Fire Danger Read online

She spread her fingers until they strained against the bone. It felt as if she was awake. Maybe the other fugue states had been like this as well. Wanting to blank the voices in her head, Rachel began humming an old nursery rhyme. It filled her brain until all she could think was “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

  His head rose. “That will do for a start,” he said aloud. “You will need to learn to cover your thoughts better than that, but you have innate ability.”

  Phoenix met her eyes. He was as gorgeous as she had envisioned in her dream, if she wasn’t still dreaming. With a face like an angel created by a macho god, he had great features and a body that would be at home on a fitness magazine cover. She was five foot ten, and he was six inches taller than her. And broad. His wingspan was wide, about twice the length of a person, in perfect proportion to his chiseled torso. Sweats covered his legs, but the loose fabric let her know that they were as well sculpted as the rest of him.

  “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose,” she thought.

  He smiled, his lips curling back like a feral dog. Like a wolf. Wolves.

  “Come. Your cat will be safe here. You look like you could use a drink, and we need to have that talk.”

  He made no comment that he’d heard her impetuous thoughts. Not that it mattered. After the last weeks, she understood now that her life would never be the same. A little admiration of a sexy male body was the least of her worries.

  His wings vanished, disappearing into his shoulders. One minute they were there, and then there was a noise, like a sucking sound, and they were gone. The fact that he didn’t move or otherwise register the disappearance told her this was something that had happened before.

  Just like the rest of everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, it made no sense. Yet there it was.

  He reached for a T-shirt resting on the back of the sofa and slipped it on. The selfish part of her missed the sight of all that beautiful naked flesh, but the logical part of her decided it was for the best.

  “Drink?”

  The skyscape out the large-paned windows showed the hill and the city beyond. With her salary, she could never have hoped to afford this upscale central San Francisco neighborhood. “This must have cost a fortune.” Her hand gesture took in the house and the landscaping beyond. Even if the place had been a family inheritance, this area hadn’t been affordable for decades.

  Phoenix poured one neat shot of brandy and handed it to her.

  “None for you?”

  He shook his head. “Alcohol has no effect on me.”

  “Oh.” Too bad.

  He grinned and Rachel flushed, realizing her mistake. “It really sucks that you can hear me,” she said, trying to sound casual. “It makes me feel vulnerable.”

  His gaze met hers. His eyes were a clear sort of brown that could be called amber in certain light.

  “You are vulnerable,” he said brusquely, moving toward her. “Sit.”

  She took the alcohol and drained the glass with one tip of her head.

  Phoenix arched an eyebrow at the act. “Another?”

  It would be nice to get drunk, to forget the craziness for a few hours, but all that would do was leave her with a hangover, a muzzy head and the same lingering questions tomorrow. Today. Whatever day it was, getting plastered wasn’t going to help the crazy turn her life had taken.

  If this was a dream, it was a hell of a ride.

  “No, that’s enough.” There was that sensation again, like someone had placed a flame under her skin. Rachel rubbed at her forearm, trying to shake the feeling. “I don’t get it, though. Why would the wolves, or you, care about me?” She waited, but he made no response. Was she really having this conversation, as casually as if they were discussing the weather?

  “I don’t know the answer to that question,” he admitted. “I will need to find out.”

  “We will need to find out,” she corrected.

  He inclined his head, but his mind was shuttered.

  “How do you do that?” she asked, tapping her head with her forefinger. “That whole not-let-others-know-what-you-are-thinking thing?”

  “There are ways,” he said, the amber-colored bottle still in his hands. “You will need to learn them, if there is time.”

  “If there is time?”

  She didn’t realize she’d echoed the words in her mind until he answered there.

  “If the world doesn’t end first.”

  “Repeat that last bit to me?”

  He turned to her, and his eyes were distant, as if focused on something far away. “Are you sure you’re ready for the answers? You’re a…damned if I know what you are. You’re different. This shouldn’t concern you, but it does.”

  This. Vampires. Shadow people. Wolves. This. It made no sense.

  “There are many things mortal beings have no concept of.” His voice was gravelly and suddenly sounded very old. He gestured to the sofa, and without waiting for her, sat on one side. The throw there told her this was the side he preferred. She took a seat as far away from him as she could, sitting primly on the opposite side of the sofa.

  His brows knitted together, and his eyes focused in on her like a laser beam. “Who are you, and how is it you can call to an Elemental?”

  Rachel wished she could have controlled her involuntary start. The sensation under her skin intensified. She was pretty sure she wasn’t in a fugue state or dreaming, but now she wished she could wake up.

  “Do you have gods or demigods in your family? Something from the pantheons would explain your powers a little better. If not gods, perhaps Cherufe? You smell of fire.”

  His words should have been strange, but they touched something inside her, a distant memory. She reached for it but it slid away, vanishing into the corner of her mind again. “Um. Do you read a lot? Or watch a lot of TV? Movies? Comic books?”

