Fire Marked

by Val St. Crowe

  “What?” he said.

  “I was just thinking that this is kind of the answer to our problems.”

  “How do you mean?” he said. “Because I think it’s kind of creepy as hell. I mean, we don’t even know exactly how we did it—”

  “We know. We both wanted them to be quiet, and they were.”

  “Well, what if I see someone walking by eating a hot dog, and I think it looks good,” said Lachlan. “That person just going to hand it over? That’s messed up, Penny.”

  “I think we both have to want it,” I said.

  “Whatever,” he said. “How’s this the answer to our problems?”

  “We wanted to ask them to help us go after Jackal. But now we don’t have to bother with that. We just compel them to do it.”

  He licked his lips.

  “Is that awful?” I said. “That’s awful, isn’t it? You said that it was a violation, and it would be. We’d be taking over their bodies, making them do things they didn’t want. It would be awful. Forget I said it.”

  He took a deep breath. “We’ll find another way.” He pulled me into his arms. “We will. I promise.”

  For a moment, it was only a comforting hug between us. But then little sparks of excitement started to dance between our bodies. Lachlan sighed deeply, pressing his lips into my forehead. “Damn, every time I’m close to you, I want you.” His voice was hoarse.

  I was already fumbling with his pants, undoing the button, the zipper. In seconds, I could feel how hard he was. How huge for me. I stroked him.

  “Damn,” he muttered into my eyebrow. His hands were moving beneath my clothes. One over my bra, one wiggling under the elastic of my skirt.

  I groaned. “We will find another way,” I whispered. “We will.” I squeezed him. I rubbed him faster.

  He touched me between my legs.

  I felt lit up in hot white light. I moaned.

  “Maybe…” he gasped.

  “What?” I said, breathless.

  “Maybe it’s not a bad idea.”

  “The compulsion?” I managed. His fingers were making circles around the most sensitive part of my body, and I felt like I was swirling into a storm of pleasure. “You think we should do it?”

  With his other hand, he pinched my nipple through my bra. “We have enough people here that they could be our own personal army. An army we control with our will. We tell them to attack, they attack. We tell them to kill, they kill.”

  I let out a little cry of pleasure. “Exactly. Answer to all of our problems.”

  He stopped rubbing my clit, moving his fingers up over my belly button in thought. “I wonder if they’ll just be automatons, though. They seemed so out of it when we sent them all to bed.”

  “Hey,” I whispered, letting go of his erection.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, kissing me quickly. “You want to take this to the bedroom?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’ll have to see how compulsion works tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He gazed at me, and there was hot hunger in his expression. “I guess tomorrow we can figure it all out.”

  * * *

  “Come over here,” said Lachlan, beckoning me.

  I turned away from the two members of the Bryant clan who I was trying to compel to fight each other. It wasn’t working out so well. They were both punching each other, like I’d told them to do, but they were moving like robots, landing one bland punch after another. They weren’t protecting themselves. They weren’t actually taking the offensive. In a fight, they’d be useless.

  I sighed, waving my hand at both of them. “Stop.”

  They stopped.

  “Take a seat,” I told them.

  Obediently, they both sat down. I headed over to Lachlan.

  Figuring out how to compel had been fairly easy. I had been wrong that both Lachlan and I needed to do the compulsion together. We could do separate compulsions if we liked, which was handy. Also, finding the way to push our will onto the people instead of just wanting something only took a few tries to distinguish.

  Now, if we could only figure out how to make them fight.

  The sound of flesh thudding against flesh caught my attention, and I saw that Lachlan had managed to make two of the clan start really going at each other. They were actually fighting, punching each other, grabbing for each other. As I watched, one of the men drove his thumb into the other’s eyeball.

  The other man screamed.

  Lachlan grinned at me. “Look!”

  “How’d you do it?” I said.

  He smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  One of the men tackled the other, forcing him to the ground. He wrapped his hands around that man’s neck and started to twist the man’s head around.

  The first man was making gurgling noises.

  “That’s amazing,” I said. “They’re actually trying to hurt each other.”

  “That’s because I compelled them to kill each other,” said Lachlan.

  “Oh!” I said. “That’s brilliant.”

  “Right?” he said. “Because we were trying to make them punch, which took away everything that they could do to make decisions or think for themselves?”

  The man who was being assaulted had struggled at first, but now he was barely moving. His head had been twisted to an unnatural angle.

  “But if you tell them to kill each other, then they decide how to do it.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “You should probably make them stop now,” I said. “We’re going to lose a soldier.”

  “Right,” said Lachlan, squinting at the two of them. “Don’t kill each other.”

  Immediately, the man got off the other man.

  The assaulted man didn’t move.

  Lachlan knelt down and moved his head back to a normal position. “Good work, man. Go get some blood. Get healed up.”

  The man gasped, his eyes opening.

  Lachlan grinned at me. “This could work. We’ve got the manpower. Now, we just have to plan our attack.”

