Fire Danger (8 page)

Behind them the noise of the wharf faded as they moved into the hills of the city on their way to the parking space.

To their left, in a small alley near their car, there was a sound. That was the only warning.

“Phoenix,” the voice said.

Phoenix swiveled toward the alley and his wings appeared. He barely staggered when their weight and feathers manifested on his body, poking through the expensive blue shirt. He swung her behind him, under the orange-and-red wings, gripping her hips with his hands. His shirt had slits, like panels, clearly designed to accommodate his intermittent wings. In a moment his wings had closed over her shoulders, draping down her back to right below her butt, covering her in feathers and tendons.

She had never thought wings would be warm, but these were. She wanted to stroke the tendons and feel the feathers to see if they were as soft as they looked, or if they were spiky and sharp like the points that went into the ligaments.

The alley, similar to the one Phoenix had found her in a few days ago, was darker than the dimming street around them. She strained to see the being in front of them, but the faint light as well as his wings surrounding her made details impossible.

“Haures,” he acknowledged. His body was tense against hers. His wings quivered slightly. “What do you want?”

He had no fear in him. He seemed wary, his mental touch that of curiosity.

“Now, now, old friend. I wanted to see your mortal.” The word
mortal
did not sound like a compliment.

Although people were moving outside the alley, not one of them checked inside it. Above them the sky was almost fully dark, and streetlights winked on one by one. It was just like with the wolves. Rachel wondered how much of her life had been an illusion, with all manner of beings and beasties moving around her while she’d been living her life unaware.

“What the hell do you want?”

“ I’ve been waiting for you, Elemental.”

The voice was female, she decided, although not like any woman she knew. She recalled that Phoenix had told her Haures was female. Her voice had the unmistakable edge of the feminine, but there was a flat quality to it, with neither music nor lilt. Rachel could only see shapes in the dim light, and all she could make out was the other woman’s outline. She was tall like Rachel, but unlike Rachel had little curve to her almost elongated body. She seemed to have a faint red glow, like the corona around the sun at a full eclipse.

“We are a lot of things, Haures, but friends was never one of them.”

The being sighed and moved a step closer. She was still wreathed in shadows, but red danced across her skin. The Demonos’s hair appeared blonde and then red. Rachel had thought all demons had wings but did not see any stretched out behind this woman.

“I like you, Phoenix, and I am going to offer you a deal,” Haures finally said. “Stay clear. Don’t interfere, don’t try and help the humans. It is time to finish what we started in World War II. This time we will win completely. Just let…it…happen. I promise I’ll use my influence once we have won to see that your companion survives.”

Phoenix had started shaking his head almost as soon as the other being started talking. “You know I can’t do that. None of us can. We are Elementals.”

“You will lose. It is destined. You lost before and you will lose again. This time it will be over once and for all.”

Rachel shivered at the flat certainty of the words. There was so much evil in the world; it seemed as if it would inevitably win. Why did Rachel think that good always triumphed? Even if she was an Ifrit, what could she do to stop this?

Haures stepped forward, and Rachel’s impression of a woman was solidified into certainty. She was humanoid but not human, female but not at all feminine. She was female in an avenging-goddess sense, in the Kali sort of way. Her eyes were huge in her head and showed no white. Her skin was fair almost to the point of being albino. Cold red fire crackled over her skin in small jets, emerging from her fingertips and then playing down her hands. It looked alive, reminding Rachel of a pilot light.

She looked at Rachel for a long, long time, clearly assessing, weighing, pondering and then dismissing.

Haures turned back to Phoenix. “Her heritage will not help you, Phoenix. She is still part mortal and she is an Ifrit. They rarely get involved.”

“There is always free will,”
Phoenix said. “No deal, Haures. Not this time, not ever. It is the same answer I have always given, and the same answer I will always give.”

A part of Rachel was fascinated by the play of flame along Haures’s body. It surrounded her, running over her arms and up her neck to her head, an outline of red and orange, the fire equivalent of a police chalk body. What would it be like to have the fire at your fingertips and be able to control it? Rachel wanted to learn. She
would
learn.

Haures made a mock sigh, shrugging her thin shoulders as if in dismay. She would have been beautiful if the fire didn’t dance across her skin, and if her eyes had been remotely human. “Watch your back, Elemental,” she hissed. “We will see you when this is over. Perhaps then we can finish our discussion.”

