Page 86 of Of Flame and Fate
“Yes.” Although there’s nothing to smile about, I manage, my sense of pride getting the best of me. “My sister once took on a pterodactyl.” I give it some thought. “And a wooly mammoth.”
“Whoa. They sound incredible,” he says.
The wolves don’t outwardly growl, but they come close. “That’s not how I’d describe them,” I say, my tone dissolving Johnny’s awe. “They’re monsters who make hundreds of blood sacrifices in order to command the power of hell within them.”
“By killing vamps?” he asks, sounding confused.
“You’re associating blood sacrifices with those who drink it,” I interpret. “That’s not how things work.”
Bren cuts me off, appearing annoyed. “Vamps don’t count as sacrifices. They don’t have souls. Humans do and are easy prey which is why they’re the ones often targeted.”
“What about you?” Johnny asks me. “Can they come after you?”
“They’ve tried. Weres, witches, and beings of magic like me all have souls, and because of our magic, we’re more worthy sacrifices. But we don’t go down easy, not like humans.”
He grips the seat in front of him, struggling to steady his breathing. “So Drake, Jude, all my friends weren’t just killed. Those shifters sacrificed their souls to gain more power?”
“Not exactly,” I reply. “Their souls were sacrificed to move one step closer toward their goal of becoming shifters. But shifters aren’t stupid, and if they’re part of the evil that’s rising, we’re in a lot of trouble. What happened to your friends is just the start.”
“So no justice, for Drake, Jude, Paulo—anyone of them?”
“Not necessarily,” Gemini responds for me. “Actual shifters didn’t kill them, their neophytes did. I could tell by the type of magic littering the room. We haveweresin the responding police force. If they can find them, they’ll take care of them.”
“By locking them up? Bullshit,” Johnny states. “It’s not like they can just take away their wands and be done with it.”
“I never said thewereswould arrest them,” Gemini replies. “I only said they would be taken care of.”
“Oh,” Johnny answers, Gemini’s frankness hitting him all at once. He reaches for another cigarette. Gemini notices, but doesn’t stop him.
The cigarette is partially broken. Johnny breaks off the damaged tip and extends what he salvaged toward me. “Please,” he asks.
My fire flickers from my fingertips and the tip ignites in blue and white. Johnny inhales, creating another bird. “How do you do that?” I ask.
“I’m an artist,” he replies simply.
“How do you do that?” Gemini asks, albeit a little more harshly.
Johnny pauses, bouncing in his seat when Gemini rolls through a large pothole. I think he’s toying with the idea of not answering, if so, the glare Bren tosses over his shoulder changes his mind rather quickly. “I will some of myself into whatever I create,” he replies. “Be it my tats, a painting, or my music.”
“So when you sing . . .”
“I will myself to sound good, and for those who feel pain to feel my pain, too” he adds, his mind appearing to wander.
I think back to the rough and tumble crowd of people who attended his concert. I mostly dismissed them as delinquents and offenders, and they probably were. But sometimes the toughest people become that way not because they’re born predators, but because they were preyed upon. I’ll give Johnny this, he knew just the right crowd to lure in.
I pretend not to care or notice the effect his music had on me, my attention trailing to the road and to the thickening forest edging closer to the asphalt. “What happens when you draw?” I ask.
“Anything I create gets a piece of me,” he states. “The longer it’s with me, the stronger and more real it becomes.”
Which explains why he has so many tattoos. In keeping them close, they absorb more of his power. “Is that why your bandmates could speak to me. They were with you a long time?”
“Yeah.”
I turn in time to catch the way his gaze skims down my body. He’s not leering, but he has taken an interest in me.
“I inked my boys in when I realized how much of me went into my lyrics, and how society throwaways like me seemed to connect to it.” He blows out a stream of smoke from the side of his mouth, sending a flock of tiny white birds to disappear into the wind. “I needed a band, you feel me? People who could stand by me and make me Johnny Fate.”
“How did you teach them to play?” Gemini asks. His voice is even, and anyone else listening might not pick up on his anger. I do. But then no one knows him like me.