The Fire Within Series: Books 1 - 3

by Ella M. Lee

  “Of course I have a huge ego,” he said. “If my ego weren’t so strong, I wouldn’t be telepathic, I would merely be dissociative. I was genuinely insane once. I have no desire to go back to that. It’s in my best interest to be the strongest personality in my own head, lest everyone else overwhelm me.”

  “Christ, you are all kinds of frightening,” I said, and we both laughed.

  He knew I was joking. I had seen Nicolas in some of his most frightening moments, and I didn’t fear him then. In fact, even with glittering Hong Kong spread out before me, it was hard to keep my eyes off of him. His ego was justified. His gaze slid to me, but I stared straight ahead, and Nicolas was kind enough not to press me for details about my questionable thoughts.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, half a dozen texts and the stark light of reality cleared my head.

  Keisha said my apartment would be ready that evening. Daniel had sent me my insane schedule for the upcoming week. Teng had passed along my bank account details and confirmation of my salary and signing bonus deposits. I blinked a few times at the number of zeros in those values. Ryan had sent me a list of book recommendations at Dan’s request.

  Practically the only person who hadn’t bothered me was Nicolas. He had spent the night at my side in our usual sleeping positions: close enough to share body heat but hardly touching. He hadn’t made any inquiries about my feelings toward him, and I was too busy and confused to consider them myself. I studied my schedule again and thought that figuring out what was between us was perhaps the least important thing in a long list of important things I needed to do.

  “Dan is the worst,” I griped, taking a bowl of grapes out of the fridge and joining Nicolas on the couch. “My schedule is jam-packed, and I don’t even understand half of it. What does ‘Nicolas, Daniel, 36’ mean, and why is it scheduled for this morning?”

  Nicolas offered me a patient and sympathetic look. “He’s giving you the floor number. In this case, he’s indicating the meeting room at the end of this hall.” Nicolas pointed vaguely off in the direction toward the elevators.

  “What are we doing this morning?” I asked.

  “It’s time for you to learn about my group and the work we do here,” Nicolas said. “Don’t you want to know why I’m so strange, and why I wanted to see your fire transmutation before I’d take you into my group?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not like I expected you to tell me all your super-secret plans when we were still enemies.”

  “Nevertheless, I think you’ll like the work we do here,” he said.

  His brilliant smile told me he was genuinely excited about including me, and that he wanted me to feel equally excited. I waved my fingers in the air, getting up off the couch and heading toward the bathroom to shower.

  “Oh, so mysterious,” I said teasingly. “You’ll need a new act to keep me interested after your big reveal.”

  “I am very creative,” he said, spreading his hands before him as though he were performing the world’s neatest magic trick.

  I had never been in this room before, but it was gorgeous. The thirty-sixth-floor meeting room contained a collection of couches and chairs arranged around a large stone table. There were shelves containing a sound system and books, and a bar with an excessive amount of whiskey.

  The far wall was taken up by a row of huge black cabinets the size of several refrigerators. A stasis locker, Nicolas called it, a storage unit that could protect against magical leakage and keep specimens magically “frozen” to exact temperature and environmental circumstances.

  The whole place was inviting, decorated in warm colors and lit with sunlight from the massive windows.

  Nicolas told me that it was generally used for full group meetings, and it did indeed feel empty with only three people present. Daniel had beaten us there and was drinking milk tea while sprawled across the largest of the seating options—a tan fabric couch that could fit four people comfortably. I perched on the edge of a wingback chair, directly across from Nicolas, and watched him snap a silencing spell into place around us.

  Nicolas leaned forward. “There are things you should know about my group and its members, and I imagine you want to learn about our plans.”

  “I’m part of this now, aren’t I?” I smiled. “I don’t want to be left out.”

  “Indeed,” he agreed. “Although my group is largely aware of your origin and background, I don’t want you to feel as though you do not know them. I realize I’ve been shielding you from their scrutiny so far, but that won’t last much longer, and I think you’ll feel better armed to handle your interactions with them if you understand more about them. I know how much you like information.”

