Battle With Fire by K.F. Breene
Four
“Oh, hello!”Dizzy beamed when he answered the door. He was a guy in his late sixties with a stained blue shirt featuring three rips and one obvious burn mark. His old jeans sagged and collected over his red runners. Gray hair stood up from his head, as though electrically charged, and I could smell the magic coating him. He’d been creating spells.
His gaze fell on Penny, and his expression instantly drooped.
“Oh no, what happened?” He stuck out his arm and turned, shepherding Penny inside.
“She’s sad that she followed my orders and left the elves’ castle with her life,” I said, following them.
I paused in the doorway and turned back. The night paused with me, utter stillness coating the street. Clouds gently drifted across the clear sky, promising a turn of weather to come.
That was what my life felt like right now: the pause before turbulent weather.
A wire crossing the street swayed softly, and a strange feeling came over me. A pulsing almost, deep down in my blood. A likeness, maybe, drawing nearer. Creeping ever closer.
I frowned, confused by that thought, and continued to peer out into the night. The moon shone down on the placid street. The low hum of a car engine reverberated off the houses, someone probably turning onto the street down the way.
“What’s the matter?” Callie stepped out with me, placing her hands on her hips. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing. It’s early for no activity on this street, isn’t it? It seems too quiet.”
Her brows lowered, and she stepped farther onto the porch, looking down the street to the right, then turning and surveying the left. The sound of the car motor increased in volume, coming closer.
Shivers washed over me, but I already knew who was coming. Sure enough, a black Town Car pulled into the driveway, Darius’s surly kinda assistant, Moss, in the driver’s seat. Darius would be in the back. I could feel his proximity through our fully restored bond.
More shivers coated me, though, and since they weren’t delicious Darius-is-close kind of shivers, I looked away from them and shifted my focus to what was going on inside of me, trying to tap into the sensation. I tilted my head, feeling movement of some kind. Not organs or anything, but…
“What is the matter?” Darius’s deep voice washed over me, somewhat soothing the feeling.
“That’s what I asked,” Callie said. “She said it was too quiet. I agree. Something doesn’t feel right.”
I shook my head as Darius’s hand slid down my back. “I don’t know. It’s…” I put my hand to my sternum. “Something is weird.”
“Danger?”
I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, unsettled. Moss stood beside the driver’s-side door, staring at me with a frown.
“You’ve been missing me, haven’t you?” I called to him, waving like a woman with a handkerchief in the fifties. “You’ve missed my sass. I know, I grow on people.”
His frown deepened into a scowl. He lowered into the car. Clearly he wasn’t staying.
“I shall miss you,” I said as he shut the door. Any hope of him warming up to me had been dashed when Darius trekked into the Underworld after me, putting his eternal life in danger, yet again. Moss did not like to see his master in peril. He blamed me.
I figured stoking the flames would make it easier for the poor guy to stick to his guns. Also, it was really fun. Always had been.
“Ah!” Callie pointed to a passing Cadillac. “There’s a car.” She looked at the sky. “Looks like rain. People are probably just staying in tonight.”
“How is your night going?” Darius asked as we headed through the hall and into the kitchen.
I breathed in his mouth-watering spicy-sweet cologne, mixed with the smell of clean cotton and man. A formfitting suit hugged his well-built body, showing off all the planes and angles of his defined muscles.
“Did you have a dinner or something?” I asked as we entered the kitchen.
“A meeting.”
“Are you planning my future without telling me again?”
“In a way, yes.”
I jerked away from him on impulse, searching his handsome face for more information. His hazel eyes, speckled with green and gold, gave nothing away.
I sighed and let it go. He’d formed an elaborate network in the Underworld specifically to rescue me if I was taken and trapped down there. His plans hadn’t exactly worked out like he’d hoped, but his presence down there had helped me keep my head. I had a lot to thank him for.
