Kissed by Fire (9 page)

No, that was ridiculous. It couldn’t have
been me. I couldn’t have set the door on fire with nothing more
than my touch. The very idea was absurd.

As absurd as a woman who could channel the
power of Darkness.

Still, I could hardly deny the fact that the
door hadn’t caught fire until
after
I touched the wood. I’d
been so frustrated, so angry.

Something sparked in the back of my mind. A
conversation I’d once had with Eddie Mulligan back in his shop in
Portland. We’d been talking about my ability to channel Darkness
and he’d mentioned how once there had been people who could channel
other elements.

Elements like fire.

“Oh, crap,” I whispered. “Oh, this is not
good.”

I hurried back down the path toward where I’d
left Kabita. She was still there, leaning against a tree. “No
joy?”

“No. She had a car waiting.” I rubbed my
palms against my thighs, trying to keep them from trembling.

She sighed. “Too bad. I wonder what she
wanted.”

“Couldn’t have been good, her spying on us
like that.”

She shrugged and headed toward the parking
lot. “Don’t jump to conclusions. There were more than a couple MI8
agents at the funeral today. She might have been watching any one
of them.”

But I knew she was wrong. That woman had been
there to watch us. Or more likely, based on what I’d seen at the
airport, she’d been there to watch Kabita.

“Dad’s throwing a wake back at his flat in
Belgravia. I figured we could pop in for a while.” I couldn’t tell
from her tone whether she had any interest in attending or not.

I shook my head. “I really need to head back
to the hotel, do some research. And I need to call Eddie.”

Kabita gave me a look. “It’s four thirty in
the morning back home. I don’t think he’d appreciate you calling
that time of morning.”

Good point. I hadn’t even thought about the
eight hour time difference. I sighed. “Fine. I really do need to do
some research, though, so I don’t want to stay too long.”

“Don’t worry.” Kabita gave me one of her
mysterious smiles. “You’ll be amazed at how much research you can
get done at one of these things.”

***

“Morgan, this is Sandra Fuentes, dragon
artist.” Kabita grinned at me like a lunatic as she led me out onto
the terrace. Which meant she was about to introduce me to some
nutter and she secretly thought it was hilarious. Just great.

“Dragon artist?”

The woman in front of me was willow thin and
ghostly pale. Even her gray eyes were pale to the point of nearly
being colorless. The only bit of color was her hair. The straight,
silky mass fell nearly to her waist and shone rich blue black in
the sun.

Her grip, as she shook my hand, was
surprisingly strong. Her skin, as it touched mine, gave off a
slight spark. That static electricity again. I was feeling way too
much of it lately.

“Morgan Bailey, lovely to meet you at last.
My sister has told me so much about you.”

I glanced from Sandra to Kabita. “Your
sister?”

“Sandra is Cordelia Nightwing’s twin sister,”
Kabita told me with a grin.

I must have looked absolutely gobsmacked
because Sandra let out a belly laugh. “She didn’t tell you a thing
about me, did she? Isn’t that just like Cordy? The woman always did
live halfway in another world.” Her accent was definitely American,
though she slipped a few Britishisms in here and there, much like
I’d done when I lived here. Heck, I still did it. I got no end of
grief about it from Inigo.

“Um, no. No she didn’t. It’s nice to meet you
Sandra.”

“I see Adam. Listen, I’ll leave you two to
chat. Enjoy.” Kabita headed off to catch up with her brother as
Sandra waved me toward a couple of chairs overlooking the communal
gardens.

“So, what exactly is a dragon artist?” OK,
stupid question, but it was the first thing that popped into my
head. I never said I was a scintillating conversationalist.

“I make dragons.” She graciously ignored my
idiocy. “Surprising amount of money in dragons. People like them.
Little clay ones are the most popular. Great for desks and such.
Sell a ton of those. Though I make a pretty penny off big stone
ones for the garden. Unbelievable how many people want a dragon in
their back garden. Bizarre, if you ask me, but it takes all sorts,
doesn’t it.”

“So, you’re a sculptor.”

She smiled. “Well, yes, you could say that.
Sculptor, yes. I like that.”

