Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters) (26 page)

I had been fixing us drinks.
 
Hot tea, I recalled.
 
Dom had been waiting in bed for me.
 
It was almost a habit to prick my finger, and place a few drops into his.
 
As I rinsed the pairing knife in the sink, I felt his presence behind me in the modest kitchen.
 
I turned, startled, my hand to my heart, wondering what all he’d seen.

He had watched me for a long moment, his gaze enigmatic.
 
He strode to me, unhurried, and unruffled, it seemed.
 
He circled my wrist softly, then brought my pricked finger to his mouth, sucking on the tiny wound until it closed, using just a touch of that wonderful magic of his.
 
I gasped.
 
He ignored me, reaching for his doctored drink behind me.
 
He downed the scorching hot liquid as though the full-sized glass were a shot.
 
He set the glass in the sink, then stepped close to me again.
 
He cupped my cheeks, touching our foreheads, his eyes intense but unreadable.
 
I knew, just knew, that he’d seen what I had done.

“It’s not what you think,” I had told him tremulously.
 
I hated how guilty my strange actions made me look.
 
What must he be thinking?

He just stared at me for an endless moment.
 
“It doesn’t matter.
 
If you were trying to harm me, I’d want to be harmed.
 
Whatever it is you think your blood will do to me, I want it done.
 
My life and my heart are in your hands, to do with as you please.”

I shook my head at him slowly, thinking he was an impossibly hopeless man.
 
An impossibly crazy man.
 
An impossibly wonderful man.
 
“It’s to protect you.
 
All I want is to protect you,” I had whispered.

Finally, he had smiled, a heartbreaking smile.
 
It had devastated me.
 
Even the memory of it devastated me.
 
“Then I’ll live forever.”
 

Back in the present time, moments from the bloody battle, Dom raised his fist into the air, and in the dark I could see the outline of one giant bear claw, his other arm still human and gripping a flame-thrower, the weapon of choice against these creatures.
 
I hadn’t even known it was possible to partial shift.
 
And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t spent years among the druids.
 
In the years we’d been together, I’d seen many, including the previous Arch, shift for battle.
 
I made a note to ask around about this strange ability.
 

“Charge!” Dom’s voice boomed into the night like a gunshot.
 
The battle was on.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Battle Dance

The first wave of necros went directly for the Arch, since he had already charged recklessly through the opening in the fence.
 
I watched, a little stunned, as he dispatched one after another brutally.
 
The ones that were able to rush past the druids around him were met with his flame-thrower.
 
The ones that avoided the flames had their heads ripped clean off.
 
He was a wild-thing fighting, and I freely admit to being mesmerized.
 
A wave of druids quickly separated us from him, but I caught glimpses of him fighting as I was pulled in another direction.
 
“Quit ogling your boyfriend, JIllian.
 
We’ve got things to do,” Christian shouted as he pulled me along by my left arm.
 
I glared at him, but followed.

“Make that showy axe useful, girl,” Christian said as we approached a still intact section of fencing.
 
He had Dragonsbane bare in his hand, and it was growing as I watched.
 
He held it in one hand, but it grew massive in seconds, glowing like blue fire.
 
It was impressive.
 
He used both hands to bring it down on the fence.
 

I shook myself, drawing my axe.
 
It wasn’t like me to get distracted so easily when there were things to kill.
 
My familiar axe was heavy but well balanced in my hands.
 
The double edged metal of the blade was shinning in the moonlight.
 
It sang in my hands as I swung it at the fence.
 
Christian was using his sword to carefully cut the links on the fence, but I hacked at it with gusto.
 
It was just how I fought.
 
I was controlled, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at me.
 
I had cleaved the fence in front of me nearly to the ground with the force of my blow.
 
I swung again, loving the feel of the axe even when it was still only a fence that I attacked.
 
I couldn’t wait to kill things that
bled.
 

Christian’s line of fence fell just moments after mine.
 
We had cut it from top to bottom, so it fell forward with nothing left to support it.
 
Druids around us were trying similar techniques to reach the action faster, but ours had been the most effective.
 
Several druids saw our success, rushing in directly behind us.
 
You might have thought we were leading a group of them, if you didn’t know a thing about druids and their disdain for other races.
 
Oh, yeah, and that every last one of them hated my ass with an enduring passion.
 

I saw that we were maybe forty yards from where Dom was fighting, but it was close enough to get instant attention from the writhing mass of necros.
 
A section of them broke off, rushing right at us like the rabid flesh-eaters they were.
 
Christian got into a familiar stance, readying to fight at my back.
 
We both needed space to fight, using such long handled weapons, but we had fought side by side too many times to count, so we positioned ourselves naturally.
 
We waited for a wave of them to hit us, the druids behind us passing us with a few scathing comments about getting our asses into the fight.
 
They were on us in seconds either way.
 

My battle-axe sang as I swung it high, bringing it down on the first unlucky undead to get within my reach.
 
It’s skin was graying, it’s eyes blood red.
 
It looked like a walking corpse that had been through hell.
 
And that about summed up the life of a necro.
 
They were dead humans who just refused to recognize the fact, feeding on other humans just to buy themselves a little time.
 
It’s head went splat, and I sliced him in half in an almost smooth motion, the noise wet and loud even amidst the loud sounds of battle.
 
