HERETIC DAUGHTERS: BOOK TWO
CHAPTER ONE
HOT MESS
The house was small and nondescript, and right smack in the middle of a shockingly populated area. This, though, was the best thing about the hot mess that was Las Vegas. Hiding in plain sight. Mixing in with loud, messy crowds of strangers. Conducting top secret meetings in rows of cookie-cutter houses.
I parked my black, brand spanking new Dodge Challenger at the curb and approached the house cautiously. My two-handed, double-bladed battle axe stayed in the trunk, unfortunately. I had a small pistol strapped to my ankle, hidden under the hem of my boot-cut jeans. A large knife was strapped to my other ankle. I wasn’t expecting trouble at this meeting, but ruling the idea out completely went against every instinct I had.
My weapons were a considerate gift from my ex. Ex-ish? Hell, I didn’t know what he was, but he’d supplied me with everything he thought I’d need on short notice.
It had been a nice thought, but I was already itching for my old, familiar arsenal, which had been lost when I’d been captured by my deranged relatives. I’d escaped, but hadn’t been exactly in the mindset to find my confiscated stash as I’d bolted from the place in my dragon form, then promptly flown far, far away.
I knocked softly on the light blue door of the tiny stucco house. It was the darkest house on the street, the porch lit only by the streetlights. From what I could see of the inside from the small, twin front windows, every light inside of the house was off, as well.
The place looked deserted. There was even an old for sale sign in the tiny desert landscaped front yard.
I wondered briefly if I was somehow at the wrong address when the door flew open and a hard hand yanked me inside. A harsh voice that I recognized well kept me from lashing out at the sudden contact. “About time,” Caleb told me, shutting the door quietly, then dragged me further into the dark house.
I shook him off, waving him ahead of me when he shot me a glance.
I certainly didn’t need the sociopath chameleon alien to hold my hand.
He led me down a dark hallway to a door with faint light showing through the bottom. I was surprised, when he opened it, that it led to a basement. Basements were hard to come by in Vegas, especially in a tiny house like this one. But it did explain why the rest of the house was completely dark.
Caleb waved me down the narrow stairway first, closing the door very quietly behind us.
I just blinked for a moment when I saw the inhabitants of the top secret basement meeting place, and what they were doing.
Christian and Luke both rose as I entered, but I didn’t miss what filled their computer screens, the bright colors vivid even across the room.
Christian was the dragon slayer to my dragon, we were an odd pairing but it was hardly the oddest thing about me.
In fact to me it made a strange sort of sense to my way of thinking.
I’ve never needed an archenemy, I’ve always had myself.
So of course I made my natural enemy into my best friend. It was decades ago and he was one of a very small number of dragon slayers that lived in the States. When I’d found out he was living in my city, I’d scoped him out and even befriended him just to keep eyes on him and suspicion off me and my sister, but the calculation had ended there. Everything that our friendship became I attributed to enjoying each other’s company and making each other laugh. Normal friendship stuff had superseded all the natural instincts. I personally thought it was a heartwarming story even if he had tried to kill me once he finally found out what I was.
Christian positively beamed at me, rushing forward to lift me up in a bone-crushing hug, spinning me around and talking all at once. “We missed you, girl. And you’re all glowy and golden. Pretty. Is that what color your dragon is?”
I didn’t answer, since he was both squeezing the air out of me and not stopping long enough to let me get a word in.
Caleb managed to cut in with an answer. “The pictures I saw of her landing on the roof looked to be pale gold, or even silver, in the dark.”
“Ohhh,” Christian said, setting me down to study me. He took a lock of my hair between his fingers, rubbing it. “It’s so bright, it looks like it could rub off.”
I shrugged it off, not really worried about the after-effects of my dragon trance. I knew that they would fade away, eventually. I pointed at his computer. “How’s WoW treating you these days? Is that a new patch? Please don’t tell me that you made me come here for a top secret World of Warcraft party,” I told him archly. If they had, I was going to be royally pissed.
Christian waved a cursory hand at the gaming computers set up in the corner. “That? Naw. That was just to kill time.”
I looked at Caleb. He met my gaze with a very blank expression. “No, Jillian, we did not invite you here for a gaming party,” he said, his tone slightly disgusted.
I supposed that, while I could have expected something that silly from Christian, I should have known better with Caleb involved.
I was suddenly distracted by Luke, who had moved close behind me and gone to his knees, his head lowered.
Now Luke, he wasn’t a friend but a strange complication.
Oh Lord, he was still doing that.
I sighed.
“Um, hey, Luke. How’s it going?” I asked, patting his head rather awkwardly.
“Good, Mistress Jillian, now that I’ve gotten to see you again. My Mistress is even more beautiful than I remembered.”
Christian giggled like a school boy. I glared at him. I had no idea what to do with a submissive man. Generally, the men I hung out with were sarcastic, crude, dominant, aggressive, borderline or not so borderline psychotic, violent to the bat-shit crazy degree, and sometimes just plain obnoxious. None of those qualities could be called submissive. Frankly, I didn’t even know what to do with a man that didn’t give me shit just for breathing. Which reminded me…
I pointed a finger at Christian. “You need to stop baiting Dom. It’s gotten old already.”
His giggles died until he was just smiling at me, an almost fond expression on his face. “You know I’d do almost anything for you, girl, but I won’t do that.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. This meeting was not off to a productive start.
Caleb spoke, finally bringing up the reason I had come. “Tianlong is still in town, though the rest of his people left months ago. Luke here has joined his household, becoming one of his favorite pets. He overheard news of another dragon visiting Vegas, one of the Chinese, and he thinks it might be Drake. Luke needs to get back undercover very soon, but he refused to go without getting to see you, since he unfortunately overheard us talking about your return.”
Caleb gave Luke a very unfriendly look. “Well, here she is. Anything you want to say before you go back?”
Luke just shook his head, darting a quick glance at my face, then looking back down at my feet. “No. Everything I need to say to Mistress Jillian I’ve said in the letters that Christian is holding for her. And I have gazed upon her beauty. I can go back to my duties with a light heart.”
