DRAGON'S FIRE Read online

  When I reached the clearing, I paused and put my foot up on a rock. I really did need to tie my shoes to do this, but it was also a good reason to stop without rousing suspicion. Another thing I needed was the knife in the small pocket on the leg of my jeans. Because the FBI agent heading this particular hunt had been a major ass-hat, I'd had to borrow a gun from the local PD and give it back once we'd caught our suspect. Agent Ass-Hat had expressly forbidden me to carry weapons of my own. I always tried my best to go along with the rules, but I never went anywhere naked – and I'm not talking clothes. No matter what I'm wearing, at least one article of clothing has a weapon of some kind hidden in it. Tonight, it happened to be a four inch switchblade in my pant-leg.

  “What's a pretty thing like you doing out here this time of night?”

  I turned towards the voice, instinctively knowing what I was about to face. The moment I saw the mullet, I knew I was right. Only someone who'd been dead for thirty years would think that was still an attractive style. Movement out of the corner of my eye told me that there were at least four others. They were younger, probably only ten years dead. I don't have a sixth sense or anything like that, just a lifetime of experience. Most of the recently undead – less than a century is recent in vampire terms – had a difficult time adapting as styles changed. I always figured it took them that long to realize the reality of their immortality. Or their taste could just take that long for their taste not to suck.

  “I'm not interested in whatever you're offering,” I kept my tone even. I wasn't scared, but I also knew that if it came down to a fight, I couldn't be seen as having provoked them.

  “It's not an offer.” The leader smiled, flashing his fangs. He looked disappointed when I didn't shriek in terror or beg for mercy.

  “Look,” my voice was tired. “If you're after sex, move along. I don't fuck vampires. If it's blood you want, I'm not volunteering, so put your fangs away.”

  “You smell like sex.” Mullet took a step towards me. The others stayed where they were. That was good. It meant Mullet was their sire and they'd wait for him to feed or fuck before they made a move.

  “Last chance to walk away.” I shifted my weight onto my back foot and rested my thumb on my knife's catch.

  “I'm gonna have fun draining you dry, cupcake.”

  Did he just refer to me as a snack food?

  Before I had time to get properly annoyed, Mullet launched himself at me. I waited until he was only a foot away and pivoted so that he went careening past me. The fact that he kept going for another few feet told me that he was an inexperienced fighter. If I had to guess, I'd say he tried to act tough and macho around his coven but, in reality, he only picked easy marks when he was trying to prove how big and bad he was. It sucked for him that he'd thought I'd be an easy kill.

  “You bitch,” he snarled as he spun around.

  I flicked open my blade and settled into my usual fighting stance. “You're really going to wish you'd left like I'd asked you to.” I amended. “Well, at least until I kill you.”

  I felt the unease ripple around the younger vampires as they looked to their sire for instructions. This would be the tipping point. If Mullet decided that he'd rather be cautious and lose face than take me on alone, the odds would no longer be in my favor. I could kill a coven of five fairly young vampires, but it wouldn't be easy. I was counting on Mullet's arrogance to outweigh his common sense. Fortunately for me, he proved me right.

  “I was just going to bleed you quick,” he growled. “But now I'm going to fuck you while I drain you nice and slow. It'll take days.”

  I knew of one way to guarantee his head wasn't in the fight. I gave him a sceptical look. “I don't think you could last that long.”

  My words did the trick. With an animalistic roar, Mullet charged me. This time, I didn't spin out of the way. Instead, I took a step forward to meet him, my knife hand outstretched. His momentum allowed me to plunge my knife straight through the heart. He had a moment to look surprised before he fell to the ground. I yanked the knife from his heart and turned to face the remaining four vampires.

  “How – how did you do that?” The youngest one, a timid-looking young man who couldn't have been more than fifteen or sixteen when he'd been turned, was staring at me. “I didn't think a knife could kill us.”

  “Let me guess,” I knelt next to their sire, all the while keeping my eyes on them. “Mullet here told you that you just had to watch out for sunlight and wooden stakes, right?” The nervous glances they gave each other told me that I'd hit the mark. I ripped open Mullet's shirt. “FYI, the sunlight part's right. Wooden stakes, well, that depends.” I plunged my knife into his chest. “Any weapon that's been marked by symbols of faith, if it pierces the heart of a vampire, will stop it until the weapon is removed. Then the vampire will start to heal. Oh, it takes them an hour or so, but they can recover.” All four of the vampires visibly paled – which is saying something – as I carved into their sire's chest. “But, if I take the heart or the head,” I stuck my hand into the warm, wet cavity and pulled. “Well, let's just say that vampires can't re-grow missing parts.”

  I'd never seen a vampire throw up before, but two of them darted into the bushes with their hands over their mouths. The other two couldn't seem to stop staring at the muscle I held in my hand. I set it on the ground and proceeded to slice it in half. Mullet hadn't fed in the last couple of days. That was good. Less blood for me to get on my clothes. Pretty much everything I owned had blood stains on it, but if I could avoid more, I tried. I heard a rustling sound and when I looked up from where I was dicing the heart into little bits, I saw that I was alone.

