Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters) (3 page)

“Be careful what you wish for.”
 
I flipped them off with both hands until the bells chimed their exit.
 
I tried to sit up.
 
The world went black.
 

CHAPTER THREE

OCD

When I came to, every part of my body was throbbing.
 
I noticed, as I stumbled around the shop, that my assailants had been considerate enough to put up the closed sign on their way out.
 
How nice.
 
And they hadn’t managed to break any bones.
 
When I returned the favor, they wouldn’t be able to say the same.
 

I dug up some aspirin in my office.
 
It didn’t do much for the pain.
 
A half pint of my sister’s rocky road ice cream helped, though.
 
I more or less passed out in my office chair.

When I next awoke, I noticed a completely different sensation than pain.
 
My skin was literally steaming.
 
I could see the bare skin on my arms glowed gold.
 
My nails changed colors as I watched.
 
Magenta, crimson, scarlet, orange…
 
It went on and on, the colors shifting through the spectrum of every hue.
 
I knew from past experience that my hair and eyes were doing the same.

This had been happening a lot lately.
 
I was pretty sure it wasn’t normal, even for my kind.
 
I needed to ask Lynn about it, but I knew nothing like this had ever happened to her.

My body had been acting up for a while now.
 
Pretty much, I was hoping that whatever problems it was having would work themselves out, or better yet, go away.
 
Whatever this thing was, I was really just counting on the whole immortal thing to trump it.
 
A few hundred years of perfect health had made me overconfident, I supposed.

I lay there, eyes closed, until my body had calmed down.
 
I sighed.
 
I was procrastinating.
 
I had some unpleasant magic to perform.
 
My battered body had already begun to heal the damage that had become my insurance.

I had lied to Mav when I told him that my body did not heal quickly on it’s own.
 
I did, however, have a way to stop the healing process, for a time.
 
I unlocked the hidden drawer in my desk, drawing out the ancient relic I kept there.
 
Chanting softly, I stopped my body from healing.
 
This was a spell generally meant for someone other than yourself, and it almost hurt worse than the beating, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
 
And lucky for me, I was on a first name basis with both desperate times
and
desperate measures.
 
Boy, did they love me.
 
The feeling was very much
not
mutual.

My body quickly rebelled, and I emptied my stomach into the wastebasket beside my desk.
 
This was not going to be a fun couple of days, but at least I had bought Lynn and I some time.
 
Now I just had to get up off my bruised ass and make use of it.
 

The closest thing I had to an informant worked as a cocktail waitress at The Golden Dragon.
 
The Golden Dragon was a dump casino on the outskirts of the strip.
 
It was, however, the closest casino to The Grove, the monstrosity of a casino that belonged to the druids.
 
It doubled as their base of operations for the west coast.
 

It was a perverse phenomena, since the druids were notorious for their love of forests and water, and all things green.
 
I had often wondered why they would choose to station so many of the green-loving bastards right smack in the middle of the desert, but I’d learned not to ask.
 
No druid would answer that question.
 
And just asking it tended to make them real salty.

I’d met Casey years ago.
 
She had been sobbing quietly in the cafe portion of our shop.
 
She was a cute little thing, with corkscrew auburn curls and bright green eyes.
 
I’d sat down in the chair across from her and asked her if she needed help with anything.
 
She’d then proceeded to tell me her life story, including the most prominent part, about her having
 
a stormy affair with one of the higher ranking druids.
 
I’d given her some good relationship advice, knowing a thing or two about the subject, and we’d been friends ever since.
 
I’d also placed a silencing spell on her.
 
If she made a habit of talking too much to strangers about such things, she’d quickly find herself buried in the desert.

And so I found myself dumping some money into a slot machine as I waited for the cocktail waitress to make her rounds.
 
I got lucky.
 
Casey just happened to be working my section of the place.
 
Her face broke into a big smile when she saw me.
 
She nearly skipped her way over to me in her excitement.
 
God, had I ever been that young?
 
Not in this lifetime.
 

She wore a black and gold cocktail getup that exposed her midriff and left nothing to cover her ass but some fishnet pantyhose and a string.
 
She was sporting the bad boob-job that so many professionals in Las Vegas had adopted.
 

I was shielding my bruises for the sake of not drawing attention to myself, though people seemed to stare my way no matter what I did.
 
Being blond and around the six foot mark tended to make me stand out.
 

“Hi there,” she said, as she got closer.
 
“Just here for slots?”

I smiled at her.
 
“I came by to see you, actually.”
 

She beamed at me.
 
“One second.
 
Let me go tell my boss I’m taking a break.
 
I have a fifteen minute one coming up, but they won’t notice if I slip out for thirty.”

She pulled out a smoke the second we stepped outside, lighting it.
 
She offered me one, and I declined.
 
I knew I’d never get lung cancer, but I just couldn’t stand the things.
 

“Some druids came and paid me a visit today.
 
Heard any gossip about anything to do with our shop?” I asked bluntly.

She froze, the cigarette actually falling from her hand.
 
“Shit, yeah, I have.
 
Been meaning to tell you about it.
 
I guess someone who visited your shop claimed that you were magic-users.
 