  * * *

  “So wait,” I said, looking at the map that Lachlan had printed off from the Internet of the streets surrounding the place where Dune had told us the drakes would be. “Are we making this more complicated than it needs to be? I mean, now that we know we have this compulsion power, maybe that changes things.”

  “You mean we could just go in and compel the drakes to do what we want,” said Lachlan. “I thought of that, too.”

  “And? What’s wrong with that plan?”

  “Nothing. Obviously, that’s going to be our first attempt. But we don’t know if the compulsion even works on drakes. What if it’s exclusive to vampires, because this is a blood bond?”

  I furrowed my brow. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “And what if they have some kind of really powerful talisman that blocks it or something?” said Lachlan. “We still need to bring everyone along.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I think that’s smart. But if the compulsion does work, then maybe this will be easy.”

  Lachlan pointed his finger at me. “Don’t say things like that. You’ll jinx us.”

  “Sorry,” I laughed. “All right, so you were saying about coming in from the water?”

  “Right,” said Lachlan. “We’ve got enough boats for maybe twenty people. So, it just depends on whether you think I should be with them or you should.”

  “Oh.” I made a face. “I guess we have to split up.” We had discovered that the compulsion only worked whenever we were fairly close to the people we were compelling. It wasn’t as close a radius as normal compulsion, but it was limited by maybe the size of a football field or something. “Will that even work? We’ve never attempted to compel people when we were so far apart. To use the whiteflame, we have to be touching. I would think we need to be relatively close to do this.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “You remember how when we were fighting Darla Tell, you d
rank my blood, and then you were able to do the whiteflame on your own?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You think this might be the same thing?”

  “Well, I think we should test it, but—”

  My phone started ringing. I sighed. “Ignore it.”

  “You should answer it,” said Lachlan. “In case it’s an emergency or something.”

  “We couldn’t leave here even if it was,” I said, but I was already getting up. I went back into the bedroom and found my ringing phone. It was Connor calling me. “Hello?”

  “Penny?” Connor sounded like he might have been crying.

  I sighed again. “Oh, Connor, this is a really bad time.”

  “Oh,” he said in a different voice.

  “Is anyone hurt?” I said.

  “Like physically?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, no,” he said.

  “Are you guys in danger?”

  “I guess not.” He was starting to sound a little perturbed.

  “Then I’m really sorry, sweetie, but I just can’t talk right now. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Seriously?” he said, and I could still hear the tears in his voice.

  “I really am sorry,” I said. But actually, I wasn’t. The truth was, I felt as if I should be sorry, but I only felt annoyed with him for interrupting me. I was obviously under a lot of stress. The sooner that we got to the drakes and found Jackal the better. I clearly wasn’t able to deal with this for much longer.

  “Yeah, you sound real broken up,” he said.

  “Okay, well, I gotta go.”

  “Whatever.” He hung up.

  I shook my head at the phone. He could be pissed at me if he wanted. Me, Lachlan, and the baby. Everyone else could go to hell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It was the day of the attack, and I was up in the loft of Iona’s RV, looking out the window up there with binoculars, trying to see what was going on with the drake warehouse. I was on the phone with Lachlan, an earphone in my ear and a mic dangling next to my mouth so that I had my hands free. “I see a couple of them at the windows with guns,” I said. “Big guns.”

  “What kind of guns?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Big ones. I don’t know anything about guns.”

  He sighed. “Right, well, can you compel them?”

  I tried to make them drop their guns out the window. Nothing happened. “I think I’m too far away,” I said. “What should we do? Get closer?”

  “No, you guys are good there,” he said. “I don’t want you making an approach until I’m already in.” Lachlan was out on the boats with the other vampires.

  “Okay, well, where are you guys?”

  “We’re close,” said Lachlan. “Still out of sight, though. We’re going to come up around a bend here in a minute, and then we start the plan.”

  “But what about trying to compel them?”

  “I’ll try, as soon as I’m close enough.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You all right otherwise?”

  “Locked and loaded,” said Lachlan.

  “Good.” I climbed down out of the loft to find Iona standing right where I’d left her. I’d ordered her not to move, and she hadn’t. She was standing stock still, staring blankly into space. I was finding that I was really enjoying compelling her. I nodded at her. “Follow me.”

  “What?” said Lachlan in my ear.

  “Not you,” I said. “Iona.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Listen, I want you to know, I love you, Penny Caspian.”

  “I love you too, Lachlan Flint,” I said. I left the RV and Iona followed me.

  Outside, all of the vampires of the Bryant clan that weren’t with Lachlan were standing in a big group outside the few vehicles that we’d crammed them into. They were all expressionless, staring into space. I’d compelled them to do that, to wait for my orders.

  Now, I faced them and ordered them all to check their weapons and make sure that they were ready.

  About twenty of them had guns. They were the first wave of soldiers. The rest all had knives and machetes. They’d go in to be the mop-up crew. After all, drakes weren’t easy to kill. Gunshots wouldn’t take them down. We’d need to cut off their heads or burn them. I wasn’t sure if we would need to kill them, but we were prepared to do it if we had to.

