Branded by Fire
Blood & Magic #4
Danielle Annett
Contents
1. Aria
2. Aria
3. Aria
4. Declan
5. Aria
6. Aria
7. Declan
8. Aria
9. Aria
10. Aria
11. Aria
12. Aria
13. Aria
14. Aria
15. Aria
16. Aria
17. Aria
18. Aria
19. Declan
Epilogue
Thank you
About the Author
Branded by Fire
Blood & Magic: Book 4
Copyright © 2017 Danielle Annett
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the author.
This book is a work of fiction; all characters, names, places, incidents, and events are the product of the author's imagination and either fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Created with Vellum
To all my readers. Thank you for your patience. I promise I won’t make you wait an entire year again for the next book.
1
Aria
In the low light of the Compound basement, I stared at the glistening sheen of blood coating the palm of my hand.
I wrapped my arms around my shivering body and tried to ignore the blood now seeping through the thin cotton of my shirt. It was sticky, cold, and black.
Not human blood, I reminded myself.
My lips trembled. The moment when I’d found Daniel’s body flashed through my mind. His cold, congealing blood seeping into my jeans still haunted me. I shuddered.
This time, however, it wasn't the blood of an innocent coating my hands.
I looked down at Irina’s heart, inches away from my booted foot, where I’d dropped it.
Anger fueled my temptation to kick it.
I refrained—just barely.
Needing to look away, I turned to Irina's motionless form in the rogue cage. Her alabaster skin was beginning to sink in on itself, and her vibrant red hair seemed to have dulled in color, though I knew that wasn’t actually possible.
She should be ash by now, right?
I looked back at her heart beside me and was filled with satisfaction. She’d deserved to die. She’d killed him, an innocent seven-year-old boy.
Blackened blood appeared to ooze out of the organ and temptation finally won out as I nudged the heart with my boot none too gently. A smear of thick liquid darkened the black leather.
Definitely not a figment of my imagination. Not that I wanted it to be. Things just weren’t adding up.
I tried to shake the fog from my mind.
“What happened after you were abducted?” Declan’s rough voice called out.
I whirled around to see him cloaked in shadows. I’d forgotten he was in the room.
I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands. I didn’t want to think about what had happened. I didn’t want to remember.
The memories rose to the surface anyway.
I closed my eyes, powerless to stop them.
Machines blared in my ears as my body was slammed onto a cold, metal table. Rough hands strapping my arms and legs down tightly as I tried in vain to fight them off. My heart racing with fear and panic when the sterile scent of alcohol filled my nose. Screaming pain as needles were shoved into my veins and, when the IV was started, my entire body burning like the sun.
I'd been connected to both Irina and Aiden through a series of IV tubes.
Her vampiric blood sustaining me while Aiden—a member of PsyShade, an elite squad within the Human Alliance Corporation—used his telekinesis to try and rip my fire from me.
My mother had just stood there and watched. Her eyes cold, devoid of any emotion for the daughter she once loved.
What did I ever do to her to deserve this?
My entire body began to vibrate, and I scrubbed my hand over my face.
And what the hell had she done to me?
I looked at Declan and could only shake my head softly as my chest tightened, a sinking feeling settling in my stomach.
My memories were muddled. Noah Thorne—Alpha to the South Atlantic Pack—had kidnapped me, the bastard, and he’d handed me over to my mother for reasons I didn’t know. What did he gain by helping her?
My life was so fucked up.
I rubbed my hand over my neck, searching for the point where the syringe had punctured my skin, but all I felt were the slightly raised, twin scars at the juncture where my neck met my shoulder.
Remnants of Declan’s bite when he’d mate-claimed me.
I bit my lower lip. This wasn’t the time to think about that.
I needed to figure out how the hell Irina lay dead twenty feet away from me, her heart at my feet.
I remembered waking up in my bed after being rescued by Declan and Inarus. I remembered the fatigue and ache in my bones. My hyper-awareness to every sensation.
I’d asked where Irina was, and Declan told me she was in a rogue cage in the basement of the Compound. He hadn’t wanted to take me to her. He thought I needed rest, but I’d insisted. I’d been hired several months ago to find a missing child. A seven-year-old boy named Daniel Blackmore. I’d been too late.
She’d killed him, and I was going to make her pay.
I’d intended to use my pyrokinesis to take care of her—a life for a life. I’d extended my hand toward her, had seen the fear in her bright green eyes, and something inside of me had reveled in it. She’d screamed in rage and made empty threats on my life but there was nothing she could do, no way she could escape her fate.
I was going to burn her alive … but that wasn’t what had happened.
I scowled down at the floor.
There were no ashes, there was no smoke. Instead, there was a body and blood. God, there was so much blood.
“It’s too much. The power is too much. It’ll consume you,” My mind flashed to two weeks ago when we’d rescued Marcella Fields—the witchling child.