I shook my head at him, exasperated, but still, I tried to be nice. I could do nice. Sort of. “You’re, um, doing a good job, Luke. Thank you for helping us.”
He kissed my feet suddenly, and I backed hastily away, the room filling with Christian’s most obnoxious laugh.
“I am not worthy of your thanks,” Luke said, prostate on the ground.
I cringed, but tried to talk some reason into him. “You are, Luke. Of course you are. I’m proud of you. It sounds like you’re doing a really good job, and it’s a very selfless thing that you’re doing to help my sister.”
He turned his head until his cheek lay on the basement’s concrete floor, a look of near bliss on his face. “Mistress is so kind. I live to please you, Mistress Jillian,” he said.
I sent Caleb a wide-eyed help me kind of look. Luke’s kind of adoration made my skin literally crawl, and I didn’t know what the hell to do with it, especially since I owed the strange hunky sub so much for his unexpected help.
Caleb gave me his little shrug. That shrug said it all: Who knows? Who cares? Not me. Deal with it. It was Caleb in a nutshell.
And Christian was even less helpful, of course, just clutching his belly and laughing at me. If he’d been a few feet closer, I’d have kicked him.
“Get going, Luke,” Caleb finally said, after an awkward pause. “You know how to contact me if you learn anything useful.”
I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally made his embarrassingly adoring goodbyes.
Caleb seemed unaffected by the uncomfortable exchange, getting back to the point after Luke had gone. “We’re as sure as we can be that Tianlong doesn’t have Lynn. And we’re nearly positive that the Chinese took her. That makes Drake our most likely suspect. He’s due in town in five days. We need to have a plan for when he gets here. I say we kidnap him, torture him for information, and get this mess figured out, once and for all.”
I processed the information while he paused for long moments.
Christian showed considerable restraint, being that he was a dragon slayer and we were talking about an enemy dragon. For all of a minute. “And then we slay his ass!”
I sent him a baffled look, opening my mouth to retort. Caleb beat me to it. “No. We keep him until we have Lynn back. After that, whatever. Who cares? But we use him alive, as a hostage, until we get her back.”
Christian just sighed, not a bit surprised. “A slayer’s gotta try, ya know?”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s easy to say we’ll kidnap him. Harder to do it. We have a plan for that?”
Caleb smiled, his cold, creepy smile. “Yes. You owe Tianlong a date. It’s time to deliver.”
I groaned. I had been a tiny bit busy since I’d made that promise. I had completely forgotten the stupid thing. “It’s not a date. I promised him a meeting.”
He gave his little shrug. “You need to set it up, in six days, with the druids to act as intermediaries. I’m sure you can talk Dom into that, for your own safety and all. Drake won’t want to come anywhere near that meeting, being that he has to know that you’ll suspect he has your sister.”
“This will hopefully tie up Tianlong and the druids for a few hours, leaving Drake to Christian and me. And since the druids clearly won’t approve of kidnapping one of the few dragons that they aren’t actively warring with, you need to get as many of them involved with that meeting as you can manage. Make it real official, real political, and real long-winded. Hell, work the jealousy angle with Dom. If he knows that Tianlong wants you to have his dragon babies, that mess could last for days. If we really luck out, the whole thing might dissolve into outright war. You just have to get your psycho ex mad enough. You seem to have a talent for that. The more time you give us to work, the better our chances are of snatching Drake.”
Christian finally piped in, helpful as ever. “We’ll call it, ‘Operation: Baiting the Bear and Snatching the Dragon.’”
“We’re not calling it that,” I retorted instantly.
I closed my eyes, rubbing my temples. Caleb’s plans were usually solid, but this one already made me want to beat my own head against the wall. There was no question that I’d rather be in on the kidnapping part, as opposed to the whole meeting fiasco.
“Fine,” I said finally, “I’ll talk to Dom.”
“Good. And while you’re at it, get him to set up a meeting for us with their captured dragon.”
My eyes snapped open. Dom had mentioned something about that… and then promptly distracted me. “Who is it?” I asked Caleb.
His mouth hardened. Touchy subject. “We don’t know. We don’t know anything about him, and we haven’t been allowed to speak to him. They have him held in some sort of underground compound in the desert, but I haven’t been able to get close enough to check it out. Dom won’t tell us a thing. He wouldn’t even discuss the prisoner with us, until he saw you again.”
“Bastard thought we knew where you were,” Christian piped in. It had been an unusually long period of silence for him. “He thought that we just weren’t telling him.” He sounded disgruntled, his English accent growing thicker, at the thought.
I had to smile just a touch at that. Everyone in this room knew that if they had known where I was, and I hadn’t wanted them to tell Dom, there’s no way in hell that they would have, so him getting defensive about it was just good comedy. And very typical Christian.
“I’ll talk to him about that, too,” I assured them.
“Make sure to stipulate that we all get to talk to the dragon,” Caleb said, a hard glint in his eye.
I arched a brow at him. He was very much overestimating my skills of persuasion, but I supposed I’d try. “I’ll see what I can do. In the morning. Dom didn’t seem too happy with me when I left. I’m going to give him some time to cool off before I start asking for favors.”
Caleb shrugged. “No one knows how to play Dom like you do, so I’ll leave it to your discretion.”
I gave him a very hard look for that one. “That’s going a little far. I do not play Dom.”
Christian coughed slightly, muttering, “Like a fiddle,” under his breath.
I didn’t look away from Caleb, who had started it, but I suddenly had the strong urge to deck Christian.
Caleb met my eyes steadily. “Just calling a spade a spade. You can look at it through the filter of your emotions, if that makes you feel better, but I see it solely for what it is.”
I felt my temper boiling, though I knew Caleb well enough to see that he could never understand my feelings for Dom. “And that would be?”
“Extremely useful. I don’t see that as a bad thing. On the contrary. Wrapping one of the most powerful druids around your littlest finger is a very good play. But we’re getting off track. If you won’t ask him tonight, I have something else planned.”
I stayed silent, just waiting for him to continue.
