Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters)

by Rebecca K. Lilley

  His neck was the worst. I gasped when they revealed it. It looked like someone had literally taken an axe to it. It had several huge gashes, as though they’d wailed on it like a tree trunk. The joke was on them. Dom’s neck was made of sterner stuff. Dom stood stoically while the healers worked away, mending it back to normal. It would be perfect again by morning.

  As I watched them work, I realized that I was sitting on the ground, my knees clutched to my chest pathetically. No one came near me. Tears ran silently down my cheeks, and I felt utterly defeated. Having your best friend try to chop your head off will do that, I guess.

  As the full extent of Dom’s wounds became clear, my numb mind began to work. This hadn’t been the clean ambush we’d been planning on. The necros had been fully prepared for battle. They had known Dom was coming, and made their best effort to kill him. They had clearly been warned.

  Cam’s mind was apparently on the same track. “They were expecting us,” he was telling Dom. Dom merely nodded, his face a mask.

  “Someone planned your assassination tonight. Half of their force came after you.” Cam’s voice was grim.

  Dom smiled slowly. It was chilling. “That was no assassination. Let them come for me. All the better.”

  As the team of healers continued to work, a tiger plowed through them, knocking several of the white-clad druids over in it’s haste.

  The tiger shifted in a heartbeat into the naked form of Siobhan. Apparently she had recovered quickly enough for the battle. She hugged Dom tightly, unmindful of both his injuries, and the now scattered healers. “Thank the gods you’re alrig-,” she stopped as Dom pushed her away.

  “Let the healers do their work, Siobhan,” Dom growled at her, not even bothering to look in her direction. “The battlefield is no place for that kind of behavior. For god’s sake, show a little restraint.”

  She was visibly distraught at his put-down. I didn’t even self-examine myself for sympathy. I knew I had none where she was concerned.

  “What will you do with him?” I asked Dom. I was dismayed at my still tear-filled voice.

  He turned his cold gaze to me. “Any regrets yet about the company you’ve preferred for all these years?”

  I shook my head at him as more tears slipped down my cheeks. He just watched me for a moment, stone-faced. Finally, he relented. “The geas will be hard for his body to accept. It’s nature goes against his most powerful instincts. We’ll keep him safely in custody until he acclimates.”

  “Thank you,” I told him softly, closing my eyes.

  “Don’t thank me for sparing him. It just makes me want to change my mind,” he growled.

  “Well, well, well,” a hated voice purred at me. I’d known it was only a matter of time. The bitch had never been able to shut her mouth for long. “How the high and mighty have fallen. Was that fight too much for our poor little Jillian?” Siobhan asked, a snicker in her voice.

  “Someone please put a muzzle on that bitch,” was my diplomatic reply. I didn’t even bother opening my tired eyes. There was a lot I couldn’t predict about Dom anymore, but I knew he wouldn’t let her near me.

  “Nice hair.” I could hear the smirk in her voice. Goddammit, I thought. My hair seemed particularly partial to lavender lately. It would have been my last choice, so of course that’s what I got stuck with. Typical.

  I opened my eyes, curling my lip at her. “Just shut it before I find out if you’re flame-retardant.”

  “I wouldn’t say that too loud around here if I were you, Jillian. You’re not exactly surrounded by friends. Oh yeah, and didn’t your best friend just try to take your head? Imagine what the rest of us would like to do.”

  I raised rage-filled eyes to her. It was a simple thing to turn the rage I felt for circumstances beyond my control onto someone I already despised. “Keep talking, Bitch. I’m quickly forgetting why it’s a bad idea for me to take your head.” My voice was filled with menace.

  “Please try it.” Her voice had gone beast. “I’ll hang your head on my wall like a fucking trophy!”

  I was taken aback for a moment by her reference to the druids long buried habit of head-hunting. Usually it was a topic they refused to talk about, along with several of the less than peaceful aspects of their history. Apparently Siobhan wouldn’t mind bringing at least one of those practices back.

  “That’s enough, Siobhan. Go help with cleanup,” Dom ordered.

