Keri Arthur - Fireborn

I flamed, felt Jackson latch on to my fires, on to me , drawing all that I was into him, through him. Fire and flesh become one, and then there was no flesh, no him, and no me, just one united being of flame. And while it wasn’t in any way sexual, it was nevertheless an incredible sensation.

Then the connection broke. The suddenness of it slammed me backward, and for several seconds it was all I could do to suck in air and remain conscious.

“Em?” Jackson’s voice was as weak as I felt. “You okay? I didn’t hurt you?”

“No.” I felt like hell, and there was little more than ash in the storage banks right now, but I was alive. “You?”

“Same.” He paused. “The leg and arm are only half-healed.”

“You’re lucky it did that.” I pushed upright. “Phoenixes generally aren’t capable of healing their wounds with fire. That’s why I still have scars on my back.”

“Yeah, but I’m Fae, and we can use our elements to heal.”

“I’m not an element. I’m a being.”

Behind me, to my left, a leaf snapped. I swung around, sparks halfheartedly dancing across my fingertips. Saw a ghostly, gray-cloaked figure watching me, the cowled hood deep enough to hide his face and yet, oddly, not his eyes. They glowed with an unearthly blue fire and were filled with such hate it shook me to the core.

“You,” he said, the words soft, yet carrying easily on the evening air, “will yet be mine.”

Then he was gone, leaving me not only shaking, but wondering what the hell was going on. Nothing we’d discovered so far was adding up, and the only thing we could really be certain about was that there was something a whole lot bigger than our investigation into the murders of the two scientists going on.

Something—if the stranger’s words were anything to go by—that would drag me far deeper into this whole mess.

Red cloaks appeared and charged as one. I raised my hands and backpedaled fast—only to trip over something and fall ass over tit. I landed on my back, had a glimpse of claws thicker than my arm, and quickly glanced up. It wasn’t trees that filled my vision; it was fire. Not mine, not Jackson’s, but Rory’s. I flung out a hand and added what little fire I had left to his. The red cloaks were hit by the joint wall and had little hope. In a very short time, they were ashen blobs on the forest floor—blobs that the wind picked through and scattered.

Silence returned to the forest.

For several minutes, I didn’t move. I could no longer hear the crackle of Rory’s containment circle, but I had no sense that anyone was near. Perhaps the cool-voiced vampire had indeed kept his word and retreated rather than attacked. But then, if he was working with whoever controlled the red cloaks—and I very much suspected that that person was the gray-cloaked figure I’d seen—he had no real need to attack. Not given that he obviously expected them to take us out.

I pushed to my feet, brushed sweaty strands of hair out of my eyes, and met Jackson’s gaze. “You up to getting out of here?”

“Yeah.” He raised his good arm, and I hauled him to his feet again. This time the effort left me panting.

“We’re a damn fine pair, aren’t we?” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and leaned on me heavily.

“Seems we’re perfectly matched when it comes to finding trouble,” I agreed. My gaze swept the trees around us. That gray-cowled figure was still out there somewhere; his presence was like a canker in the fast-fading light of the sunset.

You will yet be mine, he’d said.

A shiver ran down my spine. I had no idea who he was—or even what he was. I only knew he was someone better avoided.

And why the hell would he want me? It wasn’t like I had any special talent. Yes, I was a phoenix capable of taking several different forms, but that didn’t make me any more special than Jackson—or any other nonhuman, for that matter.

So why me?

I had no idea—but it was very obvious sometime in the near future I was going to find out.

Trepidation trembled through me, but I thrust it aside. One problem at a time, I reminded myself yet again.

And that, right now, was getting the hell out of this forest.

Rory met us at the fence line and, between the two of us, we managed to get Jackson over the fence and into the car without too much further damage to his half-healed arm and leg.

“Where to?” Rory said as he retrieved the keys from under the wheel arch.

“I don’t know.” I ran a trembling hand through my matted hair. “We need to go somewhere safe and regroup. This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.”

“No, it’s not,” Jackson said from inside the car. “But there’s little we can do here. You might as well come back to my office, so we can decide where we go from here.”

I glanced at Rory, who raised his eyebrow and shrugged. “Right now, it’s as good an idea as any. But you and I will need to go home sometime this evening.”

Yes, we would, if only so he could recharge. Though I’d called on the earth mother’s power myself, it had been only briefly. Rory had drawn on her energy for a far longer period and, though he hadn’t said anything, his skin was pale and the heat emanating from his body was muted.

We climbed into the car and headed back to the city. I flipped the vanity mirror down and kept an eye on the road behind us. But darkness was rapidly closing in, and it was damn difficult to distinguish cars that might be following us from cars that were simply going in the same direction. In the end, I gave up.

Thankfully, we arrived at Jackson’s without further incident. Together we helped him inside. Though he didn’t say anything, he was trembling by the time we deposited him on the sofa at the far end of his office.

“Right,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “We all need to eat before anything else happens. Rory, you arrange drinks for everyone, and I’ll rustle up some grub.”

I ran up the stairs and raided Jackson’s fridge, ending up with a big platter of chicken, a variety of cheeses, and some bread that I’d roughly cut into thick slabs. I carried it down and placed it on the coffee table, grabbing a chicken leg and chunk of bread for myself before retreating to one of the chairs.

“So,” I said, once everyone else had helped themselves. “What the fuck do we do now?”

“That,” Jackson said heavily, “depends very much on what the sindicati decide to do next. They have the laptop, so maybe they’ll walk away and leave us be.”

“They may have the laptop,” Rory said, “but they won’t have the files they wanted. A Trojan will destroy all of them the next time it’s booted up.”

“Good move.” Jackson finished his wine in several large gulps, then held it out for Rory to refill. “But it’s one that will surely piss them off.”

“Better to piss them off than give them Mark’s notes.” I grimaced. “But it may not mean anything, given Baltimore has walked out of the morgue and disappeared into Brooklyn.”

Jackson raised his eyebrows. “He was infected?”

“Apparently. God knows when it happened.”

“Damn it. That means the red cloaks have both of the scientists who were working on the cure for that fucking virus. That can’t be a good thing for the rest of us.”

“No,” I agreed. “And it’s made worse by the fact that—if tonight is any indication—the sindicati are now working with the cloaks.”

“Which doesn’t make sense. I mean, from what your ex said, vampires can be infected as easily as humans. Why the hell would they work with the people who cannot only give them the disease, but who now control the only two men capable of finding its cure? Wouldn’t it make more sense to try to grab the research and scientists for themselves?”