They backed up, giving us a wide berth. There was fear in their eyes. Anger and frustration and pain, but fear too. They were wary.
Dune was still right in our faces. “Where’s Iona? You separated me from Iona yesterday. I wanted to go look for her last night, but I had this strange fucking overwhelming desire to go to sleep, and I couldn’t fight it, and now—” His breath caught in his throat. He sounded like he was going to start crying.
“What do you care?” yelled a voice from the group. It was Cypress Bryant. He stepped forward.
Dune ignored Cypress. “Where is she?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice barely there.
“Why is he even here?” yelled another member of the clan. “Didn’t he betray us?”
Dune turned, angry. “I made a fucking deal with some drakes, but that’s hardly the issue here.” He pointed at us. “These fuckers, they forced us to do terrible things. They got us killed. They got Iona killed.” His voice broke. He turned back to us. “You did, didn’t you?”
Lachlan licked his lips. “We’re sorry.”
“Very sorry,” I said.
“Screw your sorry,” said Dune, his face crumpling.
“What are you?” said Selah from the crowd. She pointed at me. “Sometimes, I thought you were just a little heavy, but then other times, I’d look, and I would think… she’s pregnant. You are, aren’t you? You’re not a vampire.”
Dune sneered. “She’s a dragon. And she killed Iona.”
Cypress grabbed Dune. “Did you even care about Iona? Weren’t you just using her?”
Dune shoved him off. He was crying. “Of course I cared about her. I did that deal with the drakes to help us both. Get us away from this fucked-up place. Start over together. Just the two of us.”
“Get out,” said Cypress. “Leave this clan and never come back.”
Dune glared up at us.
Cypress looked at us as well. “You two as well. Get out.”
“We really are sorry,” I said.
“Get. Out.” Cypress stared us down.
* * *
We drove away not long after that.
We hit the road, pulling out of the campground, heading for the place that Fang the drake had told us about. We’d have to get Jackal on our own, without the use of any of our blood bond powers.
As we drove, I stared out at the horizon, feeling a dark knot in my stomach. “How do we come back from this, Lachlan?”
He didn’t answer.
“We tortured people,” I said. “We used people like they were our slaves. Worse than slaves. We took away their free will. We got them killed. We lost every shred of our humanity. So, how do we keep on going after all that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I guess we just try to do it a moment at a time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The phone rang and rang on the other end. I clutched it to my ear, feeling more and more panicked as voicemail picked up. “Hi, you’ve reached Connor,” it said. “Leave a message.”
I’d been trying to call Connor on and off all afternoon now. No answer.
I hung up. I needed to apologize to him. When he’d called me the other day, I’d been incredibly rude. The blood bond had really done a number on me, and I felt ashamed of basically everything I’d done. This might be the least of my sins, but it felt even worse to me, because it was Connor. I loved Connor. He was my best friend. I should never have treated him the way I’d treated him.
“Still no answer?” said Lachlan.
I shook my head. “I feel like I need to talk to him.”
“And Felicity?”
I scowled. “She’s been negative about this whole thing from the beginning.” Then I bit my lip. “Which… I guess she was right. She even said something about the blood bond, now that I think about it.” I took a deep breath and selected her name from my contacts. I put the phone back to my ear while it dialed.
“That’s a good thing, I think,” said Lachlan. “You don’t want to be fighting with Felicity.”
“She started it,” I muttered.
He raised his eyebrows at me.
I looked away. He was right. I couldn’t accuse her on the phone. I needed to apologize. She’d been right, and I’d been wrong.
“Hello,” said Felicity in a cold voice.
“Hi,” I said. “I, um…”
“Yes?”
The apology stuck in my throat. “I’ve been trying to call Connor all day, and I can’t get in touch with him. Is he okay?”
“He’s pissed at you,” said Felicity. “He said you were a royal bitch to him on the phone the other day, and he has no interest in talking to you anymore.”
I cringed. “Okay. Well, I guess I deserve that.”
“You do,” said Felicity. “And I don’t really want to talk to you either.”
“Oh, Felicity, don’t be like that,” I said. “I know I owe you an apology. I know I’ve been acting a little… off lately, what with this whole undercover thing and all of that, but the thing is, you were right. It’s the blood bond. And now, we’re not charging it up. We’re letting it go out of our systems, and we’re—”
“Coming home?”
“Well, we just have one more thing that we have to do.”
She snorted. “Whatever.”
“Listen, Felicity, I really am sorry, and please tell Connor I’m sorry too.”
Nothing.
“Felicity?”
Still nothing.
I took the phone away from my ear to see that it said that the call had been ended. I winced. I looked at Lachlan. “She hung up on me.”
He reached over and rubbed my leg. “Sorry about that.”
“No, I guess she had every right to do that. Everything’s been nuts lately.”
“You and Felicity will make up,” said Lachlan. “You two are very close. It’ll be okay.”
“She’s really mad,” I said. “I don’t think she’s ever been this mad at me.”
“We just have to get back to them, get back home,” said Lachlan.
“Right,” I said. “And that means getting Jackal back first.”
