Crossing Fire
This is the followup to Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters #1)
CHAPTER ONE
HOT MESS
JILLIAN
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 bootcut 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 stuccoed 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 dragging 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 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. Preetty. 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'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? 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.
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 batshit 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 was kissing 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 dragonslayer 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, yanno?"
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 I. 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 snapped back 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. 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. Him 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. 33
Now that was more like it. I nodded. "Let's do it."
CHAPTER TWO
Sociopath Chameleon 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 for eternity 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 first-hand, 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 weapons 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 area, the neighborhood 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 forgot the little things, like, oh, say a blood drinking war-axe that liked to get into my head, aggravating my already unhealthy blood-lust 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 forgot 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.