Within the Flames

by Marjorie M. Liu

  But he was also old enough for heartbreak. Old enough to start living with regret. Making a kid feel helpless was another kind of crime.

  “Lyssa’s word is final,” he said. “You know that, right?”

  The boy nodded. Eddie walked back inside the workers’ station for his backpack. All he needed was his wallet and cell phone.

  “Come on,” he told Jimmy. “Let’s go find her.”

  They walked fast across the uneven ground, flashlight beam swinging wildly across the shadows. Squeaks echoed off the walls, and the air smelled like rotting garbage, accompanied by the occasional whiff of feces.

  Jimmy gave Eddie a sidelong look. “Are you Lyssa’s boyfriend?”

  His heart squeezed. “I hope so.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Do I have to go through you first?”

  “Maybe. I like her.”

  Eddie smiled to himself. “I’ll arm wrestle you for her heart.”

  “You’re bigger. That’s cheating.”

  “Can you blame me?” He heard voices ahead of them, and saw the reflected flicker of fire against the tunnel walls. “Wait.”

  “It’s okay. I know them.” Jimmy began to lurch ahead, but Eddie grabbed the back of the boy’s sweatshirt.

  “Wait,” he said again, firmly. “Give me the flashlight, and stay back.”

  The boy’s scowl wasn’t quite lost in the beam’s glow, but he lingered in the shadows as Eddie strode across the rough gravel. He listened for Lyssa’s voice, but all he heard were men laughing coarsely, and the hum of a radio.

  “Jimmy,” he said, over his shoulder. “What did that note say? The one you gave her?”

  The boy hesitated. “No message. Just a piece of fur stapled to the paper.”

  “Dammit,” Eddie muttered, and began running—right into a tent city that reminded him of some apocalyptic way station for humanity. When and if the end of the world came, this would be what it looked like: homes made of cardboard and trash, and broken furniture that held up nothing but air. Fires burned in barrels, and a few men were huddled around them.

  They stared at Eddie with surprise and wariness as he approached, clutching that blanket around his waist.

  “Lyssa,” he said sharply. “Did she pass through here?”

  A tall black man blinked heavily at Eddie. “Like a bat out of hell. She mentioned a naked man might come this way. Left money for clothes, but there’s not much to give you.”

  Eddie gritted his teeth. “I’d appreciate anything you can spare, sir. I can pay, as well.”

  “Hmm,” he said, just as another old man saw Jimmy and bared his teeth in a brutal hiss that sounded like the death throes of a decrepit snake.

  “Fucking little thieves,” he muttered, coughing on a snarl. “I’m ready for you and that dog.”

  The boy sputtered. Eddie stepped in front of him. “You touch this kid, and I’ll break your arms off.”

  “Hey, now,” said the black man, holding up his hands. “No need for bad feelings. Mack, maybe you should go sit down. Take a load off your bad back.”

  The old man, whose skin was the color of snow and ash, made a wet grunting noise and gave them all a dirty look. He didn’t leave the circle of heat but looked down at the flames with a stubborn jut of his chin.

  Two minutes later, Eddie was forty dollars poorer, and dressed in jeans that were loose in the ass and short in the leg. His red sweatshirt smelled like mildew and concrete and made his skin itch.

  “Lyssa said to tell you not to follow,” said the black man, rubbing his knee with a wince. “But that she knew you would, and that she was sorry for trying to get a head start.”

  “I bet,” Eddie replied.

  “Women,” he added. “They’re killers.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Handcuffs were cold, even on dragon skin.

  Lyssa’s glove was still in place, but the soft portion covering her wrist had ridden down just enough for the metal to rub against her scales. She ignored the sensation, watching red taillights and the two police officers riding up front, who did not speak to her or talk with each other.

  It was still night, which surprised her. Time never meant much underground, but this day had been one hammerblow after another.

  Life hates the complacent, her mother had told her. Almost as much as the complacent hate living.

