Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters) (2 page)

I couldn’t decide if it was good or bad that they seemed to be as surprised to see me as I was to see them.
 
One thing was for certain.
 
It was damned unlucky.
 

Michael was the first to recover, cursing fluently.
 
He was relatively short for a druid, no more than six feet tall.
 
His coarse, light-brown hair was cut into a harsh buzz-cut, as though he wanted to fuss with it as little as possible.
 
He pushed black shades to the top of his head, pinning me with his angry dark-brown eyes.
 

The other one, Mav, didn’t say a word.
 
He just turned, punching a hole into the nearest wall.
 
I was tempted to tell him he’d have to pay for that, but I really didn’t want to bother.
 

Mav was a few inches taller than his partner, but shared the same coloring.
 
I seemed to recall that they were distant cousins.

“We could kill her now.
 
We could just bury her in the desert,” Mav said to Michael, his back still to me.
 
“No one ever has to know.
 
We could just eliminate this can of worms, once and for all.”

I flashed a half-sneer at Michael, who’d never taken his malevolent gaze off of my face.
 
“I’d love to see you try,” I told them both.
 
I knew they’d never kill me.
 
That kind of disobedience just didn’t happen in the druid world.
 
And there was an order from higher up that I was not to be killed.
 
Not to mention the little detail that they had no clue in the world how to actually get the deed accomplished.
 
Taking all of that into consideration, I suddenly had an idea.
 
Admittedly, it was not a great idea, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.
 
Actually, the more I worked out the details in my head, I realized that it was a borderline
terrible
idea, but I was certain it would buy me some time.
 
And time was what I needed.
 
I
 
would be the first to admit that I was a shameless runner, though even I knew that was nothing to be proud of.
 
But running like a coward meant that I had developed some pretty extensive evasive skills over the years.
 
I could work wonders with a head start.
 
And no one knew better than I did that sometimes a head start had a price.
 

Michael was shaking his head at me slowly.
 
“No, we won’t kill you-“ he began, but Mav interrupted him.
 

“Do you have any idea what he was like when you left?” Mav asked me, his eyes scary.
 
“He was a mad thing for months.
 
Did you hear what he did in the arena?
 
No one even knew he had that in him.
 
You made him into that!
 
And when he gave up looking for you, he turned bitter, and we all suffered.
 
We all had to pay because of your fucking games!”
 
His voice was a growl by the end.
 
I was taken aback when I saw that his eyes weren’t human any longer.
 
I had always thought that Mav’s powers were limited to far below the level of the beastcall.
 
“Are you even sorry for what you did?” he asked.
 
I couldn’t help but notice that he’d given me a better opening than I could have maneuvered for myself.
 
That was helpful.

I shrugged, giving him a pointedly bored look.
 
“He got over it,” I told him.
 
“I hear he’s doing more than fine.
 
You’ve never had a younger Arch-“

Before I could finish, he was across the room, backhanding me.
 
The blow knocked me off my feet.
 
“Whore!”
 
His voice was nearly a howl.

It took a lot more self-control than I cared to admit not to retaliate to both the blow and the word, but I made myself at least appear calm.
 
“I hear he’s interviewing applicants to replace me nightly,” I dared to say, standing up to face him again.
 
I saw the punch coming, and braced myself.
 
The back of my head hit the wall at the back of the room.
 
I saw stars.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Happy Place

Not fighting back was much harder than I had thought it would be.
 
My nails dug so hard into my palms that I felt the skin split.
 
My plan would be much more effective, though, if I didn’t leave a scratch on either one of them.
 
I repeated this to myself, over and over again.
 

I thought that watching me fly across the room actually made Mav feel better.
 
He was noticeably calmer when he said, “You and your sister haven’t registered with us for over five years.”
 
Actually, it was closer to seven, but I wasn’t going to correct him.
 
He continued, “I know I don’t have to tell you the kind of trouble I could give you for that.
 
In addition, you were both registered as weather-witches.
 
You’re gonna have to do better than that this time.
 
You don’t have a high-ranking boyfriend to protect you anymore.”
 
He was downright smug by the end of his little spiel.
 

“Are you implying that I’m not a weather-witch?” I asked him.
 
I wasn’t, of course.
 
Not even close.
 

“Don’t push me,” he snarled.

I tried to smile pleasantly at him, but knew I fell far from the mark.
 
“Would you like me to go make it rain?
 
Or better yet, I could make it about a hundred and ten degrees outside, with no humidity.
 
That one’s my specialty.”
 
Yes, it was a bad Vegas weather joke.
 
They didn’t laugh, either.
 

I got a hard punch in the stomach for the comment.
 
I spit out a large mouthful of blood.
 

“You are going to give us some straight answers, Jillian, or we will be making you very sorry,” Michael threatened.
   

“In that case, I should tell you that my name hasn’t been Jillian for years.”
 
He slapped me for that comment.

“You’re going to tell me what you really are, or I swear I’ll make you sorry,” Mav said.
 

“I’m not telling you a damn thing.
 
You couldn’t beat it out of me.
 
I doubt you could even hold me down long enough to try,” I said, and it was a dare that I knew these knuckleheads couldn’t resist.
 
