Kissed by Fire

by Shéa MacLeod

  “Dad’s throwing a wake back at his flat in Belgravia. I figured we could pop in for a while.” I couldn’t tell from her tone whether she had any interest in attending or not.

  I shook my head. “I really need to head back to the hotel, do some research. And I need to call Eddie.”

  Kabita gave me a look. “It’s four thirty in the morning back home. I don’t think he’d appreciate you calling that time of morning.”

  Good point. I hadn’t even thought about the eight hour time difference. I sighed. “Fine. I really do need to do some research, though, so I don’t want to stay too long.”

  “Don’t worry.” Kabita gave me one of her mysterious smiles. “You’ll be amazed at how much research you can get done at one of these things.”

  ***

  “Morgan, this is Sandra Fuentes, dragon artist.” Kabita grinned at me like a lunatic as she led me out onto the terrace. Which meant she was about to introduce me to some nutter and she secretly thought it was hilarious. Just great.

  “Dragon artist?”

  The woman in front of me was willow thin and ghostly pale. Even her gray eyes were pale to the point of nearly being colorless. The only bit of color was her hair. The straight, silky mass fell nearly to her waist and shone rich blue black in the sun.

  Her grip, as she shook my hand, was surprisingly strong. Her skin, as it touched mine, gave off a slight spark. That static electricity again. I was feeling way too much of it lately.

  “Morgan Bailey, lovely to meet you at last. My sister has told me so much about you.”

  I glanced from Sandra to Kabita. “Your sister?”

  “Sandra is Cordelia Nightwing’s twin sister,” Kabita told me with a grin.

  I must have looked absolutely gobsmacked because Sandra let out a belly laugh. “She didn’t tell you a thing about me, did she? Isn’t that just like Cordy? The woman always did live halfway in another world.” Her accent was definitely American, though she slipped a few Britishisms in here and there, much like I’d done when I lived here. Heck, I still did it. I got no end of grief about it from Inigo.

  “Um, no. No she didn’t. It’s nice to meet you Sandra.”

  “I see Adam. Listen, I’ll leave you two to chat. Enjoy.” Kabita headed off to catch up with her brother as Sandra waved me toward a couple of chairs overlooking the communal gardens.

  “So, what exactly is a dragon artist?” OK, stupid question, but it was the first thing that popped into my head. I never said I was a scintillating conversationalist.

  “I make dragons.” She graciously ignored my idiocy. “Surprising amount of money in dragons. People like them. Little clay ones are the most popular. Great for desks and such. Sell a ton of those. Though I make a pretty penny off big stone ones for the garden. Unbelievable how many people want a dragon in their back garden. Bizarre, if you ask me, but it takes all sorts, doesn’t it.”

  “So, you’re a sculptor.”

  She smiled. “Well, yes, you could say that. Sculptor, yes. I like that.”

  I blinked. Good lord, the woman was odd. “So, how long have you been sculpting dragons?” I took a sip of the cold lemonade I’d been handed when we arrived. It tasted more like Sprite, but that was British lemonade for you.

  “Oh, all my life,” she said with an airy wave of her hand. “I just found it came so naturally to me.”

  Huh. Right. Weirdo. Then again, I supposed that was like the pot calling the kettle black. “You didn’t go to art school or something? Maybe get a set of sculpting tools when you were a kid?”

  She looked surprised. “Why, no. Why would I use tools?”

  “Um, because that’s how you make a statue from clay or stone,” I said it slowly like I was talking to someone really thick.

  “Oh, goodness me,” she laughed. “I don’t need tools for that. Here, watch!” She leaned over and grabbed a smooth stone about the size of my palm from the planter next to us and placed it on the table, her palm lightly covering the stone. She closed her eyes and whispered something under her breath, then lifted her hand.

  “Oh, my gods.” Sitting on the table where the rock had been was a perfectly carved statuette of a dragon midflight. Every little detail was intricately etched right down to its slightly irregular scales and the veins running through its wings. I might have thought it was real if I didn’t know it was stone.

