Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters)

by Rebecca K. Lilley

  I hadn’t seen him as we pulled up, but sure enough, Cam was standing in the shadow of the building, arms crossed menacingly across his chest.

  “What the hell are you doing, bringing her here?” his gravelly voice called out. His eyes never left Sloan.

  “We need Christian,” she said quietly.

  He pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against. “Only the Arch can give the order to free him.”

  Sloan whipped out her phone. “I guess I’ll call him then.”

  “He’s in a meeting for another hour, at least. He won’t be taking any calls. He’s giving the dragon King his answer. We don’t expect them to take it well.”

  She gave him a level stare. “Well, we need Christian now. This won’t wait.”

  He just shook his head at her. “No go, Sugar.”

  It’s possible steam started coming out of her ears. Sloan was one of those people that never lost her composure. She was cool and competent to the core...except where Cam was concerned. “Do Not Call Me Sugar. What are you even doing here?”

  “Boss’s orders. Some of the dragons slipped away, so he wanted me to personally keep an eye on our local slayer. Lucky you.”

  “Just let us have him, Cam. It’s important.”

  “Important meaning dangerous, I take it. Dom wanted you to follow her, not help her get you both killed. The answer is no, and hell no.”

  “What do you care? If Dom is upset when he finds out, you can just put the slayer’s release on my shoulders. Your problem’s solved, now hand him over.”

  He just shook his head at her.

  “Dick,” she fumed at him.

  He smirked at her. “And there’s nothing you hate more than a dick,” he remarked.

  “It’s true. When a dick can walk and talk and looks like you, there’s nothing I hate more.”

  His mouth twisted bitterly. “Fucking man-hater. I swear you’ve gotten even meaner since you started playing for the other team.”

  I couldn’t help it, I sent Sloan a surprised look. This was something new.

  “It’s your imagination. I’ve always hated you this much,” she shot back, not denying the implication.

  His smile was mean. “Not always…” This discussion was getting more and more interesting.

  “Tie your balls in a knot, breeder.” She sneered at him.

  His smile turned rueful. “That’s a new one.”

  Sloan changed the subject back to the issue at hand. ”We need the slayer. I’m pulling rank on you, Cam. If Dom is unavailable, the decision falls to me. Give us the slayer.”

  He glared at her, just a cussed mean glare, for at least a full minute. I shifted impatiently on my feet.

  “You know I fucking hate it when you pull rank on me,” he said softly.

  Sloan smiled at him, a goading kind of smile, but with the most bitter of twists. I thought that she must hate pulling rank on him as much as he hated having her do it, by that look. I didn’t understand it, but I still saw it clearly in her eyes. “Please, Cam, let’s take it to the arena. There’s nothing I’d love more. If you want my rank, we need to fight.”

  Cam met that goading smile with a challenging look, his chin lifting. “Never going to happen, Sloan. Fucking never. Deal with it.”

  “You still scared of me?” she goaded.

  He smirked at little at that. The pair of them really did enjoy their nasty little confrontations. They shared a long, intense look, full of a lifetime’s worth of raw emotion and straight up animosity. “You know why I won’t do it. Hate it and fight it all you want, sugar, but we both know why I won’t fight you.”

  “Just give me the slayer, you ass.”

  Cam sighed. “He’s in no shape to help you.”

  “Dragonsblood will restore him. And guess what we have.”

  I wasn’t surprised that Cam didn’t spare me a glance. He was silent for awhile before finally saying, “I suppose it’s pointless to tell you not to do anything stupid.” He disappeared into the building without another word.

  “Why does Cam think you’re a lesbian?” I asked Sloan as we waited, referring to one of the many insults Cam had thrown at her. I had been waiting ten minutes to ask her about it.

  She rolled her eyes. “Because he’s an idiot.”

  “Is there a reason you want him to keep thinking it?”

  She shrugged. “Because it seems to piss him off, which has been my mission in life for more years than I care to count.”

  “Fair enough.”

