Fire Danger Page 8

  On the busy wharf, people flowed around him, some giving him dirty looks for stopping, but stepping around him even as they glared at him. He moved slightly, shifting to the edge of another café, a place where he could keep the big couple in sight without being seen himself.

  Reaching into his pocket, he slipped the necklace over his head and was unaccountably soothed. His teeth bared in a snarl before he realized he was doing it.

  * * * * *

  A mental lance of hate and anger flowed inside Rachel’s head, piercing it. On instinct she turned to Phoenix, who was standing impassively beside her as they waited for their turn. “Aleric?”

  “Char and burn. I feel it.”

  His head came up, and he scanned the café they were in. His eyes narrowed, only his head moving. His shoulders flexed instinctively, shifting as if the wings were there.

  Loathing. Deep loathing emanated from somewhere. The kind of rolling hate that was so profound there were no words for it.

  The host called another patron and they moved up in line. Phoenix’s head turned, and she followed his gaze to the outside as he continued to scan the crowd. She didn’t know what he was looking for.

  Flesh rending, a hail of bullets ripping through skin, neat puncture holes on entry, exploding wounds, blood and sinew on exit. Blood spurting from a severed carotid artery, the knife wound jagged.

  The images were horrific, and Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block them out. Her fingers heated and darkness flowed through her. She focused. The images clawed at her, making her wince.

  “Shield,” Phoenix commanded.

  She had a low-level crude shield in place at the moment to dim the human noise, but this rolling emotion pierced right through that. Three blind mice, see how they run…

  The images slowed as she blocked them with stronger white noise, but didn’t stop.

  She also observed the crowd, trying to find the person or people sending these images.

  The host called them, and Phoenix slipped a hand under her arm to guide her. She wondered if it was also to keep her close in case of trouble. They walked to their small inside table, Phoenix continuing to scan the area as they did so.

  They sat at the table, Phoenix awkwardly, his long legs and huge frame settling like a pretzel in the space.

  The images were still gruesome—limbs being torn off, faces being bloodied—but her shielding helped.

  He waited until the host had left.

  Phoenix was beginning to focus in on one area, narrowing to the café across the street, scanning, searching…

  Then, as suddenly as they started, the images stopped, winking out as if cut off by a knife.

  “Damn,” Phoenix said softly. “He’s got a blocker.”

  She cocked her head, studying him.

  “There are devices—both sides have them but we rarely use them—that can stop the flow of thoughts. It’s as if a barrier goes up, blocking all thoughts of both the wearer and the world around him. They can’t hear us and we can’t hear them. Haures must have given her minion one. Unusual.”

  “Do you…did you…want to go out and look for him?”

  Phoenix shrugged, flicking open the menu. “With the blocker, he could be anyone. He is an underling, one of many the Demonos will lure into service before this is over. There are many like him. He is of little importance.”

  His casual dismissal of the man rankled, and Rachel stiffened. He met her eyes, understanding flaring in their brown depths. For a few, intense moments there was nothing but the two of them, the hunger plain in his eyes.

  “I am unused to humans,” he said after a long pause. “I am afraid I’m a bit out of practice dealing with mortals. Especially half-Ifrit ones.”

  As an apology, it would have to do.

  She concentrated but couldn’t hear the angry thoughts. Other feelings, from happy to murderous, beat at her until Rachel put up her shield. She breathed out a sigh of relief when the mind noise faded.

  Try as she might, Rachel couldn’t get past the thoughts that drummed in her head, left there by the angry whoever-it-was. They ate quickly, and Rachel paid little attention to the unimpressive fare. After lunch Rachel found she had lost her taste for tourist attractions. Instead, she told him she wanted to be at his house, where it was safe. Their walk back to his car was in companionable, albeit watchful, silence. He had taken her hand without asking, and laced their fingers together. Their joined palms swung between them. She liked the warmth of his skin and his powerful body near her. It made her tingle and want to curve closer to him and feel his skin under hers.

  Behind them the noise of the wharf faded as they moved into the hills of the city on their way to the parking space.

  To their left, in a small alley near their car, there was a sound. That was the only warning.

  “Phoenix,” the voice said.

  Phoenix swiveled toward the alley and his wings appeared. He barely staggered when their weight and feathers manifested on his body, poking through the expensive blue shirt. He swung her behind him, under the orange-and-red wings, gripping her hips with his hands. His shirt had slits, like panels, clearly designed to accommodate his intermittent wings. In a moment his wings had closed over her shoulders, draping down her back to right below her butt, covering her in feathers and tendons.

  She had never thought wings would be warm, but these were. She wanted to stroke the tendons and feel the feathers to see if they were as soft as they looked, or if they were spiky and sharp like the points that went into the ligaments.

  The alley, similar to the one Phoenix had found her in a few days ago, was darker than the dimming street around them. She strained to see the being in front of them, but the faint light as well as his wings surrounding her made details impossible.

  “Haures,” he acknowledged. His body was tense against hers. His wings quivered slightly. “What do you want?”

  He had no fear in him. He seemed wary, his mental touch that of curiosity.