  “I know, isn’t it cool!” Her voice held more than just a hint of laughter. I think maybe she was laughing at me.

  Chapter Eight

  “I think we have much to talk about, don’t you?” Sandra leaned forward and placed her hand gently over mine. Her skin was warm, much warmer than it should have been. I wondered if she was running a temperature or something. Then there was that zing again. That almost electrical spark of energy.

  “Yeah. Yeah, we do.” I sounded just a little breathless. Heck, I felt a little breathless.

  She leaned back in her seat, the sun picking out the blue highlights in her hair. “Then why don’t you come visit me at my shop tomorrow? We can talk more freely then.” She fished around in her handbag and brought out a business card which was slightly worse for wear. “I’m over in Soho. Such a delightful place, don’t you think? Quite a lot of tourists, but the atmosphere makes up for it.”

  I’d been to Soho a few times back when I lived in London. She was right. It was a fantastic place full of life and vibrancy. It was also quite an eye opener. Soho was like a mini San Francisco with a side order of Amsterdam thrown in for good measure.

  I took the card she offered. “Tomorrow. Sure. I’ll be there.”

  “Very good.” She gathered her things and stood up. “Well, I’m off. It was lovely to meet you Morgan. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled.

  I couldn’t help but smile back even though I was feeling a bit Alice in Wonderland at the moment. A woman who could turn stone into dragons with the touch of a hand? Talk about one giant rabbit hole.

  I stared at her retreating form, bemused, as she disappeared behind the other mourners milling about on the terrace. Every time I thought I had things figured out, they got weirder.

  “Come on.” Kabita popped out of nowhere. “I’ve called a cab. I need a pub.”

  “I’ll second that.”

  ***

  The black cab dropped us off at a pub not far from our hotel. The Audley was a classic British pub just blocks from the American Embassy; it had a long polished wood bar, heavy oak beamed ceilings and antique plate glass windows. Kabita ordered drinks at the bar and we settled in at one of the little tables looking out onto Mount Street.

  It was a weekday and just after the lunch hour rush, so the pub was dim and quiet. Suited me fine.

  “So, what do you think of Sandra?” Kabita grinned.

  “She’s ... odd. Do you know what she can do with a rock?” I took a big gulp of pear cider.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I did a background on Cordelia when you first met her and discovered she had a sister here in London. The report said she had some magical talent. It did not say that she used that talent to make dragon statues.” She shook her head. “Can you imagine the guys at MI8 trying to figure out that one?”

  I laughed. “Bet that baffled them for a day or two. Why didn’t you mention Cordy had a sister?”

  She shrugged. “It didn’t seem important at the time. I assumed she would tell you. But when this whole dragon thing came up, I looked her up. I figured she might be able to help.”

  I hoped she was right about that. We could use all the help we could get. “Can I ask you something? It’s kind of personal.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Hello, Morgan. We’re friends. You can ask me anything.”

  “Why won’t MI8 let Witches join? I mean, I know you said your family had a lot to do with that. But why do they hate them so much? And why, in the twenty-first freaking century are they still such bigots? For goodness sake, MI8 is as much about protecting supernaturals from ext
inction as they are about protecting the human population. The Witch thing seems a little odd.”

  She sighed, fingers toying with the straw in her glass. “You know as well as I do that there’s still a lot of prejudice in the world. Particularly when it comes to bureaucracy, and Europe is a lot worse about that than the Americas.”

  “Yeah, OK. So?”

  “So, MI8 is convinced that witches, particularly natural Witches, are dangerous and prone to go over to ‘the dark side’ for lack of a better term. They’ve seen a lot of Witches go bad, wanting more and more power until they drown in it. It’s not the power itself that is bad any more than a gun is inherently bad. It’s what it does to the user. You know what they say about power.”

