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Authors: Erin Kellison

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal

Fire Kissed (21 page)

BOOK: Fire Kissed
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A taxi circled around from the back of the house, by Jack’s count the fourth vehicle to leave. None arrived, so this felt like a slow exodus, a reorganization based on an upset.
It was late, Shadow above and below, like black sky on water. This was the long wait before lines were drawn. And then blood.
The thick smell of smoke meant Shaw was near, though Jacques couldn’t see the fire. He had to be here, just hidden from view within Shadow. Leaves and brush crackled as wolves surrounded him, ears pinned, jaws ready, growls rolling. Close.
“A game?” Jacques called. The wolves awaited the command of their alpha, the mage. Jacques knew he couldn’t take them all, unarmed as he was, but this was worth the risk. A different approach. A parley. Just the two of them.
Shaw stepped out of Shadow, a woodsman with wiry branches for hair, pebbles for teeth, sooty holes for nostrils. He was earthen with his magic, black-eyed.
Jacques held up a cloth bundle that contained the game pieces.
“Aye,” the woodsman told him. Shadow receded and Jacques found himself one step from the fire. The woods were the mage’s home, unwarded by stones but well protected by the beasts who lived with him. The Order stayed clear of this place—too much like Twilight—but Jacques had ventured in, played for and won his life.
The stakes were higher this time.
Shaw and Jacques sat on the ground, and the woodsman cleared a space of loose earth, twigs, and bugs with his hand. The dirt smelled good. Jacques laid out the cloth along with the carved bone pieces. Picked them up, tossed them in the air, caught all but one on the back of his hand, tallied. Shaw followed, catching all of them, and so the game went until Jacques was losing by half.
“And here I’d hoped to cheat you out of battle tomorrow,” he told him. Jack had been an idealist then.
If just one mage could see reason. If just one would hear terms and agree to the strictures set out by The Order for peace, then maybe there’d be hope no blood need dampen the earth come dawn. If just one would say no. Shaw was the wildest of them all, and stayed out of the politicking and schemes of the clans. He could choose to live in his woods.
“Shadow will gather me up with the rest when it’s time,” Shaw said, “whether you win this game or not.”
Would Shadow take Kaye as well when the time came? Had it already taken her?
He shook at the futility of it all. The only thing that had changed was that Shadow had taken him.
Kaye’s fatigue seemed to really concern Ferro, but it took actual vomit for him to back a step away from her. She had practice bringing up bile from her drinking days and put the skill to good use now.
Not so sexy tonight. Plus, he’d had her already. And he would again soon; she wouldn’t lie to herself about that. But Ferro could wait. He’d have to wait.
Kaye had snagged a bottle of Ferro’s Black Moll, a sharp knife, and a wineglass. Then she waited in the dark, her heart beating in time to the seconds as they passed. Waited, listening to the whispers.
... wanna play ... wanna play ... wanna play ...
Kaye’s private rooms had once belonged to Ferro’s dead wife, Penelope. The apartment needed renovation but was lovely in its outdated way. She’d been partial to mellow golds and golden greens, colors that washed out Kaye, literally and figuratively. But with the lights off and Shadow rising, the shimmer and dramatic stretches of fabric reminded her of trees, magical ones that swayed and moved and were inhabited by whispering fae.
Ferro came by again to “check on her.” How like a man.
She communicated in no uncertain terms that she was not available.
The hours stretched; whispers rose.
... not yet ... not yet ... not yet ...
And still she waited.
Kaye knew Sigmund Lakatos was smart. She just hoped he wasn’t clumsy. Shadow confused wraith senses, and if he kept to the darkest bits, he might have a chance. Every mage child learned to navigate the pitch and cling of magic. But he’d lived most of his life in the near absence of Shadow. Had he figured out its secrets later in life? Had he practiced?
She heard someone outside the door.
She braced, though her heart galloped.
No ... someone just passing by.
This was insane. She should have found a way to sneak out. She hated waiting; it gave her too much time to think.