I was trying real hard not to be pissed about his assessment of my relationship with Dom. I had never been so mercenary, never set out to make him utterly obsessed with me. And I certainly hadn’t chosen to stay just as obsessed with him, though no one ever seemed to notice my feelings.
I knew that the druids saw me as the cold bitch that had played with Dom’s emotions. I was used to that. Having my own friends thinking that… stung. But that was just how Caleb’s mind worked, so how upset could I get about it, really? And Christian was, well, an ass, likely giving me grief just because it tickled his fancy. I should have been used to them both, but I struggled for endless moments to stifle my rage and hell, my hurt.
Why was I being so sensitive? Was it the dragon trance, still keeping some hold on me? Was I feeling a sudden bout of postpartum depression? I really didn’t know.
Finally, when I thought I had a good handle on it, at least enough to drop the subject for the moment, I spoke. “What did you have planned?”
Caleb smiled his cold little smile. “A surprise. I’ll ride with you in your car. Christian, you follow us in yours.”
Christian was nearly vibrating in anticipation. “I love surprises.”
“It’s not for you,” Caleb said coldly.
Christian shrugged. “So? I still like surprises.”
I wondered, not for the first time, how these two men could be friends, spend significant time with each other, when they were very nearly polar opposites.
“I don’t like surprises,” I told Caleb. He knew that. Hell, everyone knew that.
He gave me his little shrug. “This surprise is unavoidable, so you might as well get it over with.”
I studied him closely, though I knew that was pointless. Caleb was exactly as readable as he wanted to be. It could have been a mimic thing. I had no idea, since I’d never met another of his kind. I mused that it may not have been a bad thing. The thought of more than one Caleb in the world just boggled the mind.
Being enigmatic and hard to read was one thing, expecting me to go blind into some surprise situation was quite another. “I’m not walking into anything blind, Caleb,” I told him frankly.
In a way, I trusted Caleb. He’d played reliable backup for me too many times to count, and he had obviously been actively involved in trying to find my sister, even without my having to ask. I had also played his backup many a time, so you could say we were even-steven.
Yes, I trusted Caleb to do exactly what he said he would, but only that. His keeping secrets left too many gray areas for my peace of mind. I wasn’t playing along until the rules were very clear. He knew me well enough to get that.
Finally, he caved, but he didn’t look pleased about it. Like I cared. “Christian and I were in on the raid. You know, the one that attempted to rescue you. We found some of your goodies there, and we were also nice enough to scour the desert for you, at the spot where you were taken. We recovered most of your weapons. They aren’t here. I’m keeping them at another location. Would you like to go get them?” He showed me his teeth in what the twisted bastard probably thought was a smile.
Now that was more like it. I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER TWO
SOCIOPATH CHAMELION ALIEN
“I have a druid tail,” I told Caleb as I pulled away from the house. Christian was parked in the back of the house where a small alleyway was attached to the garage. I’d heard his loud race car speed away before we’d even gotten into my car.
“Of course you do,” Caleb responded, his tone dry. “And if I know anything at all about Dom, your gear is covered in tracking devices, and so is this car. We’ll take care of it.”
I sent him a look. Caleb’s plans usually worked for what he intended them to, but I couldn’t exactly count on him to take Dom’s reaction into account. In fact, considering their history, I could pretty much assume that pissing Dom off royally would make Caleb’s day.
“Is there a reason why we have to lose them so fast tonight?” I asked. I didn’t like being tracked or followed either, but I wanted the trouble I would get for going straight off the radar even less.
“Your things are at a location that I would like to keep private. The druids keep enough damned tabs on me. My biggest weapon stash in town is not their business.”
Fair enough. Couldn’t blame him there. Knowing Caleb, he’d have things in that stash that would get him imprisoned or worse.
Of course, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be catching all sorts of hell for losing my tail later. I would be worrying about that later, though, since I very much wanted my weapons back. It wasn’t even a question.
“Make a left at the next light,” Caleb told me.
I did, watching the car that followed rather closely behind me. Whoever had been put on tailing duty wasn’t even bothering to be subtle about it. They must not have heard much about me.
“Make a right, here,” Caleb said as I drew almost even with a small side street.
I had to swerve rather crazily to make the turn, since he’d given me so little notice. “Maybe you should have driven,” I told him as I evened the car out, watching the dark SUV behind us careen wildly into the turn just behind us.
“This is more entertaining,” he told me dryly, and I shot him a look. His expression was deadpan, of course, but I knew that he was being very literal. Caleb did seem to find it endlessly entertaining to mess with me. And the annoyed druids behind us would certainly be icing on his cake.
“Right,” he said, and I had to make another sharp turn, even going slowly.
“Right,” he said again, maybe two minutes later.
“U-turn,” he said, when I had nearly passed another street.
“Dick,” I muttered, but I followed his instructions.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he shot back without expression.
Actually, I kind of would. I couldn’t even be sure what sex the sociopath chameleon alien was, really. His preferred form was male, but that didn’t mean a damn thing. I’d seen Caleb mimic me with perfect accuracy, and his sexuality, hell, that was anybody’s guess. We’d known him for years, decades even, and he’d only ever showed a leaning towards the A-sexual variety. Was there a specific sexuality for people who only got a hard-on for super badass weapons?
“Not firsthand, that’s for sure,” I shot back. Never hurt to be perfectly clear about things like that.
He snorted, an unusual noise from his usually stoic self. I shot him a look. His little smile was as good as a shit-eating grin on somebody else. “Trust me, you’re safe there. There’s only one thing I want your body for.”
My mind flashed back to the night before I’d done my little disappearing act. He’d been mimicking me then, wearing an obscene outfit that still made my cheeks heat in embarrassment.
“I really don’t like the sound of that,” I told him, my tone hard.
He gave his little shrug. “Nothing is free, Jillian. I know you know that. Don’t balk at my methods. There may come a time that I’ll need to mimic you perfectly. It may make all the difference between success and failure. You are a complicated woman. Complicated takes practice, even for me.”
He was full of shit. I just knew it. The bit about needing practice, and the implication that he’d been mimicking me for fun. I tried to level with him. “You are not allowed to mimic me for anything…bad. Got it?”
