Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) Read online

  RITA STRADLING

  Henchgirl

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents and places are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Rita Stradling.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit this book in any form or by any means. For subsidiary rights please contact the author.

  Email: [email protected]

  Cover by Rita Stradling. Photo on covers: Image ID: 54649460 Copyright Alex Malikov. Image ID: 42977932 Copyright Algol. Both used under Royalty-Free License.

  This novel is for my mother, because she always selflessly gave me her ear to cry into and her shoulders to stand upon.

  This novel is also for my father for bringing to life the works of JRR Tolkien, Douglas Adams and Jane Austen for me; it made an impression.

  Table of Contents

  An excerpt from: The History of the Dracons

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A Note From the Author

  Henchgirl

  An excerpt from The History of the Dracons, a Human Perspective Version II, by E. Frasier (banned from the public school system).

  “The children of dragons, known as the dracons, came from the unnatural joining of two beings that should have, by their very nature, been forever separated.

  Dragons and humans were never meant to meet. They were natural opposites and balancing counterparts. Where humans were creatures considered devoid of magic, dragons were magic. Where dragons were immortal and infertile, mortal humans prolonged their genetic existence through their fertility. Where humankinds’ numbers ever multiplied, the dragons’ numbers only dwindled through the ages of their existence, until the time that dragons discovered that human women were not solely fertile to their own species.

  Natural barriers should have kept the species from crossing. Dragons, creatures of fire, could not cross into the bitter cold of the world’s surface and humans, creatures of water, could not dig deep enough to find, nor survive, the heat of the dragons’ world.

  Simply put, if humankind had not polluted their world it would have remained too cold for dragonkind. However, humans had an industrial revolution and then turned to and survived on industry with no thought to its multiplying waste. They changed the chemical makeup of their world heating the air and creating weakness in the very crust that kept the dragons in an impenetrable penitentiary wall. As the world’s outer layer thinned, volcanoes broke through from the deep, creating pathways of fire.

  The first immortal who successfully crossed through a fire-portal found that he could only endure a day outside the world’s crust before he weakened. However, the dragon also discovered that it only took an hour to morph his body to that of a human male, only a scratch of his claws or a nip of his teeth to infect humans with his own brand of magic and little effort to find a human female willing to carry his young.

  Nine months later, the first dracon was born, extracted from his dead mother’s womb.

  Nearly one-hundred years after the industrial revolution began, the human queen and king of Anglo were deposed and Anglo was declared a draconic monarchy. Three hundred years later, draconic monarchies controlled eighty-five percent of the world’s governments.”

  Chapter One

  The vampire looked me up and down. A cloud of cigarette smoke blew out of her mouth and curled around her like a sickly opaque aura. "Sweetheart, you are begging to die," she said.

  I had known she was going to give me trouble as the vampire had been shooting me disapproving glances since I came to stand behind her in line for the Midnight Club.

  The Midnight Club sat somewhat apart from its neighbors, looking as harmless as any shady nightclub in a run-down area could. The building had only one adornment, a small sign that read ‘Midnight’ in thickly printed white letters.

  Its sleazy neighbors, a long line of buildings promising instant cash for your cherished possessions, blood or unnecessary body parts, had all closed up for the night. Metal bars gritted through every visible window on the street and the windows themselves rattled their disapproval of the techno music pumping through the air. Even if all their windows shattered, I doubted whether the meanest pawn shop owners would dream of complaining. The Midnight Club was the kind of place that people just vanished into.

  I knew that.

  The citizens of Mabi knew that.

  Yet the line outside the Midnight Club was threatening to circle the block. That line, I now stood in and had been standing in for the last fifteen minutes, fifteen minutes I did not have.

  Most people could not tell the difference between a human, vampire, werewolf, witch, or dracon until they revealed themselves with something pretty obvious. I had identified what type of infection every creature in this line had within the first three minutes of standing in it. It was easy to identify them if you knew which signs to look for. For instance, werewolves revealed themselves in their posture, vampires in their complexion and skin quality, and almost every creature revealed themselves in the look in their eyes, if you were brave enough to meet their gaze. Not only did I know that the lady standing in front of me in the line was a vampire, I could tell that she had only been undead for a couple of years.

  When the vampire noticed that I was looking at her, she shook her head. "What are you... twelve? Little girl, go home." The line finally moved forward and when she caught up to the others, she glanced back, raising her eyebrows.

  The costume I wore was about as far from my standard fare of school uniform and high tops as you could get. There were more boots than skirt covering my legs. The overdone black bustier halter top contrasted with my makeup-free face and managed to accentuate my childish features showing I was trying to look older.

