Flame's Dawn

by Jillian David

  “Um, how about back to the couch?”

  “Okay.”

  He didn’t miss how her damp head tucked into the space between his shoulder and neck made him feel complete, purposeful.

  Too bad he had no purpose except to carry out his Indebted contract.

  Too bad the only thing that made him complete was slaking that damned knife’s hunger.

  He was a monster crammed into the shell of a man. Nothing more.

  • • •

  Jane shrunk back away from the syringe Barnaby brandished.

  He stepped back and raised his hands. “Antibiotics. I swear. You need it for, the, um, infection.”

  “It’s okay. I know what happened. The miscarriage had complications.”

  He looked everywhere but at her. Jane didn’t blame him.

  “So, may I?” He waved the wicked-looking needle.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said, slipping her arm out from under the sheet. As the bite of metal and tight squirt of liquid hit her upper arm, she felt a burn low in her pelvis. That’s what failure felt like, no doubt.

  After wiping the tiny drop of blood on her upper arm, he set the syringe on the coffee table. “So. Sure it’s Thompson’s?”

  “The miscarriage? Yeah.” She sure was doing a great job memorizing the bland pattern on the couch cushions tonight. “Change the subject, please.”

  “Right. Bad choice of topic.” He paused long enough for her to glance over and check on him. Myriad emotions—everything from sadness to curiosity to banked, lethal anger—shone from his eyes. “So are you ready to get out of here? Even though the police haven’t made it to this block yet, doesn’t mean they won’t soon. Any idea where you want to go?”

  “I have no place to go. The DEA won’t take me back; I’m compromised, a liability, after everything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Well, then, let’s just say I don’t want to deal with the DEA right now.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Actually, I’d like to somehow get that info to the DEA chief, who might believe me, about the drugs and sex trade. If those women are suffering as much as than I did, they have to be freed. Also, I think my supervisor was somehow involved.”

  “Okay then.” The line of his jaw turned to hard rock. “Why don’t we put together a plan to inform him after you’re healed?”

  “Sure.”

  “So. No idea ...?”

  “I don’t have a home. No family. So that leaves a whole lot of nothing.” She swallowed around the lump in her throat.

  “Or a lot of possibilities.” A smile lit up his handsome face.

  For the first time in months, her heart lifted. A foreign feeling. Hope. “Yeah?”

  “Yes. I have an idea.”

  “Your last idea landed me forty stories up on a roof.” She smiled as he pulled a face. “But let’s hear it.”

  “I have a little place in the Santa Cruz mountains. No one knows about it. You’ll be safe.”

  “Barnaby, I can’t impose.”

  “If you were imposing, I wouldn’t offer.” His voice, so grave, made her want to burst into tears all over again.

  “I don’t know ...”

  “Do you trust me?”

  The $64,000 question again. No doubt about her answer at this point.

  Her pathetic attempt at a laugh made her even sadder. “What choice do I have?”

  The next half hour faded into a blur of Barnaby’s energetic activity, phone calls with mumbled conversations, and her own exhaustion.

  At one point, his constant motion stopped when he stood over her, his arms filled to bursting with bags and supplies.

  “I’m going to pack up the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She’d be here alone? Her heart thudded. Who was she to complain? It wasn’t as though she had many choices. “No problem.”

  When he dashed out of the room, the emptiness around her felt like a mantle of fear and failure. She huddled, spine rigid, with the sheets clutched about her curled frame.

  Until the door exploded inward.

  She yelped, and a wave of sweat fired through her.

  Chuck leered at her from the hallway.

  Murmurs of nearby tenants drifted down to her, but the big man storming over to her consumed most of her senses.

  “What are you ... how ...?” she managed.

  “That stupid janitor used a fake address on his job application at the hospital, but one of his references had this address listed. What an idiot. Once we realized who kidnapped you, Thompson sent me here to ... get you out of here.”

  He pulled a compact pistol. A Sig Sauer, if her weapons training remained relevant.