His smile was chilling. “I can live with that. That gives me a lot of wiggle room, though, you understand?”
I sighed. “I understand that your help isn’t free. Getting the best gun in the world at my back will cost me. That I understand.”
“Yes,” was all he said to that.
“Left,” he said, a few minutes later. I didn’t even know where we were anymore. The small streets in this area were barely lit, and huge concrete barriers lined the streets, small, dark houses nearly hidden on the other side of those barriers.
“Pull into this parking lot,” he said, and I did.
It was a small, deserted lot. The large, nondescript warehouse attached seemed disproportionately large for the lot. Caleb pulled something out of his pocket, pointing it at the building. A large panel that I hadn’t even realized was a garage door slid open smoothly and quickly. I pulled in without a word. It shut directly behind us. The druids would be getting pissy in a hurry about that one.
“Take off your jeans, shoes, and your bra. Leave your phone in the car, too, of course,” Caleb said brusquely, opening his door and getting out.
I did so, sighing. The repercussions were probably going to suck, but he was right. The druids would have slipped tracking devices into all of those, and taking the time to find them would only aggravate things. “You have more clothes for me, perchance?”
“Nope,” he said without a hint of remorse.
Braless, shoeless, and pant-less, I followed Caleb out of a door on the opposite side of the building from where we’d entered.
Christian was there, car running, door opened.
I got to crawl into the cramped back of his super tiny sports car.
Christian hooted at me. “Looks like I missed the party. I suddenly feel overdressed.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
Caleb got in quickly behind me. “Drive fast,” he said brusquely, shutting his door very quietly.
Christian took off like the hounds of hell were behind us. That, or some very pissed off druids.
“I at least need pants,” I complained, after we’d raced through half of the city, Christian finally driving rather sedately, for him.
“I’ll have something at the house,” Caleb said. “No bras, though,” he added.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I’d be happy just for some pants. I was surprised that Caleb even had those, since he had no need for clothing that I’d ever seen. As he could mimic people, so could he mimic clothes. I’d asked him once if he ever got cold. He had simply said no, without elaborating. Typical Caleb. I was lucky to have gotten an answer at all.
Lynn had told me that she’d tried to touch his clothing once, to see if it actually felt like clothing, since it was obviously mimicked. She’d told me that I should never ever try that, and that the only thing she’d learned from the experiment was not to mess with Caleb.
I’d had plenty of casual contact with him, grabbing his arm, or having him adjust a weapon’s harness for me here and there, but I’d heeded her words. Leave his clothes alone. It was sort of like asking me or Lynn about our age. A touchy subject all around. No possibility of getting a useful answer and endless potential to piss us off. Lose, lose.
We ended up in a neighborhood much like the one we’d begun in. A smallish house on a street crowded with cookie-cutter houses. It was a quiet neighborhood, the area neither particularly good or bad. Which, being Vegas, made it kind of bad. But only one meth-house on the block was not as bad is it could be. Yes, I know, I’d make a horrible Las Vegas realtor.
I didn’t mention that Caleb hadn’t bothered to blindfold me, or that Christian had obviously known where this place was without needing directions. Either Caleb was growing more trusting, or he was planning to ditch the house soon. I didn’t ask which, since he’d never give me a straight answer for a question like that.
Christian pulled his tiny car into the carport, and we filed out silently.
No one said a word as we entered the dark house. Like the other house, this one was completely dark, and Caleb didn’t turn on any lights as he led us through it. He told us to stop in the hallway, approaching a door about six feet away by himself. He typed in a code, then did a tongue scan to open the dark steel door.
Yes, a tongue scan. Only Caleb.
He pointed a finger at me. “No one is to know about the tongue thing,” he told me.
I just nodded, eyes wide in the dark. Weird sociopath chameleon alien. So there was something distinctive enough about his tongue that it could be considered identifying. I hadn’t particularly wanted to know that, in fact I found it disturbing, but I still made a note of it. In the very small mimic file in my brain, it went under the tab: More weird shit I’ve learned about Caleb.
Caleb led us into another basement, only turning the light on when we were all inside, and the door was shut behind us.
I started to walk down the stairs ahead of him once the lights were on.
“Wait,” he called, his tone casual. Still, I stopped on a dime. In the world of heinously scary, crazy booby traps, I imagined that Caleb was King. And I didn’t imagine for a second that what he claimed was his biggest weapons’ stash in the city didn’t have a failsafe, or ten.
He led us down the stairs, his steps very calculated. I watched his feet, seeing that he seemed to be stepping out a sort of pattern on the stairs as we descended.
“Do we need to follow your steps?” I asked him, hesitating behind him.
“No. Just don’t go ahead of me. The system is set up to allow me two companions.”
“What happens if there’s less than two?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“What happens if there’s more than two?” I tried.
Christian must have already known all of these answers. Otherwise, I couldn’t have imagined him not asking at least some of these questions himself.
“Boom,” Caleb said.
“Boom?” I asked.
Christian snorted. “Boom is a horrible explosion noise. It’s too simple. At least say Kaboom! Or make a cool noise accompanied by a gesture.” Christian demonstrated enthusiastically, making his hands into a ball that grew bigger and bigger, finally throwing his arms out in the universal sign for explodes.
I laughed. Caleb just gave his little shrug. “Boom gets the point across. If this house is breached, no more house.”
I arched a brow at him, trying not to get mad. “Just the house?” I asked.
He gave that evil little shrug. “No more block.”
I shook my head at him, my face tight. “You can’t put the entire neighborhood at risk just to keep your secrets.” My tone was hard.
“You can’t stop me,” he said, his own voice just as hard. He must have some very nasty secrets here indeed, to go to such lengths, and be so open with me about it. “Trust me, if this place is breached, this block going down is the least of our problems.”
Is ignorance bliss? Hell no. But I still didn’t want to know any more about this Pandora’s box of a house. Uncharacteristically, but not all that surprisingly, I stopped asking questions after that.
The basement was spartan, seeming almost empty, though it was a very tiny space considering the size of the house. I saw why before I could think much about it.
