Heart of Fire

by Lisa Edmonds

  Well, that sounded like the truth, anyway, for whatever it was worth. “Why are you taking these people and draining their blood? Not for ritual magic, I know that. So why?”

  He gave me a vicious smile. “So you don’t know, then. Good. That’s a bargaining chip for me.”

  I scoffed. “I can find out on my own. The answer is here, in this warehouse. I’ll keep looking until I find it.”

  “You’re on borrowed time, my dear,” West said. “You can’t stay out of sight forever. When Addison catches you, either you’ll be dead or you’ll end up like me, watching yourself die slowly. Get me out of these cuffs. I’ll help you take Addison out. I’ll help you bring down the wards. Then I’ll disappear to a country far away from here, and you can bring in the vamp army and the feds, and you can have your justice.”

  I shook my head. “No deal, West. I don’t know how many people died at your hands and on your watch, but you have to answer for those deaths. I’ll figure out a way—”

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway, approaching fast.

  I dove under West’s cot. He moved the sheets so they hung over the side of the bed, hiding me, just as the door swung open.

  “Plotting your escape, John?” It was a man’s voice, the tone mocking. The door shut and footsteps crossed the room to stand a few feet away.

  “Plotting your death,” West replied acerbically. “It helps me pass the time.”

  “You’ve only been here a few hours,” the other man pointed out. I assumed this was the infamous Addison. I recognized his voice from Bobby’s earlier phone call. “Imagine those who have been here for days. Then again, we keep them asleep most of the time and they never last more than a week or two, so they don’t really have to worry about finding ways to pass the time.”

  “Is that blood on your shirt, Spencer?” West asked. “What stupid thing have you done now, as if killing the Vamp Court investigator wasn’t bad enough?”

  I’d figured this Spencer Addison was the blood mage who’d killed Mark, but hearing West talk about it so casually made my blood boil. West was obviously orchestrating this conversation for my benefit, but to what end?

  “Killing Dunlap was a good move,” Addison countered. “The timing was perfect. People already hated the vamps and thought they were the ones behind everything. All they needed was a sympathetic victim. The Daylighters and Humans First people are burning and bombing vamp-owned businesses. Now they’re rioting outside the gates of Northbourne and the Court has no investigator.”

  “They have this Alice Worth, and she knows what Dunlap knew,” West pointed out. “Not that you know what Dunlap knew, since you didn’t get it out of him before he died.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I knew all too well how agonizing a blood mage’s torture was, and yet Mark hadn’t given in and told Addison what he wanted to know. I was getting answers to my questions about Mark’s death, and with every answer, Addison was ensuring his hours were numbered.

  “Maybe you could have done better, if you’d been the one questioning him,” Addison said sardonically. “But I knew there was no sense trying to involve you because you wouldn’t have done what needed to be done. I’m going to expand our operation into other cities. We may have to leave this one; even with attention focused on the vamps, it’s getting too hot now, and we need more donors. Garcia wants more product.”

  “What do you mean, it’s getting too hot? Don’t tell me the Dunlap murder is backfiring on you.” I could almost hear the smirk in West’s voice.

  “It’s not your concern anymore. I’ll have Worth soon. I’ve got her boyfriend already; it’s only a matter of time before we find her.”

  “What boyfriend?” West pounced on that.

  “Why the sudden interest?” Addison asked suspiciously.

  “Because when all of your little plans fail spectacularly and it all comes down on your head, I’d like to know which idiot thing you did caused it. I led our harnad for more than twenty years, and no one knew we existed. I developed the manufacturing process and bought this warehouse. I had the contacts at the police department that kept us under the radar. We all made a lot of money and would have continued to do so if you hadn’t gotten greedy thinking you could do better.” He laughed. “You’ve been in charge for less than forty-eight hours and you’re having to leave the city because you’ve made it too hot to stay. If you think you’ll be able to just set up shop in some other city in another harnad or cabal’s territory, you’re delusional as well as stupid.”

