Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters)

by Rebecca K. Lilley

  Caleb was a Mimic. The only one of his kind that I had ever met. He was the perfect killer. And, many times for us, the perfect backup. If shit was going down, we called Caleb, and he showed up to join the violence. He claimed that no one could find a good, solid battle like Lynn and I. He may have had a point, but it wasn’t something we were pleased about.

  We always knew what we were getting when we called Caleb. He was a calm, emotionless, uncontrollable killer. We only called him when things got real bad. Which, sadly, meant we had called him enough that he was a fairly solid part of our lives now. We’d gotten so chummy with the sociopath over the years that he just popped in for coffee sometimes. Rather often lately, actually. It was a little scary… If you started spending enough time around the real, stone-cold killers, you could get too comfortable and let your guard down. That would never do with someone like Caleb.

  “I love the T-shirts, by the way,” Lynn chortled.

  “Bite me, Captain Hook,” I told her.

  Christian was studying me, a strange look suddenly coming over his face.

  “What?” I asked, eyes narrowed.

  “Your hair’s not purple anymore. What’s the deal?”

  “She doesn’t want to talk about it,” Lynn said, laughter still in her voice.

  “That’s right.”

  Christian shrugged. “Whatever. It works better with the T-shirt this way anyways. You don’t look so much like an easter egg now.”

  I started to respond when I felt a burst of energy behind me. I turned, backing into the tent wall. Four men burst into the room.

  They walked in with an air of authority that meant they were either cops, or druids. I was willing to bet druid by the crisp dark gray suits, and the burst of energy that hovered around them like a mist. I didn’t recognize any of them, which was a definite plus.

  They barely glanced my way as they studied the dozens of people lounging around the room. The apparent leader of the four stepped forward. He had brown hair and eyes, a hard face, and the tall, brutish build that many of the druids shared. He was also the biggest in the group of men, though not a one of them could be considered small.

  “We’re looking for the ones that call themselves Solace and Dustin.”

  Lynn merely raised a brow at him, not bothering to even sit up. “And who are you?”

  “We’ll be asking all the questions here,” another, auburn haired Druid told her sternly. The second-in-command of the task force, I assumed. Druids were big on rank. Even with just four of them, they would have a clear chain of command.

  “Why’s that?” she asked.

  “That sounded like another question,” Christian piped in, helpful as always.

  “Solace, and Dustin. Tell us where they are.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Are you saying you don’t know them?” This question came from another druid of the group. Number three was the shortest of the group, but built like a truck.

  “Huh?” she asked, mocking them obviously enough that even they noticed.

  “Lady, you really don’t want to mess with us. If you know something, you’d best tell us now,” number one growled.

  She shrugged. I could tell she was already bored with the intruders. “I might know a few by that name. Your turn.”

  “We’ve heard some charges against them from some of our informers. We’re here to investigate.”

  “What kind of charges?” Her tone was disinterested.

  “We aren’t discussing that, especially not in this crowd.”

  “Everyone out,” Lynn suddenly addressed the crowd. “I need to speak to these gentlemen. You may all come back in thirty minutes.”

  The druids started to block everyone from milling out. “If you want to talk, let them leave us.”

  The druids let them pass, all four of them giving Lynn hard stares. Within seconds, all that remained in the room with the druids were myself, Christian, Caleb, and Lynn. I wasn’t well acquainted with Solace or Dustin, but I’d recognized them well enough to note them walking out.

  “Both of the ones we mentioned are charged with vampirism outside of our registry. Obviously there were no vampires here, but do you know the whereabouts of Solace and Dustin?”

  ““Yes,” Lynn replied. “They just walked out.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Coming Storm

  The druids braced as if to go after them. Lynn held her hands up to halt them. “As you saw, no one in that crowd was a vampire. Charges disproved. Be on your way, boys.” Lynn, like myself, had always had a hard time with authority figures. Perhaps that was why she was naturally antagonistic when we happened to run into some.

