Breath of Fire (2 page)

“How do you know they didn’t just douse her in gasoline and light a match?”

“The smell, first of all. Torch fuel makes my throat raw. Besides, look at her body closely. She’s still burning.” The embers of the inside of her body glowed red as she burned from the inside out. “If we had shown up two hours from now there would be nothing left of her. Only dragon fire can burn that hot. Once the fire starts it can’t be extinguished.”

“What do we do?” Cal whispered.

“I can slow the deterioration enough so we can get her home to Erik. He’ll want to take a look at her.” I dug through the black bag at my side until I came up with a can of cooling spray—a special formula my brother had come up with. But despite Erik’s best efforts, he’d never been able to invent anything that could stop dragon fire completely.

“Why do you say ‘she’?” Cal asked.

“Really, Cal? I’d figured you’d be able to tell the difference between a man and a woman at this point in your life.”

Cal flushed red, and I took pity on him. Surely I hadn’t managed to hire the only hundred-year-old virgin in our society. And maybe the charred meat in front of us did look rather androgynous.

“Look at the shape of the pelvis,” I told him, blanking my mind as I pointed to the charred areas that identified her as woman. “Definitely female. And the size of her in general is consistent with that of a female.”

“Right,” Cal muttered. “I knew that.”

I opened her thighs and the burnt skin crackled. There were several tears in the flesh. Made from teeth sharp enough to leave nothing but ragged pieces behind. They hadn’t killed her for food, but for fun. There was too much meat left on the lower half of her body, and dragons never wasted a meal. If they’d meant to use her for food they would have taken the body back to their lair with them.

“They always travel in a pack,” Cal said. “But I don’t understand why they tried to cover their tracks with this one. They didn’t burn the others.”

“Maybe there wasn’t a member of the pack who could breathe fire before. Maybe they’re traveling with someone new.” I moved to the head and picked up the skull gently, just in case there was anything I missed. Her hair had been dark and probably long, but it was now melted against the bone like plastic. Where a nose had once been was now an empty cavity and the mouth was drawn and open in the parody of a scream.

“Let’s get her bagged and back home so we can dispose of her properly,” I said. “I’ve found all traces of the different scents of her killers I’m going to find. I’ll start hunting as soon as we get back. We’ll have to dig up all the ground underneath her and bring it with us. You know the drill. I don’t want any sign that she was ever here.”

“You got it,” Cal said. He’d already taken a shovel out of the bag.

I laid the skull back down and moved to stand up, but as I did her eyelids crackled open and immediately sloughed away like dust, leaving her eyes big and round in their sockets.

“Kill me,” she wheezed.

Cal dropped the shovel and jumped straight up into the tree above us—more than fifty feet.

“Shit,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of as I stared into a pair of pale yellow eyes with pupils in the shape of diamonds.

She was Drakán—one of us. And it was now glaringly obvious why they’d chosen to burn this woman. There was no other way to get rid of the body. All of their other kills had been human, so the last thing I’d expected to find was that the victim was one of us.

I moved down to her calves where the fire hadn’t spread yet and inhaled deeply. Her scent was faint, but it was there. And it wasn’t the scent of my clan. What I had to figure out was what the hell she was doing in our territory. I opened my mind and let my power flow, trying to read the last images she’d seen, but she was already too far gone, and I saw nothing but the blackness of impending death.

“Kill me,” she said again.

“Who did this to you?” I asked. I knew I didn’t have a lot of time to question her. She had no chance for survival, and I winced at the pain she must be suffering. I couldn’t even fathom the torture of burning to death slowly. By law she was my enemy, but I couldn’t wish this torture on anyone. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I blinked rapidly to clear my vision before Cal could catch me in a moment of weakness.

Cal jumped back down, and took the recorder from the bag to start documenting.

The woman tried to answer, but she was turning to ash in front of my eyes, little bits of her blowing into the wind with every small movement she made.

“What’s your name? What clan are you?”

“Jillian.” Her voice was no more than a whisper.

I wasn’t going to get anything helpful out of her, and I couldn’t stand to see her suffering. “Be at peace, sister.” I took her head in my hands and twisted hard and fast so the break was clean. I held the skull between my hands and crushed it so the only thing left was a fine bone dust that fell in grey flecks to the ground. She wasn’t in pain any longer. “Let’s get her home to my brother,” I said when it was done. “Maybe he’ll be able to tell us something that will help us catch them.”

Dragons were hard to kill. The head could be separated from the body to slow us down, but the skin would re-knit itself if the two pieces were brought back together. The heart could be taken and crushed, rendering us unconscious for a day or two, but eventually the organ would regenerate itself. Ashes to ashes was the only way to truly kill a dragon, but killing one of our own was an automatic death sentence by the Council.

The tortures that Jillian had just experienced were nothing compared to what would happen to her killers.

I just had to find them first.

Chapter Two

It was almost dawn by the time we made it back to our lair. The sky was a solid wall of grey, heavy with rolling storm clouds and almost bursting with the promise of rain. I made the sharp turn into our drive at high speed, kicking up wet leaves and slush.

The big house I’d called home for the last hundred and fifty years came into view—an intimidating fortress built of dark stone, standing three stories high and barely visible amid the towering forest of trees. Stone arches and a covered courtyard surrounded the entire outer bailey, and massive gardens of evergreen shrubs sat in neat rows between the drive and the house.

We’d lived in this house longer than any of our other lairs. With the growth of the human population, all Drakán have had to move their lairs more frequently or make major adjustments to their lifestyles. Our clan members lived in either a remote location, where people were scarce and animal hunting was convenient, or in a major city where the overwhelming population wouldn’t notice if humans went missing every once in a while. They had jobs, found mates and lived among the humans, guarding the secret of their blood fiercely. The diamond pupils could be covered with contacts and their violent natures toned down with small doses of animal tranquilizers taken like vitamins. We were experts at blending.