Some old hag, looking to get a reward, I hear.
 
Joseph told me about it because he knew I went to the shop a lot, wanted to know if I noticed anything unusual.”
 
She laughed nervously.
 
“Crazy, right?
 
I figured they’d go check out your place and see that she was scamming them.”
 
I was watching her face while she spoke.
 
She never met my eyes once.
 

“Why’d you cross me, Case?” I asked her softly.
 

She burst into tears.
 
“I didn’t mean to, I swear.
 
Joseph used something on me.
 
I was talking, telling him things I didn’t want to.
 
I figured you’d get out of whatever trouble they made for you.
 
I know you’re really strong.”

I let my shields down, showed her my battered face and arms.
 
She sobbed harder, apologizing over and over.
 
I put my shields back up.
 
Normally, I avoided using magic around humans like the plague, but it seemed the damage was already done here.
 
“Why couldn’t you at least give us a heads up?” I asked her.

She was shaking her head.
 
“It was like I said, some old w-witch-hag got to them first.”
 
Witch-hag’s were a particularly nasty class of witch.
 
They always looked like ancient old hags, regardless of their age.
 
Their youth was the first thing they sacrificed to gain more power.
 
After that, they got even more desperate, sacrificing countless other things.
 
The rogue hags were even less particular, sacrificing humans or even whatever Others they could get their hands on.
 
It alarmed me a bit that one had been aware of me, but not me of her.
 
Luckily she hadn’t been a rogue, or she would have done worse than gone to the druids.
 
If a rogue hag knew what I was, if they had even an inkling, and got the jump on me, with any knowledge of how to bind me, she would harvest me for parts.
 
There’s nothing a rogue hag would love more than getting ahold of one of my kind.

Casey continued.
 
“Then Joseph was questioning me.
 
I’ve never seen him like that.
 
He was ruthless.
 
I’m not sure I ever really knew him at all.
 
I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, backing into the side of the building and sliding down into a crying heap.

“What all did you tell them about me?” I asked quietly.

“Everything I knew.
 
Everything you’ve ever told me, or that I’ve noticed on my own.”
 
She was curled up on the ground now.
 
“What can I do to make it up to you?”
 

I felt a little sick at heart, but I was too practical to overlook a good opening when I saw it.
 
“You can’t, Case.
 
But you can call me if you hear anything.
 
Keep me up to date on anything you find out.”
 
I was walking away as I finished, Casey a mess on the ground of the alley behind me.
 

“Are we still friends?” she called after me.

“You tell me.
 
I don’t have a lot of friends.
 
Is this how you normally treat them?”
 
I ignored her pitiful sobs and walked away.

Well, I’d learned two useful and unfortunate pieces of information with that errand.
 
One was that Casey’s boyfriend was on to our little chats, probably had been for awhile, if he had resorted to be-spelling her.
 
The other was that, whether they wanted to or not, Mav and Michael wouldn’t be able to just forget that I existed.
 
It was obvious that the attention of more higher-ups had been caught.
 
On the bright side, if Dom was one of those higher ups, I was pretty sure I would know it by now.

I was speeding down Tropicana Avenue when it started again.
 
I started to tremble.
 
I barely pulled over before I lost control of my body.
 
A familiar force pushed against my mind, and this time I didn’t fight it.

At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
 
It was all wrong.
 
“I should not be looking at you like this,” I told my other form.
 
The dragon was more beautiful than I had realized, gazing at it from the outside for the first time.
 
It was all glowing, shifting colors, as it’s long form writhed in agony.
 
It’s eyes were the same palest aquamarine I had in human form.
 
“Why is this happening?” I asked it.
 
It didn’t answer.
 
It was hard to pull my eyes away from it’s entrancing beauty, but I did for a brief moment, and I perceived that all that surrounded us was an inky blackness.
 
Suddenly, all of that blackness turned to a shinning silver.
 
Water seemed to surround us at every angle.
 
It laid it’s body on the shifting ground, head nearly touching me.
 
Was it going to sleep, or laying down to die
?
 

It rolled suddenly onto it’s back, showing me it’s belly.
 
I stepped close, but couldn’t touch it.
 
“What’s happening to us?” I asked it.
 
It had clearly brought me here to show me, but I was not as perceptive as I needed to be.
 
It began to moan in pain.
 
A twin pain brought me to my knees, clutching my middle.
 
Suddenly it’s moan turned to a roar of agony.
 
I tried to shield my ears from the noise, but instead found myself voicing the same agony in my human throat.
 

As the noise died down I realized I was lying
 
beside my other self, close to mirroring it’s pose, our limbs almost touching.
 
I turned my head to meet it’s eyes.
 
So much anguish floated in their depths that I gasped.
 
Was this what I had always dreaded?

“It can’t be the madness.”
 
My voice was a hoarse whisper.
 
I was too young, and I’d been doing so much to prevent it.
 
Surrounding myself with humans on a nearly daily basis, staying in human form more than dragon.
 
Everything we had ever learned about preventing the brain sickness that lived in our bloodline, I had practiced as part of a daily routine.
 
I was damn near OCD about it.
 
It’s tormented roar was my only answer.
 
I blacked out.

CHAPTER FOUR