When we’d released her back into her mother’s care, her violet eyes had gone wide with horror as a prophecy poured free from her lips. A prophecy about me.
I hadn't given it much thought at the time. I was an untrained pyrokinetic with unsteady abilities, but my slips in control had always been minor. Nothing I worried over. But now—
The door to the basement creaked opened and I jumped, the sound deafening in the stillness of the room.
James Shields—my werewolf best friend— came in, followed closely by Inarus Ryholt.
What was Inarus still doing here?
We worked together at Sanborn Place, but given his history as one of the Human Alliance Corporation’s former henchmen, he wasn’t exactly welcome in the Compound.
I flicked a glance toward Declan, taking note of the tick in his jaw as he eyed Inarus up and down.
“What’s going on?” James asked.
Declan stepped forward, his navy shirt stretched tightly across his chest as he walked closer toward me.
“Get it together, Aria,” I said aloud, uncaring if whether anyone heard me.
Lines of strain bracketed Declan’s mouth, and there were stark shadows under his emerald green eyes. He ran a hand through his close-cropped, white-blonde hair, and when he flicked his gaze toward me, I saw worry in his eyes before he turned to the men at the door.
"I think we're going to need you," he said to Inarus. Declan's intensity and the silent communication passing between them indicated that this was clearly about me. And Declan didn’t look happy about it.
Inarus shoved his hands into his dark denim pockets and looked down at the heart, then at Irina’s body that lay more than twenty feet away. His dark eyebrows rose, and a flash of concern crossed his face as he walked toward me with measured steps. He stopped when he was only a handsbreadth away from my trembling body and hesitated, unsure of what to do next.
The vibration throughout my body increased, and my head started to pound. I rubbed at my temples to no avail, feeling the blackened blood that coated my hand smear across my face.
"You did this?" he asked. There was no accusation in his voice, just a simple question. I opened my mouth to answer. Obviously, I had. I wasn't an idiot. It was exactly what it looked like. I just had no idea how I’d done it.
I shook my head as if the movement might shake loose my memories. I was a pyrokinetic. I had fire. Whatever happened here looked like the work of a telekinetic—someone who can move objects with their mind. Something I wasn’t able to do.
The movement made me feel like someone was stabbing me through the eye with an ice pick. I reached my hands up and cupped my ears, as though I could hold the pressure in that was suddenly making my head feel like it was going to explode. Fuck.
“Aria?”
I gasped, my vision suddenly swimming. “I thought I was calling my fire,” I rasped.
Vampire flesh was extremely flammable. One little spark, and it would have been over. It would have been a merciful death, not that Irina had deserved one.
“I don’t know how—” The floor felt like it was sliding out from under me, and my knees buckled as Marcella’s words rang through my ears again. The power. It’s too much. You can’t control it. It’s too much. Anxiety filled me, followed quickly by a flood of panic and fear.
I stared up at Inarus, ignoring the pounding in my head and the vibrations taking over my body. “I ripped her heart out of her chest, and I never even touched her!” I heard the note of hysteria in my voice.
“Aria,” Declan came forward, the push of the mate bond working hard to breach the wall I’d erected around my heart.
His feelings were leaking through. Concern, doubt. I couldn’t deal with this right now.
“It’s all her fault. It’s all Viola’s fault. She did this to me.” I didn’t even think of Viola as my mother anymore. She was a stranger. A monster that worked for the Human Alliance Corporation, hell-bent on returning humans to what she considered their rightful place. If she could purge the world of paranormals she would. Unfortunately for me, having a pyrokinetic daughter didn’t fit into her plans.
A small part of me had wanted to believe that she still loved me. But the blank look on her face as I’d begged her, tears streaming down my face, to stop, to please make it stop . . . No, she couldn’t possibly love me.
My heart pounded in my chest and my blood roared in my ears. My breathing hitched as foreign power beneath the surface of my skin flooded every fiber of my body.
I clenched my fists against the stone floor.
“What did your mother do to you?” My mind recoiled at the thought of her as my mother, and I looked from Declan to Inarus to James. Who’d asked that? I didn’t even know. Everything was jumbled. I couldn’t think straight. All three of them came closer, crowding me. I leaned away, but my back was met by the cold stone wall behind me, leaving me nowhere to go.
I couldn't breathe. My throat constricted, and I fought the panic that whispered to me that the walls were closing in. I brought a hand to my throat as if somehow massaging the muscle would let air into my lungs.
Declan’s worry and fear mixed with my own in a twisted blend of panic that had me cursing the mate bond between us. I didn’t want to feel his emotions. I was having a hard enough time dealing with my own.
I scrambled back on my hands and feet and tried to sink into the cold stone wall at my back. “Go away,” I said. My voice trembled, and my limbs began to shake.