  Are you talking about me? Lyssa’s father had asked, grabbing his wife around the waist. If I’d been complacent, I’d never have caught you, darlin’.

  Her mother had a beautiful laugh. Sometimes it was hard to remember what it sounded like.

  You knew this would happen, thought Lyssa, wishing her mother were here. You knew you weren’t the last of your kind.

  You knew someone would come for you, one day.

  And if not you, then me.

  Lyssa wore Eddie’s jacket, and it felt like a suit of armor. His warm, smoky scent still clung to it—and her—and she breathed deep as she listened to the radio crackle, and the squeak of the vinyl beneath her, and the jangle of handcuffs.

  Eddie, she thought. Eddie, don’t look for me. Jimmy, don’t tell him anything.

  Stay away. Please, stay away.

  The two police officers had done their best not to show her their faces. Only during that initial approach on the sidewalk had she gotten a good look at them. The driver was middle-aged, white, with a downturned mouth and milky blue eyes. His partner was Latino, young and handsome, and six inches shorter than Lyssa. He kept giving the other man nervous looks.

  Both had been waiting outside the neighborhood Laundromat, a nondescript hole-in-the-wall between an Italian deli and a convenience store that sold more comic books and cigarettes than milk and bread.

  The building that housed the laundry—and, to some degree, the deli and convenience store—had been built over the second entrance to the abandoned subway tunnel. Or rather, there was a door in the laundry’s basement, which descended into a mechanical room that held another door that opened into a corridor filled with pipes—leading to yet another hall that had a metal grille in the floor—which, when lifted, revealed a ladder that descended into a hand-dug corridor that spilled out into the subway tunnel.

  One had to be very brave or very stupid—and sometimes lucky—to find certain secret places. It also helped that the owner of the Laundromat was sympathetic to folks who lived underground. Mostly because they washed all their clothes at his place.

  Lyssa had not felt brave, stupid, or lucky when the cops pointed guns at her. She felt no surprise, either, not even when a tall, African-American woman in a red jacket glided from the shadows.

  Nikola.

  The men handcuffed Lyssa while she watched, and their scents washed over her in a wave of body odor and sweat, and nauseating fear.

  No rights read. But why would they? Rights didn’t exist. Not here, not now.

  All that mattered was power.

  “Lyssa Andreanos,” said Nikola, and the police officers flinched at the sound of her voice.

  “That’s me,” she said, staring the woman in the eyes. “Sorry about Betty.”

  Nikola punched her in the stomach, then grabbed her hair, yanking back her head.

  “You will be sorry,” she whispered, then frowned when Lyssa’s only response was a quiet laugh.

  Nikola drove a red Corvette. During the ride over the Hudson, she pulled alongside the police sedan and looked into the backseat at Lyssa—who stared back, straight into her eyes, with a smile.

  You can’t make me afraid of you, she thought. Not unless I choose to be afraid.

  The witch’s frown deepened, and she gunned her Corvette ahead of them. Lyssa kept smiling but for a different reason.

  Five minutes after crossing the bridge that spanned the Hudson, the police took an exit off the freew
ay and cruised down a series of twisting streets that carried them into a quiet riverside neighborhood filled with expensive homes nestled in expensive gardens, where a person could smell the money in the breeze, and the breeze smelled good.

  At the end of the street, the police pulled into a long, curving driveway that wound up an increasingly steep hill. Delicate lights illuminated the way. Lyssa didn’t see guards or security cameras, but it was night, and there were a lot of trees. Anything could be out there.

  The house was too big to take in at one glance. It seemed to sprawl over the hill in climbing layers of glass and stone, and the light from within shone in the night with a warmth that would have been, in another life, comforting.

  The Corvette was parked in the driveway. Nikola leaned on the hood and watched, unmoving, as the police helped Lyssa from the back of the sedan. The men did not speak as they unlocked her handcuffs. Both kept their gazes down, and oozed sweat.

