Fire Cursed Trilogy Box Set

by J. E. Taylor

  “That is really handy when it works,” I mumbled.

  He ran his hands through my hair, pushing it away from my face before he got a clear look at my chest. His blue eyes glistened with interest, and when he glanced back up at me, he tilted his head to the side. A slow smile spread across his lips, accentuated with deep dimples.

  “Say my name again,” he whispered in the huskiest of tones.

  “Ty Alexander Ryan,” I replied slowly.

  His look smoldered in a way that was way too raw, too powerful for a sixteen-year-old.

  Enough!

  I winced at the volume of CJ’s voice in my head. From Alex’s tightened grip on my hips, I knew he heard it too. Any heat between us fled with the anger in that single word.

  “No. It’s not enough,” Alex growled under his breath and met my stare.

  His hips circled under me, but I was too terrified at the ramifications of not listening to his father to respond in kind. I climbed off him, frantically gathering my clothes.

  “Shit,” Alex mumbled as he looked at the couch. He glanced at me and ran a hand down his face. He nodded towards another door. “You might want to clean up in the bathroom,” he said, his cheeks blooming as red as the thin streaks on my legs.

  I felt like I should’ve been embarrassed, but there was something completely disarming about Alex’s half smile and shrug. He was totally endearing. I crossed to the bathroom, glanced in the small pantry for a wash cloth, and then cleaned myself up.

  My shirt hung on my frame. Half the buttons were missing, and I stepped out into the room, holding the soiled towel. The couch had no sign of a stain, and I cocked my head at Alex.

  “I turned the cushion over. I’ll have to clean it up at some point, but not right now. Right now, we are going to get reamed. But it was worth it.” He came to where I stood and cupped my face between his palms, then kissed me with the same bravado as he had earlier. “Marry me,” he said when our lips parted.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. We were only sixteen. There was no getting married and having a happily ever after, at least not yet.

  “You don’t want to marry me?”

  “Someday I do.”

  Then why did you laugh? His thought filled my head as he searched my eyes.

  “We are only sixteen.”

  “Then marry me on my eighteenth birthday.”

  “Ask me on your eighteenth birthday, and then we can have this discussion. My wedding day is not going to be on either one of our birthdays.” I pulled out of his arms and headed towards the door at the far end of the room. There was no door handle. Keypad tones rang, and the door whooshed open.

  CJ stood on the other side, his arms crossed so tight I thought his shirt was going to rip. His eyes blazed, and when they landed on his son’s barely concealed grin, I thought CJ was going to slug Alex.

  “Don’t give me that look. You lost your virginity when you were my age.” Alex crossed his arms. His cocky gaze was enough to set anyone over the edge, and I wasn’t sure he realized just how close his father was to flying off the handle.

  “Not under my roof.”

  “No. It was under her parents’ roof,” I blurted as the memory barreled from the mental file cabinets. I blinked and threw my hand over my mouth.

  CJ glared at me.

  I could feel my eyes widening despite my attempt at playing it cool. Memories were just coming forth willy-nilly. It was irritating that I couldn’t clamp down on my mouth in response.

  Alex burst out laughing. “Really?”

  I nodded and more information poured out. “He got caught, too.”

  CJ’s face reddened, but it wasn’t from embarrassment. He grabbed both our arms and hauled us back into the room. The panic door closed behind us, locking us inside with him.

  If I hadn’t been scared before, I was when the sofa cushion flew across the room.

  CJ pointed at Alex. “You are going to clean that up. Understand?” His teeth clenched so hard that I thought they might crack.

  “Yes, sir,” Alex said, but his amusement hadn’t abated.

  It was as if my mouth and his expression were tied together. I couldn’t stop the actual facts from pouring out as soon as they came forth, and Alex couldn’t stop smirking. The next set of images flashed forward, and I gasped.

  “Put your gloves on, Faith,” CJ said. This time his voice was cautious like he was talking someone off a high-rise ledge.

  Alex stepped behind me, and before I realized what was happening in the present, his hands wrapped around mine, closing them into tight fists.

  “Tom didn’t have a tongue?” A litany of memories assaulted me, blinking off like a gruesome slide show. The things my father did were awful, but this family had been through much more at the hands of humans.

  “What’s happening?” Alex asked, his voice strained and very far away.

  “She has too many memories in her head. All the way back to the beginning when Damian was born. Thousands of years. And she is time jumping from one to another to another,” CJ yelled over the din.

  “They’re fucking everywhere,” Alex said. “And she is shaking so hard I don’t know if I can hold on.”

  Time jumping.

  Those two words pulled air into my lungs, and I blinked back into the room with CJ and Alex. My breath wheezed, and then everything went black.

  Chapter 7

  I woke in the bedroom tucked under the covers with a cool, damp wash cloth on my forehead. Valerie sat next to me, holding my wrist as she looked at her watch. She still wore her doctor’s coat.

  She looked from her watch to me, and the tightness of her lips told me enough. I reached up and moved the cloth over my eyes so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to her overwhelming disappointment, but the cloth didn’t hide her feelings. They pummeled me like a battering ram, and it was worse than when CJ had lost his brother because this time it was aimed at me.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  I lifted the cloth and looked at her. She cocked an eyebrow, and heat filled my cheeks.

