blood and magic 02 - kissed by fire

by Danielle Annett

  Okay, so maybe I wanted to hear what he had to say, but I didn’t have to admit it to him.

  Inarus paced over to a wooden barrel and leaned against it. His eyes tracked me for a few more seconds. I could see him debating whether to stick around and tell me whatever it was he had to say, or just port out and leave me on my own. I wasn’t sure which outcome I was hoping for.

  “I was telling the truth when I told you I didn’t have anything to do with that little boy’s death.”

  Oh, you have to be fucking kidding me. My vision went red. Daniel’s death was still sore spot for me. I’d been too late, and an innocent boy had died for no reason. His death had been a ploy to make the vampire Coven and the shifter Pack go for one another’s throats. When that hadn’t happened, a vampire and shifter had been found dead, looking as though they’d attacked one another with neither coming out on top.

  Inarus had been directly behind the second set of deaths. He’d staged the entire thing, killing two innocents in the process to further the agenda of PsyShade, a shady organization buried within the Human Alliance Corporation. The HAC wanted humans back on top of the food chain and from my perspective, they’d do whatever they had to, to get there. That included getting in to bed with people willing to kill innocents if it furthered their cause.

  “You have no right to bring him up,” I said, my hands visibly shaking. I still hadn’t been able to put his death behind me. It just wasn’t fair. No child should have to go through what that little boy had.

  “Aria, you need to hear me out.”

  “NO, I don’t!” The temperature was rising and I could feel my control slipping. I couldn’t start a fire, not in here. I stormed past Inarus and headed outside. The night was cool, the stars shining bright in the clear night sky. I paced several yards away from the barn, taking deep breaths through my mouth in an effort to calm down.

  I could hear Inarus’s approach from behind but I didn’t bother to turn around. I just stared out into the night, hands clenched into fists at my sides.

  “Aria, please.”

  Urgh, I hated when he said please. It never sounded right coming from him. We’d barely spoken since I’d found out about his betrayal. He’d drop off flowers and I’d throw them away. On rare occasion like this evening, he’d port in and I’d yell at him for a minute or two before he left. Nothing ever came from any of it. Why should tonight have been any different?

  “I didn’t kill that boy.” Flames licked my fingers at his words. “Before you yell at me again, I didn’t kill that boy, but I think I know who did.”

  I stared down at my hands, watching the flames climb over my fingers and onto my palms.

  “Aria, did you hear what I said?”

  Varying shades of yellow and orange stretched across my hands. The flames swaying as though they followed the beat of a song.

  “Aria!”

  I turned around, my eyes falling on Inarus. “What?”

  “Did you hear anything I said?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Sure, I’d heard. He didn’t kill Daniel. He’d said as much several times already. Didn’t mean I believed him.

  His eyes fell to my hands and he quirked a brow. “Mind putting out the fire?”

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I certainly wasn’t taking orders from him, but it wasn’t smart to keep my flames going. If Mr. Ortiz looked out his window, he’d get another shock he likely wasn’t ready for.

  It took longer than I liked for me to snuff out the flames. Inarus remained quiet the entire time, his patience apparently endless. With my flames no longer evident, I folded my arm across my chest and waited for him to continue. He didn’t usually stick around this long. He heaved a heavy sigh, the look on his face full of exhaustion.

  “Will you listen, just this once?” he asked. He sounded almost defeated. I had a feeling that if I said no, if I raged at him like I usually did, that he’d leave and wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t decide if that was what I actually wanted or not, and for some strange reason, against my better judgment, I nodded and waited for him to continue.

  It hadn’t been the response he’d expected, and it took him another minute to start. His brow furrowed in contemplation, and I decided to sit on a bale of hay and wait until he figured it all out.

  “Look, my work with the HAC—”

  “You mean PsyShade?” I corrected.

  He scowled at me. “No, I mean the Human Alliance Corporation. Look, PsyShade is separate. I was recruited into the HAC a few years ago when humans tried to regroup, to regain some sort of governing system. The guys in PsyShade have been around for decades, long before the Awakening ever happened.” When he spoke about PsyShade there was a note of admiration in his voice.

