Hearts of Fire (3 page)
She knew she was the subject of stares and speculation back in the ballroom. How could she not be after a dance like that? And now in the night with a strange and handsome man, she was practically asking for trouble. But the rest of her kind couldn’t fail to see it, this thing between them, so fast and so strong it could only be a gift from the Lady herself. Touched by Her hand, as some things were: a perfect sunrise, safe refuge in a storm, the first laugh of a new babe. She could not ignore this. They could not judge this. Her and him beneath the stars. She wanted to launch into the sweet night and soar with him. There had never been a man she’d wanted to dance with like this.
Her father should welcome it. Bonding two supernatural races together. An unbreakable joining. The future of their race.
Even her brother couldn’t refute the political good of the thing. They might not know much about this strange Other kind, but surely they were in this together. Two races fighting for their place in a rapidly changing world. Joining forces would benefit them both.
And she couldn’t ignore what was in her heart, even without the coldly rational arguments. The hot, fierce part of her, her totem Owl, saw what it wanted and wouldn’t wait. This. Here. Now. Damn propriety. Damn them all.
She went to Brand and stood at the balustrade. Mirrored his stance, two hands tightly clutching the unpainted rail. She felt the energy vibrating in him. Saw the strain of his muscled forearms as he clung to the wood like a drowning man. The fast rise and fall of his chest. He seemed like a man on the edge of a great precipice.
She had too much of the Trickster in her not to push him over.
“Fancy a turn about the gardens?” she asked.
“You’d tempt a monk.”
“If the monk were as pleasing to the eye as certain company, I might.”
“Forward.”
“Brazen.”
He angled toward her like an iron to the lodestone. “I’d like that.”
She offered her arm. It was supposed to be the other way around. Descending the stairs, she wished she could kick off her slippers and feel the thick wet grass curling between her toes. But some propriety must be maintained in view of the full town. Other couples mingled amid the shrubbery. They rested aching feet on the benches and took respite in the cool salt air.
The noise of the ballroom continued behind them. She knew her father would be in the gaming hall already. He’d be none the wiser for her turn outside. Drink would flow. By the end of the night, his pockets might be lighter, but he’d have fleeced the strangers for their deepest secrets. He rode a fine line between welcoming the new and preserving the old. But he was an open, guileless man. He liked a good yarn and a good drink more than he valued the old traditions.
Brand had to shorten his pace a good deal to match hers. He brought them around a bed of roses—hothouse flowers carefully gathered as seeds from England and flown here as a courting gift from her father to her mother. There was symmetry in it—a new generation courting in the same spot. She thought her mother would have approved of Brand. He was built like a warrior. He held himself with honor.
“Lady Alice,” he breathed.
“Mr. Haldor.”
“Brand,” he corrected. “If I’m to call you by your first name, you can certainly have mine.”
“What brought you here?” She’d wondered this. He wasn’t a timber or railroad man, but he seemed well off.
He shifted his stance. Studied a pink rosebud and touched the thorns along the stem. “Honestly? A woman.”
“You came here for a woman?”
He smiled. “A certain brazen young thing with tawny eyes. That pattern suits you, by the way.” She’d made the dress from the fabric she’d purchased at Potter’s.
“Thank you.”
“I left Stockholm because of a woman. She made it ... uncomfortable for me to stay. And Norgard convinced me to come here. It was a good time to cut ties with the past, to find a new inspiration for my art. Perhaps the stars willed it.”
“You’re telling me destiny brought you here.”
“Would you believe me?”
“I might.”
“You might understand.” The yearning in his eyes startled her. It mattered to him deeply. “I think we are alike in some ways. A woman back home discovered who I—what I am. Too many bleak years alone, and I’m afraid I grew careless. She rallied her kinsmen to relieve me of my burdensome immortality. I was ... indifferent at the time.”
“Immortality would be a very long time to be alone.” She did understand. Kivati were not immortal, but they lived considerably longer than humankind. Even a lone wolf needed a place to belong.
“Yes.” He drew her hand in his. Her breath raced like butterfly wings in her breast. “I’m a glassblower, same as my father and grandfather. Norgard convinced me to escape the old land and join him. He needed artists, he said, for his new town. He promised a veritable Eden, a place to fly free.”