  “It doesn’t work that way, lady. We need to interview the suspects. And for that matter, everyone in this room doesn’t exactly strike me as human. We’ll need to interview all of you as well.” All but the leader of the group had gotten very quiet, and they had spaced themselves apart, as though preparing for a fight. Greeaat.

  Lynn shrugged. “Interview away.”

  “Are any of you going to try to say that you’re human?”

  I raised my hand. So did Lynn. Both of the guys didn’t bother. They were listed on the druid roster. Nice and legal. No reason for them to hide. Unless they were in some kind of trouble. They weren’t, that I knew of, but both had the potential for trouble at any given time, so I couldn’t be positive about that. If they hadn’t been hell-raisers themselves, they never would have found themselves friendly with Lynn and I. We were, by nature, perpetual fugitives. Birds of a feather…

  The druid in charge nodded his head towards me. I gave him my widest, blankest stare. “You’re human?” he asked dubiously. “What are you doing hanging out with these guys?”

  I shrugged. Lynn spoke before I could. “Look at her T-shirt. She’s obviously this slayer’s girlfriend.”

  He looked between mine and Christian’s matching shirts, smirking. He nodded at Christian. “You saying you’re a dragonslayer?”

  Christian smiled, his friendly, innocent smile. “Yeah. I’m on your roster.”

  “We will, of course, be checking you out. Right after we speak to our original targets.” They said the same to Caleb. Lynn claimed to be his girlfriend. They looked skeptical, but didn’t press it. None of them were powerful enough to tell if we were human. Few were, for that matter, if we weren’t actively using some kind of magic. Our kind was the first race, and the hardest to identify.

  Lynn sent for Solace and Dustin. There was no way to make the druids leave until they had their interviews.

  The boy and girl walked in, looking guilty as all hell. I made a note to myself to play poker with them sometime.

  “Are either of you human?” the druid leader asked without preliminary.

  They both looked guiltily at Lynn. She gave them an exasperated look. “Just tell the man the truth.”

  “No, we’re not human,” Dustin said.

  “We’re vampires,” Solace said.

  The druids just looked at them like they were crazy. So did I, for that matter. The stupid kids looked like they actually believed it.

  “Bullshit,” the druid said.

  “I-it’s true. Mistress Noir shared blood with us. We both feel different. Stronger,” Solace said in a rush. Shit. That wasn’t good. The druids looked at Lynn, who had claimed to be human. Drinking human blood didn’t give you special powers. Only Other blood had those kind of perks. Lynn was effectively outed.

  Lynn just stared right back, still looking bored. She was going to try to brazen it out. I recognized the glint in her eye. “They answered your questions. You see that they’re perfectly human. Can they go now?”

  “Not quite. Since you’ve shared your blood with them, we’re taking them in. We have specific procedures for such things. You’ll be joining us too, of course.” Well, that decided it. Lynn shot me a quick but unnecessary look. I already saw clearly what needed to be done.

  I hit the druid closest to me with
a hard tackle. It was the auburn haired, second-in-command. He came up swinging. It was a dog-fight after that. Even the lower ranking druids were tough bastards in a brawl, and this guy wasn’t half-bad. He backhanded me hard, and I was stunned for a minute. A bitch slap. I had a second to hope that no one had seen. I’d never hear the end of that. The worst part was that I really felt it. With my body’s healing ground to a halt, I was literally crippled. Everything became harder. And more painful.

  My heel connected with his chin solidly enough that I heard something important pop. Probably his jaw. Crap, that had been an accident. I was compensating for my injuries by using more brute force. He was up and rushing at me quickly, ignoring his jacked-up jaw. I ignored it too, focusing on landing a solid blow to the back of his head. My goal was to knock him out quickly, but I seemed to just be pissing him off. I finally settled for choking him out, his hands beating at me the whole time.

