Breathing Fire (Heretic Daughters #1)(47)
The pistols were clearly visible, mounted just below my armor covered br**sts, but Dom checked them anyways. He even removed them from the holsters to check the rounds.
“Explosive rounds,” I told him. “They only carry ten. I have more of the good rounds packed, and some normal clips.
He re-holstered them. I watched his hands as he did it. I had thought that it was his eyes that seemed to be-spell me, but the sight of his hands had a very similar effect. I shook myself, looking resolutely at my feet.
“They’re placed a little low. Let me see you draw.”
I had already checked this myself, but I humored him. He was the man in charge, and I didn’t want to argue with him. If we started fighting, gods only knew what would happen. I just couldn’t trust myself with him.
I drew the guns swiftly and smoothly, their mounted position just below my br**sts perfect. I aimed them at the ground. “See? Good to go.” I re-holstered them just as smoothly.
He made a low sound of approval in his throat. I could see my chest rising and falling with my harsh breaths. Hadn’t we f**ked just that morning? How had that not assuaged even an ounce of the wanting?
“Show me the rest.”
I showed him my pockets of extra ammo. “I’m carrying a duffle with additional ammo. I figure we’ll move forward in waves. I’ll just drag it along when I’m not actively fighting.”
I showed him my knives next. I had only the two guns on me, the larger ones would go in the duffle, but I had a shit-ton of knives. I showed him the longest one. It was mounted on my thigh, and ran nearly the entire length of it. That made it closer to a short sword than a knife, since I had a very long thigh. It had been a bitch to find pants with a thirty-six inch inseam before online shopping came along.
Torturously, he knelt down and examined the sheath, running his fingers over the buckled straps. I crossed my arms, suddenly baffled about what to do with my hands. I knew what I wanted to do, but that was not what I would do.
“I have an ankle sheath as well, with a bowie knife with a serrated edge.” He checked that as well.
I showed him all of the smaller knives I had along my arms and torso, detailing all the additional equipment that I had packed. He studied it all personally, even checking my vest with his hands. I should have told him that any gear that had already passed Caleb’s inspection was above reproach, but I remained silent. I stood perfectly still for his appraisal. I was determined to get through this encounter without laying a finger on him.
Finally he stepped back. I breathed a sigh of relief. See, I could be in the same room with him without jumping him. It was a close thing, though.
He smiled briefly. It was a sad smile. I wondered if his smiles ever looked happy anymore. All of the brief glimpses I’d seen of them had been bittersweet at best. “I like your hair.” His expression quickly went serious again. “Be careful out there,” he told me softly, before walking away.
“You too,” I told his back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Battle Charge
The nightmare voice drifted out to us as if by accident. Like we were overhearing a conversation that grew in volume as we listened.
That voice inspired a fear in me that was reserved almost exclusively for my bloodthirsty family, oh yeah, and the occasional demon from hell. It was that, oh shit I wanna run and hide somewhere until life goes back to what it should be, kind of fear. And it wasn’t just the glamour in that voice that inspired it. It was also a fear of what the necros represented, what they could do. If left unchecked, they could turn the world into ravening monsters like themselves. Perhaps thats why I took particular joy in butchering them in bulk.
The huge necro settlement had been a military base at one time, and was surrounded completely by a tall, barbed-wire fence. The druids were making short work of the fence, using cutters to make a large opening for our large force to slip through. They were almost done when we realized that our presence had been detected by the nightmare creatures inside. It was far from ideal timing.
I could hate the druids for a lot of things. In fact, I did. But I did have to give them some serious credit where the necros were concerned. They were the major force that kept the things from running completely amok. If not for their considerable efforts, and constant vigilance, the world could quite possibly turn into something from a zombie apocalypse film. And for that, even I was a little bit grateful to them.
After what was called ‘The Great Druid Wars’ had ended nearly fifty years ago, the ‘cleansed druids’ had fought and eventually abolished the ‘blood druids’. The cleansed druids were what we knew today, a law-enforcing people who had turned their back on a dark past riddled with human sacrifice and other atrocities. Blood druids sought the old ways, and refused to give up the practice of human sacrifice to gain powers. From what I had heard, the blood druids were more powerful, but a great majority had sided with the cleansed. It had involved centuries of battles, the last years of it dwindling down to routing out the enemy in hidden keeps, caves, and groves. I had learned all of this, and nearly everything I knew of druids, and that I shouldn’t know, from Dom. His parents had, tragically, died just before the very last battle in the war. Their heads had decorated spikes on the walls of the fortress that the cleansed had stormed to take out that last malevolent pocket of bloods druids. They had been captured just days before the entire war had ended.