Firebloods

by Hays, Casey

  Kane sighs and rubs a hand across his brow. “Look, this other Fireblood and I, we have... an ongoing feud, I guess. But you don’t need to worry about it.”

  I decide not to press it. But I’m not exactly finished.

  “How many Firebloods are in Carson City?”

  He hesitates, his eyes flickering more heavily.

  “You might as well tell me.” I level with him. “Someone caught two of them on tape. Making out in the Spooner Lake area. Uncamouflaged. I saw the live video.”

  He sighs, nodding. “Ten families. So... thirty-five, maybe?”

  I study his face, trying to imagine him in his other form, trying to wrap my mind around how any of this is even possible.

  “You sound different in that other language. I only knew it was you because you’d already told me.”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Jezik.”

  “Jezik.”

  I repeat the word quietly, and everything suddenly feels so surreal. Kane’s eyes burn with the heat of a Fireblood. A Fireblood! Last week, he was Frankie’s myth. He didn’t exist—not like this. He didn’t speak in some crazy foreign tongue. He didn’t compel people or flare or read minds. All of it lives beyond the scope of imagination, but here he is; here I am with him—living it. The impossible. The unreal.

  And you want to know something crazy? Everything about it frightens me as much as it thrills me.

  “What’s going to happen to you now?” I ask. “At the disciplinary hearing?”

  “Nothing.” He shakes his head. “I’ll just go before the board and—”

  “Kane.”

  I stop him, and he just looks at me, golden fury simmering. It’s scary beautiful. His emotions boil just below the surface, but I see them in his eyes. He’s so brave—always. But he’s scared.

  “There has to be something we can do.” I hate the next words that come out of my mouth, but I say them anyway. “Can’t you get Frankie to give you all the copies?”

  His jaw clenches. He runs a hand through his hair. “I already did.”

  I lean back. “What?”

  “After we hung up, I went to Frankie’s. It’s fixed.”

  “Fixed.” I heave a nervous breath, almost afraid to ask. “How?”

  He scratches at the light scruff on his cheek before he comes to me, threads a leg over his bike, and straddles it, facing me.

  “I compelled her to give me all the copies.” He chews on his lip, hands propped on his thighs. “I compelled her to forget there was an audio.”

  I swallow the bile rising in my throat. “And Matty?”

  He shakes his head. “We can’t compel kids. I had Frankie tell him the game was over, and if he never mentioned it again, she’d take him for ice cream.” He smiles. “A double dip cone.”

  I think a minute. “You can’t compel kids?”

  He sighs, and the worst feeling rumbles through me. “Their minds are too imaginative. I mean, they believe in Santa Claus and think their stuffed animals are alive. It’s hard to plant something and have it stick.”

  “Oh.” I swallow and meet his eyes. “But it’s done.”

  “Yeah,” he whispers.

  I hate this for him. I hate what he had to do to Frankie. All his life, he’s had to lie and steal and betray his friends to keep his secret. He’s had to lie to me. What an awful way to live. And me? Overnight, I’ve become his accomplice. Crossed over to the dark side.

  Of course, only one half of my heart aches for what he’s had to do. The other half drips with pure unadulterated relief that Kane is capable of doing it. I surrender my hand, entwining my fingers between his.

  “Why can’t you just compel Frankie to forget about Firebloods altogether?”

  Kane shakes his head. “It’s criminal to mess around with latent memories. That kind of intense invasion could wipe out too much. I mean, for weeks Frankie’s lived and breathed this project. That’s all I saw in her head. It was dangerous enough to make her forget the audio… for a second time. ”

  “Right.” I can’t believe I suggested it. Some friend I am. “Yeah, that wouldn’t be good.”

  “Plus, you made me promise. No more compelling.” He shakes his head with a half-deflated laugh, eyes down. “But there I was, doing what I do best. I’ve been doing it all my life. Little things, you know? It finally caught up with me.” He looks off into the trees. “Because of what I did the other night, my parents have had to face some serious questions from the Contingent.”