  He suddenly went limp, and I worried for a second that I’d killed him. A quick check showed him still breathing, and I let out a sigh of relief.

  My guy made three of the four druids down for the count. Christian was still toying with his. It was the leader, obviously the toughest of the bunch, but that wasn’t why Christian was still fighting him. It was completely deliberate on his part. His was simply prolonging his own fun.

  “Christian, finish it,” Caleb barked at him sharply. Christian complied, knocking the druid out cold with one powerful, perfect kick to the back of the head. He stuck his tongue out at Caleb. Oh yeah, we were a bunch of badasses. Badasses with the maturity of fourteen-year-olds.

  We lined the four unconscious druids up next to each other. “Can you do a sweep outside, Christian? Make sure no one heard anything,” I asked. He went without a word. Lynn and I shared a look. I got to work on my part.

  It was harder than it would have normally been for me to heal each druid, but I worked quickly. Christian would only be outside for a few minutes.

  Lynn started working on each druid immediately after I finished. I stood when my part was done. Caleb was watching us strangely. I gave him a questioning look. Finally he asked, “I can tell that you healed them. Lynn is what, wiping their memories? How long will that last?”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Impossible to say, exactly. One day, maybe. Three tops. She can’t work them over too hard or they won’t recover.” Christian returned, and I shut my mouth. He didn’t even look at the downed men.

  “All clear. We ready to roll?” he asked. He had a hyper, after battle look on his face. Fighting made him perky. Go figure.

  “You’ve got issues,” I told him. I was mostly messing with him. I loved a good fight as much as he did. I just wasn’t all chipper about it.

  He smiled happily, not in the least insulted. “I found one of Lynn’s flunkies. They’re getting the goth-tard bus ready to go.”

  Lynn nodded. “Good. Let’s get out of here. We’ll leave these guys with the tent. My people should have the rest packed up in a matter of minutes.”

  “Think these guys’ll be out long enough for me to grab an elephant ear on the way out?” Christian asked. Caleb gave him a borderline disgusted look. Lynn and I laughed.

  As we made our way quickly to the parking lot, I pulled Lynn aside. I held my arm up. It was literally steaming. I was burning up again. She studied me closely, saying, “You ride with Caleb in Christian’s car. You’ll have to take one of my kiddies with you. We have a full house.”

  “What about Caleb’s car?” I asked her.

  “God only knows. He says he doesn’t have a car here. I have no idea how he got here.”

  “The bus?” I joked.

  “I have a feeling he didn’t take the bus, either.” We shared a long look. We had our reservations about Caleb. He was an ally, had even become a friend, but he was a concern. There was so much we still didn’t know about him, about his abilities and his loyalties. I could well understand his need to keep his own secrets; we did the same rather zealously, but it was still a concern. He had arrived with the first wave of the coming storm…

  I ended up sprawled out in the cramped back of Christian’s porsche, with Caleb at the wheel. Luke, the submissive, was riding shotgun. Apparently he’d volunteered to ride with us. I wondered if he’d done it just to get a punishment from his girlfriend, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. He kept his face in profile to me. He was shooting me worried glances from under his downcast lashes. Such demure looks from such a large man were disconcerting to me. I thought I had adapted well to this century, but perhaps I was a little sexist, after all.

  I gasped as a wave of raw, painful heat swept through me. Not good. I started gasping and shuddering involuntarily. “What’s going on, Jillian?” Caleb’s voice drifted at me as if from a distance. I held on hard to consciousness.

  “I don’t know, but I think I might be about to ruin Christian’s backseat,” I gasped out.

  “What can I do?” Caleb asked, always practical.

  I could literally smell smoke coming off of my clothes. I tried to answer him. The world went black.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dangerous Backup

  I came to lying on a hard slab of concrete. I didn’t recognize my surroundings, but I knew immediately that I was in a cel. There were no windows, and the lighting was dim, but I could see well enough to know the man looming in the doorway. It was the only way in or out of the small room.