  “Now, now, old friend. I wanted to see your mortal.” The word mortal did not sound like a compliment.

  Although people were moving outside the alley, not one of them checked inside it. Above them the sky was almost fully dark, and streetlights winked on one by one. It was just like with the wolves. Rachel wondered how much of her life had been an illusion, with all manner of beings and beasties moving around her while she’d been living her life unaware.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “ I’ve been waiting for you, Elemental.”

  The voice was female, she decided, although not like any woman she knew. She recalled that Phoenix had told her Haures was female. Her voice had the unmistakable edge of the feminine, but there was a flat quality to it, with neither music nor lilt. Rachel could only see shapes in the dim light, and all she could make out was the other woman’s outline. She was tall like Rachel, but unlike Rachel had little curve to her almost elongated body. She seemed to have a faint red glow, like the corona around the sun at a full eclipse.

  “We are a lot of things, Haures, but friends was never one of them.”

  The being sighed and moved a step closer. She was still wreathed in shadows, but red danced across her skin. The Demonos’s hair appeared blonde and then red. Rachel had thought all demons had wings but did not see any stretched out behind this woman.

  “I like you, Phoenix, and I am going to offer you a deal,” Haures finally said. “Stay clear. Don’t interfere, don’t try and help the humans. It is time to finish what we started in World War II. This time we will win completely. Just let…it…happen. I promise I’ll use my influence once we have won to see that your companion survives.”

  Phoenix had started shaking his head almost as soon as the other being started talking. “You know I can’t do that. None of us can. We are Elementals.”

  “You will los
e. It is destined. You lost before and you will lose again. This time it will be over once and for all.”

  Rachel shivered at the flat certainty of the words. There was so much evil in the world; it seemed as if it would inevitably win. Why did Rachel think that good always triumphed? Even if she was an Ifrit, what could she do to stop this?

  Haures stepped forward, and Rachel’s impression of a woman was solidified into certainty. She was humanoid but not human, female but not at all feminine. She was female in an avenging-goddess sense, in the Kali sort of way. Her eyes were huge in her head and showed no white. Her skin was fair almost to the point of being albino. Cold red fire crackled over her skin in small jets, emerging from her fingertips and then playing down her hands. It looked alive, reminding Rachel of a pilot light.

  She looked at Rachel for a long, long time, clearly assessing, weighing, pondering and then dismissing.

  Haures turned back to Phoenix. “Her heritage will not help you, Phoenix. She is still part mortal and she is an Ifrit. They rarely get involved.”

  “There is always free will,” Phoenix said. “No deal, Haures. Not this time, not ever. It is the same answer I have always given, and the same answer I will always give.”

  A part of Rachel was fascinated by the play of flame along Haures’s body. It surrounded her, running over her arms and up her neck to her head, an outline of red and orange, the fire equivalent of a police chalk body. What would it be like to have the fire at your fingertips and be able to control it? Rachel wanted to learn. She would learn.

  Haures made a mock sigh, shrugging her thin shoulders as if in dismay. She would have been beautiful if the fire didn’t dance across her skin, and if her eyes had been remotely human. “Watch your back, Elemental,” she hissed. “We will see you when this is over. Perhaps then we can finish our discussion.”

  With a flick of her wrist, Haures dipped into the shadows and vanished.

  Rachel waited until she was sure Haures was gone before breathing out a sigh of relief. Phoenix’s wings vanished as quickly as they had come, but he remained motionless. She missed the warmth of feathers, and a brief flash of what they would be like draped over her body differently darted through her. The air seemed to grow dense and then clear. People were now peering into the alley, mostly rushing by, but some examining it with curiosity.

  A woman checked Phoenix out with the practiced, knowing smile of a flirt. The woman showed no interest in why they were in the alley and didn’t seem to feel any psychic residue clouding the scene. After a moment she moved on.

  The San Francisco skyline loomed over the buildings of the alley, with the Transamerica Pyramid dominating the view. Seeing it had always made her feel like something bigger than herself. Now it just seemed to mock her as all too human.

  Rachel shuddered, and Phoenix put his arm around her, drawing her close. The mental noise started again, the din of human thoughts pounding at her. She heard other things too, beings unfamiliar to her, their thoughts foreign. The darker ones pierced through her shields, with thoughts of muggings and other human atrocities.

  There were deeper thoughts under those of the humans. The ones of beings who had lived for her until recently only in stories. There were so many, so many. They seemed to be everywhere, as pervasive as the mortals. Mortals who, from what she had seen so far, seemed to exist, at least in the minds of the paranormals, one step below them on the food chain.

  Phoenix steered her toward the edge of the alley. “Come. Let’s get you home.”

  Chapter Six

  The drive back to the hillside house was wreathed in the sort of silence that practically cut the air. Rachel was bursting with questions. Phoenix could see it in the fidgeting and frequent looks his way, but he kept silent. The time was best spent trying to figure out how to tell her and what to tell her. The truth, or a variant? How much could he tell her without further putting her life at risk? What should he tell her? There were no easy answers.

  Phoenix said nothing until they were parked and inside. Once there, he strode to the living room and motioned her to sit on the couch.

