Fire Marked

by Val St. Crowe

  Jackal tugged out a machete from a sheath he wore on his belt. Laughing, he began to swing it in a wide arc, cutting into whatever he could get—drakes, furniture, the wall.

  I let go of Lachlan.

  The whiteflame cut off.

  It was dark.

  Jackal was still laughing.

  Drakes were yelling, screaming.

  Guns were being fired again.

  It was chaos. Pandemonium. I didn’t know what to do.

  “Stop!” yelled a voice. “Everyone fucking stop!”

  And—for some reason—everyone did. Or at least the noise stopped.

  The light came on in the room, bright overhead, flickering and buzzing from a light fixture in the kitchen. The room was covered in blood and splinters of wood. There was a huge hole in the house where the whiteflame had hit. The whole place looked like a war zone.

  A drake was standing next to the light switch. He had silver spikes growing out of the bridge of his nose. One of his arms was around Jackal’s neck. The drake had a gun fitted under the vampire’s chin.

  Jackal’s eyes were bright, almost amused.

  “I’ll shoot him,” said the drake.

  Lachlan’s nostrils flared. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

  “I won’t,” said the drake. “I won’t if y’all back off. Leave this house.”

  Lachlan swallowed. “You let him go, we’ll all leave.”

  “Fuck that, I ain’t letting him go,” said the drake. “You two leave. I’m keeping this one. We’ll use him as a bargaining chip. Y’all can have him back after we get some terms between us.”

  “Terms?” I whispered. I was so confused.

  “You tell your leader we want a sit down,” said the drake. “And until he agrees that we get one, this guy ain’t going nowhere.” He jammed the gun into Jackal’s chin for emphasis.

  Jackal laughed again. “Fuck you, drakey! Fuck you, and fuck all you—”

  “Jackal,” said Lachlan. “Shut up.” He licked his lips and addressed the drake. “Let him go. Please.”

  “No,” said the drake. “And y’all best be getting out of this house, or I’m gonna blow his brains out. Then if he lives through that, I’ll cut off his damned head. Now start backing the hell up.”

  Lachlan let out a frustrated sigh. And then he started backing up.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lachlan climbed back into the RV, his eyes wide. I got in too. Of the men who’d come with us, only two were still standing. I could see them coming for the RV too. I left the door open.

  “You’re going to have to drive,” Lachlan said. “I’m too fucked up to drive.”

  I bit down on my lip. “Something this big?” Was it going to be an automatic?

  Lachlan propelled me through the RV to the driver’s area at the front. He pushed me into the driver’s seat. “Drive. Get us out of here.”

  I turned to him. “Shouldn’t we at least try to get Jackal back?”

  Lachlan glared at the house. The man who was still holding a gun to Jackal’s head had come out on the porch, and he was standing there, expression stony, watching our retreat. “Anything we try might get him killed. We can’t chance that.”

  “He’s your friend,” I said, nodding in understanding. This place might be horrible, but Lachlan had some kind of loyalty—

  “No, he’s the only person who knows how to get in touch with Olsen Hunter. He is the contact, our only link to that mage.”

  My lips parted. “Oh.” Right. How had I forgotten that?

  “Just drive. We’ll get him back.”

  My hand went to the ignition. No keys. “Lachlan, we have to get him back.”

  He turned around, looking to see if any of the other men were back in the RV. “Don’t call me that,” he hissed.

  “Sorry,” I murmured. “Sorry.”

  He turned back around, pulling down the sun visor and there were the keys. He handed them to me. “Drive,” he said. “We’ll get him back. We’ll find a way to get him back.”

  * * *

  “I think if I go back with some men, and we’re more cautious, more clear-headed, we can take them down for real and get Jackal back,” Lachlan was saying to Ossian. It was early morning. Ossian looked barely awake. We hadn’t been to bed that night.

  Ossian shook his head. “Sounds to me like they want to declare war.”

  “No, they said they wanted to negotiate,” said Lachlan.