With a flick of her wrist, Haures dipped into the shadows and vanished.

Rachel waited until she was sure Haures was gone before breathing out a sigh of relief. Phoenix’s wings vanished as quickly as they had come, but he remained motionless. She missed the warmth of feathers, and a brief flash of what they would be like draped over her body differently darted through her. The air seemed to grow dense and then clear. People were now peering into the alley, mostly rushing by, but some examining it with curiosity.

A woman checked Phoenix out with the practiced, knowing smile of a flirt. The woman showed no interest in why they were in the alley and didn’t seem to feel any psychic residue clouding the scene. After a moment she moved on.

The San Francisco skyline loomed over the buildings of the alley, with the Transamerica Pyramid dominating the view. Seeing it had always made her feel like something bigger than herself. Now it just seemed to mock her as all too human.

Rachel shuddered, and Phoenix put his arm around her, drawing her close. The mental noise started again, the din of human thoughts pounding at her. She heard other things too, beings unfamiliar to her, their thoughts foreign. The darker ones pierced through her shields, with thoughts of muggings and other human atrocities.

There were deeper thoughts under those of the humans. The ones of beings who had lived for her until recently only in stories. There were so many, so many. They seemed to be everywhere, as pervasive as the mortals. Mortals who, from what she had seen so far, seemed to exist, at least in the minds of the paranormals, one step below them on the food chain.

Phoenix steered her toward the edge of the alley. “Come. Let’s get you home.”

Chapter Six

The drive back to the hillside house was wreathed in the sort of silence that practically cut the air. Rachel was bursting with questions. Phoenix could see it in the fidgeting and frequent looks his way, but he kept silent. The time was best spent trying to figure out how to tell her and what to tell her. The truth, or a variant? How much could he tell her without further putting her life at risk? What should he tell her? There were no easy answers.

Phoenix said nothing until they were parked and inside. Once there, he strode to the living room and motioned her to sit on the couch.

He wanted to enclose her in his arms and comfort her with his body. He wanted much more than that, judging from the quickening of his heartbeat. She looked at him and then away. Phoenix knew that distance was a better option, but the rest of him disagreed.

His cock hardened again, begging him to plunge into her warm body. Her lithe form was so lush, so right for his hands. It would feel so good to break his long sexual fast inside her.

“It’s all around fire,” she said, and her voice shook a little, although he could feel her strain to keep it level. “You, me, Haures. Is that the way the world ends?”

He could not stay away. Phoenix sat next to her and let his hand move over her arm, settling on her forearm, her skin warm under his.

She smelled of fire too, as if it was smoldering inside her, as well as the unmistakable tang of woman.

He studied her and she met his eyes unflinchingly, her questions clear in their depths and the creases in her forehead. She said nothing, though, just waited.

“Fire calls to fire, Rachel. Haures and I are two sides of the coin, always opposing each other at the time of Challenge. Where you fit in, I am not sure. But you are part of this. Each element has affinity for its own kind, which explains how you reached me. You have power. I have felt it, but I haven’t figured out more than that.”

“My parents?” she asked.

“I don’t know. There are paranormals around and the equivalent number of offspring. None frighten the Demonos like you have. None have made the wolves, the shadow people and the Demonos want to take them out of the game, until now. The dragons would scare her—they scare me—but they haven’t been seen in centuries.”
Thankfully.

She swallowed. “Phoenix, this is new to me. I was tossed out of my foster home at eighteen, but I should have left before then. I wasn’t wanted and I knew it. The minute the state stopped paying for me I was out on my ass. They didn’t care where I went, only that I was gone. They never liked me, but I don’t know why. I tried to be good, to stay out of their way and not make waves, but it didn’t matter. I’ve had few friends. The guys who asked me out never went beyond a couple of dates. My jobs have been entry level and I haven’t advanced up the ladder, despite a college education. Grocery store and department store workers are more often than not rude to me.”

He put his hand in hers and gripped, pulsing his palm against hers in what he hoped was reassurance. “Did you ever consider why?”

She shrugged, the gesture jerky. “It’s easy to think that I was inherently unlikable. I never thought maybe it was because I had fire in me.”

“You are different, and the mortals can sense it and hate you for it. Fear you for it.”

“Maybe.”

He carefully shielded his mind from her. He hoped she understood he wasn’t trying to be unkind. He was trying to protect her.

