Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters)

by Rebecca K. Lilley

  Dom stared moodily out the window, until Sloan spoke. “Was there any way to tell how many of them got away?”

  He looked at her, shrugging. “Impossible to say, for sure. Their casualties number in the thousands. It seems we accomplished our goal tonight, though we lost far too many of our own in the process, far more than we anticipated, and I want to know why. Those things were expecting us tonight. They were prepared for us, prepared to fight druids.”

  Cam sent me an accusing glare. “It has to be her. None of our own would betray us.”

  Dom sighed. “Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so.” He looked at me. “It’s easy enough to see if your story checks out. I’ll just need your cooperation for a small spell.”

  I gave him a blank face, shrugging. “Whatever will get me out of here faster.”

  His mouth hardened. “Of course. Cam, switch places with her. I’ll need to touch your forehead for a minor memory spell. That voice you spoke of. I should be able to get some clue as to it’s origins.”

  I moved onto the seat beside him, and he touched my forehead with just a finger. I closed my eyes. He began to chant, and I felt the moment when he delved into my recent memories, looking for the voice. His brow furrowed when he finally found what he was looking for.

  He ripped his hand away suddenly. “She speaks the truth, a voice led her to the necro circle. It does sound like a small child’s voice, but that must be some kind of illusion. The one that spoke to her was an unbelievably strong telepath. There’s no way to know where it was contacting her from, or how it knew what was going on. Logic tells me it must have been someone from within the compound, but with that kind of telepathic power, it could have been picking up the circle’s intent from god only knows what kind of distance.”

  “So I’m cleared then?” I asked.

  Dom shrugged. “To some extent. Sloan will be escorting you around for awhile, just to be safe.”

  I felt my temper finally start to simmer. “You gotta be kidding me-”

  “It’s not negotiable,” he said shortly.

  “That’s bull-” I felt a sharp pain pierce my abdomen, then my temples. “Shit, not again,” I muttered, as my vision started to swim. Vaguely, I felt Dom grab both of my arms as I started to collapse. He called my name sharply. I blacked out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Grove

  I came to again in the hotel section of the druid casino. A lobby of some sort, I thought groggily. I was lying on a plush, deep red couch facing a set of elevators. There were hallways on both sides of me. I immediately noticed the strange earrings I was wearing. I fingered them. They felt like large black pearls, but I knew instantly what they actually were. Dom had placed tracking devices disguised as jewelry into my ears as I slept. Typical Dom behavior. And did it even matter at this point? I was already found.

  I sat up straighter and realized that I badly needed a restroom.

  I picked a hallway, walking until I found a rather swank public restroom. The bathrooms in Vegas could be fancier than most people’s living rooms. When I came back out I was all turned around again.

  I headed back the way I thought I had come from, but something felt off. Nothing was quite the same. The wallpaper was upside down. That couldn’t be right… It was such a silly detail. It was nondescript wallpaper to begin with, some aesthetically pleasing pattern that didn’t mean anything. How would it do that, and why had I even noticed such a thing?

  I shook my head dismissively, and continued walking. The carpet began to squish wetly under my shoes. I quickened my speed. The whole place was really starting to creep me out.

  I passed a large open space that I hadn’t noticed on my way to the bathroom. It was lovely. A pine oasis amidst the usual casino decor. We must have been on the top floor of the building, because the ceiling of the indoor forest was completely glass and streamed in sunlight, which was weird, since I had thought it was still dark out… I walked into the atrium, fascinated by this druid mark on their casino.

  I hadn’t taken more than a few steps into the room before I froze where I stood. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and my hands itched to reach for weapons that weren’t there. Where the fuck were my weapons? I had woken up stripped of them, and promptly walked into a trap. The impressive but harmless forest scene I’d thought I’d seen was a figment of my imagination. Or rather, it was an illusion imagined by someone and planted into my own mind.