  “Well, that kind of negotiation is going to be all about making sure we never enter their territory again,” said Ossian. “No, I’m not interested in talking to them. Not at all.”

  “I’m not saying talk,” said Lachlan. “I’m saying strike again, strike smarter—”

  “I’m not interested in losing any more men either,” said Ossian.

  “But Jackal. They’ll kill him.”

  “Jackal was a soldier,” said Ossian. “He knew the risks.”

  Lachlan raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? We’re just going to leave him behind? I thought that you valued your men more highly than that.”

  “Oh, and you value him?” said Ossian. “You’re only here to get to that mage. And you’re upset because now your contact is gone.”

  Lachlan folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, well, look, the thing is, it’s true for you, too. What are you going to do without Olsen Hunter?”

  “There are other mages,” said Ossian.

  “Not ones that powerful.”

  “All I need are some talismans,” said Ossian. “I can find mages who can do that for me.”

  Lachlan shook his head at him in disbelief.

  “I’m sorry, Hawk,” said Ossian. “I know you and Jackal were close.”

  Lachlan dragged a hand over his face. “Maybe you should think on it a bit.”

  “My decision is final,” said Ossian. He looked the two of us over. “But you two should probably grab some shuteye. We’ll be moving out tomorrow morning, heading south. If you still want to travel with us, you’re welcome. You held up your end of the bargain.”

  * * *

  We did go to bed. I fell asleep almost immediately. A deep, dreamless sleep of despair, because everything we’d done had been for nothing. All the sacrifices we’d made, all the things Lachlan had to go through. None of it was getting us anywhere. It made me feel empty inside. Empty and panicked and terrified.

  When I woke up, Lachlan wasn’t in bed with me.

  I got up out of bed and went out to find him sitting in the living room, clutching a container of blood. He looked haggard and exhausted.

  “Did you sleep?” I asked.

  “A little bit,” he said.

  “Go back to bed,” I said. “You need rest.”

  “We need to get Jackal back,” he said.

  “I know that, but we can’t do anything about it now, so it would be better if you laid down for a little bit. Get a little more sleep.”

  “I can’t fucking sleep,” he said. “I keep trying to work out ways we could go after him on our own. Maybe with the whiteflame, we’d be strong enough?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But we have no idea how many of them there are. If it was just as many as were in that house last night, then sure, but if it were a lot more…”

  “Yeah, too risky,” he said. “We need some backup.”

  “Should we call people from back home? Felicity? Connor?”

  “No, we can’t drag them into this.” He sighed.

  I chewed on my lip. “We’ll figure something out. We will.”

  “I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “You’re tired.”

  He sighed.

  “We will figure it out,” I said. “We’ve got to get to that mage. We’ve come too far to back off now.”

  He nodded.

  “You, me, the baby,” I said. “Everyone else can go to hell.”

  He smiled grimly. “Exactly.”

  I crawled up behind him and rubbed his shoulders. “Now, if you wou
ld just go and lie down for a little—”

  A banging on the door to the camper.

  Lachlan and I exchanged a glance.

  Whoever was out there knocked again. “Hawk! It’s Salix. Open up, man.”

  Lachlan got up and went over to the door. He opened it. “Salix.”

  I recognized one of the men who’d been with us last night. He had made it out alive, unlike some of the others.

  “Can I come in?” asked Salix.

  “Can we talk outside?” said Lachlan. He didn’t like anyone in our trailer.

  “Better if I come in.”

  Lachlan sighed, but he stepped out of the way and let Salix in.

  Salix looked around. “Wow. This is, um, this is nice. How’d you put together the scratch for something like this?”

  “There’s a lot of dragons to kill in Sea City,” said Lachlan darkly. He gestured to the couch. “You want to sit?”

  Salix sat. “That was a fucking ambush. They must have known we were coming.”

  “You think?” Lachlan sat down too. “This what you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yeah,” said Salix. “This is bad news, you know?”