  “No protection?” she asked.

  I stared at her and glanced at my hands which now had my gloves on them.

  She rolled her eyes. “Not talking about your hands, girl.”

  My eyes slowly widened with what she was referring to and I gasped. “No ma’am.”

  “Next time, make sure my son has a little bit of his head on his shoulders. Even if his soul is gone, his common sense should still be in there somewhere.” She took the cloth off my head. “What’s done is done.” She sighed. “Now, let’s talk about the seizures.”

  “Seizures?” I knew it was ridiculous to repeat her, but I couldn’t get my head wrapped around that word. It had medical connotations, and I didn’t need any complications beyond Lucifer.

  “I have seen CJ have enough seizures after his first pummeling from Lucifer to understand what he described. Your brain couldn’t handle the volume of information, and it shut down, leaving your body to deal with after effects it really can’t handle.” She took a deep breath. “In your case, it is much more dangerous than ending up in a vegetative state.” She picked up one of my gloved hands to make her point.

  I pulled my hand away from her and slumped down in the covers. “I’m sorry.”

  Valerie smiled at me. “No need to apologize. They are as much in your control as your time jumps are, and we need to fix that.” She leaned back in the chair. “I want to hypnotize you so we can put up some organizational barriers in your brain so this doesn’t happen at a critical moment, okay?”

  The thought terrified me more than the barrage of memories. Allowing someone inside my head, playing with my psyche while I was not in control, just freaked me out.

  “I’m a doctor,” she said softly. “I will not take advantage of your vulnerabilities, and I won’t make you walk around and cluck like a chicken. I promise.”

  I blinked at her a few times, and then her attempt at humor seeped into my befuddle
d brain.

  “If you take a closer look, you would know that.” She tapped her temple. “It’s how I knew you had the best of intentions with us. Chris sees it, too.”

  “I am just learning,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to pry in others’ heads. With the exception of Alex, I hadn’t looked closer at those around me. “Besides, it just doesn’t feel right to go sneaking around other people’s thoughts without their permission.”

  She nodded a little. “I used to agree. However, just a peek into someone’s thoughts can mean the difference between life and death. I have saved more lives with this than with the healing ability. Consider the teenager who is thinking about suicide. Or the kid with a gun under his mattress at home who is angry with the world. When you encounter someone so deep in that hole, you offer your hand and pull them out of the darkness. This is the blessing of this particular power, and to not use it isn’t right either.”

  “But isn’t that… snooping?”

  Valerie sighed. “Yes. I guess it is, but if it helps someone or protects the ones you love, isn’t it worth it?”

  I couldn’t argue with her logic.

  “Try it,” she said.

  “You mean, right now?” I didn’t know if I could at will. I did know I could hear people’s thoughts when I wasn’t trying, but I sort of blocked it out. Well, except for Alex. I wanted to know what was in his head, but even so, there were some times I could only hear static or nothing at all.

  “Everyone in this house knows how to create static in their minds. It makes reading thoughts impossible. But out there?” She pointed to the window. “If you are getting static from someone that isn’t within our little circle, you give them a wide berth. No thoughts usually mean psychopathic at some level, or they are an investigator of sorts and have to look at things like a complex three-dimensional puzzle, which requires multiple trains of thought at the same time. Even so, they should be avoided at all costs.”

  I glanced at her skeptically then closed my eyes and tried to get inside her mind. It was like walking into a warm and welcoming home. I completely understood what she had been talking about. Her intentions were pure. I shivered at the thought of what a mind with ill intent felt like.

  She smiled as I opened my eyes. “Do you trust me now?”

  I was sure she already knew the answer, but I nodded anyway. “Yes.”

  “Okay.” She reached over to the desk, picked up a metronome, set it on the baseboard shelf of the bed, and turned it on. “Keep your eyes on the peg,” she said. “When you are feeling sleepy, raise your finger.”

  I thought hypnotism was more than just falling asleep to a metronome. When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I lifted my finger. Valerie’s voice seemed distant as the constant clicking of the instrument filled my head.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw myself organizing a room full of papers, using a large file cabinet to arrange them in chronological order by person and then dates. Each person had a drawer in the file cabinet, and some drawers held more than one person’s memories.

  When I finished, I wiped my hands on my hips and then glanced at the key between my fingertips. An old skeleton key that looked like it fit in the cabinet lock. Sure enough, it did. I slipped the key on a chain and clasped it around my neck, then tucked it under my shirt before I glanced around the immaculately clean room. Even my memory box was neat and shiny.

  Relief swept through me, and I blinked my eyes open to Alex’s bedroom and the metronome keeping time. I yawned and glanced at Valerie. Dark circles stood out under her eyes. She looked even more tired than I felt.

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven in the morning.” She rubbed her face and then turned off the instrument. “But I think we are all set for a while.”

  My brain was still stuck on the time. Alex had cornered me in the panic room downstairs at some point in the early afternoon. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out before Valerie hypnotized me, but I didn’t think it was that late when we’d started.

