Fire Danger (6 page)

“I am,” she said helplessly. She reached out a hand, needing Phoenix’s touch, his warmth. He called to her in a primitive way, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. The thing at the core of her beat against her skin, as if wanting to explode out. Rachel’s head continued to buzz.

Then it was as if she were in a long hallway, telescoping at either end until there was no way forward or back.

The buzzing increased like a thousand angry bees were swarming around her. She couldn’t hear anything past the sound in her ears. Rachel recognized that she had slipped into a fugue state, only familiar now that she was in it.

Memory tugged at her, of something important but she couldn’t think what. An image of the car accident, of hiding behind a stand of trees as she watched the car burn and her parents’ corpses inside and the flames all around, the flames the flames… Fire beat against her, a living thing inside her. The hallway seemed to elongate, and the bees were orange and red now, like the color of Phoenix’s wings, like the dancing of a bonfire, like…

“Rachel!”

* * * * *

She came out of herself to a vision of Phoenix’s living room that was wholly unexpected.

When had she gotten up? When had the room shifted around her? When had Phoenix’s wings erupted on his back?

Both men were standing, their wings fully extended so yellow overlapped with red and orange, presenting a wall of feathers and tendons that appeared at once beautiful and deadly. Phoenix’s T-shirt fell in tatters on his chest, the cloth shredded where it had once clung to his sculpted back.

There was a voice calling to her, but it wasn’t Phoenix’s. It felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, like an echo of a prior time. It wasn’t the grumpy Griffin either, it was a person she knew but yet, she didn’t…

“Rachel,” Phoenix said urgently, this time with sound.

She cocked her head at him. She was standing in the middle of the living room. How much time had passed? The buzzing sound was retreating, but there was something wrong, something different.

Then she smelled an acrid scent, similar to what she had smelled a few moments—or had that been minutes or hours before—but it wasn’t coming from Griffin. It was coming…from her.

It was coming from
her.

Her skin felt hot, as if she had been sitting in a sun-tanning bed. Slowly, Rachel raised her hands. Relief flooded her—they were the same pink color they normally were and not the red she had so lately seen.

“How long?” she asked. Phoenix’s wings fluttered, moving slowly to her and then away, as if they had a mind of their own. His fellow Elemental gave her a studied look and stepped away from Phoenix, his butter-yellow wings folding against his back until they almost disappeared.

“How long? Rachel repeated, feeling off-balance. She staggered a little, and Phoenix went to her, putting his arms around her.

“Twenty minutes,” Phoenix said, and his voice had a rough quality, as if he had been shouting.

Rachel breathed out a sigh of relief—there was no evidence that she’d set anything on fire. The room held the heavy scent of char, and Griffin went to the sliding glass door and flung it open. Cooler air rushed in, gliding over her heated body.

“Interesting.” Oddly, Griffin seemed more relaxed, as if whatever had just happened had made sense to him.

“Explain,” Phoenix said. “What are you thinking? We know she’s not dragon. They do not mate with humans.” There was something else behind the word
dragon
that left Rachel wondering what the beasts did do.

Griffin’s look held a wealth of shared history and experience.

The feel of Phoenix’s wings was an unexpected sensual pleasure. They were warm and soft, with just a hint of danger at the tips and along the tendons. Those same muscles could break bones, but they also protected her and kept her safe.

“She is not Cherufe either.” Griffin’s lips curved at the look on Rachel’s face. “A being of rock and magma. You’re definitely not a hellhound, and if you were a Lampad you would gravitate to the evening more. Hecate always liked her maidens to come out only at night. You may be driving Phoenix mad, but for different reasons. There is only one possible explanation.”

Rachel felt Phoenix tense and she grew still. While the buzzing in her ears had receded, her mind was whirling. She was on the precipice of something huge, something that would change her life irrevocably.

The thought came to her unbidden. Change it or…make it right.

“Ifrit,” Griffin said, and although the word meant nothing to her, it echoed inside. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

She snorted, drawing a quick look from Phoenix. “What is an Ifrit? Wouldn’t I know if I were a…a…whatever an Ifrit is? Phoenix leaned forward, his casual attitude at odds with the fierceness of his eyes. For a moment Rachel thought that they had changed color and shone with an amber cast. Then the image was gone.

Rachel tried to stay calm as the heat of anger rose in her. Phoenix’s wing stroked her, soothing the jagged edges of her temper.

Unaccountably, Griffin chuckled, and Phoenix relaxed slightly.

“You’re a cool one. I’ll give you that.” Griffin said.

“She’s a hot one. Rachel, a line of flame ran from your hands up your arms and down your torso. You are fire, which explains much.” Phoenix continued to hold her, stroking her arm as if soothing a scared cat.