  I walked straight up to her, stepping in close enough that she would know I wasn’t afraid of her. "I’m twenty two,” I lied in a quiet voice; the lie was obvious, I could not pass for a day older than my real age, sixteen even if I dyed my hair gray and painted on wrinkles. “Why don’t you mind your own business?" I stared directly into her eyes, refusing to look away first.

  She smiled too widely at me, exposing her long sharp canines. "Usually I feel sorry for lamb-chops like you, but you seem desperate for the dinner table. Don't let me get in your way.” She spun away.

  The line picked up pace, and the vampire only had the chance to shoot me a couple scathing glances before she was in and it was my turn to hand my ID to the bouncer. I reached into my purse for my High School student ID which I had taped a hundred dollar bill under and handed it to the vamp. He glanced at me, my ID, then handed it back, less the money.

  Even though it wasn't my money, it hurt.

  I stepped in front of the werewolves and vampires unloading personal arsenals into plastic bins and went directly t
o the short line leading to the security detectors. I unloaded nothing.

  I touched the blue charm bracelet around my wrist, I had already known it was there, but feeling the small smooth blue charm calmed me. I held my breath and stepped through the detector.

  The bored looking troll at the monitor said, "Human, no weapons."

  With unhurried steps I made my way further into the club. The deeper I went the louder the techno grew. The music sunk into me, my blood, my breaths, all in line with the beat. The neon lights that flashed over the club made me feel like I was inside an arcade machine.

  I pushed through the bodies feeling the range from room-temperature vamps, to fever hot were-animals and the witches and humans somewhere in between. I moved all the way to the front where a vampire DJ moved one lightning quick hand on his turntable while dancing on the stage.

  I glanced at my watch, twenty-three minutes, three behind schedule.

  I scanned the crowd and caught up my three minute delay automatically as I spotted the club's manager, Mr. Rustom Barns. Honestly, he was hard to miss, a three hundred pound giant ascending the stage. He was also a man-eating were-tiger or so I was told.

  I ran off a quick text to my uncle Bobby: ‘all is well’ and then started dancing.

  The dancing was short lived though as the music cut off abruptly and the vampire DJ threw one of his discs straight into the audience. "You're going to kick me off stage! I invented techno!" he shouted into the microphone before diving at the crowd. In half a second, security took him down. The vamp yelled the entire way as they escorted him out.

  Freaking vampires.

  Not looking the least bit bothered by the vampire’s very public tantrum the were-tiger grabbed the microphone and purred in his low raspy voice, "We have a special guest band for you tonight. Let me introduce you to: The Prowlers." The were-tiger lifted the entire DJ stand off the stage; discs fell and shattered all around him.

  Two werewolves and two dracons took the stage.

  I blinked up at the stage, confused. Then, I immediately checked my arm for my charm bracelet which was still there.

  When wearing my charm bracelet, my powers were supposed to be gone; I should have experienced people as a human would and my senses should have been just like a human’s were. I should not have been able to see the power that came off these dracons; however, I still saw a distinct aura of power around each of them.

  After the tiger returned once to bring on a drum-set, the werewolves started howling, and then the full group started playing a Celti-punk song.

  What in all the human hells?

  I grabbed out my phone to shoot off a text to Bobby: there’s a werewolf and dracon punk band?

  It's a school night, I received back, translation: get out of there.

  No. Way.

  I sent: I did my homework

  He did not send anything for a long minute, then: Twenty minutes.

  Me: Thirty five.

  Him: Thirty or I’m coming in there to get you.

  I swallowed and then slipped my phone back in my pocket. For a moment my heart dropped to sizzle in my stomach acid when I thought I had lost track of the were-tiger, until I found him to the side of the stage leaning and surveying the crowd.

  Focusing on the music while keeping him in my peripheral vision I started dancing again. The upbeat music was all too easy to move to and when the guitarist switched out his guitar for a fiddle, I almost broke character laughing. What did this band think this place was: a concert hall? This was a sleazy dance club for the infected.

  I had never seen the dracons that were on stage before, not that I met every dracon that came to the island; the Mabiian Island chain was one of the biggest tourist destinations for dracons in the world. There was nothing extremely ostentatious about their clothing and I would have labeled them as just average-wealthy if I had not noticed their shoes. Both wore drake serpent leather shoes, shoes that probably were worth more than the average “rich” dracon’s entire hoard. Drake serpent leather wasn’t too obvious from snake leather, but my grandfather had a money clip made from drake serpent leather which he kept locked away and showed me once; that particular sheen only came from leather imported from the dragon kingdoms.

  Most dracons were rich, but these two were obviously ‘rent out the resort’ rather than the ‘hotel suite’ type of tourists.

  The singer was shaggier, less polished than the fiddle player, but when I took a closer look, he was unkempt in a manner that appeared like stylists designed his ‘look’ to be that way.