  My fingers tighten around his. “Kane, be honest. What are they going to do to you at that hearing?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He minimizes the seriousness. I can tell by the shift in his breathing. He runs his free hand the length of my braid, tugging gently on the end. “It’s my first offense. They’ll go easy on me.”

  “And the other Fireblood?”

  He nods. “Same for him.”

  Him. I don’t miss that. I lean into Kane, snug against his chest, hoping to feel some assurance in what he says. “I wish it was over.”

  “You and me both.” He tugs on my braid again. I breathe him in.

  Right here. This is what I want forever. To sit on the back seat of a Kawasaki with Kane O’Reilly’s heart beating against my cheek and the wide open summer night watching us from the shadows. I took it for granted so many times before. Never again. I take another deep musky-filled breath.

  “Hey,” he whispers. I lean back, toss him a lazy glance. “You wanna do something to get our minds off all this crap for a while?”

  “You have to ask?”

  His eyes suddenly swirl with orange heat. I smile.

  “Been there,” I tease. He cups my hand and pulls on my ring. I toss him a sharp glance. “Hey!”

  “I’m gonna hang on to this for just a minute.”

  His smile is sly and kind of seductive as he slides it off, and my skin ripples with intense shivers. He slips the ruby onto his pinkie. It only makes it to his second knuckle before it locks into place. He leaves it there and tugs on the back of his collar, pulling his shirt up and over his head.

  “What are you doing,” I laugh.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispers. He balls up his shirt and tosses it to the ground.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, okay?”

  I pretend to smirk, but I do as he asks. The sun has been gone for at least half an hour, and closing my lids turns the darkness to pitch. That, along with my anticipation, makes my heart speed up. I’ve never known what to expect with Kane, but lately… that’s an understatement.

  “Keep them closed,” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” I quip.

  The motorcycle lightly wobbles, and a whooshing sound followed by a rush of strong air blows all my loose strands of hair into my face. I wipe at them.

  “What is going on out there?” I tease.

  “Okay.” Kane slides a hand across my knee. “Open up.”

  My breath catches deep in my chest at the exact moment I lift my lids. And… I’m blown away.

  Kane’s eyes burn with an even deeper orange that rages with yellows and blood reds. They flash hot and strong, piercing right through my chest and into my heart. But that’s not it. That isn’t what paralyzes me with sheer wonder. It’s his skin. It glows. And I don’t mean with that soft light I saw in my garage. This is unreal.

  His body buzzes with white florescence, and all along the surface, tiny, fiery-orange, tattoo-like markings etch his skin in a brilliant pattern that pulses with each beat of his heart.

  “Whoa,” I manage. I study his forearm, tracing the tip of my finger along the heated markings. He smiles.

  “How’s that for getting your mind off your troubles?”

  All I can do is shake my head. My brain tells me—for just a small second—that I should be freaking out. But I don’t want to freak out. I want to sit here and bask in the awe of this moment that is so unreal and amazing and totally…
wow!

  “Look up,” he says.

  A rustling flutter fills my ears as he spreads his wings. His wings! Giant and raven black, they span out against the backdrop of the night, but they don’t fade into the darkness. They should, but instead, they shimmer with an iridescence—almost like water droplets glistening on the feathers.

  “Oh my…”

  I honestly can’t vocalize what I’m thinking or feeling. It’s… incredible. He laughs, and in the next breath, he pulls his wings forward, enclosing us all around. I sit here, in the light of his glowing body, mouth hanging open in awe. It’s insane. At least, I feel the need to laugh like a crazy person. I throw my head back, taking in the roof of feathers. Kane folds them in, towing me a bit closer to him. I trail my fingers through his feathers. He ruffles them up and relaxes again.

  “That tickles.”

  I drop my eyes, stunned, and meet his golden gaze.

  “Say that again,” I whisper.

  “I said it tickles.”

  That’s what I thought he said. In Jezik. And I understood it. His smile widens, and I shake my head in utter disbelief.