  “Let's hope they learned their lesson,” I muttered to myself as I finished. I picked up the pieces and began throwing them into the woods. This part was so much easier out here than it would be in a city. Vamps can't put a heart back together if it's been eaten by a dozen or so wild animals. It was rare, but if all of the pieces were stitched back together and put back into a vampire's chest, they could heal. Granted, it took a very powerful, usually very old, vampire to do something like that, but it was always better to be safe than sorry when dealing with these types of creatures. Oh, sorry, we're not supposed to call them 'creatures' anymore. While there are hundreds of sub-species, the entire group had been deemed the more politically correct 'Paranormal Beings.'

  I wiped my hands on my pant-legs and fished my phone out of my pocket. I dialled the direct number for Agent Ass-Hat, taking pleasure in the fact that I was waking him at two in the morning. His greeting was surly, but I didn't let it bother me as I quickly explained what happened. “I was approached by a young vampire coven on the path from the ranger's cabin to the town. The leader threatened me. I gave him a total of three warnings but he charged me. I moved out of the way and he came after me again. I killed him, removed the heart and scattered the pieces. The four other vampires did not behave in any aggressive manner so I didn't pursue them.”

  “How did you kill him?” Agent Ass-Hat sounded more awake now.

  I grinned, thankful he couldn't see me. “As I am a Paranormal Being investigator, hunter and executioner, I am not required to answer questions unless there is proof that I have attacked a Paranormal Being without provocation.” I had to admit, I took a bit of perverse delight in quoting the guidelines to him. He'd been spouting that book of rules at me ever since I'd arrived. “And since I am licensed to carry any form of weapon that can be used on a Paranormal Being, unless it is used on a human, I cannot be asked to reveal, provide or even describe what was used to carry out a method of execution unless it is determined that the aforementioned execution was carried out in bad faith.”

  “You're a real bitch, you know that?”

  “Yeah, well, you're an ass,” I hung up the phone. I'd done my duty and reported the fact that there was a dead – well, more dead – vampire. Since there was no way he was going to get back up, I didn't have to wait around for the Disposal Squad to come get him. They
'd run his prints, get a name, notify next of kin, if there was any who cared, and dispose of the body. Agent Ass-Hat, however, would have to come to the scene to officially declare the deceased was a Paranormal Being. He would be in charge of chain of evidence and typing up my statement. The job fell to whatever law enforcement officer that I, acting in my capacity as executioner, contacted. I could've called Alex or the local police, but it was a lot more fun to annoy Ass-Hat.

  I continued on my way, hoping I wouldn't run into anyone before I reached my hotel. Pretty much the entire town knew what I was, but I didn't think that meant I'd get to walk through town with blood hands and clothes without getting some questions. There had been a time when people like me had been required to work in secret. If law enforcement knew about us, sometimes they would help, but often, we spent as much time trying to avoid them as we did trying to do our job. Then came The Revealing, and everything changed.

  Maybe I should back up a bit.

  Unlike most of the world, I grew up knowing that the creatures who went bump in the night actually existed. They're all real. The virtually human ones like witches and warlocks who had just a little something extra that made them straddle the line between the paranormal and the normal. Then there were the ones like the werewolves and were-leopards – pretty much any type of Were you could think of – who passed down the ability to change into their particular animal through their bloodline; they weren't entirely human, but close enough to maintain a nearly human life. Ghosts had been human once, but they rarely retained anything that made them human. It was always kinder for them to be sent on. Vampires, djinn, necromancers, shape-shifters, rougarou and aswangs may have looked human but they danced much closer to the darkness and were more likely to go rogue and kill people, especially since three of them consumed human blood or flesh. Then there were the ones who may have once been human or spent time in human form, but they were too otherworldly to be considered anything but a creature. These were the succubi, incubi, the wendigoes and selkies, the sirens, and kitsune. No matter how much time they spent with humans, they always retained their wildness.

  For centuries, my family had been part of an elite group of hunters who tracked and killed any creature who crossed the line. Just being one of these things didn't necessarily mean a death sentence, but any form of violence against a human meant a knife to the heart, a silver bullet to the brain or whatever little trick was needed to ensure it didn't happen again. There were no warrants, no red tape. Very few people outside of our kind knew that these things existed. To the rest of the world, we were nomads, never staying in once place for long, doing odd jobs and, very often, having run-ins with the law. It was a little difficult to explain to some homicide detective that the sweet little old lady with her heart cut out was an aswang who'd been eating babies. Used to be that the mark of a true hunter was the number of warrants out for their arrest. I'd had four by the time I was fourteen. My parents, both of whom had been raised hunting, each had two dozen, including a handful of international warrants.

  Then, five years ago, came The Revealing. The heads of the largest covens, clans, packs and whatever else a group of creatures was called, got together and decided that they were tired of hiding and wanted to make their presence known. After thousands of years, I think they finally figured out that the law would be an effective deterrent to hunters. Sad thing is, they were right. Within months of The Revealing, it became illegal to kill any 'Paranormal Being' without a warrant. After a rougarou went on a rampage in Detroit, eating an entire Pilates class, the laws were amended to allow for self-defence and conviction. Before, when we knew a vampire or djinn was responsible for a death, we could just barge into a nest, beat the information out of someone and eliminate the creature responsible. Now, law enforcement was supposed to handle the cases and we were considered vigilantes, arrested for doing what we'd been doing for generations. Almost fifty hunters were imprisoned that first year alone.

