Heart of Fire

by Lisa Edmonds

  The vampire listened as I talked, his fingers steepled. When I finished, he tilted his head. “You did not mention how you came to be under the influence of Black Fire.”

  I shrugged. “Addison tried to kill me with it. He misjudged the dose.”

  “Or perhaps he misjudged you.”

  I smiled. “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps I have misjudged you.” He tapped his fingertips together. “What a vexing mystery you are, Alice.”

  We sat silently, watching each other. Finally, Charles looked up at his enforcers. “Leave us.”

  They hesitated.

  “Go inside and close the doors.” It was a command.

  With obvious reluctance, Adri and Bryan went into the house. Bryan closed the French doors with a soft click.

  Charles reached for the decanter and poured us each two fingers of whisky. He handed me a glass, then raised his. “To you and your success.”

  We clinked glasses. I didn’t know what brand he had served me, but it was good enough to make the Scotch given to me by Mark taste like swill by comparison.

  “The Court is grateful to you,” Charles said. “I am to relay their thanks and give you this.” He handed me the smaller envelope.

  Inside was a check. I glanced at the amount and my eyebrows went up. “There seem to be a couple of extra zeroes on here.”

  “Consider it a well-earned bonus, for a quick resolution and with our sincere apologies for the injuries you suffered at Hawthorne’s.” Charles sipped his Scotch, then cradled his glass. “I have also been asked to present you with an offer of employment.”

  “An offer from whom?”

  “From the Vampire Court. We wish to employ you as an official investigator, working full-time for the Court and representing our interests.” He handed me the large envelope.

  I put the envelope on the chair next to me. “I have a job. I’m not interested in working for the Court full time.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I assure you our offer is quite generous.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “I do not wish to be indelicate, as you still grieve for your mentor, but we require a new investigator. This situation has demonstrated very clearly the need for one or more full-time employees whose priorities are not divided between the Court’s interests and other matters. We have another case that will require an investigator’s full attention. I believe you are an ideal choice.”

  “I’m willing to continue working for the Court part-time, as I’ve done for the past three years, but you’ll have to find someone else for this.” I held out the envelope.

  Charles did not take it from me. “Perhaps I can offer additional incentive to consider the offer.”

  “I’ve worked very hard to become an MPI and start my own agency, and I’m not interested in giving that up.”

  “You should consider your position,” he said. “A mage who is not who she claims to be would wish that information to remain private. She should make allies, not enemies.”

  I regarded him. “Blackmail, Charles?”

  “Information is leverage.” He finished his whisky and set the glass on the table. “I would be a poor broker if I failed to see the value of the information I have and use it to my benefit.”

  “To your benefit?”

  “To the Court’s benefit, of course,” he corrected smoothly.

  I finished my Scotch, put the glass on the table, and settled back into my chair. “If I did agree to work for the Court, what guarantee do I have you won’t use this ‘leverage’ against me anyway, or again in the future whenever you want me to do something I don’t want to do?”

  “I give you my word.”

  “Not good enough.” I leaned forward. “You bit me when I was in a coma. You had no intention of telling me what you had done until you could use it to your advantage. I once said you’ve always been a man of honor, but if you were you wouldn’t have violated someone who was in your care. I can’t trust your word, Charles.”

  “And yet, the situation remains unchanged. We require an investigator. I require your signature on—” Suddenly, Charles jerked in his chair, his eyes wide. He stared at me, frozen.

  “Leverage is a valuable tool,” I mused, tracing the pattern on the arm of my chair with my fingertips, leaving a barely visible trail of blood magic that dissipated like smoke. My eyes were warm and I knew they were softly glowing. “It can tilt the field in your favor or restore balance. You have information about me that’s valuable to you, but now you see I have leverage too.”

  “What are you doing to me?” he hissed. “What is this pain?”

  “You drank the blood of a high-level blood mage with a”—I chuckled—“a very particular set of skills. My blood and my magic are within you. I control my magic. I control you.”

