Mercy Burns

“What do you call him, then?”

“Sir!”

Damon pushed him out over the railing again. “Really?”

“Really. For fuck’s sake, I’ve no reason to lie!”

“Then how are you paid?”

“Something called Frederick Enterprises pays it directly into my account.”

Damon glanced at me. “What do you think?”

“He’s not lying.” He was too scared to lie.

So was I. My heart seemed to be pounding somewhere in my throat and my fingers were twitchy. Although in my case, it wasn’t so much fear of the man but fear of what he might do.

Damon raised an eyebrow, but pulled the man back from the edge again. “What clique do you come from?”

“Jamieson. Jesus, man, I was just hired for the hit, you know?” Blood was staining the collar of his pale shirt.

Then his answer sank in and my stomach lurched. These men were from my clique? I’d never seen them before, but I guess that didn’t mean anything. Not only did Jamieson have a huge population of draman, but many of them left well before adulthood, either to escape the abuse or to find something better. And this man looked several years older than me, so he would have been in a different crèche.

“So you’ve worked for these people before?” Damon asked.

“Shit, yeah. Been getting work off and on for two months now.”

Two months. The first cleansing had happened about two months ago. Coincidence? I suspected not.

“Doing what?”

The man shrugged, then winced as the movement forced the wire deeper into his already bleeding neck. “Whatever they wanted. Shooting, burning, whatever.”

I closed my eyes. So he was involved.

And the truth was, he probably did deserve whatever Damon decided to dish out to him. And yet I knew if he decided to drop the man into the ocean, I’d try to rescue him. Not because he deserved to be saved, but simply because, if he was offering no threat, killing him was nothing more than murder. And that still wasn’t something I wanted on my conscience, no matter how right the reason.

Did that make me weak in Damon’s eyes? More than likely.

“How do you make contact once the job is done?” Damon asked.

“There’s a card in my wallet. Take it.”

With his free hand, Damon pulled the wallet out of the man’s back pocket and tossed it to me. I caught then opened it. There were tons of business cards inside. This guy obviously had a moneymaking business. “Which one?”

“Black one. Red writing. Jesus, ease up on the wire! I’m being honest here.”

“If you were an honest man,” Damon said, “you wouldn’t have been involved in mass slaughters.”

Our captive didn’t say anything. But then, the dangerous edge in Damon’s voice would have scared even the strongest soul.

I flicked through the cards until I found a black one with red writing. “It says—in somewhat pretentious gothic print, I might add—Deca Dent. Under that is a number.” I looked up at him. “What the hell is Deca Dent? A name or a place? And how is that related to the guy who pays you?”

Damon gave his captive a shake, and he stammered, “Deca Dent is a bar. I have no idea how the bar and the man are related to the money or my jobs. I get paid, and that’s all that matters.”

I shoved the card in my pocket and resisted the urge to ask about all his victims, and whether they’d mattered. It was obvious that they hadn’t.

Which made me study Damon and wonder if there was anything that mattered to him. Or whether I was looking at two sides of the same coin. One light, one dark, and both intent on doing the job and caring for little else.

“Is the man at the bar draman or dragon?” Damon asked.

“Dragon.”

“And is he the man in charge of the whole operation?”

“I told you, I don’t know. He just gives me my orders and I report to him when I’m done. I swear, that’s it.”

“And has he got an elegant-sounding voice?” I asked.

Damon glanced at me, then shook the man when he didn’t immediately answer. “Not really. It’s more gruff than elegant. Please, the wire is fucking hurting.”

“You can thank my lovely assistant for the fact that that’s all it’s doing,” Damon said, and frog-hopped him back to the lounge.

He repeated the process with the other three men, but none of them had anything else to add. The first man was obviously the brains of this outfit. Or at least, the one who made contact.

“What are we going to do with them?” I said as Damon pushed the last man back into place.

“We stop them from escaping.”

I frowned. “The minute we leave, they’re going to flame themselves loose.”

“Not if they haven’t got any flame to begin with,” he answered, and then touched the last man lightly on his forehead.

Damon closed his eyes and power began to crawl through the air. It was dark, that power—as dark and as dangerous as the man wielding it.

The man he was touching screamed—a short, sharp sound that was filled with pain and fear. I swallowed heavily, my gaze jumping between the two men, wondering what the hell Damon was actually doing. The man was alive—I could see him breathing—but he looked as if someone had ripped his heart out.

What the hell was Damon doing to him?

He moved on to the next man. I frowned and stepped forward, touching the first man lightly on the shoulder. His flesh was icy, even through the thickness of his shirt. But it was more than just the chill of stolen fire, and my stomach did an odd flip-flop.

No, I thought, he couldn’t have. I reached down inside myself and unleashed the dragon, letting her energy swirl into the stranger. But instead of fire, she found nothing. Not even the broken, scattered ashes where once the soul of a dragon had lived.

He hadn’t just stolen his heat, as I’d threatened to do. He’d completely erased it.

“How is that possible?” I murmured as I glanced at Damon, feeling sick. “How can you extinguish someone’s very essence?”

He didn’t open his eyes. “Any fire can be put out, Mercy. You just have to know how.”

I swallowed heavily, but it didn’t ease the dryness in my throat. “Can you do that to full dragons as well?”

“It’s harder, but yes.” He dropped his fingers from the last man and looked at me. “It beats killing them, doesn’t it?”

“But—”

“They’re alive, Mercy. They just can’t flame.”

“For now, or forever?”

He hesitated. “Draman do not need flames or wings.”

“Of course not. After all, what right have we got to be able to protect ourselves against you lot?” I snorted softly. “You really have no understanding of what goes on in cliques, do you?”

“And you have no idea just how close the cliques are to being exposed,” he snapped, then made a visible effort to control himself before adding, “Let’s not get into this argument again. If you want to rescue this woman, we need to get moving.”

He went back out onto the deck without waiting for me. I grabbed the backpack, checked that the netbook was still in one piece, then followed. It was a large space, but there wasn’t enough room for a dragon to stand, let