  “Oh, so that’s where you’re aspiring to be?” My tone was mocking, but hey, what did I care?

  “You can’t judge it without understanding what they do, what they stand for.”

  I waved him off. I knew enough. When Mike had dug up information for me after mommy dearest reappeared, back from the dead, PsyShade had been a bomb I hadn’t expected. Their goal worked towards the elimination of paranormals, and they’d do and kill just about anything and anyone to make it happen. For whatever reason, psykers like myself were considered one hundred percent human. Under a microscope our DNA looked just like your average humans. All that meant to me was that I wasn’t on their hit list. Yet.

  On paper, PsyShade and the HAC were two separate entities, but paper didn’t mean shit.

  “Fine, whatever.”

  Inarus threw his hands up in frustration.

  “Look, one of these days, you’ll get it,” he said. “But until then, you need to know that I didn’t kill the boy. A vampire did.”

  “We thought that originally, but—”

  “But it didn’t add up, I know. The boy’s body was mutilated and there was too much blood left behind. I get it. A normal vampire wouldn’t have been so messy, but it wasn’t a normal vampire. You weren’t even supposed to find fang marks on the body. It was supposed to look like a shifter attack, but the vampire lost control and bit. The bite marks were never supposed to be there in the first place.”

  “So we weren’t supposed to have them to compare to the second murder?”

  Inarus was shaking his head. “No, you were supposed to go after the shifters first, not the Coven.”

  “Why would a shifter kill one of their own? They don’t harm their children.” Shifter young were protected at all costs by every member within the Pack. Even rogue shifters tended to bypass the children as if something inside of them still urged them to protect.

  “They didn’t know he was a shifter.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “Patrick Blackmore didn’t tell them that Daniel was a shifter. They thought he was human. If a shifter had killed a human, there would have been a public outcry and the shifters wouldn’t have had any friends to turn to.”

  “What do you mean Patrick Blackmore didn’t tell them? Didn’t tell who?” Patrick had been Daniel’s stepfather. I’d suspected involvement from the parents when I’d investigated his murder. Neither had seemed overly upset by the child’s death, not the way a parent should have been.

  “Patrick offered his stepson up as a sacrifice for the cause.”

  Jesus Christ. I’d hunt him down and take that bastard out myself.

  “How do you know this?” I asked.

  He looked away for a moment, his gaze off in the distance.

  “I overheard your mother speaking about it with another HAC member.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. I’d wondered if he’d known that Viola Reynolds was my mother when we’d gone to the gala, and now he’d confirmed it, the bastard. He’d known that my mother was alive and had set me up to run into her without any warning. My resolve snapped, and without even thinking, flames burst to life in my palm again and I pushed them out in a small ball of fire the size of a baseball, right at his chest.

  He didn’t
move, didn’t even flinch. I narrowed my eyes at him when I realized that the ball of fire had stopped, hovering a few inches away but not actually touching him.

  “Aria, you know you can’t hurt me.”

  Dammit. Stupid telekinetic capabilities allowed him to control matter with little more than a thought. It didn’t mean I wouldn’t try, though.

  My hand inched to draw the tattooed blade hidden beneath the hem of my shirt. That could and would hurt him, if I caught him off guard before he was able to port. His telekinetic abilities didn’t work on its magical properties. There’d be no way for him to halt its movements. I debated the idea before tossing it aside. While I was fuming that he’d set me up, a small part of me was grateful. I hadn’t known that she was alive. Seeing my mother in the flesh after six years had been shocking. I still didn’t have any sort of explanation for how she’d gotten away and why she’d never looked for me, but knowing she was alive healed a broken piece inside of me. At least that was one less person’s death I felt responsible for.

  “Where is Patrick Blackmore now?” I asked. When I finished up here with Mr. Ortiz, we were going to have a chat.

  “Dead.”

  Good riddance.

  “How?”