Seconds and minutes collected. Kaye wondered about Bastian, how he must hate her and if he’d go to Segue and if they’d ever really talk again. And if the gaping hole in her chest would ever stop aching. But she didn’t regret loving him, and didn’t regret the ten years of Hell that it took for him to find her, and didn’t even regret the wraith attack that destroyed her life at fifteen. All of it had prepared her for this. And Bastian had taught her the conviction that would see her through. This was her life. She was needed here. She could make something better here.
She thought of Michael, who’d saved her so long ago, and who’d been wrong about what to do and where she belonged. And she willed strength to the angel now sunk in darkness below the house. If she could just hold out a few more days ...
It was past three
AM
when her door opened, and Sigmund Lakatos entered, without stealth, as if he lived there. “I’m sorry, my lady, to have kept you up so late. I had to wait until the house was still.”
Kaye hurried across the room to him, a question burning. “Do others know you can get past wards?”
“If others knew, I wouldn’t be standing here.”
“No, you would not.” Kaye’s head pounded at what came next. She was in the position of power, yet was agitated. She wrung her hands as she whispered, “We’d better get to it, then.”
“My lady.”
Were there special words for taking on vassals? She didn’t know.
“So”—Kaye swallowed hard—“I’ll arrange a settlement and purchase a residence for your bloodline. In the event of war, I will arrange with Grey for you to stay here, within his wards, for protection. And I’ll see to it that the name Lakatos is honored. Your quarrels will be mine, our fortunes entwined.”
“I thank you for your generosity,” Sigmund said. “Lakatos is your servant.”
Kaye turned to locate the wineglass, but Sigmund stilled her.
“I believe it is customary that you stipulate a sixty percent tithe on anything my family earns through labor or investment.”
“Sixty percent!” Kaye whispered. But she did kind of remember that the families within the great Houses gave a portion of their earnings. “That’s robbery.”
“It’s tradition.”
Well.
“You keep your money,” she told him. “I only want loyalty.”
“Again, you are very generous.” Sigmund bowed. “You have my loyalty, my life, my Shadow.” He smiled a bit. “Your quarrels are mine, our fortunes entwined.”
Kaye made a face. “I rhymed there, didn’t I?”
He shrugged. “I liked it, though.”
“My first time.”
“You don’t say.”
“So now we seal the deal.” She led him to a table. Poured the Moll into the wineglass, then lifted the knife. “Archaic,” she muttered, then drew the blade across her palm. He did the same as she let her blood drip into the glass. Then she staunched the flow with cloths she’d set aside for the purpose. Drops fell from his palm as well.
Shadow and blood swirled in the glass though no mortal physics had encouraged the minivortex. The words were formal, but this was binding. Magic. This made them part of a whole.
She took a deep breath, reminding herself that she was Brand, and drank deeply from the glass. It roared down her throat and dispersed, hot and cold at the same time, into her system.
Sigmund solemnly did the same. When he put it down on the table, he said. “Lakatos is yours.”
Great. “Can you make me a key?”
He jerked slightly in surprise. Then immediately recovered. “Certainly, my lady. What do you want it to open?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
He frowned a moment. “Ah. Of course.” He said it like he’d known there’d be a catch to her sudden acceptance of his family. “You’re asking for a skeleton key.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“There is.”
“And do you know how to make one?”
“Yes.”
He seemed disturbed, but Kaye couldn’t do anything about that. The problem was much larger than Sigmund or her. And this was the only way she could think of to get to the angel. Once upon a time, ten years ago, she’d stolen keys. Every decision she made would be different now.
“I need it right away. How long will it take you?”
The diffused light made him look pale and older. “Can you meet me tomorrow afternoon? Where we first met? I’ll be bringing my son; the two of us together can’t make it into your rooms here.”
Kaye didn’t think Ferro would leave her alone tomorrow night anyway. “In the sculpture garden.”