  Of course I did. Everyone did. “Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Trite but true.

  Kabita took a sip of her drink. “Exactly. Now imagine you not only are already naturally powerful, but have the ability to grow your power exponentially. By pulling power from the earth, the universe, or even other people you can actually have the power over life and death. So much power you’re drunk with it. Imagine what that could do to a person.”

  I felt the muscles in my shoulders go tight. I didn’t have to imagine. I knew. The Darkness shifted inside me, wanting out, and beside it I felt something new. Something hot and bright and hungry. My hands started doing that tingly thing again.

  I shoved the Darkness down along with whatever that new thing was, slamming the metaphorical lid on it as fast as I could. My hands clenched my glass until my knuckles turned white. No, I didn’t have to imagine at all.

  “It would take a very strong person to resist the pull of that power,” she continued. “And most of us just aren’t that strong. That sort of power exploits every fear, every weakness. After awhile it can’t be controlled anymore. Even a good witch goes bad eventually.” She took another sip of her drink before placing it carefully back on the scarred wood table. “At least, that’s what MI8 says.”

  “Is that what your father told them?”

  She nodded. “Yes. It’s what his family has believed for generations. I come from a long line of witch hunters.”

  I shook my head. “I still can’t get over that.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it? The very first Jones, Jonas, was an orphan, raised by the Church. Originally they raised him to be an ordinary hunter, but things changed by the time he came of age.” She took another long drink.

  Kabita, the Witch, descended from witch hunters. Irony wasn’t the half of it.

  “The Church was having problems maintaining their control over England at the time,” she continued. “All these pesky women trying to get the locals to think rather than blindly accept whatever the Church told them. So, instead of sending Jonas to fight demonspawn and vampires and whatnot, they sent him to hunt down and murder witches.”

  My eyes must have been as big as saucers. I took a big gulp of my drink. “Hooo, boy. That’s a bit out there. Can’t say I’m surprised, though.”

  “No,” she agreed. “The Church has a lot of sins to answer for.”

  “And Jonas? What happened to him?”

  “He was good at his job. Really good. The Church wanted him to marry, produce heirs to be raised as witch hunters like their sire. The Witches, on the other hand, wanted no such thing. They knew that Jonas’s ability to hunt was more than just a matter of good training. His ability was more in the realm of the supernatural.”

  “He was a natural born Hunter?” I asked.

  She nodded the affirmative. “Probably a Demon Hunter or something similar. It would explain why my brothers and I are so good at it, but the Church refused to acknowledge it. They retrained him to use his abilities against Witches. Something the Witches figured out. So, they sent one of their own, a young woman named Ysoria, to pose as a virtuous young woman of the Church and seduce him.”

  “I’m guessing it worked.” Damn. This was like something out of a really bad scifi movie.

  “Yeah,” she said. “It worked. She was supposed to kill any children they had so there would be no one for the church to train. There would be other people, but a true Hunter is rare and that’s what they were worried about. Especially since the church had its claws in Jonas.”

  “She obviously didn’t do it or you wouldn’t be sitting here today, Kabita Jones.”

  “She’d just had her third child when the witches discovered her deceit. They killed the older children, but she hid the baby. When Jonas discovered that she was a Witch and that her coven had murdered their children, he killed her.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know.” Her smile was a bit weak. “Jonas took the baby to the Church for the monks to raise and then disappeared. Some say he killed himself. Some that he became a monk. Nobody knows because he was never seen again.”

  “And he never told the Church his wife was a Witch?”

  “No. Can you imagine?”

  “So, how do you know all this?”

  “When the baby was grown, he became a witch hunter like his father. One day he was about to slaughter an old woman, but before he did she told him everything. She claimed she’d belonged to his mother’s coven. He wouldn’t have believed her except he had begun manifesting Witching abilities.

