Jay shut the door behind her, smelling like French fries and pizza. “Our deal stands?”
She barely kept from rolling her eyes. “Yes. You helped me with the mission, and now I’ll make sure the king lets you into the Realm.” By all that was holy. If the kids just showed up at King Dage Kayrs’s house, he’d feed them dinner and provide lodging for them, making sure they were trained. Hell, knowing Dage, he’d adopt the young warriors into his own vampire family. They didn’t need her introduction.
Good thing they didn’t know that. They’d been invaluable in scoping out Titans of Fire, the Dunnes, and the Apollo drug. After she sent them to Dage, she should probably let him know some of the outliers didn’t realize he welcomed all vampires into the fold.
Something to worry about another day, and only if she survived double-crossing Daire Dunne, which seemed to be a bit impossible after meeting the guy. It was too bad the only kiss she’d had in eons had come from a witch who no doubt was about to put a bounty on her head and then collect it himself.
It wasn’t like she could blame him, because man, had she worked him. Who would’ve thought, her biggest curse and greatest regret would be an advantage in subterfuge? She might be damaged, and she might be weak, but this time, she was going to win. Finally.
It was odd how life worked out.
Hers was no doubt reaching its expiration date, but she had one job to do before she could rest, and Daire Dunne or no, she was going to do it.
The old television sprang to life, and a grainy video took shape of a couple of twenty-year-old girls dressed in shimmering tops and high heels hanging out in the private lounge area of Tod’s Bar in lower Seattle. They smiled and flirted with men in suits, and the shortest girl finally drew slim vials of bright orange liquid from her knock-off purse. Apollo. The newest drug on the market.
They drank the entire vials.
Jay glanced over his shoulder. “This gets bad, Cee Cee. Sure you want to watch?”
If the kid had any idea what she’d seen through the years, he’d feel like an idiot asking the question. Yet she appreciated his concern, even as her stomach rolled. “Yes,” she murmured, her gaze remaining on the screen.
The girls continued to party, one even making out with a much older man in a corner booth. An hour passed and the room began to clear out. Soon, the girls began to wobble on their heels while returning to the bar.
For water, probably. At that point with Apollo, their spit would be drying up.
Sparks crackled on the shorter girl’s arm. Then waves of fire, blue and orange.
Her friend gasped and stumbled back, only to shoot plasma, oddly purple, from her fingertips.
A bouncer quickly reached the girls, but it was too late. Fire cascaded around them, on them, even inside them. Soon they both dropped to the ground, scorching the carpet around them.
The bouncer, a huge bald man with multiple earrings in each ear, shouted orders and sent the few remaining patrons scrambling for the door.
He didn’t reach for the phone.
The taller girl went into convulsions, and fire roared from her fingertips to scald the far wall. Then she went silent and still, her eyes open in death. Colorful striations marred the whites of her eyes.
The other girl gasped, smoke streaming from her mouth, and tried to crawl toward her friend. She almost made it before collapsing in death, a trickle of flame burning out the side of her mouth.
The television clicked off.
“So sick,” Jay said. “What’s in Apollo? Nobody knows, Cee Cee.”
She knew. It was a mineral mined in Russia that had several names, and her people called in planekite. It stole the power of witches and ultimately killed them, and now it was part of a designer drug that gave witchly power to humans before incinerating their internal organs. “I don’t know what’s in it,” she lied.