Slayers (37 page)

Authors: C. J. Hill

BOOK: Slayers

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Then the beginning verse of the song “Staying Alive” jolted into her ears.

Wow, a bunch of guys singing falsetto badly. She could see Overdrake’s point about that CD.

She minimized the sound, but Jesse must have seen the effect Overdrake’s speech had on her. He slowed down, waiting for her.

“What’s wrong?”

She was not about to let Overdrake’s threats ruin this outing with Jesse. There would be time to pass on Overdrake’s message later. “Nothing,” Tori said, and let go of Jesse’s hand. She was getting the hang of flying now. She didn’t need to propel herself through motions. It worked through vision and a part of her heart wanting to go a certain direction; that’s what steered her. She grinned over at him. “I bet you can’t catch me,” she said, and darted off into the forest.

Jesse followed after her, and proved her wrong.

CHAPTER 45

R
yker Davis was finishing up work on the simulator when his cousin, Willow, walked into the basement. She had been at his house since the start of summer, but he still wasn’t used to having her pop in and talk to him. Most of the time she stayed holed up in her room reading, and he forgot she was around. Then she would finish a book and be there, a flurry of chattiness, until she started a new novel and disappeared again.

Even now, she carried her Kindle in one hand, absently fingering it while she walked toward him. She was tall and graceful—willowy—which was a good thing, because it would be hard to live down a name like Willow if you were short and dumpy. She sat down on the step-stool next to him.

“Just so you know, you need a better password on your Web site.”

He attached a transmitter circuit on the simulator’s bread board, barely looking at her. “I don’t have a Web site.”

“What you mean is, you don’t want your parents to know you have a Web site. You’re going to be in trouble when they find this.” She
flashed her Kindle screen at him, showing the Internet home page for
RykerDavis.com
. The title proclaimed: All You Ever Wanted to Know About Ryker Davis.

Oh.
That
Web site. He should have known that was what she was talking about.

Ryker’s dog, Griffin, trotted over to Willow and nudged her hand, a clear request to be petted. Griffin—named because he was a mixture of who knew what—hated most people, but adored Willow. Probably because she couldn’t resist cooing and petting him anytime he was around. She scratched his ears as she scanned
RykerDavis.com
.

“So, do you have any juicy secrets you reveal on your not-so-well-hidden Web site?”

“It’s not my Web site,” he said, checking the simulator’s power output. He needed more power, better batteries, and made a mental note to buy some the next time he went out. “There’s more than one Ryker Davis in the world, you know.”

“Yeah, and your parents might buy that story if you had a better password.” She tilted her chin down patronizingly, making her dark blond hair spill over her shoulder. “I mean, come on. The hint is: What animal does Ryker dream about?” She let out a disparaging grunt. “It took me two tries. Once ‘hot women’ didn’t work, I knew it had to be dragons.”

He placed the circuit board inside the simulator’s chassis, centering it perfectly. “For your information, I mostly dream about snowboarding, or if it’s summer—hang gliding.” He shot Willow a grin. “Okay—I confess—sometimes I dream of hang gliding with hot women.”

Willow nodded philosophically. “Well, that’s all
I
ever wanted to know about Ryker Davis.” She scrolled down the page and paused to read some of the entry titles. “Although you’re unaware of it, you belong to an elite group called the Slayers … .” She stopped petting Griffin and looked up at Ryker. “Dang. I was hoping it would tell me your secret to acing math tests.”

“My secret is I’m smart.”

She silently read for another minute, then said, “What is this anyway? Some kind of interactive novel?”

He looked around for his toolbox. “Seriously, Will. I didn’t write any of it. I’ve read it, but I didn’t write it.” He spotted the box next to the step stool and held his hand out to Willow. “Can you give me the Phillips screwdriver?”

She gazed down at the tools. “You named one of your screwdrivers Phillip? That’s a clear sign you’ve been working on that thing for too long.”

“Phillips is a
type
of screwdriver.” Instead of explaining what kind it was, he walked over to the toolbox himself. Really, how could a girl reach the age of sixteen and not know what a Phillips screwdriver was? Granted, her parents weren’t handy, but neither were his, and he’d been taking things apart all his life. “If I was going to name a screwdriver,” Ryker said, “I wouldn’t call it Phillips. That sounds like a butler. I would name it something manly, like Rodrigo.” He picked up two screwdrivers from his toolbox and showed her the difference. “This is a flat one and this is Rodrigo, the screwdriver of doom.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just make one kind of screw?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, so he said, “Come, Rodrigo. It’s time to make some screws do your bidding.” Then he began attaching the circuit board to the card slot.

Willow went back to reading the Web site. He knew what she would find. He had read it enough times himself. He’d discovered the Web site two years ago when he’d Googled his name, and since then it had become a secret hobby of his to check and see what the mysterious Dr. B had posted. Dr. B updated it the first Sunday of every month, usually with some sort of message for Ryker. Well, not
really
for him. For a magical Ryker Davis that this Dr. B had invented. Still, it was pretty
cool having a superhero named after him. Where else could you get personalized entertainment like that?

