Marjorie Liu - Within the Flames

At the end of the street, the police pulled into a long, curving driveway that wound up an increasingly steep hill. Delicate lights illuminated the way. Lyssa didn’t see guards or security cameras, but it was night, and there were a lot of trees. Anything could be out there.

The house was too big to take in at one glance. It seemed to sprawl over the hill in climbing layers of glass and stone, and the light from within shone in the night with a warmth that would have been, in another life, comforting.

The Corvette was parked in the driveway. Nikola leaned on the hood and watched, unmoving, as the police helped Lyssa from the back of the sedan. The men did not speak as they unlocked her handcuffs. Both kept their gazes down, and oozed sweat.

Nikola sauntered close. The men trembled, cowering like abused dogs. Lyssa knew they had no control over their reactions. It would have hit them like a bomb in their heart. If the witch asked them to, they would crawl on their bellies into the river and never come out.

Nikola, however, did not look at them. Her focus remained on Lyssa.

She stared back, her gaze flat and calm, and unflinching. It wasn’t difficult. Rage might have had something to do with it. Maybe she should have snapped before this, but discovering that Jimmy and his mother had been kidnapped, his body cut, blood consumed. . that he could have been subjected to emotional torture. . put her on a whole new level that transcended anything she had felt since her parents’ murder.

And then, there was that scrap of fur stapled to the note in her pocket. Another reminder of what Estefan had suffered — as if she hadn’t already seen enough.

“You’re not afraid,” Nikola said to her, trailing an elegant hand over the younger police officer’s shoulders. He squeezed shut his eyes, shaking violently as her fingers stroked his hair.

Lyssa gritted her teeth because she was very afraid and determined not to show it. “Why would I be?”

Nikola frowned. “Just like the young man who saved you from the fire. I don’t like mysteries.”

She pushed the police officer away from her, and he stumbled against the car, one hand on his weapon, the other clutching his chest as he panted for air. Lyssa felt the break in the air around them, a release of tension — the witch pulling back her influence.

The difference in the men was immediate — as if the hands squeezing them to death relaxed enough to let them breathe.

“You can go,” Nikola said to the officers. “You should go. Now.”

No hesitation. No questions. Lyssa had not heard those men make a single sound the entire time she’d been in their presence, and nothing changed when they left.

Leaving her alone with Nikola.

The night was very quiet. Lyssa felt reminded of another evening, ten years in the past, when she had stood bound and captured. The memory made her heart quicken, but she thought of Jimmy and his mother. Estefan.

Eddie.

She was not bait this time. She was not a kid.

“You’re wasting time,” she said. “I want to see Georgene.”

A muscle twitched in Nikola’s right cheek, and deep in her eyes there was a glint of unease. Defiance — and simple knowledge — unsettled her. Made her uncertain how to proceed. This woman — likely any who served the Cruor Venator —had relied on power too long and forgotten what it was to be vulnerable. If she had ever known.

Nikola reached inside her jacket and pulled free an obsidian blade. “How do you know the Cruor Venator ’s name?”

“Easy,” she replied, ignoring the weapon. “We’re cousins.”

The witch blinked. It would have made Lyssa smile, under different circumstances.

Or maybe not. It wasn’t really that funny. Over the years, when she’d let herself think too much about the truth, it all seemed rather disgusting.

“She didn’t tell you much of anything, did she?” Lyssa said. “How many surprises can you handle?”

Nikola’s face hardened. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’ll scare me to death?” Her stiff lips curved into a cold smile. “You have no power over me. Betty found that out the hard way.”

The witch edged forward. “Are you stupid?”

“Are you? Who do you think you are?” asked Lyssa, feeling the night air warm around her body. “What has Georgene told you? That you’re a Cruor Venator, like her? That you can be like her if you continue to serve her?”

Nikola said nothing, but she didn’t have to. Lyssa felt a terrible sense of déjà vu, as though she was living inside her mother’s skin — ten years in the past. Her words, so similar to her mother’s as she had stood in the snow and confronted a woman just like Nikola.

“You’re nothing,” she whispered to the witch. “Do you think Georgene would keep you so close if you had the ability to kill her?”

Nikola tensed. Lyssa said, “Go on. Try and take her life. See the truth for yourself.”

“You’re only a dragon,” she said, but the obsidian blade wavered. “You’re just a shape-shifter. You cannot be her cousin.”

“But if I am?” Lyssa stepped toward her, and Nikola swayed. “You know what that makes me.”

Conflict filled her eyes. “No. We watched you for weeks. You live in a hole. You have nothing. If you possessed that power, you would never deny it. No one would.”

Lyssa barely heard her. Her blood was tingling.

Your mate is close, whispered the dragon. He is terrified for you.

She tried to bury her unease. How do you know what he’s feeling?

How do you not?

The idea of Eddie being here, witness to what she was, what she was capable of becoming, made her insides turn to rubber.

“Is Georgene in that house?” Lyssa asked, proud her voice sounded sharp, strong.

Nikola’s jaw flexed. “Yes. She is waiting for you.”

“How many people are imprisoned?”

No response. Lyssa pulled off her glove, flexing her clawed hand and savoring the pull of the contorted muscles in her arm. The witch’s gaze settled on her hand and stayed there.

Lyssa wished she had Eddie’s skill with fire — to summon a flame and have it burn in her hand — but all she could do was let the woman look, and imagine.

“That knife doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said softly. “Tell me how many people are there.”

Nikola gave her a hateful look, but there was caution in it, too. “Go and find out for yourself.”

As the tingling in her blood intensified, Lyssa turned on her heel and strode toward the house.

You could not run forever, whispered the dragon, as pain throbbed down her arm. You must fly or die, little sister.

Just as she reached the front steps, twin beams of light swung and bounced off the house. Lyssa listened to the low rumble of a car engine — watching as headlights flickered through the trees that lined the winding driveway. The vehicle that appeared was an older Cadillac, built like a tank. Lyssa couldn’t see the driver, but she knew who it was.

Eddie left the engine running as he climbed from the car, keeping his hands in plain sight. No sign of Jimmy.

“Lyssa,” he said, watching the witch.

“Get away,” she told him, heart in her throat, dying a little on the inside even as another part of her thrilled that he was here, with her.

Nikola tightened her grip on the knife. “Hello, puppy.”

Lyssa felt the power in her voice — an attempt to spread her infection of fear. But beneath that was a tremor.

Weakness. Uncertainty. Lyssa thought about the memories she had seen from Estefan’s death — this woman, slashing him with that blade. Torturing him simply because she could.