Heart of Fire

by Lisa Edmonds

  When Don Hall of the Daylighters stepped up to the microphone, however, the mood of the protesters changed. Sean felt it, too, and tension rippled across his shoulders as the crowd surged, pushing us forward.

  Hall wore a dark blue suit and dark-framed glasses. He looked over the crowd, taking in the protesters and their signs, then raised his hands to quiet them. “My friends,” he intoned, “I come here today with a heavy heart. One of our own citizens, a very good man who called this city home for his entire life, was slaughtered here last night and left to die in an alley, like garbage. Like trash.”

  The crowd moved restlessly.

  “Mark Dunlap was a husband. A father. A grandfather. He was married for thirty years and worked long, hard hours all his life to provide for his family. He was everything you could ask a man to be and more. In all that time, he only made one single mistake: he trusted vampires and decided to work for them.”

  Another surge of anger from the crowd. I gritted my teeth. How dare he use Mark like this? Sean’s hand found mine and squeezed.

  “For years, Mark worked for the Vampire Court as an investigator. He even called some of the vampires friends.”

  Angry murmurs from the assembled protesters.

  “Despite warnings from those closest to him, he believed these creatures could be trustworthy. He believed he was more than just a human to them. God help him, he believed they would never turn on him.” Hall looked up toward the sky. When he looked back at the crowd, his gaze was intense. “He could not have been more wrong.”

  Shouting broke out in the crowd, loud chants of “Stake them all!” and “Kill the fangheads!” Hall stepped back from the microphone and more people took up the chants. I started to sweat.

  Hall let the shouting go on for over a minute, then raised his hands and the voices quieted. “The police say they will bring the killer to justice. They say no one, human or not, is beyond the law. But I ask you, my friends, if that is true, then how have the vampires gotten away with more than fifty murders in this city in the past year and a half?”

  The crowd roared.

  “Son of a bitch,” I hissed. Sharon must have told him about the missing homeless people.

  “More than fifty murdered human women and men!” Hall shouted over the din. “You know who took them. You all know. And you know why no one has faced justice for it: because the police of this city fear the vampires. They won’t stand up for you.” He paused, then pointed to the assembled people. “I will stand up for you!”

  The roar of the crowd became a mix of shouting and cheers. Sean muttered expletives. The police and federal agents lined up, forming a perimeter around the protesters.

  That was when I saw Lake on our side of the plaza, standing with Agent Parker and another agent. He was speaking quickly into a radio, scanning the crowd for trouble. He looked past me, then his eyes zipped back to meet mine when recognition dawned. He saw Sean next to me and his jaw tightened.

  Parker touched his arm and gestured at something going on behind us. Lake immediately focused on whatever it was and they headed in that direction, walking briskly. I turned my attention back to the stage.

  Hall finally began quieting the crowd. “My friends,” he said. “My friends, my friends.” He waited until the noise died down, then continued. “Mark Dunlap’s murder has left his family devastated. I have with me two members of that family who have come here today to share his memory with you.” He smiled kindly toward the front of the crowd and held out his hands. “Please, everyone, welcome Mark’s wife, Sharon, and his oldest son, Marcus Dunlap, Junior.”

  I watched as Sharon, in a black suit, and Marcus, wearing a button-up shirt and slacks, went up the steps. The Daylighters’ website hadn’t mentioned anything about Mark’s son coming to the rally. I hadn’t seen Marcus in years. He’d be about twenty-four now, I thought, and was tall and burly like his father.

  Sharon was almost as tall as her son. She held onto his arm as they joined Hall behind the microphone. Hall hugged Sharon, then shook Marcus’s hand and clasped his shoulder in a show of support.

  Sharon stepped up to the microphone. “Thank you,” she said shakily. “Thank you for coming here today. What we’re doing here today is so…is so important.” Her voice cracked, and she paused to collect herself.

  When she spoke again, her voice was stronger, more determined. “My husband was a good man and a wonderful father. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. He didn’t deserve to be drained of blood and dumped in an alley, like he meant nothing. He meant everything to us.” She hung her head and Hall and Marcus each reached out to comfort her with a hand on her back. I heard sniffling in the crowd.

  Despite my anger at what was happening around me and Sharon’s participation in it, my throat closed. Sharon’s grief was real, even if her anger was misplaced.

  As Sharon struggled with her tears, Hall reached out toward the audience. They broke into applause and shouts of “We love you, Sharon!”

  When Sharon raised her head, the crowd quieted. She cleared her throat and continued. “Mr. Hall mentioned the horrible murders that have been terrorizing our city for the last year and a half. My husband was helping to investigate those murders. That’s what he was doing last night, when they took him and killed him. I don’t know what he found out, what he knew, but they killed him and left him in an alley behind a dumpster.”

  The crowd’s fury swelled again. I closed my eyes. She’d just strongly implied that vampires killed Mark because he’d found out they were behind the murders.

  Sharon raised her voice over the crowd noise. “I am asking for your help today, to help me get justice for my husband. Please don’t let the police be so afraid of the vampires that they let them get away with Mark’s murder and the murders of all these other people.” Her voice hardened. “The vampires should be afraid of us, not us be afraid of them.”

