“Both of the ones we mentioned are charged with vampirism outside of our registry. Obviously there were no vampires here, but do you know the whereabouts of Solace and Dustin?”
““Yes,” Lynn replied. “They just walked out.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Coming Storm
The druids braced as if to go after them. Lynn held her hands up to halt them. “As you saw, no one in that crowd was a vampire. Charges disproved. Be on your way, boys.” Lynn, like myself, had always had a hard time with authority figures. Perhaps that was why she was naturally antagonistic when we happened to run into some.
“It doesn’t work that way, lady. We need to interview the suspects. And for that matter, everyone in this room doesn’t exactly strike me as human. We’ll need to interview all of you as well.” All but the leader of the group had gotten very quiet, and they had spaced themselves apart, as though preparing for a fight. Greeaat.
Lynn shrugged. “Interview away.”
“Are any of you going to try to say that you’re human?”
I raised my hand. So did Lynn. Both of the guys didn’t bother. They were listed on the druid roster. Nice and legal. No reason for them to hide. Unless they were in some kind of trouble. They weren’t, that I knew of, but both had the potential for trouble at any given time, so I couldn’t be positive about that. If they hadn’t been hell-raisers themselves, they never would have found themselves friendly with Lynn and I. We were, by nature, perpetual fugitives. Birds of a feather…
The druid in charge nodded his head towards me. I gave him my widest, blankest stare. “You’re human?” he asked dubiously. “What are you doing hanging out with these guys?”
I shrugged. Lynn spoke before I could. “Look at her T-shirt. She’s obviously this slayer’s girlfriend.”
He looked between mine and Christian’s matching shirts, smirking. He nodded at Christian. “You saying you’re a dragonslayer?”
Christian smiled, his friendly, innocent smile. “Yeah. I’m on your roster.”
“We will, of course, be checking you out. Right after we speak to our original targets.” They said the same to Caleb. Lynn claimed to be his girlfriend. They looked skeptical, but didn’t press it. None of them were powerful enough to tell if we were human. Few were, for that matter, if we weren’t actively using some kind of magic. Our kind was the first race, and the hardest to identify.
Lynn sent for Solace and Dustin. There was no way to make the druids leave until they had their interviews.
The boy and girl walked in, looking guilty as all hell. I made a note to myself to play poker with them sometime.
“Are either of you human?” the druid leader asked without preliminary.
They both looked guiltily at Lynn. She gave them an exasperated look. “Just tell the man the truth.”
“No, we’re not human,” Dustin said.
“We’re vampires,” Solace said.
The druids just looked at them like they were crazy. So did I, for that matter. The stupid kids looked like they actually believed it.
“Bullshit,” the druid said.
“I-it’s true. Mistress Noir shared blood with us. We both feel different. Stronger,” Solace said in a rush. Shit. That wasn’t good. The druids looked at Lynn, who had claimed to be human. Drinking human blood didn’t give you special powers. Only Other blood had those kind of perks. Lynn was effectively outed.
Lynn just stared right back, still looking bored. She was going to try to brazen it out. I recognized the glint in her eye. “They answered your questions. You see that they’re perfectly human. Can they go now?”
“Not quite. Since you’ve shared your blood with them, we’re taking them in. We have specific procedures for such things. You’ll be joining us too, of course.” Well, that decided it. Lynn shot me a quick but unnecessary look. I already saw clearly what needed to be done.
I hit the druid closest to me with a hard tackle. It was the auburn haired, second-in-command. He came up swinging. It was a dog-fight after that. Even the lower ranking druids were tough bastards in a brawl, and this guy wasn’t half-bad. He backhanded me hard, and I was stunned for a minute. A bitch slap. I had a second to hope that no one had seen. I’d never hear the end of that. The worst part was that I really felt it. With my body’s healing ground to a halt, I was literally crippled. Everything became harder. And more painful.
My heel connected with his chin solidly enough that I heard something important pop. Probably his jaw. Crap, that had been an accident. I was compensating for my injuries by using more brute force. He was up and rushing at me quickly, ignoring his jacked-up jaw. I ignored it too, focusing on landing a solid blow to the back of his head. My goal was to knock him out quickly, but I seemed to just be pissing him off. I finally settled for choking him out, his hands beating at me the whole time.
He suddenly went limp, and I worried for a second that I’d killed him. A quick check showed him still breathing, and I let out a sigh of relief.
My guy made three of the four druids down for the count. Christian was still toying with his. It was the leader, obviously the toughest of the bunch, but that wasn’t why Christian was still fighting him. It was completely deliberate on his part. His was simply prolonging his own fun.
“Christian, finish it,” Caleb barked at him sharply. Christian complied, knocking the druid out cold with one powerful, perfect kick to the back of the head. He stuck his tongue out at Caleb. Oh yeah, we were a bunch of badasses. Badasses with the maturity of fourteen-year-olds.
We lined the four unconscious druids up next to each other. “Can you do a sweep outside, Christian? Make sure no one heard anything,” I asked. He went without a word. Lynn and I shared a look. I got to work on my part.
It was harder than it would have normally been for me to heal each druid, but I worked quickly. Christian would only be outside for a few minutes.
Lynn started working on each druid immediately after I finished. I stood when my part was done. Caleb was watching us strangely. I gave him a questioning look. Finally he asked, “I can tell that you healed them. Lynn is what, wiping their memories? How long will that last?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Impossible to say, exactly. One day, maybe. Three tops. She can’t work them over too hard or they won’t recover.” Christian returned, and I shut my mouth. He didn’t even look at the downed men.
“All clear. We ready to roll?” he asked. He had a hyper, after battle look on his face. Fighting made him perky. Go figure.