“Fire calls to fire,” Griffin said, and his tone was flat.

“It’s very sexy.”
Phoenix’s mental voice was husky, his eyes lingering on her breasts.

“Kids.”

She flushed guiltily and saw a similar stain on Phoenix’s cheeks. She noticed with pleasure the hardening of his strong length as his penis pressed against his jeans.

Griffin made a disgusted sound and clicked his tongue. “Phoenix, you may be twice as old as me, but at least I know how to shield my thoughts when aroused.”

“You’ve had more practice than me.”

Griffin studied her for a minute and then rose. Leaning over to where she and Phoenix were sitting, he brushed a hand over his eyes. “Rachel.” He still had that flat quality to his voice. “The world is at stake. You came out of nowhere as Challenge was starting.
Che coincidenza!
as we would say in Italian. A fire being showing up at the fire Elemental’s door is too neat. We haven’t survived this long by being stupid.”

She put aside that she knew nothing about what an Ifrit was. She would find out. Rachel turned to Phoenix. “I thought you were immortal.”

“Elementals have extremely long lives, but we’re not immortal. We can be killed.”

His voice was so matter-of-fact, Phoenix might have been discussing a grocery list. Rachel held up her hand. “Stop. Just stop. I can’t take any more. Sorry.” She lowered her hand. “I do want to know. But I’m getting this in large, indigestible chunks. Could you feed it to me slower, maybe over a couple of days, at least?”

Phoenix met Griffin’s eyes again.

“Do we have time?”
It was a narrowly focused beam from Griffin to Phoenix, but she heard it clearly in her head.

“Say it out loud, for God’s sake,” she cried, clutching at her temples. “I can hear you anyway, so what’s the difference? Much more of this mind speak and my head will explode.”

Nobody said anything for a minute. A gentle breeze rustled the curtains of the balcony door. Down below the hill was the sound of early-afternoon traffic, thick even at this hour. Far in the distance was the sonorous horn of a barge moving across the San Francisco Bay.

Phoenix studied her and answered the question Griffin had asked him in his mind. “I don’t know.”

Chapter Five

Ron was sweating, but wiping the beads running down the side of his face would make his nervousness more obvious.

The being in his hotel room shimmered as it moved. It had a jerky walk, winking in and out as if it was not quite solid.

It was on two legs and resembled a person, but its skin was iridescent. The pieces of its hair that he could see were two-toned, one side blonde and the other red. It surveyed his cache of weapons, flicking a long, not-quite-human finger over the table.

Finally, it nodded.

“The firearms will do.” The hiss was more pronounced in person, and Ron fought to control a primal shudder. “You will need more explosives to put along her route. You can rig a simple timer, yes?”

Ron said nothing, only nodding his head. He didn’t think the being was here for conversation.

It was a good thing this job paid well. Very well.

“Good. Arrange it.” The being shimmered again, fading out before becoming clear. Once again it was hooded, and Ron decided he really didn’t want to see its face.

“The mayor will be here in a few days. It should be a simple thing to remove one politician, if you are as good at your task as you claim.”

He didn’t know why this being would want the Chicago Mayor assassinated, but again, he wasn’t paid to ask questions. It was a simple enough job. He would add the explosives along her car route as requested, although he didn’t see the reason why. He could take her out easily. It was simple. Too simple.

It tossed a necklace on the table. The thing clanked there, just an ordinary stone on a thick, inexpensive chain. The stone, caught in a brass frame, was not quite round, and an off-white color.

“Wear that. Always. Do not take it off, under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

Ron picked it up in confusion, fingering it. He saw out of the corner of his eye that the being was just waiting, without moving, for his answer. Instead of saying anything, Ron slipped it on, nodding in affirmation as he did so. The weight, heavier than he anticipated, fell to the middle of his chest. On instinct, he moved the chain. It disappeared under his shirt.

The being crossed to the door, and Ron knew better than to lift his eyes to watch it go. He wanted to. Every part of him wanted this thing gone.

“I will be in touch. Do not fail.”

After it had left, Ron finally let out the long sigh he’d kept in, a soul-deep fear searing through him. Wiping away the sweat, he shuddered. He had decided long ago that death did not frighten him.

But this being did.

* * * * *

World events could be mind-numbing when inspected for hours on end, Phoenix decided. It had been simpler in the old times, what mortals called the Dark and Middle Ages, before so much technology and so many people.

He hadn’t been mortal for a thousand years. The Dark Ages were familiar to him but, in the way of many old memories, better left in the past.

Early morning sun was coming in through the plate-glass windows when Phoenix flipped through the BBC again, bypassing American news, and then went to the Al Jazeera site, the one Americans were allowed to see, but then hacked into the site solely for Arabs. He scanned the words, trying to find the link, the connection he knew was out there, to find the disaster he had to stop.