  It was a good twenty minutes before Cam appeared again, carrying a sickly looking Christian.

  “Is he unconscious?” I asked softly.

  “I only wish. Little bastard keeps shooting off his mouth,” Cam growled.

  “I’m not little. You’re just one huge mother-” Christian began, rather weakly.

  “Shut your mouth, boy.”

  Cam handed him off to me without sparing me a glance. His weight wasn’t a problem for me, but cradling a six foot plus man in my arms was awkward, to say the least.

  Christian didn’t open his eyes as he said to me softly. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you, Jillian. I’m glad they put this thing on my wrist, even if it knocks me on my ass.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I told him gently. I was over it, honestly. “I’ve got a job for you to do, and you’re gonna like it.”

  “Oh yeah?” His voice was half-interested. He held up his wrist, jangling a bracelet of bones at me. Druids and their geases… “It is a relief to me, like a weight off. They tell me it only applies to you and Lynn. You still owe me a lot of answers, Jillian, but when I’m thinking clearly I know I don’t want to kill you. But when I found out that you were…well, I couldn’t think at all. It was like a red haze went over me, like I had no control over what my body wanted to do.”

  I listened as he spoke, staying silent. Caleb helped me put him in the backseat without a word. I moved into the backseat with Christian, and we all watched the show. Sloan and Cam couldn’t seem to help but put one on for the world whenever they got into each other’s vicinity.

  Cam was gripping her arm tightly, and she was attempting to pull away, to no avail. “Get your hands off of me, you cave man,” she was yelling at him.

  His response was to grab her other arm, leaning down until they were face to face, pushing closer until their foreheads literally bumped, and he was snarling at her in a whisper, all of his teeth showing.

  “Can anyone hear what he’s saying?” I asked. I started rolling down my window. I wanted to grab some popcorn and watch this little reprieve. It was a nice temporary escape from the bigger problems at hand. The way they interacted had always been more fascinating to me than any movie. I had concocted a drama in my head where they were secretly in love, but couldn’t be together because they were both so stubborn and dominant. I was team Sloan, of course, but a part of me had always respected Cam for his staunch loyalty to Dom. And I couldn’t help but have a soft spot for someone who looked similar enough to Dom to be his brother.

  I also couldn’t help but think how beautiful Sloan and Cam looked together, standing nose to nose, both tall, with straight black hair and blue eyes.

  “Fuck you, Cam,” Sloan was shouting, a comical contrast to Cam’s fervent whispering. She was still pulling hard against him, but he was immovable. This went on for precious minutes while we watched.

  I started, remembering that I had a phone call to make. I had a short, succinct conversation with a voice I didn’t recognize. “The desert stadium. The druid one,” it told me. That was all. I supposed it was enough. I certainly knew where that was. If it was a trap, it was a trap. I couldn’t walk away from a chance to get Lynn back. That wasn’t even an option.

  Sloan and Cam were still going at it even after I hung up the phone.

  Finally he seemed to finish his quiet lecture. He looked up at us, pointing. “You get her killed and I will hunt you down. I will gladly forfeit my life to take your miserable head
s, if she is killed. Do you understand?”

  We all nodded. My eyes were wide. Well, well, well. That had been revealing.

  Sloan finally got free of him. She gave him the finger as she got in the car.

  “See you next tuesday, Baby,” Cam called to her.

  The moment she got in the car, Caleb started driving again.

  Sloan and Cam had a hostile staring contest until we drove out of his sight. She punched the dashboard a few times when we were out of his sight, then fell silent.

  “See you next tuesday?” I asked her finally, dying to know.

  She just shook her head, and I caught a corner of her smirk in the rearview mirror.

  “C U next tuesday. C U N T,” Caleb finally explained. I couldn’t hold back a laugh.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Torst

  Without further ado, I slashed a deep but small cut into my wrist, holding it to Christian’s mouth. “Drink,” I ordered. “As much as you can stand to.”

