Broken Gates (16 page)

“Natty Lite? Don’t you have anything left besides Natty Lite in here?” Laila said with annoyance as the sound of ice sloshing around reached my ears. I almost wanted to laugh, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Were teenagers, no matter where in the country, whether they were fully human or playing hosts to aliens, forced to drink the beer cast offs of society?

Cliff frowned down a Laila. “You know all the good stuff always goes first; maybe if you would have gotten here earlier you could’ve had something else.”

Laila finished flicking the ice off a can of Natty Lite and cracked it open, and lifted it to her mouth. She proceeded to chug it all down in almost one go. Huh. And maybe her solution was the same as mine always had been, to use quantity to make up for quality in beer. But then again look what almost happened to me the last time I’d attempted to actually apply that flawed logic as a solution. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said to both Cliff and Laila, hoping that Laila would be a good girlfriend and offer to come with me, and Cliff would be a good host and direct me to the nearest one. Too bad neither one of them wanted to fulfill those particular roles.

“I’ll wait for you here,” Laila said as she made goo goo eyes at a cute boy and his little friend inside of him.

“I’ll show you where to go,” Cliff said with a smile on his face.
Ugh
.

“Fine,” I grated. I suppose that Laila wouldn’t be much help anyways. I was seriously outnumbered and she was a non-gifted human who had absolutely no idea what was really going on right under her nose.

“Come on.” Cliff tried to link his arm with mine and I sidestepped him, not wanting to come into contact with his bare skin again. The bold move made him frown at me.

“Do I need to remind you again that I have a boyfriend back home?” I punctuated my sentence with the best death glare in my arsenal.

It didn’t even faze him. “Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said with a laugh.

“Actually, yes I can,” I retorted with ice dripping from my voice. I trailed along behind him, wishing I could use my dragon magic to fry him to a crisp, but I knew it was just the Rider I wanted dead, and not poor Cliff, at least not the real Cliff. When we got to the top of a huge set of winding stairs, Cliff sauntered down to the end of the hallway and turned the light on in the bathroom for me.

As I moved to walk past him, he stuck his arm up to rest his hand on the edge of the doorjamb to completely block my way. “Aren’t you gonna thank me for taking you to this bathroom where you don’t even have to stand in line?”

“Ummm . . . Thank you,” I said crisply, and tried to duck under his arm, but he wasn’t having any of it. Or maybe it was the Rider that wasn’t having any of it.

Cliff’s features suddenly seemed to completely take on the appearance of the alien within. It was a shock that made me stumble back and gasp. “Cliff has been difficult to hold on to from day one,” the Rider snarled at me as he grabbed a huge clump of my white hair at the back of my head. “But I have a feeling if we get one of us into you, and the two of you make nice with us”—he smiled a big toothy grin at me—“then Cliffy here will be a lot more easy to manage.”

Riders couldn’t possess dragons. I still wasn’t really sure why, but if they tried to put a Rider in me they would know something was different and my cover would be completely blown. I couldn’t allow that to happen. I twisted abruptly and managed to wrench myself out from under Cliff’s tight grasp, losing a clump of hair in the process, and slammed him into the wall. His head hit at a wrong angle, or just right for me, and he passed out cold. He probably hadn’t been expecting that. That made two of us . . . or should I say three?

I stood there for a second, my chest heaving from the sudden adrenaline rush, before my brain finally caught up with what had just happened. Now what the hell was I supposed to do? “Think, P.J., think,” I whispered hoarsely to myself. I glanced back down the dark hall just to make sure someone hadn’t come up behind me when I wasn’t paying attention. Much to my relief the coast was still clear. But I knew I had to do . . . something . . . fast.

Okay, first I should probably check to make sure that Cliff was in fact still sucking in oxygen. I tentatively stepped over his slumped body, my heart pounding in my chest, half expecting him to suddenly sit up and attack me like in some grade B horror movie villain. But he didn’t, and the rise and fall of his chest let me know that I hadn’t killed him. I heaved a sigh of relief, short lived, as I heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Shit
. In a moment of panic I grabbed Cliff under the arms and drug him into the bathroom, it was harder work than I would have thought, and as soon as he was far enough in, I shut the door behind us and locked it. Great—now I’d managed to trap myself in an even smaller space with the hostile Rider.
Go me!

