Breathing Fire

“How many does my Uncle have with him?” Lynn asked. I understood her concern. His ‘them’ answers were alarming, to say the least.

He shook his head over and over. “Dude, I have no idea. I can’t tell one of those things from another. They don’t tell me stuff like that.”

“What things?” Christian spoke up suddenly.

Adam just laughed at him like a lunatic. “You don’t even get it, do you, dude? You’re even more in the dark than I am. How can you not see that you’re surrounded by-” Suddenly, surreally, his head just disappeared, pieces of it decorating the wall behind him. It hadn’t even been a conscious action, my hand had just found the gun in my ankle holster, aimed and shot on pure instinct. He had said enough incriminating things in front of Christian. The sound in the echoing room was deafening for a moment.

I bent down, calmly re-holstering my gun. The entire room was staring at me, mouths hanging open, jaws slack. Understandable, I supposed. I swear a few of the goths started putting curses on me.

Christian was the most shocked of the four of us, of course, since he couldn’t know the reason I’d needed to silence Adam so immediately, and so permanently. “What the hell, Jillian?” he was shouting over my ringing ears. “I can’t believe you shot him when he was giving us information. Was that really necessary?”

I just shrugged, acting nonchalant. “He was just wasting our time.”

Christian threw his hands up in the air. “And here I thought Caleb was our resident sociopath.”

I looked at Caleb. “Yeah, Caleb. Where were you on that one?” I asked him, an edge to my voice. What was his angle? Usually he was the fastest draw. I was good with guns, but they weren’t even my best weapon. I needed a blade to show my real talent. And guns, well, they were Caleb’s passion. Caleb looked at a solid piece like most men would look at a lover. Was he messing with us?

But he was studying me thoughtfully. He seemed to be as surprised as the rest of us that I’d beat him to the punch.

“That was impressive speed, considering that you were drawing from your ankle. You may actually be faster than me,” Caleb’s tone was speculative, making my trigger finger start itching. Knowing Caleb, he was considering drawing on me just to find out…

“He was full of lies from our uncle, Christian,” I said, turning away from Caleb, effectively ending the tense standoff. “Villi was using him to try to hurt Lynn, and I told you only the nice parts of what that monster did to my sister. We could have never let him go. He would have led them to us.”

“Ok, ok, just someone needs to explain to me a little more of what’s going on here. I hate being kept in the dark.” As Christian spoke, his phone started ringing, along with Caleb’s. I found this to be an odd coincidence.

The connection made sense a moment later, when I realized that it was a call from the druids. Tonight was the night. Time for a Necro roast.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a bad night for Lynn to get sloshed,” I muttered under my breath.

“I will take care of cleanup, and watch over Lynn’s children,” the strange dragon spoke into the charged silence. We had been absorbed in thoughts of prep and battle.

“Who the f**k are you?” I asked him, finally.

He gave me a little mysterious smile. “I’m Drake. And you are Lynn’s sister, Jillian. You have a very strange choice of lovers. Where I’m from, your affair with the druid King would be considered quite taboo.”

I just blinked at him. I really, really didn’t like Drake. The feeling was instant and almost blinding. He knew way too much about me, about us, and I didn’t care to hear anyone’s observations about my love life, not even someone whom I didn’t hate on sight. I didn’t trust him, but if he was staying and we were leaving, I decided to deal with the problem later. One thing was for certain; We wouldn’t be coming back here until I knew more about the bastard.

I smiled at him rather unpleasantly. It was no coincidence that he had rolled into town at the same time as my family. It simply couldn’t be.

I addressed Lynn, knowing even as I did so that she was in no condition to help me just then. “What were you thinking, bringing him here?”

Her eyes seemed clear enough as she stared me down. “You need to trust me on this, sister. He’s on our side. I don’t have time to explain it now, but I will tomorrow. Can you wait until then to question my judgement?”

I sighed. She’d gotten way too defensive way too fast. I knew my sister. When she got defensive, she got stubborn, and a stubborn Lynn was nothing I wanted to deal with. “Fine. Tomorrow will work, I suppose, if it all doesn’t blow up in our faces before that.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

That's Siobhan

 The meeting place we’d been assigned was a large warehouse in a seedy part of town. Cars nearly filled the parking lot. Anyone driving by the place probably thought a rave was going on.

The first person I noticed when we walked into the room full of druids did not set the evening off to a good start.

Siobhan was tall and voluptuous and every bit as beautiful as I remembered. And the moment her bright green eyes met mine across the room, I knew that she hated me every bit as much as she had seven years ago. The feeling was very much mutual. She started whipping her deep red hair back repeatedly as she stared at me. I made a note to tell her that horses did the same thing when they got agitated. That might sound a little catty, but Siobhan brought me to catty in seconds flat. She and I did not have a friendly past. Ok, that’s putting it very lightly. She’d hated me from the moment she’d heard of me. I hadn’t really cared one way or the other. Until she’d poisoned me. The poison didn’t kill me, of course. It did make me throw-up my dinner. Oh yeah, and it pissed me off royally. I’d returned the favor by throwing her headfirst out of a twelve story window. It’s safe to say that didn’t help us to patch things up.