Where The Heart Lives (6 page)

His spine caught on fire, a
deep burn born in his bones, born deeper, rippling from his heart. Eddie closed
his eyes, listening to the crackle of flames eating through his jeans and
t-shirt, turning them to ash.

He didn’t make a sound, not
even when the burn of his skin made him feel as though he would split apart. He
pretended not to feel the soaring waves of heat moving around him, wrapping him
in a nest of fire that brushed against the walls of his cage.

He tried so hard not to think
about his sister’s murderer walking out of prison.

But in the end, it was easier
just to burn.

***

When Eddie left the cage, a
woman was waiting for him.

He happened to know that she
was in her early fifties, though she hardly looked it with her loose red hair,
creamy skin, and long supple body clad in black. A patch covered her right eye,
and the other was golden, pupil slit like a cat. She leaned on the kitchen
counter, arms folded over her chest—and even standing still, there was a
lethal, inhuman grace about her.

Eddie froze, and clutched the
curtain around his waist. None of his clothes had made it through the blaze.

“Ma’am,” he said, a little too
hoarse.

Her gaze traveled down his
body, cold and assessing. “You make me feel so old. How many times will we
meet, Edward, before you call me Serena?”

Eddie waited. Serena gave him a
slow, dangerous smile, and picked up a cloth bag on the counter behind her. She
tossed it to him. When he looked inside, he found sweatpants and a t-shirt.

“Roland told me where you keep
your things,” she said. “He also mentioned that your skin is
sensitive….afterwards. I chose what seemed soft.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said. “Ma’am.”

Serena tilted her head, golden
eye glinting. Eddie stepped back into the cage, letting the curtain fall behind
him. The process of dressing made him feel more human—more grounded in his own
body—though his skin still ached, and when he moved too quickly, lights danced
in his eyes.

When he reemerged, Serena stood
at the foot of the stairs.

“They’re waiting,” she said.

Eddie did not move. “No one
mentioned that you would be here.”

“Shocking, I know.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “It’s a bad
sign. What else has happened?”

“I don’t know. Yet.” Serena
gave him a faint, mocking smile, and turned to climb the stairs. “If it’s any
consolation, no one told me I’d be in San Francisco tonight. But here I am. I
go where there’s trouble.”

“You make trouble,” he replied.
“With all due respect.”

She laughed, quietly, and kept
climbing.

Eddie did not follow. He
watched until she disappeared around the landing, and then looked down at his
hands. Small, circular scars covered his skin. He rubbed them, and shivered.

He was always cold after he
lost control. Cold as winter, in his bones. When he felt like this, he couldn't
imagine losing control ever again. Drained of fire, burned out. Safe.

If only.

Eddie took a deep breath, and
climbed the stairs.

He entered an immense room
filled with overstuffed couches and low tables sagging with books and
newspapers. The top floor, the penthouse suite of an entire building owned by
one man, one organization—converted into a home and office. Nine floors that
could be traversed by stairs and hidden elevators.

It was night outside. Only a
few lamps had been turned on, but the floor-to-ceiling windows let in the
scattered light of downtown San Francisco, and that was enough to illuminate
the room, softly, as though with starlight.

Two people stood near the
windows. Serena still had her arms folded over her chest. The man who stood
beside her was taller by half a foot, and broad as a bear. His rumpled flannel
shirt strained against his shoulders. Thick brown stubble, peppered with gray,
covered his jaw. The scent of whiskey clung to him, but that was no surprise. Not
for months now.

Roland’s bloodshot gaze was
compassionate and sad as he studied Eddie. Edged with doubt, too. And pity.

Eddie tamped down anger. “Don’t
look at me like that.”

Roland grunted. “Like what?”

“Like I’m broken,” he said
hoarsely. “Like I’m you.”

Low blow. Eddie received no
satisfaction from the surprise and hurt that flickered through the other man’s
face -- but he wasn’t sorry, either. He had never thrown a first punch, hardly
ever used his fists at all, but for the last year he had wanted to -- against
the man in front of him. Words were a poor substitute.  