I looked around the small second story bathroom for some kind of . . . I don’t know . . . inspiration to help me out of my predicament, but none came. I was about one panicked second away from ripping off my Khol repelling bracelet so that I could call him for help. The only thing stopping me was that I didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger . . . yet. Well, that and I didn’t know if my pride could take that kind of blow. I was kind of attached to the idea of doing things on my own now, and besides if I was going to be with Bryn, I couldn’t keep relying on Khol for everything without killing Bryn a little more each time. I was beginning to understand why Bryn was so upset about me always relying on Khol instead of him, when I should have chosen him, or the best option . . . myself.

A knock on the door made me feel like my heart was going to explode out of my chest and I tried to sound calm when I answered. “Someone’s in here,” I squeaked. Yep . . . I sounded like the epitome of calm.
Nothing suspicious going on here . . . nothing at all
.

“Cliff in there with you?” a male voice asked while I heard a decidedly masculine chuckle at his question.
Shit.
Two Riders outside the door, and me stuck in here with a third.
Think, P.J., Think.
My eyes finally settled on the window. I bit my lip with determination. There really wasn’t any other way. I stepped over Cliff’s still unconscious body and pushed the medium sized frosted window open. I hoisted myself up onto the ledge and looked around for options to climb down to the ground on: a tree, a drainpipe, a vine . . . something . . . anything . . . but there was nothing. I heard a loud groan come from the bathroom floor as Cliff started to come to. I had to make a decision on what I was going to do . . . fast.

“Cliff man, you in there?” the Rider outside the door asked with suspicion in his voice. Cliff groaned louder in response. “Hey,” the Rider said. “What’s going on in there?” The door handle began to rattle as he tried to turn the locked knob without any luck. It looked like I was going to have to jump. Hopefully, I’d just sprain an ankle or do something pretty benign, but at least I would get away relatively unscathed, all things considered. I wondered briefly if I should try to tuck and roll or just jump feet first. Or maybe—

“Not so fast,” a very angry Rider growled from Cliff’s body as he grabbed me by my shoulder. I let out a startled scream as I teetered forward toward the ground and instinctively reached back to grasp Cliff’s hand. But instead of keeping me on the ledge, the sudden movement sent us both careening forward. With nothing else to do but fall, I clamped my eyes shut and wished I had never left the house tonight. Why, oh why, couldn’t I have spent a nice evening at home at the Murder House? Spending time with ghosts isn’t as bad as becoming one. Suddenly a weird—familiar—feeling of dizziness overtook me, and instead of feeling the impact of the hard ground shortly before my emanate demise, I landed with an oof on what felt like a bed. Of course, I felt Cliff crash into me half a second later.

“What the fu—?” Cliff exclaimed as I opened my eyes to find the purple and white pattern of my bedspread that I had been using at the Murder House under my nose. I quickly reeled around, picked up the lamp from my nightstand, and knocked Cliff out cold again. As he slumped down to the ground, I found myself wondering for the second time in one evening if I had killed him.

My bedroom door slammed open, hitting the wall behind it to reveal a battle ready Nala. She paused to take in the scene of Cliff unconscious on the floor, and a freaked out me standing over him with what was left of my lamp and relaxed a bit. “Who’s he, and what happened?” she asked a little too calmly.

“That,” I started, surprising myself with how normal I sounded, “is the Rider who was going to blow my cover by trying to force one of his buddies into me because his host has some kind of thing for me.” I inhaled and exhaled a couple of times trying to get fresh oxygen to my brain. “And I have absolutely no idea what happened. One minute I’m hurtling toward the ground to my death, and the next I’m here.”

It was then that Nala’s face took on the look of surprise. “You transported yourself and him here?” she said incredulously. “You’re too young to have that kind of control.”

“Hey,” I snapped with indignance. “I’m the same age as Bryn and he can already do it.” And then everything sunk in. I had . . . finally . . . been able to use the super cool dragon power I’d been drooling over since I first found out what I really was. Too bad I had absolutely no idea what I had done to access it, besides having a near death experience. And cool or not, that wasn’t something I was willing to replicate, even for a power that awesome.

“Alright. Fine. I really don’t want to get into to it with you about your powers right now. The more important issue is, what exactly do you plan on doing with your new little friend, now that we have him here?”