  He strained to move, despite the daggers of magic piercing his heart. I drove them in deeper and he stilled.

  “I could rip out your heart,” I told him. “I could sever your spinal cord or take off your head. I could do it from four feet away, or from across the city, or from another country. You said you underestimated me. You had no idea by how much.”

  We stared at each other. I read Charles’s eyes, his body language. He was thinking, calculating.

  “What do you propose?” he asked finally.

  “Détente. A mutually beneficial arrangement in which I continue to work for the Court on a contract basis. I’m a valuable asset, as you’ve no doubt concluded. Hire a full-time investigator and I’ll work with him or her on jobs for you. No one needs to know what you know about my magic or that my magic can influence you.”

  “And how do I know you will not use this leverage against me in the future?” he asked wryly.

  “I won’t be anyone’s slave, and I won’t be anyone’s master. Had you not tried to blackmail me, I would have never have done what I just did.” I put the large envelope on the table. “Do we have an agreement?”

  “We do.”

  I released him. Charles reached for the decanter. His hands were steady, but he poured three fingers’ worth of the very expensive Scotch and knocked it back like he’d needed a stiff drink. When he offered to refill my glass, I shook my head and he splashed whisky into his own.

  “With such a bold move, you make yourself irresistible to me,” he said, stoppering the decanter. “You are powerful and calculating and surprisingly ruthless. I have seen the recording of your interrogation of Clint Ravell. Stay with me tonight, Alice. Share my bed.”

  “Thank you for the invitation, but no.” I pushed myself to my feet. “I need to be getting home.”

  Charles rose as well. “Because Maclin has your heart?” There was no anger in his tone, only curiosity.

  “Because I don’t want to share your bed, tonight or ever.”

  “Ever is a very long time. Even immortal vampires do not speak in terms of never or always.” He raised his hand. The French doors opened and Bryan emerged. “Alice is ready to be taken home.”

  Bryan gestured at the house. I picked up the small envelope, folded it neatly in half, and tucked it into my back pocket before heading inside, Bryan behind me.

  As we crossed the enormous living room, I glanced back over my shoulder.

  Charles was watching me. He raised his glass in a toast, a ghost of a smile on his lips. I heard his voice in my head: Good night, Alice.

  Good night, Charles. I turned and kept walking, through the house and out the front door and into the night.

  The news broke at nine o’clock that morning.

  The press conference took place in front of the harnad warehouse. It was an alphabet soup of federal agencies and local law enforcement: SPEMA, DEA, ATF, FBI, SWAT, CRT. The SPEMA bureau chief was there, accompanied by Lake, who’d had a chance to shower and put on a suit, but he looked like he was barely standing. The police chief stood flanked by Detective Diaz, the deputy chief, and two federal prosecutors.

  I watched the press conference on my laptop, sitti
ng in bed. The SPEMA bureau chief laid the official story out succinctly. After a long and painstaking investigation, a joint task force had arrested thirteen members of a harnad, including its leader, who were responsible for the kidnapping and murders of at least thirty people over the past fourteen months. Nine other people had been arrested in connection with the murders, one of them an as-yet unidentified member of the police department. The DEA had raided several locations where Haze and Black Fire were being manufactured and rounded up several dozen drug suppliers and distributors. Everyone was going to be tried in federal court. There was no evidence of any vampire involvement whatsoever, and the SPEMA bureau chief was grateful to the Vampire Court for their cooperation and assistance in apprehending those responsible.

  There was more, but I was having an increasingly difficult time focusing. I turned down the volume of the press conference.

  “How are you feeling?” Sean asked from next to me in the bed.

  He’d shown up just before dawn, having spent several hours with Felicia. When she was healed from her injuries and resting comfortably in the care of her mother and brother, he’d come to my house in my car to bring me my wallet, keys, and phone. I was surprised at how glad I was to see him.