  The crowd cheered.

  Hall helped Sharon step back, then took her place at the microphone while Marcus held his mother with an arm around her waist.

  “My friends,” Hall said earnestly. “Sharon has asked for our help to get justice for her husband and for all the other victims. You may wonder how you can help. Our website lists the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of your local senior law enforcement personnel and politicians. We must work together to keep the pressure on the police until these murderers are brought to justice. Also, on our website you will find a list of local businesses owned by vampires.”

  I jerked. Beside me, Sean growled low in his throat.

  “We ask that you refuse to do business with any of these establishments. Instead, take your money to local, human-owned businesses. Put no money in the fangheads’ hands. Let them know you are human and proud of it!”

  The crowd grew louder and we were jostled as people started pushing forward. Hall said something else, but I couldn’t hear him over the shouting.

  My gut churned. That list of vampire-owned businesses wasn’t just a list of places to boycott; it was a list of potential targets for anyone looking to strike out at the vamps.

  The police organized into lines at the perimeter of the plaza, and the SPEMA agents grouped up as the crowd surged again. Fights broke out all around us.

  Up on the steps, men in suits hustled Hall, Sharon, and Marcus away from the protesters and toward SUVs parked at the curb. Hall had accomplished what he’d come here to do. His people knew when it was time to make a hasty exit and so did I. Sean and I started making our way toward the edge of the plaza.

  Suddenly, I froze.

  Dark, dangerous magic slid along my senses like a snake on a tree branch. I recognized it as the trace I’d detected in the poltergeist a few days before. The demon who’d sent her after me was here. Again, the magic seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  Slowly, carefully, I looked at the people around us but saw nothing except bodies pushing and shoving.

  “Alice?” Sean said into my ear. “Alice, what is it
?”

  I turned my head, searching the sea of faces around me. The back of my neck prickled in warning, but when I let go of Sean’s hand and spun around, I didn’t see anyone staring at me.

  A whiff of sulfur teased my nose and the dark magic surged. I spun again and caught a glimpse of red eyes and dark hair for a fraction of second before I lost sight of my target.

  I plunged into the crowd in pursuit. Behind me, Sean shouted my name, and then he was lost in the crush of people.

  A flash of red eyes to my right—I turned and it was gone. Fingertips that burned like hot coals raked across the back of my hand. I bit back a cry of pain as I whirled, but again, too slow. I heard a low laugh on my left but saw nothing but angry, shouting, rioting humans.

  Sinister sulfurous magic wrapped around my throat like a tentacle and squeezed. I reached up with both hands and tore it away in a flash of white air magic that went unnoticed by the people around me. Another sepulchral laugh, and the demon magic faded.

  The crowd parted just in time for me to see the fighting had spread and the police were advancing on the plaza. As they approached, someone threw a rock. It landed five or six feet in front of the line of police, but it set off a flurry of rocks, bottles, and other debris. The police raised their riot shields and an enormous armored police vehicle rumbled toward the crowd.

  Pandemonium broke out. Someone’s elbow hit me hard in my lower back. A poorly thrown bottle caught me just below my left eye and I staggered, almost losing my footing.

  A hand closed on my arm in a vise grip. I looked up into Sean’s grim face. “We have got to go, right now,” he said.

  I couldn’t argue with that. I could no longer sense the demon’s dark magic and what had begun as a peaceful protest was now a full-blown melee.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. So we did.

  “That’s turning into a shiner.”

  I lowered the cold pack I was holding to my left eye and glared balefully at Sean, as we sat in his SUV in the convenience store parking lot where I’d left my car that morning.

  We’d come back here to regroup, after getting out of downtown just as things were getting messy. The news reported dozens of injuries and arrests at the scene of the protest, with unrest spreading to other parts of the city. So far, no attacks on vamp-owned businesses, but I suspected it was only a matter of time.

  My eye hurt, but not as badly as my lower back and not even close to the pain radiating from my burned hand. I’d been hiding that injury from Sean since we left the protest.

  “I wondered what you had in that cooler in the back,” I said, putting the cold pack back to my eye. “I would not have guessed first aid supplies.”

  “They come in handy on a regular basis.” Sean scanned the Daylighters’ website on his phone. “It’s a pretty comprehensive list they’ve got on here of vamp-owned businesses. I don’t see Hawthorne’s listed, though. They’ve got some of Vaughan’s other properties, including the new wine bar, but not Hawthorne’s or anything on that block.”

  “Huh.” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  “How’s your back?” Sean asked.

  I grimaced. “Sore.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small tube of something, and held it out.

  “What’s this?” I squinted at it with my good eye, but it was a plain white tube with no label.

  “For your hand.” Sean’s voice was deceptively calm, but a muscle moved in his jaw and his eyes were bright gold.

  Son of a bitch.

  I raised my right hand from where it had been hidden at my side and put it in my lap. Across the back of my hand and fingers were four painful, blistering red welts several inches long.