  Weapons all loaded, I got them into position.

  The shooters lined up in two rows, facing the warehouse.

  Then we waited.

  Eventually, I heard Lachlan’s voice in my ear. “All right, we’re around the bend in the river. Starting our approach.”

  “Got it,” I said. To my fighters. “See the drakes in that warehouse?” I said. “Kill them.” Even though I’d said that we didn’t necessarily have to kill them, Lachlan and I had found that compelling the vampires to kill was better than compelling them to maim or hurt. They were more effective fighters when they were trying to kill.

  Immediately, the shooters started shooting. A volley of gunfire echoed through the streets.

  This was an abandoned part of town, and there weren’t any casual people walking up and down the street, but I did notice a few windows being slammed shut in surrounding buildings. It was as if the people in this neighborhood were used to this, and they wanted no part of it.

  One of the drakes in the windows was struck in the head, and he fell out of the window, down on the ground, face first.

  The other drakes started shooting in our general direction.

  Typically, people would have taken cover in such a situation. But not my vampires. I hadn’t compelled them to protect themselves, only to kill, so they surged forward fearlessly.

  Bullets hit some of them, and they went down. The rest of the crowd surged over them, paying it no mind.

  They weren’t dead. They were vampires. They’d heal. I left them where they were.

  More drakes were falling out of windows.

  But it wasn’t helping us much, because the drakes seemed to be alerted to our presence, and the minute one fell, another immediately took his place.

  We were still taking heavy losses, vampires getting shot in the head and falling down. Because the shooters were in front, they were taking the brunt of the bullets, which was only leaving behind the vampires armed with knives and machetes. They weren’t much help with gunshots right now.

  I turned to the vampires with knives. “Pick up the guns in the fallen’s hands. Kill the drakes.”

  The vampires obeyed, and soon we were really making a dent. Drakes were falling out of windows left and right. So much so that new ones stopped appearing where the old ones had fallen.

  We were making progress, and we began to actually move down the street toward the warehouse. Before, so many of the clan had been getting shot that we’d not gone more than a few feet.

  I was feeling pretty confident, and I brought up the rear, behind my compelled army, feeling like things were going our way. I checked in with Lachlan. “Hey, how’s it going back there?”

  “So far, so good,” he said. “You seem to be keeping them busy. They haven’t noticed us.”

  “Just like we planned,” I said. “We’re taking ‘em down.”

  “Good,” he said.

  And then I saw that the drakes who’d toppled out the windows were getting to their feet. They weren’t dead, of course, so they were recovering from their wounds, good as new.

  Some of them were still armed with their guns. Were they going to start shooting?

  But now, some drake came out of the warehouse and started handing out circular metal discs of some sort. I couldn’t see exactly what they were from here. They looked almost like circular saws or big throwing stars or something.

  “Shoot him.” I said to my army, pointing. “Kill him.”

  They did their best, but the drake threw himself to the ground and crawled on his belly.

  And then one of the other drakes hurled the throwing-star-thing like a Frisbee
. It sailed through the air, coming right for us.

  My vampires didn’t duck. They weren’t compelled to defend themselves.

  The throwing star struck one of the men. It hit right above his chin, slicing through his skull. His head slid off at its jaw and tumbled to the ground.

  My army kept marching.

  I reached out with magic to try to stop the drakes, but we were still too far away.

  The metal discs soared through the air now, and one right after the other, four of my vampires were decapitated.

  One was Iona, and it was clean through her neck. Her head fell down on the sidewalk and stared up at the sky, and I was glad that she was dead.

  And I wondered what the hell was wrong with me that I was glad about anyone being dead.

  And then a disc struck a vampire right in front of me. It went diagonal through her head and neck, slicing her at an angle. Half of her nose stayed with her body. Half slid off and hit the ground.

  Her blood sprayed out everywhere.

  Splatters of it hit me. They were hot and wet. They smelled like pennies.

  I let out a tiny choked sound, looking down at my arms, which were flecked by tiny red dots. The blood was everywhere. It was on my clothes. It was in my hair.

  And it seemed as if my soldiers were dropping left and right, all around me. And the metal discs were whizzing closer, too close for comfort.

  But we were still too far away for magic. I couldn’t reach them. If Lachlan were here, if it was both our magic combined—

  Lachlan. I was on the phone with him still.

  “Lachlan,” I said into the phone. “Are you close enough to do magic?”

  “Hey,” he said. “Yeah, we’re pretty close.”

  “Compulsion,” I said. “Try compulsion.”

  “Damn it, I forgot about that,” he said.

  Suddenly, all the drakes froze in place. Some were in the midst of getting ready to throw. Some were aiming their guns. But they all stopped.

  “Well,” said Lachlan in my ear. “Guess the compulsion does work after all.”

  I looked around at the bodies around me, at the blood on my skin. “Great,” I said. “That’s really good.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE