiting for winter to strip them down to their bark.

Dr. B liked the downtown area for Slayer meetings because the monuments were open twenty-four hours. So many tourists were always coming and going, that one more group walking around wouldn’t be noticed.

Walking felt too slow. Tori itched to fly or at least to run. With her powers turned on, it wouldn’t even be tiring. But the group wasn’t supposed to draw attention to themselves. They had to look like a bunch of normal teenagers seeing the sights. Well, a bunch of normal teenagers and one girl wearing a miniskirt and shiny red superhero boots.

Rosa walked beside Tori, still giving her a refresher in protocol whenever passing tourists weren’t within earshot. The group strode past the FDR monument: statues of people waiting in a line that never moved. Tori’s father said it was really a monument depicting government speed.

The group next passed the marble likeness of Martin Luther King. Tori couldn’t quite decide whether his expression looked hopeful or suspicious. One of the quotes on the inscription wall read, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Right and wrong. Not just the roll of the dice. She felt buoyed by the words until she thought about the part that said right didn’t always triumph. It seemed like a bad omen.

The group crossed Independence Avenue and walked over to the Lincoln Memorial, a hundred-foot tall Greek temple where a huge statue of Abraham Lincoln sat pondering the tourists. To Tori it would always be the place made famous by the back of the penny. As a child she had expected the monument to be copper colored and not made of pale white stone.

Bess stood near the mountain of steps that led up to the statue’s room. She wore a jean jacket, cowboy boots, a western shirt, and a bandana looped around her neck. Her curly hair had grown out a little since the summer. It was long enough that she had put it in two short braids. She spotted the group, walked over, and hugged everyone—even Lilly, and they had never gotten along that well at camp.

In Lilly’s defense, Bess did things like throw shields up while Lilly was tossing her lunch plate in the garbage can. Bess thought nothing was funnier than seeing bits of macaroni salad bounce back in Lilly’s direction.

Tori looked around for Dr. B. “Where is your dad?”

“Waiting for us,” Bess said. “We need to go around to the lower lobby.” She headed in that direction and the rest followed. The Lincoln Monument, like the Jefferson Memorial, had a room underneath it full of information about the president: timelines, quotes, pictures, bits and pieces of the remarkable laid out to display. Definitely not the most private place to meet.

As she walked alongside Bess, Tori said, “I’m glad I’m not the only one wearing a costume.”

“Costume?” Bess asked. “What are you talking about? This is how I normally dress.”

“Right,” Tori said. “Me too. Including the big
S
on my chest.”

Bess laughed. “Okay, I don’t actually dress like this, but Kody does. Seriously, the first time we did a drill in D.C., we had to make him ditch his cowboy hat. It was too conspicuous.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t make that mistake then. I’ll blend right in.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Bess glanced around to make sure no one overheard. “My dad brought our Kevlar outfits.”

They needed their bulletproof gear. That wasn’t good news.

The group walked into the lower lobby, weaving around displays until they reached the elevator. Jesse pushed the call button and after a couple moments the elevator doors opened. Tori walked in with the others. “Why didn’t we just go up the stairs?” she asked Bess. “We were right there.”

Instead of pushing the button that read “to statuary,” Bess pulled a key from her pocket and inserted it into one of the keyholes on the panel. She twisted the key and the elevator went up. “You’ll see.”

Bess had a special key to the Lincoln Memorial elevator? How did a person go about getting one of those? No one else seemed surprised by all of this, but then, they’d done drills in D.C. before.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, the statue of Lincoln was nowhere around. A space not much bigger than the elevator stood in front of them. The group piled out and moved toward a built-in ladder that went up to the roof. Jesse flew up and opened a trapdoor. Tori watched him. “Um, is going up on the roof legal?”

“Define legal,” Bess said.

“Will I be arrested for doing this?” Tori clarified.

“No,” Bess said as though it were a ridiculous question. “No one will catch us.”

It wasn’t the most comforting of answers. “Couldn’t we meet in the van?” Tori suggested. “Isn’t that private enough?”

“Someone could have followed us,” Bess said. “If that’s the case, they’ll think we went to the statuary and they’ll look for us there. Besides, according to Theo, with the right equipment you can decipher what’s being said inside a vehicle by picking up the sound waves hitting the windows.” She shrugged. “Personally, I think Theo just likes making our lives harder.” She took her place in the line for the ladder. “When you get up on top, stay low and follow the rest of us. We’ll be far away enough from the edge of the building that no one on the ground will be able to see us.”

Jesse flew through the trapdoor, stood on the roof, and held his hand down to help Rosa up. He did the same for Lilly. Dirk ignored Jesse’s hand and leapt up onto the roof. Bess looked up as though contemplating trying to copy Dirk’s move, but in the end she held her hand out to Jesse and let him help her up.

Tori flew up. By then the rest of the Slayers were carefully making their way around the skylights to where Dr. B waited for them. He sat cross-legged a few yards over, studying something on his laptop. Even in this simple act there was something of his signature demeanor: an odd mixture of intensity and mildness, of intelligence and inattentiveness. He was an operative who had a key to the roof of the Lincoln Memorial and yet was sitting up here wearing tan professor pants, bright white tennis shoes, and a jacket from a decade ago. Night vision goggles hung from his neck. It had probably never occurred to him that he didn’t blend in.

His smile was tired, worried. “I’m glad you could all come.”

“Alyssa isn’t here,” Lilly said pointedly.

“That’s what we need to talk about,” Dr. B gestured for them to come closer. “I’m afraid Overdrake has captured Alyssa. He wants to come after the rest of you, too. Now we need to decide what to do about it.”

CHAPTER 19

Tori stared at Dr. B mutely. Alyssa had been captured? Lilly let out a high-pitched gasp. Her hand flew to her mouth. Her bright red fingernails contrasted against her ashen face.

“He hasn’t hurt her,” Dr. B went on. “At least not yet. We need to free her before he does.”

First Jesse had been attacked, and now this. The safety of the normal world was shrinking, closing in on all of them.

Rosa paled. She reached out and took hold of Lilly’s arm for support. “How did Overdrake find her? How did he find Jesse?”

“I don’t know.” Dr. B motioned for everyone to sit down. “Did any of the rest of you see anything suspicious? Anything that might indicate Overdrake was trailing you?”

The group all shook their heads. As Tori sat down, she said, “If Overdrake planned to pick us off, he could have already found me. He could have sent people to my father’s events.”

“True.” Dr. B typed something on his laptop. “But you’re also the most well-guarded Slayer. If you were attacked at a campaign stop, there would be a public outcry. The police would be pressured to find the perpetrator. Overdrake must not want that.”

At least
, Tori thought,
not yet.

Bess nudged her elbow into Tori. “And an attack on you would give your father the sympathy vote. I bet Overdrake is a Democrat.”

Dr. B sent Bess a look that indicated he didn’t think her comment was helpful.

“What?” she asked him. “You’re always telling us to pay attention for clues about his identity.”

Dr. B turned to the other Slayers. “At 3:16, Alyssa sent me an emergency alert, and then turned on the phone function on her watch so I could hear what was being said. Overdrake had her by that point. He told her he wanted information about the Slayers—how many there were, names, and where you lived.”