Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters) (32 page)

“Fair enough,” I muttered.

Caleb led us briskly to his car, which was parked a good distance from the settlement.
 
I had no idea how he’d gotten it there.
 
Christian and I had been forced to travel in a huge truck, packed in like sardines with the druids.
 
I made out what was inside before we reached the car.
 
“Tied up, huh, Cal?
 
What the hell?”

“It was for her own good,” he said, opening the passenger door.
 
“She is being summoned, and she was having a hard time resisting.
 
She said you could help her.”

Lynn had several chains wrapping her to the passenger seat.
 
Her arms were even cuffed above her head.
 
I gave Caleb a sardonic look.
 
“Think you have enough chains there?”
 

“Better safe than sorry,” Lynn spoke up.
 

“Ok, so someone is calling you to them against your will?”

Lynn nodded.

I looked at Cal.
 
“We need to get her locked down someplace safe.
 
No enchantment I put on her will last long.
 
We need to take her straight to a safe house after I place it.
 
And not the retreat.
 
It’s been compromised.”

“Obviously,” Caleb said, insulted.
 
I must have forgotten for a second who I was talking to.
 
I was a little shocky, I acknowledged.

“He’ll have to take her alone.
 
You’re not to go anywhere until you’ve been questioned,” Sloan spoke suddenly.

I rolled my eyes.
 
“Ok, you’ll have to take her after I’ve enchanted her, Cal.
 
I’ll meet up with you guys later.”

“Fine.”
 
Cal’s voice was curt.

I placed the enchantment on her quickly, using a relic I wore around my neck to draw power.
 
“Feel better?” I asked her after I finished.

She nodded, closing her eyes.
 
“His call is much fainter now.
 
It still stings to resist it, though.”

“Here, look at this.”
 
I held the relic in front of her eyes.
 
She looked at it, brow furrowed in confusion.
 
She didn’t know about this spell, though it was one of my personal favorites.
 

I clocked her, hard, on the back of the head.
 
She was out cold.

Cal gave me a questioning look.
 
“Hurry,” I told him.
 
“Get her locked down someplace safe, pronto.”

“That was jacked up,” Cal muttered, but he waisted no time, getting in the car and taking off without further ado.
 

I turned back to Sloan, mouth twisted bitterly.
 
I waved her ahead.
 
“Lead on.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Old Buddies

“Is this really necessary?”
 
I asked Sloan after a long period of silence.
 
She gave me a hard look, which was answer enough.
 
“We could go out and help with cleanup, while we wait.
 
Sitting here seems a little pointless.”
 
We were in the back of the Arch’s limo.
 
We’d been doing nothing but sitting and waiting for at least an hour.
 

“My orders are to wait with you in this car.
 
No one said I had to listen to you.
 
And I certainly don’t want to speak to you.”

“You have to admit, it seems a little pointless for us to just be sitting around.”

“Shut up,” was her response.

“I have to say, I’m a little surprised you’re acting like all the other druids.
 
You of all people should be happy I left him, Sloan.
 
You’ve been in support of Dom as Arch from the start.”

She turned murderous eyes to me, opened her mouth to speak, then shut it abruptly.
 
“No, I’m not gonna get into that with
 
you.
 
I promised myself I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.
 
Just shut up.”

“If I promise to stay out of his life as much as humanly possible, can we call a truce?”

“Bullshit.
 
If you wanted to stay out of his life, then what the hell are you doing here?”

I raised my brows at her.
 
“I didn’t get discovered on purpose.
 
I’d still be in hiding if I hadn’t had a few too many bad luck run-ins with druids lately.”

“Bullshit,” she said again.
 
“Word is you waltzed into his office yesterday.
 
You sought him out.
 
Why?”

“I went there under a geas, Sloan.
 
Collin found me before that, and bound me to seek Dom out.
 
I never would have gone to him if I’d had a choice in the matter.”

She curled her lip at me.
 
“Well, I guess that’s something.”
 
She paused.
 
“Not much, though.
 
You know, when I first saw those pictures, I told Dom that they must be doctored.
 
I was so sure you wouldn’t have done that to him, I would have bet my life on it.
 
I had him half convinced, at first, that it was a ploy of Siobhan's.
 
He was even more crushed when he found out they were legit.
 
I bet it makes you happy that I helped to dig your knife in deeper, huh?”

I made my face carefully blank.
 
“No, that doesn’t make me happy.
 
Far from it.
 
I was trying to make the break as clean as possible.”

I didn’t see the punch coming, but it sent me clear across the cabin of the limo.
 
I slammed hard into the glass partition that separated the drivers side.
 
I just lay there, stunned, trying to work up the desire to retaliate.
 
It was very uncharacteristic for me, but I just couldn’t find it.

“You wanted it fucking clean?
 
That was the messiest-”

The door nearest Sloan slammed open.
 
Cam shoved his snarling face inside the car, growling, “What’s going on in here?”
 
His glare was all for Sloan.

Sloan and I looked at each other, and shrugged.
 
“Nothing,” I said.

“I don’t know.
 
Why?” Sloan responded at the same time.
 
It was somewhat reassuring that Sloan and Cam seemed to still be hostile to each other.
 
They had always bumped heads, and neither were subtle enough to even try to hide it.

“Don’t mess with me, Sloan.
 