  Nikola sauntered close. The men trembled, cowering like abused dogs. Lyssa knew they had no control over their reactions. It would have hit them like a bomb in their heart. If the witch asked them to, they would crawl on their bellies into the river and never come out.

  Nikola, however, did not look at them. Her focus remained on Lyssa.

  She stared back, her gaze flat and calm, and unflinching. It wasn’t difficult. Rage might have had something to do with it. Maybe she should have snapped before this, but discovering that Jimmy and his mother had been kidnapped, his body cut, blood consumed . . . that he could have been subjected to emotional torture . . . put her on a whole new level that transcended anything she had felt since her parents’ murder.

  And then, there was that scrap of fur stapled to the note in her pocket. Another reminder of what Estefan had suffered—as if she hadn’t already seen enough.

  “You’re not afraid,” Nikola said to her, trailing an elegant hand over the younger police officer’s shoulders. He squeezed shut his eyes, shaking violently as her fingers stroked his hair.

  Lyssa gritted her teeth because she was very afraid and determined not to show it. “Why would I be?”

  Nikola frowned. “Just like the young man who saved you from the fire. I don’t like mysteries.”

  She pushed the police officer away from her, and he stumbled against the car, one hand on his weapon, the other clutching his chest as he panted for air. Lyssa felt the break in the air around them, a release of tension—the witch pulling back her influence.

  The difference in the men was immediate—as if the hands squeezing them to death relaxed enough to let them breathe.

  “You can go,” Nikola said to the officers. “You should go. Now.”

  No hesitation. No questions. Lyssa had not heard those men make a single sound the entire time she’d been in their presence, and nothing changed when they left.

  Leaving her alone with Nikola.

  The night was very quiet. Lyssa felt reminded of another evening, ten years in the past, when she had stood bound and captured. The memory made her heart quicken, but she thought of Jimmy and his mother. Estefan.

  Eddie.

  She was not bait this time. She was not a kid.

  “You’re wasting time,” she said. “I want to see Georgene.”

  A muscle twitched in Nikola’s right cheek, and deep in her eyes there was a glint of unease. Defiance—and simple knowledge—unsettled her. Made her uncertain how to proceed. This woman—likely any who served the Cruor Venator—had relied on power too long and forgotten what it was to be vulnerable. If she had ever known.

  Nikola reached inside her jacket and pulled free an obsidian blade. “How do you know the Cruor Venator’s name?”

  “Easy,” she replied, ignoring the weapon. “We’re cousins.”

  The witch blinked. It would have made Lyssa smile, under different circumstances.

  Or maybe not. It wasn’t really that funny. Over the years, when she’d let herself think too much about the truth, it all seemed rather disgusting.

  “She didn’t tell you much of anything, did she?” Lyssa said. “How many surprises can you handle?”

  Nikola’s face hardened. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Or what? You’ll kill me? You’ll scare me to death?” Her stiff lips curved into a cold smile. “You have no power over me. Betty found that out the hard way.”

  The witch edged forward. “Are you stupid?”

  “Are you? Who do you think you are?” asked Lyssa, feeling the night air warm around her body. “What has Georgene told you? That you’re a Cruor Venator, like her? That you can be like her if you continue to serve her?”

  Nikola said nothing, but she didn’t have to. Lyssa felt a terrible sense of déjà vu, as though she was living inside her mother’s skin—ten years in the past. Her words, so similar to her mother’s as she had stood in the snow and confronted a woman just like Nikola.

  “You’re nothing,” she whispered to the witch. “Do you think Georgene would keep you so close if you had the ability to kill her?”

  Nikola tensed. Lyssa said, “Go on. Try and take her life. See the truth for yourself.”

  “You’re only a dragon,” she said, but the obsidian blade wavered. “You’re just a shape-shifter. You cannot be her cousin.”

  “But if I am?” Lyssa stepped toward her, and Nikola swayed. “You know what that makes me.”