She squeezed his hand. If he needed Eden, she would happily play Eve. “And is it everything you hoped it would be?”
“It is now.” A commotion from elsewhere in the garden stopped the next question on his lips. Unease spread, jumping like fire across the desert brush. It swept through the garden and into the ballroom. Anger sparked. Voices rose. Someone screamed and then the music stopped. The great swirl of the ball turned ugly, panicked, like a demon carousel. More noise and movement but of a fearful variety.
Someone came out of the doors and called her name. “Alice? Alice, come out!”
“What is it?” she asked. They walked quickly back to the stairs. Her brother stood above them, worry on his face. For her? It turned angry when he saw her company.
“Get away from her,” Emory hissed. His eyes flashed purple. The slightly awkward boyishness was only evident in his lanky build. In his face she suddenly saw the man he would become. Older. Harder. A weight of responsibility already on his thin shoulders. She’d never seen him like this. The Aether roiled around him. Crackled from his skin. His power was suddenly obvious, but untamed. He called it unthinkingly. It was too much. There were too many innocents around him who might get hurt.
And his anger was directed toward the man at her side. She stepped in front of Brand.
“Get back,” Emory snapped. “His kind is not welcome here.”
“But—”
“
Unktehila
.” The word snapped in the air with its own power. The soul-eaters. The Kivati’s greatest enemy. Dragons.
Unktehila
.” The word snapped in the air with its own power. The soul-eaters. The Kivati’s greatest enemy. Dragons.
“No.” She wouldn’t believe it. But she couldn’t help turning to the handsome stranger for confirmation, and the tight set of his jaw said too much. Suddenly the night turned red. The stars retreated. She spun the events backward in her head. Her first sight of him. His beauty. His grace. The way women everywhere stopped in their tracks at the sight of him and his kin. Her own immediate attraction to him. To his touch and smell. Luring her in like a black widow.
Her eyes stung. She bit her lip to keep from screaming.
“Alice, I—” Brand put out his hand, but she stepped away. The commotion in the ballroom made sense. Her ancestors had killed off the native dragon population, but now dragons had returned to the Pacific Northwest. She’d been right about the wings. A soft sob built in her throat. Wings! And she’d thought to fly with him, to show him her other self. To think she’d thought him honorable! Two of a kind, she’d thought. But she had two souls twining in her breast, and he had none.
Worse, his kind stole the souls of others.
“Is that what you meant to do to me?” she asked. “Take me in the garden and harvest my soul?” Her voice shook.
“Alice, come away from him!” Emory ordered.
“No! Answer me!” She pointed a defiant finger at the man—demon—who now stared at her. She would not see the heartsickness in his expression. She would not see the way he held himself so still as if the slightest breath could break him.
“Was it Adam who asked to walk in the garden?” Brand’s hoarse voice sounded scraped from the very bottom of the sea.
Emory descended the stairs and gripped her arm. Electricity charged the air around him, almost as if he were Thunderbird and not Raven. He shocked her when he touched her. What about her brother’s untamed power? What if his control snapped and he laid waste to the whole hall, innocents and all? Would he be a monster simply for a curse he’d been born to?
She searched Brand’s face. Even now, unmasked, he didn’t attack. He was right. He hadn’t asked to tour the garden with her or leave the safety of the ballroom light. She in her recklessness had done it. Her thirst to know him as he truly was. Her temptation. She, Eve.
Another scream pierced the general cacophony of the hall. Emory’s grip tightened.
“What’s happening in there?” she demanded.
“One of Norgard’s friends attacked Rowena.”
Brand’s jaw tightened.
“You aren’t surprised,” she accused. “Did you attack that woman in Stockholm? Did you deserve to be run out of town?”
“I swear by all I hold holy that I didn’t—”
“Holy?” Emory spat. “You can’t trust a word he says, Alice.”
“We were lovers.” Brand spoke right over her brother. “But one night, she snuck into my bedchamber unannounced and caught me returning from a flight in my dragon skin. Scared the bejesus out of us both. And, yes, I hold a few things holy.” His eyes pierced hers. She could see the truth in them. She could see he still believed in their connection. “The gods might have damned me to a soulless eternity, but they can’t take away my hope.”
“Is that so?” Emory sneered. “Well, I swear by the ghosts of my ancestors who walk these shores I will hunt you and your kind to extinction, just as they once did.” The Aether crackled with the force of his vow.
