Keri Arthur - Fireborn

Something was thrown over my body; then I was carried like a sack out of the house. Wind. Sunlight. Darkness and metal vibrating underneath me. Then nothing for a long period of time.

Rising to full consciousness seemed to take forever. My head was back to throbbing with an intensity that suggested it was about to tear apart, and there was a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. My shoulders burned, and there was something tight around my wrists and ankles. It took a few minutes to register it was rope. I was tied.

Which was better than being dead, I guess.

As awareness grew, I remained still and listened to the sounds around me, trying to discover where I was and who might be near.

I was lying on something cold and hard. Not concrete, but smallish rectangular shapes. Bricks, I thought. Bricks that were slick with moisture. In the distance water trickled, the sound echoing lightly. The air that swirled around me was stale and heavy with the scents of excrement and rubbish. Either I was in a very old, not-often-cleaned lane or I was in a sewer.

My vote was on the latter option.

After a few seconds, I became aware of footsteps. They were barely audible, and I could hear only one set. But until I knew whether there was more than one person nearby, I wasn’t about to give any indication that I was awake.

Time seemed to creep by. The pain in my shoulders flared downward until it felt like my arms were locked in agony. And the ropes around my legs were so damn tight they were cutting into my skin and making my toes numb. It was just as well I could take another form, because if I had to rely on this one to react with any sort of speed, I’d be in serious trouble.

A phone rang sharply into the silence and I jumped. Thankfully, whoever was out there didn’t seem to notice.

“Got your parcel,” a gruff voice said. “You were right—they did go for the waitress.”

God, I thought, the waitress had been a trap. I should have known that it had all been a little too conveniently timed.

“She did get a call off to the cops,” he continued, “so I didn’t get the chance to kill the waitress. And the Fae took out my two men.”

He didn’t get the chance? He’d had plenty of time to kill the waitress before we got there, if simple murder had been his intention. I wasn’t close enough to hear the other side of the conversation, and that was irritating. I cracked open an eye and peered around. My captor was standing near what looked like a sewer’s edge ten feet away. He was tall, broad shouldered, and thickset, with a bald head that seemed to gleam even in the thick shadows that surrounded us.

Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew who he was, having seen a photograph not so long ago. It was Sherman Jones, the man who’d mysteriously disappeared after Mark’s murder.

“Don’t worry. They can’t tell anyone anything,” Sherman said. He swung around, and I quickly shut my eye. “So there’s no problem with the cops interrogating them. What do you want me to do about the waitress, though?”

He listened for several seconds, then grunted. “And this one?”

Again silence fell; then he said, “Fine. See you then.”

He walked toward me and bent down. Even though he was close enough that I could feel the wash of his breath across my cheek, I couldn’t really smell him. It was as if something had completely erased his scent. Maybe that was why Jackson hadn’t realized he was in the house—either that, or the scent of the other two had been so strong he simply hadn’t had the chance to look beyond it.

“So,” he said softly, his rough fingertips trailing across my cheek. “It seems we have an entire afternoon to fill in before I have to hand you over.”

“Well, you’re not passing that time with me,” I spat, and flamed. The force of it threw him backward even though he was barely touching me, and it cindered the ropes holding me captive in an instant. I let the flames take me fully into spirit form, then flowed forward. Sherman scrambled backward, his sharp face twisted with fear and his mouth open, though if he was screaming, he made no sound. I reached out and grabbed him with one molten hand. My flames danced across his clothing, setting them alight but not actually burning them. Not yet, not until I intended it. I slammed him against the slick brick walls and held him there.

“Tell me who you’re working for,” I said softly. “Or the flames that surround you will consume you.”

He made several attempts to speak and eventually croaked, “What the hell are you?”

“Something you don’t want to mess with.” I shook him lightly. “Now, answer the question.”

He licked his lips, then said, “I don’t know his name. I was contracted through an intermediary.”

“Marcus Radcliffe?”

He shook his head violently. “No. Haven’t worked for him in weeks.”

“Then who?”

I directed the flames up toward his face, letting them tease his chin and lightly burn. He gulped. “Lee Rawlings. I was supposed to hand you over to him this evening.”

The timing suggested that Lee Rawlings was a vampire—the same one that had pursued me, perhaps?

“When and where?”

“Under the bridge near the red zipper sculpture in the Flemington Canal. Eight p.m.”

“And is Rawlings the one who hired you to watch the professor?”

He shook his head. “Radcliffe did.”

“Why was he interested in the professor?”

“I don’t know. I was just asked to see who he interacted with on a daily basis.”

Did that mean we had two different parties interested in Mark’s work? “What about Professor James Wilson—was anyone following him?”

“How the fuck do I know? I was just employed to follow Baltimore. When he was murdered, I made scarce.”

I guess that was no surprise. “What does Rawlings look like?”

Sherman shrugged, so I let the flames leap a little higher and singe his whiskers. He yelped and said, “Christ! He’s tall and thin, like most fucking vampires. Dark hair, brown eyes.”

“And what was the delivery deal?”

“Half before, half later.”

“Half being . . . ?”

He licked his lips. “A thousand.”

I was worth only a paltry thousand dollars? That sucked—or Sherman was simply cheap. “And what about the waitress?”

He frowned. “What about her?”

“Why were you employed to kill her?”

“I don’t ask why,” he all but whined. “I just take the job and do it.”

“So you were told to beat her up and then rape her before you killed her?”

Sweat beaded his upper lip. He quickly licked it, his gaze darting away from mine. “Not exactly.”

Disgust stirred, and it took every ounce of effort not to burn the bastard to a cinder right there and then. He might have been employed to the kill the waitress for whatever reason, but he’d been the one who decided on the more savage method. Because he enjoyed doing it.

“What’s the security code for your phone?” I asked brusquely.

Confusion flitted through his eyes, but he rapidly spat out a number.

“Thank you,” I said, then regained flesh and hit him as hard as I could. He went down like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground with a sharp crack that suggested something had broken.

For several minutes I did nothing more than wince and curse as the pins and needles in my arms and feet made the mere act of holding human flesh sheer agony. As the pain began to subside, I checked that Jones was unconscious, then rifled through his pockets, discovering in the process he’d landed awkwardly on his left arm and had indeed broken it. Feeling little in the way of sympathy—especially given what he’d intended to do to both me and the waitress—I plucked his phone free. Mine was with my purse back at the waitress’s house, and I wouldn’t have used it anyway. Not when Sam had it bugged. I flipped the case open, typed in the security code, and saw the time. I’d been missing for more than an hour, which no doubt meant that not only would the cops be at the waitress’s house but Sam and his people would be as well. Jackson would have been interrogated, but had enough time passed for him to have been released? Or was Sam holding him somewhere?