Within the Flames

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Eddie’s mouth hardened, and in one long stride he stood inside her personal space. Suddenly, he seemed so much larger than her—strong and big, and powerful—bristling with a heat that seemed to shimmer over his body. It took all of Lyssa’s strength not to retreat.

  “Back off,” she snapped.

  His eyes were so dark. “No.”

  No. It was impossible that one word should be laced with so much determination.

  “I will kick your ass to Sunday,” she told him.

  He leaned in even more. “You try. Beat me black-and-blue, if that makes you feel better. I’m not going anywhere. I was sent to find you. To protect you. And you better believe I will do that. You run, and I will find you. Again, and again, and again.”

  She believed him. And it enraged her.

  Ten years on her own, ten years alone, and while some of that time had been shit, she’d made it—and hammered out a life with her own two hands, a life that was quick and dirty, but hers.

  And now this man, a stranger, was telling her that he was in her life?

  And Long Nu was involved?

  No, she thought. No way. Not in a million years was Lyssa going to let that stand. It would be like spitting on her father’s memory. All the humiliations, his isolation, his sacrifice.

  Because Long Nu had thrown them to the wolves.

  “Get away from me,” she growled.

  “No,” he said again, and there was more quiet power in that one word than in any other she’d ever heard.

  She backed away. Eddie followed. She turned, and he stayed right on her heels, terrible heat flowing down her back.

  “Lyssa,” he said, reaching for her.

  She whirled, lashing out with her first: a solid right hook that snapped toward his face. Fast, driven by arm muscles deformed with power.

  Eddie blocked her. Barely. Her fist clipped his ear, but he twisted, and clamped his hand around her wrist. She grabbed his throat, but not before his hand slid forward, beneath her sleeve—and touched her bare, reptilian, skin.

  The contact burned. Burned to the bone.

  Lyssa flinched. So did he. A roaring sound filled her ears, and her vision brightened in a haze of golden light. She tried to let go, but her hand around his throat would not loosen, no matter how hard she tried. The world blurred away in the light until all she could see was Eddie’s eyes.

  He was looking at her . . . not with fear . . . but that quiet, deadly compassion.

  I understand, she heard him say inside her mind. I’m sorry.

  Smoke rose from beneath her hand.

  Everything exploded.

  Chapter Six

  Eddie knew it was a mistake the moment he touched Lyssa.

  Because he was irritated when he caught her wrist—and it didn’t matter that she had tried to punch him. He had laid a hand on her, with frustration, annoyance—and it was too close to anger for comfort.

  Too close to his worst nightmare.

  So Eddie didn’t fight when she grabbed his throat. He went still, staring into her glowing golden eyes, taking in her anger and knowing it was fear. The same fear he had felt for years on the street: cornered, forced to look strangers in the eyes and hope it would be okay, without knowing whether or not it would be.

  I understand, he wanted to tell her. I’m sorry.

  A thought that was followed by fire.

  When he could see again, when the world stopped spinning, and the heat inside him was nothing but a matchstick, burning—he blinked away tears and found there was nothing left but smoke clouding the air.

  Alarms wailed, sounding tinny in his ears. His clothes were charred, his jeans on fire. Pavement, cracked and blackened. He smelled gasoline and burning metal, and felt terrible heat press against his back.

  Cars had exploded, parked at the side of the street. The skeletons of each vehicle burned, pouring off a poisonous cloud of smoke that was thick and gruesome. Eddie didn’t see anyone inside, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.

  He rolled over. Nothing but broken glass in the office building beside them. Windows had blown in. He heard screams and moans. How many? How many injured? Had anyone died?

  Lyssa.

  Eddie twisted and found her close, curled in a ball. Her green sweater had been reduced to rags that sparked and glimmered. She was on fire.