  He wanted to enclose her in his arms and comfort her with his body. He wanted much more than that, judging from the quickening of his heartbeat. She looked at him and then away. Phoenix knew that distance was a better option, but the rest of him disagreed.

  His cock hardened again, begging him to plunge into her warm body. Her lithe form was so lush, so right for his hands. It would feel so good to break his long sexual fast inside her.

  “It’s all around fire,” she said, and her voice shook a little, although he could feel her strain to keep it level. “You, me, Haures. Is that the way the world ends?”

  He could not stay away. Phoenix sat next to her and let his hand move over her arm, settling on her forearm, her skin warm under his.

  She smelled of fire too, as if it was smoldering inside her, as well as the unmistakable tang of woman.

  He studied her and she met his eyes unflinchingly, her questions clear in their depths and the creases in her forehead. She said nothing, though, just waited.

  “Fire calls to fire, Rachel. Haures and I are two sides of the coin, always opposing each other at the time of Challenge. Where you fit in, I am not sure. But you are part of this. Each element has affinity for its own kind, which explains how you reached me. You have power. I have felt it, but I haven’t figured out more than that.”

  “My parents?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. There are paranormals around and the equivalent number of offspring. None frighten the Demonos like you have. None have made the wolves, the shadow people and the Demonos want to take them out of the game, until now. The dragons would scare her—they scare me—but they haven’t been seen in centuries.” Thankfully.

  She swallowed. “Phoenix, this is new to me. I was tossed out of my foster home at eighteen, but I should have left before then. I wasn’t wanted and I knew it. The minute the state stopped paying for me I was out on my ass. They didn’t care where I went, only that I was gone. They never liked me, but I don’t know why. I tried to be good, to stay out of their way and not make waves, but it didn’t matter. I’ve had few friends. The guys who asked me out never went beyond a couple of dates. My jobs have been entry level and I haven’t advanced up the ladder, despite a college education. Grocery store and department store workers are more often than not rude to me.”

  He put his hand in hers and gripped, pulsing his palm against hers in what he hoped was reassurance. “Did you ever consider why?”

  She shrugged, the gesture jerky. “It’s easy to think that I was inherently unlikable. I never thought maybe it was because I had fire in me.”

  “You are different, and the mortals can sense it and hate you for it. Fear you for it.”

  “Maybe.”

  He carefully shielded his mind from her. He hoped she understood he wasn’t trying to be unkind. He was trying to protect her.

  “I could drown in his eyes,” he heard her say, and he chuckled. Rachel flushed. “That is still taking some getting used to.”

  “Yes.” His fingers laced through hers and his grip firmed, squeezing gently. He kissed her, his lips grazing hers, and pulled her against him, tucking her head against his shoulder.

  He could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady, in her mind. She radiated uncertainty, fear.

  “It’s crazy to let someone see who I am,” she said. “You’re going to see my ugly side and never want to know me again.”

  “I am not those people. I am not one of your mortals to be so easily scared by a few dark secrets. I have more than my share.”

  She sighed and relaxed a little bit more. The scent of fear and adrenaline was acrid in his nostrils. A part of him that hadn’t felt anything for a long time surged to life.

  “I want to know,” she said. “I can feel something shifting inside me, like a d
am breaking. I don’t understand who or what happened, but I want to know.”

  He swallowed, cupping her face in his hands. “Let me in and let me see if I can discover what you really are.”

  Her reluctance was plain in a fearful look in her eyes. He hated that she wasn’t meeting his gaze. He hated that she was afraid. But there was no way to avoid the process. They needed to do this.

  “Okay.” Her voice was tremulous. When she met his gaze, to his relief there was strength lurking in the blue depths.

  He took both her hands in his. Then he opened his mind to hers all the way, leaving himself bare to her. Her shields went down, the small ones she had erected only recently, and the deeper, instinctive ones she had carefully locked around her innermost self.

  Images. Her parents at the water. He saw the world through Rachel’s child eyes, and he worked on orienting himself. That memory was only a fragment, and he went deeper, searching her mind for the answers there.

  Dark memories. Images of petty crimes. Stealing a candy bar as a child. Taking toilet paper from her employer when she was so low on money she didn’t know how she was going to eat after she had fed JT. Deep sexual needs, hard, fast, more than her partners could give her. A horrifying loneliness, soul deep, when she realized that nobody loved her. Nobody but the cat she had rescued from death in a dumpster, anyway.

  Before he could think, he mind spoke. “You are not alone anymore.”

  She shuddered.

  He went deeper. There it was. A thread, something not human. Phoenix followed it. He sensed something deeply buried, a power banked that had not yet been revealed. It licked at him like flames, like his own ability to manipulate fire under certain circumstances, but different. Very different. This was focused, somehow feminine. There was no question her gift came from the maternal side.

  Images. Her mother bathed in the flames from a campfire, out in the Sierra Nevadas. Her father enjoying the view of his woman, seeing but not seeing the glow of the red fire.

  Images. Lightning sparking and touching down near them, not as close as it seemed but feeling close enough to touch. Her mother laughing while her father looked on with fear, watching her reach out to the energy.