“Yes. Come whenever you can. We’ll be waiting.” He turned to leave, and though Kaye was terrified of discovery, she secretly wanted him to stay. He was a nice old man. He made her feel ... not so alone. If he sat by her bedside, she might even be able to sleep. He was of Brand House now, that’s what this feeling was. And she needed that: Twenty-four hours in Grey’s home and she was already exhausted and heartsick. Not so strong.
“A question,” he said, turning. “So I don’t mistake anything.”
“Ask.” Though she didn’t know what was safe to tell him.
“Why is your old bodyguard waiting across the street, watching the house, and not inside with you here?”
A flame burst within her. She resisted the urge to dart to the window. To fling herself across the lawns and sob in Bastian’s arms.
He had
stayed.
“Is he still loyal to Brand?” Sigmund asked.
The inner flames crackled, feeding her better than water and food and sleep and comfort. She felt herself growing strong again.
Her throat clogged with feeling. Was Bastian loyal to Brand? “Apparently so.”
Chapter 10
Work was all that was left until they could meet. Eleven tours, a millennia of service, and Jack could barely get through the sixty seconds that comprised a minute. And the sixty of those that made an hour. And so on and so forth—the prospect making his teeth clench and his nerves snap. Shadow might be insanity, but the mortal world was no different. And The Order? Might as well be Hell. There was no place left for him.
Work. Urlich was the only lead he had. The rest would have to wait for Kaye.
Noon. Two hours from now. One hundred twenty minutes. Seventy-two hundred seconds.
Work.
The Gregory Building was a stately block of brick and plaster left over from the last century. It was a quiet building, expensive, its apartments primarily let by foreign dignitaries and businessmen visiting the D.C. area. Often the apartments remained empty, at the ready, but hushed.
Jack entered through the tall double doors, immediately turning the security cameras away, a critical measure for angels in these modern times; leave no record of The Order behind. The lobby was black and gray marble, cold. Shadow clung to the corners like translucent cobwebs.
A security guard stood sentry by the elevator. No weapon was visible, but Jack knew he had one just inside his jacket. Jack distracted the guard’s mind as he approached, then cracked his skull against the wall.
This was what he was good at. This was what he was on Earth to do.
One hour, fifty-nine minutes before he could see Kaye and demand an explanation.
Jack punched the button for the elevator.
Another guard stepped out from behind a concealed counter, rifle raised.
Jack flicked a hand his way, yanked hard on the man’s consciousness, and the guard slumped into oblivion.
How many breaths did he have to take until then?
The twenty-sixth floor was also guarded, this time with semiautomatic rifles.
As Jack advanced, he was tempted to turn the guards on each other. Oh, how he wanted to, but instead blanked their minds, rendering them both unconscious as well.
He wasn’t supposed to meddle with humankind, but there was no use warning Urlich he was there.
Urlich, the human who’d cut a deal with the mage Houses, the deal that Kaye’s client Mr. Ballogh had wanted to mirror.
The Order’s intelligence had finally located and identified this waste of a man. Wealthy, connected, the mastermind behind a carefully planned system of human trafficking. Urlich didn’t value human life, which made him a perfect candidate for a mage deal. He’d established a government of his own that didn’t recognize political boundaries or laws. His was an underworld organization, a world unto himself, with channels for commerce, transport, and access to arms.
The mage-Urlich deal was actually quite inspired: Once the dominant governments toppled, another was already in place, entrenched and functional. Global markets would turn to black markets. And humanity, desperate to survive, would buy in, therefore strengthening the dominion of the Houses.
This was no Shadow-based claim to power; this was a multilayered, systemic undermining. Coupled with the flow of Shadow, the Houses really couldn’t lose.
Jack stalked through Urlich’s large suite looking for his prey. He could sense him just ahead by the muck of his thoughts.
There.
Jack kicked in a door. Urlich, half-dressed, was mid-grunt, mounted on a woman, beads of sweat on his forehead. The woman’s mind was fuzzed by drugs. She’d have to be stoned to have sex with that monster.
Urlich stopped puffing and drew out his prick, pushed the woman out of the way. Jack’s death was on his mind.