When we first got together, I’d demanded that he keep me aware of his various machinations, but his maneuverings had an obscene number of layers. To parse them, I’d need to learn a lot of mundane details I had no interest in knowing. Given that everything he did was for us, something he’d proven many times over, I’d decided to let it go. He had the best of intentions, and if they didn’t work out, he had me to save him. I could live with that.
Why are you smirking? he thought.
“No reason. Just having a private think. Butt out.”
He slipped his arm around my waist as we leaned on the counter. Penny sat at the island, a glass of whiskey with a single ice cube in front of her. Veronica, a cute girl with tight brown curls, a curvy build, and kind eyes, was at her side. Two black markers waited on the countertop between them.
“Hi,” Veronica said to me, and her face turned red. Although she wasn’t magical, she’d lived on the periphery of our world for long enough to get a few glimpses of magical mayhem. She’d made it through those, but I still tended to make her nervous for some reason. I had no idea why, because I always took care to mind my crazy around her—Callie’s orders.
Penny heaved a sigh. “Yeah. We should probably go now, or I won’t be able to see the signs.” She was clearly answering a previously posed question.
“Where are you going?” Callie demanded as she filed into the kitchen.
“Neighborhood watch.” Veronica, sporting a supportive expression, rubbed Penny’s back and then got off her stool. She took the two markers, waited for Penny to stand, and handed one over.
“This will make you feel better,” Veronica told her as they headed out. “It always makes me feel better, at any rate.”
Should we let them go? Darius thought to me. Penny doesn’t seem completely…at ease.
I gave a shallow nod so Penny wouldn’t catch it. In this mood, if anyone messed with her or Veronica, they wouldn’t get a chance to be sorry—they’d be dead too quickly.
“I do not get how correcting the grammar and punctuation on handmade garage sale signs would help anyone feel better,” I said as they turned the corner. “If that is their definition of a neighborhood watch, they didn’t have a very rough neighborhood growing up.”
“Of course they didn’t have a rough neighborhood growing up.” Callie opened a cabinet and pulled a glass out. She eyed Darius.
“I would love a cognac, if you have it,” he said.
She set the first glass down, reached a little higher, and brought down a snifter.
“That woman was sheltered within an inch of her life by her mother,” Callie said, moving the glasses to the island and pulling out two bottles, one for Darius and one for me. “And Veronica fixes those signs because she is an editor and hates seeing grammatical errors. It’s ridiculous, but it’s their thing.” She poured my glass and handed it over, then turned back for Darius’s.
“About as ridiculous as a sixty-year-old woman wearing a gold, faux-velvet sweat suit with ‘money maker’ written on the butt?” I asked with a smirk.
She handed Darius’s glass to him and ignored the comment. “If it makes Penny calm down a little, it’s okay by me.”
“She is incredibly wound up,” Dizzy said, standing at the island. His protruding belly flattened against it. “She did the right thing, leaving Reagan to that horrible fate, but—”
“Would you stop calling it a horrible fate?” Callie demanded, picking up a half-filled tumbler of whiskey from the far counter by the stove and finding a stool. “It only makes things worse.”
“Well?” he demanded, raising his voice. “You were there. It looked like a horrible fate. But we had to go, I was saying. Otherwise they would’ve killed us.”
“Ms. Bristol was exemplary in the Underworld,” Darius said. “I think what she needs is to stand on her own and assure herself that she can be a hero if she needs to be.”
“She tried today, but that weasel Garret at the MLE office got in her way. What’s going on with the Mages’ Guild?”
“That’s another thing.” Callie took a sip of her drink as Emery walked into the room. After spending years on the lam, hiding from the elves and the previous corrupt Mages’ Guild, Emery had learned to be the right kind of dangerous. He was also quite easy on the peepers.
He ran his hands through his wet hair, his graphic T-shirt smelling fresh and his sweats without a single spill. Clearly he was right out of the shower. He must’ve worked out earlier, or maybe done arduous spell working while Penny was being annoyed by Garret.