  He obeyed without argument. That’s how I knew I had a contrary nature. Him not protesting made me antsy. But I held my tongue while he drank. It hurt more than I would have thought, but I’d be damned if I complained like a wimp in front of Caleb. He always turned everything into a badass contest, and I was in no mood for that today. Especially since I’d lose.

  Christian drank for a solid five minutes, drawing hard, as though he did this all the time. Which was a little disconcerting. I’d add it to the growing list of questions I had that were definitely not going to get answered today.

  My wrist had already made good progress towards healing by the time he finished. He drew back, looking breathless and dazed. He shook his head a few times, as though to clear it. “That is some powerful shit! Whew! Let’s party!”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “So…” I began. “You, uh, know what to do, Christian? I know you’ve never, yanno, ‘slayed’ a dragon before. But you know how, right?”

  He glared at me, pouting exactly as though he didn’t know what to do. “Of course I do. I went through all the training. So I have a very good idea about what to do.”

  “A very good idea?” My brows rose. It didn’t sound like quite enough to me.

  He just continued to glare. My blood ringing his mouth made him look slightly more ferocious than normal. Sloan handed us a box of tissues without a word. I thanked her, and we began to wipe up.

  “My father never got a chance to slay a dragon either….but he taught me all of the theories.”

  I looked at him incredulously for a few tense moments. “Theories…” I said softly.

  He became even more defensive. “I know enough, trust me. Besides, it goes against the grain to discuss the family secrets with one of you. They’ve been well guarded from your kind…obviously.”

  I just raised a brow at him. “As long as you know what you’re doing…”

  He shrugged, the casual gesture not working for him as it usually did. “I guess we’ll see, huh?” His response was defensive and childish, and far from the reassurance I had hoped for.

  I brooded for a few minutes until I realized where we were. “We need to make a stop. Make a right on Tropicana, left on Warm Springs,” I told Caleb suddenly.

  Three pairs of incredulous eyes swung to me, Caleb’s glaring into the rearview mirror. “Why on earth?” he began.

  “Torst,” I said very softly, looking out the window.

  “Torst,” Caleb repeated in the same voice, a wicked grin spreading across his/my face at me. “God, I love hanging out with you guys.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Torst?” Sloan asked.

  Christian just sighed. “I thought that thing was buried for good. But, yeah, guess that’s worth a stop, under the circumstances. Torst means thirst in god only knows what language. And Torst is an…object of power that Jillian acquired, oh, who knows when? She won’t share the story.” He glared at me.

  I half-smiled. “I’ll tell you what. If we live through this, I’ll give you the full story, or as full as it can be, without the when part.” Age was a touchy subject, as always, and the when would reveal far too much about mine.

  His bloody mouth turned up in a shit-eating grin. It just looked wrong on his face. I started attempting to clean his face again. The blood had dried too quickly, so the dry tissue could only do so much. “Hell, yeah,” he said.

  “Who is holding Torst for you?” Caleb asked.

  I flinched. I was embarrassed. I couldn’t help it. I’d done a bad, bad, thing. “No one is. I put it in storage.”

  His eyes in the rearview mirror were cold with disapproval. “How? Why?”

  I sighed. “It’s not good. I just couldn’t see another way. It won’t be happy.”

  “What kind of blood did you use?” Professional curiosity colored his tone. I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been, that he’d guessed my method so quickly.

  “Necro. I was in a pinch at the time, and more than a little pissed at that stupid axe. I swear it was provoking me on purpose. Maybe it wanted to rot in storage.” I grimaced.

  “So defensive,” Caleb said flatly. “It must be bad.”

  Christian whistled. “It’s gonna be pissed.”

  “So it’s an axe?” Sloan was asking the car at large.

  I nodded. “I’m just hoping that the promise of dragonsblood will calm it down…”

  “Your blood, perhaps,” Caleb suggested.

  I grimaced again. “That’s hardly what I had in mind. It never drinks as much as you want it to.”

  “So it’s an axe that drinks blood?” Sloan sounded dubious.