  Choking, eyes stinging, he crawled to her and beat out the fire with his bare hands. Not once did she move. Grabbing her shoulder, checking her blackened face and arm, he was relieved to find the dark spots on her skin were nothing but soot. The fire had not touched her. Relief made him tremble.

  She was like him. Immune.

  “Miss,” he rasped. “Lyssa.”

  Still no response. With a gentle push, he rolled her over—and stared.

  Her scarf was in tatters, her sleeve mostly gone. Much of her glove had burned away, revealing her neck, right shoulder—her arm, her hand.

  Gleaming red scales had replaced human flesh. Large scales, like a snake’s, edged in gold. It was like looking at armor made of rubies and precious metal, glinting in the smoke-shrouded light as though lit from within. Beneath that reptilian skin were contorted, sinewy muscles. Golden claws tipped her slender, triple-jointed fingers.

  Eddie saw it all too quickly. No time to take it in.

  He glimpsed movement on the other side of the dark cloud—people rushing down the sidewalk, pouring from the few office buildings that lined the street. Police would be coming soon, ambulances, fire trucks. Cameras.

  Get out of here. Right now.

  His ears still rang. Eddie fell the first time he tried to stand, and looked around, wildly, for a way out. Through the smoke, across the street, he glimpsed a parked car: an older model Camry.

  Lyssa’s backpack was a wreck, but the strap was still intact. He slung her belongings over his shoulder, then scooped her into his arms. He held her carefully, her inhuman shoulder tucked against his chest. Hidden, as best he could. She did not make a sound.

  Hunched over, hurting and breathless, he staggered between the burning wrecks. He felt movement from the corner of his eye, heard shouts and more screams as he carried Lyssa across the street. He set her on the sidewalk and pulled a multipurpose folding knife from his charred jacket. One of the tools was a window punch, which he set against the lower corner of the car window. He tapped, hard, and the glass crumpled with a crackling sound. Tapping again, he made a hole large enough for his arm. He reached in and unlocked the door.

  Lyssa was so quiet and still. Gritting his teeth, trying to stay calm, Eddie pulled and pushed, and shoved her into the cluttered backseat. Newspapers fell to the floor, along with limp gym clothes and empty cans of soda. He tossed in the backpack after her.

  Before he jumped into the driver’s seat, he looked around one more time—and found that they were not alone.

  Two women stood close. The one on the left was tall, African-American, wearing a cropped red motorcycle jacket and a skintight black bodysuit with tall, heeled boots. Her striking face was dominated by eyes highlighted in purple shadow and black liner.

  The other woman was shorter, but no less beautiful: long black hair, pale skin, crystalline blue eyes. Dressed in jeans and a white blouse partially obscured by a heavy necklace strung with chunks of onyx.

  They stared at him. Him, and not the blast.

  Might as well have been no fire, no screams, no billowing smoke and burning cars . . . none of that touched them. They stood eerily still, still as stone, still as cats waiting to pounce—their eyes narrow and watchful, their mouths tilted into faint, sly smiles.

  And Eddie realized, in one split second, that he was in deep trouble.

  Few people scared him anymore. Most inspired caution, yes—but not fear. It wasn’t arrogance that made him feel that way. Just age and fire, and experience. Most
of the time, he was more scared of himself.

  Something about these women terrified him.

  It was hard, immediate: a primal fear at the back of his primitive brain, like hearing a scream in a pitch-black forest, or the touch of bone fingers in the night.

  When he looked at them, he thought death. Or something worse. And for those brief seconds that he stared into their eyes, the fear made him feel like a kid again, faced with all his worst nightmares: powerlessness, despair, guilt, desperation.

  Eddie averted his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. It felt like a matter of survival, not looking at them.

  “What a puppy,” said the black woman. “Such a handsome boy.”

  “Adorable,” added the other woman. “I want to eat him up.”

  Their soft laughter chilled him. Because he thought, yes, they really would eat him up. And then bury his bones in a ditch.

  He shivered. “Who are you?”