  It didn't take the authorities long to realize that they were extremely unprepared to investigate, hunt, capture or kill anything of the supernatural realm, so they started hiring out. That's when families like mine started working as freelancers. The first time a cop saw fifteen year-old me take the head off of a pissed-off kitsune, he threw up. I'd wiped off my machete and asked my parents where we were eating dinner.

  The new laws took their toll on my kind in more ways than just getting arrested. The job actually became more dangerous as equal rights groups successfully lobbied for arrest warrants and trials rather than straight kill warrants. After that bit of legislation went through three years ago, over half of the hunters I knew retired. Since then, another third have been killed trying to serve those arrest warrants.

  In the past five years, we've seen hundreds of wanna-be's try to join our ranks. Personally, I tell them to go back home and be content with killing things in the virtual world, but as our numbers dwindled, some hunters have tried to replenish our ranks by taking them on as apprentices. While there are always a few who make it, the majority either quit and go home, or don't get the chance to go home at all. I probably could have been selective and found one or two who had what it took to do the job, but I preferred to be on my own. It was easier with no attachments.

  Unwillingly, my mind went the night I'd made that decision. It had been two years since my parents, older sister and younger brother had been massacred by some unknown thing. I couldn't even say for sure that it was a creature, only that the scene was like nothing I'd ever seen before. The case had long since gone cold for the Montana police, but I was still searching. I'd just turned seventeen, so the state wanted to put me somewhere, but the lead detective – Paul Carson – had argued against it. He'd been the one who'd referred other cases to me for the first few months when no one thought that a teenager could be worth the risk. I owed him a lot. He'd died six months ago when a rogue were-tiger tore him to pieces. A week later, his department received a lovely tiger-skin rug without a note. Weres didn't turn back to human until after they died and anything not connected to the brain when it quit working stayed in animal form. Even an experienced hunter such as myself learned new things every day.

  My phone rang, interrupting my memories. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Faust?”

  I rolled my eyes and answered, “this is Siobhan.”

  “I'm Special Agent in Charge Kevin Beck.” He sounded awfully young to be a Special Agent in Charge. “I was told to contact you regarding a consultation on a case.”

  I tried not to take the doubt in his voice personally. I'd only been working with the FBI for a couple of months – Paul's final referral – and most of them were still leery of someone like me to begin with, let alone a young female. I had a lot of strikes against me going in. “You know my consultation rate?”

  “It's been approved by the director,” Beck replied. “We need you in DC first thing tomorrow. There will be a first class ticket waiting for you at the airport. Your flight leaves at six.”

  Well, there went any ideas I had about a decent night's sleep. I could probably catch a bit on the flight. “I'll be there.”

  There was an awkward pause as Beck tried to figure out how to end the call. I decided to help him out and hung up. It might piss him off, but at least I wouldn't be wasting more time while he was deciding how polite he had to be. I swiped my keycard and flipped on the lights as I entered my room. Nights like this were why I always requested a first floor room with an outside entrance. As I peeled off my bloodied clothes, I shifted into professional mode.

  Consultations cases were easy money for the most part. I'd been researching, documenting and tracking creatures from the time I was old enough to read and walk. Even among hunters I was well-versed in my knowledge of the supernatural. Put me in with people who'd only been learning about these things for five years at the most and I was a genius. Plus, there was always the opportunity for more money if they decided that the creature I identified was one they needed help tracking or
capturing.

  As I rinsed the blood, sweat and sex from my body, I let my mind begin to run through the checklist of everything I'd need to do before leaving for the airport. Sleep was looking further and further away.

  Chapter Three

  The flight was delayed by over an hour, which keyed me up, but I actually did manage to sleep for a couple of hours on the plane despite the arguing seven year-old twins behind me. I supposed the ability to sleep despite distractions came from spending my entire life sleeping in moving vehicles and hotel rooms, but whatever it was, I was grateful for the time. I didn't usually get back-to-back jobs like this and turning down an FBI job was a sure way to not get asked back. Business was booming and I needed to stay on top of it.

  I pulled my bags from the overhead compartment as soon as we were allowed to get up. The smaller one had all of the clothes I owned in it. The larger held my weapons. I had to admit, flying first class on someone else's dime and not having to go through a baggage check was nice. Before The Revealing, flying anywhere commercially was pretty much impossible. It wasn't like bags of knives, guns and other myriad weapons could be walked past security and onto a plane. Trains sometimes worked, but mostly, we drove, even to Alaska. In emergency situations, we usually called upon owners of small aircraft to take us under the radar. Once hunters started working for the authorities, we got a few perks, including badges that let us bypass the usual security measures. Well, after we'd proven ourselves to be mentally stable. This job did attract its fair share of psychos.