I heard fighting in here.
 
What happened?
 
Why does Jillian look like she just got punched in the face?”

Sloan shrugged.
 
“Ask Jillian.
 
I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He called her a bitch under his breath as he looked at me.
 
“What was all the noise about?” he asked me.
 
It was obvious it pained him to even have to speak to me.

I shrugged.
 
“Ask Sloan,” I told him.

He looked at Sloan.
 
“What, you guys are old buddies again?”
 
Every word dripped with disgust..
     

We both laughed, then stopped, glaring at each other.

“Hardly,” Sloan told him.
 
“We both just happen to hate you.”

He gave her a murderous look.
 
“Right back at you, you half-breed bitch.”
 
He slammed the door in her face.
 
She shrugged.

“He’s even meaner than he used to be,” I noted.

Sloan’s mouth turned up on one side in an unhappy smile.
 
“So am I.
 
But he’s been impossible since Siobhan started dating Dom again.
 
You see, before Dom started seeing her again, she’d been slumming with Cam for awhile.
 
He’s been on his period ever since she dumped him.”

My eyes widened.
 
“She dated Cam?
 
Does Dom know?”

She shrugged.
 
“Kinda.
 
He knows that they dated.
 
Don’t think he knew they were dating so recently, or that it had gotten serious.”

I curled my lip in distaste.
 
“Dating two cousins?
 
Creepy.”

Sloan nodded.
 
“It’s worse than that, even.
 
She’s dated Collin, too.”

I was more than a little surprised.
 
“I never knew.
 
I thought druids were way too possessive to pass around women like that.
 
I always thought Siobhan was just waiting patiently for Dom to finally fall for her.”

She snorted.
 
“Hardly.
 
She’s certainly never waited for him at home, if you know what I mean.”
 
We fell silent.

I remembered something I’d heard.
 
“Good job wiping the floor with her in the arena.
 
When I heard about that, I wanted to cheer.”

She smiled a little at the mention of her victory over Siobhan.
 
I just don’t think she could help her mouth turning up when she thought about the memory.
 
“It felt good.
 
And now I outrank her.”
 

My brow furrowed.
 
“You’re 1
st
lieutenant now, right?”
 

She smirked.
 
“Yes, this half-breed bitch is 2
nd
in command, and 1
st
lieutenant.”
 

“So does that mean that you fought Cam for the spot?
 
I never heard the details of that.”
 
When an Arch took his vows, he personally appointed seven lieutenants for himself.
 
Their rank was then voted on by the people.
 
Whatever was voted became the chain of command for the leadership.
 
However, the vote was not the final decision.
 
The lieutenants could all challenge each other to combat to move up in rank.
 
If one was challenged, and refused to fight, the challenger then moved up in rank, pushing the challenged down one spot.
 
You could only challenge the one directly above you, however, so no one could just skip to the top.
 
Originally, when Dom had become Arch, Cam had been the 1
st
, Siobhan the 2
nd
, Sloan the 3
rd
, Collin the 4
th
, and so on.
 
When Sloan had beaten Siobhan, she had moved up to second, putting her in a position to challenge Cam, if she wanted to be 1
st
.
 
Since she was now 1
st
, I assumed that had happened, though I’d never heard anything about it.
 
My sources weren’t quite that good.
 
All I’d heard was that it had been a private affair.

That wiped the smile right off of her face.
 
“He refused to fight me, just handed me the spot like a little bitch.
 
You can’t know how much I wanted that fight.
 
How much I still want it.”

I blinked at her, surprised at her, surprised at them both.
 
“Did he say why?
 
He’s so big on rank, I just can’t picture him doing that.”
 

She flushed, looking down at her fisted hands.
 
“He said that he didn’t want to hurt me, the bastard.
 
I fucking hate that guy.”

I thought that said a lot, but apparently it hadn’t said anything that Sloan wanted to hear.
 
We were both silent for a long time, lost in thoughts.

“I tried to talk to him before that, Sloan,” I spoke after a while, going back to the exhausted subject of Dom and I.
 
“The pictures were a last resort.”

“You are such a stone-cold bitch,” was her only response.
 
I decided to stop trying for a truce, after that.

Eventually Cam got back into the car, rudely crowding Sloan to the opposite end of the
 
bench seat they shared.
 
“Asshole,” she muttered loudly.
 

“Man-hater,” he responded without sparing her a glance.
 
“The Arch is on his way.”

Dom finally slid into the car, forcing Sloan to take a seat beside me to avoid having to sit too close to Cam.
 
Dom didn’t spare anyone a glance as the car starting moving.
 
He pulled a large bottle of whiskey out of the trench he wore over his tattered vest, taking a long swig.
 
He passed the bottle to Cam without saying a word.
 
Cam followed suit, passing the bottle to Sloan.
 

I’d asked them about this after battle habit years ago.
 
I’d been told the hard liquor was the best way to get the taste of flesh off their tongues.
 
I’d wondered out loud why, if the taste of flesh was so unpleasant to them, they couldn’t just use claws instead of teeth for fighting.
 
The answer I’d gotten was that a berserker couldn’t hold back from using it’s teeth.
 
And the whiskey wasn’t really that much of a problem.
 
It was very difficult to get a druid drunk.
 
I, of course, had refrained from mentioning that my kind had invented berserker rage.