“Don’t, Emory,” she warned, but it was too late. Dark clouds drew across the sky, and thunder rumbled as if the Sky God had heard. “No bloodshed. No more violence.”
Brand put out a hand. “We can work this out—”
“You attacked first!” Emory shouted.
More commotion from the hall behind her, and then her father was there, pulling her away. The Thunderbirds drove people out into the streets as the rain came. Hard rain. Angry rain. Turning the streets to rivers of mud. She didn’t see Brand again. But his beautiful, treacherous face was etched permanently on the inside of her eyelids.
The Thunderbirds urged the poor horses through the sheets of water. By the Lady, what had she done? She was so confused.
She turned her face to the sky and let the rain wash away her shameful longing.
Chapter 3
“We exterminated them once,” Will said. “We can do it again.”
A temporary lull in the battle had let each side retreat and regroup. A representative from each Animal Tribe had arrived for the war council. The Deer and Wolves, unusually in agreement, wanted to flee north into the wilderness. The Cougars urged caution, but their claws were sharp, and they had been spoiling for a fight since Aunt Maddie’s husband had been shot in his Cougar skin by human hunters. Whale was indifferent; his waters weren’t affected. The Crows were happy to follow the Raven’s lead. The other birds perched firmly in the Thunderbirds’ camp. They wanted to strike hard and fast and rip the very memory of dragons from the face of the world.
Halian paced around the council fire in the great room in Kivati Hall. “And once this batch is gone, you think that’ll hold them off forever?” Curious onlookers crowded in the doorway, and he sought to look each one in the face. “How much will it cost us? The blood of our warriors. The blood of our children—”
“Peace is not an option,” said another Thunderbird. “We must have security.”
“There are dragons in every corner of this earth,” Halian said. “Our ancestors took out the native population, but at what price?”
“They are soul stealers!” Will shouted. “An abomination.”
Alice curled away from the revealing light of the fire. She pressed her back against the warmed cedar wall. Inside a war raged. Brand was a soul stealer, she repeated to herself. His beauty hid a savage truth. The connection she felt burning between them, the certainty that her destiny lay with him, was a lie.
She knew it with her head, but her heart wouldn’t listen.
Her father paced to his seat and threw back another shot of whiskey. He wasn’t cut out to be a wartime leader. He liked to make his audience laugh, to take the seriousness of the Thunderbirds and crack it into manageable pieces. Practical jokes, spontaneity, gaiety—these were the things he valued, even more since her mother died. But then he’d started drinking and those smiles turned chilly in the wee hours of the morning.
“When you find him, Ali girl,” he’d told her one bleary dawn when she’d risen for a drink of water and found him still up and unusually alone, “hold on tight. Never waste a single moment.” She’d been seven, but she’d been old enough to understand his meaning. She’d promised him that when love came for her, she wouldn’t ever let go.
But if Halian Corbette had seen the future and watched his daughter fall for his sworn enemy—a deathless, damned, soul-eating monster—would he still have made her promise?
She couldn’t bear to attach those hateful names to Brand. And she couldn’t stop thinking about his beautiful hands, about the way he sensed the world with his fingertips, about their sensual dance and the way he moved, as if the music were in his blood. How could someone without a soul create? An artist used more than his own darkness to bring beauty and meaning to his work.
“We have a sacred pact to protect the Gate,” Will said roughly. She looked up to find him towering over her. He seemed to have drawn nearer despite himself, and now his defensive stance blocked her from the anger in the room. But she wasn’t his to protect. He didn’t look at her, but each word was an arrow shot straight into her pride and loyal heart. “The damned belong on the other side in the Land of the Dead. It is our sacred duty to send them there.”
“We approach the end of an era,” Halian said. “The old ways won’t work. We can’t keep them out. Not the humans, not the other supernatural races. We must work with them. We must adapt. Embrace change. Embrace new technologies, new people, new ideas. This is the future.”
“And let them prey on our people?” A thunderbolt buzzed between Will’s fingertips. “On humans, who we are sworn to protect?”
Zeke, the Wolf representative, dug his claws into the back of his chair. “Already we must travel far to hunt. We must move north, where there is still wilderness and freedom.”
