Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(90)

“I do not know in inches or centimeters, but taller than the roof of a modern house.”

“A ranch-style one-story house, or a two-story?” Nicky asked.

“One story.”

“So, he’s sixteen to twenty feet tall in dragon form,” Nicky said.

“Can he fly?” Edward asked. No Holy cow, a dragon, just practical questions.

“No,” Jake said.

“If we can isolate him somewhere away from civilians, a LAW might do it,” he said.

“Law enforcement?” Richard asked.

“Light antitank weapon,” I said, “LAW.”

“How do you have an antitank weapon?” Richard asked.

“Never ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” I said.

He frowned at me.

“Save questions that won’t help us kill Deimos until later.”

Richard held up his hands like he was giving up, but he nodded.

I turned back to Edward to ask, “I thought we used the last one you had on that case in Washington State?”

“That was years ago, did you really think I wouldn’t have more by now?”

I grinned, almost laughed, and said, “Silly me, okay, but if we blow him up, will the fire-breathing part make the explosion something we can’t plan for?”

“It depends on what type of fire breathing it is.” Edward put his fingers up in quote marks around fire breathing.

“Okay, Jake, explain the fire breathing to us?” I asked.

“Have any of you heard the term ‘Greek fire’?”

“It’s like ancient Greek napalm,” Peter said.

I looked at him. “How do you know that?”

He pointed at Edward, who offered him a fist bump, which he took grinning. “It was supposed to be worse than modern napalm, or even the Greek fire that survived into later Greek history.”

“So, there are two types of Greek fire?” I asked.

Edward answered, “The first was supposed to be so deadly that nothing could stand against it. It clung to things like modern napalm, or a phosphorus grenade, and like phosphorus, getting it wet made it burn harder, but it was supposed to be worse than anything we have now.”

“It was, or I suppose is,” Jake said.

“I hadn’t thought about one of you being old enough to know the lost recipe for original Greek fire,” Edward said.

“History does say the recipe for it was lost, but they also say that the Greek heroes didn’t use poison in battle, and neither is true,” Jake said.

“What are you saying, or rather, say it more clearly,” Jean-Claude said.

“The original Greek fire was not lost; we, the Harlequin, killed all the demigods that could spew it from their bodies. The Greeks had to re-create it from ingredients they could find, because our dark queen declared that beings that could create a substance that burned through armor, flesh, anything it touched and could not be extinguished were too dangerous to vampirekind to be allowed to exist.”

“Didn’t you say that Mommie Darkest turned him into a vampire? Why would she do that if she wanted him dead?” I asked.

“She thought she would be able to control him and create a living weapon that all vampires and shapeshifters would fear.”

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“He was too alien from the rest of us, even from her.”

“She couldn’t control him,” Damian said.

“She could not.”

“Can we kill him by blowing him up?” Edward asked.

“And can we blow him up without turning him into pure spirit like what happened to the Mother of All Darkness when she got assassinated? It was so much harder to kill her once she could jump into and out of the vampires and shapeshifters connected to her,” I said.

“He never had the ability to leave his body,” Jake said.

“That is good to know,” I said, “but wait, if he can’t take over Jean-Claude’s body, then how was he going to possess his power as king?”

“By plugging himself into the vampire marks I have with you, through the marks you share with others, to the blood oaths I have given to every master vampire in America. He does not need to possess my body, only hook himself into my mystical connections like a . . . what is the term for someone who steals power that they do not pay for?”

“You mean like someone piggybacking onto your internet service, or cable, or whatever?” I asked.

“Oui.”

“But that’s done in secret, you don’t want people to find out you’re stealing from them. Tonight was the magical equivalent of a frontal assault,” I said.

“Deimos has never been subtle,” Jake said.

“Then he won’t be patient either,” I said, “so now answer the question. How do we kill him?”

“Deimos’s brother was killed by a large boulder crushing his head, so a bomb should work, but I do not know what will happen to the Greek fire inside him,” Jake said.

“If we accept that Deimos can spit Greek fire, then the chemical or whatever he uses internally to create it have to be separate until the moment he uses it, or he would injure himself,” Richard said.

I nodded. “True, if we accept that fire breathing of any kind is possible, then the substances the animal uses to create the heat or ignition of the fire would have to be kept very carefully separate in the body until it’s time to use it, or they’ll burn themselves.”