  “We’ve been at this for almost twelve hours,” she said. “It took that long to get some organization in your mind.” She covered a yawn. “I need some sleep.” She stood and wandered out of the room.

  I stretched and turned on my side to get some rest, but sleep didn’t come. Instead, a vision of that file cabinet shook under the pressure. It was only a matter of time before the metal holding it all together gave.

  Chapter 8

  Voices pulled me out of the stupor I had fallen into. It sounded like a gathering that had turned into a brawl downstairs. I crawled out of bed and made a beeline to the bathroom before I investigated the noise.

  When I had finished relieving myself and polishing my teeth, I climbed down the stairs. The moment I came into sight, the conversation near the stairs stopped. It looked like the same gathering that had been in Bridget’s living room before Tom and I had ventured out to close the breach.

  My gaze landed on Fate, and her honey golden hair shined in the streaks of morning sunlight piercing the family room. Her aura wasn’t fluid like a normal aura. It seemed to be stuck, as if someone paused had it like a video.

  Movement next to her pulled my attention. A boy who looked like he was our age stood next to Fate. His eyes were as striking as Alex’s, but he had no aura, unlike almost all the people in the room sporting the brightness of angel blood.

  He gave me a nod and put his hand on Fate’s shoulder, calling her attention to me.

  She crossed to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at me. “We need to talk.”

  No one wanted to hear words like that from an entity like Fate. Me least of all, and I turned to go back upstairs. I didn’t want to hear that I needed to confront Lucifer again. I already knew that. I didn’t need to hear how many lives were at stake.

  “Faith.”

  Her sharp tone stopped me in my tracks. I hung my head and took a deep breath. What I really wanted was Alex and his warm arms around me, but I hadn’t seen him in the madness that was CJ’s family room.

  “I’ll talk with her, Julia,” the boy said to Fate and passed her. He climbed the stairs behind me and waved for me to lead the way.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He gave me a cockeyed smile. “I’m Nick.” He waved me up the stairs again.

  “You don’t have an aura,” I said, hesitant to move any farther. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, and when I tried to read his intentions like I had with Valerie earlier, I got a blank slate.

  He sighed. “No. I don’t suppose I do anymore. But I’m not here to collect you. I’m here to talk, and having this conversation is going to be difficult enough. We don’t need an audience.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, crossing my arms at the ever-increasing alarm budding inside me. I had to clamp down on the fire because my body was going into protection mode as if I’d walked into a death zone.

  Nick looked down and started to chuckle. “Well, technically I am death, so your sudden nervous energy isn’t unusual.”

  My legs lost the ability to hold me up, and I sat down hard on the step.

  He reached for me but I flinched.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk that is a little more private?” He shoved his hands into his pockets.

  I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that I was having a conversation with the Grim Reaper himself. A big German shepherd came barreling up the stairs and stopped at eye level with me. A low growl in his throat caught me off guard.

  “Levi, go play outside.” Nick pointed down the stairs. “She’s not going to hurt me.”

  The dog glanced at him, and then the growl ceased. He didn’t move from his intimidating spot, though.

  I stared at it, trying to read its chaotic aura. I hadn’t seen a dog since I’d returned from closing the breach, but this was not what I would have guessed one looked like. I envisioned them having the same light as an angel descendant. Before I could stop myself, I reached out and touched its fur.

&nb
sp; Shock filtered through me. It was like touching a giant lizard and not a fur-covered creature. I pulled my hand away and scuttled up the stairs meeting Nick’s bemused stare as he followed me.

  This was not how I envisioned spending my evening. What I really wanted was another spell alone with Alex. Not a conversation with death. I stepped into Alex’s room, and Nick closed the door behind him.

  “We came last night,” he said. “Whatever happened to you fractured the barriers between purgatory and here. We understand there were some bigger cracks created in hell.” He took a seat in the desk chair, and his dog sat beside him.

  I sat down on the bed and just stared at him. “Excuse me?”

  “There are at least a hundred tears in the fabric between this plane and beyond. Some big enough to let things through. Others are just ripples in the air, but with persistence from the other side, they will weaken and tear.” He crossed his arms. “You need to shut them down. This takes precedence over going after Lucifer.”

  Gooseflesh rose across my arms, and I rubbed them. I didn’t think there was anything more imperative than bringing Lucifer down.

  He wiped his face. “Normally, I would agree, but there are now things out there that don’t care about the order of things. And if things go out of wack, like too many people die that aren’t supposed to, then earth becomes a battle ground for the gods. Heaven and hell will flood this land, and if you think Lucifer’s end of times is bad, this is infinitely worse.” He pulled a list out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  I chewed on his words and took a deep breath, unfolding the sheet of paper. Locations were listed, including longitude and latitude coordinates. Dozens of locations worldwide.

  “Does Lucifer know about this?” I waved the list. If he did, then everyone here was in danger.

  Death shrugged. “I don’t know, but if his minions have gotten out of hell, it won’t be long before he does.”

  There was no way I was going to leave Alex in the line of fire, but I didn’t know how safe closing the breaches would be either. I also needed to find that stinking knife.

  I glanced up at Nick. “Do you know where the knife that was built using heaven’s light might be?”