  Relevant for the next few seconds, at least.

  Jane’s stomach dropped out from under her.

  Chuck snorted. “We tried the nice way to get you to shut up.”

  “What? By drugging me into oblivion?” She didn’t care if she riled him. Thompson and his cronies had taken everything. The least they could do was provide some answers before killing her.

  “Thompson wanted to know what you told the DEA so he could plan his next business move, but at this point, screw that. Damn idiot still wanted you alive to try to make more little Thompsons. Go figure. In my opinion, he should have killed you at the very beginning. Doesn’t matter now. You’re history. Problem solved.” He chuckled. “Killed escaping the loony bin.”

  The big man took one step closer. Then another. The rock rhythm of BTO’s “Takin’ Care of Business” punctuated his steps. Fitting.

  She flexed, testing her muscle strength. Not much defense to offer other than flopping to the floor.

  With any luck, Chuck would throw his back out bending over to shoot her.

  No such luck.

  What an inglorious end to her career. Shot dead, wrapped in nothing but a sheet. When they did the autopsy, they’d find her hopped up on antibiotics with traces of God-knew-what drugs in her bloodstream. They’d know she was recovering from a horrendous miscarriage, so maybe chalk it up to hormones making her crazy. The DEA would label her a rogue, and rightly so, and then ... what?

  Nothing.

  Nowhere to send her body.

  No one to mourn.

  How had her life come down to this pathetic end?

  What about Barnaby? He was about to walk into the barrel of Chuck’s gun.

  The nasty man flicked the safety and aimed.

  “Say bye-bye, honey.”

  “No, wait!” she shouted.

  He froze for only a moment, but that’s all that was needed.

  In a blur she couldn’t follow, Barnaby flew through the open door and hit the man like a vertical projectile. The gun fired, and the couch shuddered as a puff of fiberfill and fabric drifted out of a hole in the cushion.

  Her right ear rang, but she could still hear snapping bones and screams.

  Another gunshot and Barnaby rolled away, blood coating the front of his shirt. He didn’t move.

  Oh God, Barnaby.

  Chuck staggered back to his feet, fumbling for the gun with the hand that wasn’t attached to a broken arm.

  “I’ve killed him. Now you’re next,” he growled.

  His arm shook as he raised the gun once more.

  Well, that was it.

  Life, nice while it lasted.

  Actually, no, it kind of sucked eggs while it lasted. Maybe death would be better.

  Before she had a chance to test her theory, Barnaby sprang like a tightly coiled Lazarus, smacking the gun to the floor and grabbing the man’s broken arm until Chuck collapsed with a howl.

  Barnaby reached under the hem of his Levi’s and extracted a dangerous-looking knife.

  The blade glowed green.

  As he flicked a glance up at Jane and then back to Chuck, she caught the eerie green glow of the knife reflected in Barnaby’s black eyes. She froze.

  Growling, he sat on top of the man. He grabbed Chuck’s jaw and turned it so
the man had no choice but to look with horror at Barnaby’s rictus of a grin.

  “You will never hurt her,” Barnaby snarled.

  Chuck mumbled something she couldn’t hear.

  “Don’t care,” Barnaby said.

  And plunged the knife hilt-deep into the man’s chest, then twisted.

  He shoved his hand over Chuck’s scream and rode the twitching body for a few seconds until the man didn’t move.

  It wasn’t until Barnaby swiveled his head around to stare at Jane that she realized she’d clapped her own hands over her open mouth.

  The brief flicker of ecstasy on Barnaby’s face as he closed his eyes and sighed made her nauseous.

  With an efficiency of movement that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d made this move, Barnaby used the dead man’s pants to clean the blade and slid the knife back into the sheath on his leg.

  “Let’s go.”

  “What?”

  He couldn’t be serious. Go with him? Who was he? What was he? Nothing about Barnaby felt completely human. Not the speed of his attack, not his bizarre strength. And certainly not the part where he had been resurrected from a point-blank gunshot to the chest.