“You can run,” Halian said coldly, “but you can protect the humans better from right here.”
Emory rose. He’d listened to the argument for the last hour without comment. “Forget the humans. Who is to say they won’t come directly for our people? What is a paltry human soul when they could have the twinned souls of a Kivati and totem?” His eyes flickered to Alice. She heard him loud and clear.
Aunt Maddie rose too. “The boy is right. What have humans ever done for us? It should be Kivati for the Kivati.” A chorus of cheers greeted her pronouncement.
“Aunt Maddie raises a good point,” Emory said. “The territorial government thinks we should be part of the United States, but maybe we should kick them all out. We should found our own government.”
“Sit down, boy,” Halian growled. “You’re not leading this wagon yet.”
“Long live Cascadia!” someone called.
Her father’s shoulders fell. He poured himself another drink.
Alice had never felt so lost. She wanted her father to win, to craft a clever solution for them all to live in peace. What good was the Raven if he couldn’t find a trick out of this predicament? She didn’t want to hide herself away from the world or lose her uncles and brother in war. She didn’t want to find her land and her people under siege. But she could see Halian being swayed by the Thunderbirds.
Shadows flickered on the wall. She watched as they snaked and moved of their own accord. They formed pictures that clarified and faded from moment to moment. She saw the war party. Claws out. Paint on. Winged serpents and Thunderbirds grappled in the sky. Seattle burned. The firelight cast a reddish hue on the thick carpet where she sat. The blood of her people stained the sacred earth.
Foresight was the Spider’s gift, but Alice had always had a touch of it. She’d known this when she first saw Brand and recognized him as her destiny. She also knew the future was not set in stone; it could be altered. Even the stone of the mountain changed year to year. Wind and rain chiseled it down. Hot magma from deep within the earth pushed it high again.
Will and Nathaniel turned the discussion from if the fight should occur to how the battle lines should be drawn up. She watched her father sit down and knew he was all out of tricks. If only her mother were still alive, she could give him the strength to stand up to them. Emory was useless; he was full of teenage rebellion and a hothead besides.
The peaceful path needed a champion, and Alice was the only one left.
She wouldn’t let her chance at love slip quietly through her fingers. She wouldn’t let her people fall into the darkness of hate and war. The Lady had blessed her with this gift, despite the dragons and Kivati’s great enmity. Perhaps She’d had a bigger plan in mind when She’d tied Alice’s and Brand’s heartstrings together. No argument was strong enough to overcome the past’s hatred, but love was. Love was strong enough to overcome the darkness in their hearts, but only if Alice was brave enough to act.
She needed to find Brand. Together they could make peace between their people. There was no time to lose.
Brand tucked his wings and dove into the freezing waters of Puget Sound. He was powerful, ancient, deadly. He should be beyond caring. He cursed himself. Cursed the gods. Cursed capricious fate. Of course she’d run. Of course she’d been horrified to find him a soulless monster. Hadn’t Norgard warned him to stay away? Brand had hoped that a fellow shape-shifter wouldn’t be shocked at the truth of him, but they shared nothing but the ability to Change. He was damned.
The truth had never cut so cruelly as the look she’d shot him. The blood had drained from her face. The warmth in her tawny eyes had frozen like the icy tundra of his birth.
Again and again he dove beneath the waves. He pushed his muscles to the burning point. Beat his wings through the thick ocean waves until he couldn’t feel them. The sting of salt in his eyes was only an annoyance, the cold on his scales hardly of note compared to the howling darkness in his breast. Why had Norgard called him here? To start another war? This was supposed to be a fresh beginning.
He soared back into the air and reveled in the freedom to breathe. Clouds covered the moon. A light rain fell. There was no bright city glow to reveal him. He was free to fly over the Sound, the Olympics, the wide Pacific Ocean. Free to put miles and miles between him and this godforsaken town. But he couldn’t outrun the despair that clung to his hide.
Even after her rejection, he wanted her.
He opened his jaws and roared into the black night. Where were the Thunderbirds? Why didn’t they come and rid him of this misery? He’d relish a fight. He wanted to be rid of this intense longing, this emptiness.
Cut off my head
, he’d tell them if they would only show up. That was the only way to keep his body from regenerating. Maybe then he’d find peace, because there was nothing for him in the afterlife. There was nothing in this body to go on into the world beyond. All this rage, all this frustration would cease with his last breath.