  A worried Luke rushed past the still form of Caleb, apparently oblivious of the danger. He knelt by my head, a damp cloth in his hand. He pressed the cloth to my head, a concerned look on his face. Great. My own hunky nursemaid.

  “Where are we?” I asked Caleb.

  “Someplace safe.” He shot Luke a cold look. I saw that there was a fresh bruise on Luke’s cheek. It hadn’t been there before I’d blacked out. If I’d had to guess, I’d say he’d been bitch-slapped. “Luke assures me he’ll reveal it’s location to no one. I’ve assured him that he had better not, or I’ll teach him the true nature of pain. Those little games he plays have done nothing to prepare him for the kinds of tortures I can devise.”

  Luke looked suitably scared. He was nodding jerkily. “I swear.”

  Caleb’s cold stare turned back to me. His face was it’s usual expressionless mask, but I could feel something warmer under the surface. Anger, maybe. “It’s time for you to give me some answers, Jillian.”

  I sat up, fury almost blinding me as I felt the shackles on my wrists and ankles as I moved. The bastard had taken full advantage at my first sign of weakness. I gave Luke a murderous look when he moved to help me. He backed off, head bowed.

  I schooled my features into passivity, meeting Caleb’s cold gaze with my own. My fury would not help me here. I wanted to rip his head off, but I still needed his backup more, and I couldn’t fathom the extent of his betrayal just yet. “So I’m your prisoner? Care to explain what you’re doing, Caleb?”

  “What the fuck happened to you in that car?”

  I gave him a disgruntled look. “I told you I don’t know what that was about in the car. I’ve been having…episodes. I can’t explain them.”

  He set his hands on his hips. No, that was wrong. He had them resting on the hilts of two guns riding his hips. “You’re going to give me answers, Jillian. I’ve been kept in the dark for far too long where you and your sister are concerned. I have a real problem with you knowing more about me than I do about you.”

  I curled my lip at him. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m determined,” he said ominously. Well, that sure sounded like a yes.

  I didn’t have to feel down my body to know he’d removed my weapons. You know it’s a bad week when even your backup turns on you.

  “What are you?” he asked. Well, that was direct.

  “Do you have another room that Luke could wait in?” I asked pointedly.

  Caleb shifted, waving Luke out. Luke went, casting me sad, worried glances. I nodded at the door. He
closed it softly behind him.

  “What are you? Both of you? I know that you have different powers, and I don’t understand it. Some shit is about to go down in this town, and I sure as hell don’t plan to stay in the dark about the people I’m fighting with.”

  It was almost a relief that this was all he wanted to know. I’d had the horrible thought that he was in league with my relatives. If they were in town, he could have been holding me for them. I was still pissed, but slightly less worried. I remained cautious, though. Caleb was not someone to take lightly. I debated for awhile what to tell him. He could threaten me all he wanted, but the truth was, he couldn’t torture me into telling him anything I wasn’t willing to. But we’d known him for long enough, and he’d seen us do enough strange things, that I was considering just telling him the truth. Besides, if he was going to turn on us, it wasn’t as though he didn’t already have enough ammo to help take us down.

  “We are what you must have suspected we are, Cal. We’re descendants of the ancient ones. Dragon-kin. All the evidence points in one direction for a reason.”

  He looked shocked for a moment. It was as off-guard as I’d ever seen him. “But how? You two have lived among humans for so many years. It doesn’t make any sense. And what about Christian-”

  I shrugged. “He doesn’t know. We got to him early on. We figured our best bet was to keep him close to us. We mean him no harm, and we don’t have him enthralled. Hell, neither of us ever learned how. And he’s a friend now, so we wouldn’t, even if we could. He sees a lot of the same clues you have. I guess that sometimes, if something seems so impossible, your mind just doesn’t believe it. Obviously, it’s for the best if he never finds out.”