Free Breath of Air by Katie Jennings

simulating an explosion, and despite herself, Capri jumped in surprise. Roarke laughed at her reaction. “Pretty damn scary, huh?”
    She nodded, her eyes still on the round, her imagination running wild with images of burning buildings and epic destruction.
    “Anyway, we come across demons who have these sometimes and we confiscate them. It’s good for us to test them out, and see how best we can defend ourselves against them. Now, the revolver itself is something we confiscated from a demon recently, and we’re testing it out to see if they’ve modified it in any way. It’s your basic double action, old west style revolver with an eight inch barrel. The only modification we can see so far is that they’ve enlarged the openings for the rounds, since these bullets are much larger than the kind normally carried in a revolver like this one. Why don’t you go ahead and fire this one off again, Rian, so Capri can see it in action.”
    Rian nodded, reloading one of the rounds back into the revolver and clicking it into place. He replaced his ear plugs and then proceeded to point the revolver towards a target some twenty feet in the distance and cock it. Clynn motioned for Capri to step further back, up against the wall of the cage. She watched in fascination, realizing with a jolt that she had never even seen a gun fired until now.
    After a moment of lining up the shot, Rian fired, and the bullet zoomed through the air with a loud pop, hitting the bull’s eye on the target, and proceeding to instantly explode with fire. Capri’s eyes widened with shock as sprinklers above the target sprayed some kind of white liquid over the fire, putting it out within seconds. All that was left of the target was smoldering remains.
    Clynn and Roarke began to clap, so Capri followed suit, even though her hands were shaking slightly. Rian set the now empty revolver down on a nearby table, and turned to face his father.
    “Good work, son. You’ll never guess it, but the one liquid we’ve discovered that can quickly put out eternal fire is milk. We think it’s because milk means life and fertility and, well, the Underworld just means death.” Roarke threw back his head and laughed at his own joke, and when he was finished he was still grinning. “C’mon, girl, let me show you what else we got over here.” Roarke motioned towards the wall full of weapons and led the way, Clynn and Capri walking behind him. Rian followed as well, silent as ever.
    When they passed the other shooting cage, Clynn nodded to Balgaire, who tilted his head slightly in return. Capri caught a glimpse of his face before he turned away again, and she shuddered involuntarily. It amazed her how much of a contrast there was between the two older Furies. It was like light and dark, night and day…where Roarke was jovial and confident, Balgaire just seemed, well, sour.
    “These are most of the weapons that we not only use in the field, but that we’ve come up against in the past from the enemy.” Roarke gestured to the wall, grinning. “As you can see, we have an expansive collection.” He began to walk along the wall, pointing to each of the different groupings of weapons, his voice getting more and more excited. “You have your semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, much like the one you just saw; your shot guns, pistol grip, sawed off, and complete; your semi-automatic rifles, long distance sniper. Then we have the more, well, unique weapons: your eternal fire whip, poisonous demon ninja star, and your full range of grenades.” He paused at the end of the display case, which held nearly a hundred different sized and shaped grenades. He grinned again, even more excited. “But now I have to show you the best part.”
    He reached over and pulled a round from a box on the display case and handed it to Capri.
    She stared at it for a moment, rolling it between her fingers. It looked almost identical to the demon fire bullet, only instead of there being fire in the