  “Jillian, could you come with me real quick?” Caleb’s voice called out from the dark. He stepped closer, and I wondered how long he’d been waiting, unseen, to speak. I supposed it couldn’t have been long since he was slightly out of breath.

  “Where’s Lynn?” I asked, immediately noticing that he was alone.

  “Um, she’s ok,” he answered, but something in his voice bothered me. He seemed way too ruffled, a characteristic that was usually anathema to Caleb. “Just a little tied up at the moment. Everything ok with you?”

  I nodded, wiping at my wet cheeks. Caleb was the last person I wanted to see me crying. “Christian tried to chop my head off a few minutes ago, but I’m dealing with it.”

  He wasn’t amused. His eyes swung to Dom, narrowing. “You kill him, Druid?” he asked softly.

  Dom just bared his teeth, not bothering to answer.

  “How’d he find out?” Caleb’s gaze swung back to me.

  “It was my fault. I started to shift in the fight. I couldn’t control it. I didn’t complete the shift, but it was enough.”

  His eyes widened. “I have to say, I’d have paid to see that. Next time we have one of these things, I might have to roll with you.”

  I curled my lip at him.

  “So, um, could you come with me? I could use your help with something.”

  I stood, brushing off my tattered clothes as though they were still intact enough to even bother with. I nodded at him to lead the way as I started walking.

  “Wait,” Dom ordered from behind me. I looked back. “When you’ve finished there, I need to ask you some questions. Sloan here will go with you to help you find your way back.”

  At his words, a tall woman stepped out of the shadows. Apparently I was off my game tonight, with both her and Caleb approaching me, undetected. I knew Sloan well, she was one of the few druids I’d been friendly with back in the day. Our relationship had never been close, but we’d understood each other. She was a tall, lithely muscular woman, a fighter through and through, and I’d always felt a sort of kinship with her. She was no-nonsense, but always fair, and I’d long respected that.

  Her long, straight, pitch-black hair was braided back tonight, so the expression on her even, eurasian features was hard to miss. She looked at me with loathing now, and I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  I looked back at Dom, trying to work up some righteous anger, but my mind was just too tired. “So you agree with Cam about this? You think I helped plan that fiasco earlier? I need to be put under guard for saving your life?” I asked wearily.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I didn’t say that. I just have some questions about what happened. Don’t be long.” He dismissed me.

  I walked away, knowing Sloan was on my tail. We moved briskly through the camp to match Caleb’s pace. “How ya been?” I called back to Sloan as we moved. No reason not to be polite just because she hated me now.

  “Fuck off,” she answered. Ok, guess that was a reason. “I’m here to make sure you don’t run off, so finish with your errand, but leave me the hell alone.”

  “Fair enough,” I muttered.

  Caleb led us briskly to his car, which was parked a good distance from the settlement. I had no idea how he’d gotten it there. Christian and I had been forced to travel in a huge truck, packed in like sardines with the druids. I made out what was inside before we reached the car. “Tied up, huh, Cal? What the hell?”

  “It was for her own good,” he said, opening the passenger door. “She is being summoned, and she was having a hard time resisting.
She said you could help her.”

  Lynn had several chains wrapping her to the passenger seat. Her arms were even cuffed above her head. I gave Caleb a sardonic look. “Think you have enough chains there?”

  “Better safe than sorry,” Lynn spoke up.

  “Ok, so someone is calling you to them against your will?”

  Lynn nodded.

  I looked at Cal. “We need to get her locked down someplace safe. No enchantment I put on her will last long. We need to take her straight to a safe house after I place it. And not the retreat. It’s been compromised.”

  “Obviously,” Caleb said, insulted. I must have forgotten for a second who I was talking to. I was a little shocky, I acknowledged.

  “He’ll have to take her alone. You’re not to go anywhere until you’ve been questioned,” Sloan spoke suddenly.

  I rolled my eyes. “Ok, you’ll have to take her after I’ve enchanted her, Cal. I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

  “Fine.” Cal’s voice was curt.