“I could drown in his eyes,”
he heard her say, and he chuckled. Rachel flushed. “That is still taking some getting used to.”

“Yes.” His fingers laced through hers and his grip firmed, squeezing gently. He kissed her, his lips grazing hers, and pulled her against him, tucking her head against his shoulder.

He could hear his heartbeat, slow and steady, in her mind. She radiated uncertainty, fear.

“It’s crazy to let someone see who I am,” she said. “You’re going to see my ugly side and never want to know me again.”

“I am not those people. I am not one of your mortals to be so easily scared by a few dark secrets. I have more than my share.”

She sighed and relaxed a little bit more. The scent of fear and adrenaline was acrid in his nostrils. A part of him that hadn’t felt anything for a long time surged to life.

“I want to know,” she said. “I can feel something shifting inside me, like a dam breaking. I don’t understand who or what happened, but I want to know.”

He swallowed, cupping her face in his hands. “Let me in and let me see if I can discover what you really are.”

Her reluctance was plain in a fearful look in her eyes. He hated that she wasn’t meeting his gaze. He hated that she was afraid. But there was no way to avoid the process. They needed to do this.

“Okay.” Her voice was tremulous. When she met his gaze, to his relief there was strength lurking in the blue depths.

He took both her hands in his. Then he opened his mind to hers all the way, leaving himself bare to her. Her shields went down, the small ones she had erected only recently, and the deeper, instinctive ones she had carefully locked around her innermost self.

Images. Her parents at the water. He saw the world through Rachel’s child eyes, and he worked on orienting himself. That memory was only a fragment, and he went deeper, searching her mind for the answers there.

Dark memories. Images of petty crimes. Stealing a candy bar as a child. Taking toilet paper from her employer when she was so low on money she didn’t know how she was going to eat after she had fed JT. Deep sexual needs, hard, fast, more than her partners could give her. A horrifying loneliness, soul deep, when she realized that nobody loved her. Nobody but the cat she had rescued from death in a dumpster, anyway.

Before he could think, he mind spoke.
“You are not alone anymore.”

She shuddered.

He went deeper. There it was. A thread, something not human. Phoenix followed it. He sensed something deeply buried, a power banked that had not yet been revealed. It licked at him like flames, like his own ability to manipulate fire under certain circumstances, but different. Very different. This was focused, somehow feminine. There was no question her gift came from the maternal side.

Images. Her mother bathed in the flames from a campfire, out in the Sierra Nevadas. Her father enjoying the view of his woman, seeing but not seeing the glow of the red fire.

Images. Lightning sparking and touching down near them, not as close as it seemed but feeling close enough to touch. Her mother laughing while her father looked on with fear, watching her reach out to the energy.

Images. A small Rachel looking up at a furious father, who was holding a scorched teddy bear.

Images. A dream this time, Rachel tossing and turning in a stormy night, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of revenge on all the children who mocked and pointed at her. Of the foster family who only took her in because of the money, and made sure she knew that every meal she ate was begrudged. The dream took the form of the movie
Carrie
, with Rachel sending fire down the hallways and corridors of the school and into the master bedroom at home, setting everyone ablaze.

That fateful night. A ten-year-old Rachel running from the car as it erupted in flames. There was a large…something…behind them, and it spat fire at them.

Memory jumbled and she was away from the burning car, her overnight bag in one clammy hand. Inside she could see the skeletons of her immolated parents. A big winged figure, like a page from the
Arabian Nights
, was hovering out of sight of another, smaller one. She wasn’t sure how he managed to be unseen, but he did. The large person spared her a look, and she heard,
“Run, Rachel, run. Now, granddaughter.”

Her feet were moving before she was aware of it. In the distance there were sirens, their sounds indicating they were getting closer. Someone must have seen the fire. She could stay, she could go back…maybe her parents were still alive…

“They are not. Run.”

It was the only thing to do. Tears on her cheeks, Rachel had run. As she did so a blanket descended over her mind, something that protected her even while it took her memories.

She came out of it with a cry, still clinging to Phoenix.

* * * * *

Rachel was damp with sweat, and released one of his hands to wipe her forehead. His eyes were closed, as was his mind, and he was mouthing words, their meaning unclear.