I needed space. I needed to breathe. Couldn't they see that I needed them to get the hell away?
“Aria, just tell us what’s going on. We can help.” James’ words were little more than a whisper to my ears. He reached out and touched my shoulder.
“Shit!” He jumped back and looked down at his hand. Inarus and Declan both looked at him with expressions of confusion on their faces. James held up his hand for them to see. It was red and sported angry looking welts.
My eyes widened. I’d burned him. I started to hyperventilate. I knew I was panicking but couldn’t do anything to stop my body’s natural responses. Terror consumed me as Marcella’s words again screamed in my head. It’s too much. You can’t control it.
“I’m in so much trouble,” I said, cursing.
I fought to remain aware as a wave of raw power crashed over me, responding to my fear with an arc of unchecked energy. “Back up!” I shouted, thrusting my arms out in front of me.
My world slowed, and time stood still. My hair blew behind my shoulders, and I watched in horror as Declan, James, and Inarus were thrown across the room and their bodies slammed into the opposite wall with an audible whack.
I watched it happen in slow motion but could do nothing to stop it.
“No!” I screamed.
I snapped out of the fugue-like state I’d been in and rushed forward. I fell to my knees beside them but didn’t touch anyone. I couldn’t risk causing more damage. Why had I done that? How had I done that?
“Shit, Ari. What the hell?” James said. He pulled himself into a sitting position as he rubbed his lower back. Declan had quickly rolled to his feet after colliding with the wall and now stood beside James. His vigilant stance said it all. He was Alpha, instinctively protecting a member of his Pack. From me.
Something broke inside of me. James was my best friend. I would die before I ever hurt him. And Declan was … I shook the thought away.
It hurt to realize that on some level, Declan saw me as a threat.
The floor cracked beneath my feet, and I stared in horror as the crack spider-webbed across the floor, splitting several feet of stone flooring.
“Aria, I need you to breathe,” Inarus had jumped to his feet and closed the space between us. His blue-grey eyes were ice hard, and I could see a storm rolling through his gaze. Suddenly, an invisible blanket fell over me. It wrapped me in a vice-like grip that made my heart race and panic consume me once more. Darkness spotted my vision. Dammit.
"Aria, breathe!" Inarus ordered. I sucked in a lungful of air. The fresh, earthy fragrance of rainstorms, a scent I'd come to associate with Inarus, assailed my senses, but the usual comfort I found in it did nothing to ease my growing trepidation.
He nodded in approval but his expression remained granite hard. "Again." I did as instructed, but the blanket of telekinetic power Inarus had wrapped around me was constricting.
Instinct had my body fighting through the fear of being trapped. Reason told me that Inarus was containing whatever was going on inside of me.
Apparently, reason and my body's instinctual responses were on different pages today.
“I need to purge,” I said through labored breaths.
"You can't. I can't contain you. You'll bring the whole building down. Focus on your breathing and get it together." It was an order, but fear wrapped around my throat. I felt my fire, as well as something else, respond.
&nb
sp; “Please.” I choked on the words and punched the concrete floor. I squeezed my eyes closed and gasped for breath. The floor shook. I sucked in as much air as my lungs could hold.
Another crack split beneath me, this one nearly half an inch wide and several feet long. I watched as it raced towards the wall of its own volition.
“Do something,” Declan growled.
“Aria. You need to calm down.”
“I’m trying!” I cried. Screaming at me wasn’t going to help matters.
Declan knelt beside me. He didn’t touch me, but he was so close I could feel the heat radiating off of him. “What do you need?”
I wanted to scream. I’d told them what I needed already. Why wasn’t anyone listening?
I looked up and, for a moment, felt myself sink into his emerald gaze. I leaned towards him before catching myself and jerking back. "I need to purge," I repeated.
“How do you purge?”
I opened my mouth to tell him but the words were stuck in my throat.
Tears leaked from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. I needed to get it together. I dug my nails into my palms and bit the inside of my cheek. The copper taste of blood filled my mouth. My vision blurred, and a surge of energy rolled through me again.
It wasn’t going away. I needed to get out of here or Inarus was going to be right. I’d bring the Compound down and kill everyone inside.
I almost laughed. If only Irina had known. She could have saved herself the trouble of trying to start a war between the Vampires and Shifters, in the hopes of destroying the Pack.
At this rate, I’d destroy the Pack for her.
“Help her purge,” Declan snarled.
“I can’t contain that much energy. You have no idea the magnitude of destruction she’s capable of.”
I heard Declan swear beside me before Inarus filled my vision and his hands gripped my shoulders.
“Water, get her to water,” James said. Sound grew distant and flames began to lick my fingers. It was getting worse, and it was only a matter of time before I lost control entirely.
Branded by Fire: A Paranormal Urban Fantasy Series (Blood & Magic Book 4) Page 1