  The dracon burning through his fiddle strings was startlingly different in appearance than his companion. The only colors in his features were his dark brown eyes and lips the faintest shade of pink. His skin, long pulled-back hair, eyebrows, everything else was a pale ivory. His face was chiseled and not the least bit delicate, the lines were broad and sharp. His looks were startling, striking, and at the same time cold and almost terrifying.

  There was something seriously familiar about him as though I had seen him before; yet I knew that if I had seen that dracon before, I would have remembered it. I saw an immense amount of power around him, much more than around the scruffy singer, much more than I should have seen even if I wasn’t wearing my charm bracelet. The power around him crackled like my grandfather’s soul did when he was exercising a lot of his power.

  Although seeing power around a dracon despite having my charm on was unusual, it wasn’t completely unheard of for me; there was one dracon I had already been able to see power around when wearing my charm bracelet, my grandfather; he was a half-dragon and a seriously powerful one.

  Something about this guy on the stage, his power, the whole situation felt wrong, all wrong.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," I almost jumped as a giant hand landed on my shoulder.

  I spun to look up into the yellow cat eyes of the excited were-tiger. "Can I see your ID?" He asked, his voice a purr.

  I did not need to fake my terror, I was already freaked out and the were-tiger’s expression said one thing: dinner.

  "Um," I said, "I misplaced my ID somewhere, sorry."

  “You’re underage,” he said, a statement.

  I bit my lip and looked up at him pleadingly. “I can explain.”

  "We do not accept underage patrons. You need to come with me to see the owner; he'll be the one to decide whether or not to call the police." The grip he had on my shoulder made sure I was going to see the owner.

  "Hey, hey you!" the main singer’s accented voice called into the microphone. The entire crowd quieted and several people looked back at me. I glanced around, then up, to realize that the main singer of the band had been speaking to the were-tiger and me.

  "Hey, don't take her out; she's the prettiest human in here," he said with a little accented-lilt to his words. He wasn't looking at me whatsoever, just at the tiger.

  He was trying to save me. How he had heard my conversation with the were-tiger over the crowd, I have no idea.

  "None of us up here are of age,” he continued. “We'll take her on the stage; we’ll make sure she won't drink anything." He reached down, smiling jovially.

  The distraction caused the fiddle player, who was crouched down, trading his fiddle for a guitar, to glance up and look straight at me. I almost reeled back, the power that dracon emitted, it was like a punch to my senses, even dampened as mine were. I really should not be able to sense him like this with my charm bracelet on.

  He was huge, not a giant like the tiger, but nearly. He met my gaze, his brow furrowed and his eyes widened, just a little, so little I could have imagined it, and for a second it looked like he had recognized me or something about me.

  "This is over," he said in a low voice as if that was the final word. "Take that human out and wait for her parents to come pick her up.” He gave me an irritated-looking glare, as if I had interrupted their performance on purpose, and then broke his gaze from mine. To his friend, he said, “Let's get back to playing."
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br />   The were-tiger’s hand clenched on my shoulder and to my surprise, he growled, "Yes sir, of course." Rustom Barns headed to the front of the club rather than the back, dragging me along with him.

  I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. This was not going to happen. "But I don't want to go home!" I shouted at Mr. Barns when we were far enough from the stage as the musicians started up again.

  He growled from where he stood beside me, but said no response.

  I glanced at my watch, I still had fifteen minutes.

  When we were almost at the main entrance, I took in a deep breath and did something really stupid. I stomped on the were-tigers foot with my stiletto boot and sprinted to the back of the club, by sprint I meant: dodged between vampires, ducked under the arms of some uproarious witches and then ran full out the last distance toward the closed door that led to the back offices. When I reached the closed door, I deliberately turned away, as if lost.

  Before I moved two feet from the door, big meaty fingers wrapped around the back of my neck and squeezed. Rustom Barns’ other hand shot past me and threw open the closed door. He shoved me down the hall toward the offices.

  I glanced back, rubbing the back of my neck and immediately realized how much I screwed up. The were-tiger’s teeth elongated, his bones moved under his skin, and he became more feline than human. I broke the first and most essential rule of dealing with weres: never run from them, if you run, you're prey.

  As his fingernails elongated, I realized, I wasn’t going to make it to the club owner. My uncle Bobby could probably take the were-tiger, my uncle Glacier definitely could. Me? Nope.

  I had about three seconds before he pounced; I used them to reach down to my boot for my contingency plan.

  "Rustom, stop," the voice was soft but commanding, almost as commanding as the fiddle player’s had been.

  Rustom, who had been, literally, squatting to pounce, stood and straightened slowly, his claws and teeth retracted. But his cat-eyes stared, memorizing me, so filled with hatred I knew that I just screwed up bad, bad, bad as I could have possibly done.