  She should be calling for help.

  And then what?

  Shouts and doors slamming brought her back to reality.

  She had limited choices, and none were good.

  “Jane.” Still kneeling on the floor over the silent body, he held a bloody hand out to her. “Please, I want to help you.”

  She shook her head. “By doing ... this?”

  “If I have to, yes. I was prepared to do the same thing in Vietnam if it meant keeping you safe.”

  Oh God. “What? ... how? ... what are you?” Her mind couldn’t even form the questions that needed to be asked.

  “I can’t— Shite. Please believe that I would never hurt you.” He stared at his hand and wiped it on his pants, as though that would somehow help.

  “I don’t know.”

  Footsteps pounded down the hall.

  “Jane, please.”

  This moment, right here, with Jane wrapped in a sheet on a beige couch in a beige room of a supernaturally strong man who killed people—this moment was where the two paths of her life waited. She’d picked a bad path before. So what about now? She could take the leap of faith with a killer who had kept her safe in ungodly situations or stay here, go to the police, and risk Thompson, commitment, and death.

  Not so big of a choice, when put that way.

  Chapter 11

  Hours later, the rays of dawn lit up the twisting roads near Santa Cruz. Barnaby pulled the bronze Nova into the local sundry store. He had changed the bloody shirt before leaving the apartment. No need to attract unwanted attention. With a light touch on Jane’s arm to alert her, he tucked his jacket more firmly around her shoulders and locked her in the car.

  Leaving her alone was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to get supplies and try to make her comfortable in this hellish situation.

  A situation he’d precipitated.

  If only he hadn’t connected with her in Vietnam, if only he’d followed through on his promise to find her in San Francisco, Jane wouldn’t be a broken and ill woman. He had one job—to search for her—and he couldn’t be bothered to do it.

  Look what happened. She’d almost died. A minion still tracked her.

  What a worthless bastard. And he didn’t mean the minion.

  Inside, he picked up several weeks’ worth of dry goods and a few outfits he thought might suit Jane. Later this week, Dante would drop off a bag of women’s clothes and additional supplies at the store.

  Even his old friend didn’t know the exact location of the mountain retreat, and Barnaby liked it that way.

  With a bare nod at the young worker who raised her eyebrow at the order, Barnaby paid and hurried back out to the car.

  His whole life, such as one could call it, was in this vehicle.

  Did that include Jane?

  What a wretch, but he couldn’t follow that thought to its terrible conclusion. He had to live in the here and now, as he had for the past 400 years.

  If only he could stop this hamster wheel from hell. The urge, the kills with that cursed knife, the relief, the hope that he might have completed the contract, and then despair. Always ending on despair. Rinse and repeat.

  If he’d returned to Vietnam, he might have found those scrolls. Might have broken the curse by now.

  But then again, he wouldn’t have found Jane and saved her from Thompson.

  Then again, if he hadn’t encountered Jane in the first place, the minion wouldn’t have been drawn to her and wouldn’t have hurt her.

  Ah, shite. No answer worked.

  Steering the car up the highway, he turned onto an unmarked dirt road. He prayed that the road was clear of debris, as it had been more than a year since he’d come up here.

  After traveling several miles deep into the forest, he parked in front of his cabin. In the late morning light, the redwood-sided cabin thrust a porch off the steep mountainside and suspended it into the pale blue sky above the pine trees. The familiar lines of Loma Yorba’s rocky peak to the north soothed him. He so loved nature, loved having a place apart from his sick existence as an Indebted.

  Sadly, though, the peace never lasted. Not as long as he had to kill criminals on demand.

  Couldn’t rightly do that up here, alone in the woods, now, could he?

  Before getting out of the car, he woke Jane with a gentle rock to her shoulder. Even then, she startled, her aqua eyes going round until she focused on him, blinked, and relaxed. He may never know more than a fraction of what she’d been through, but he knew what reliving past traumas looked like, and right now, fear was written all over her lovely face.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Yawning, she glanced around. “Wow. Beautiful.” She pulled the door handle.