That was a good question . . . a very good question indeed.

15

“So what are you going to do with me?” the Rider inside of Cliff asked in an exasperated tone.

“I don’t know yet,” I said, resuming my pacing from one corner of my room to the other. Cliff, and the alien leech inside of him, was currently tied to a wooden chair that Nala had brought up from the kitchen. We’d used rope and duct tape to secure him there . . . lots and lots of duct tape. I guess that goes to prove that duct tape really is all-purpose.

“Well, aren’t you going to question me or something?”

“Look,” I said as I came to stop directly in front of him, “if this is so hard on you, then why don’t you just ooze on out of Cliff’s body and leave him alone?”

The Rider made Cliff’s handsome face grimace at me in response, “It’s not that simple.”

I crouched down in front of him and peered up with curiosity at the Rider inside of Cliff. The alien inside seemed to have almost eclipsed him completely since the moment he came to in my room. “So why don’t you try and explain it to me then.”

He narrowed his eyes at me with hatred. “No.”

This all seemed a bit surreal. Was this actually happening or was I having some kind of weird dream? If felt real, it felt like I was awake. And yet the fact that I was having this conversation with the Rider inside of Cliff while he was duct taped to one of my kitchen chairs seemed a bit . . . ridiculous. I guess I had to stop repeatedly questioning the fact that my life had turned into one surreal moment after another. “Really? You just asked me if I was going to ask you questions, and—”

“I didn’t say I was going to answer them,” he snapped with more irritation, like I was an annoying little gnat circling his head.

“Fine. If that’s the way you wanna play it, then I’m about ready to enroll you in Torture Class 101.” But could I actually torture Cliff’s poor body? I had no doubt that my conscious would have no problem letting me cause some major damage to just the Rider, but he wasn’t just the Rider at the moment. “Why are you still in Cliff anyways? I saw him push you out. I saw you leave.”

“How do you know that?” The Rider’s jaw dropped, or I guess Cliff’s jaw dropped. Everyone kept telling me to think of a host and the Rider within as one and the same, to which I used to be able to do pretty easily. But with one currently residing inside of Jenna, and with having the vision of Cliff pushing this Rider out, it was beginning to be more and more difficult.

I let a slow smile creep across my face. It was obvious the Rider had figured out I was a dragon, but I was under the mistaken impression that he had also come to the conclusion of who I was specifically. Guess I was wrong. Time to fill him in. “I
saw
it in a vision.”

He just stared at me, shock playing across his face. “Impossible. You’re a dragon.”

I leaned back and flopped into a sitting position on the floor in front of him before crossing my legs casually. “Yes, I’m a dragon.” I smiled brightly at him. “But I’m also a Seer, and a very powerful one at that.”

“The dragons only have one Seer, and she’s a gifted human. And she should be dead by now,” he blurted out, seemingly unable to stop himself.

All amusement drained from me. “I am that Seer. And clearly I’m neither human nor dead.” Of course, until recently even I had thought I was human, at least partly, so I couldn’t really expect the Riders to be privy to any information that said differently. I rose up from my sitting position on the floor and came to stand as close as I would dare to the Rider. “But I’m hoping you’ll be soon . . . dead that is.”

“What are you doing here?” the Rider asked as he clearly tried to hide the fear in its eyes. “Did you come here for me? Because of who I am?”

I could feel my face scrunch up in both shock and confusion. “Who you are? I don’t know who you are, besides Cliff that is.”

He let out a dark laugh. “Well, isn’t this perfect.” He paused and I could tell he was trying to weigh what he should say to me next. “Okay. If you let me go, I’ll get my father to back off of you guys, to leave you alone. I mean a lot to him . . . in both my forms. And he doesn’t really care about you guys, not really, just the threat you pose. If you promise to leave us alone, we’ll do the same.”

It was my turn for my jaw to drop. Was he kidding? There was no way he actually thought I’d go along with that, could he? “You can’t be serious. You killed our families, slaughtered my people, are trying to destroy our world . . . and you want us to simply look the other way? Maybe I hit you on the head too hard,” I muttered, the last part more to myself than him. Could Riders suffer brain damage if their host did?

“My father felt threatened . . . and we’re not trying to destroy your world. We like it, actually.”

