Fire Danger (2 page)

The green of the cat’s disdainful eyes was the last thing he saw as he closed the window. The cat jumped on the bed as he watched. Phoenix hovered for another second, watching Rachel stir before he turned and soared upwards.

It would have been better to ignore her distress call. It was not his business. Even with Challenge upon him, he should have let it be. But he could not. If Haures had been involved, the reason was unclear. The woman’s origin was also opaque, his sense that she had fire still dancing in his mind. It was a mystery, and he did not like those. Especially when it was time for Challenge.

He took to the air. His intention was to go above the clouds and float there, unseen, observing the Earth. It never failed to soothe him.

Except, perhaps, for tonight.

* * * * *

Rachel woke with a jerk, sweat beading her forehead and covering her body. Her hands clutched the covers. For a moment she thought someone was in the room with her, and she cried out before stopping herself.

Oh no. It happened again.

She glanced around wildly, letting the atmosphere seep into her mind. She heard little other than the ambient noise of late evening or early morning—she wasn’t sure which. She focused. Birds, large birds, soaring and flying, darting in and out of her path until they became a tangle of wings and feathers. They appeared almost human as they dove, knotting her hair with their huge orange-and-red feathers. Wolves howled, their canines bared, trotting menacingly back and forth, morphing into humans and then back to wolves again. Rachel shook her head. The dreams, so real, whirred in her mind until she finally allowed herself to relax, seeing only the familiar lines of her apartment.

She found the nightstand light and turned it on. The halogen lit the small bedroom, flooding her with welcome illumination. It had happened again. Damn it, it had happened again.

Were there any fires? Any scorch marks?

Her cat, JT, was at the foot of the bed, his posture watchful, intent. When she focused on him, he started licking the fur on his ruff as if that was what he had been doing the entire time.

The last thing she remembered was… She concentrated, the details slow to focus in her mind. She recalled nothing after getting on the subway, and had no idea of where she had gone. She didn’t remember coming home or going to bed. She didn’t remember anything after she’d gotten on BART. Rachel peered at the clock, the LED numbers telling her it was twelve fifty-three. Damn it. She had lost several hours. Again. Luckily, she was home, and unhurt.

Rachel eased herself from the bed. Had those been the clothes she’d gone to work in? She thought for a moment and decided that they were. No shoes, though. She flexed her limbs one at a time, checking for soreness. She sniffed the air, tense with anticipation. Smelling nothing but night and a faint stench of her own sweat, Rachel let out a breath.

The dreams struck her again, and she staggered. Large birds, more human than bird; vivid dreams of a half man, half bird swooping down to rescue her from dogs? In the dream they felt like wolves. Wolves in Oakland? That made as much sense as bird/human hybrids did, she thought ruefully. That was how dreams worked. Fire was another component of her dreams, and not always confined to her subconscious.

Odd dreams had been part of her psyche since she was ten years old. If she’d had these types of dreams before then, she didn’t remember then. Like most other things from her first ten years, they were a blur, the memories impossible to reach except in snippets.

Winged men. Wolves shifting. The dreams circled her vision, playing over and over again in her mind. Rachel cursed, and JT gave her a look of feline disdain.

No question her fugue states were getting worse. She focused, trying to remember something, anything, from her time on BART. All she could remember was wolves and men and the feeling that she had been saved by something she didn’t understand.

She prayed that nothing had happened at work, but she couldn’t be sure. One more blackout at the office, one more unexplained and unexplainable fire, and she was done for. Rachel wondered if that would be for the best.

JT jumped off the bed to stand in front of the window in the far corner of her bedroom. He meowed, then again, and a third time. It was a persistent, shrill meow, unlike his usual laconic sound. He continued until she finally rose and went to the window.

It was unlocked. She shook her head. Even in a second-floor apartment, Rachel made sure to keep all access points locked. It had been a habit of hers since before she could remember most things. She didn’t recall why.