  “He was murdered by his wife before she took her own life.” Taken out by his own wife. That sucked, but he’d sure as hell deserved it. I wished I’d been the one to do it, but at least he’d gotten what he’d deserved. Bastards like him belonged in hell.

  “She was involved too, wasn’t she?”

  He nodded. “She didn’t know until he’d been taken already. Her husband had led her to believe that he’d be back. That they were only staging a kidnapping. But when he wound up dead, she’d decided her husband and their rich lifestyle were more important to her than her son.”

  Then I was glad she was dead, too. No woman deserved to be a mother if she couldn’t put her child’s well-being first. “So if Daniel’s death was in fact the result of a vampire attack, who did it?”

  “I don’t know her name, but I know what she looks like. She’s tall for a woman and has long red hair.”

  “Let me guess—beyond beautiful, like Jessica Rabbit come to life?”

  “Who’s Jessica Rabbit?”

  I shook my head. He really needed to watch more classic cartoons. “It doesn’t matter. Tall, red hair, legs for days?”

  His eyes narrowed as though he were looking for the trap in my question. No, you big ole dummy, I’m not looking for a compliment from you.

  After a moment more of contemplation, he nodded. I wasn’t surprised. Inarus could only be describing Irina Petrova. She was a high-ranking Coven member, one of the five within Rebecka’s inner circle and the only red haired vamp I’d come across in the two years I’d been in Spokane. The last time I’d spoken with her had been when James and I had gone to confront Rebecka about the Coven’s possible involvement in Daniel’s death. Irina had been seething over our accusation and had been visibly hostile. She didn’t strike me as a supporter of the Pack and Coven treaty.

  “Why is Irina working with the HAC? It goes against everything Rebecka believes in.”

  “She doesn’t agree with her Coven leader’s views. She doesn’t believe in peace with the shifters. She thinks the vampires should wipe them out, but since her Coven leader disagrees, she’s chosen to take matters into her own hands.”

  “And where does the HAC stand with this?”

  “If the Coven and the Pack take one another out, it makes it that much easier for the HAC to seize control of the area. Both would be too weak to intervene.”

  Well that was obvious. Dammit, how could I have missed Irina’s involvement? I knew she was ruthless. I guess I just hadn’t thought her stupid enough to fall into such an obvious trap.

  The wheels in my mind turned as the ramifications of what she’d set into motion hit me. If Declan found out that a vampire was in fact behind Daniel’s death, treaty or no, he’d be out for blood and Irina would get exactly what she wanted. A war.

  A shrill scream pierced the evening air, jerking me from my slumber as effectively as a shot fired. In an instant, I was on the move. Jumping from my bed of hay, I shoved my feet into my boots and pounded my way out of the barn and into the night. A scream rent the night again, giving me a location to head in. I turned to my left and ran for the tree line, the scream dying off into the night. As I neared, I could hear a gurgling sound. My skin crawled as the sound of slurping reached my ears and a twisting sensation began deep in the pit of my stomach. Whatever animal had made the blood-curdling scream was dead now, and the monster that had attacked it was enjoying its meal with vigor.

  I could barely make out a darkened shape hidden within the shadows. It was nearly seven feet tall and at least four feet wide. I slowed my steps and hunched down. I silently moved closer, brushing branches aside as I stepped further into the tree line surrounding the property.

  The monster’s head jerked up as my boot snapped a twig. I froze. Red eyes met mine; I stood frozen only fifteen yards away from it. Its shape was barely visible in the darkness but for its red-tinged eyes. I held my breath as I waited to see what it would do next, debating whether to continue inching my way closer or slowly back track and get the hell away from it.

  My heart pounding in my chest urged me to run. I didn’t want to look like prey though. I’d initially thought the monster was big, but I soon realized that quick judgment had been wrong. Now, the thing no longer crouched. It stepped forward from the brush and rose to its full height. It was massive. The creature had to be over nine feet tall, and now I definitely wanted to run.