Caleb used his creepy tongue scan to access a panel in the smooth, dark gray wall. He very deliberately angled away from us so we couldn’t get a good look at his tongue while he did so. Fine by me.
An entire section of the wall just sort of lifted, and I stepped back, startled at the unexpected moving wall.
There was some kind of closet set up inside, though all I could make out was one large silver chest and a smallish black dresser. Other than that, it seemed empty.
“Your weapons’ stash doesn’t play well with others,” Caleb told me idly, stepping into the small space.
Perhaps my mind had been shying away from it. Perhaps I was very, very good at denial. Perhaps it was the dragon trance that made my mind forget the little things, like, oh, say a blood drinking war-axe that liked to get into my head, aggravating my already unhealthy bloodlust to a fever-pitch within a small amount of time, chanting kill, kill, kill until I fed it the blood that it craved.
Whatever it was that had made me very conveniently forget about the pain in the ass that was Torst, Caleb’s words quickly made me remember.
Right on the tail of that thought was another. If Caleb had recovered Torst for me, the damned axe would be in my head by now. But he wasn’t. Did that mean that Caleb hadn’t recovered the cursed thing?
That possibility was almost worse than the thought that he had. If he hadn’t recovered Torst, that meant that it was either lost in the desert, which was bad, bad, bad. Or else it meant that my deranged relatives had ahold of it, which was worse, worse, worse.
Caleb relieved my mind (kind of) when he opened the silver chest.
CHAPTER THREE
EXACTLY LIKE A NUTCASE
I saw the thing in the chest and braced myself for the onslaught.
I was both relieved and chagrined that Caleb had in fact recovered my bastard of a blood-thirsty axe. Or at least, it looked like he had…
I shot him a look. “What the hell? That looks like Torst, but he’s not talking. Torst never shuts up.”
Christian snorted. “You sound like a nutcase. An axe can’t talk.”
I rounded on him. “Torst can. He’s in my head if I’m even in the same building.” As I spoke, I pointed at my temple, showing him where Torst ‘talked to me.’
Exactly like a nutcase would do.
Christian’s brows shot up into his artfully messy blond hair. “I knew that you talked to Torst, but this is the first I’ve heard of him talking back. And here I just thought you were being funny when you had one-sided conversations with your bloodthirsty pet axe.” I could tell by his cheerful tone that he was making fun of me, which wasn’t a shocker. Christian would stop giving me shit at about the moment his heart stopped beating. He continued, “And what does the chatty axe say to you?”
I glared, but it was half-hearted at best. Having a talking pet axe did qualify me as at least borderline crazy.
“He says, ‘I thirst,’ a lot. And threatens to kill me. And threatens to kill you.”
Christian pointed at himself, letting out his most infectious laugh that was hard not to at least smile with. “Me? What did I ever do to Mr. Thirsty?”
I shrugged, not even trying to keep my smile back now. “It’s not personal. He threatens to kill all of my friends. And ya know, enemies, of course. He’s not particular.”
Christian tapped his temple in exactly the same spot that I had. “You should get some help for those voices in your head.”
“Yes. If by help you mean someone that can dispose of magical, immortal, bloodthirsty axes,” I shot back, unfazed, and not at all optimistic that I’d ever be so lucky as to actually find such help.
Christian opened his mouth, just the look on his face telling me that he was about to say something ornery, when Caleb cut in. “Trust me, this is Torst. Take him.”
“Why is he so quiet?” I asked him suspiciously.
Caleb just gave me dead eyes. “Maybe you should just enjoy the silence, instead of questioning it. Take your axe.”
I eyed the silver chest, taking a cautious step towards it. “Why does this feel like a trap?” I asked the room at large.
Caleb sighed, looking annoyed. He strode to the dresser, the only other thing inside of the strange closet. He opened the bottom drawer, pulling out a huge battle axe that shone even in the dim light of the closet, the brighter basement light behind me setting off the various jewels set into the handle in a rather dazzling display. It was pretty.
Warkitten was a showy axe, to be sure, but still a good one. It had been my favorite trusty weapon for over a decade, and if life sucked less, would be again. It was the weapon I preferred, the weapon I wanted. But I had promises to keep, and lives to save, namely those that Torst would take in someone else’s hands. I couldn’t trust anyone else to deal with the shit-storm that was Torst. I’d had a brief respite while it’d rotted in that storage unit back on Warm Springs road, but I knew I couldn’t push my luck like that again.
Caleb held Warkitten out to me, gripping the middle of the oversized battle axe so I could take the hilt easily.
I grabbed her with a little sigh. Even her handle was perfect, the grip having been adjusted with the softest leather over the hard metal until it was literally made for my hand.
Christian snorted. “It’s like Warkitten is your mistress, and Torst is your wife. You’re in love with the one, and obligated to the other. Weirdo.”
I had to laugh. And not even at his strange little analogy. “You dork. I’m a girl. Torst would be my husband, not my wife, in your screwed up little scenario.”
He just shrugged. “If you say so.”
“You have to take Torst. I’ve bought you about a week of its silence,” Caleb said quietly, not enjoying our not so witty repartee in the slightest. “I can’t keep that thing, as much as I’d love to. It’s not compatible with the hammer.”
I just blinked in surprise, because I’d forgotten about that cursed hammer, and also because what he’d just said was freaking strange. “Our weapons aren’t compatible?” I asked him slowly.
He rolled his shoulders, looking way too agitated about it for my peace of mind. “One person having them both in possession is a recipe for disaster. One wants power, the other blood. It’s been bad. The hammer is the safer bet for me. I don’t trust myself with the axe. As I said, it is a bad combination.”
I felt dread curl in my belly. That kind of a confession from Caleb hadn’t come from nothing. If he said that it had been bad, and Torst was involved, then the gods only knew how much blood had been spilled.
“What happened?” I asked very carefully.
He grew still as a stone. “You see that he’s silent. I don’t like voices in my head. I’ve been keeping him silent. I’m sure you know what keeps him silent.”
My hand tightened on Warkitten. “Not innocents,” I said, trying real hard not to make it a question.
He shrugged that little shrug, and I wondered how hard it would really be to take his head. “Innocent is such a strange word. Such a strange concept. Who is innocent, really?”
