Slayers: Friends and Traitors (37 page)

Dirk didn’t have a reason he could tell her. “Kiha doesn’t feel well.”

Bridget cocked her head in disbelief. Dragons were rarely sick. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s tired.”

“You’re just saying that ’cause you don’t want to take me.” Bridget turned from the wall and flounced over to the computer on the desk. “I bet she’s not even sleeping.”

Well, she would be by the time Bridget checked on the cameras to that enclosure. Dirk reached his mind out to the dragon, severing the link he had with Jupiter and searching for Kiha’s mind.

He couldn’t reach her. His father must be with her, controlling her mind.

“Kiha is gone,” Bridget said in confusion.

“Gone?” Dirk repeated. He felt a rush of dread. His father had been sure that the Slayers would head to Vermont to find Ryker. Although Dirk didn’t say so, he thought the Slayers would get their families to safety before they did anything about Ryker. But what if they had come to the dragon enclosures instead? Tori could have stolen the dragon.

No, he told himself. The Slayers had no way of knowing where the backup enclosures were, and he had disabled his cell phone so they couldn’t trace that.

Dirk strode over to the computer, telling himself it wasn’t possible. Even if Dr. B had brought along some sort of tracking chips for the rescue mission, he hadn’t handed out any supplies. The Slayers had no way to track Dirk. If anyone took Kihawahine, it was his father.

Dirk checked the cameras, hoping Bridget was wrong. When dragons slept, their scales darkened. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, they could appear to be rocks.

Bridget wasn’t wrong. From every camera angle, the room was empty. The dragon was gone. Dirk pushed the intercom button that connected him to the keeper on duty.

“Keeper One,” the man answered. It meant he was the keeper assigned to enclosure one, where Kihawahine lived.

“This is Dirk. Where’s Kiha?”

“With your father,” the keeper said.

Dirk’s father took the dragon out for rides some nights, but only when it was very late and never for long. This didn’t seem like the night to give Kiha exercise. “What’s my dad doing with her?” Dirk asked.

The man hesitated. “Taking care of some business.”

“What sort of business?”

“I don’t know.”

He wouldn’t tell, more likely. Dirk felt the sting of the man’s refusal. It was another reminder that Dirk’s father didn’t trust him. “When will he be back?”

“Don’t know.”

Dirk grit his teeth in aggravation. “How long has he been gone? You were there when he left, weren’t you?”

The man hesitated, then must have decided that it wouldn’t hurt to tell Dirk. “About a half an hour.”

Dirk cut the connection without saying good-bye.

What was his dad doing? Some sort of an attack? Where? Dirk ran his hand through his hair, noticing as he did that one of the computer screens showed information from the Federal Aviation Administration registry. He looked at the screen more closely. His father had been looking at flight plans from Rutland to Dulles. Somehow Dirk didn’t think his father was checking on his men’s flight home.

Bridget wandered back over to the glass wall to look at the fledglings. She leaned her head against the wall and sang to them. She liked to think she was a maiden from a fairy tale taming unicorns.

Dirk scanned the flight plan. A Gulfstream from Southern Vermont Regional Airport was slated to land at Dulles tonight. It wasn’t one of his father’s planes. The Slayers must have gone to Rutland and this was their flight back. Dirk glanced at the time. The Slayers would be so easy to attack—all together on a plane. His father must have seen it as an irresistible opportunity.

To check and make sure, Dirk accessed the security codes for the cameras in his father’s hangers. Over the years, his father had amassed a collection of planes—a jet for personal travel, some retired C-130s for moving his private troops, and six cargo planes capable of moving dragons and releasing them midair.

One of the cargo planes was missing.

Earlier tonight his father said,
You can’t be completely loyal to me as long as part of you is loyal to them. Do I need to get rid of the competition so I can depend on my son again? Is that what it will take?

Dirk had thought it was a threat to keep him in line, not the next item on his father’s to-do list.

In a horrible rush of understanding, Dirk knew what his father planned. His father would get close to the Slayers’ airplane, then have Kihawahine intercept them. One burst of directed EMP and the plane’s electric systems would be useless. A hit from the dragon, and the plane would plummet. It wouldn’t even look like murder, just an unfortunate malfunction.

Would any of the Slayers have time to bail out? If they did, the dragon would be there to take care of that, too.

