by S. W. Clarke
The Fire Eater and Her Dragon
S.W. Clarke
Ramy Vance
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Join The Clan!
About the Authors
Setting Fires with Dragons Series © Copyright <<2021>> S.W. Clarke and Ramy Vance
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Chapter 1
As soon as Seleema started toward me, I half-collapsed to the floor. My elbow hit the coffee table, and I grunted as I fell into an awkward half-seat on the couch.
All at once, with Seleema’s acknowledgement, the pain had become unbearable. Once I no longer had to bear the load of my injuries by myself, my brain had switched into a new mode.
Panic.
Seleema’s face appeared in front of me as she helped me sit back on the couch. “What has happened?”
Behind me, Frank and Erik’s voices were asking questions—expressing concern.
Seleema raised a hand. “Give us a moment.”
I allowed her to settle me back, my hands shaking as I dripped blood. “I … I …” A swirl of thoughts pressed through my head, and for the first time, I was having trouble distinguishing my own from Mariana’s. Because, after all, she was as panicked as me.
Was I dying?
What about Percy? Ariadne? What would happen to them if I wasn’t here?
If I went back into my own head, would the demon find me again?
And then there was the obvious issue: how to explain what had happened to me?
“Something attacked me,” I managed.
“Where?” Seleema’s head turned left and right. “I do not see anything.”
“Not here.” I gave a feeble gesture to indicate my head. “In here.”
Her face went dead serious. “You were attacked inside yourself?”
I couldn’t properly express my gratitude to Seleema for immediately believing what I was saying. But I had known from the moment she’d helped me onto the couch that of anyone in this house, she was the person I needed to be talking to.
She got these things.
“Yes.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I was in a memory, and I saw a creature. It had red eyes.”
Her fingers slid over my arms. “May I?”
I gave an impassioned nod, wincing at the barest touch.
Seleema angled my arms a few degrees, inspecting the wounds. She clicked her tongue, what sounded like a noise of disapproval. “No good.”
I kept my eyes pressed shut against the pain. “Can you elaborate?”
“The wounds are already developing an infection.”
“How is that possible? I just got them five minutes ago.”
“Yes, five minutes in this world.” Her cool fingers brushed along my skin, testing the tautness and heat. “But this world and the world of your soul do not operate on the same timeline.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening.”
When I opened my eyes, she looked deeply concerned. Her voice lowered until only I could hear it. “Do you remember, Tara, what we spoke of on the night I helped you to see?”
“I don’t know. Lots of things. Orange juice and birthday suits.”
She fixed me with large eyes. “We talked about your memories, and what it meant if they remained unacknowledged.”
My chest tightened. Now I remembered. “You said … suicide.”
“Yes. To refuse your memories is a form of suicide.”
I screwed up my face. “But I’m not resisting. I was inside one of Mariana’s memories.”
“I am not referring to Mariana’s memories. I am referring to yours.”
The tightness in my chest grew. I didn’t know if it was because of this infection or because of my own fear. I could hear what Seleema was saying, and I could understand it … but I couldn’t make myself sit with it.
Again and again, my attention turned itself away.
“My arms,” I gritted out. “They’re burning.”
Seleema took hold of my hands. “I will slow the infection.”
“How?”
Frank appeared in my periphery. “Seleema … are you going to burn time?”
Seleema didn’t look at him. “Yes, Franklin. If I do not, Tara’s infection will spread too quickly.”
Too quickly for what? I thought. Then again, I didn’t want to know how that sentence ended.
Frank knelt by her. “Please don’t.”
I couldn’t even blame Frank. I knew he cared about me, too—but he cared about Seleema way, way more. She’d already burned three days to heal herself after that fight with the ghoul back in Montreal. Three days felt like next to nothing, but it was also something.
When the end brought oblivion, three days could be everything.
“Don’t, Seleema,” I chimed in. “Valdis can do it. He won’t let Mariana die.”
“He cannot,” Seleema insisted. “He does not understand the soul as I do.”
I burst into a small, insane laugh. “And yet he’s the one screwing with mine.”
“Seleema,” Frank said again, setting one hand on her shoulder.
Seleema had already closed her eyes and lowered her face. She gripped my hands more tightly, and I knew her decision was already made.