Our home was the main lair for our clan. It was where we had our yearly gatherings and where our people would come if there was danger. The hunting was plentiful, though not so much for my father. He was an Ancient, and all Ancients I’d ever met only ate human meat, so he had to fly to more populated areas for good hunting. I’d never been able to hunt humans the way the Ancients did. Hell, there were a lot of things I couldn’t stomach that the Ancients did. Ancients were more dragon than human—animals without consciences trapped in human bodies, tyrannical in their need for power and possessions.

The cobbled driveway crunched beneath my tires as I followed the serpentine curves around to Cal’s side of the house. Everyone in residence had their own entrance that led to their own specific wing. We didn’t spend a lot of quality time together in my family, so separate quarters were a necessity.

“I’ll get the body to Erik,” I told Cal. “Get some sleep.”

“I want to go hunting with you.”

“Not this time, Cal. They’re too close. And it’s too dangerous.” I stopped the car at the door to Cal’s private entrance on the west side of the house.

He shoved the car door open with enough force that I was surprised it wasn’t ripped from the hinges. “Stop treating me like a newling,” he said, the calm of his voice ruined by the clenched fists held at his sides.

I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a temper tantrum. I didn’t like working with anyone on my best days. Seeing this side of Cal made me question my sanity at agreeing to mentor him in the first place.

“You
are
a newling. You barely have a grasp on your powers of persuasion against humans. What makes you think you’ll be able to do anything but be an easy kill for an Ancient?” Drakán didn’t hit puberty until they were almost fifty years old, so even though he was a hundred in human years, he was still a very young dragon.

“I’ll never learn if you don’t give me a chance.” He was close to pouting, and I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least had he stamped his foot in protest.

I threw open my own door, not bothering to wince as it flew far into the wooded area surrounding the house. I jumped across the hood of the car from a standing position and had Cal’s face pressed against the cold stone of the drive before he knew what, or who, was happening to him. I squeezed my hand around the back of his neck and yanked his arm a little harder than necessary behind his back. I heard the pop of cartilage as his shoulder slid out of joint.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I whispered in his ear, “but I can make you wish you were dead. Continue your training. And only when I feel you’re ready will I let someone besides me try to tear the limbs from your body. Understood?”

He whimpered in agreement and I let him go, throwing myself back behind the wheel of the Land Rover and squealing around to the front of the house before Cal had the chance to get up. I was shaking with anger. The instinct to kill was close to the surface, and if I’d lost control for even a second I could have hurt Cal badly. Sometimes I hated our power, even though I knew I’d die before I ever gave it up.

I stopped the car in front of the garage and got out, taking a moment to stare at the gaping hole I’d created where the door should have been. I kicked at the front tire and couldn’t control the growl that spewed from my throat as the tire exploded in a
whooft
of hot air. The skies opened just as I grabbed the black bag that contained the remains of Jillian from the back of my Land Rover.

“Figures.” I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing before I did something I’d regret.

I ran to the front of the house in a blur of speed, and my brother, Erik, opened the door for me before I could turn the handle. I’d called him as we left the crime scene to let him know what had happened.

“Is there anything left of her?” he asked.

“Not much. She’s turning to ash as we speak. Just do your best. I only need a miracle.” I followed him down the curved, stone stairs that led to his lab. There were no lights—the space so dark a human wouldn’t be able to see a hand in front of their face—but we had our dragon-sight to find the way.

Erik’s body blocked most of my view. He was a large man—strongly built—broad through the chest and slim through the hips. It was the body of a warrior, and in his time that‘s exactly what he’d been. He skimmed just under six feet and carried himself like a general. His black hair was cut close to the scalp and his goatee was neat and trimmed. His eyes were a pale green, and despite the relaxed jeans and T-shirt he wore, he never looked comfortable in modern clothing. Erik’s mother, Claudia, had been the first wife of Augustus Caesar. When my father seduced her and left her pregnant with a half-Drakán child, Claudia was exiled from Rome for her adulterous treachery.

Erik hadn’t been blessed with any powers at all, other than Drakán longevity. This wasn’t unusual because of the human blood that tainted us, but it was extremely rare for someone like Erik since he was the grandson of a pureblood. His attempts to develop his powers had been fruitless over the years. Dragons could sense the strength of others around them, and Erik was no more powerful than a stronger-than-average human.

But Erik hadn’t let his deficiencies harden him over the years. He’d spent the early part of his life training the Roman armies and leading them to victory (I always assumed he spent so much time with humans so he felt like he had a purpose). When he’d gotten tired of a soldier’s life, he’d turned his interests to medicine and research. He was now known as a doctor of our clan. His lack of powers made him somewhat of an outcast, which worked out well because my ability to control minds made me one as well. We spent a lot of time together, and we were as close as any two of our race could be.

Erik took the black bag from my arms and laid it on a metal sterile table. Some of the most advanced computers in the world lined one wall, and weapons and medicines he’d invented lined another. It was a state-of-the-art lab that any scientist would dream of.

“Are you going to tell Alasdair?” he asked.

Alasdair was our father, though we never called him so to his face. He was also the Archos—leader—for our clan. And I used the term “leader” loosely. He was a bastard by any definition. There weren’t many Ancients in our clan, but I’d known a few over the centuries. Their dragon natures always overpowered the minute amount of human blood that flowed through their veins. I’d read many times that the only difference between humans and animals was that humans had the ability to feel. They had a soul. But I could say with certainty that Alasdair had never had a soul, and the longer he was confined to the Earth Realm, forced to spend more time in his human body than dragon form, the more cruel and depraved he became. I tried to keep my distance.