“Most humans are innocent,” I told him, my voice suddenly as cold as the grave. “And all children are innocent.”
“If you take time-travel into account, no one’s innocent on a long enough timeline,” Christian said unhelpfully.
“Very funny,” I said, rolling my eyes.
They looked intensely at each other and then at me.
“He’s joking,” Caleb said which made me think it actually wasn’t a joke now. “And I didn’t kill any children,” Caleb added.
“But you did kill humans. Who and why? And what else?”
“Let’s just say, Torst got to sample a little bit of everything. Even using your flawed logic on the issue, though, none of them could be considered innocent.”
I looked to Christian.
He held up his hands defensively. “We’ve been together almost constantly. Things have been bloody, but he didn’t kill anybody that didn’t need killing, even with Torst in the mix.”
I looked back at Caleb, far from appeased. Was he proving a point, trying to make me see that I needed to take Torst? He’d been riling me, and I wanted to know the reason. And of course, I still didn’t trust him to use what he called my flawed logic correctly. Christian had said that the two of them had been together ‘almost constantly,’ which left some disturbing wiggle room.
“I’ll take the axe, I always planned to, but why are you trying so hard to piss me off?” I asked him tightly.
“I just wanted to make sure that things are clear between us, in case you hear anything…later. Now you can’t say that I lied to you.”
I suddenly felt exhausted, just so impossibly tired that I couldn’t deal with another moment of this pissing contest. “You know that won’t mean shit if I find out you’ve done something that I can’t accept.”
He inclined his head. “I’m well aware. Take the axe.”
With a sigh I ran covetous hands over my axe ‘mistress,’ wishing that I could have even one thing that I wanted in life, even if it was just this pretty axe.
Instead, I always just got a mix of hard choices that were bitter as hell to swallow.
I took Warkitten back to the dresser, pausing at the chest for a long moment, glancing between the two weapons.
Torst was a huge, plain, beast of an axe, not a pretty thing about him, and certainly not a jewel in sight. His handle was cold metal. If you tried to wrap it, or refit it, he just reshaped however he damn well pleased. He looked like he’d be uncomfortable to handle, but that wasn’t really the issue at all. The issue was that when you were wielding him, you’d be so consumed with bloodlust that you wouldn’t give a thought to how the grip felt.
I thought of all of my deranged relatives and how I didn’t have a clue just how they’d gotten that way. I’d always stood by the idea that the family dementia was not a forgone conclusion, but what else could I do? I supposed I could have my BFF dragon slayer kill me, but that seemed like quitting. I was not a quitter, just a runner. There’s a difference. Or at least I liked to think so.
No matter how I tried to spin it, though, I just couldn’t imagine that becoming the warden for that axe again was good for my sanity. I wasn’t exactly short on bloodlust to begin with. That’s why the thing had stayed in a storage container for nearly a decade, but I couldn’t do something like that again. It had been stupid, and irresponsible, and a punishment for the cursed thing. It had also been a miracle that nothing truly heinous had happened as a result. That axe in the hands of even the most harmless human on the planet was bad news.
With ill-grace and a bad attitude, I shut away Warkitten, and reached for Torst. I couldn’t even feel too relieved about the fact that he stayed silent at my touch. That silence had apparently been bought with a lot of gods-only-know what blood.
Caleb emptied out the top two drawers of the dresser, filling two large duffle bags.
“Two goody bags to go for the crazy woman,” Christian said cheerfully.
I punched him in the arm.
Caleb tossed me my axe shoulder harness, and I caught it, but just looked at it.
“We aren’t sleeping here?” I asked.
Both men sent me a nearly identical, baffled look. That was a disturbing new development. The two of them had definitely bonded while I’d been away.
“You’ve become quite the copacetic pair. Will you two be sending out Christmas cards together this year?”
Christian laughed. “In a prom pose. I call big spoon.”
“This is not a place to sleep,” Caleb said, ignoring us. “This is a cover for a stash. I never stay here for more than twenty minutes, as I don’t really feel like getting blown to pieces in my sleep if someone tries to breach the place.”
Fair enough. “Lead on,” I told them. I needed sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
TELEPATHIC EGG
We wound up staying at yet another small, cookie-cutter house less than twenty minutes away. This one belonged to Christian.
“I wonder how many houses you have between the two of you,” I mused as Christian pulled into a two-car garage.
I saw Christian shoot Caleb a glance. “I have six properties in and around the Vegas valley, but I think it’s safe to say we’ll never hear how many Caleb has.”
“That would be a safe bet,” Caleb agreed succinctly.
I wasn’t surprised.
“Don’t feel bad, Jillian,” Christian said as he opened his door. “We have a lot of houses, but you have a brand new, shiny Dodge Challenger. Or at least you did, until we ditched it. Let’s hope that Dom didn’t tear it to pieces in a jealous fit of rage.”
I grimaced. That wasn’t going to go over well, but Dom really should have known better than to have me tailed.
The house was small, with three tiny bedrooms, and I crashed hard on the twin bed that Christian showed me to.
When I woke again it was light out. Still early morning, by the direction of the sun. That was good, since taking all day to get back to my abandoned car would only aggravate things, I was sure.
Someone had left me jeans and even a sports bra that almost fit. It was downright sweet. I got dressed and grabbed my axe. It was still mysteriously quiet.
Christian and Caleb dropped me off a full block away from the garage where I’d left the car. Caleb handed me a garage door opener as I climbed out of the backseat.
“Pussies,” I called to them loudly as they peeled away like they were being chased, but I couldn’t really blame them. Dom wouldn’t hurt me, no matter how mad he was. No one in their right mind could assume that Caleb and Christian would get the same treatment.
I was somewhat relieved when I arrived at the garage and found no Dom.
Of course, there was a team of druids swarming the place, and they converged on me the instant they saw me.
They flanked me, stopping about four feet away, all of them looking wary in their three-piece-suits.
I didn’t recognize any of them.
There was one woman in the group. She had dark hair, a level stare, and she spoke for the lot. “Are you unharmed? The Arch was alarmed when we found your car abandoned, and your tracking devices… discarded. My first order is to ascertain that you are unharmed.”