I blinked. Good lord, the woman was odd. “So,
how long have you been sculpting dragons?” I took a sip of the cold
lemonade I’d been handed when we arrived. It tasted more like
Sprite, but that was British lemonade for you.

“Oh, all my life,” she said with an airy wave
of her hand. “I just found it came so naturally to me.”

Huh. Right. Weirdo. Then again, I supposed
that was like the pot calling the kettle black. “You didn’t go to
art school or something? Maybe get a set of sculpting tools when
you were a kid?”

She looked surprised. “Why, no. Why would I
use tools?”

“Um, because that’s how you make a statue
from clay or stone,” I said it slowly like I was talking to someone
really thick.

“Oh, goodness me,” she laughed. “I don’t need
tools for that. Here, watch!” She leaned over and grabbed a smooth
stone about the size of my palm from the planter next to us and
placed it on the table, her palm lightly covering the stone. She
closed her eyes and whispered something under her breath, then
lifted her hand.

“Oh, my gods.” Sitting on the table where the
rock had been was a perfectly carved statuette of a dragon
midflight. Every little detail was intricately etched right down to
its slightly irregular scales and the veins running through its
wings. I might have thought it was real if I didn’t know it was
stone.

“I know, isn’t it cool!” Her voice held more
than just a hint of laughter. I think maybe she was laughing at
me.

“I think we have much to talk about, don’t
you?” Sandra leaned forward and placed her hand gently over mine.
Her skin was warm, much warmer than it should have been. I wondered
if she was running a temperature or something. Then there was that
zing again. That almost electrical spark of energy.

“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” I sounded just a little
breathless. Heck, I felt a little breathless.

She leaned back in her seat, the sun picking
out the blue highlights in her hair. “Then why don’t you come visit
me at my shop tomorrow? We can talk more freely then.” She fished
around in her handbag and brought out a business card which was
slightly worse for wear. “I’m over in Soho. Such a delightful
place, don’t you think? Quite a lot of tourists, but the atmosphere
makes up for it.”

I’d been to Soho a few times back when I
lived in London. She was right. It was a fantastic place full of
life and vibrancy. It was also quite an eye opener. Soho was like a
mini San Francisco with a side order of Amsterdam thrown in for
good measure.

I took the card she offered. “Tomorrow. Sure.
I’ll be there.”

“Very good.” She gathered her things and
stood up. “Well, I’m off. It was lovely to meet you Morgan. I’ll be
seeing you tomorrow.” The corners of her eyes crinkled as she
smiled.

I couldn’t help but smile back even though I
was feeling a bit Alice in Wonderland at the moment. A woman who
could turn stone into dragons with the touch of a hand? Talk about
one giant rabbit hole.

I stared at her retreating form, bemused, as
she disappeared behind the other mourners milling about on the
terrace. Every time I thought I had things figured out, they got
weirder.

“Come on.” Kabita popped out of nowhere.
“I’ve called a cab. I need a pub.”

“I’ll second that.”

***

The black cab dropped us off at a pub not far
from our hotel. The Audley was a classic British pub just blocks
from the American Embassy; it had a long polished wood bar, heavy
oak beamed ceilings and antique plate glass windows. Kabita ordered
drinks at the bar and we settled in at one of the little tables
looking out onto Mount Street.

It was a weekday and just after the lunch
hour rush, so the pub was dim and quiet. Suited me fine.

“So, what do you think of Sandra?” Kabita
grinned.

“She’s ... odd. Do you know what she can do
with a rock?” I took a big gulp of pear cider.

She nodded. “Yeah. I did a background on
Cordelia when you first met her and discovered she had a sister
here in London. The report said she had some magical talent. It did
not
say that she used that talent to make dragon statues.”
She shook her head. “Can you imagine the guys at MI8 trying to
figure out that one?”

I laughed. “Bet that baffled them for a day
or two. Why didn’t you mention Cordy had a sister?”

She shrugged. “It didn’t seem important at
the time. I assumed she would tell you. But when this whole dragon
thing came up, I looked her up. I figured she might be able to
help.”

