The driver was a white man in his thirties, short but thick in the shoulders, with strong arms, strong legs, and a jutting jaw. His fists swung when he walked. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and when his jacket came open for a moment, she saw a shoulder rig holding a gun.
He helped Tina into the back. The doctor had Aaron in the wheelchair, unconscious and drooling. No shirt, but a bandage had been slapped on top of the brand in his chest. He and the driver rolled him into the front seat. No one walking past seemed to pay attention. It was early evening, the time of day when shadows rolled in and lights turned on, and all anyone wanted was to get home from work.
The driver stomped into the building, where Eddie and Lyssa waited, watching. Maybe they hadn’t been followed here, maybe it didn’t matter if they had, but it seemed to Lyssa that being seen out in the open with Jimmy and his mother might classify as bad luck for them. Just in case it mattered.
“Where do I dump the trash?” asked the driver.
“Someplace frightening,” replied Eddie.
The man thought for a moment. “Yeah. He’ll be terrified.”
And then he grinned, and Lyssa saw that all his teeth were capped in gold.
Lyssa hugged Jimmy and kissed Icky on the head.
“You be good,” she said. “Take care of your mom.”
“I will,” he replied. Eddie crouched and shook his hand, giving the boy a steady, warm look.
“Remember,” he said.
Jimmy swallowed hard and nodded.
Five minutes later, the boy and his mother were gone, along with the doctor. Eddie and Lyssa watched the street, the slow flow of traffic, women chatting on phones. It was all so normal. She didn’t know how the world could be so normal when everything she understood was just the opposite.
“Now what?” asked Eddie. “What are we doing?”
I’m falling in love with you. I’m getting my heart broken.
“I need to do some magic,” she told him.
“Magic?”
“Don’t get too excited,” she told him dryly, though on the inside the butterflies were already forming. “I made a mistake when I was with Mandy. I could have done something then that might have let me track back to where she had been taken. It’s been so long since I even thought of using . . . magic . . . that it didn’t cross my mind until it was too late.”
“Is there a risk to you?”
“Why?”
“Something in your eyes when you talk about it.” He reached for her left hand, stripping off her glove and tucking it into his back pocket. His skin was smooth and warm against hers, the heat between them instantaneous. “If there is, don’t do it.”
“I have to,” she said, and then, softly: “You’ll stay?”
Eddie leaned in and kissed her, with a sweet hunger that made her sag against him with a sigh. How many times had she been kissed in her life? So few, and she had never enjoyed the experiences. Felt so little, in fact, that she had decided that it was lies, lies, and more lies that a kiss could rock a person to the soul.
But she was rocked—and now she understood.
“Come on,” he said, against her mouth. “I still have the key to the apartment.”
They went back upstairs without seeing another person. The apartment felt hollow, ugly, without anyone else there. Furniture overturned, glass still on the floor. Eddie closed the curtains and turned on the lights, while Lyssa knelt, away from the wreckage.
She began stripping off her right-hand glove, but stopped before her deformity was completely exposed.
“I’ve never . . . done this,” she said, not quite looking at him. “Shown this part of me . . . on purpose.”
Eddie was silent a moment. “How long have you been . . . caught in a bad shift?”
“Ten years.”
“It must have been difficult on you.”
“Summer is a pain.”
“I can look away.”
Lyssa wondered how long it would take her to finally put on her big-girl panties and not care about this sort of thing.
“You know,” she said, “I once read a magazine article about loving your true self. But I don’t think looking like something out of a freak show was what they had in mind.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I’m on a twelve-step program to self-discovery. This is not easy.”
“Just rip off the glove, Lyssa.”
“I suppose it would be silly to pretend you hadn’t seen . . .”
“You,” he said, gently. “I’ve seen you.”
She sighed and stripped off her glove.
Lyssa expected him to stare, and he did. It was okay. He didn’t act weird about it, just curious. Maybe, after all these years, she didn’t find her own hand entirely freakish . . . but it was so far away from human, it created a disconnect even inside her mind.
Golden claws curved over the tips of her slender, scaled fingers: red scales, crimson as rubies, catching light as though burning from within.
“Boo,” said Lyssa.
Eddie tore his gaze from her hand. “Sorry.”
“At least you don’t need smelling salts.”
He smiled. “What next?”
Next I do something crazy.
Lyssa let out her breath—and before she could change her mind, raked a claw over her left palm, cutting it open.
Blood welled. Eddie muttered a curse and reached for her hand. She pulled back, but he still managed to grab her wrist.
Heat flared between them, wild and throbbing. He let go, but that warmth remained, sliding down her spine into her stomach: liquid sunlight or lava. A slow fire, burning.
Lyssa shuddered. “Why does that happen when we touch?”
“You can’t really control fire,” Eddie murmured. “All you can do is focus it. Give it a direction.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been around anyone who does this to me.” He cleared his throat. “Your hand.”