I studied her, wondering how to get out of this mess. But should I, really? We’d be working with the druids and getting higher up on their shit list was hardly a good idea. “I’m just fine. What was your second order?”
“To contact the Arch and update him.”
I nodded at her. “Go right ahead.”
She had her cell to her ear, her gaze unwavering on me.
“What’s the third order?” I asked.
“To…escort you back to the casino.”
I snorted. Escort, my ass.
“Sir,” she spoke into the phone. “We found her. She assures us that she is unharmed.” She paused. “She came back to her car. She’s cooperating.” She glanced at me, as though to make sure I hadn’t bolted.
She answered a few more questions, then handed her phone to me.
I grimaced as I put it to my ear. This was the part I’d been dreading—facing him myself.
“Hey,” I said quietly, not sure what else I could say.
“Hey,” he repeated back, his tone icy. “Some foreign… diplomats are arriving in town today. We’re assembling a task force to combat the rogue dragon threat. We’re arranging a meeting this afternoon, and I’d like you to attend.”
“Um, sure,” I said, still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I couldn’t believe that he would just let the issue of me disappearing for the night drop without a word.
“Caleb and Christian need to be there, too, since I assume they’ll want to be involved.”
I assumed the same. As much as the two of them couldn’t stand the druids, they wouldn’t be able to resist the chance to join a task force that would have the legal right to take out some dragons. I knew I couldn’t.
“I’ll let them know,” I said.
There was a long pause on the other end. “Thank you.” Another long pause. “And could you… please return to the casino posthaste. I’ve set up a secure room for our son, and I’d like you to approve it.”
That surprised me, but I agreed to it readily enough.
My approval… What a strange way to word it. Dom had never needed anyone’s approval for anything.
My security detail at least let me drive myself back to Dom’s casino, though of course they tailed me. I didn’t even give them a hard time, driving straight there.
I parked valet, and three of the druids made it to the door before I did, holding it open for me.
Two others grabbed the bags out of my car, following me with them.
“We’ll put your bags away for you, ma’am,” one of the male druids told me.
Caleb had said he’d earned me a week of silence from Torst, and I tended to trust him about something that important.
“They’ll need to be locked up tight,” I decided aloud. “No one should have access to them but me.” I figured that covered all the bases and bought me some time.
“We’ll put them in a safe in your suite,” he assured me.
My suite? I wondered about it but figured I’d save that question for Dom since it was a bit embarrassing that I didn’t know where I was staying.
Was it his suite of rooms or had I been assigned my own?
I shook off the musings. Time enough for that later. “What are your official orders concerning me?” I asked the female druid.
“To assist you, if needed, and to protect you, if necessary,” she answered quickly.
I rolled my eyes. Those duties were bogus, but she wasn’t the one to take it up with. It wasn’t her fault she’d been assigned as my babysitter.
I opened my mouth to ask her where to go, when the very air around us changed. I shivered, every hair on my body rising as a surge of power made its way to us.
I had no doubts about just who was approaching.
We passed through two sets of doors before we were in the casino. The normal sounds of slots clinking and music seemed drowned out, as though the man approaching had overwhelmed every sense with his overpowering presence.
I met the druid woman’s gaze. “Is it always like this now? His power never calms down? He feels like a walking powder keg, and I can’t even see him yet.”
She looked puzzled by that. “He is the Arch,” she said, as though that should explain it. I’d met an Arch or two, and the position most definitely did not explain it. I would have bet my life on the fact that there wasn’t a druid alive more powerful than Dom, and that power just seemed to be growing.
His face was expressionless, his stance stiff, as he finally turned a corner and came into view.
I figured he was in a bad mood, though I couldn’t read it, but something else instantly distracted me. There was a small black patch over his right eye, his wolf’s eye. It was a small patch, and didn’t seem to be attached by any strings. I’d never seen him wear such a thing before.
“Did something happen to your eye?” I asked him the second he was within ear shot.
One of his dark brows went up. “This way,” he said, striding back the way he’d come.
“Is your eye okay?” I asked again, sincerely worried.
“It’s fine. I wear this whenever I’m among humans.”
“You never used to.”
“Things change. Appearances must be kept. The eye could raise questions.”
I didn’t like that, hated that he had to hide even the physical aspects of who he was in public now.
“Fucking druid politics,” I muttered.
I saw a corner of his mouth turn up, but he didn’t comment.
“Stay here,” he told the druids who had been trailing us as we approached a lone elevator. He used two keys before the doors slid open. I followed him in.
“I spoke to Caleb and Christian about the meeting this afternoon,” he said idly as he punched the button on the elevator to send us to the bottom level. “They said they’d be there.”
I was tense, waiting for him to say something about me ditching my tail the night before, but he didn’t bring it up, and I sure wasn’t going to.
“Thank you,” I responded. Caleb had made me memorize his current number, but I hadn’t had a chance to call yet.
“I know that you work best with those two, and the three of you will certainly be essential for the task force. If there is anyone alive with firsthand experience in dragon-slaying, they aren’t on any of our rosters, so you three have a distinct advantage.” As he spoke, he took off his eye patch, slipping it into his pocket.
I knew of at least one who had experience slaying nearly the entire female population of my family, though I couldn’t imagine he’d be on any druid roster.
“The dragons have at least one slayer, as well,” I told him as we disembarked from the elevator. “One with experience killing many dragons. He is my father’s pet.”
He sent me a startled look, and I thought I caught a hint of the worry in his eyes. “I’ll need to know all about that. You’ll brief me later.”
I sighed, knowing I was about to piss him off royally, but unable to help it. “I need to talk to the dragon you have in custody. How about we exchange a briefing for a talking?”
His jaw clenched, but he took it better than I’d thought he would. “We’ll discuss it later. For now, I need to walk you through the steps I’ve taken to secure our son before I have to leave on urgent business. Everything else can wait.”
We passed two sets of guards in the hallway before we made it to the next door.
“There will be four guards in this hallway at all times,” he explained, “as well as two to guard the elevator doors up top.”