  “It speaks! How unusual,” said the black woman, swaying close. “I am Nikola. This is Betty. And you have something we want.”

  “Besides your virtue,” said the other woman, showing her white teeth. “And here we thought we’d actually have to work to snare a dragon. It turns out we just have to follow her until she does something stupid.”

  The meaning of their words was almost lost to him. What mattered was the sound of their voices, which crushed him smaller and harder, like he was nothing but a walnut or little stone.

  Each word, a fist. Each word, an iron collar tightening around his soul.

  Nikola moved even closer. It was all he could do not to fall on his knees and whimper. Sweat trickled down his chest. His fear was so nauseating, he could barely think.

  “Mmm,” she murmured, her breath hot against his cheek. “You smell . . . different.”

  “Like fire,” Betty added, with a note of surprise. “Like . . . a dragon.”

  I’m human, he wanted to tell them.

  “It must be her scent,” said Nikola, suddenly sounding bored. “Open the car door, puppy. Pick up the little lizard and come with us.”

  She spoke as though she expected him to obey, without question. Part of him wanted to. He was that scared of them.

  But not scared enough to forget who he was or what he had come to do.

  I’m going to protect you, he thought, toward Lyssa. I’m going to take care of you.

  And just thinking that . . . changed everything.

  Another chill raced through him, but this felt like a splash of cold water: clean and bracing. Suddenly, he could breathe again, and his spine straightened, and the nausea faded away.

  Eddie raised his head, and looked the two women dead in the eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  Betty’s right eye twitched. “Excuse me?”

  Nikola frowned. “Get the bitch out of the car and come with us, you little fuck.”

  “Ma’am,” he replied, and slipped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door and locking it. He locked Lyssa’s door, too, then pried off the panel beneath the steering wheel. In ten seconds he had the engine roaring. Just like old times.

  The women stood outside the car, staring at him with stunned expressions.

  Eddie accelerated into the road, catching the light just as it turned yellow. He crossed Lexington, rolling down his window so that people wouldn’t notice the broken glass. By the time he turned left on Third, the trembling had begun, deep quakes that made him clench his jaw so his teeth wouldn’t chatter. He felt so cold.

  I just met the Cruor Venator, he thought, shakily.

  And if it wasn’t them, and just some random witches . . . then God, yes, he finally understood what Lannes was warning him about.

  Their presence alone had filled him with crippling, nauseating fear . . . though now, with some distance, he couldn’t understand why.

  Is that what a spell feels like? Or was it just them? And why did they let me leave?

  Because he had surprised them, he realized.

  Those women were not used to being defied. If they could instill that much fear in anyone they chose, then he understood why.

  No way in hell could they be allowed to get close to Lyssa.

  Eddie glanced into the backseat and found her eyelids twitching. Even unconscious, she grimaced as though in pain. He wondered if that was what he looked like after losing control of his fire.

  Lyssa had caused the explosion. It had to be her. He had felt none of his own triggers, and the heat that had rolled off her skin in the seconds prior to the blast had been immense. Just standing next to her would have been enough to put a normal person in the hospital for burns.

  He recalled Lyssa’s hand on his throat, her glowing eyes, the scent of smoke . . .

  Someone got injured today. No way there weren’t injuries.

  Maybe she won’t care.

  He chanced another look, this time at her exposed arm. Her hand, covered in red scales, rested on her stomach. Claws glinted, razor-sharp.

  Seeing her caught in a partial shift was disconcerting. As though it should have been a makeup job, something out of a Hollywood creature shop. It also limited his options of where to take her.

  You only have one choice.

  But it would be bringing more trouble on their doorstep.

  He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. The screen was cracked, but he held his breath, and it powered on.

  Lannes answered on the second ring.

  “Trouble,” Eddie said.

  Eddie parked the car on Fifty-eighth, in front of a steakhouse behind a white delivery truck. He wiped everything down with his sleeve. The hunt would have already begun for the cause of the explosion. Terrorists might be blamed. Homeland Security would get involved.