  “Take the ointment or use a healing spell,” Sean said quietly. “Your choice, but pick one and do it fast.”

  Since I didn’t have a healing spell with me that would be strong enough, I took the tube. It was cold, so it must have been in the cooler. I opened it with my stiff fingers and used my left hand to squeeze the ointment onto the burns. When the cold gel touched the wounds, the pain went white-hot and I sucked in air through my teeth.

  Sean sat silently as I applied the treatment to all four burns, then took the tube from me and put the cap back on as I trembled and panted from the pain. If I’d had the option of cutting my hand off right then, I might have considered it.

  Within a minute, however, the pain faded to numbness. The back of my hand cooled rapidly, then became ice-cold. That was its own kind of pain, but one I could endure much more readily than the searing heat of the burns.

  “That’s good stuff,” I said when I could talk without my voice shaking. “I’ve never used anything that worked that well or that fast.”

  “I know a guy who knows a guy.” Sean put the tube in the cup holder between us. “Tell me who did this.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then tell me what you do know.”

  I said nothing.

  “Alice, two days ago, you were attacked down on the Stroll. Today, someone came after you in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. They burned your hand, and it looks like they tried to strangle you, too. Those are just the incidents I know of.”

  I frowned. “Nobody tried to strangle me.”

  Sean reached over and flipped down my visor, tilting it so I could see my neck in the mirror. There was a dark line of bruises right where the demon magic had coiled around my throat. With my attention focused on the pain in my back and hand, I’d had no idea it was there.

  “I am done being kept in the dark about this.” Sean flipped the visor back up. “Who or what is after you and why?”

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can take care of yourself. I’m not trying to hunt this person down on your behalf or tear them limb from limb for hurting you, as much as I’d like to do that. You’ve made it very clear from day one that you’re not looking for a protector or someone to fight your battles for you. I’m working on accepting that, despite the fact it goes against all my instincts. All I am asking for in return is information and honesty from you.”

  “I’m entitled to my secrets, Sean.”

  “Yes, you are. I told you before I know you’ve got some serious shit in your past, and I’m not going to push you because we’ve all got things we don’t want to talk about. But this isn’t about your past; it’s about keeping things from me right now, things affecting both of us. You were so committed to keeping me from knowing about your injury that you were willing to sit in agony for almost an hour. I waited for you to use a healing spell or tell me about what happened, but you never did, and I couldn’t take how much pain you were in any longer.”

  He leaned toward me, his eyes fierce. “These attacks are escalating in both severity and brazenness, so someone is getting increasingly aggressive about doing you harm. I can’t fight beside you if I don’t know what I’m up against.”

  “I’m not asking you to fight beside me. It’s not your fight.”

  “That’s not your decision to make; it’s mine. Sometime soon, it might not even be my choice if things continue to escalate. I may just end up in the line of fire, handicapped because I don’t know what I’m fighting or why.”

  “Then maybe you need to stay clear of me until I sort this out.” I was keeping Malcolm out of danger by having him watch John West; it made sense to get Sean out of harm’s way too.

  “Why do you do this?” He was getting angry. “Push me away? Every time we take down one barrier, you put another one up.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I’m doing it to protect you?” I demanded.

  The moment I said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Sean’s face went blank. “Do you think I need you to protect me, Alice?”

  Magic rose, but it wasn’t mine. Sean’s eyes shone like two golden suns. He had my left wrist in his hand before I even saw him move.

&nbs
p; The air in the SUV was suddenly thick with hot, golden shifter magic, impossibly powerful, searing my shields. My mind filled with memories, bloody and brutal. I jerked in his grip as they played in my head, overlapping each other in a jumble of violent images of vicious fighting.

  Sean’s wolf appeared in my mind: black and gray and enormous. He stalked across the darkness between us, with golden eyes that stared through me into my soul. He was magnificent and deadly.

  The wolf leapt at me, his teeth bared.

  I raised my hands and an arc of green and white lightning split the air with an audible crack. The lash of magic threw the wolf back and tore Sean’s grip from my arm. His back hit his door hard enough to make the SUV rock back and forth. I shook my head to clear it.

  Sean and I stared at each other, both breathing hard. The shifter magic faded and his eyes slowly returned to human brown.

  Finally, he spoke. “If you really think you need to protect me, you know nothing about me at all.”

  Maybe I didn’t, or maybe thinking I was keeping him at arm’s length in order to protect him was just another lie I was telling myself. Maybe it was more to protect me than him.

  “I only know one way to fight,” I said quietly. “And that’s alone.”

  His phone rang. He checked the screen, then answered. “This is Sean.”

  It was another deep male voice, with a growly edge, speaking rapidly. I watched Sean’s face as he listened. His jaw tightened, and the shape of his eyes changed. Whatever he was being told, it made him worried and angry.

  “I’ll be there in twenty,” he said when the other man stopped talking. “Call our lawyers and get them down there. No one talks to the police without Nadine or Leland present. Is that clear?”

  The reply was terse.

  “I’m on my way.” Sean ended the call. “That was Jack, my beta. Some of the younger members of my pack got in a fight. Three of them are in jail.”