“She’s got far too much on her plate.” Callie got up and moved to the fridge. She took out a beer and handed it to Emery. “You do too, young man. Far too much on your plate. You can’t hope to head up the Mages’ Guild and be Reagan’s right hand. It’ll never work.”
“Where’s Penny?” Emery asked.
“Neighborhood watch with Veronica,” Dizzy answered.
Emery nodded and popped the top on his beer, his blue-eyed gaze coming my way. “How’d it go with the bounty hunter gig?”
I briefly explained, watching as a grin worked up Emery’s face. He loved Penny’s antics almost as much as I did. I also let them know about Roger.
“Penny thinks he’s manipulating me,” I finished.
Emery held up a finger. “You glossed over the merpeople part of that story.” He sat down at the island and leaned forward. “What happens when they’re in the water? I tried to find out once, and one of their males almost killed me.”
I held my breath.
“Really?” He squinted an eye at me. “You’re really not going to spill?”
“Oh my God, I want to. I really do. But I can’t.”
“Ask Cahal,” Darius said, his smooth, deep voice sending a shiver down my back. I leaned into his hard body. The guy could still get to me. All this time together, and it still felt fresh and new. Exciting. Or maybe I was just horny. Hard to say. “He doesn’t seem to have any qualms regarding spilling other creatures’ secrets.”
“Still mad about the unicorn slip, huh?” Cahal had given up the vampires’ secret means of creating new vampires to Roger, of all people, although he’d also revealed another interesting tidbit: new shifters could be made—not birthed—with the use of dragon blood. I grinned up at Darius. “Speaking of, what’s going on with them? We’re pretty sure Vlad’s going to try to bogart them, right?”
“The unicorns are their own creatures. They will choose what course they will take, though they are partial to Vlad. We will need to meet with their matriarch before long and plead our case. I have already spoken with her, but she has requested your attendance as well. If the elves are defeated, there is a question on where they might roam. Everyone has interests in the coming war, including the magical creatures.”
My heart leapt, my stomach flipped, and a stupid grin worked up my face. I hadn’t seen them since my first visit to their territory, back when I was helping Darius solve a case. They were the vampires’ best kept secret (until Cahal had blabbed, clearly not afraid of vampire retribution). I’d wanted to get back there for a long time, but it just hadn’t worked out.
“Totally,” I said, gushing.
“When we need to move the dragons, we’ll fly them to the unicorns’ land on the way to our destination. We might as well hit two birds with one rock.”
“Got that saying wrong, but what’s this now? Move the dragons?”
“I sure would like to see a dragon,” Dizzy said with glittering brown eyes. His smile lit up the room. “Imagine! I had no idea they even existed! Wouldn’t you like to ride a dragon, Callie?”
“Have you lost your mind? I’d fall off inside of a minute. You would, too. You’d forget what you were doing and slip right off.”
“How can you forget that you’re riding a dragon?” he replied.
“How can you forget that there is a flowerbed between your shed and the house? I don’t know, but you manage to trample through it at least twice a day.”
“We’ll meet Roger at his packs’ compound in central Montana,” Darius said as the dual-mages continued arguing. Emery switched seats on the island so he could hear us over the bickering of the older married couple. “A few of my people are setting up accommodations there now, blacking out, that sort of thing. I’ll only bring those obviously loyal to me. Vlad is employing the same tactic with his vampire allies. At present, there is no real way to discern numbers. Many are still on the fence, waiting to see how things shake out.”
“They’d rather join with Lucifer than Roger,” I said.
“Yes, for obvious reasons. Roger and I are working amicably together now. We have an understanding. I doubt we will ever trust each other, though.”
“Yeah, but…you don’t trust anyone.”
“I trust you, mon amour.” He kissed me on the temple. “Vampires are practical, though. They will choose the side most likely to win. We’ll need to have a good showing. Anyway, the pack has close to a hundred thousand acres in Montana. The dragons should be happy there. There’s plenty of game to hunt and space to fly.”