And he needed to hit someone
right now. Right now, more than anything, he needed to inflict some pain.

Roland cleared his throat. “You
little shit.”

“I only look like shit. Don’t
confuse the two.”

“In your case, it’s the same
thing.” Roland tilted his head, watching him. “Are you going to be able to do
this? Handle New York?”

Eddie hadn’t told him about his
mother’s phone call. He hadn’t needed to. Roland had known from the moment
Eddie entered the penthouse, heading for the cage. Some telepaths were like
that.

“According to you,” Eddie said,
“there’s no one else.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He set his jaw, warmth finally
trickling back into his hands. “It’s the only answer I need. You taught me
that.”

Roland stilled. Serena
murmured, “Generous praise. Given that you’re speaking to a man who hasn’t left
his home in over a decade.”

Roland blinked hard, tearing
his gaze from Eddie. “
You’re
certainly free to go.”

“I wish I could. I have a
grandchild I could be visiting right now, and you smell like a drunk.” Serena
swung away from Roland to stare out the window. “But the new alliance stands.
A’Priori
wants me here, and I work for
them
. Not Dirk & Steele.”

Eddie was already tired, but
hearing those words stole the last of his strength -- whatever was left in his
heart. He couldn’t keep the bitterness off his face, and it made him feel like
a different man. A worse man. Too much like the man who had burned those scars
into his hands.

“It’s all the same,” he found
himself saying, even though he wanted to stay quiet, and hold in that
bitterness and bury it, again and again as he had been burying it for months. “
A’Priori.
Dirk & Steele. It’s just family.”

Family and lies. And that was
hardest of all to reconcile. 

A’Priori
was one of the
largest, most powerful corporations in the world. Run by a tight-knit family of
men and women who possessed singular gifts of a paranormal nature, gifts that
had been used almost exclusively for material gain.

But more than sixty years ago,
members of that same family had broken away to form another, much smaller
organization, one founded on values that had nothing to do with money or
power…but instead, helping others.

That
organization had
become Dirk & Steele. To the public, it was nothing but a high-powered
detective agency—but in private it functioned as a refuge. For people like
Eddie. And others, who weren’t human by any stretch of the imagination.

Until recently, however, almost
no one at Dirk & Steele had been aware that A’Priori existed, or that its
connections to the agency ran so deep.

And
no
one, certainly,
had known that Dirk & Steele’s worst enemy, the Consortium -- responsible
for human trafficking and experimentation, bio-terrorism, mass murder—was part
of that same family.

Your brother
, Eddie said
silently, looking at Roland, knowing he could hear his thoughts.
Your
brother runs the Consortium. You knew all along that it existed, and why. You
never warned us, not even after it was too late.

Too late for me.

Roland flinched, but those
bloodshot eyes showed nothing. And Eddie felt nothing except a dull ache when
he looked at him.

At the other end of the room, a
shadow detached from the wall: a slow, sinuous flow of movement made of
perfect, dangerous grace.

Eddie had been aware of that
presence from the moment he entered the room, but he still tensed; and so did
Serena and Roland. It was impossible not to. The old woman who emerged from the
shadows was deadly, in more ways than one.

Little of her face was visible,
but her eyes glowed with subtle, golden light. She was Chinese, but so old—and
so inhuman—that definitions based on ethnicity held no value.

“Ma’am,” Eddie said, with
careful respect.

“Boy,” she replied, and the air
seemed to hiss across his skin with power. “I’ve met immortals with younger
eyes than you.”

He said nothing. Roland
muttered, “Long Nu. Get on with it.”

The old woman’s hand flashed
out, trailing light, and touched the corner of Eddie’s mouth. Not with a
finger, but a claw—cool as silk, sliding across his lips, down his jaw. He
smelled stone and ash, and a hint of sandalwood.

“You know what you have to do?”
Long Nu said to him quietly.

 “You want me to find a girl. A
girl who can control fire.”

“A shape-shifter,” she
murmured, as golden light continued to shimmer over her hand, and her flesh
rippled with scales. “A dragon.”

