Blood in the Ozarks

24. Aconite Burns

"Don't you feel it?" Jayme Donner's voice had changed. The octave lower, the words slowed. "Something wicked is in this town. And it's not one of us."

Head toward the sky, he inhaled deeply, audibly filling his lungs and releasing. "This kind of power reeks of death. Not chaos. Smells like carnage with a purpose. You Feds are really out of your league here."

"And why would we believe you?" Ortega asked.

"Believe me or don't. I'm right either way. And you'll find this little fight you're picking was fruitless."

Donner snarled as he hunched forward. I braced myself, hand on gun for his next move.

Slowly, he made his way toward us, stopping directly in front of Cian. Ortega and I trained our gun barrels on either side of him.

"Careful, fiend." Cian spat.

Donner sniffed the air. "You're one to talk." His nostril flared and his brow cocked. "What is that smell? It's disgusting."

Ortega thankfully held back any remarks about the notorious smell of fiends.

"We don't want a fight," I reminded all of them. "We just want a DNA sample from you and then we'll leave. Can we do that without an altercation, please?"

The man's neck snapped to look at me. As he stared into my green, human eyes as his own flashed from brown to red. The irises glowed for a moment before settling into their new dark red-ringed tone.

"Coming right up," said Donner. A slight growl was added to his tenor tone that slipped beyond his lips; his lips sticky with saliva.

My eyes grew wide and I watched him begin to transform in front of Cian. I kept my hand on my gun, ready to take him down the minute things went sideways.

Back in the car, I'd traded my standard government issued Glock for the pistol I was now caressing. But this wasn't any pistol. I'd swapped for the pistol because it was a paintball pistol loaded with balls of aconite poison. Even if my target wasn't superhuman, the little balls were still being hurdled at a rate of speed high enough to pack a punch. Luckily, fiends aren't a fan of aconite. It wouldn't kill Donner, but the small ball of aconite would do enough damage to incapacitate him and that's all I needed.

Although the fiend in him was nearly freed, Donner was attempting to calm back down. I had hoped he knew a way to do a partial shift. Maybe turn a hand or something so we could pluck a few scales. I shuddered at the thought as I watched him battle himself.

"Don't fire!" I yelled at Ortega. However my lips had barely shut before the fiend was rampantly running for us, Donner completely lost to his new form.

As Donner barreled forward in a blind rage, Ortega dodge to the side out of the fiend's path. The large red beast was unable to correct his trajectory and flew past and straight out the barn door.

The roar of an anger-laced growl ripped through the sky outside the barn doors. Silence followed the cry.

In the quiet, I thought we may have a beat to gather a plan before leaving the relative safety the wooden exterior provided. Of course before I could utter a word, Oretga's lip curled into a smirk and he ran out the door after the fiend.

"Goddammit, Tommy," Cain mumbled to himself more than me.

Gripping his t-shirt from the back, Cian yanked the plain white fabric over his head. Then he threw the shirt to the ground and kicked off his shoes.

"What are you doing?" I cried.

Even with a fiend right out the door, I couldn't take my eyes off Cian. His own eyes had shifted from their normal stellar blue to a light gray, a hue change that was far more extreme than a shift in light.