“Exactly,” he said.
* * *
The drake house by the river was little more than a shack. It only had two rooms, and we could see through the windows, even from pretty far away, so we knew everything that was going on inside.
Jackal was there. He was tied up in one corner, his head hanging down. He looked weak and hurt, but he was alive.
There were maybe ten other guys there.
“This would be so much easier with the compulsion,” I said.
“I know,” said Lachlan. “All we’d have to do is freeze them all, and then we could go in and get Jackal and get out.”
“It would take ten minutes,” I said. “We could do it fast, and no one would have to get hurt. They’d all be alive, not even wounded.”
“It would be easier,” he said. “Better. Quicker. Less bloodshed.”
We gazed at each other.
“Why aren’t we doing it, then?” I said.
“You know the answer to that,” said Lachlan. “Because we’re having a baby, and when he’s bigger, we want to be able to look him in the eye. That blood bond wants to take over us. It wants us to use the power. I don’t know why exactly, but it does.”
“And that power is so…” I sighed. “Enticing.”
“But not good for us,” said Lachlan.
“No,” I said. “Not good for us. So, we do this the old-fashioned way.”
“Yeah,” he said.
We both sighed.
We waited and watched. As it started to get dark, the number of drakes started to thin out. Four or five of them got into a car and drove off.
“You think they’re gone for the night?” I asked Lachlan.
“Don’t know,” he said. “They might just be going on a beer run. Either way, I think the time to strike is now.”
“I think
you’re right,” I said.
“I’ll go first,” he said. “You stay behind me.”
“No way,” I said. “You only have talisman magic right now.” He refused to drink my blood, so I’d given him a talisman I’d made, one that I usually wore. It meant that we were both at less than full strength. My own innate magic was charged up, because I’d shifted earlier today, so I at least had that. “You have to let me go first.”
“No,” he said. “Because of the baby.”
I flinched. “Okay, okay, fine. But I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
Lachlan crept forward.
I went behind him.
We stuck to the shadows, following the tree line around the house until we got to the front, where the trees tapered off and the river took over.
The house squatted on a muddy river bank. There was a rope swing dangling from a tree in the front. Beer bottles littered the stoop in front of the door. A rickety dock hung out over the water, but nothing was tied to it.
From this angle, it was tougher to see through the windows.
Lachlan looked back at me. “You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I said, pulling up all my magic, ready to release it as I needed to.
He started forward, making a beeline for the front door.
I stuck right behind him.
When he reached the door, he stayed low, crouched so that he wasn’t visible from the windows, and I followed suit. He tried the doorknob. The door opened.
“Hey!” said a voice. A drake was at the door immediately, pulling it the rest of the way open. “Somebody out there?” He looked out over our heads.
Lachlan opened his palm, shooting out a beam of magic.
It caught the drake in his stomach, and the drake stumbled backwards. But the magic hadn’t been very powerful, so it didn’t even knock him off his feet. He went for his gun, pulling it out and spraying bullets in our general direction.
Lachlan and I flattened ourselves against the ground.
I reached out with my magic and seized his gun. I hurled it through the air and dropped it in the lake.
Fat lot of good that did. The other drakes were right behind him, pouring out the door with their guns out. They pointed them at our heads.
“Freeze,” said one of them. “Try anything, even magic, and I will put a bullet in each of your skulls. Then I’ll cut off your heads, just to be sure you’re actually dead.”
Lachlan let out a frustrated noise, but he stopped moving.
I did too.
“Hands on your head,” said the drake who’d spoken. He had large, reptilian eyes, and he looked at us without blinking. He was monstrous.
I licked my lips. Damn it, but it would be really good to use compulsion right now.
Lachlan put his hands on his head.
I did it too, swearing inwardly. I didn’t want to do anything these stupid drakes ordered me to do.
“On your feet, man,” said Reptile Eyes. “You too, bitch.”
We got up. I might not want to obey them, but we didn’t have the blood bond charged up, and we’d sworn not to use it, so there was no other option.
Reptile Eyes lowered his gun, but the other four drakes had theirs trained on us. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Uh, our car broke down,” said Lachlan. “We were wondering if we could use the phone.”
“I recognize ‘em,” said another of the drakes. This one had black scales. “They did some weird fucking mojo at the warehouse yesterday. They’re dangerous. Shoot ‘em right now.”
“Shoot them?’ said Reptile Eyes. “Maybe we use them as bargaining chips. I heard Fang wants them. Wants to toss them in a hole and watch them starve. How much you think he’d pay? Or maybe he’d trade something else. A favor, maybe?”
“They’re here for that fuck,” said Black Scales, pointing his thumb in the direction of Jackal, who was inside. We couldn’t see him anymore.
“Man, I said we should have moved him,” said another of the drakes.
“No, no, this is good,” said Reptile Eyes. “This can work to our benefit.” He grinned widely at us, looking even more like something from a nightmare. “Come on inside, then.”
Guns dug into my rib cage.
Lachlan started walking. I walked too. I jostled forward, knocking into him. “You have to drink my blood,” I whispered.
Lachlan didn’t look at me, but I saw him shake his head.