  Before logic could guide me, the monster let loose a vicious cry before barreling towards me. I ran. I turned as instinct kicked in and hightailed it as fast as my legs would take me, twigs and frost crunching beneath my feet.

  My mind rushed for a solution on how to take the monster down and came up blank. Fear suffocated my abilities to call fire; I clenched my fists as I ran, pumping my arms and willing the flames to burst forth. I could hear its thundering footsteps and glanced behind my shoulder to see how far it was.

  It had been a mistake. As soon as I turned, my boot twisted in a tree root hidden beneath a blanket of snow and I felt my body tumble. My ankle protested with the fall. I caught myself on my hands before I fell entirely, but wasn’t able to roll away fast enough out of the monster’s reach. A massive paw swiped at me, sending me sailing through the open space and into the tire of a tractor nearby. The impact jarred me. My ribs protested and I prayed nothing was cracked.

  My vision blurred as I tried to regain my senses. The sound of a door opening met my ears. Blinking several times, I focused on the shape coming from an illuminated doorway.

  Mr. Ortiz. Shit!

  He was standing in the doorway, his porch light casting a clear target for the monster to hone in on.

  “The chupacabra,” I said. His eyes were wide, horror stamped across his face. The monster’s attention turned to him and I saw its intent to strike. I couldn’t let that happen. “Go back inside!” I yelled. I hugged my ribs as I pulled myself up. The movement caused me to flinch but nothing was broken. I’d have one hell of a bruise come morning.

  He looked from me to the monster. I could tell he didn’t want to leave me alone to face the creature myself, but he would only get in the way.

  “Lock your door and call this number.” I rattled off a series of digits, praying he’d remember them since he clearly wasn’t writing them down. “Tell him I need backup,” I yelled at him. I was going to need some help with this one, and with any luck, James would get here before the chupacabra took me out.

  Thankfully, Mr. Ortiz went back inside, and I shook my head and focused on my hands, calling my fire to me. It came within seconds, and before the chupacabra could get any closer to the house, I rushed it.

  Flames licked my arms as I ran, their coverage growing with each and every step. I leapt for the creature’s back, my hands findi
ng holds within the scales covering its spine. They had looked gray from a distance but I could now see that they had a metallic, green sheen to them. I dug my hand beneath them, searching for softer flesh to hold on to.

  It didn’t like me on its back, and my fire seemed to do little against its natural armor. I buried my hands within the scales, praying that they’d light, but nothing happened. It was like the monster was resistant to fire. The chupacabra roared in anger, rearing its head back. I had to jump free to avoid being thrown back. As I landed in a crouch, the monster turned to me, its eyes thin slits.

  “Come on, you bastard,” I bit out, taunting it. I didn’t know if it could understand me, but I needed to lead it away from the house. It huffed, spittle flying free from its maw as it roared once more, displaying an impressive expanse of double-rowed teeth, each sharp and deadly. I seriously did not want to be bitten.

  The chupacabra was one ugly beast. Scales lined its back, with leathery skin on its underbelly and thick fur covering its arms and legs. It had a face like a wolf and three-inch-long claws on each finger.

  I zoned in on the fur. Fur caught fire easily. While it was only on its arms and legs, it would have to be my target. It was my only hope for taking it down. I pushed my flames further, molding my hands before me in the shape of a ball as the monster watched. I wondered why it wasn’t attacking, but its eyes seemed to be fixated on the flames, so I spent a few more precious seconds funneling my energy into the ball of fire, making it as hot as I was able to in the short time I had, the flames now burning a bright white. The monster wasn’t as patient as I would have liked, and his interest wore off before more than twenty seconds had passed.

  When he charged, I let the flames free, directing the ball of fire to his left calf. He roared in pain when fire met fur but his gait didn’t slow. I turned and ran, pulling my daggers free from their sheath as I tried to come up with a plan.

  With another look over my shoulder, I could see that the flames were still growing over its leg, but I didn’t know if it was actually doing any damage. A tractor was about fifteen yards to my left and I turned for it, adding a burst of speed to give myself the time I needed to climb it.