  There was a long silence. Addison’s blood magic sizzled on my skin, as if he’d lost control briefly. West had to know he was playing with fire, quite literally; Addison could kill him where he lay and there would be nothing West could do about it. If he was hoping I’d defend him, he was sadly mistaken.

  Without another word, Addison spun on his heel and stomped out of the room, slamming the door.

  Neither of us moved or said anything for several minutes. When Addison didn’t return, I slid out from under the cot and got to my feet, careful to stay out of West’s reach.

  West adjusted his sheet and blanket. “Did you enjoy the show?”

  “None of this is funny,” I snapped, keeping my voice low. “And it’s not a game. Who is this Garcia, and what is he buying from you? The blood or something else?”

  “Addison has the temperament of a three-year-old child who isn’t getting what he wants,” West said, ignoring my questions. “I know what buttons to push to get him to storm out in a rage, so let’s return to the previous discussion about making a mutually beneficial deal.”

  “No deal, West. I’d rather die breaking the wards by myself than make a deal with you.”

  “And your boyfriend, the fed? You’d rather let him die?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend and I’m not letting him die.”

  “Addison left the room quite angry. I’ve known him for more than fifteen years. When he’s angry, he likes to take it out on whatever—or whoever—is nearby. Right now, I’m guessing that will be your fed, assuming he’s even still alive.”

  I headed for the door, but he spoke again. “What’s your plan, if you find your fed? You can’t break the wards by yourself without dying. You’ll be trapped here and we’ll all die. Let me out and I will help you kill Addison and break the wards. It’s the only way either of us survives.”

  West reminded me so much of my grandfather: a cold, unrepentant killer to whom lives meant nothing except as sources of potential profit. Moses Murphy had never faced justice for his crimes. I was determined that West would be held accountable.

  “Every second you stand there is one less second your fed has to live,” West said.

  I pictured Lake’s face, the way he’d smiled at me the night he’d handcuffed himself to me so I didn’t run off and get myself killed. He was a good man. He deserved to live.

  If I let West out, he’d try to kill me the second the wards broke and Addison was dead. He knew damn well I wasn’t going to let him just disappear with the millions he had stashed away.

  But I couldn’t see any alternative, and there was no time to debate. “Hold out your cuff,” I said coldly.

  West held his left arm as far away from his body as possible. I manifested my cold fire whip and lashed the spell cuff. He set his jaw and didn’t make a sound. The spell cuff hit the floor, broken in half. An angry red welt appeared on his forearm.

  “Foot.”

  West held out his left leg and visibly braced himself. The green fire lashed again and the second cuff hit the floor, leaving another welt.

  The dampening spell broke and West’s magic was his again. It flared around him for full second before he got it under control.

  West pushed himself to his feet unsteadily and swayed, his face ashen. The fact he’d already been bled by Addison might work in my favor later.

  I backed toward the door. “I’m going to find the fed. I want you to hide somewhere until I come find you and then we’ll break the war
ds and take out Addison. Where will you be?”

  “You don’t trust me to help you save your fed?” He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “No, I do not. Where will you be?”

  He considered. “There’s a large supply closet at the other end of the hall, past the holding rooms. I’ll wait for you there.”

  “All right.” There was no sense asking for his word; it wouldn’t mean anything if he gave it. I opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hallway. It was empty. “Where do you think he’s holding the fed?” I asked, wondering if I could trust his answer.

  “Start with the room across the hall, but let me leave first and get to the storage closet before you go exploring.”

  “Fine.” I stood aside as West walked toward me. His gait was uneven, but his eyes were sharp. His magic crackled on the edges of my senses, like a wildfire that was barely contained. He was hobbled, but he was still powerful and deadly. Then again, so was I, and he knew it.