Once upon a time, Jack would have carefully used reason and patience to compel answers. He would have kept himself out of reach of the atrocities littering Urlich’s mind. But a little bit of Shadow had infiltrated Jack’s heart, and the burn on his arm—all Kaye, of course—put him in a bad mood.
Which was why he had his hand around Urlich’s throat. He used his angel’s strength to lift the man and braced his body on the bedroom wall.
The man was lizard lean, with sparse black hair and old pockmarks. Big nose. He didn’t look the least bit afraid.
The woman limped away, oblivious to her nudity. No need to wipe her mind; she was doing that herself.
“I’m going to ask you some questions,” Jack said to Urlich, whose face was going purple. “And you’re going to answer me. I can tell when you lie, so don’t even try.”
Jack let go and Urlich fell to the floor. Urlich gasped and sputtered for a moment. He brought his head up only when several soldiers burst through the door behind Jack.
Kill him,
Urlich thought, while he still choked on sound.
Jack didn’t even turn as he pushed into the soldiers’ minds and ripped out the violence. They staggered back, collapsing, eyes rolling up.
“Mage,” Urlich said, raspy. “I have protection, eh, from your Mr. Grey.”
How cute. This soon-to-be devil thought Jack’s strength and abilities came from Shadow. Well, Shadow did have something to do with it.
One hour, forty-seven minutes. Kaye.
Jack took the lid off his light. Let whatever divinity Kaye had left behind unfold within him. Burn into his cells, his bones, his sight. And once again he was an avenging angel of old, terrible in beauty, swift in strike. His expansive soul filled the room with his fury. The dazzling blaze narrowed Urlich’s pupils to black specks.
Urlich finally trembled, raising a hand to protect himself or to beg.
“I’m no mage,” Jack said. “I am of Order, and I’m here to destroy you.”
 
 
“Can’t very well travel with her like this,” came a man’s harsh whisper, carried on the shallow drifts of Shadow down the hallway outside Kaye’s cracked bedroom door.
Kaye hesitated, her bag and scarf in hand. Bastian might be waiting for her even now.
Bastian.
Her heart had been battering her inside since waking.
A woman murmured in response, but Kaye couldn’t make out her words.
“You can’t be serious,” the man whispered back.
Kaye really had to go, but instinct told her to investigate. A fast check. Better to see how the house was run and who lived there than go on in ignorance.
She looked both ways down the hallway—red carpet, wide moldings—and then traveled the passage to her right until she turned into a narrow gabled corridor, less elaborate in decoration, but still in keeping with the richness of the house. At the end of the hallway stood Arman Maya, the mage she’d unseated at the Council. And he was whispering to Ferro’s secretary, Camilla.
“Mr. Grey says you can’t stay here any longer,” Camilla was saying.
“She can’t be moved—” Arman Maya broke off when he spotted Kaye.
“Who can’t be moved?” Kaye asked, approaching.
Camilla was undeterred. “Might I suggest a hospital? You have his message.” The secretary turned to leave. Upon passing, she said, “Ms. Brand.”
Kaye didn’t answer. She couldn’t risk shifting her gaze from Arman, who looked ready for violence.
This meeting was good. If he wanted to fight her, now was the time. She was still feeling a little iffy, but she could take this guy. And she’d make quick work of it. Didn’t matter that she didn’t remember how his House used Shadow.
Kaye was prepping to warn him in no uncertain terms not to cross her—that she’d burn him like lightning—when someone screamed from inside the room.
“Shana!” Arman opened the door in a blur of panic.
Kaye sputtered with her threats as she looked after him.
Inside the room was a girl, a starved-looking teenager, and she was struggling on the floor against an unseen adversary. She had black, scraggly hair, which accented her pallor. The room smelled of sweat and bad breath. The girl rasped as she craned her head away from whatever was attacking her. In the brightly lit room, no danger was apparent. Mentally ill?
Arman tried to comfort her, but the girl fought him too.
“It’s only in your head,” he was saying. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing here. Just Dad.”