  “I watch and read my share, but that is not why I am asking.” His gaze was steady on her. “Who are you? What are you?” Phoenix asked the questions softly, but she could hear his words.

  A woman could get lost in those eyes, with their promise of sensual pleasure and something else—a strength that could slay dragons.

  Fire. Dragons. Heat surged through her and just as quickly was gone. She felt something in his mind at the word dragon and then it too was gone.

  Phoenix’s eyes narrowed, and there was an answering surge of fire, like incipient flames dancing on his skin. Then there was the touch of his mind in hers.

  Screaming. Glass shattering. The call to “Run, Rachel, run!” from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was the first thing she had any clear memory of. The car accident. The day her life was changed forever. Rachel tried mentally to retreat but had no power against his assault. A screech. A bang. Someone hovering. Hovering? Memories of fleeing from the car and then watching it burn, her parents trapped within. Then running, compelled by a voice coupled with fear that dug its claws into her and wouldn’t let go.

  “Maybe I’m a witch?” she forced herself to say, and felt the probe retreat.

  Phoenix’s forehead creased. “Witches have to have some innate ability, but for the most part they are taught their powers. You will need to find out. It’s important.”

  Agitated, Rachel rose from the couch and went to the window, seeing but not seeing the twinkle of early-morning city below them.

  “You are not going to your workplace,” he informed her. “It’s too dangerous.”

  She doubted work would want to see her tomorrow, or ever again. Rachel thought she had escaped before the fugue took her, but she was sure of nothing these days.

  “Bogeyman going to get me?”

  He shook his head. “They only come out at night, in a new moon. Aver, their leader, prefers it that way. You will see him if he is summoned, but not during the day.”

/>   Ask a silly question…

  “This is crazy. I’m nobody. I have a nowhere job, a small apartment and a boring-as-heck life.”

  “Not anymore.” Phoenix’s voice was solemn.

  She turned to face him. “You are going to have to give me a little time to take this all in. I’ve flown with you. You’re real, I think. Understand that I’ve been having fugues for the last few months, so this could all be in my head. I don’t get this. Why is this happening?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  Phoenix moved, his reflection in the glass giving him away until he stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. The tanned hands against her body were dusted with fine hairs the same color as the hair on his head, and appeared strong and unlined.

  “Look, Mr. Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix. Just Phoenix.”

  Of course he would only have one name. “Is that what’s on your driver’s license?”

  Phoenix gestured over his shoulder to the garage that she imagined was behind the house.

  “I have a driver’s license and a car but I rarely use them. I have no need for a driver’s license most of the time. Between BART and my abilities, it’s irrelevant.”

  She pointedly moved her gaze to his back.

  His grip firmed and he turned her toward him. “As you can see, they come and go. When I have them, they cannot be seen. Humans are very easily led.”

  “You say that pretty arrogantly,” she said. “They don’t see what you tell them not to see?”

  He shrugged. “Humans do not see the paranormal. They see paranormals as regular people. Those of us who function in the world as they know it, anyway. Those who function solely as paranormals they only see, or feel, in nightmares. As the Phoenix, an Elemental, I am invisible to them.”

  A play of emotions crossed his face, his brow creasing. The air wavered in front of her, as if a heat source were in the room. Him?

  “You look like you’re trying to decide what to tell me,” Rachel said.

  “Not what I can tell you. What I should tell you. The wolf cubs, the shadow people—they felt or smelled something in you. Either that or they were compelled to attack by my Demonos foe. You are involved in this. This is unprecedented.”

  The room dipped and swam, but Rachel managed a snort. So many questions danced through her mind, and she didn’t even know where to start. Vampires? Werewolves? Demonos? A man as the mythical Phoenix? Maybe she had taken a wrong turn and landed smack-dab in Rod Serling’s brain.

  “Char and burn. If I thought it would do any good, I would make you forget last night and return you to your apartment none the wiser for your ordeal,” Phoenix said.

  Rachel pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Okay, stop. The fact that you can read my mind is weird enough as it is. Now you’re telling me you could erase my memory?”

  Phoenix focused on a spot past her, his expression discomfited. “Not erase but make it appear as if it had been a dream. A bad dream brought about by too much vodka and a late-night viewing of The Howling.”

  “Or An American Werewolf in London.”

  “Yes. But not Teen Wolf.”

  She was going to say more, but the heat under her skin intensified and she took a step back. Phoenix frowned again, checking her arms where she was rubbing them.

  “Rachel?” he asked.

  He had an accent, something old-world Europe. She studied him again but couldn’t place his nationality.

  “How old are you?” she asked suddenly. “I’m trying to figure out where you came from and I can’t.”

  “I’m from what you would now call Germany,” he said simply.

  She made a small sound. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you only answered half my question.” The feeling of heat faded, to her relief. Now it was as if something had tilted her world on its axis.

  Phoenix smiled, sending a shiver down her spine. The danger she’d sensed in him earlier came flooding back, and she wondered just how formidable an opponent he would be when roused.