I hoped she was right about that. We could
use all the help we could get. “Can I ask you something? It’s kind
of personal.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Hello, Morgan.
We’re friends. You can ask me anything.”

“Why won’t MI8 let Witches join? I mean, I
know you said your family had a lot to do with that. But why do
they hate them so much? And why, in the twenty-first freaking
century are they still such bigots? For goodness sake, MI8 is as
much about protecting supernaturals from extinction as they are
about protecting the human population. The Witch thing seems a
little odd.”

She sighed, fingers toying with the straw in
her glass. “You know as well as I do that there’s still a lot of
prejudice in the world. Particularly when it comes to bureaucracy,
and Europe is a lot worse about that than the Americas.”

“Yeah, OK. So?”

“So, MI8 is convinced that witches,
particularly natural Witches, are dangerous and prone to go over to
‘the dark side’ for lack of a better term. They’ve seen a lot of
Witches go bad, wanting more and more power until they drown in it.
It’s not the power itself that is bad any more than a gun is
inherently bad. It’s what it does to the user. You know what they
say about power.”

Of course I did. Everyone did. “Power
corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Trite but
true.

Kabita took a sip of her drink. “Exactly. Now
imagine you not only are already naturally powerful, but have the
ability to grow your power exponentially. By pulling power from the
earth, the universe, or even other people you can actually have the
power over life and death. So much power you’re drunk with it.
Imagine what that could do to a person.”

I felt the muscles in my shoulders go tight.
I didn’t have to imagine. I knew. The Darkness shifted inside me,
wanting out, and beside it I felt something new. Something hot and
bright and hungry. My hands started doing that tingly thing
again.

I shoved the Darkness down along with
whatever that new thing was, slamming the metaphorical lid on it as
fast as I could. My hands clenched my glass until my knuckles
turned white. No, I didn’t have to imagine at all.

“It would take a very strong person to resist
the pull of that power,” she continued. “And most of us just aren’t
that strong. That sort of power exploits every fear, every
weakness. After awhile it can’t be controlled anymore. Even a good
witch goes bad eventually.” She took another sip of her drink
before placing it carefully back on the scarred wood table. “At
least, that’s what MI8 says.”

“Is that what your father told them?”

She nodded. “Yes. It’s what his family has
believed for generations. I come from a long line of witch
hunters.”

I shook my head. “I still can’t get over
that.”

“Ironic, isn’t it? The very first Jones,
Jonas, was an orphan, raised by the Church. Originally they raised
him to be an ordinary hunter, but things changed by the time he
came of age.” She took another long drink.

Kabita, the Witch, descended from witch
hunters. Irony wasn’t the half of it.

“The Church was having problems maintaining
their control over England at the time,” she continued. “All these
pesky women trying to get the locals to
think
rather than
blindly accept whatever the Church told them. So, instead of
sending Jonas to fight demonspawn and vampires and whatnot, they
sent him to hunt down and murder witches.”

My eyes must have been as big as saucers. I
took a big gulp of my drink. “Hooo, boy. That’s a bit out there.
Can’t say I’m surprised, though.”

“No,” she agreed. “The Church has a lot of
sins to answer for.”

“And Jonas? What happened to him?”

“He was good at his job. Really good. The
Church wanted him to marry, produce heirs to be raised as witch
hunters like their sire. The Witches, on the other hand, wanted no
such thing. They knew that Jonas’s ability to hunt was more than
just a matter of good training. His ability was more in the realm
of the supernatural.”

“He was a natural born Hunter?” I asked.

She nodded the affirmative. “Probably a Demon
Hunter or something similar. It would explain why my brothers and I
are so good at it, but the Church refused to acknowledge it. They
retrained him to use his abilities against Witches. Something the
Witches figured out. So, they sent one of their own, a young woman
named Ysoria, to pose as a virtuous young woman of the Church and
seduce him.”

“I’m guessing it worked.” Damn. This was like
something out of a really bad scifi movie.

“Yeah,” she said. “It worked. She was
supposed to kill any children they had so there would be no one for
the church to train. There would be other people, but a true Hunter
is rare and that’s what they were worried about. Especially since
the church had its claws in Jonas.”