“No. You’ve destroyed worlds before. Decimated them for their resources like the parasites you are and then moved on to the next world you planned to victimize. And how you’ve been treating our world . . .
my world
 . . . definitely proves you plan on doing the same here.”

“Mistakes,” the Rider pleaded with his voice and eyes. “We didn’t know any better. We were just trying to survive. But we like it here—want to stay.”

“Well you’re not!” I bellowed, finally losing control of my temper. I could feel my dragon fire magic spark to life just under my skin, practically begging for me to release it on the Rider. But I fought the urge because I knew, even through the haze of red that was tinting my vision, that I didn’t want to hurt Cliff.

The Rider’s eyes widened to the size of saucers as he finally realized how much danger he was really in. “We can make a bargain. I swear. Just don’t hurt me.”

“How many have begged for your mercy? How many of my people begged before you slaughtered them in cold blood? Men, women, and children, all of the same, just because of who we are. This is our planet and you can’t have it!” Flames crept up into my fingertips, and I stretched out my palms in Cliff’s direction.

“That was my father! Not me! We’re not all the same! Some of us just want to stay—to live!” the Rider exclaimed as sweat trickled down Cliff’s frightened face. “Please . . .”

“Tell me,” I growled. “Tell me who your father is, and what his end game is.”

“Sena—Senat—Senator Bill Wexington is my father’s human host . . . and my real father is the one inside him . . . our leader,” the Rider stammered.

What were the chances? I had both Senator Bill Wexington’s son, and the son of the lead Rider both as my prisoner. Actually—I chuckled darkly to myself—I knew none of this had happened by chance . . . My birth mother had seen it all and planned for it to happen. There was no other explanation.

“Senator Bill Wexington is your father?” He seemed to be the center of all of this from the beginning. One of my first big visions had been of the alien rider taking possession of him. He also seemed to be the one leading the charge that was pro-gun control and anti-American citizen’s rights—or anti-human rights, if I really wanted to be accurate. Maybe if I could take him out, then the rest of the Riders wouldn’t be as difficult to manage.

“Yes,” the alien made Cliff’s head bob in affirmation. “He’ll make a deal for me—trade—”

“Tell me,” I growled, my throat feeling raw. “Tell me what he’s planning.”

Cliff’s crystal blue eyes blinked at me slowly a few times before the Rider began to speak again. “He wants control. He wants the humans as slaves. We won’t kill off your world. We want to stay, to live, like I said, but we want—”

“To rule,” I finished for him. It was a story as old as time itself. The struggle for power. How cliché. Couldn’t they at least come up with something new? I never quite understood it myself, but then again, I’ve heard that those with power usually didn’t pay much mind to it, and those without, or with a little, made it their focus, or sometimes obsession. I clearly have always had power, and now I had more than I’d ever dreamed of, and more than I’d ever wanted.

“Yes,” Cliff’s full lips responded with the fowl sound of the Rider’s voice. “So you see, it doesn’t have to involve you, if you don’t want it to. We’ll leave you alone to do whatever it is that you do, and we’ll do our thing. The humans are no concern of yours, not really.”

A low animalistic growl erupted from my chest. “Until not too long ago I thought I was human. I was raised to think I was human. I still
feel
human.” I tried to keep my fire from going to him, from burning him alive, because I didn’t want to hurt Cliff, but beyond that I knew that keeping this particular Rider alive for the moment would do our cause more good. He was full of information, useful information, I reminded myself. “The people who raised me, who were the only real parents I ever knew . . . were human.” But it was hard . . . harder than I thought to not just act on my murderous impulse. I had to leave . . . leave the room now . . . or he would die . . . they both would die.

I slammed out of my room and ran down the hallway, my dragon fire magic dripping down from my fingertips. “Nala!” I screamed. I needed help. I couldn’t handle my emotions and all of my new raw power together. “Nala, please!” But she didn’t come. I knew she was afraid. Afraid because she was a Water Dragon, afraid that my fire would consume all of her up and leave nothing but ash. I dropped to my knees as things around me began to burn . . . the carpet, the wall . . . my own clothes. I had one of two choices: I could reach down inside of myself and find the strength of will to get myself under control, or I could rip the small—hot—very, very hot blackening bracelet from my wrist and call on Khol for help. The latter was more appealing . . . simpler . . . but . . . but
Bryn
. His name swam through my mind as I tried to decide what to do before I burned everyone and everything down around me. If I wanted him, wanted to be with him the way that I truly desired, I was going to have to stop relying on Khol. I had to trust in myself, in my own strength of will. The old Dragon Queen, my birth mother, wouldn’t have given me her powers if she didn’t think I could handle them. I had the strength in me somewhere; I just had to find it . . . for Bryn.
Always for Bryn
.

