Rachel Caine - Firestorm

Eamon was sitting in an armchair next to the light, which was a standard-issue sort of thing with a lopsided paper shade. He wasn't an intimidating presence, generally; tall, lean, with pleasantly shaggy hair and a neat beard and mustache that gave some softness to his angular face. His hair was a color trapped somewhere between brown and blond, and although his eyes looked dark at the moment, I remembered them as that smoky color between blue and gray. He was, in a word, cute. Older than I was, but not more than ten years at a stretch.

In some ways, his hands were the most striking thing about him. Long, restless, graceful hands that should have been doing something artistic, like music or sculpting or neurosurgery. He took good care of them. His manicure was better than mine.

"How long?" I asked. My sense of time was screwed.

He tilted his head slightly, watching me. He looked a little surprised, as if that wasn't the first question he'd expected me to ask.

"An hour," he said. "By the way, congratulations on your escape from certain death back at the fire. That was exciting."

"You were following me."

He shrugged. "I'm not that energetic about it. I was tracking you. I only saw a bit toward the end."

"Why?"

Ah, that was the question he'd been expecting. He smiled. A sweet smile, with a loony's edge. "I had a strange idea that you weren't going to be looking after my interests," he said. "Seemed like a good idea to keep my hand in."

"Well, you've made your point. Very scary. Now let me go." It was scary. I was starting to sweat again, and I really didn't like the ropes sawing into my hands and feet. The threat was implicit and precise, and the ease with which he'd handled me was frightening. He'd had a lot of experience at this abduction thing.

"Have I?" he asked. It was a neutral question, but I sensed the menace behind it. "Love, I haven't even started making my point with you. I warned you before. I need a Djinn, and I need it now. I'm not going to wait politely while you take care of your own affairs. You satisfy me first. Now."

There was a double entendre there that I was quite sure was intentional.

"I'll kill you," I said. "I'll kill you if you—"

"I'm not that crude," he interrupted. He hadn't really even moved since turning on the light, except for tilts of his head; his hands were limp on the arms of the chair. "I'm not Quinn, you know."

He knew. Quinn had told him what he'd done to me. Fury boiled up inside me, hot as plasma, and I didn't know how to deal with it. I'd never told anyone , not about what had happened to me in that darkest place, but Quinn had been shooting off his mouth to Eamon. Laughing about it over beer and chips, or whatever it was those two bastards did for fun besides tormenting others.

"No," Eamon said quietly. "He didn't tell me. I guessed. I wouldn't have done that to you, you know. There wouldn't have been any point. I keep my business and my pleasure completely separate."

He knew me way too well. I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my breathing. I needed calm, and I needed to have full command of my powers. Weather and Fire. I was tired, and I was waterlogged with drugs, but dammit, I wasn't going to take this. Not from Eamon.

"Yeah, but you've still got me tied up on a bed," I said. "Do the words sexual predator mean anything to you, Eamon?"

"Mmm. Fifteen to twenty-five, by the laws of this particular state, I believe. If I don't kill you. If I do, of course… does Maine have the death penalty? I'm afraid I can't keep track, as often as you people change your minds about cruel and unusual." He sounded bland and unworried. "You'll notice I tied you with your legs together. I could have done anything I liked. For that matter, I still could. You should be a little more polite."

That edge showed for a second, naked and glittering as a knife. Eamon was a Halloween candy bar full of razors. He terrified me on some level that I couldn't even fully understand.

"Somebody's going to come looking for me," I said to him. That got a stir from him; he sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, and tented his hands with his fingertips resting over his lips.

"The girl?" he asked. "The one who looks so remarkably like you that I had to ask Sarah about younger sisters, cousins, et cetera? I had to conclude that she was a closer relation. Daughter, I think. Very, very pretty." He smiled, and it was an expression that curled my stomach in on itself. "And since I've fairly comprehensively established that there's simply no way you could have conceived and delivered a child without there being some kind of record of it, she's something else. Something… unusual."

I stopped breathing, then forced myself to start up. Calm and casual, that was the only way to do this. "I'm not old enough to have a grown daughter."

"Please, don't force me to be ungentlemanly about it. You're more than old enough. But I think I can assume this is something else. Something to do with your handsome young Djinn boyfriend, for instance, and the desire of all living things to reproduce."

"You're crazy."

"Very likely." He nodded. "But your daughter is Djinn, and I want her. Need her, actually. I promise to return her unbroken, if that will help."

There were lots of answers I could have chosen from, but the most primal one boiled up first. "Touch her and I swear, I'll rip you apart, Eamon."

"I believe that," he agreed. "I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as capable of violence as you, Joanne. You disguise it well, but there's nothing light in your nature when you're at the sharp end. I like that about you."

"I mean it!"

"Oh, I spotted that right off," he said, and suddenly he was standing. He moved that way, unexpectedly, and my heart did a funny little jump as he crossed the short distance to the bed. He stood over me. There wasn't so much light over here, and he was blocking out most of it. I couldn't see anything but a pale oval for a face, and the darkness of his body.

The bed creaked as he sat down next to me.

"I love your sister," he said. Talk about things I hadn't expected… I kept my eyes on his unseen face. "That is very annoying, you know. I hadn't planned on feeling anything for her, beyond the occasional gratitude for being a good fuck—" He smiled at my animal noise of protest. "She's a good woman, Sarah. And she believes that I'm a good man. No doubt that bubble will burst soon, but I'd like to keep the fantasy intact awhile longer. She makes me feel—"

He fell silent. I didn't interrupt his thoughts.

"Well," he said, finally. "She makes me feel well."

No question, Eamon was sick on some level I didn't even want to understand. "Don't hurt her."

"I don't want to. But I'm afraid that's really up to you at this point, and your daughter. I've told you what I need, and it's up to you how it gets provided to me. I've made the request nicely—"

"You abducted my sister!"

"Rescued, actually."

"You molested her!"

"Yeah," he admitted cheerfully. "I did, a bit. Sorry about that. Can see how that might rot the trust between us to some extent, but love, I was trying to emphasize to you the seriousness of the situation. Which has, I could point out, become even more serious. So I want my bloody Djinn or I will crush your fucking throat ."

The last was snapped out in tones that made me cold inside. Before I could draw breath, his right hand was around my neck.

I wanted to scream, but nothing came out when I opened my mouth except a choked gagging sound. He was an expert at it. He choked me just hard enough to lock the scream in my throat and make it unbearably painful to breathe. The darkness began to spark with fireworks. Oxygen deprivation. He kept holding my throat, steady and sure, and then suddenly the pressure was gone. His hand stayed, loose and cool against my burning skin, and I whooped in a convulsive breath.