  The white light cools into a soft glow and fades back to bronzed-skin. But his eyes still simmer, and he keeps his wings unfurled, draped around us like our own private curtain. It’s darker, and I lean into his embrace, my fingers spread wide across his bare chest. Our eyes connect, and the way he looks at me? It’s familiar. The same look he had on his face the night we baked cookies. I dig through my memory until I remember what he said: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but man, you look kind of beautiful right now.”

  Tonight, he doesn’t have to say it. Words would ruin this.

  “Jude, can you hear me?”

  I perk up, blink once. Kane’s dimples puncture his cheeks, his eyes steady.

  “Yes?” My voice is tentative, a question. Did I hear him? Or did I just imagine his voice in my head?

  “I have to tell you this one thing. I’ve wanted to say it for a long time now.”

  Nope. He’s in my head.

  “Okay,” I whisper. I stare at his unmoving lips, amazed. My heart threatens to punch right through my chest and somehow find a way to get inside to his. His hands, warm and emanating with musky vanilla, cup my face. I raise my brows, hold my breath, waiting.

  “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

  He says it—right inside my mind. I can’t move. My lungs just stop on an inhale and hang suspended between aching breaths, and it is the best feeling ever. I sense him in there, connected to my thoughts. They aren’t just words; they’re truth—alive and humming with promise. And you wanna know what they do? They force me to finally admit that I love him too. I’ve loved him since the letter A stared at me from that stupid assignment in kindergarten. He was one of my very first friends, and now this—a brand new angle on an old feeling. My heart beats rapidly, and his catches up—one constant thudding of a single rhythm.

  His eyes flicker, consuming me, and I don’t have to say a word. I can’t explain it—it must be his Fireblood juju—but I feel myself inside his feelings. He knows.

  We’re done wasting time. I fling my arms around his neck, tackling him. He laughs against my lips and takes me in, pulling me up onto his lap, my legs hitched over his hips. Those amazing wings? They fold up around us and vanish from sight.

  Just like that day at Lake Marlette, we disappear from the world’s eye for a little while.

  Interlude

  The Ring

  That summer… one by one… the secret doors of my life began to creak open.

  My ruby ring became the center of all my attention. In fact, it was so on my mind that I found myself glancing at it several times a day. It had become such an extension of me over the years that I was usually unaware of its presence. I was the world’s worst at leaving it on the sink after washing my hands, which was the only time I ever took it off, besides a shower. But that Friday night ride cured me of that habit for good.

  Still, I had no idea exactly what kind of power my ring held. I only knew that if I wasn’t wearing it, Kane could get inside my head, which was fine by me for the most part. He never once abused his power, and I kind of liked being able to let him in from time to time.

  It also didn’t escape me that the day Frankie played the audio for me, I was making sandwiches… after washing my hands. You see where this is going.

  The ring. It was the key.

  I was determined from that point on to get to the bottom of it.

  Twenty-three

  Saturday morning, I try Mom’s phone again. No answer. That’s how I end up standing in the middle of her room feeling slightly guilty for the intrusion. Call me impatient; I don’t care. She has another twenty-three days in that program; I’m not about to wait twenty-three days for an answer.

  The heavy curtains are drawn, as they always are since Mom works nights. This drapes the room in deep shadows. A tomb. My spine tingles a little, and I’m tempted to march around the bed, pull back the curtains, and invite the sun to bring some life back into this place. But I don’t. In fact, it feels wrong that I even had the thought.

  I rarely come in here… and never alone. We have this unspoken rule in place, see? This is Mom’s sanctuary, full of memories of my dad. All of his clothes still hang in his closet in perfect, color-coordinated rows. The burgundy comforter, wadded in a pile on the bed, is the same one they shared for the seventeen years of their marriage. Daddy’s guitar, dusty with disuse, leans in a corner. Pictures of him litter the room in golden and silver frames. Some of them include me; most are pictures of him with Mom. I take a tentative step and pick up one of the frames next to Mom’s bed: a picture of Dad by himself.