  He moved then, coming to sit beside her. He met her eyes as he came closer until she could see the gold and black flecks in his amber-brown eyes and the sun-bleached highlights woven through his chocolate hair. Up close his face spoke of age without having a line or a wrinkle to mark him. She decided it was his eyes. They appeared to have seen far too much. Rachel tried to remember what she could about the legend of the Phoenix. They were associated with the sun and died in fire and were resurrected. Did they have control over fire? Did he have control over it? How much of it was true and how much fiction?

  “You’re projecting like a mewling werepanther. Try to shield.”

  His phone rang, interrupting them, the bell echoing in the living room. She started, the unexpected noise piercing through the tension in the room.

  The sense of heat began to fade, and Rachel took a breath. It retreated like a banked fire, controlled but not gone.

  “Call from Griffin,” the talking caller ID announced. “Call from Griffin,” it repeated.

  That wasn’t a last name. “Landline?”

  “It’s easier. Safer.” Phoenix turned his attention to the phone. “Griff, they have clocks in Iceland,” he said, after pushing speaker on the telephone. “What is it?”

  The voice was tinny but clear, a lilting tenor. “Aleric, what is going on over there? Who is projecting so loudly half the paranormal universe can hear her?”

  Phoenix’s gaze was speculative.

  “That is an interesting question, my friend.”

  * * * * *

  The man blinked at the sun fading into the horizon as night approached. Tilting his head, he focused again. Whatever he had felt, it wasn’t in the bazaar shop he was in. He set the object he’d been holding down and made his excuses to the shopkeeper he’d been dickering with. Running more than walking, he reached a secluded area of the city, ducking into a shop where the tourists had left for the day. With a nod to the proprietor, he took his winged form and made his escape, flying the short distance to his family compound. He quickly went into one of the small, empty rooms, trying to quell his excitement.

  The first series of mental shouts had woken him out of sleep. He couldn’t calibrate them through the chatter: even in the early hours of his day, there were too many minds around and he was too unfocused. Now it was later in the day and he was ready.

  Possible or not, it was real. He knew that mental signature. Or rather, he had known the signature of the parent. It was familiar to him in that way that spoke not of the parent—impossible since she was dead—but of the child. Which was impossible and yet here it was. When he heard it again, an annoying rhyme he was unfamiliar with, he winced.

  His dreams had been dark, full of death and mayhem. Some had been memories.

  Flexing his leathery wings, he listened for the shrill shriek again, so familiar and yet unfamiliar as well.

  The booming voice came into his head. “I have need of you.”

  “Who’s that?” He hoped he didn’t sound too eager.

  A mocking laugh was his answer. “You know the answer to that. I have need of your assistance.”

  The voice wasn’t of his clan. It was possibly a god or a demigod. A supernatural being, without a doubt. Someone who lived on the darker side of life. A Demonos? He gloried at the idea. The moment he thought it, he knew that he was right. A Demonos. It could only be one Demonos. Fire. The fire Demonos had contacted him.

  “I would have her,” he said out loud.

  He didn’t know how this child had escaped his wrath all those years ago, but it could not stand. He would fly now, fly to where this creature was and dispose of her.

  His wings flexed and the horns on his forehead burned with fire. He would destroy this abomination. He would not tell his clan. It would be his little surprise. He would b
e able to fix the mistake, and once he had, everyone would see he had been correct.

  “Yes. You shall have her. Come to me. Come now.”

  How she had eluded him and hidden all these years was a puzzle, and he would solve it. He focused on the picture the voice had given him. America. He was unfamiliar with most of their cities, but even halfway across the world, he recognized the Golden Gate Bridge. That must be where the atrocity was. She could not be permitted to live.

  Time to fly.

  Chapter Three

  So many selections, the human assassin-for-hire thought, standing in front of the glass case of the gun store. So many ways to kill.

  Wonderful.

  “Need help?”

  He shook his head, staring down the much bigger, burly man covered in tattoos. The other man didn’t blink, crossing his powerful arms and flexing his forearms.

  “Still deciding,” he said. “I will let you know when I am ready.”

  The tattooed clerk moved down the line, giving another customer his attention.

  The man called Ron resisted the urge to pat his pockets. His false IDs were safely tucked away, well crafted and perfect. They had already passed the highest tests, as was evident by the California driver’s license and US passport, as well as a social security card and gas bill. More importantly, he had a clean record. Ron Davies was a good boy. He had never been arrested nor gotten as much as a moving violation. He had probably been a Boy Scout, or would have been if he had lived past the age of two.

  The man’s slight frame and mild, uninteresting looks were an advantage in his line of work. It was an effort to remember him, even if someone had met him more than once. The prison guards had only remembered him when the other inmates tried to fuck with him. Then, everyone remembered him. For a time. But violence was unremarkable in the prison system, and once again he was quickly forgotten.

  This ordinary part of his persona made him perfect for the job.

  The clerk was hovering again, giving him a narrow, stony-faced look. Ron had been lingering too long in front of the case. Would it be wise to go elsewhere?

  He pointed to the gun case. “That one.”