  Even down to the smell, it had fooled me briefly. No fresh pine scent here. The space was saturated in the sickening sweet smell of earthy decay. And blood. It was as though a switch had been flipped, and I caught the real picture. The trees were suddenly darker, the deep brown bark of the trunks almost black, almost every hint of green in the foliage gone to darker shadows.

  The pleasant brook had no hint of blue now, but a deep, crimson red. The reddish brown earth was suddenly dotted with stark white objects. The white dots near the water were bigger, and I swallowed hard as I realized that they were human bones.

  The druids had turned their backs on a violent past, where their greatest powers were earned through human sacrifice. Or so I had thought. This was a place of power earned through blood, and it was apparently still in use.

  A white object bobbed near the surface of the water. I assumed at first that it was a skull, like the many spread among the dirt throughout the grove. But a gasping sound pierced the air as it reached the surface. I didn’t realize at first what I was seeing. The creature was palest white and hairless. It’s every movement was slow and..wrong, but it moved towards me unerringly. It had no eyes or nose, not even dents or bumps where they should have been. It’s mouth was a wide, toothless black hole, much too big for that strange white head. Wrong was the best word to describe everything about it. It’s body was vaguely human, but again, it was all…wrong. It’s body was emaciated and sexless, but I could see no bones moving beneath the slimy white skin of the too thin figure. It had ten fingers and ten toes, but all the digits were too long, and they were shaped with too many joints.

  As I was studying the abomination I hadn’t moved, and it was in arm’s reach far too soon, considering how slowly it was moving. I wanted badly to back away, or better yet, turn and run, but I was literally frozen in place. It spoke, and it’s voice was gasping, like it was sucking the words in rather than letting them out. “First-born,” it said to me.

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Apparently dragons weren’t the only ones that called us the first-born. That was a revelation to me.

  “First-born, I thirst,” it said, lifting one of it’s awful hands to me. I tried to shake my head, but to no avail.

  “Speak,” it said, and I finally could.

  “I can’t move.” Was all I could think to say.

  “This place is a prison, and you our new prisoner. If you want to leave, you must pay us blood-price.” The way it said this seemed almost obscene.

  I cringed away. “What is blood-price?”

  “I drink my fill of your blood. If you can walk away after I am done, you may.”

  I really did not like the sound of that. But I was frozen in place, and no other options were presenting themselves. Still, I needed to be clear about the limitations. “You may have blood, but only what you can take in one feeding. Then you must take this enchantment from me, and allow me to leave.”

  It gave me a grotesque parody of a smile. I flinched. “The first-born has spirit, yes. But not many choices here. Who are you to make terms, when you cannot even move?”

  “Those are the terms. Obviously, you need my permission to take my blood, or you would have already done it.” I was bluffing, and mentally crossing my fingers. “So, that is how you can acquire it.”

  Now its gaping mouth turned down. “I take these terms. I have never tasted a first-born.” It’s obscene mouth opened wide, and revealed the teeth hidden there. I gasped. It had only four of them, far apart, lined up side by side, top to bott
om. The size was the terrifying part. They were closer to the size of tusks than teeth, but razor sharp.

  It gripped my arm in it’s slimy hand, and slowly moved it’s head over the inside of my wrist and elbow. In a dizzying flash, it struck.

  I screamed. The pain was agonizing, and I wasn’t exactly a stranger to pain. It began drawing hard, and still I was frozen. It drew on my arm roughly, relishing every draw, until I felt the pull of unconsciousness.

  I came to, lying near the bloody brook. I heard Dom’s voice, as if at a distance. “How dare you?” He was speaking to the creature.

  “Master, she offered blood freely. She is first-born, and she is more. If you offer me tribute, I’ll tell you a secret. It is knowledge you will value.”

  Dom’s voice was as icy as I’d ever heard it. “I’m not interested in your secrets. I will deal with you later.”

  “It is your secret, Master. Your’s and the first-born’s.”

  Without another word Dom turned, picked me up like a child, and strode out. It felt good just to breath outside of that nightmarish place. “What the hell was that thing?” I asked softly.