  He called Lannes again and gave him the address.

  “It’s on the news,” said the gargoyle. “Just now.”

  Eddie stopped breathing. “Fatalities?”

  “Nothing yet, but the media is going nuts. Were there security cameras in that area?”

  “I don’t know. There was no way to stop it, Lannes.”

  “I thought . . .” He paused, his silence heavy and thoughtful. “I know you’ve been ill. It couldn’t be helped.”

  Eddie stilled. Lannes thought he was the one who had caused the explosion?

  Of course he does. I’m the one who’s been out of control.

  It hurt his pride and embarrassed him. He almost corrected his friend, but thought of Lyssa . . . and kept his mouth shut.

  “We’ll see you soon,” Eddie said, and hung up before Lannes could say anything else.

  Behind him, he heard a soft whimper.

  Lyssa was still unconscious, but her face contorted with pain, her breathing shallow and fast. She clawed fitfully at her scaled throat. Nightmare, perhaps. Eddie hesitated, unsure whether to wake her.

  Until a wave of heat blasted his face. Smoke rose from the charred edges of her sweater, followed by sparks. Another fire, brewing.

  He twisted fully around, reaching for her hand. “Lyssa.”

  She did not wake. But the pain in her face softened. Her breathing slowed. Eddie stroked the back of her hand and watched the sparks fade, along with the smoke and heat. He did not breathe any easier, though.

  Her skin was so soft. Eddie rested his chin on the car seat, content to take a moment and just . . . stare. Soot didn’t hide her beauty, which managed to be delicate and fierce—vulnerable—and totally, utterly, striking.

  She can’t be all those things, his sister would have said. She’s a girl, not a laundry list.

  Eddie smiled to himself. Fine. If he had to choose one word . . .

  “Fierce,” he whispered. Fierce, stubborn . . . but not hard. Not yet.

  Their conversation before the blast had told him more about her
than perhaps she realized. Her words were sharp, cynical . . . but her eyes had been soft with uncertainty and buried hunger.

  Something he understood all too well.

  If you get used to having the rug pulled out from under you—or not having any rug at all—you stop trusting anything that sounds like good news.

  But that doesn’t mean you stop wanting to trust.

  Once again, Eddie tried to imagine her life. She had dropped off the radar after the deaths of her parents. No other family. No apparent friends—except one dead shape-shifter—and maybe a little boy. Had she been alone all this time? Homeless?

  If she had lived on the streets, she seemed to be doing better now. Her clothes had been worn, but clean—and even now he saw the edge of a blackened laptop poking through a charred hole in her backpack.

  Everything about her was a mystery.

  Eddie let go of her hand as she stirred. Not yet awake but settling deeper into the backseat. The ragged remains of her sweater slipped, revealing the curve of her pale breast. More breast than she would probably be comfortable with him seeing—though he gave himself a few moments to appreciate the sight.

  His jacket was charred but mostly intact. He stripped it off, then squeezed between the seats to lay it over her, tucking in the sides as best he could. Eddie wanted, very badly, to wipe the soot from her cheek. He began to. Just one little touch.

  Her eyes opened. Golden, hot, staring. And glowing.

  His breath caught in his throat, his hand frozen near her cheek. Unable to look away as her eyes shifted from human to . . . something else. Pupils narrowed into slits, and tiny hints of crimson appeared around the rims of her iris—as well as her lower eyelids.

  Dragon eyes.

  Lyssa did not move, but her golden gaze searched his face with a thoroughness that was alien and cold—and utterly unlike the woman he had faced before the explosion.

  “You,” she whispered. “You, with fire in your blood.”

  Her voice was dry and sibilant. Eddie stared. “Lyssa?”

  “Lyssa,” she murmured, faintly mocking. “Lyssa sleeps. I am her dragon.”