I conjured up an image of his face in my mind’s eye for focus. I pictured his dark blue eyes glittering with amusement as he laughed at something silly I’d done. His full firm lips would curve up slightly at first, and then his patented smile complete with dimples would spread across his perfectly chiseled jaw line. I wanted him to look at me like that again, to laugh easily in my presence like he used to be able to do. I wanted to banish the new, hardened Bryn from my life forever, because I had made him that way, I had changed him. I wanted us back, and I would do anything . . . anything, including burn down this world to have a chance with him again.

And just like that my dragon fire magic pulled back into me and took all of the fires it had started with it. I was surrounded by blackened and still crackling . . . well, everything . . . but nothing was actually burning anymore. I laughed hoarsely. What do you know? I’d actually done it . . . all by myself. No. That part wasn’t true. I’d done it with Bryn, because he was as much a part of me as my own heart. I could never let myself forget that again, never let anyone or anything come between us again. Or maybe I’d done if for Bryn. I was too tired to care at the moment though, all that mattered was that I had done it; I had stopped my fire from burning the creepy Murder House down around me.

A contented smile spread across my face as I collapsed to the ground and my mind went as black as the carpet my face pushed into.

“I’m so thirsty,” I mumbled from the desert that was my throat.

“Using your fire magic will do that; it won’t ever burn you though, but I guess you found that out the hard way.” A familiar voice rumbled from nearby. “Here, drink this.”

My eyes snapped open to the sight of Khol. How’d he find me? What was he doing here? “Wha—what—how did you find me?” It was then that I noticed that I was not in fact in the Murder House any longer, but lying in Khol’s large comfortable bed.

He handed me a glass of what appeared to be ice water, and I took it with shaky hands. I watched him with wide eyes over the rim of the glass as I greedily gulped down the best glass of water I’d ever had. When I’d finished, I lowered the empty glass to my lap and gripped it tightly. What would Khol’s reaction be now that I was back? Would he be angry I was gone? Or would he be ready to pull me back into his arms to pick up where we left off? I was hoping the former because he’d be easier to deal with in that mood when I told him I’d chosen Bryn.

He eyed me warily, his green eyes blazing with unreadable emotions. “I don’t know what you’re feeling,” he said as his mouth dipped into a frown.

“It’s the bracelet,” I said as I tapped the tiny intricately made bronze bracelet on my left wrist. “My birth mother gave it to me to wear so you couldn’t track me.”

Khol’s nostrils flared with anger. “I see. Will you be taking it off now that you’re back then?”

I bit my lip and looked at my hands still gripping the empty glass in my lap. “No. I’m not ready to take it off just yet.”

Deafening silence engulfed the room, and I didn’t need to be able to read Khol’s emotions to know that he was not happy. I decided to change the subject and quickly. “So how did you find me?”

“You used enough magic to announce your presence to all of dragon kind,” he responded flatly.

“Oh.” I hadn’t really thought about that. Of course, with all that dragon magic I had used, Khol probably zeroed in on me in seconds.

“What did you do with the Rider? The one I had at the house—the one—”

“We have him here,” Khol interjected. “He’s important then, like I thought?”

I did meet Khol’s electric green eyes then. “Oh yes,” I breathed. “Very important.”

Khol leaned forward, his face growing more intense, “Tell me.”

“His father is the lead Rider, and his host is none other than Senator Bill Wexington. He’s the son of both the lead Rider and the Senator.”

A tight smile turned Khol’s lips up slightly at the corners. “He is very important then.” He suddenly came to me in a burst of speed almost too fast to track with my eyes, and took me in his arms, inhaling sharply as if in pain as he crushed me to him. “I went out of my mind not knowing where you were, not being able to sense you.” He pushed his nose into my hair and inhaled. “I’ve missed you so much.”