  I nodded, feeling nervous. Nicolas took a deep breath, pressing his fingertips together in thought.

  “First, there are rules. Yes, I know how much you love rules,” he said, seeing my exasperated look, “but this is very important. Although the clan is mostly aware of the talents of my group members, the exact details I’m about to tell you of our plans are never to be spoken of outside a warded and silenced room, with only our group present. Do not bring this topic up in public. Do not write anything down about it, even in code. Do not send messages about it outside of our secured channels. If for some reason you have to write about it outside of an encrypted channel, you see Daniel first to understand the protocols. Everyone in our group knows the details, but it is of the utmost importance that it never goes beyond our knowledge. Do you understand me?”

  Nicolas’s eyes on mine were stern and demanding.

  “Yes, of course,” I said quickly. “No talking about it to anyone. I get it.”

  It was a measure of Nicolas’s trust that he was bringing me into this so openly. A month ago, I had been in a rival clan. I’d been a candidate for his group for only a few weeks, and actually in the group for only a day. I was touched that he would even consider telling me the most important core goal of his work.

  “Good. Thank you,” he said.

  He stood, going to the closest wall and pushing aside a wooden panel to reveal a large dry-erase board.

  “Some of my group’s work is normal,” he said, picking up a marker. “As members of Water Clan, we help the clan and its other groups. They rely on my visions and Daniel’s excellent intelligence team for various pieces of information that can yield successes for us as a whole. That’s fine. They are our extended family, and we are happy to help. Requests are received from the clan or from individual groups and are assigned to a member of my team as appropriate. We charge a fee for our services, based on the complexity of the task and the time and effort it will take.

  “Each of my group members also pursues their own individual interests, mostly in various research avenues or magical studies, some of which help our group or our clan.

  “But that’s not all we do. There’s another plan in the works. We generally refer to it as Shatterfall, but even that name should not be said outside of the group. Shatterfall is the reason I was in Vienna, and it’s the primary directive of my group.”

  He uncapped the marker in his hand. He wrote the names of his eleven group members in a row across the board: Ryan, Sylvio, Yu-Teng, Irina, Athena, Daniel, Cameron, Chandra, Farhad, Keisha, Fiona.

  “A little background first,” he said. “Left to right, this is the order in which I recruited the current members of my group. The first four joined roughly around the same time, within months of my commander appointment, with the exact dates being complicated and largely irrelevant. I’ve spent the rest of my career here collecting the rest. My choices for group members probably seem random to you, but they aren’t, especially not the later ones. It’s time you learned more about them.”

  He wrote notes under each name as he spoke.

  “Ryan, Sylvio, Yu-Teng, Irina, and Chandra predate me in Water. In addition to saving my life and being my first friend here, Ryan is also an interesting magician. He has a very rare ability that we generally call ‘t
ransference’. I’m sure you know the basics from Flame: He can imbue items with magic and move it around between items and people. He’s the kind of magician who can craft a block-sync or other such magical device. Ours were all created by him. The object he used to destroy Derek’s shield in our fight was also invented and perfected by him. A lot of his personal work is focused on his ability. He makes good money for himself and for our group with it, in addition to furthering his own research.”

  This information didn’t surprise me at all. Ryan was clearly a talented researcher and seemed to enjoy his work. He had also known Nicolas the longest of any Water Clan member, making him an excellent reference for my impenetrable commander.

  “You don’t know much about Sylvio, but he’s a former commander from Meteor,” Nicolas said, his eyes meeting mine.

  My breath caught.

  Meteor Clan, the clan responsible for my father and brother’s deaths almost eight years ago. Sylvio predated Nicolas in Water, which meant he was gone from Meteor far before their interference in my life, but my heart was racing nevertheless. I called up an image of tall, blond Sylvio, a devastatingly deadly magician and fighter, and could see his roots from Meteor.