  “Well, maybe they knew we were coming, maybe not,” said Lachlan. “Fact remains, we lost Jackal, and Ossian isn’t going to do a damned thing about it. You hear that?”

  “Yeah, he made a big announcement. Said we were going to avoid a war. Said maybe Jackal was hasty trying to do a strike like this.”

  “So, what does it matter?”

  “I think that someone double-crossed Jackal. I think someone in our group tipped off the drakes. Because no one except people in our group knew we were coming.”

  “Maybe so,” said Lachlan. “But that doesn’t matter either.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” Salix raised his eyebrows. “We got a traitor among us and you think it doesn’t matter?”

  “I’m not saying that,” said Lachlan. “Just saying that it doesn’t really matter to me. We joined up to get these rogues to stop following Presley around. Now, Jackal is gone, and we got no way to get in touch with Olsen Hunter. So, that’s our number one priority. I’m sorry, man, but that’s the way things stand.”

  Salix took a deep breath. “Right. Right, of course. So, you two are going to leave?”

  “We’re going to get Jackal back,” said Lachlan.

  “How you going to do that?” said Salix. “You don’t even know where he is. I guarantee they’ve moved him from that house we attacked last night.”

  Lachlan sighed. “We’ll figure it out, all right?”

  “The guy who double-crossed us would know where he was,” said Salix. “Or at least, he’d know how to find out. We should figure out who that is. That’s going to help you get Jackal back.”

  Lachlan turned to look at me. “He might be right. If there is a double-agent here, that person would have intimate knowledge about how the drake gang works.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Whatever helps us get to Olsen Hunter.”

  Lachlan turned back to Salix. “So, you obviously have some suspicions. Who do you think it was?”

  “Well, there’s a guy who just joined the gang. They call him Dune. Now, the night of the big meeting and bonfire, when y’all first got here? He wasn’t there. I know because I was looking all over for him, and I never found him. Maybe he was meeting with the drakes then.”

  * * *

  “Hey, hey, Dune, man,” said Lachlan, leaning against the outside of Dune’s camper, which was rundown and rusty.

  Dune was standing in the door, looking us both over. “You’re, uh, Hawk, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dune peered around at me. “I forget your girl’s name.”

  “Presley,” I said.

  “What’s up?” said Dune, who looked confused.

  “I’ll cut right to the chase,” said Lachlan. “There was a raid on some drakes that went badly. Maybe you heard about that?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Dune.

  “Well, we think it went badly, because someone here was talking out of school to the drakes. And we’re wondering if that person might have been you.”

  “Me?” said Dune. “No way. You kidding me? Why would I do something like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Lachlan. “Why does anyone do anything? Money? Power? Sex?”

  “The reason I joined up with the Bryants is that I’m head over heels for Iona,” he said. “This is where she is, and this is where I want to be too.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Iona? The same Iona who was trying to fight me over you, Hawk?”

  “She would never do that,” said Dune. “She and I are together now, and she’s happy. She never even talks about Hawk.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lachlan. “Where were you at the bonfire the other night?”

  “What that big meeting thing? What does it matter if I didn’t go?”

  “Just suspicious is all. No one knows where you were that night. Maybe it was your chance to go off and get things nailed down with the drakes.”

  “No,” said Dune.

  “So, where were you? Were you with anyone who can verify you were there?”

  “I went for a walk, okay? I went out to look at the moon and the stars. I stared up at them, twinkling in the sky, and I thought about how lucky I was to have my girl, and that’s all. I don’t know a thing about those drakes. I swear to you.”

  “So, you went for a walk and no one saw you?”

  “What the hell?” said Dune, glaring at him. “You sound like a cop.”

  Lachlan laughed a little. “Yeah, well, you watch yourself, Dune. We’ll be watching you too.”

  * * *

  “Well, Dune seems like a good-enough guy,” said Cypress Bryant. “I mean, that’s why we let him in in the first place, you know?”