  I placed the enchantment on her quickly, using a relic I wore around my neck to draw power. “Feel better?” I asked her after I finished.

  She nodded, closing her eyes. “His call is much fainter now. It still stings to resist it, though.”

  “Here, look at this.” I held the relic in front of her eyes. She looked at it, brow furrowed in confusion. She didn’t know about this spell, though it was one of my personal favorites.

  I clocked her, hard, on the back of the head. She was out cold.

  Cal gave me a questioning look. “Hurry,” I told him. “Get her locked down someplace safe, pronto.”

  “That was jacked up,” Cal muttered, but he waisted no time, getting in the car and taking off without further ado.

  I turned back to Sloan, mouth twisted bitterly. I waved her ahead. “Lead on.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Old Buddies

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked Sloan after a long period of silence. She gave me a hard look, which was answer enough. “We could go out and help with cleanup, while we wait. Sitting here seems a little pointless.” We were in the back of the Arch’s limo. We’d been doing nothing but sitting and waiting for at least an hour.

  “My orders are to wait with you in this car. No one said I had to listen to you. And I certainly don’t want to speak to you.”

  “You have to admit, it seems a little pointless for us to just be sitting around.”

  “Shut up,” was her response.

  “I have to say, I’m a little surprised you’re acting like all the other druids. You of all people should be happy I left him, Sloan. You’ve been in support of Dom as Arch from the start.”

  She turned murderous eyes to me, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it abruptly. “No, I’m not gonna get into that with you. I promised myself I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction. Just shut up.”

  “If I promise to stay out of his life as much as humanly possible, can we call a truce?”

  “Bullshit. If you wanted to stay out of his life, then what the hell are you doing here?”

  I raised my brows at her. “I didn’t get discovered on purpose. I’d still be in hiding if I hadn’t had a few too many bad luck run-ins with druids lately.”

  “Bullshit,” she said again. “Word is you waltzed into his office yesterday. You sought him out. Why?”

  “I went there under a geas, Sloan. Collin found me before that, and bound me to seek Dom out. I never would have gone to him if I’d had a choice in the matter.”

  She curled her lip at me. “Well, I guess that’s something.” She paused. “Not much, though. You know, when I first saw those pictures, I told Dom that they must be doctored. I was so sure you wouldn’t have done that to him, I would have bet my life on it. I had him half convinced, at first, that it was a ploy of Siobhan's. He was even more crushed when he found out they were legit. I bet it makes you happy that I helped to dig your knife in deeper, huh?”

  I made my face carefully blank. “No, that doesn’t make me happy. Far from it. I was trying to make the break as clean as possible.”

  I didn’t see the punch coming, but it sent me clear across the cabin of the limo. I slammed hard into the glass partition that separated the drivers side. I just lay there, stunned, trying to work up the desire to retaliate. It was very uncharacteristic for me, but I just couldn’t find it.

  “You wanted it fucking clean? That was the messiest-”

  The door nearest Sloan slammed open. Cam shoved his snarling face inside the car, growling, “What’s going on in here?” His glare was all for Sloan.

  Sloan and I looked at each other, and shrugged. “Nothing,” I said.

  “I don’t know. Why?” Sloan responded at the same time. It was somewhat reassuring that Sloan and Cam seemed to still be hostile to each other. They had always bumped heads, and neither were subtle enough to even try to hide it.

  “Don’t mess with me, Sloan. I heard fighting in here. What happened? Why does Jillian look like she just got punched in the face?”

  Sloan shrugged. “Ask Jillian. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He called her a bitch under his breath as he looked at me. “What was all the noise about?” he asked me. It was obvious it pained him to even have to speak to me.

  I shrugged. “Ask Sloan,” I told him.

  He looked at Sloan. “What, you guys are old buddies again?” Every word dripped with disgust..

  We both laughed, then stopped, glaring at each other.

  “Hardly,” Sloan told him. “We both just happen to hate you.”

  He gave her a murderous look. “Right back at you, you half-breed bitch.” He slammed the door in her face. She shrugged.

  “He’s even meaner than he used to be,” I noted.