Dirk picked up the phone on the desk and called his father. He didn’t answer. Dirk gripped the phone hard, listening to it uselessly ring. His father had promised he wouldn’t kill any of the Slayers. That had always been Dirk’s condition for spying. Apparently that promise didn’t mean anything now that Dirk couldn’t spy anymore.

He slammed the phone back onto the desk. He couldn’t call Tori. She disabled her cell phone. He looked around the room, pointlessly searching for some way to stop this from happening. His gaze landed on the sleeping dragons.

Dirk’s father would give Tori as little warning about the attack as possible. Last summer she knew a dragon was coming because, when Tamerlane got close enough, Tori automatically connected to his mind and heard what he heard. If Tori knew too soon that Kiha was coming after the Slayers, she would warn Dr. B. He would turn the plane around and land back in Rutland. To prevent that from happening, Dirk’s father would take firm control of Kihawahine’s mind and put her into a comalike sleep while she traveled in the plane. With the dragon’s mind nearly an inanimate object, Tori wouldn’t connect to it. Not until his father woke Kiha for the attack.

The upside of that was Tori was still connected to one of the fledgling dragons. At least Dirk hoped she was. He had no idea how long her range went. “Stay right here,” he told Bridget. “I’ve got to go inside the nursery.”

She brightened. “Can I come?”

“No. Cassie would kill me if I let you inside.”

Dirk went over to the computer, put in one of the keepers’ passwords, and opened the screen that controlled the nursery settings. His father didn’t usually check the fledglings’ day-to-day logs. Still, Dirk didn’t want to leave any more evidence than he had to. He turned off the piped-in music, and hit the command that raised the wall between Vesta and Jupiter. He watched the dragons for signs of aggression. He didn’t know which fledgling Tori connected to, so he would have to give his message where both dragons could hear him.

Vesta stayed asleep. Jupiter raised his head, sniffing the air. Dirk plunged into the dragon’s mind and took control of its thoughts. There was no prodding this time, no gently directing Jupiter’s thoughts to ease his resistance. Dirk told the dragon to stay down, stay calm, and stay quiet.

Jupiter bristled, fought Dirk’s control, and then went limp on the floor. His mouth hung open as though he’d been hit.

Good. Dirk would be able to speak to Tori without worrying about a fight erupting. He hurried to the nursery entrance, put his hand on the lock pad, and impatiently waited for the scanner to identify his fingerprints. Bridget frowned at him, pouting.

Dirk turned away from her. He didn’t have time to argue with her about this. He didn’t know how long he had until his father’s attack. It might already be too late. The door clicked open. He hurried through it, barely noting when the door closed and relocked. He didn’t realize Bridget had snuck into the hallway behind him until his hand was on the lock pad of the second door. Then he heard her feet half tiptoeing, half running toward him.

Dirk swore and glared at his sister. Her blue eyes filled with tears. “I never get to see them,” she protested. “How will they be my friends if they don’t know I’m a nice person and not a nasty Slayer?”

The second door was opening. Bridget folded her arms stubbornly. Dirk didn’t want to take the time to haul her back into the observation room. Instead, he picked her up and held her securely to his side. “You have to stay in my arms, and you can’t make any sudden moves. Promise?”

She nodded, happy again.

As he strode into the room, he added, “And you absolutely can’t tell Dad or Cassie I took you in here.”

“Promise,” she chimed.

The room smelled of raw meat, droppings, and cleaning detergent. Vesta surveyed him languidly. She was still in a lazy stupor, mollified by his earlier thoughts. Jupiter’s eyes followed him, but he didn’t move. Couldn’t. Dirk still had a tight control on his mind.

Dirk didn’t let himself think about what he was doing or what his father would say if he found out. “Tori,” he said. “It’s me, Dirk.” Nearly as quickly he added, “Stop minimizing the sound to block me out. You’re in danger.”

“Why is she in danger?” Bridget asked.

Dirk made a shushing motion. With Bridget here listening, he couldn’t tell Tori that his father was trying to kill her, so he used his father’s real name. Bridget didn’t know it. “Overdrake has a jet and his favorite weapon. He’s going to intercept you in the air. If you’re all on a plane somewhere, land or bail out because your plane won’t be working for long.”

Bridget eyed him over. “You don’t have a phone,” she whispered. “How are you talking to Tori?”

Dirk ignored his sister. “When you stop connecting with the fledglings and hear wind and wings—that means you’re out of time.”