“But they’ll need to go through the Realm to get there,” Emery said.
“Yes.” Darius slowly took a sip of his cognac. “We obviously can’t have dragons flying over humans, even if the journey wasn’t too far for a single trip. No, we’ll have to take them through the Realm. We are plotting the fastest ways, hoping to fly over the least amount of enemy troops.”
Shivers racked my body. Enemy troops. The battle was coming soon, and the battle lines were being drawn. I’d been in a lot of skirmishes at this point, some larger than others, but this was the war to end all wars. I’d unabashedly use my magic, and unfortunately have to combat someone just as strong but a lot more experienced. Not to mention the elves, whose king and queen were just as strong as me and also a lot more experienced. I was the newbie in all of this, and I was expected to take on the masters, one of whom I really didn’t want to fight. Not after getting to know him.
“It’ll be fine,” I muttered, and drained my glass dry. Callie hurried up to refill it. She must’ve known what I was thinking.
“When are we leaving?” Emery asked.
Darius rubbed my back supportively, which I thought was a little odd because I wasn’t that shaken up about kicking this off, until he spoke.
“I want to speak with the Seers tomorrow,” he said.
“Nah.” I pushed away from him and took Callie’s proffered drink. “They didn’t do such a bang-up job the last go-round. If I was going to end up in the Underworld anyway, I didn’t need to make a pit stop in Elf Torture Land. I could’ve revealed myself to the demons, and they would’ve taken me with them, handy as you please. Penny wouldn’t be having nightmares of leaving me to die, Cahal wouldn’t have to paint torture porn or whatever he gets up to, and I wouldn’t have to choose between taking my vengeance on the elves and saving the fucking day. The Seers can chew on rocks for all I care. I don’t want to hear what they have to say.”
“Our friendship with Karen has certainly been…strained since we got back,” Dizzy said softly.
“I’ll say,” Callie grumbled, thunderclouds on her face. She and Dizzy tried to brush it off, but they hadn’t fared much better than Penny when it came to leaving me behind. I heard thoughts that slipped, felt it in their tight hugs, and saw it in their sorrowful eyes. I was physically tortured, but they’d been tortured emotionally. It had probably left a bigger scar on them than on me.
“Let’s talk about what you said earlier,” Darius said smoothly, and I braced myself, recognizing that cunning gleam in his eyes.
“Which part?” I asked suspiciously.
Emery drained his beer and pushed it in front of him. Callie moved to the fridge to get another. Clearly this would not be a sober affair.
“Roger manipulating you,” Darius responded, suddenly on point.
I waved it away. “He didn’t. Penny was just overreacting.”
“That’s what’s so fascinating,” Emery said, studying me. “If it was Darius, or me, or even Lucifer, who’s supposed to be the master of lies, you’d clue in to what we were doing. You might not even register it as manipulation, but you’d instinctively know someone was trying to tell you what to do, and you being you, you’d push back. I’ve seen it time and again. But Roger so obviously turns you in the direction he desires and pushes, and you bat your eyes like a lost lamb and go with it.”
“First, I did not bat my eyes. When have I ever? Second, I didn’t agree to anything other than showing up on the battlefield with them. Honestly, you guys, he isn’t trying to get anything besides help. His reasoning was…reasonable. My logical side gets it completely. I just have to work a little to keep that side of me in control, that’s all.”
“Ah.” Darius’s lush lips wrapped around the edge of his glass, and I tore my gaze away. Now was not the time for randy thoughts.
Emery nodded like Darius had actually said something meaningful, and I wondered if suddenly I wasn’t the only one able to read thoughts.
“What ah?” I asked, feeling incredibly stupid and very annoyed because of it. It had been so much easier when I didn’t have friends to confuse and annoy me. So much easier. And less painful. And less conducive to feelings of impending doom.