  West slipped away down the hall and disappeared around the corner. I waited another minute to give him time to get to the closet, then stepped out into the hallway and closed the door, locking it behind me. It wouldn’t gain us much time, but even a few seconds might mean the difference between life and death.

  I thought of West waiting in the storage closet, presumably trying to get better control over his magic and deciding the best way to kill me at the first opportunity. I’d made a true deal with the devil. It was going to come back and bite me in the ass; the only questions were how and when.

  I couldn’t hear anything from the other room, but my blood magic surged as I crossed the hall and reached for the door handle. I took a deep breath and opened the door.

  The smell of blood was overwhelming. I had a moment of displacement, as if I were simultaneously in two places at once: the blood mage’s torture room at my grandfather’s compound and this room in the harnad’s warehouse. There was blood on the walls, blood on the floor, blood on the ceiling.

  A bloody man in a tattered suit was slumped over in a chair in the middle of the room, his wrists and ankles cuffed to its metal frame. The cuffs had cut deeply into his skin as if he’d pulled at them trying to get away. He wasn’t moving. Please, let him be alive.

  I came into the room, pulling the door closed behind me. “Lake,” I hissed.

  To my relief, he raised his head. His face was bloody from multiple slashes. One eye was swollen shut. The other, ice-blue and filled with pain, focused on my face.

  “Run,” he grated.

  An obfuscation spell broke behind me. I started to turn, but too late. Someone grabbed my shoulder and a zap of magic stunned me as a needle punctured my neck.

  “I was about to give this to your boyfriend,” Spencer Addison said in my ear. “But I think I’ll enjoy letting him watch you die even more.”

  Burning acid flooded into me. I let out a choked scream, my knees buckling.

  Addison let me hit the floor and stood above me, an empty syringe in his hand. He was a man of about sixty, trim, with gray hair. I recognized him as the man I’d seen in Felicia’s memory, threatening to kill her and take her brother.

  Addison smiled. “How do you like Black Fire?”

  His face dark with rage, Lake struggled against his cuffs. “Alice,” he rasped.

  The burning was spreading fast. My heart raced and I couldn’t get enough air, even though I was panting.

  Addison nudged me with his shoe. “Thank you for saving me the trouble of finding you. Now be a good girl and die.”

  24

  Lake lunged toward me, yanking on his cuffs. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear him over the pounding of my heart and the roar of my blood in my ears. My arms and legs jerked and seized painfully.

  The door flew open. I heard an urgent voice that sounded like Bobby’s and caught the words “West,” “cuffs,” and “gone.”

  “Find him!” Addison shouted. He kicked me hard in the ribs and left with Bobby, slamming the door.

  I managed to turn my head toward Lake. It looked like he was still saying my name, though I couldn’t hear him. When he saw me looking at him, he mouthed something else. I thought it might have been I’m sorry.

  The drug raced through my bloodstream, searing everything as it went, poisoning my body and threatening to stop my heart and lungs. My earth and air magic roared through me and I couldn’t contain it all. Green flames danced over my body and the air in the room began to swirl in a kind of indoor tornado. My blood magic tore free and churned around me in a swirl of black, red, and purple. Black Fire enhanced magic and I was experiencing its effects firsthand.

  There was something strange about the drug, though, something that left an echo of magic trace as it passed through my awareness. It tugged on my blood magic the way the concrete room at Charles’s house and this room had, as if there was blood in the drug itself, but that wasn’t possible.

  Unless…unless there was blood in the drug.

  The pieces fell into place. There was mage blood in Black Fire. That was why it enhanced the user’s inherent magical ability. Somehow, West had figured out how to manufacture a drug spiked with magic—something no one else had ever done, to my knowledge.

  Addison’s first mistake was killing Mark. His second was seriously underestimating me. His third was assuming West was the bigger threat, and his fourth believing a massive overdose of Black Fire would simply kill me.

  West was right about one thing: Addison was an idiot.