“Dr. B,” Willow said, testing the name in her mouth. “I wonder what the B stands for. Batty? Bonkers? Bored beyond belief?”

Ryker didn’t answer. He’d finished attaching the circuit board and was now screwing the panel in place.

“On second thought,” Willow went on, “he probably used the letter B because X and Z had already been taken by the cool supervillains.”

“Dr. B isn’t the villain,” Ryker said. “He’s the good guy. Overdrake is the bad guy.”

Griffin nudged Willow’s hand, reminding her that he was still in need of a dog massage. She stroked his fur again. “There’s a ‘contact me’ link after every single entry. What’s that about? Does he ask for money to tell you how the story ends or something?”

“I don’t know,” Ryker said. “I’ve never contacted him. You know how my parents are about that kind of stuff. They think everybody is out to commit identity theft or worse.”

Willow went back to surfing the Web site. When she drew in a sharp breath, he could guess which page she’d landed on. Her gaze ricocheted between the simulator and the specs on the Web site. “Are you actually building this guy’s machine?”

“Maybe.” Ryker hooked up the patch antenna, suddenly wishing he had gone with a cavity-back antenna instead. The specs said either would work and the patch antenna was cheaper, but maybe the cavity-back worked better.

Willow stood up to get a better look at the simulator. “Okay, I thought I was the ultimate dragon geek because I’ve written fan fiction for so many fantasy novels, but this …” She nodded at the machine. “This means you win.”

Ryker straightened, pointing the screwdriver at his chest. “Excuse me, I’m not any sort of geek, dragon or otherwise.”

“Says the guy who names his screwdrivers and is building a superhero machine.”

“I was just curious to see if I could follow the specs on the site and actually build the thing.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the real reason he’d spent the last few weeks buying and constructing parts for the machine. As farfetched as it seemed, Ryker had begun to believe—well, maybe not
believe,
but at least entertain the possibility—that the Slayer and dragon stuff was true. He was the same age as the Ryker on the Web site. His parents had lived in Virginia when his mother was pregnant with him, just like the Web site said. It didn’t add up to coincidence.

Who Dr. B was, what he wanted, and his level of sanity was another matter. Building this machine would at least rule out, or possibly confirm, the sanity issue.

With the antenna secure, Ryker stepped back and surveyed his creation. It was done. A simulator following the instructions that Dr. B had put on the Web site. “Are you ready to see what this thing does?” he asked. He hadn’t expected to feel nervous about it and yet found that he was fidgeting with the screwdriver.

“Turn on the switch,” Willow said.

Ryker did. Nothing noticeable happened. He couldn’t even be sure it was actually running.

Willow pursed her lips. “I was expecting a little more magic.”

Ryker turned it off, turned it on again, then picked up the printout of the specs and reread them. When he finally looked up at Willow, she was typing something into her Kindle. “There,” she said.

“There what?” he asked.

“I just e-mailed Dr. B and told him that if he was going to save the country from the clutches of the dragon lord, he needed a better superhero machine.”

Ryker nearly dropped the specs.
“You e-mailed him?”

“Yeah. I told him I was the real Ryker Davis’s cousin, and if he wanted you for a Slayer, you needed equipment that was more along the lines of the Batmobile.”

She smiled at him, but he didn’t return it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “I’m sure the guy has a sense of humor.” She motioned to her Kindle’s screen. “I mean, look at the stuff he writes.”

“Exactly,” Ryker said. “He could be anybody. He could be some psycho.”
He could be Overdrake, and the whole Web site is a trap to find me.

It wasn’t the most comforting thought. Even his subconscious was beginning to believe the Slayer stuff.

Willow tipped her head to the side. “It’s not like I told him where I lived, or what my Social Security number is. I didn’t even tell him my name.”

“Yeah, you told him
my
name.”

His words came out too sharply and she fluttered her eyelashes at him, hurt. “Well, he kind of already knew
your
name.”

Ryker didn’t say anything. He didn’t know how to explain.

She shrugged and her voice was soothing, the same tone she used to calm Griffin down. “It’s not like anyone is going to grab you off the street and shove you into a van. You’re what? Seven feet tall? They don’t make vans with that much headroom.”

“I’m six-four,” he said.

“Close enough. Besides, we’ll probably never even hear back from Dr. Alphabet Letters.” She looked down at her Kindle screen, her eyes suddenly wide. “Hey, look. He already emailed back.”

“What?” Ryker asked. In two strides he had grabbed Willow’s Kindle from her hands. Sure enough, there was a new e-mail with the subject line: Re: the simulator.

That had been fast.

He opened the e-mail and saw two sentences.
Please tell Ryker it’s imperative that he call me. We need to talk.
A phone number was listed next.

When Ryker built the simulator he had wondered if he would feel anything. Now, he did. He felt like everything was about to change.

Thank you for reading
this FEIWEL AND FRIENDS book.

the friends who made

SLAYERS

possible
are:

JEAN FEIWEL,
publisher

LIZ SZABLA,
editor-in-chief

RICH DEAS,
creative director

ELIZABETH FITHIAN,
marketing director

HOLLY WEST,
assistant to the publisher