Cut off my head
, he’d tell them if they would only show up. That was the only way to keep his body from regenerating. Maybe then he’d find peace, because there was nothing for him in the afterlife. There was nothing in this body to go on into the world beyond. All this rage, all this frustration would cease with his last breath.
He finally understood his father’s choice.
As he released that old knot of pain, some of his rage lessened. He wove through the heavy clouds toward Queen Anne Hill, where the Kivati lived. Why couldn’t their two races live together? There was plenty of room for both of them. Norgard was strong enough to keep the Drekar in check. His economic interests would be hampered by a war. Brand doubted he had anything to gain by battling the Kivati. But what did he know? Norgard was a twisted devil, and he had a secretive project that involved ghosts. Why else did he need that Deadglass monocle?
Something small and white shot out of the darkness. Brand reared back, startled. Birds usually avoided the dragon. Everything avoided the dragon. But this small snowy owl flew straight at him. He’d expected Thunderbirds—great clawing beasts that could pull fire from the air to fight his fiery breath. Instead he got one small, crazy owl pelting like a cannonball at his head. Curious, he hovered in the air. The owl circled his long serpentine neck. Its soft feathers brushed his scales.
The owl sailed past his long snout, and he caught a glimpse of tawny eyes.
Alice.
He’d know those eyes anywhere.
Brand followed her. This must be a dream. His body must be in Norgard’s opium tent and his head off in Valhalla, because there was a Valkyrie if he ever saw one. She was bravery and beauty all wrapped into one. He followed the Owl east. He’d never seen such a beautiful creature. Her white feathers sported little black dots. He’d expected more rejection. Violence, even. He’d wanted a last glimpse of her to covet deep in his black dragon heart. No gold or jewels could surpass those moments dancing in her arms.
And who was he to turn away from the gods’ gifts? He certainly didn’t deserve it, and he half expected a trap of some kind. What had changed her mind? What god could he thank for giving him a second chance to languish near her? He wouldn’t let this go. Wouldn’t let her go, because, Tiamat blind him, he was a damned creature and he wanted her for his very own.
He would be happy to follow her to the ends of the earth, but she led him a merry chase through the sky and across a great unbroken forest of evergreen trees. She hid among the clouds, sending his heart dropping to the distant ground, only to pop up again at his tail, hooting with laughter. He tried to match her speed and grace, but he was too large, too muscled to have the control of the much smaller bird. The Owl and the Dragon played in the sky. And it wasn’t until she started to descend that he realized his body’s fatigue. A lesser man might say nerves skittered through his gut at the thought of Turning again. What could he say to her? He couldn’t defend his being. It had never been enough. Some women liked the power and riches that his kind possessed, but the woman who wanted forever in his arms also wanted to possess something that he lacked.
He was determined not to let his fear show. Let the battle rage behind them. Let others fight the territory wars. He craved peace. Stability. A strong woman in his arms. Was that too much to ask?
Alice swooped through the tree canopy and landed in a clearing next to a small waterfall. Light played across her feathers as she began to Change. A million sparkling stars coalesced across her Owl body, rippling like water over her head and down her tail, and when they faded a woman stood. She was naked. Her bare toes clung to the mossy carpet of the forest floor. The Aether bathed her limbs in a milky glow. Her long, shiny hair blew back in the wind generated by his beating wings. In the cold, her creamy breasts peaked, arrows pointed at his heart. A little smile played along the curve of her lips. If this were a dream, he wanted to never wake up.
“The ancient Vikings,” she called up, her tone easy, conversational, as if she weren’t standing naked in a clearing with a dragon hovering above her, “were said to take what they wanted. Berserker, I think they were called. Crazed warriors without inhibitions.”
She called him out and pricked his pride. He let the fire rage through him to Turn him from monster to man. Turning and landing at the same time was awkward. He stumbled as he fell on the thick moss carpet with his slippery man-shaped feet. With no claws to catch him, he landed on his knees.
When he looked up, she stood mere inches from him, her breasts at the level of his mouth. He wanted to run his tongue down the curve of her stomach to that silky patch that hid her feminine power. He wanted to kneel like this on the forest floor between her legs and worship her body.
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