  Dom sent me a cold look. “You think you’re the only one with a fucked up family? There have always been skeletons in my closet, but not all of us just run away from everything that scares us.” Ouch, that one hit home on several levels that I didn’t even want to think about.

  He strode quickly back to the lobby where I had first roused. This hotel had the most confusing floor plan I’d ever encountered. I thought it might be deliberate, to keep people away from that thing.

  I shot him a wary glance, my good hand to my still pounding heart. My injured arm was cradled against my stomach carefully. “I have to say, it’s not that easy to shock me, but I must admit you’ve done it.”

  Angry eyes bore into me silently for a moment before he spoke. “It’s nothing like you’re thinking.”

  I waved the hand of my un-injured arm in the direction of the abomination I’d just witnessed. I wasn’t surprised to note that it was shaking. “How could I misunderstand a thing like that? Are you going to tell me that room wasn’t a grove full of-”

  He cut an impatient hand through the air, effectively stopping me mid-sentence. “Of course it is. But you misunderstand. We did stop all of those practices centuries ago, just as we’ve been saying, but we can never undo what’s been done in the past. You can’t get rid of a thing like that. You can only hope to contain it.”

  “I know you’ve always been avid with curiosity as to why we set up such a huge population in the desert. Well, that was your answer. We don’t get to choose where that thing resides. It chooses, and we follow. The ancients used to sacrifice humans to gain power, and we pay the price for their transgressions. We feed it power, to stop the bloodshed. As Arch, I am that abomination’s guardian.”

  “Only druid eyes have ever witnessed the grove. You wanna tell me how the hell you found that place?” As he spoke, he set me down gently on a plush dark-brown leather chair in one of the hotels many sitting areas. Where the hell were we? I still had no idea. Damned annoying druid casino…

  I shook my head. “I think it lured me in. I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, everything was wrong. It was subtle at first, so I have no idea exactly when the enchantment overtook me. It knew what I was, and it wanted to trap me. It called me first-born. I haven’t heard that term from anyone in-I don’t even want to think how long it’s been. But I’ve only ever heard other dragon-kin refer to us that way.”

  Dom knelt down beside me as I spoke, gingerly taking my injured arm. He sucked in a harsh breath at the large holes piercing my arm, two near my elbow, two on my wrist. They were already starting to heal, but they looked gruesome and they hurt like a son of a bitch.

  He began to heal me without a word, and I gasped in pleasure as soon as he began, biting my lip. To go from a persistent, deep pain, to that kind of pleasure made me suddenly weak. I tried hard not to recall all of the ways he could cause me pleasure with his magic. And his hands…. I tried not to moan a protest when he finished.

  He cleared his throat, obviously trying to stay on the subject at hand. “As I said, that thing is meant only for druid eyes. It is one of our darkest secrets. I only hope that you finding that grove doesn’t cost us both too dearly. You must never speak of it. Even thinking of it gives it more power. Let us hope it had it’s fill of your blood. We should get farther away. My rooms are warded against it.”

  He didn’t ask, just carried me to his rooms without another word. With the pain in my arms gone, I became all too aware of who was holding me, who was touching me. He cradled me like a child, and I lay my cheek on his chest, inhaling that intoxicating scent of his. I fingered the material over his chest. He had changed since the battle. He wore a soft black T-shirt. I rubbed a hand over his hard chest, kneaded at the firm flesh of his pectoral.

  “Stop it,” he said, his tone expressionless.

  I sighed. I had no clue where he and I stood, or even where I wanted us to, but it was a fact that I couldn’t keep my hands off of him.

  “Why was I lying on that couch, anyways? So close to that…thing?”

  His chest rumbled against my cheek when he spoke. “I had some urgent business to tend to. I left you right outside of the office while I went to make a quick phone call. It should have been perfectly safe. The grove is hidden to all but the most powerful of druids. And that thing moves.”

  “I’m no druid, Dom,” I told him.