Nothing.

JT sauntered into the room and gave Phoenix a haughty look before turning to the kitchen to eat the kibble there. Rachel gave the cat a chirpy greeting, and he smiled.

A minute later she emerged, fresh and wet-haired, two cups of coffee in her hand. The cat silently padded next to her.

Lust surged through him, hot and deep, pooling in his groin until it tightened painfully under the sweatpants he wore as a concession to his guest. He slammed his shields down, carefully concealing his thoughts from her with the practice born of a thousand years.

She had made no attempt at makeup, and her face glowed with the dewy skin of a woman grown but not of an age where it started showing. There was something timeless about her.

She joined him by the computer desk, pulling a chair in from the dining room and sitting next to him. The heat of her and the scent of her feminine musk did nothing to stop the swelling in his cock.

It was unusual for an Ifrit to mate with humans. He needed to know more. He had been surprised that Rachel hadn’t asked about her parents last night, but decided it was shock and information overload. She would be asking questions soon enough.

There were some questions he would not answer. Dragons ranked high on that list.
Fire calls to fire
had nearly burned him to ash once, and he had never thought he’d succumb to its pull a second time. Rachel threatened to burn him to another kind of ash, breathe into him a different type of fire.

“Thanks,” he said, gesturing to the coffee.

JT meowed before settling next to Rachel and licking his paw.

“Char and burn,” he muttered. “Cats.” His tone was rueful.

She grinned. “Someone had put him in a plastic bag and tied it up and left it in a dumpster. I found him before…” She shrugged. “I wasn’t going to leave him after that. The Chinese say something about having to take care of something after you save it.”

“If you save a man’s life, you are responsible for him.” Phoenix studied at the animal with new appreciation. “You lost a life there, cat.”

JT licked his paw with a lack of concern, and Phoenix chuckled. Cats were Griffin’s domain. They were attracted to Griff due to his nature, but they were not natural to a Phoenix. Maybe it was time to embrace new ideas in the modern world.

Rachel glanced around at the living room, and the empty sofa with a throw tossed across its back. “Did Griffin leave?”

“When it is time for Challenge for one, it is Challenge for all. He had to get back to Europe.”

Rachel opened her mouth to say something, and then shut it.

“Griffin’s wings never left him,” Rachel said, eyeing Phoenix’s naked, bare back. “Do they vanish too?”

Phoenix shook his head. “Griff always has his wings, and Sphynx never has to change to manipulate earth. Ondine and I are the ones whose outward manifestations of our station come and go. The only thing we’ve been able to figure out is that air and earth are all around us, but fire and water don’t exist everywhere. It’s a mystery.”

She cocked her head at him. “I’ll add it to the pile. What about you, Phoenix? I’m decently well versed in mythology, although I guess not enough. I know the phoenix stories. The fire, resurrection, phoenix tears… How much of it is true? Any of it? Or is Phoenix just a name?”

He picked up the mouse and set it back down. After a moment, he spoke. “It’s a name and a power. I have fire as mine, and control over it. Of course there is a price to pay. The phoenix legends are mostly nonsense. I have never healed anyone with tears, but sometimes I get sent to the pyre to burn. Usually it’s after a failure, after we have lost our battles, one or all. Sometimes it just…happens. I never know. The Phoenix wakes up from the ashes, unless we choose not to…but not always. Going to the fire is a risk.”

“Oh, Phoenix,” she said, tentatively touching his shoulders. He put his hands over hers and slid her arms around his body. She belonged there. It was good, it was right, like fire that burned but did not consume. “How often?”

“Not very. I assumed the mantle of the Phoenix when the last one failed to come out of the fire. That was toward the end of the Saxon reign. I did not account for time in those days, but I’m told it was around the year nine-fifty.”

“That’s why Griffin calls you Aleric.”

“My mortal name was Aleric. Call me that.” Then he smiled. “Griff is a youngster. He was born in the fifteen hundreds, so he’s a little over five hundred years old. His family can be traced back to Charlemagne, but he’s from Verona. Italians think they invented culture.”

She leaned her head against the broad expanse of his back, and his hard muscles flexed under her cheek. “You’re a thousand years old?”

“More. I was twenty-five when I assumed the office of Phoenix.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “A thousand and twenty-five, then.”

“A thousand and ninety,” he corrected. “Give or take a few months.”

Rachel’s mind stuttered to a halt. A thousand and… “An older man,” she said, hoping she was shielding enough that her thoughts didn’t show. She wanted to press a kiss against his spinal column and lick the salty skin. She was surprised when a deep shudder ran through Phoenix, making him ripple.