A ripple went through her body, goose bumps rising on her skin, making all the hairs stand on end. With a flick of her wrist, she locked the window again, testing the pane to ensure that it was truly sealed.

Satisfied, JT began licking his paw and then rolled over in front of her feet, presenting his back to her. Rachel reached down and scratched the brown-striped fur until he purred.

She’d been poked and prodded, and nobody had found anything wrong, but the fugue states continued. She’d seen a therapist who seemed more interested in her family life than the blackouts. When they happened, she would be unaware of her surroundings for anywhere from under a minute to several hours, like last night. She didn’t normally associate the blackouts with flying man/birds, however. That was new. They were usually accompanied by something burning. Last night had been new in a variety of ways.

Her mail lay strewn across the large, round oak table by the door. It had been neglected the past few days. Maybe the task of sorting mail would soothe her. Unfortunately, the piles of paper did nothing to ease the images in her head.
Birds. Wolves. Fire. Fire. Fire.

JT meowed again, and this time she picked him up, his soft fur tickling her cheek. She scratched the cat behind the ears, luxuriating in his loud purr.

“What do you think, JT?” She wasn’t too fond of slobbery dogs, and cats were easier for apartment life.

Dogs.
Dogs.
Wolves. A sliver of the dream or her fugue state came back to her. When the first dog-wolf came trotting up, it had turned and snarled at her. Then the second one joined it and the third, all growling.

Rachel knew you were supposed to stand your ground in front of dogs and not show fear. She had a vague recollection, or perhaps it was a dream, that when they surrounded her, she had reacted by flinging her hands, and something had discharged from them. She thought she had smelled smoke. Then they had charged, their teeth bared, and she had run. They had loped after her, keeping three paces behind but not letting her out of their sight. Yelling for help had yielded nothing but the sound of her voice bouncing off the buildings in the deserted industrial area.

An image of the flying man came to her, in that foggy quality that dreams had. With her life in danger, she shouldn’t have noticed him, but she had. Even with wolves barking around her, she’d seen that he was handsome in a craggy way, with short brown hair and a heavily muscled but sleek body, tall and fit. He called to the deeply feminine part of her that had been too often neglected.

Rachel shuddered. The door was locked and chained, but the window had been open. A flying man could have gone out that way. The drop to the ground would have been no obstruction to someone with wings. She almost felt the sensation of the wind on her face, and for a moment it seemed as if she had, at one point in her life, flown without a craft.

She shook herself, sending mail scattering across the table. Flying people didn’t exist and neither did werewolves. It was a weird, bizarre, unexplainable
dream
. Either that or she was going crazy.

Sensing a tingle, she checked her palms. Had she been clenching her hands too tightly? Her palms were red in that blistered way of sunburns. There was an odd smell in the air, as if someone had struck matches and let them burn all the way down. She rubbed suddenly itchy hands together and stared at the mail.

Rachel wiped at a char mark on the table. It hadn’t been there a week ago, but she had woken up from one of her fugue states to find it etched into the table and a piece of junk mail smoldering on the floor. She had put it out, the acrid smell of the coated paper as well as her fear searing her. It was similar to events she’d had in the office and, once, in her car.

What in the hell was happening?

* * * * *

The first ripple of the earthquake was so slight that Rachel would have slept through it under normal circumstances. Quakes were a fact of life in San Francisco, and small ones happened all the time. If you panicked over each one, you wouldn’t last long.

JT flicked his ears at the slight ground movement but seemed as unconcerned as his owner. Rachel continued to sort through bills, noting that her shades swayed a little. She picked up the junk mail to toss into the recycling, and began to move to the kitchen area.

A loud rumble alerted her that she only had seconds to act. Dropping the junk mail to the floor, Rachel leaped for JT and scooped him into her arms before he could run.

A big earthquake was coming. A bad one too, if the rumble was any indication. Her building was relatively new and up to code, but there was never a way to tell for sure if a building would survive the big one.