I’d learned a long time ago that if you suggested something to someone, if it was something they had already wanted to do, something they were already considering, they would almost always take you up on it.
 
This was especially true if you were dealing with idiots.
 

“Hold her,” Mav told Michael.
 
They were cooperating faster than I could have anticipated.
 
They were really stupid.
 
Which was good.
 
I had kind of been counting on it, though I couldn’t exactly get excited about having the shit beat out of me.
 

Michael gripped my wrists from behind, more tightly than he needed to.
 
All the better, I told myself, though the feeling made me want to fight harder.
 
I let myself struggle against the hold, just hard enough to guarantee that my wrists would be bruised.
 

“What the fuck are you?
 
And how old are you, anyways?
 
I heard that you met Dom when he was just fourteen!
 
That was fifty years ago…”

I definitely wasn’t going near that one.
 
My age was a touchy subject, to say the least.
 
Physically, I could have passed for being anywhere between twenty-five to thirty-five, but that was no reflection of my actual age.
 
My kind did not age physically.
 
Or die of natural causes, for that matter.

Mav proceeded to batter me up.
 
There could be no doubt that he relished the opportunity.
 
Sadistic bastard.
 
He landed a solid punch every time I answered one of his questions with an impassioned, “Go fuck yourself!”

It hurt.
 
God, did it hurt bad.
 
And I’d been through some pretty rough stuff.
 
I’d been alive for a very long time, and my life had never been easy, or painless.
 
Nevertheless, getting the shit beat of you never failed to suck.
 
I tried to take my mind elsewhere.
 
I thought of other places, better places.
 
Nope.
 
The beating still sucked royally.
 
I tried to make my mind go to a happy place.
 
Did my mind have a happy place?
 
Apparently not.

“Damn,” Mav said at one point.
 
“Dom told me about this.
 
He told me that your hair and eyes shifted color during sex.
 
I never realized it’d be so pretty.
 
Does this mean you’re turned on?” he asked, leering at me.
 

I spit in his face.
 
He punched me in the jaw, hard.

“I think it means she’s pissed,” Michael answered for me.
 

“It means I think you should go fuck yourself,” I added helpfully.
 
Pain had never been a good enough excuse to make me shut my mouth.
 
My breath whooshed out hard.
 
A solid punch to the ribs will do that.
 

I lost track of time as the beating seemed to last forever.
 
The bastard even made me black out at one point.
 
I had reached my absolute limit when I called a halt to it.
 

“Enchanter,” I finally gave an answer to his favorite question.
 
It was a lie, but not a real obvious one.

“Bull,” Mav snarled, and smashed his fist into my ribs.
 
He loved that spot.
 
I coughed up more blood, spitting it in his direction.
 

“Wait, wait,” I said when he went to punch me again.
 
I had really reached my limit.
 
I knew it for certain because the panic in my voice had become very genuine.
 
“I am an enchanter, and I can show you.”
 
He paused, and I continued.
 
“I can make you do my will.
 
For instance, you’re not going to tell Dom that you ever saw me.
 
In fact, you won’t tell anyone that you know where I am.”

Mav just blinked at me for a minute.
 
“Now why on earth would we do that?” he asked.
 
“If that was an enchantment, it was pathetic.
 
I had no urge to obey you.”
 

“I’m pretty sure you don’t want him to see me like this.
 
And if you tell him that you found me, there’s nothing stopping me from paying him a visit myself.”

Mav just grinned at me.
 
“I’ve seen how fast you heal.
 
You’ll be good as new by the time you reach his casino.
 
And he won’t believe a word that comes out of your lying, whoring mouth.”

I clucked my tongue at him, going in for the kill.
 
“I’m no druid, Mav.
 
You’ve seen how fast I
can
heal.
 
It’s a spell, not a natural ability.
 
It takes effort on my part.
 
And neither of you have any healing abilities of any kind.
 
That much I remember.
 
You could probably call in someone that does, but I’d be willing to bet that you won’t risk anyone else finding out about this.
 
No one is willing to become an accomplice to you idiots.
 
I wonder how Dom would react if he saw the shape I’m in, with not a
scratch
on either one of you.
 
I know from past experience that the proof that you restrained me will make him go apeshit.”
 
I held up my wrists.
 
They were red and already turning into a dark, bruised purple.
 
“These little marks alone will trigger his wrath.”

Mav was starting to look a little green, but he still tried to bluff his way out of it.
 
“You haven’t seen
 
him lately, Jillian.
 
He hates your guts.
 
He doesn’t give a damn what happens to you.”

My chest hurt a little at what he said, and I wondered how much of it was true.
 
I tried to snort at him disdainfully, but it just made more blood spurt out of my nose.
 
“You and I both know that he could hate me enough to beat me to death himself, but he’s still dominant enough that if he sees me like this, he’ll rip apart whoever did it just for disobeying a direct order, and with so much apparent gusto.
 
I have no qualms about giving you two up to him.”

Michael finally let go of my wrists.
 
I fell to the floor, glaring up at both of them.
 
“Fine, you win, for now,” Michael said, not looking me in the eye.
 
“We’ll report that we found nothing unusual when we went to make inquiries at your shop.
 
But, you know, all you’re doing is buying a little time.
 
Everyone has to come clean sometime, Jillian.”