  “He killed the woman anyway and returned to the Church. He never told them of his heritage, but spent the rest of his life trying to purge himself of ‘sin’ as he called it.” Her voice dripped with disdain. “He trained his own children to hate and fear Witches and to ignore any abilities that might crop up. Each generation followed suit, denying their heritage and decrying it as evil.”

  I leaned back against the hard bench, shifting to get comfortable. Shit. That was fucked up. “Until you.”

  “Yes, until me. My mother’s people do not share European views on Witches. Quite the opposite, in fact. My mother refused to allow my father to repress me or my abilities. Instead, she had me properly trained.”

  “And so the witch hunter’s son has a Witch for a daughter.” I snorted, “Ah, the irony.”

  “Trust me, the irony is not lost on my father, he simply isn’t amused by it.”

  I downed the last of my drink. “Obviously the man needs to work on his sense of humor.”

  She laughed. “Obviously.”

  We were headed out the door when I stopped abruptly causing Kabita to crash into me. “What the ... ” she said, but I shushed her.

  “Look. It’s her! The woman from the airport.” I pointed down the street. A woman with spiky platinum blond hair was striding along the pavement, her black leather boots making a clicking sound that echoed off the old brick buildings on either side of the street.

  “Morgan,” Kabita started to say something, but I ignored her. I was going to catch that woman and make her tell me why she was following us.

  I took off down the street at a dead run. She must have heard me coming, but she didn’t turn, instead she kept walking, her hips doing that little sashay thing women do when they’re wearing heels.

  I grabbed her by the arm, spinning her around. She shrieked, pulling away from me. “Get away from me! Stop or I’ll scream!” She held her handbag in front of her like a shield.

  “Oh, gods, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.” I lifted my hands up and backed slowly away. It wasn’t her. This girl was much younger than the woman from the airport. She looked like she was still in her teens, and had a bright pink streak through her bangs. She was shorter, too, up close. She’d had her earbuds in which was why she hadn’t heard me. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  She scurried off, casting a frightened look behind her. Poor kid would probably be scarred for life. Crap.

  “Good one, Morgan.” I hadn’t heard Kabita come up behind me.

  “Hey, I thought it was her, OK? Sure looked like it from behind.”

  “You are taking this thing way too far. It’s like you’re obsessed with this woman from the airport. Between that and thi
s business with the vampire, I think you’re starting to imagine things.”

  Her attitude pissed me off, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could say. It wasn’t like I’d had much luck finding either of the people in question. Instead I turned and, without a word, headed for the hotel, Kabita trailing behind.

  ***

  By the time we got back to the hotel it was late enough to call Eddie. I used my mobile since Inigo, the techno-genius, had rigged them so they couldn’t be bugged or traced. Eddie’s phone rang twice before he snatched it up.

  “Hey, Eddie.”

  “Morgan Bailey! I knew it must be you. How is London? Have you seen the Queen? What about Prince William? Isn’t he a handsome one? I did so love his mother ... ”

  “Eddie!” I broke in. He’d go on like that for an hour if I’d let him. “No, no Queen, no Prince. I haven’t seen any famous people at all.”

  “Ah, well. One can dream. So I imagine you didn’t call to give me a status report on the Royals?”

  I laughed at that. “Uh, no. I rang because, well ... ” How to say it? I mean it sounded so crazy, even to me.

  “Morgan, what’s wrong?”

  So I told him everything. I told him about Alison and her murder, the blond woman from the airport and the cemetery. Then I told him about scenting the vampire, my murderer of sorts, and about following him. Finally I told him about the fire.

  He was quiet for a moment. “Morgan, this isn’t good. I mean, chasing that vampire around the city like a lunatic. And that woman.”

  “Eddie, I get it. I sound like a basket case. But I’m a little more concerned about this fire business. I mean, I set a freaking door on fire!”

  “Yes, yes, I know. It is worrying.”

  “Yeah, worrying would be the word for it. I’m spouting flames out my fingertips.” I started pacing back and forth across my room. There wasn’t much space, so it was a short walk.