The drakes shoved us into the house. They pushed us down on the ground and we both went sprawling.
I thought about using magic, plucking the guns out of their hands one after the other.
But what would happen if I wasn’t quick enough, if one of them pulled the trigger? Probably it would be okay, because I’d be able to get to them before they could cut off Lachlan’s head, but what if they shot me too? There were too many of them, and I didn’t know what to do.
They stood over us, and we cowered on the floor. Four guns pointed at us, five grinning drake faces above us.
Reptile Eyes dug his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “Those people you were talking about yesterday. The ones you wanted to hurt real bad? Well, I got them. I got them both. I could kill them right now, but if you want that pleasure yourself, you better start talking to me about what you think you might do for me.” He paused, listening.
I looked around. What we needed was a distraction. If they weren’t looking at us directly, weren’t pointing their guns at us, then we had a chance.
Yes, that was what I’d do. I couldn’t use magic against them. They were waiting for that. But if I used magic to distract them… that might work.
Of course, it was a risk, because what if they got startled and discharged their guns? What if it all backfired?
But we needed to get out of this.
I searched the house with my gaze. I could barely see into the other room, where Jackal was tied to a chair. He was alert now. Our eyes met, and he looked haggard but there was a spark of hope in his expression. He believed we could get him out of here. Of course, he was probably expecting us to bust out our whiteflame, which wasn’t going to happen.
Still, I believed in us too. I had to take this chance.
I reached out with my magic and I slammed the door hard. The sound was a jarring bang.
Three of the men turned to look at the sound, but not Reptile Eyes, who dove for me, yanking his gun out of his belt.
I threw more magic at him, halting him where he stood.
But now the other three men had turned back.
“Get her!” said Reptile Eyes.
The other men went sprawling. It had to be from Lachlan’s magic. I could see he had his hand around his talisman.
But that still left one more guy, and he tugged me up off the ground, fitting the barrel of his gun under my chin. Grinning at me with a wide set of razor-sharp teeth, he said, “What do you think, boss? Put a bullet in her skull?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I wasn’t a vampire. A shot to the head would kill me. I healed fast, and I had a long lifespan, but I wasn’t invulnerable.
“Stop,” Lachlan said in a hoarse voice.
“She’s trouble,” said Reptile Eyes. “Just want to keep her docile for a minute.”
“She’s pregnant,” said Lachlan.
And then they all looked at me.
Reptile Eyes got closer, waving the gun away from my chin. Instead, he seized me by the shoulders to look me over. “Not a vampire? But you’re not wearing any talismans, so you’re not human…” He turned to look at Lachlan. Then he looked back at me, his eyes zeroing in on my stomach. He shook his head slowly. “What are you?”
“Dragon, asshole,” I said, and I blew fire right in his face.
He screamed, flailing backwards. The flames were licking at his skin, and it was bubbling up underneath his scales.
I swept my hand in an arc, using magic to rip the guns from each one of the me
n’s hands, one after the other. I did it quick, and they were distracted by their boss, who was burning and shrieking.
All the men fell backwards, courtesy of Lachlan, who was clutching his talisman, and breathing hard as he held them all pinned to the ground. He didn’t have strong magic, and he was struggling to bring enough power to bear to hold them down. Through gritted teeth, he said to me, “Get Jackal.”
I rushed into the other room. Jackal was tied down with strong knots. I started to untie one.
My hands were sweaty. My fingers couldn’t undo the knots.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, and I shot a tiny thread of fire at the ropes, burning through them. Each one snapped.
Jackal got to his feet shakily, rubbing his wrists where the ropes had bit into his skin.
Lachlan let out a low growl from the other room.
I rushed out to see that several of the men were sitting up, fighting against Lachlan’s magic.
One was using magic to hurl objects at Lachlan. I figured the others must not have any magic. That was why they all relied on their guns. I didn’t know the way things worked in a gang, but if it were me, I wouldn’t let the underlings be high on dice all the time. They wouldn’t be very effective that way. So, that was probably why they didn’t have any magic.
A lighter flew off the table and struck Lachlan in the forehead. A coffee mug followed it.
I reached out and halted the coffee mug in the air. I reversed its trajectory and sent it hurtling back at the man who’d thrown it.
It slammed into his head, and he fell back, stunned.
I used magic to push the rest of the men back down into the ground.
Reptile Eyes was no longer moving. He was still smoldering in the corner, his body curled up.
I felt a twinge. More dead. I didn’t like how many people we’d had to kill. But it was done now.
One of the men was still struggling.
I pointed at him. “Stay down, or you all go up like tinder.”
He stopped moving, glaring at me.
Lachlan was out of breath. He panted as he gave Jackal a shoulder to lean on. The two of them looked pretty ragged.
“You two first,” I said, gesturing to the door.
Together, they limped out.
I kept my eyes on the men and backed out of the door. I hesitated there for a minute, thinking about how close we’d still be when my magic wore off. I pointed at the guns that I’d torn from their hands and made them float through the air to me. Taking their guns, I left the house. That would keep them from being able to do much damage.
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