Memories continued to crowd her, but they were distant, like a far-off dream. They were fading and hard to get to, more like sepia-toned photographs than actual memories. Without opening his eyes, Phoenix tugged her until she went into his lap. His arms closed over her. She burrowed against him, allowing the skin contact to soothe her.

Finally, he opened his eyes. His expression held understanding but no fear, and a kind of respect. His eyes were warm and liquid brown, their depths seeming to say, “I understand.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly the images started again. This time, they weren’t hers.

There was a Phoenix much the same as he was now, except decorated with war paint and smeared with gore and bile of other men’s bodies. He was thinner and his shoulders far less massive. By the look of him, she decided this was before his change to an Elemental. He was chanting a cry of some sort, swinging a huge ax that looked as if it could dismember half the universe with one blow. He didn’t look that different than he did now. He swung his ax, killing all around him. She watched as later that night he stood on the side of a volcano, shaking his head as a handsome light-skinned Egyptian man and woman stood in front of him, explaining his new station. It didn’t seem that this warrior had had a choice in what he became.

The Phoenix origin story
, she thought wryly. Far different than the comics.

A shift, the image fading to be replaced by a brown and dirty city, small by today’s standards, with dim illumination and people bustling. They were dressed in archaic fashions that she didn’t recognize. There was a pall in the air, a cloud of what she would call smog if this were modern times. The smog dimmed the sun, the rays peeking out through streaks of pale brown.

There was a river, the banks of which had trash on them. The harbor was clear, however, with many ships going in and out of a major shipway. The shape of the port and the river were familiar in a travelogue way.
“London?”

“Yes.”

Rachel searched her memory for her history lessons, trying to remember what time frame this would be. She didn’t know architecture well enough to place it accurately.

“Fourteenth century.”

With a small shudder, Rachel found the reference. London in the fourteenth century had been struck by bubonic plague, one of many cities to succumb to…

“The Black Death.”

Things happened as if in stop motion. Mongol armies tossed their infected corpses into their warring Italian foes, who fled, taking the plague with them to Italy. It then spread into France and other ports north, including London.

Phoenix and three others she didn’t recognize watched helplessly from the sky as the plague ships landed at port after port, spreading the disease. It spread throughout Europe, taking the continent down like Asia shortly before that.
“You caused it?”

“The Demonos caused it. Challenge happens simultaneously; we all fight at the same time. In this case all four of us failed, making a final Challenge unnecessary. We lost, and therefore the humans paid.”

Rachel studied him.
“If only one of you loses then what happens?”

“We all fight again. It is the way of Challenge. If we all win or we all lose, then there is nothing further until the next time, but if only one loses then we all fight again. If we win that final battle then all is won, but if we lose that one, as we did in the Second World War, then we have lost.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“It is the way of Challenge.”

Even in telepathy, his voice was flat. She filed that away for another time, the bubbling questions put aside. The image of the Black Death still danced in front of her. Over one third of London’s population sickened. Their skin blistered and blackened and corpses littered the streets, continuing to spread the disease, families torn apart. People killed animals out of fear, not realizing they kept at bay the rats that had the fleas that spread the disease. She watched as both continents lost so much of their population that it would take over a century to recover from the devastation.
“This was a Challenge?”

“Yes.”

She continued to watch, seeing the plague sweep the continents until it settled down. Always there were Phoenix and the other Elementals, hovering, watching. Then there were the Demonos, crowing their delight as human populations were decimated, leaving behind a shattered populace.

It appeared to be happening in fast motion, like a movie on an old-style projector. When Challenge was finally over and the Demonos disappeared, Phoenix gave a start and took to the air. His flight took him to the top of Mount Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Andes. Phoenix just sat, unmoving, for an indeterminate length of time.

Active magma and licks of flame bubbled in the caldera deep inside the mountain. The color was bright red, similar to the red of his wings.

It was time to go to the fire.

He didn’t hesitate. He only shrugged, rose to his feet and soared upwards. Higher and higher he flew and then, with a sudden, swift bank, turned until he was headed straight for the lava. Rachel cringed as he got closer and closer, the heat buffeting his body. The noise of the active magma was similar to a slow-boiling pot of fudge—
bloop, bloop
. It would have been beautiful if it weren’t so deadly.

If it hurt, she could not feel that emotion inside him. Perhaps after several times the pain was no longer an issue.

“Perhaps there are some things you’re better off not knowing.”