Tears hit my eyes. Whether from pain or feeling, I didn’t know. The sight of the two of them blurred, and I thought:
I don’t deserve this.
If Seleema was right, I was committing a form of suicide. This was my fault … though I didn’t precisely know why or how. And the houri was paying for it with her own life.
I opened my mouth to protest
again, but a soft warmth had blossomed in my fingertips. It was so sweet and pleasant, like morphine through my veins, that my mouth remained open without any words emerging.
I only lay my head back as the sweetness pressed its way into my hands, and from there, tendriled into my forearms. Carbonate bubbled through my muscles and veins, a tender fizzing that brought incomprehensible, immediate relief from the pain.
So this was what it meant to receive life from an Other. It was glorious, the most potent high I’d never even known existed. A tiny part of Seleema’s power was issuing into me, and just that speck of it—a few hours of her life, perhaps?—was unfathomably beautiful and intoxicating.
When she stopped, it was obvious.
Where morphine would have stayed for hours, Seleema’s relief remained for as long as she burned time. A few seconds later, she lifted her face as the pain returned—not as terrible, but also unequivocally present.
“The infection has slowed,” she whispered. “But it will not leave. Now both your soul and body are being consumed by what is inside you.”
↔
I opened my eyes on the houri. “Being consumed? Box of frogs, Seleema. Help me understand.”
She lowered my hands. As she did, the light shone over my wounds. They weren’t oozing blood anymore, but they also didn’t look healed.
Not nearly.
“I touched your soul when I transferred my life to yours, Tara,” Seleema said. “The demon inside you is strong.”
I swallowed. “The darkness.”
“Yes.” She averted her eyes. “The darkness.”
When we’d first met, Seleema had told me my soul swirled with darkness and light. Later, she had clarified that I—Tara—was not the light, but the darkness. Mariana was the light.
So if the demon was the darkness, and I was the darkness …
Was I the demon?
That couldn’t be—I had the wounds on my arms to prove it. The demon had attacked me.
My breathing quickened. A physical malaise was settling over me. I felt hot and cold all at once, and my limbs seemed unusually heavy. “What do I do if the demon comes back?”
“The demon will come back,” Seleema said. “I assure you it will.”
“And then? How do I fight what’s inside my head?”
“You do not.” Seleema sighed, touching the bridge of her nose in a very human way. “Tara, you are not meant to fight this creature.”
“Really?” My eyes flicked down to my arms, back up again. “You could fool me.”
“It hunts you because you will not acknowledge your memories. And for as long as you persist, it will come for you.” She shook her head. “You must go to the place you refuse to.”
“I don’t know what place you’re talking about.”
She held me with her stare. “Do you not?”
Frank stroked her back. “Are you feeling OK, honey?”
“Yes, Franklin. I have burned only two hours of my life.” She afforded him a small smile. “Do not worry—we will partake in many long hours of carnal pleasure in the decades to come.”
That felt like their thing—a reassurance to one another in the same way some couples said “I love you.” For Frank and Seleema, it was the promise of nookie. Lighthearted, but also completely serious.
If the whole situation wasn’t so awful, Frank would probably have blushed. As it was, he set his hand on Seleema’s arm. “I’m holding you to that.”
I felt like I was going to be sick, and not because of the couple in front of me. I just felt … terrible, like I needed a bed and a nearby toilet to kneel beside as necessary. And even that reality felt far less terrifying than the prospect of venturing back into my head and meeting the red-eyed demon again.
I didn’t know what Seleema wanted me to do. I did, but I didn’t.
The truth was, I didn’t want to know. My entire being pressed away from what she was telling me with two hands forcefully shoved out before me. This wasn’t just about hating vulnerability … it was more than that.
What Seleema wanted me to do was why I hated vulnerability. It was the dark, beating heart of my avoidant nature.
I gestured toward Ariadne with my chin. “Seleema, she talked to me.”
“About what?” Seleema asked.
“Lust, I think. She said, ‘she calls.’ ‘She promises.’ I figured if anyone would know about cryptic statements, you would.”
Seleema turned back to Ariadne, still seated on the ottoman with my blood dripping off the brown leather. “She said ‘she calls?’ ”
“That’s right.”
Seleema rose. “And did she do anything?”
“She tried to get up. She kept looking at the front door.”