  Despite my exhaustion and the hollowness left behind after I’d burned the rest of the Black Fire from my body, I hadn’t been able to sleep. We’d simply curled up together in my bed until Adri texted me about the press conference.

  I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine, then closed it.

  Sean sat up. “Alice?”

  “I’m hurting,” I said quietly.

  He took my laptop and put it aside. “Where are you hurting?”

  “Everywhere.” I took a deep, shuddering breath. “It started about an hour ago.”

  His eyes darkened. “Is it the Black Fire?”

  Mutely, I nodded.

  He took me in his arms. I burrowed my face into his shirt but his scent failed to comfort me or ease my pain and restlessness. The need to feel that fire in my blood again was almost overwhelming.

  After a few minutes of holding me while I trembled, Sean moved so he could see my face. “Do you trust me?”

  “To do what?”

  “To help you. Yes or no?” he prompted gently.

  Did I trust him? With my heart and my secrets, no, not yet. To help me? I didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes.”

  Sean’s eyes turned bright gold. A rush of shifter magic ran through me, making me shudder and then go limp. Everything faded away. The pain, craving, nausea, and uneasiness all disappeared and I was wonderfully warm and content. I exhaled and nestled my head against his chest.

  “This is my magic,” he murmured into my hair. “I can’t tear down wards or make cold fire or do whatever the hell you did to Spencer Addison, but I can take this pain from you for as long as it takes until you no longer want that poison.”

  I drifted in blissful comfort for several minutes while he held me. Finally, I asked, “How can you do this when I’m not part of your pack?”

  “I suspect because you have some of my magic and I have some of yours.” He settled into the bed and pulled the covers up over us. “How about we get some sleep? I don’t know about you, but I feel like I could hibernate for a while.”

  “Wolves don’t hibernate,” I reminded him, my eyes already closed.

  “Have you been reading up on wolf behavior?”

  “I may have read something on Wikipedia,” I said sleepily.

  Sean chuckled and reached up to close the curtains over the bed. I rolled onto my other side and he spooned up behind me, his arm around my middle. He nuzzled the back of my neck and pulled me close. We slept.

  26

  That evening, I was on my back porch with a glass of iced tea when the perimeter wards tingled, announcing a visitor.

  I waited.

  The back gate creaked open and closed quietly. A tall, dark-haired man in a well-tailored suit appeared from around the corner of the house. He crossed the backyard to stand about fifteen feet away. The breeze shifted and I smelled sulfur.

  We watched each other in the moonlight. He was handsome in a classically aristocratic way, with the imperious bearing of a man used to power and wealth and giving orders. That wasn’t my thing, but I could see why women would fall for him.

  “Alice Worth,” he said finally. His voice was very deep and it resonated with dark magic.

  “I wondered when you’d be stopping by,” I said, setting my glass on the table beside my chair.

  “So you know who I am?”

  “It took me a while to put it together,” I admitted. “In my defense, it’s been a busy week. But yes, I figured out why the trace of demon magic I kept sensing seemed so familiar. You’re Scott Grierson’s father.”

  “I am Ravan.” He inclined his head formally. “I am here to seek justice for the murder of my son.”

  I both needed and dreaded the answer to this question. “How did you know to come looking for me?”

  “At first, I believed SPEMA agents were responsible for my son’s death, as they quite publicly claimed credit for the deed. However, when I visited Agent Elaine Parker, intending to avenge my son, I was informed it was you who killed him.”

  I’d seen Parker alive and well at the anti-vamp protest two days ago, so obviously Ravan hadn’t had to torture the truth out of her. Also, she evidently hadn’t felt the need to warn me there was an angry demon coming after me. I made a mental note to address both of those issues at my earliest opportunity, assuming I had the chance.

  “I don’t suppose it matters that I acted in self-defense,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”

  “If you had murdered him in cold blood, you would already be dead. Instead, I wished to find out more about you first, this mage who killed my son.”

