Keri Arthur: Fireborn

Rory kissed my cheek, then headed for the door. Twenty minutes later I ran out of the building and headed for the train. I squeezed out at Footscray Station, then walked down to Byron Street and the big white building that housed the Chase Medical Research Institute.

Ian Grant—the day shift security guard, and a bear of a man with a close-cropped head of gray hair and very little in the way of untattooed skin—gave me a wide grin of greeting as I entered the foyer.

“Hey, Em,” he said, “Lady Harriet’s office has been trying to contact you for the last twenty minutes. You got your phone off again?”

Harriet Chase had founded the institute some fifty years ago, and it was still one of the biggest privately funded organizations for biological and medical research in Victoria. The old dear was also something of an elitist, hence the not-so-affectionate moniker.

But I had no idea why the hell her office would be chasing me.

I dug my phone out of my purse and, sure enough, there were seven missed calls. I glanced up at Ian. “I gather she’s been on the phone to you?”

“Well, it was Abby rather than herself, but she wanted me to get you on the phone the minute you walked in.”

Abby was Harriet’s overworked but not underpaid assistant. Ian duly picked up the phone and called her, and I suddenly wondered if I was about to get sacked. I couldn’t think of any other reason for Lady Harriet’s office to be ringing me, especially given she or her staff rarely spoke to anyone less worthy than the heads of the vari- ous research departments. Although the security guards did at least get a smile of greeting every morning, which was more than could be said for the rest of us.

“Abby, I have Emberly Pearson here for you.” He paused for a moment, then handed the phone across to me. I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry about the missed calls, Abby, but I was on the train and didn’t hear—”

“Never mind that now,” Abby said, her voice sounding more than a little harassed. Lady Harriet had obviously been in one of her moods this morning. “You need to get over to Professor Baltimore’s place. He’s due to make a presentation to some investors in half an hour, and he hasn’t arrived and he’s not answering his phone.”

I frowned. It wasn’t like Mark to be late, so something had obviously gone wrong. But why was I being asked to fetch him? Granted, I was the one being paid danger money to be his beck-and-call girl, but if this was so urgent, why not send someone else? It wasn’t like this place was lacking in research assistants. I said as much to Abby.

“We did send someone else,” she said, “but he’s not answering the door. You’re keyed into his security system, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then go,” she cut in. “Make sure you get him back here fast.”

She hung up before I could reply. I handed the phone back to Ian. “Well, there goes my peaceful morning.”

Ian grinned, his teeth spectacularly white against the inked darkness of his cheeks. “I’d run.”

I did. Thankfully, like many of the senior staff at the institute, Mark lived nearby. It saved time traveling back and forth and allowed them to work longer hours. Nothing like being addicted to your job—which was something I could never claim. Hell, I couldn’t even claim that I’d liked many of the things I’d done over the centuries Rory and I had been alive.

Mark’s brown brick building came into view. It was a squat, three-story building with vinyl windows that were double-glazed and butt-ugly. They’d been the rage about fifty years ago, and I could only thank the designer gods that the damn things had finally gone out of fashion.

A man with burnished auburn hair and the most amazing pair of emerald-green eyes I’d ever seen exited the building as I approached and, with a wide smile, he held the door open.

“Thanks,” I said, even as my steps slowed and my nostrils flared. The heat radiating off him was incredible, and it was all I could do to resist the desire to siphon it away. He had to be a fire Fae. No other nonhuman had that sort of heat signature.

From what I knew of the Fae, there were four groups, with each group controlling one of nature’s fundamental building blocks—earth, wind, fire, and water. This man, as a fire Fae, couldn’t actually create fire, but he could shape and control it. All Fae tended to be loners, preferring the solitude of empty countryside to the concrete jungles of this world, and each of them also had a need to be near their element regularly or they would fade away, becoming little more than a sigh on the wind.

While Fae were loners at heart, they were also sensualists, existing to experience sensations both within and without their elements. Fire Fae, in particular, reputedly delighted in introducing innocents to the more seductive pleasures of this world, which was maybe why this Fae was here in Melbourne. In a city as big as this, there was a greater chance of finding innocence.

Deep in his bright eyes, recognition flared, along with curiosity. He might not know exactly what I was, but he sure as hell recognized another being of fire.

“Do you come here often?” His voice was gravelly, sexy as hell, and sounded as if it was coming from somewhere near the vicinity of his rather large boots.

If there was one thing about the Fae that most literature over the years had gotten very wrong, it was their stature. They were neither small nor winged, and the only ones that were ethereal in any way were the air Fae.

I smiled. “A couple of times a week, at least.”

“Then with any sort of luck, we’ll meet again, when I’m not in so much of a hurry.” With that, he gave me a nod and walked away.

The urge to chase after him rose, but I resisted the temptation and ran up the stairs to Mark’s apartment on the third floor. The hallway was shadowed and cold, the small, ugly windows down the far end doing little to let much heat or light in. Mark’s apartment was the second on the left. I leaned on the doorbell and listened to it chime inside. I waited a few minutes, then, when there was no response, flipped up the cover protecting the security system. After I keyed in the code, it scanned my eyes, and the red light switched to green. As security measures went, they were pretty over-the-top, but the institute had insisted on them after the homes of several other professors had been burgled.

The door slid open with a soft whoosh . I took three steps inside and stopped, my eyes widening in surprise. The place was a mess. In fact, mess was putting it mildly. The room looked as if it had been turned upside down and given several violent shakes. Furniture was dragged away from walls or upturned, books were scattered all over the carpet, and his precious research papers had been flung everywhere.

What the hell had happened?

“Professor?” I stepped over loose paperwork and around fallen furniture and made my way to the bedroom. The door was closed. I hesitated, then pulled a tissue out of my handbag and used it to turn the door handle to cut any risk of adding my own prints to whatever prints might be there.

“Professor?” I repeated. “You in here?”

Still no answer. I opened the door and warily peeked around the corner. The mess in this room was a mirror of the first; the sheets and blankets were torn from the bed, the mattress flung against one wall, the dresser drawers half-out and their contents strewn across the floor. Someone really had done a number on this place, but where the hell was Mark?

My gaze went to the small en-suite bathroom and I swallowed heavily. But just because it was closed didn’t mean he was dead inside—and even if he was , it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen a corpse before.