  He rushed over to help her out of the car. Sure enough, her attempt to stand failed, and he swept her up again.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, giving a vague motion that encompassed the sheet still wrapped around her, the car door, and her legs.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry about. Ever.” He shifted her into what he hoped was a more comfortable position. Sure as hell was making him uncomfortable, her proximity. Which made him even more of an evil bastard. Maybe he had a reputation as a paramour over the centuries, but no way would Barnaby hit on a convalescing woman.

  He breathed in the air, still warm at the end of July, but lighter here in the mountains. Douglas firs and redwoods dominated the chaparral scrub oaks with their rich green leaves shifting in the breeze.

  “I hope you like it here.”

  Her smile, a rare treasure, lit up her face, giving him a glimpse of what heaven must look like. “I already do. Thank you for everything.”

  All of a sudden, something irritated his eyes. “Yes, well. Take a moment to change into this outfit, and I’ll give you the grand tour. Then it’s time for your next dose of antibiotic and for you to rest.”

  When her face fell, he cursed at himself for being such a fool. Great job, reminding her of the trauma. But he’d caused this mess, so he would finish his job and see her healed. He owed her at least that much.

  Then he’d leave her the hell alone.

  • • •

  Jane loved the cabin. Loved how she could view miles of mountains from the airy porch. The redwood plank walls and floor gave it a welcoming, burnt-orange glow. She could breathe in the wood scent of the house, Barnaby’s masculine scent, and the fresh air every day of her life and be a happy woman.

  Too bad her future didn’t include a cabin and happiness.

  And it sure as heck didn’t include a normal, kind man ... or even a freakishly strong killer.

  God, what a mess.

  She sat in her position of choice, curled up on a couch with Barnaby nearby. Better to keep an eye on him. He still had that knife strapped to him
.

  The fleecy softness of the velour tracksuit he’d bought at the store didn’t fit right. It hung off her bony frame, reminding her of all that she’d lost.

  After quelling a wave of self-pity and then paranoia, she sipped at the double-strength hot chocolate he’d insisted she drink.

  She studied his handsome face, knitted tight in concentration, as he puttered around the cabin, putting away food supplies and items he’d removed from his apartment. How did he go from cold-blooded killer to domestic engineer?

  And how could he function after being shot point-blank in the apartment? Nothing made sense, and the ends of her frazzled nerves kept buzzing. It didn’t take a background in pattern recognition to know that something didn’t add up.

  The least she could do for both herself and Barnaby was to recuperate quickly and get out of his life and re-create her own.

  “Penny for your thoughts?”

  She jumped out of her skin. How long had he been watching her?

  “Just taking everything in,” she hedged.

  At his intake of breath, she figured he would say something, but he clamped his lips together for a full minute. “All right then. So. I have plans to feed you until you burst tonight. Until then, let’s get you up and moving.”

  In spite of herself, Jane smiled. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Nine-mile hike in the mountains.” When he winked, her heart flopped. “Just kidding. How about taking a few steps around the living room?”

  Sitting up, she gave him a thumbs-up. “I’ll do anything to get better.”

  Was that a shadow of a frown below the sweep of thick, brown hair?

  “Well, let’s get some music to help you along.” He tuned the countertop radio to a Top 40 station.

  Ah yes, “The Loco-Motion” by Grand Funk Railroad. Perfect.

  He turned to her. “Right, then. Let’s see what you can do, turbojet.”

  Ten wobbly steps later, and Jane’s energy had deserted her. Even with Barnaby at her side, she nearly hit the floor when her legs gave out on that tenth step. Like it was no big deal that an adult couldn’t walk, he tucked her into his side and shuffled her back over to the couch.

  Damn it, but her legs trembled like she was a newborn foal, and all she wanted to do was sleep for hours. A year of insane levels of stress and several weeks of a life-threatening condition ending in full restraints would do that to a person.