The girl clawed the air, thrashed, thumped her hips up and down.
“Honey, it’s just me.” He tried to stroke her hair. “These are
your
illusions. Not real.”
Damn it. Now she had to like Arman, a father who was so tender.
But she didn’t have to show it. “What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Go away.”
He reached to slam the door shut in Kaye’s face, but she stopped it with a palm, dropped her purse and scarf to push the door open again, and entered.
“It’s on me!” the girl screamed. “Shadow!”
“Nothing’s on you, honey,” Arman said. “I swear there’s no Shadow in here.”
Kaye knew there was Shadow everywhere, especially in this house. The room might be filled with light, but it wasn’t angelic light, which was the only kind that could push Shadow back. All light was not created equal; thinking that it was equal was like believing shadow and Shadow were the same. And just as with anything else, light’s quality varied. So simple a concept, yet even a Council member didn’t understand.
Kaye lifted her palm, Shadowfire in hand, the better to
really
see.
Arman gave a primal, defensive shout as he grabbed the girl roughly and dragged her away from Kaye. His torso hulked over his child in protection.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Kaye muttered. “At least not yet.”
Fire was a different kind of light too, and it was good stuff, like gold—ageless and true. Kaye crouched to brandish the flame about, and sure enough, a faint outline of something skittered back, but she couldn’t make out what.
Shadow was indeed everywhere. The room was webbed with the stuff.
“Illusion!” Arman spat.
Kaye looked up at him. “Not my thing.”
She slowly moved forward, made her intention clear that she was going to approach the girl. Arman tensed protectively again, but then relaxed his grip so Kaye could bring her fire close.
A little gremlin cringed into sight, its planes and contours going hyper-black next to Kaye’s fire. He had his skinny fingers on the girl, but like a squirrel, the creature went from sudden stillness to a flash of movement as he fled into obscurity.
There! She’d seen it. The fae
could
cross into the world.
“What was that?” Arman demanded.
The girl began weeping, turning against her father’s chest. He gathered her close to him again.
“I don’t know.” The thing reminded her of an intelligent rat. “My guess is it was a pest taking advantage of her weakness.”
It made sense, though. If Shadow could cross, more and more of it by the minute, then its creatures would find a way as well, even the least of them, like the gremlin. Nosing through fissures, sneaking through gaps in the veil—the pests would be the first to come. To nest. To breed.
“Why would it attack a child of Shadow?” Arman sounded angry.
As if Twilight didn’t have its parasites too.
“Why do mosquitoes bite humans?” Kaye snapped back. “
Now,
will you tell me what’s the matter with her?”
Arman’s mouth closed up tight, but he took his daughter’s wrist and showed Kaye the girl’s palm. A circle was burned into its center and red streaks radiated from the wound.
Kaye closed her eyes. She knew what that circle meant.
“Don’t ask what you don’t want to know,” Arman said.
She felt angry again, which pushed her energy back up to a blaze. “I take it that your daughter’s Shadow has been depleted,” Kaye said diplomatically. One did not name mages. “That her magic has been stolen.”
And the mages let Ferrol Grey prey upon them because the angel light, among many other things, gave him some kind of magnetism that drew magekind to him. She understood now: Ferro was their leader, their Order, their pharaoh.
“Then you do know.” Arman’s contempt was back again. “This was her punishment for using illusion to shoplift.”
Kaye shuddered in revulsion. “Why do you have her in this shitty light? She won’t heal this way.”
Bastian and Custo had steeped Kaye in the deepest, purest Shadow when she was ill. That’s what this girl needed.
“She’s afraid of the dark,” Arman answered. “Sees things, which isn’t unusual for one with our power.”
A mage who was afraid of the dark? Poor girl. Stupid, if caring, father.
“Still. She can’t heal this way. And she was probably weak to start with because she’s refused Shadow her whole life.” And if Kaye’s tone suggested Arman was partly to blame for allowing the behavior, she wasn’t sorry. The man should have taught his daughter better.
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