  I’ve looked at this one a million times. I have a copy in my room propped up against the lamp on my desk. It’s a headshot. He’s young, maybe twenty-five, and his eyes are brilliant blue. Five o’clock shadow shades his jawline just enough to make him the right level of handsome. I run my thumb over his face.

  When I see Daddy like this, immortalized in a picture, it helps me understand my mom’s grief. She told me once that one man in this world was created just for her, and nothing changed that fact simply because he was taken from her. “A real love,” she said, “lives beyond the end of time. I have that with your father.”

  I set the picture down, and my eyes fall on the one next to it. Their wedding photo. My mom looks so pretty in her white dress, but she’s even more beautiful now. I’ve seen how men look at her. She’s been asked on a few dates, but she wants nothing to do with any of it. I’m not saying she hasn’t ended up in a man’s bed on one of her loneliest nights, but I’m not saying she has, either. All I can tell you is that she’s never brought a man home, and she doesn’t ever plan to.

  I pull my eyes from the picture and refocus on the real reason I came in here. I’m not sure where to begin. I just have this inkling deep inside that something in this room—even the smallest of all clues—has to explain this crazy ring.

  I open the nightstand drawer, rummage through it, feeling really shameful. Not much in here, though. A box of tissue, some Chapstick, a Bible. At the very back there’s a letter written in purple ink and sealed inside a sandwich bag. I don’t touch it. It feels like too much of a trespass. I push the drawer closed.

  Hands on hips, I peer at the desk. I feel prickly all over, like the eyes in the back of Mom’s head watch me. But I move forward and pull on the top drawer. It’s locked.

  Hmmm… A locked drawer means secrets. I sigh. And now the trouble of finding the key.

  I check the other drawers first. They all open with ease, and they’re all empty. Weird. I swing open Mom’s walk-in closet door and step in. It smells like lavender and dirty feet. Nice, Mom.

  Her clothes line each side, a shoe rack to the left. A tall, jewelry box with several drawers sits against the back wall. I head straight for it. The top drawer is full of earrings Mom never wears. The second, a mountain of bracelets. Again…
Mom never wears these. But in the third drawer, I hit the jackpot.

  In a squared off section in the back corner, I find a pile of keys. I fumble through them for one that looks as if it fits the desk. Seconds later, I get my answer. A sharp click, and I ease the drawer open.

  It’s full of papers—documents. I lift out the first one: my parents’ marriage license. Rafael Michael Gallagher and Ellen Marie Rios joined in holy matrimony. It’s kind of touching to see this, and I bite back my tears and set it aside quickly. No more emotions needed, thank you. I’m full up.

  I reach for the next item. It’s a copy of an insurance policy in my dad’s name… for five million dollars. Wow. Yeah, Mom has plenty of money in her account all right; Dad made sure of it. I leaf through a couple of Mom’s life insurance policies where I’m named as the secondary beneficiary in the event that my dad dies first. Clearly, my parents were prepared.

  I find a few more documents. Mom’s will that leaves everything to me, titles to our cars, a few contracts, a key to a safety deposit box. And at the very bottom, a manila envelope. My full name, Jude Ellen Gallagher, is typed across the top.

  It’s sealed with packing tape.

  I pick it up with both hands and lower myself onto the end of the bed. My heart beats in my throat.

  I’ll take a moment to mention that both sides of my brain begin a vicious battle with each other at this point—reason pitted against curiosity. My initial thought? I shouldn’t open this. I should drop it right back inside the drawer, lock it up, and forget I ever saw it. It may have my name on it, but maybe it’s none of my business, you know? Maybe one day, when I’m supposed to see the contents, it will be Mom who hands it over.

  Then again, why is it sealed? If it’s about me, don’t I have the right to know what’s inside? I mean, my name is on it; technically that makes it mine, right?

  I run a thumb across the taped end. If I open this, Mom will know. But what if all the answers are inside? Maybe… maybe I need to open it. Maybe once I do, it won’t matter anymore whether Mom knows or not. Then again, I can’t undo what I see once I see it. What if it’s bad? What if it’s something I can’t live with? What if it answers all the questions I have in the most horrible of ways?