She dumped the now-squirming cat into the soft-sided top-loading carrier that always stood open in the corner and zipped it up. If claws and teeth were any indication, escape was the only thing on JT’s mind.

The quake struck, and she tossed JT onto the queen-size bed, joining him there. She’d taken some earthquake safety courses when she moved out to San Francisco, and one of the things they said was that the bed was one of the safest places to be. It was better than a slamming door in a doorway or under flimsy furniture. It was better than outside, with falling glass and exposed, live electrical wires.

The headboard slammed into the wall, and the shades and ceiling lights swayed. The room moved—
bam bam bam
—a hard jolt shaking the walls. Rachel clung to the carrier, JT yowling loudly, while holding on to the side of the bed with her free hand. Her body warmed, just as her hands had earlier. It wasn’t the first time over the past few weeks that heat had flushed through her body. If she hadn’t been twenty-five, she might have thought she was going into menopause. It felt as if bees were just under her skin, buzzing to get out.

Rachel visually measured the distance between the bed and the door in case the walls started to buckle. The lights flickered but didn’t go out. Her skin felt loose and heavy, as if it were sloughing off her body. A quick glance outside showed that the outside lights were fine and…

Strangely, the streetlights weren’t swaying or flickering. Beyond the frantic beat of her heart, there were no sounds. Car alarms should be going
woop woop
by now in shrieking disharmony, triggered by the motion of the rolling earth.

The hissing of her feline drew Rachel’s attention back to the room, and she clicked her tongue in reassurance to JT, but her gaze lingered on the outside tableau. The room was still rolling and jerking. Rachel thought she saw…

Eyes.

There were eyes outside.

Red, glowing, very unfriendly eyes. Floating outside her window.

Rachel shrieked internally but showed no outward fear. Her skin burned, and she wanted to… What did she want to do? She wasn’t sure.

* * * * *

Even if Phoenix had been sleeping, the shrill mental scream would have pierced his consciousness. He caught a glimpse of rolling furniture and red eyes, and cursed. Not his image, not his mind. The woman. The—whatever she was. Rachel.

First the wolves and now the shadow people? The paranormal had a hard-on for this woman.

No time for a shirt. His shirts were well crafted, but even the best stitching got in the way in desperate times. Sweats and feathers would have to do.

A peek into the woman’s mind confirmed his suspicion. It could have been vampires, they had those red eyes—a trick of the light and the fluids that kept their biology going. But he was betting on the shadow people. He sent a quick mental blast to her, praying it would be enough until he got there.

“Hold on,”
he said into her mind, hoping she was strong enough to accept his mental signal.
“I am coming.”

What he got back was a sense of fear but also of heat, like she was ready to go up in flames. He hurried to the door.

* * * * *

“I am coming.”

As the room rolled, Rachel glanced outside several times and confirmed that nothing else was behaving the same way. This event was confined to her apartment.

The dream last night.

Red eyes and then dark mist, shadowy forms and a hiss.

“Open the door.”

“They” wanted her outside.

The dream last night. It hadn’t been a dream.

With that acceptance, for the first time since her fugue states started, the memory flooded back. The strange dogs/wolves, the winged man, the flight home. Although she had been unconscious, part of her mind had been linked to his, and she wasn’t sure if she was remembering or seeing through his eyes. There was the feeling of flight, the sensation of feathers on the wing and air currents passing them like strong wind in a storm, vivid in her mind.

Birds? Wolves? Red eyes outside?
This is crazy.

“Open the door. Open the window. Let us in.”

The room still rolled, and even JT had started to settle down, as the rumble showed no signs of abating.

“I am coming. Don’t go outside.”
It was the man’s voice, urgent, rushed and closer.

Was this earthquake real? Or was it in her mind? JT was feeling it, so it was somehow physically manifesting, but how? Her skin continued to heat and her forearms developed red streaks. Something deep within her stirred, an animal clawing to get out.

“Don’t open the door. Don’t open the window. Don’t go outside. I am almost there.”
In the madness, the familiarity of the man’s voice reassured her.