  Nicolas snapped his fingers to get my attention back. “Before that, he was in Sky. He has a long history of switching between clans and a strong understanding of them. He’s an incredible fighter, but he has one more trick up his sleeve: He’s retained his powers from Meteor. We don’t know why, but occasionally magic sticks to a host and becomes intrinsically part of them. He wields both Meteor and Water. Sky, it seems, didn’t stick to him in the same way.”

  I hadn’t said even a single word to Sylvio and had no idea what he thought of me. I was concerned that, despite being part of Nicolas’s group, I would still need to watch my back when it came to him.

  Nicolas caught my thoughts. “You don’t need to worry about Sylvio. He’s willing to give you a chance. He understands clan clashes more than perhaps anyone else in my group and is willing to forgive them. He also understands changing clans under trying circumstances. Meteor is quite possibly the hardest clan to leave.”

  I nodded, still skeptical. I glanced at Daniel, who merely nodded and gave me an encouraging smile.

  “Teng is impressive beyond words,” Nicolas said. “His hacking and intelligence skills aside, he’s an elemental magician of the finest caliber. I’m not sure there’s anyone better in the entire clan. If Daniel makes commander and takes Teng with him, I will be bereft of two of my most important members.”

  Nicolas spared an affectionate glance for Daniel, who was stretched lazily on his stomach, head in his hands, looking young and bored.

  “Irina,” Nicolas continued. “She’s an incredibly competent healer, one of the best I’ve ever seen in any of the clans with healing powers. It comes naturally to her. As a former liaison, she also has many connections among mortal liaisons and magicians in other clans.”

  So Irina was the group’s true healer. No wonder Nicolas hadn’t wanted to take me to her on my first day here. I hadn’t even seen her yet, had no idea who she was or what she was like. All I knew was that I had killed her closest friend and lover, Nicolas’s other lieutenant, Andres, in my assassination attempt. I had no idea how I could possibly make that better.

  If Nicolas had ideas on the matter, he hadn’t enlightened me, nor had he suggested a meeting between the two of us. I had to trust his instincts and knowledge of her, and I had to accept that my relationships with some of his group members might take a long time to develop.

  Nicolas didn’t seem to care about responding to my anxious thoughts.

  “Athena,” he went on, pausing for a moment to catch up with his writing.

  “How is Athena?” Daniel asked.

  “She’s all right. She’ll be back soon,” Nicolas said, glancing at me. “Her mother died suddenly, shortly before you arrived in Water. Her family is from California. She’s there with them now. Her mother’s death affected her father quite a lot.”

  He hesitated before going on. “I think she’ll like you, Fiona. You’re around the same age, and you both have a similar sarcasm and bite. Athena is perhaps the most unique of my group. She has a gift similar to mine. She receives limited precognitions in the form of dreams.”

  “What?” I asked, shocked. “She sees the future as well?”

  “It’s not like what I can do,” he said, holding up a palm. “It’s more like… the oracles of old. She sometimes receives dreams that foretell the future, usually in a metaphorical or obfuscated way. She’s gotten reasonably good over the years at reading the signs. Unlike me, she can’t simply search into the future and tap into people or events—she needs it to come to her. It has been useful to us in the past, in an extremely limited way, but it’s an incredible gift nonetheless. When she heard what I could do, she sought me out for guidance.”

  “Wow,” I said. I was immensely impressed with Nicolas’s group members, and he was only halfway through the list. “Do you get visions in dreams, too?”

  He glanced at me. “No. I don’t dream at all. I haven’t had a single dream since my abilities appeared, and I can’t read the thoughts of sleeping people. Whatever dreaming is, it runs interference on my gifts.”

  Interesting. That certainly wasn’t the worst or only limitation to Nicolas’s abilities. If anything, they seemed erratic and annoying enough to sometimes be completely worthless. It was no surprise to me that they had yet another mysterious wrinkle.

  “I don’t think I need to tell you about Daniel’s history or skill set,” Nicolas said, casting another affectionate look toward his lieutenant, “but his unique transmutation is the key to our plans. I’ll elaborate on that later. I want to get through the others first.”