Bridget leaned closer to Dirk’s face, as though he had an invisible phone she could access near his lips. “Tori, you can come to our house and help Dirk with the dragons. They’re nice.”

“Shh,” he told Bridget so she wouldn’t elaborate on that plan. He stared at the ground, wanting to say something else, wishing he had a way to hear Tori’s voice in return. He didn’t, though. And he didn’t know if he would ever hear her voice again.

“Don’t try to fight,” he told Tori, “just get someplace safe.”

“Look,” Bridget said, pointing. “Vesta is waving her tail at us.”

CHAPTER 37

“Dirk, no,” Tori said. The words were pointless. He couldn’t hear her. Still, she wanted to yell at him. How could he stand by and let this happen? How could he stay with his father when the man was trying to kill people—starting with Dirk’s friends?

Then she chided herself for forgetting so quickly. The Slayers weren’t really his friends. This warning was only thrown in her direction so Dirk could appease his conscience. He had taken his little sister with him to deliver the message as if it were all a game without consequences.

Tori opened her eyes and the sound in the plane immediately grew louder. The Slayers were all staring at her. “Bad news,” she said. The words sounded absurd even in her own ears. Getting a flat tire was bad news. Failing a math test was bad news. Finding out a dragon was going to attack your plane was something much worse. “Overdrake has a jet and a dragon. He’s coming after us. Dirk says we need to land or bail out.”

For a moment, the other Slayers stared at her in shock and then everyone spoke at once.

“We’ve got to turn the plane in another direction,” Rosa said.

“We can’t trust what Dirk says,” Lilly insisted. “It’s some sort of trap.”

“How long do we have?” Jesse asked.

Ryker’s gaze bounced between them. “How did Dirk talk to Tori? I thought you said counterparts don’t have psychic powers.”

Bess grabbed her helmet from off the floor. “How does Overdrake know where we are?”

Willow looked around the cabin nervously. “I really hope someone is about to tell me that there are enough parachutes.”

The next few moments were just as loud and jumbled as people grabbed their gear and spoke over one another to answer the first set of questions.

“I don’t know how long we have,” Tori said.

“Air traffic control tracks all planes.” Jesse handed Ryker and Willow bulletproof jackets, pants, and boots. Along with the extra pair Dr. B always packed for missions, he’d brought a pair for Alyssa. “Overdrake must have someone in ATC giving him information.”

Bess got out the extra helmets. “Tori hears what the dragons hear. When someone is near the dragons, she hears what they say. Dirk knows that.”

Willow kicked off her shoes and pulled the bulletproof pants over her jeans. “You know, when you asked if I wanted to be a Slayer, I thought I’d have a little more training before I faced a dragon. I’m seriously having second thoughts about my career plans.” She tried to put the Kevlar jacket over her own, then took off her jacket, tossed it on her chair, and slipped her arms into the Kevlar jacket. “And I never thought I’d say this, but Aunt Harriet was right. This was not a good idea.”

The floor tilted downward. Dr. B was lowering the plane. “Strap on your rifles and parachutes,” he called. “Bess, bring me mine. Rosa, turn on the simulator. Lilly, give me the first-aid kit.”

Most of the Slayers headed to the cabinets. Kody didn’t. “Parachutes won’t do no good. They’re too slow. If the dragon catches us with those things on, we’ll be nothing but a buffet of dangling Slayer kabobs.”

“What other choice do we have?” Lilly asked, handing Dr. B a small blue box. It seemed pointless to take a first-aid kit. Sort of like taking an umbrella into a hurricane.

“Can’t we make it to another airport?” Kody asked.

“If we have enough time,” Dr. B answered. “Right now we’re over the Catskill Mountains. Captains, what is our plan B?”

Tori didn’t speak. She wasn’t a captain. She snapped on her parachute even though it seemed meaningless. She could fly. Still, if the group bailed out over a populated area, people might wonder how she made it to the ground without one.

“Kody is right,” Jesse said. “Parachutes are too slow. If the dragon gets around the flyers—and it will—everyone will be ripped to shreds. We’ll only use them as a last resort.” They had learned last summer that shocks and force fields weren’t enough to hold a dragon back. “The flyers will carry the nonflyers,” Jesse went on. “One person rides piggyback. We carry the other. We find cover on the ground and fight from there.”