  Sloan’s mouth turned up on one side in an unhappy smile. “So am I. But he’s been impossible since Siobhan started dating Dom again. You see, before Dom started seeing her again, she’d been slumming with Cam for awhile. He’s been on his period ever since she dumped him.”

  My eyes widened. “She dated Cam? Does Dom know?”

  She shrugged. “Kinda. He knows that they dated. Don’t think he knew they were dating so recently, or that it had gotten serious.”

  I curled my lip in distaste. “Dating two cousins? Creepy.”

  Sloan nodded. “It’s worse than that, even. She’s dated Collin, too.”

  I was more than a little surprised. “I never knew. I thought druids were way too possessive to pass around women like that. I always thought Siobhan was just waiting patiently for Dom to finally fall for her.”

  She snorted. “Hardly. She’s certainly never waited for him at home, if you know what I mean.” We fell silent.

  I remembered something I’d heard. “Good job wiping the floor with her in the arena. When I heard about that, I wanted to cheer.”

  She smiled a little at the mention of her victory over Siobhan. I just don’t think she could help her mouth turning up when she thought about the memory. “It felt good. And now I outrank her.”

  My brow furrowed. “You’re 1st lieutenant now, right?”

  She smirked. “Yes, this half-breed bitch is 2nd in command, and 1st lieutenant.”

  “So does that mean that you fought Cam for the spot? I never heard the details of that.” When an Arch took his vows, he personally appointed seven lieutenants for himself. Their rank was then voted on by the people. Whatever was voted became the chain of command for the leadership. However, the vote was not the final decision. The lieutenants could all challenge each other to combat to move up in rank. If one was challenged, and refused to fight, the challenger then moved up in rank, pushing the challenged down one spot. You could only challenge the one directly above you, however, so no one could just skip to the top. Originally, when Dom had become Arch, Cam had been the 1st, Siobhan the 2nd, Sloan the 3rd, Collin the 4th, and so on. When Sloan had beaten Siobhan, she had moved up to second, putting her in
a position to challenge Cam, if she wanted to be 1st. Since she was now 1st, I assumed that had happened, though I’d never heard anything about it. My sources weren’t quite that good. All I’d heard was that it had been a private affair.

  That wiped the smile right off of her face. “He refused to fight me, just handed me the spot like a little bitch. You can’t know how much I wanted that fight. How much I still want it.”

  I blinked at her, surprised at her, surprised at them both. “Did he say why? He’s so big on rank, I just can’t picture him doing that.”

  She flushed, looking down at her fisted hands. “He said that he didn’t want to hurt me, the bastard. I fucking hate that guy.”

  I thought that said a lot, but apparently it hadn’t said anything that Sloan wanted to hear. We were both silent for a long time, lost in thoughts.

  “I tried to talk to him before that, Sloan,” I spoke after a while, going back to the exhausted subject of Dom and I. “The pictures were a last resort.”

  “You are such a stone-cold bitch,” was her only response. I decided to stop trying for a truce, after that.

  Eventually Cam got back into the car, rudely crowding Sloan to the opposite end of the bench seat they shared. “Asshole,” she muttered loudly.

  “Man-hater,” he responded without sparing her a glance. “The Arch is on his way.”

  Dom finally slid into the car, forcing Sloan to take a seat beside me to avoid having to sit too close to Cam. Dom didn’t spare anyone a glance as the car starting moving. He pulled a large bottle of whiskey out of the trench he wore over his tattered vest, taking a long swig. He passed the bottle to Cam without saying a word. Cam followed suit, passing the bottle to Sloan.

  I’d asked them about this after battle habit years ago. I’d been told the hard liquor was the best way to get the taste of flesh off their tongues. I’d wondered out loud why, if the taste of flesh was so unpleasant to them, they couldn’t just use claws instead of teeth for fighting. The answer I’d gotten was that a berserker couldn’t hold back from using it’s teeth. And the whiskey wasn’t really that much of a problem. It was very difficult to get a druid drunk. I, of course, had refrained from mentioning that my kind had invented berserker rage.