  “So now you’ve come to kill me?”

  “I’ve come to tell you I will first kill your lovers and discorporate your ghost. Then I will kill you.” He sounded matter-of-fact, as if he was discussing dinner options rather than murders.

  I didn’t bother to correct him about Lake being my lover; even if he did believe me, he apparently knew I cared about the federal agent and that alone would seal Lake’s fate. “So that’s how it is, huh?”

  Ravan raised his chin. “That is how it is.”

  “All right.” I reached out with my magic. “Snare.”

  The force of the wards flaring felt like I’d stuck my finger into a power outlet. My backyard was suddenly a cage made of blisteringly powerful wards—including a razor ward that would tear through even a demon’s hide. The wards were anchored by my house wards, which I had been enhancing for nearly five years. If Ravan tried to break them, he would die in the attempt.

  Ravan roared. Luckily, the wards also prevented sound from escaping, or 911 would have been flooded with frantic calls.

  His human body split open in a spray of blood and flesh that sizzled when it hit the wards. His demon form was enormous, almost ten feet tall and half as wide, with arms and legs like tree trunks. He was also unfortunately naked. My neighbors would have been thankful for the obfuscation spells that hid him from their sight if they’d known what I was sparing them from seeing.

  While his human form would have looked at home in an expensive restaurant or a CEO’s office, this was his true form. In this body, he had killed and eaten a half-dozen young women kidnapped by his son.

  “Do you think you can hold me prisoner?” Ravan demanded. His mouth was full of jagged teeth and there were too many of them. As unpleasant as the sight was, it was still better than looking below his waist.

  “I could if I wanted,” I said, rising and moving to the porch railing. “I’m sure you can feel how strong those wards are. But I’m thinking about putting in some flowerbeds back there, plus you just threatened to kill people I care about, so I have to dispose of you.”

  “You can’t kill me,” the demon snarled. “Your wards are strong, but your magic alone
is not enough.”

  The back door opened and Sean stepped out onto the porch. “She’s not alone.”

  Ravan glowered as Sean joined me at the railing. “Alpha,” the demon sneered. “Do you plan to die to defend your woman?”

  “Alice is her own woman, and she doesn’t need defending, as I’m sure you’re already aware,” Sean replied. “But if you’ve come for her, you’ll face me as well.”

  Malcolm emerged from the house and hovered to my right. “Yeah, what he said.” He gaped at the demon. “Why are you naked? Are you trying to scare us to death by waving that thing around?”

  Ravan growled.

  “Malcolm,” I sighed.

  “What? It’s barbed.” He tilted his head. “And a lot smaller than you’d think it would be.”

  The demon turned purple in indignation.

  I unleashed my air magic and threw Ravan across my backyard. If I’d been able to touch him, the blast would have been more forceful, but even so I’d caught him off-guard and he hit the wards hard.

  The impact stunned him. The razor ward went partway through his body before he wrenched himself free with a bellow of pain and fury. Foul-smelling black blood spurted across the grass as Ravan staggered and almost fell. His back and legs were missing large chunks of flesh.

  Malcolm went invisible as he crossed the yard. He slashed the demon with a laser-like stream of air magic that opened a deep gash across his enormous chest. Ravan lashed out with a tendril of dark magic and fire but Malcolm evaded it and sliced the demon’s right arm.

  As Ravan tried repeatedly to strike Malcolm, who he could sense but not see, Sean dropped to his knees on the porch. I heard bones popping and shifting and a powerful surge of magic pushed me back a half-step. Moments later, an enormous black-and-silver wolf launched himself over the porch railing with a snarl.

  Ravan saw Sean jump and lashed out, but the wolf dodged the demon magic and hit him full-force in a blur of teeth and claws. Malcolm took advantage of the opportunity to strike Ravan with air magic again, wounding him in the neck and making the demon stagger.