  Conflict filled her eyes. “No. We watched you for weeks. You live in a hole. You have nothing. If you possessed that power, you would never deny it. No one would.”

  Lyssa barely heard her. Her blood was tingling.

  Your mate is close, whispered the dragon. He is terrified for you.

  She tried to bury her unease. How do you know what he’s feeling?

  How do you not?

  The idea of Eddie being here, witness to what she was, what she was capable of becoming, made her insides turn to rubber.

  “Is Georgene in that house?” Lyssa asked, proud her voice sounded sharp, strong.

  Nikola’s jaw flexed. “Yes. She is waiting for you.”

  “How many people are imprisoned?”

  No response. Lyssa pulled off her glove, flexing her clawed hand and savoring the pull of the contorted muscles in her arm. The witch’s gaze settled on her hand and stayed there.

  Lyssa wished she had Eddie’s skill with fire—to summon a flame and have it burn in her hand—but all she could do was let the woman look, and imagine.

  “That knife doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said softly. “Tell me how many people are there.”

  Nikola gave her a hateful look, but there was caution in it, too. “Go and find out for yourself.”

  As the tingling in her blood intensified, Lyssa turned on her heel and strode toward the house.

  You could not run forever, whispered the dragon, as pain throbbed down her arm. You must fly or die, little sister.

  Just as she reached the front steps, twin beams of light swung and bounced off the house. Lyssa listened to the low rumble of a car engine—watching as headlights flickered through the trees that lined the winding driveway. The vehicle that appeared was an older Cadillac, built like a tank. Lyssa couldn’t see the driver, but she knew who it was.

  Eddie left the engine running as he climbed from the car, keeping his hands in plain sight. No sign of Jimmy.

  “Lyssa,” he said, watching the witch.

  “Get away,” she told him, heart in her throat, dying a little on the inside even as another part of her thrilled that he was here, with her.

  Nikola tightened her grip on the knife. “Hello, puppy.”

  Lyssa felt the power in her voice—an attempt to spread her infection of fear. But beneath that was a tremor.

  Weakness. Uncertainty. Lyssa thought about the memories she had seen from Estefan’s death—this woman, slashing
him with that blade. Torturing him simply because she could.

  Eddie gave the witch another lingering glance, full of disdain. It made him seem decades older—those searing eyes in that young, hard face. He didn’t need some magical hoodoo to make someone feel uneasy. Just a look.

  He walked right up to Lyssa and she braced herself, cut to the quick by the flash of concern and disappointment in his eyes.

  “Of course I ran,” she said to him, before he could say a word. “That’s what I do.”

  “You ran in the wrong direction. And you forgot someone.” Eddie took her hand, entwining their fingers. “Why do I get the feeling I’ll be chasing you for the rest of my life?”

  “You wish.”

  “You’re trouble.”

  “I won’t change.”

  “I’ll just have to run faster to keep up,” he said, and squeezed her hand. “If you dislike me, that’s one thing. But if you’re trying to keep me safe, don’t bother.”

  She started to shake her head, but before she could say a word he leaned in and pressed his mouth to her ear. A smoky scent washed over her—real smoke, drifting off his clothes, accompanied by sparks. The tremendous heat that flowed from his body into hers felt like a balm on her soul, stealing the worst of her fear and misgivings, and self-hatred.

  “Being safe alone holds no appeal,” he whispered. “We haven’t known each other long . . . but trust me. I’d rather have no chance, with you.”

  “You,” she said, but couldn’t speak all those words inside her. Eddie kissed her hand.

  “I know,” he said.

  Lyssa dragged down a deep breath and looked at Nikola, who was watching them with hollow eyes.

  “You have a choice to make,” she told the witch. “Accept the truth that you’ve been lied to and that your friend is dead because of it . . . or continue to serve the lie. This”—and she waved to Eddie and herself—“is no illusion. If Georgene told you that I am merely a shape-shifter, then she did so thinking, perhaps hoping, it would get you killed.”

  Nikola swayed. “She would not do that.”