  “Oh, yes,” Caleb said succinctly, and in such a way that I had the strong urge to deck him. He spoke about the axe far more passionately than I’d ever heard him refer to any woman. “So many would kill to have a relic like that, and she puts it in storage. You’re lucky I didn’t know where it was all this time.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Why do you think I didn’t tell anyone?”

  “It’s not going back in there at the end of this,” Caleb said, his tone very final.

  I glared at him. “We can cross that bridge when we get to it. We certainly don’t have time to fight about it now.”

  Caleb just nodded. “As long as you realize that it will be a fight, if you try stash that thing away again.”

  It was a threat, and I wanted to take exception to it, but now was not the time. “Your opinion on the matter has been noted,” I said neutrally. I wasn’t neutral about it, though. Not by a long shot. Torst was a killing machine, only good for mass carnage. I sure as hell didn’t intend to keep it handy when there wasn’t any killing to be done. It’s thirst knew no bounds. I would fight Caleb over it if it came to that, but I would curse the gods all the while for giving me shit for options once again.

  “It’s that storage facility up ahead, the big one on the right,” I said, as we approached the spot.

  I was getting out of the car right as it stopped, running before anyone else had gotten out of the car. I wanted to get the whole mess over with.

  It was no coincidence that the storage unit’s eighteen digit password ended in 666. I felt a punch of rage and hunger as I stepped into the small, climate-controlled space.

  The axe was in my head, insinuating itself into my thoughts, before I’d even opened the giant, airtight, steel container where it resided. That was bad.

  I dropped to the floor as I opened the lid and the thing came flying at me. The man-sized receptacle was bone dry. No surprise there. It had probably finished off that blood within a week, even though it had feasted right before I’d locked it in there.

  The axe embedded itself into the wall before pulling out and taking another long swing at me. I rolled out of the way, catching it by the handle from where it had embedded itself into the ground. It was obviously too angry to fight well.

  “Dragonsblood!” I shouted at Torst. “All that you can drink, in just a few minutes! All you have
to do is calm the fuck down and wait ten minutes!”

  Yes, blood. Yes, dragonsblood. Your blood. All of it. I thirst.

  Like that was news. Torst always thirsted. Always. “I have three with me. You can’t take us all. But we’re going to kill a dragon, and if you just come with me peaceably, you can have all of it’s blood that you want.”

  I’ll have all of your blood that I want. And all of your three as well. I thirst.

  Torst had a bit of an ego. There was basically no fight that he didn’t think he could win, just by being thirsty enough. “Remember what’s it’s like to fight with me? I captured you. You were never able to take my blood by force, but I know you remember that when I go into battle, I get you all of the blood you can drink. You said no one before had ever quenched your thirst so well.”

  When you fight, I drink, yes. But you rarely fight, and then you locked me away. It was a horrible thirst in that metal box. Never have I known a thirst so terrible.

  I sighed. Torst wouldn’t be getting over that for a long while, I knew. “You tried to slaughter innocents after a battle. I warned you. I had to show you that I meant my threats. You do not feed on innocents. Not ever.”

  I thirst. Necro blood is vile and rotten. Human blood is young and fresh. I thirst for human blood.

  I shook the infuriating axe. “Never happening. Get the idea out of your head. But I have something better. I’ve given you small tastes of my blood. Imagine getting enough dragonsblood to quench your terrible thirst.”

  Yes. Even human blood cannot compare to dragonsblood. Even druid blood cannot compare to a dragon’s.

  I gave Torst another little shake. “Don’t go around talking about druid blood. They avenge their own. Always.”

  It was a long time ago that I drank my fill of druid blood.

  “Lalala, I didn’t hear that. How about this? You keep quiet, and I will take you to a bloody battle. We will bathe in it.”

  Yes, my warrior is back. Into battle, dragon warrior. I thirst.

  “Yes, you thirst. I think I got that one. Shhh.” I was more than a little surprised when the axe went still in my hands and actually stayed silent.