  “Does he have a history working with slayers or dealers or anything?” Lachlan asked.

  “I, uh, couldn’t say. He might… But we let him in mostly on the strength of how much Iona wanted him here. She’s, uh, well, I think Phelan insisted on it. Speaking of which, that guy really lost his mind, issuing that challenge against you, especially since Iona already had another man. I think he just didn’t like you, and… Well, you did what you had to do. If Phelan would have issued a challenge against me, I would have had to kill him too.”

  Lachlan looked down at his shoes. “Yeah, I didn’t take any pleasure in that.”

  “No, I know you didn’t.”

  We were all quiet.

  “If he hadn’t challenged me, I was happy to leave all that alone.”

  “I know.” Cypress sighed.

  I cleared my throat. “About Dune?”

  “Dune,” said Cypress. “Well, uh, Iona is a bit of a spoiled little princess sometimes, I think. She gets what she wants. She’s related by blood to the core part of the group, and they remember when she was a little girl in pigtails, and they just do what she wants.”

  “Well, she’s related to you too,” said Lachlan.

  “Yeah, but I’m younger than the others,” said Cypress. “Iona was only a few years younger than me growing up, so I see how she is. I don’t understand what it is you ever saw in her, by the way, man.”

  Lachlan shrugged. “Me either.”

  Cypress laughed.

  “So, you don’t know anything about Dune?” Lachlan said.

  “Not much,” said Cypress. “Never really paid a lot of attention to him, I gotta admit.”

  “You have a sense from him of how trustworthy he is?” said Lachlan.

  “Eh… I wouldn’t necessarily trust him, but I got nothing to back that up,” said Cypress. “Maybe it’s just because I can’t figure how anyone’s that devoted to Iona.” He snorted.

  Lachlan laughed too.

  I smiled as well. I really didn’t like that chick.

  “You think he could have been double-crossing the group?” said Lachlan.

  “Really couldn’t be sure one way or
another.” Cypress shrugged. “Sorry. Wish I could be more help. You know who might know more about him? Uh, John Knight, maybe? He’s relatively new too.”

  “He’s not that new,” said Lachlan. “He was here when I used to run with the group a while back.”

  “That’s new,” said Cypress. “We don’t get a lot of new people in this clan.”

  * * *

  John Knight (who was one of the few members of the Bryant clan not to have a completely odd name or nickname—I was never sure which was which) was drinking a beer outside his camper and grilling sausages on an outdoor grill when we asked him about Dune. “Dune? Yeah… seems like an okay guy to me.”

  “Okay?” said Lachlan. “So, you like him?”

  “I don’t know, I guess so.” John closed the grill and turned to us. “Little bit of a lightweight, if you ask me.”

  “As in he can’t hold his liquor?” asked Lachlan.

  “As in he can’t pull his weight. Not really stepping up to do the work around here, if you know what I mean. Not much of a joiner. Has to be ordered to do something to get off his ass.”

  “Hmm.” Lachlan tapped his chin.

  “Why you asking me this?”

  “We think it’s possible that the raid with Jackal that went south was because someone inside this group is working with the drakes.”

  John opened the grill again. “No shit?”

  “We don’t have any real proof, but it seems to make sense,” said Lachlan.

  He poked a sausage with his tongs. “So, you think Dune might be the guy?”

  “We’re following that line of thinking for now,” said Lachlan.

  “Well…” John shrugged. “Look, I don’t feel like the guy’s my good buddy or anything, but he doesn’t strike me as a traitor, either. I mean, that Iona chick brought him in. She brought you in, too, and it’s not as if she’s got an eye for guys who are secretly working against the group, right?”

  Lachlan and I exchanged a glance. If John only knew…

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “What are you doing here?” Iona glared at us through the screen door on her camper. “If it weren’t bad enough that you treated me like trash—both of you—then there’s also the fact you killed my great-grandpa, so I can’t think of any reason why I’d want to talk to you.”