Necros were squishy.
 
They were diseased and decaying, rotting from the inside out.
 
They had to feast constantly on human flesh to keep from rotting until they had fallen to pieces.
 
This group seemed particularly squishy, I noted, as I swung hard, decapitating a second monster in a flash.
 

The trick to fighting with a big-ass weapon in the crowded battleground was to turn every strike into the next attack.
 
I didn’t draw back to hack at the enemy, but just kept pushing, hacking through one undead body, and into the next.
 
It was an effective tactic, considering my strength and my huge weapon, though the technique wouldn’t have worked for many.
 

Something bit my back, and I screamed, more in anger than pain.
 
I turned, blade sweeping at everything in reach, but the necro was already down, Christian’s sword being drawn from it’s body.
 

I gave him a nod, then turned back to the chaos.
 
In a blurringly fast movement, I raised the axe above my head, cleaving it down into the thick swarm of Necros.
 
I began to turn my body with the motion, chopping into flesh as I spun.
 
I had never been swarmed by so many before.
 
It was both terrifying and exhilarating.
 
We would take heavy losses in this crush of a battle, but on the other hand, I didn’t need to hold back.
 
I could just let go, becoming the dangerous thing that I was born to be.
 
I let my body and mind go into the trancelike state that lived for battle.
 
I was a berserker, and this was my rage.
 
Things would bleed, and I would glory in it.
 

Some of the necros held weapons, knives and machetes, or something similar, mostly.
 
But they were a largely untrained fighting force, teeth snapping and arms swinging wildly as I cut down one after another, or even several at a time.
 
A few held guns, but that was uncommon.
 
Guns were just harder to come by, and Necro’s didn’t have a long lifespan, thanks to the druids.
 

I wasn’t a dancer, except for in battle.
 
Here, I danced, spinning and lunging, swinging and slashing.
 
I even had a song in my head, and I moved to the beat as I killed, and killed.
 

We had cleared a break in the mob when I paused to take a breath.
 
“Fuck, you’re scary,” Christian said behind me, his voice quiet.
 
“Let’s stay friends, k?”
 

It broke me a little out of my trance, and I laughed, a rich sound.
 

I saw Dom maybe thirty yards away.
 
He too, had cleared the first wave, and paused to appraise the carnage.
 
I caught his glance for one endless moment.
 
The look he gave me was…enigmatic.
 
It was hard to say what he meant to tell me with his intense regard.
 
I did learn one thing with that shared look.
 
He still loved to watch me fight.
 

We moved towards the compound’s spartan buildings, taking the fight into smaller spaces.
 
The force had to split up to accommodate the change.

Christian and I found ourselves leading a small group of non-druid Others.
 
I’m not sure how it happened, but we took the new company in stride, breaking away from the main wave of druid fighters.
 
Druids were an extremely exclusive group, so it wasn’t really a surprise that the leftover Others had banded together.
 

Christian had a small arsenal of explosives that he was way too excited to use, so our first order of business was to scout from house to house, basically blowing shit up.
 
It was a simple plan.
 
Christian threw the explosive in the door, and I lit it midair.
 
The rest of our group helped us finish off whatever ran screaming out of the building.
 
As far as demo-ing the whole necro settlement went, our plan worked well.
 
We were doing more than our share of destruction.
 
Oh, and as another plus, it gave Christian his blow-up-shit fix for awhile.
 
Win, win.

I swung my two-handed battle-axe in a circle, beheading two escaping necros at once.
 
Yeah, I was showing off.
 
Or rather, showing up Christian.
 
He just gave me a disgruntled look.
 
“Quit hogging,” he muttered, sending an explosive shotgun round into a running Necro as he spoke.
 
It’s head exploded, spraying black liquid everywhere.
 

I sent Christian a warning look.
 
“Don’t even think about shooting one of those bullets anywhere near me.
 
Those things are a mess.
 
I don’t want any Necro gunk on me.”

He snorted, eyeing me up and down.
 
“You are already covered, you prissy b-”

“Show a little respect,” one of the non-druid Others who’d been following us, spoke.
 
“These things used to be human.”

I turned my head slowly toward the new voice, glaring.
 

“Uh-oh,” Christian said in a loud whisper when he saw the look on my face.

“Respect?
 
Have you fought these things before?” I asked the man, speaking slowly.

He was a small man with thick black glasses.
 
His nearly gray hair put him past forty.
 
He looked more than a little out of his element in his armored vest, carrying his handgun awkwardly.
 
He glared right back at me, answering.
 
“No, but anything that once had a soul should be shown respect on it’s passing.”

I raised my brows at him.
 
“Is that so?
 
Well, Mr.?”

“Allen.”

“Well, Allen, any soul these things possessed left them a long time ago.
 
Me and Christian here have had more than a modest number of encounters with the necros.
 
It’s been a few years since I’ve been on a necro raid, but let me tell you a little story about the last one we went on.
 
It was at an orphanage the necros had ravaged in the middle of the night.
 
They drank from the bodies of over sixty children.
 
Killed all of the little ones in their beds.
 
Not one of them rose from the dead.
 
Not one.
 
Do you know why that is, Allen?”

He swallowed hard.
 
He looked a little sick as he shook his head.