  “I’m well aware,” he responded flatly. “This is a troubling development, to say the least.” As he spoke, we reached his room.

  I recognized it as the one he had taken me to the last time I’d been in the casino, but absolutely nothing leading to it was familiar. “What the hell is with this place? I remember this room, but nothing else about this floor. And where are all of your people?”

  “I dismissed them. We have half of a floor to ourselves, for the moment. I wanted some semblance of privacy. News of our reconciliation is already running rampant among my ranks.”

  “Reconciliation?” I asked softly, shocked and…something that I didn’t want to examine.

  He sent me a hard look. “The very idea is absurd, I know, but the rumor mill that I’m sure you remember is still alive and well.”

  Absurd, yes. I let that sink in as he carried me to his bed, laying me down, a strange look on his face. “And if you notice anything strange about this hotel, I’d suggest you stick close to me, and speak of it as little as possible.”

  That only whet my curiosity, of course, but I dropped it, suddenly much more interested in the fact that he had lain me on his bed.

  He stood at my side, studying me intently, an enigmatic look on his face. I didn’t last long under that regard, much to my everlasting dismay. I shifted impatiently, watching his face as closely as he watched mine. “Please, Dom,” I said softly.

  He was suddenly over me, our lips touching. “Damn you,” he said roughly, kissing me with all of his pent-up rage and anger.

  “Damn me,” I agreed, when he finally came up for air. The storm took us yet again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Pictures

  I knew it was a touchy subject, but I asked anyways. “What did you think I was for all those years? Of course you didn’t buy any of our covers. I never expected you to. It was always enough that you didn’t press me for answers.”

  I could only see his profile. His mouth tilted up slightly in a bitter smile. “Actually, I thought you were an angel. I couldn’t have been more wrong now, could I?” He didn’t look at me as he walked into the bathroom, shutting the door hard behind him. Well, shit, it had been stupid of me to ask. But it hadn’t occurred to me that the answer would hurt so much, reminding of all that we’d lost. Reminding me of how he had adored me once.

  I was perched on the side of his bed, completely undressed. I had a fleeting urge to get dressed and get out of there before he came back out,
but couldn’t seem to make myself move. I just sat staring at my feet, listening to the shower run in the background. I was trying hard to talk myself out of following him in when my eyes fell on the drawer of his heavy-wooded black nightstand. It was slightly ajar. I vaguely recalled him closing it quickly when I woke up. I sent a quick glance at the bathroom door before I peaked inside the drawer. Yes, you can add nosy to my already impressive list of character flaws.

  A large manilla envelope was the only thing inside. I hesitated briefly before plunging my hand inside. My hand trembled a little when I realized what was inside the envelope. I’d never actually seen the thick stack of photos before, but I was very familiar with their contents.

  The man in the photos couldn’t have looked less like Dom if I had gone in search of a man just for that purpose. He was pale, with long yellow-blond hair, lithely muscular rather than bulky, and almost exactly my height. There could have been no mistake that it was not Dom’s naked back facing the camera in the first photo I looked at. My hands were gripped tightly in his curly golden hair. Our coloring had complemented well, two golden forms melded together. The pictures were even prettier than I’d thought. I’d angled myself in the first dozen shots so that the photographer would capture my angled face and naked torso perfectly. My naked hip just peaked out from behind his naked butt, which was practically plastered to the window where my hand-picked photographer was taking furtive shots with a trigger-happy speed only Caleb could have managed. There was no mistaking that it was me. And there was no mistaking the man in the pictures either. Especially the ones where I angled for a perfect straight shot of his lust-dazed face at the camera. I’d known if they captured his face there’d have been no hiding for Declan. As a passionate and incriminating embrace, it was convincing. The only thing suspicious about the photos were my eyes. They were downcast in most of the shots. But the ones that revealed glimpses showed clearly that there was no passion there, just cold determination. But that was a small thing when confronted with all of that naked skin. And I knew that as far as convincing Dom, it’d been overkill. But, hell, overkill had always been my specialty.