Breathing Fire

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…