He walked me through a hand print scan, eye scan, and voice activated door, inputting my information into all three.
“Who all has access to the vault itself?”
“You, me, and my lieutenants, and one of the seven will be on active guarding duty at all times.”
I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help it. I would never trust the bitch. “I’m assuming Siobhan is the exception to that?”
He sighed. “She’ll never be guarding our child, if that’s what you’re getting at. She’s loyal, but I knew you wouldn’t approve of that.”
“She shouldn’t have access, either. She’d harm him if she could. You’re being naive if you don’t believe that.”
“She is exempted from guarding, and she would be unable to access the vault if she tried. I haven’t even told her about it, though with this many guards, our child won’t be a secret from anyone for long. I didn’t see another option. Better to err on the side of caution than to rely on discretion alone. Any more questions?”
I glanced around, making sure we were alone. We were in a small, nondescript white room. “Where’s your lieutenant now?”
“The next room. They will act as the last line of defense before the vault.”
A nine digit code that I made myself memorize took us into the next secure room.
Collin was lounging on a low white couch reading a book when we entered.
He stood, smiling at the sight of us. “Dom! Jillian! Gods, it’s good to see the two of you together again. Congratulations on the baby! What a shocker! You do know how to make an entrance, Jillian!”
I smiled, perpetually surprised to run into a friendly face among the druids. Collin always had been the most amiable of the bunch. “Thanks. If it’s any consolation, the baby surprised me as much as anyone.”
“A twelve year pregnancy!” he laughed. “I can see how that might surprise!”
Dom only nodded to his cousin/lieutenant, going immediately to the next door. Clearly, he wasn’t in the mood to chat. “Jillian, come memorize this code.”
I obeyed, watching him unlock the combination. I didn’t have a photographic memory, by any means—there was too much random junk in my brain—but I could memorize a few nine digit codes if it was crucial.
The watermelon-sized egg lay on a small round bed that sat low to the ground, perched upright on soft white cushions. It was a paler golden today, setting off the metallic tones still present in my own skin.
I had it cradled in my arms before Dom had closed the door behind us. I traced my fingers over the patterns etched in its surface. They changed, I’d noticed, as the egg grew.
I did this for several minutes before I realized that Dom still stood at the closed door. He watched us, face carefully blank, though I saw something raw move behind his mismatched eyes as I studied him.
“Our telepathic egg,” I said affectionately.
We shared a warm look.
“I need to go now. I’m late to an important meeting,” he said, not moving.
I nodded, my attention going back to the egg.
Dom contradicted himself almost instantly, moving to kneel beside us. He touched one big hand to the egg, the other moved to cup the back of my head. “I’ve named him,” he said quietly.
I shot him a startled look.
“He wanted me to.” He sounded a touch defensive, which was downright strange coming from him. “Somehow, through his telepathy, he’s picked up knowledge about druid customs. He knew it was my duty to name him, and so he asked me to.”
“What did you name him?” I asked.
“Conan.”
I nodded. It had been his father’s name, and I’d half expected it.
“He told me that he has the wolf’s eye. And he speaks Druidic.”
That had me speechless for a moment, my mind racing with the implications. “How could he know what color his own eyes are? And how could he learn an entire second language?”
Dom looked less puzzled about that than I was. “The eyes would have a feeling—a changed nature. He says the beast-call wars with the dragon inside of him. You know as well as I that having two natures is a complicated balance. He’ll have a bigger challenge ahead of him than most, but he’s been given more power, so we can hope that it will balance out. And the Druidic…who can say? He was inside of you for twelve years, and conscious for at least some of it, and if there is a limit to his telepathy, I do not know it.”
I knew I didn’t need to tell him, but I said it anyway. “No one can know about the telepathy. The things he’s picked up about druids already would make him such a target…”
He nodded. “I know. No one will hear it from me. I think our biggest concern is that he may reveal the secret himself. We don’t know who he might try to contact.”
“The girl,” a small voice said in my head.
I looked down at Conan’s egg, the voice now familiar to me. “What girl?” I asked him.
“The girl you met. The one with the lavender eyes. You need to let her see me.”
The girl from the club where I’d gone to look for Lynn, I recalled. I’d run into her briefly the night before I’d disappeared, and I’d known she wasn’t human. I’d sent Luke to find her. If all had gone as planned, she should’ve been in druid protective custody.
I looked up at Dom. “Did a human named Luke bring you a little girl with purple eyes and dark blond hair?”
He nodded. “She doesn’t say much, but we’ve put her in one of our schools. She’s doing well, and she’s safe, though we still know nothing about her.”
“She’s not human.”
“So I gathered. What is she, then?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. The answer came from a different source.
“She’s half-dragon kin, half-human. The dragons must not know you have her. She is ours. Her name is Yinlong.”
“Ours?” Dom asked.
Somehow, Conan could talk to us both at once. It was insane. And good to know.
“A part of our family. You must let her see me. It is hurting her to stay away.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slowly.
“Hurting her how?” Dom asked.
“I can’t explain it. Bring her to see me. Let her have the codes. She is safe. She is family.”
Dom and I exchanged a look.
“Not even born yet and already giving orders and keeping secrets,” Dom muttered, though his tone was fond, and his mouth was turned up in a smile.
“Will you let her see him?” I asked.
Dom nodded. “I’ll bring her myself as soon as I can. She must already know he’s a telepath. They’ve clearly been speaking to each other so there’s no reason to keep her away. I’m not giving her any codes, though.”
“You’ll learn to trust her, and then you’ll give her the codes.”
Dom and I shared a look that said not likely.
“I have to go. The meeting is in four hours. I’ll see you then,” Dom said.
He kissed my forehead, then Conan’s egg, said something softly in Druidic, and left.
I lay down on the tiny bed with Conan, content just to be near him for a while.
I was not a peaceful soul. I rarely sat down, rarely rested unless it was for required for sleep. But being near Conan was different, or rather, I was different when I was near him. I could lie beside him for hours, doing nothing but tracing his beautiful golden shell.
My world was in chaos, but one thing was clear. Motherhood was changing me.