“It’s part of what I need to do.” She tore her gaze from him and, with a great deal of trepidation dragged a claw through the blood dripping down her palm. It had been more than ten years since she’d done anything like this, but she remembered exactly what to do as though it was only yesterday. That frightened her almost as much as casting a spell.
Her mother had always called her a natural.
Her skin tingled, like pins and needles. Lyssa hesitated for one last moment, asking herself what the hell she was doing . . . but again, before she could change her mind, she opened her mouth and placed a drop on her tongue.
It was like being swallowed up in acid. Not drugs, but real acid. Her entire body burned away—the first flash of pain so intense her voice broke before she could scream. All she managed was a rattling sound that made her feel as though she were choking on her own breath.
The tremors began—first in her shoulders, wracking the rest of her so violently her teeth clacked. A golden haze fell over her vision, and she squeezed shut her eyes—burying her head against her fists, rocking, rocking.
This isn’t even the real reason I hate magic, she thought, as the air warmed, and a wave of heat pulsed off her body. A whimper escaped her, long and pained, pulled from her with such force it scared her.
But with the pain, tremors, and the heat—came power.
It trickled into her veins, as though she was hooked to an IV of pure sunlight—dripping into her system with a slow burn that went deep as her soul. It felt like being alive on the best day of her life, only more, more alive, shining and brilliant with the world at her feet.
You could have the world, whispered the dragon. The world is in your blood.
No, thought Lyssa . . . but for a moment, she couldn’t remember why she was doing this. Only that it felt so good, so w
onderful, she couldn’t imagine living without it.
Suddenly, she could hear her own heartbeat, thundering, and the hard beat steadied her focus.
Where are you? Where the hell are you hiding, Georgene?
It was no good focusing on the Cruor Venator, so Lyssa concentrated on Mandy instead. She had touched the woman earlier—connected to her mind—and she focused on those memories, letting herself sink into flashes of Flo and obsidian, and screams.
Where? Lyssa asked again. Where were you?
As if in response, she glimpsed sunlight, blue sky . . . a river and the glitter of glass . . .
. . . flowing into a room made of stone, where women slumped in chains, faces sunken and slack.
Horrific. Stunning. Part of Lyssa felt removed, as though she were watching some movie . . . but another part of her was there, viscerally, feeling every moment as if it were her flesh, her wrists heavy with bands of iron.
The women had been drugged. Lyssa saw Flo amongst them, then Mandy—who was tied to a stone slab. A beautiful black-haired woman stood beside her, dressed in stylish jeans and nothing else. The obsidian blade in her hand sliced through Mandy’s chest.
A woman with a muscular, slithering voice said, “Little lives, little pleasures. You must learn not to be choosy, Betty. When the world as we know it ends, you will then be forced to take what is at hand.”
Lyssa knew that voice—and it cut her cold, straight into the heart. She choked, trying to claw free of that suffocating presence, feeling as though she were trapped in a garbage bag that was being sucked down her throat.
Until, suddenly, she burst free—able to breathe—and found herself elsewhere, in another world. In a different time.
She sat in snow, and it was night. The moon hung bright in the sky. A thick forest surrounded her.
A girl who wore her face ran between the trees.
Lyssa saw her, and a split second later was running at her side, behind her, all around her—flying over the snow like a ghost, her heart pounding in her chest. She could see the girl’s tears, glittering on her cheeks like diamonds.
Behind her there was no forest, only darkness.
She smelled blood.
You run, whispered a sibilant voice. But you do not run from those who would harm you.
You run from yourself.
The forest disappeared, and so did the girl. Lyssa floated, struck with terror as she scrabbled at the darkness . . .
. . . clawing at the floor, in a cold apartment where broken glass glittered on the floor like small stars.
She panted, blinking hard and shielding her eyes from the dim light flooding the room from the window. A low voice said her name, but it barely registered until she heard it again, louder, and felt a tug.
“Eddie,” Lyssa croaked, and found him holding both her hands tight within his own. She felt very far away as she looked at his skin against her scales, his fingers wrapped around her fingers, claws gleaming near his nails. Human, alien . . . but for a moment, their hands together looked natural, right. And it felt like that, too.
“Lyssa,” he said, and just like that, everything crashed. Her body ached, and her muscles were almost too weak to hold her upright.
But that was nothing compared to the hole in her heart, and the emptiness. It was not just the vision she’d had that made her feel so drained and gray. That was bad enough, on its own.
This other sensation of barrenness was the product of magic itself. A placeholder for that sunlit rush of power that had pumped through her for a glorious few seconds. It was like being a bird and having her wings chopped off in the middle of flight, or losing her legs when the only way to survive was to keep running. She had experienced something essential and wonderful, and freeing—and now it was gone, in the most absolute way possible.
This was the reason she hated magic. This was the reason she never touched it.
Because it would be too easy to never stop. Too easy to do terrible things in order to keep the power burning—and never suffer this crushing loss.
Lyssa choked down a sob. Eddie slid his hands—awkward and careful—over her back. Humiliation wracked her, but she didn’t pull away. Just leaned in even closer, her face buried against his chest.