“I would like that too.”

“Ah, Rachel,” he said with a tone that was sad and aroused at the same time. “It would have been better if you hadn’t gone into a fugue that night.”

“Better for who?” she asked.

“You.” In a swift motion, he pivoted and pulled her into his arms. “It would be safer for you. Not for me. I am pleased that we met. More than pleased. You entice me.” He settled her on his lap and let her know with a gentle thrust of his hips what he meant.

“I see,” she said with a mischievous grin. Winding her arms around his neck, she straddled him, letting his arousal settle in the cleft between her legs. Rachel was usually shy around men, but this one had made his arousal plain and it aroused her in return. Any thoughts about his age or the strangeness of their situation fled when his hardness pressed against her.

His intake of breath brought their faces close together, and Rachel could once again see that fascinating combination of colors in the flecks of his irises.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, and then, as if talking were no longer possible, he caught her lips with his, his hand holding the back of her head as his mouth took hers.

“I’m not,”
she protested.

“Don’t argue with an Elemental,”
he said and deepened the kiss, fitting his lips to hers and plunging his tongue into her mouth.

Rachel drew back after a few heated moments and went to the large plate-glass door.

The sun, yellow and round, streamed through the window. Rachel drew a breath. So many things warred inside her mind. She opened the door to rid herself of that pent-up feeling. Then she looked down, directly into glowing black eyes on the street below.

The human—or whatever—was staring up. It was tall, but from her distance Rachel couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Whatever it was, it appeared to be staring fixedly at the house. When he-it-she caught sight of Rachel, it tipped its head farther back and opened its mouth. Fire streamed from its mouth and nostrils, surrounding its head but not burning it. Its hair was a strange mixture of blonde on one side and red on the other.

Rachel made an involuntary yelp and heard Phoenix’s cry of alarm at her mental picture as she projected without realizing she was doing so.

The being studied her for a long moment and with one strangely knuckled finger, beckoned to her. It gestured with its body, craning its neck and tilting its head away from the house. It motioned again, this time with its whole hand.

“Rachel!”

She heard Phoenix behind her, and the humanoid winked and took to the air. It had no wings, but it flew. One minute it was there, the next it was high above her, and then it was gone.

“Oh God, Aleric,” she said as he reached her, putting his arms around her and drawing her back from the door. His intake of breath told her more than she wanted to know.

“Haures. Of course. It’s about time.”

Rachel threw the lock and stepped back from the large glass door. It didn’t look nearly secure enough to hold back whatever that was.

Belatedly Rachel tasted blood on the inside of her mouth. She’d bitten her cheek. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might explode from her chest, and her skin was clammy to the touch.

Then she straightened. She might be out of her depth, but she was nobody’s victim. She was no simpering coward to freak at the sight of someone, even if that thing did have black eyes, breathed fire and flew without wings.

She hadn’t had a chance to do much digging into what she supposedly was, but the little she’d learned about Ifrits wasn’t much help. They were fire beings, like Djinns or genies. It seemed they’d be more likely to be on the side of the Demonos than the Elementals. She wanted to know more about who she was, but there was frustratingly little online.

* * * * *

The sun splashed in over the door, and it caught Rachel in a beam of light, glinting off the blonde of her hair and spiking her lashes with rays. For an instant all Phoenix could do was stand there and stare at the vision she created. He wanted to pull her into his arms and carry her to the highest mountain, where she would be safe. He wanted to trace every curve of her body with his hands until she quivered with need for him. When he took her, it would be the joining of the century, soaring together as only those who are meant to be together could soar.
Fire calls to fire.
Was he ready to pay the consequences a second time?

“Be right back.” He opened the door again and went through it. With a practiced move, he jumped off the balcony, down to the spot where the being had been a minute ago.

There was a faint black residue of fire on the ground. The Demonos had left its paranormal mark on the Earth in a line of black, char seeping into the cracked pavement of the hillside street.

Phoenix sniffed the air, searching for where Haures had gone. He saw her as a speck, far above them. Phoenix wondered what the purpose of the brief visit had been. Fear? Intimidation?

Taking Rachel’s mettle? The Demonos and Elementals knew each other well, locked as they had been for eons in this battle of good and evil. Rachel was an X-factor. There was only one reason Haures was trying to intimidate Rachel, and that was because she meant something to Challenge. He didn’t know what it was, but clearly she did. The wolves and shadow people seemed scared of Rachel. What did Rachel’s fire do to the balance of Challenge?

The residue was already fading. He could follow it, but it didn’t seem worth it at this stage of the game. To do so would leave Rachel defenseless. She might be part Ifrit, but she was still learning. Her fire was an uncertain thing, unpredictable and therefore useless in this battle.