  Dan was still stretched out, his eyes half closed, relaxed. His pose was graceful, like a pleased cat.

  “Cameron was an interesting acquisition,” Nicolas said, pulling my attention back to him.

  “Acquisition?” I asked, wondering about his choice of words.

  “Yes,” Nicolas said. “Cameron is another of my ‘strays,’ as Dan calls them. He originally comes from Sky Clan. He was captured as part of a raid a year or so after Daniel joined my group. I purchased Cameron at auction. Daniel insisted on it. Irina knew of him and his interesting ability. In Sky, he had an ability we often refer to as ‘suppression.’ I saw in visions that it might transfer to Water with him, and it did. It’s quite helpful to me.”

  “My old commander is a suppressor,” I said. “They are somewhat common in Flame, although at varying levels of effectiveness. Many suppressors are fairly weak, or so I’ve been told.”

  “In a Water, it’s a rare ability, as rare as Ryan’s,” Nicolas said. “The people who have it are almost always good at it, and powerful. With Water magic, suppression allows the wielder to use their own magic to actively suppress another user’s magic. Cameron’s magic can effectively clobber other magics, and when he touches another magician, he can render them useless. I clanned him immediately after getting my hands on him.

  “Chandra has an ability I’ve never seen before, although it has been previously observed in Water Clan and has been written about in our records,” Nicolas said, pausing his writing. “It’s a form of transmutation, but not magic-to-magic. Instead, she can transmute her own raw magic into physical strength. It’s one of the things that makes her so effective in combat. I saw her do it once in a joint operation between my group and another group. I knew I had to have her, although it took a while to convince her to join me.”

  That explained a lot about how powerful she had been in Vienna against Damon, who had not been a shabby fighter in the least. I hadn’t interacted much with Chandra, but from what Nicolas told me the one time I had summoned the courage to ask, she seemed to accept my presence as an unchangeable thing and was slowly coming around to the idea of me joining the group.

  “You said Chandra predates you in Water. Is she older than you?” I
asked.

  Nicolas smiled. “No. She’s younger than you, but her parents are Water magicians. She’s what we call originalis here in Water. She was born into the clan.”

  “Is that common here? It’s rare in Flame.”

  “Flame is a small clan,” Nicolas said. “Water is much larger. I wouldn’t say it’s common, but it’s not strange either.”

  I wondered what it would be like to have been born into magic, to not have had to struggle to find it and grab it and hold it and possess it like the rest of us had. Did Chandra have her own problems, similar to mine but somehow also completely different? Maybe I would get a chance to ask someday.

  Nicolas snapped his fingers again. “You’ll like hearing about Farhad, Fiona. He’s like you. He has detection skills that came when he was clanned and given magic. He can tell truth from lies when someone is speaking,” Nicolas said. “It makes him great at the sort of undercover work he does for Daniel. It was simply blind luck that he struck up a friendship with Sylvio and wanted to join my group, but I was eager to have him. In fact, he’s currently on a long undercover operation with Smoke. He probably won’t be around for you to meet until closer to winter.

  “Keisha…” he said, drawing out the syllables of her name as he wrote. “Another stray, but not from another clan.”

  I shot a look at Daniel, who shrugged lazily. I hadn’t realized exactly how correct he’d been when he mentioned before that Nicolas took in strays.

  “Has she told you much about herself?” Nicolas asked me.

  “No. We haven’t had a lot of time to talk yet.”

  “Well, I’d prefer that she be given the chance to tell her own story,” he said. “It’s not a nice story, but I think that’s true of many of us. Suffice to say, I rescued her from a bad situation, Hong Kong mafia bullshit, skin-trade stuff.”

  Daniel, catching my confused look, said quietly, “Prostitution.”

  “She didn’t have anyone else to look out for her,” Nicolas said, giving me a troubled look. “She seemed smart and determined. At the time, I didn’t imagine I’d be keeping her in my group. I figured I’d put her up for clan candidacy and then find a group better suited to her later. But… it turns out I got incredibly lucky.”