“Shhh,” he murmured, and rested his hand against her neck—warming her cold muscles and skin. “I’ve got you.”
She could barely look at him. “Thank you.”
“What happened?”
“Power is a drug,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “That’s what happened.”
“You’re not crying because of power.”
A tense, bitter smile touched her mouth. “No.”
Eddie wiped away her tears and kissed her cheek. A small, lingering gesture that was sweet and gentle.
“What do you need?” he whispered, and there was such compassion in that one question.
I need a home, she wanted to tell him. I need to know that I don’t have to run anymore.
I need you. Whoever you are, I need you.
You’re in my blood.
“Just be here,” she told him.
“I am,” he said. “I’m here.”
Lyssa shivered, hunching deep inside the charred leather jacket. “I had a . . . vision. I didn’t see much that would help us find anyone, but there was a room. Women there, drugged and bound. What I was seeing was in the past. It was awful.”
Eddie was quiet a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“It had to be done.”
“You look so pale,” he said, then, after a moment’s hesitation: “This may not be the best timing, given what you just saw . . . but when was the last time you ate?”
“I . . .” Lyssa hesitated. “I don’t know.”
He grimaced and gently untangled himself from her. “Wait here.”
She sat back on the floor, watching him walk to the kitchen. The apartment felt too quiet and lonely without him near, and even the sounds of his rummaging through the refrigerator sounded muted.
Time helped, though. She was able push away the bad memories, focusing instead on thoughts of her paintings, sunlight, Jimmy.
Eddie.
He returned less than a minute later with a jug of milk, an aluminum tray of chocolate cupcakes, and some paper cups.
“I hope you like sugar,” Eddie said. “This is all I found that’s easy.”
“Rawr,” she replied, and he laughed softly.
They poured the milk and sat on the floor, side by side, making a mess of the cupcakes and licking frosting off their fingers. She hadn’t done anything in years that could remotely be called companionable, but this . . . felt good. The silence between them as they ate was comfortable and safe—exactly what she needed.
Lyssa let herself imagine doing this over other meals, or—hell—a weekend on the couch, in front of a television. Like normal people lived.
And she could totally see it. It didn’t make her want to run. Just the opposite.
“This reminds me of when I was little,” she found herself telling him; and then, with that much already said, she added, “My dad was the cook in the family, but my mom could handle box mixes. So we always kept a lot around, just in case.”
“Sounds like my mom.” Eddie smiled, but his gaze was distant. “We had this thing. Every Friday and Saturday, we’d choose a movie. My sister would get one day, I would have the other. And my mom would bake us something from a box.” He glanced at her, and his smile deepened. “It was a big deal.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I loved it . . . but in hindsight, I wish I had loved it a little more often.”
He looked down. “I know what you mean.”
His sudden vulnerability called to her as strongly as the need to breathe. Lyssa reached for him with her left hand, unable to help herself.
Eddie closed his eye
s as her fingers touched his throat, sliding up against the strong lines of his jaw. Hot skin. Hot as fire. Her right remained curled in a fist against her stomach.
She brushed some frosting from the corner of his mouth.
“Got it,” she whispered.
“Maybe you missed a spot,” he replied, softly.
Lyssa scooted closer, rising to her knees, and studied the hard lines of his face, the slight curl of his dark hair over his forehead. His eyes opened as she stared at him—and as always, she found herself caught in the intensity of his gaze, which was becoming as familiar as her own.
“I dreamed you,” she told him, unable to stop herself. “For a month, I’ve dreamed of fire. And inside the fire there was always a man. I could never see any part of him clearly, except his eyes. Your eyes.”
Eddie made a soft sound. “That was why you seemed to recognize me.”
“It shocked me,” she told him. “And it was frightening.”
“Are you frightened now?”
Lyssa shook her head. “No.”
He slid his arm around her waist, pulling her tight against him in one smooth, hard movement. Instead of feeling as though she was going to topple over, his strength filled her, warm and light, and the emptiness inside her chest no longer felt so vast and hollow.
Eddie bent his head, only a breath from kissing her.
“Good,” he murmured, and closed the distance, drawing her lips between his. She sighed against his mouth, and his hands tightened with a crushing strength that felt as good and safe as his kiss.
“Closer,” she breathed, and he laughed softly, curling his broad, hard frame around her body, tangling his fingers in her hair while his other arm squeezed them together in a devastating embrace that still was not near enough for what she needed.
In your skin. In you, thought Lyssa, reaching beneath his shirt to slide her hand up the lean, straining muscles of his back. Eddie grunted and kissed her harder. Fire licked the tips of her fingers—real flames, skimming his skin and hers. She didn’t need to see the fire to know they were burning. It felt as though she held her hand against the surface of a swift-moving river of lava, molten and throbbing.
Eddie broke off their kiss, both of them breathing so hard it sounded as though they were in pain.
Within the Flames Page 16