“Lead by example,” Emery said, accepting the full bottle from Callie. “He explained his reasoning, which is backed by his morals, and sold it to you with his personal guarantee that he will follow the same set of rules. You know he’s a trustworthy guy who will put his life on the line for you, if need be. He drew on your trust to elicit an assurance that you’ll abide by his moral code. That you’ll fall in line and act like a team player.” Emery turned to Darius. “It works because of the whole a pack is mightier than one wolf mentality. She’s never had a pack, so she has never confronted that sort of mentality.”
“You guys seem to be missing the point where I didn’t actually agree to anything,” I said.
“She is used to people manipulating her for their personal gain, and not for the gain of a group as a whole,” Darius murmured, and I could see the wheels turning.
“No, no.” I waggled a finger at him. “Don’t you get any ideas.” I turned to Callie for help. Maybe Roger was trying to get me on board with the team, but he had been reasonable. I still didn’t see the problem.
She was looking at me with a thoughtful expression. “You’re so used to being surrounded by the likes of his kind”—she pointed at Darius—“that you always assume people’s motives are to use you. Roger isn’t trying to use you—”
“That’s subjective,” Emery cut in.
“He’s trying to unite you with the rest of his team, and I’m sure that feels good to a person with your…background.” She was about to say “issues,” I knew full well. “You don’t pick up on that kind of subtle maneuvering, because he really is trying to look out for you, in the best way he knows how. Your primal urge with a guy like him is to let him protect you.” She dropped her voice to a mumble. “I’d want to let him, that’s for sure…” She dabbed her forehead.
“I can see that,” Dizzy said, frowning at her. “I probably would’ve said yes to that shifter too. Then again, he’s the sort of guy you don’t really want to say no to.”
“The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t understand his enemy,” Darius said, watching me acutely. Damn it, I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Exactly,” Emery said, war in his eyes. “The elves in charge are morally bankrupt. They do not care about anyone, save themselves. They aren’t stupid, either. Roger is naive when it comes to the really dirty, gritty places of the Realm. Places the elves have cultivated with their longstanding mistreatment. He can’t possibly know the extent of the vileness he’s about to face. He’s not prepared for it, and if he tries to chain you to his cause like this, he’ll get a rude awakening right before his forces are completely wiped out. He might be trying to do the right thing, but he’s not fighting fire with fire in this case.”
“I agree, mon coeur,” Darius said to me. He moved his words to his thoughts.
I did not realize your desire to be part of a greater unit. I should have, with your reliance on Penny and your growing esteem for Roger. With the loyalty you’ve cultivated with Cahal. I was shortsighted. Soon we will establish some roots and build us a life like the one you crave. I promise you.
“But for now,” he continued out loud, leaving me confused and touched and longing for a life that didn’t involve hiding, the fear of discovery, or constant feelings of impending doom. “For now,” he said, capturing my attention again, “we need to get past this last hurdle. And to do that, you need to work the way you always have—and that means being headstrong and impulsive. You know every player in this war. Now you have but to act, and let us help you bring about change.”
“Curse breaker,” Callie said softly.
“Yes, but…” Dizzy rubbed his temple. “Charity had that vision that said we were supposed to stop the two leaders from killing each other.”
“Charity had a vision of the shifters and fae standing between the leaders, true enough,” Darius said. “They all stood together, as you recall. But Reagan and the natural mages, and my vampires, were separated out. The shifters and fae have their interpretation of what that vision meant, but that doesn’t mean it is ours. We weren’t Seen to be standing with the rest of them for a reason. Reagan has different motives, and she needs to hone down what those are.”
He was right, though my motives were still a bit hazy at the moment. Things had gotten so big, so confusing, that I wasn’t handling this whole situation the way I usually would.
Although, in my defense, this was a situation unlike any I’d ever imagined. A situation born of pain and confusion. We were all flying by the seats of our pants, not just me.
We’d better figure it out soon, though. Time was running out.
The doorbell chimed.
Knock, knock… I heard, and my blood ran cold.