  I closed my eyes. A memory surfaced of another blood-spattered room, this one at my grandfather’s compound. A man in a lab coat stood over me, a syringe in his hand. My grandfather was demanding to know why the drug hadn’t worked. The man in the lab coat said I had some way of neutralizing it. He couldn’t make me compliant with drugs. Moses killed him in a rage.

  How did you sober up so quickly? Lake had asked me the night Mark died.

  Because I had a very special skill, one no one else knew about, not even Moses.

  I focused on the drug in my body and unleashed my blood magic on it. The black, red, and purple magic raged through me, burning up the drug as it went. The pain was excruciating. I heard someone screaming and realized it was me.

  The flames that covered my body began to fade. As my head cleared, I realized if I burned away all of the drug, I would no longer be under its influence and no longer in danger of dying, but I would be at my normal power level. I wouldn’t be able to break the wards on my own without the landmines killing me.

  Slowly, I drew my blood magic back. The remaining Black Fire sizzled in my veins as if I was holding an electrical charge within my own body. I thought I had been supercharged after drinking Niara’s blood, but that was nothing compared to this.

  I was high on Black Fire and magic, and it felt so good.

  I opened my eyes and sat up. Everything was bright and clear. I felt powerful, invincible. Untouchable.

  “Alice, your eyes,” Lake said, his voice still rough.

  My eyes felt hot—not the usual warm glow that signaled my blood magic was aroused, but an intense heat. I wondered if my eyes were bright gold, like Sean’s when his wolf was close to his skin.

  Lake knew the glowing eyes meant I was a blood mage. He watched me, not afraid, but cautious. Wary.

  I rose, feeling each muscle move as I stood. I had never been so acutely aware of myself. It was like I could feel each atom, each cell, each individual hair on my body.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” I told Lake. My voice didn’t sound like my own. As I approached, he didn’t recoil from me, but he held very still as I came to stand beside him.

  “I can heal some of your wounds. Brace yourself.” I traced a rune in the air and held my hand in front of his chest. “Helios.”

  The blood magic healing spell washed over him. I hadn’t healed anyone in a very long time, and I had to be careful to control the power of my magic; it was so strong that too much would
kill him instead.

  Lake was in pain, though he was trying not to make a sound. Strong blood magic healing spells could hurt worse than the wounds they were healing. I sensed his pain but it felt distant. After about a minute, Lake leaned over and vomited.

  If I’d only had my normal level of magic, I could have healed some or most of his wounds, but only at great expense to my own magic. The extra power coursing through my veins from the Black Fire overdose provided enough healing magic that I could see wounds healing all over Lake’s body and my own magic remained almost unaffected.

  Finally, I raised my hand and finished the spell. Lake’s chest was heaving and he trembled. He was still covered in blood, but most of the wounds looked healed.

  I stepped back. “Hold out your wrists so I can get to your cuffs.”

  He obeyed. His eyes widened when my cold fire whip spiraled out of my hand. He’d seen it once before, on the night I killed Scott Grierson, but from a distance.

  I lashed out with precision and his right cuff fell off his wrist, broken neatly through. There was no welt on his skin. I hadn’t had to leave burns removing West’s cuffs, but I’d enjoyed doing it.

  When all four of Lake’s cuffs were off, he took my hand and forced himself to stand. He’d suffered enormous blood loss, and that was not something I could heal.

  “You’re in no shape to fight,” I told him. “When things get dicey, take cover. I’ve got this.”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do.” His voice was hoarse.

  “I can’t carry you. You have to stay on your feet and do what I say, or neither of us is getting out of here alive. Tell me you understand, or sit back down.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. “How did you survive that overdose?”

  I gestured at some bottles of water on a table near the door. “I’ll explain later. Clean yourself up and then we need to move.”

  He used one bottle to wash his face and another to rinse out his mouth several times. He drank a whole bottle and half of another, and then he walked out the door. I figured it was at least eighty percent sheer willpower.