Seleema balled her fists, unclenched them. “Lust is the deadliest sin. And she has beckoned Ariadne.”
I shook my head. “But I didn’t hear anything. I was sitting right next to her.”
Seleema turned back to me. “Lust can whisper to each of us. That is her power—her seductive, personal nature. She has promised things to Ariadne that Lust knows she wants, if only Ariadne would open the door.”
Frank slowly stood. “She can talk to anyone?”
“Yes, Franklin.” Seleema raised her voice to catch the others’ attention. “Lust has beckoned to Ariadne. Has anyone else heard her whispers?”
No one else had.
“You must remain vigilant,” Seleema said. “All of you. Vampire, tell your men that you will kill them if they open the door. Threaten them in your worst language, for only the fear of imminent death will overpower Lust’s promises.”
I groaned; another thing to worry about. I needed to check on Percy, to relay the message to him, but I found myself unable to move. It took herculean effort just to keep silent in spite of the pain.
So I remained seated alone in the living room as the others strategized about their next move.
This really wasn’t my best look. I was Tara Drake, dragon rider and vampire hunter. I called the shots. I made the moves.
GoneGods, I couldn’t even move off this couch.
My consciousness became bleary as they talked, but I did hear Erik’s voice float in from the kitchen. His boots squeaked across the tile as he paced. “We can’t send more men out to the helicopter.”
“Correct,” Valdis said. “If what the Soul Hunter has told us is true.”
“I do not lie,” the Soul Hunter hissed. “The angels are far more capable than ever before. Lust’s magic empowers them.”
“Which is equally true of every creature outside this house,” Erik said. “And she can wait forever. We can’t. Either Valdis’s magic gives out, or the World Army arrives with the big guns.”
Valdis let out a low noise of deliberation. “There must be another way.”
“An underground passage, maybe?” Erik offered.
“My power resides here,” Valdis said, though the rest of his words faded away.
I blinked hard, trying to keep my gaze from swimming. I focused on Ariadne, who again stared into nothing.
Soon, a hand was on my arm. I lifted my face to find Seleema staring back at me.
“We must go,” she said. “I will help you walk.”
Chapter 2
Seleema wrapped one arm around me and eased me to my feet. As soon as my legs straightened, I staggered with wooziness.
“Woah,” I said. “The world’s swimming.”
She kept a firm hand around my back. “The world is steady, Tara. Come.”
I felt feverish, like that time I was three years old with a fever so high I saw snakes. Snakes everywhere, and I’d climbed into my mother’s lap and pointed around our trailer. There was a snake in Dad’s shoe, there was one coiled in the sink.
Of course, there were no snakes. Just as the world wasn’t swimming.
But in both cases, our perceptions were our reality.
I took unsteady steps, allowing her to lead me around the couch and toward the kitchen. Ar
ound me, people were gathering supplies. Affixing weapons to their bodies. “Where are we going?”
“Underground,” Seleema said. “There is a way.”
Underground—of course Valdis would have an escape route. If he’d been hiding Ariadne from Sin for as long as I suspected, then he’d done his level best to make sure she’d have ways of evading Sin’s grasp.
Sometimes my thoughts came cool and easy like that, and then, alternately, they came like this—
The pain. It hurts. It really, really hurts.
At some point in the half hour since Seleema had slowed the infection, my arms had gone from pained to two flaming branches attached to my body. The pain surged through me in spikes, almost doubling me over as we walked.
“Seleema,” I murmured. “It’s real bad.”
She paused, reaching to touch one of my arms. When she did, I screamed and jerked it away. Her fingers were like iron brands. “Don’t!”
“I must see, Tara.”
I ground my teeth together and forced myself not to cry out as she cradled one of my forearms in her hand and studied it under the light. “This is very bad,” she finally pronounced. Her head rose toward Valdis and Erik. “Tara cannot leave.”
Erik turned around, wavering in my vision as he did. I blinked hard at the handsome corporal. “You’re cute,” I breathed. Some part of me recognized the randomness of this, and another part of me was charmed by my own non sequitur.
Erik took two steps toward me. “I thought you healed her, Seleema.”
“I only slowed the infection. But her soul is undergoing a transformation because of the shard inside her. Everything has been magnified, including the infection.”