Eddie reached up, very slowly,
and pushed her hand away from his face. “I don’t understand why you don’t go
yourself. One of your kind to another.”

“It would draw the wrong kind
of attention. More than what is already focused on the child.” Long Nu glanced
at Roland. “She is being hunted.”

Hunted. A girl, hunted. Eddie
felt a cold, visceral disgust when he heard that. It made him think of his
sister.

“No one told me,” he said.

“We were not sure. Now we are.”

“Who’s after her?”

Long Nu hesitated, and that was
enough to convey to Eddie just how bad it was.

“They are called the
Cruor
Venator
,” she said, in a cold, heavy voice. “Blood Hunters. Witches who
steal power from blood.”

Serena sucked in her breath, a
startling sound because it was filled with fear, dismay: two emotions Eddie had
never, once, associated with her.

Eddie shared a quick look with
Roland. “Witches?”

“Not just any witches,” Serena
said sharply, continuing to stare at Long Nu. “Killers. Vicious, ruthless. They
live for death. It’s their first, and only, pleasure.” She moved even closer to
dragon woman, as though stalking her, hands flexing at her sides. “But it’s impossible.
That magic hasn’t been seen in a hundred years.”

Long Nu shook her head. “I know
what such a death looks like. A shifter in Florida was lost to a group of them
only two weeks ago. The same shifter who contacted Dirk & Steele about the
girl.”

A hard knot of unease hit
Eddie’s gut. “I didn’t know he was dead.”

Roland rubbed a hand through
his hair, and closed his eyes. “I only just found out. Long Nu discovered
Estefan’s murder through different channels. When he stopped emailing me, I
thought maybe he’d changed his mind about asking for our help in finding the
girl.”

“I suspect he reached out to
you because he had an idea of what threatened her. Except the
Cruor Venator
got him first,” said Long Nu in a cold, blunt voice—looking directly at Eddie
as she spoke. “Estefan was ripped apart. Drained of blood. Part of his heart
eaten. Skinned. It was a very bad death.”

Eddie did not blink or flinch. Long
Nu, still watching him, added, “His wife is human, and was away when he was
murdered. She explained that just before her husband died, Estefan told her that
three women had been asking locals about a girl with golden eyes. It concerned
him a great deal…especially when he learned that they were using her real
name.”

“You think those women are
witches,” he said, “and that they found the shifter, and murdered him, because
they were looking for the girl.”

“I know it,” Long Nu replied,
with chilling certainty. “And even if I am wrong, the mere possibility makes it
urgent that we find her as quickly as possible.”

Serena’s eyes narrowed. “Did he
know that she was headed to New York?”

“Yes. And everything he knew,
the
Cruor Venator
now knows.”

Deep, dangerous, waters
,
thought Eddie, feeling that old familiar shift inside his skin, as though he
was a shape-shifter himself, transforming into a different person.

That transformation had begun
as soon as Long Nu said the girl was being hunted. After all these years, it
was natural as breathing. Part of him was always quiet, always waiting, beneath
the fire. A mindset, where nothing could be depended on, where violence was
expected, promised, and always lethal. He had the scars to remind himself, if
he ever forgot. But he never had.

His heart donned a cold armor:
where he would feel nothing. Nothing, until this job was done.

Because it was obvious this job
was going to require doing things he was going to regret.

“Just find the girl,” Roland
said heavily, clearly reading his thoughts. “Serena, talk to your contacts. I’ll
do the same here.”

Eddie didn’t need to hear more.
He didn't want to.

He turned and walked away, descending
the stairs to the kitchen. He did not look at the cage. He strode down a long
hall, and then took another flight of stairs to the seventh floor.

He had an apartment half-a-mile
from here, but a spare room had been given to him several years ago, after
contracting an artificially constructed virus: the prototype of a bio-weapon. The
infection had almost killed him, with one additional side effect.

Eddie had lost all control over
his powers.  All those hard-earned years of focus, sacrifice, and isolation—gone,
meaningless. Literally, up in flames.