Authors: Erin Kellison

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal

Fire Kissed (9 page)

BOOK: Fire Kissed

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A week and she had done it. With so little effort, she could catch anyone on fire, even Ferro Grey. Jack didn’t know why he was surprised; he’d known as much from the beginning of this wretched mission.

Kaye delicately cleared her throat and took a hesitant breath. “I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”

Now what game was she playing? Getting inside Grey House meant acceptance by the other mage Houses, and therefore access to information on the wraiths. This was the job. Didn’t she want her payback?

“We’ve just met,” she continued, with her soft smile. “While I’m interested, I’d like to proceed slowly.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jack didn’t either. If she turned Grey down, no one from any of the Houses would approach her. She was as good as done. One did not flirt with Ferro Grey, and then play hard to get. Tease.

“As a
mage,
you should,” she answered. “Dinner would be lovely, of course, but I want a seat at a very different table.”

“As a mage,” Grey repeated in a murmur, respect dawning in his eyes. “You’re referring to the Council.”

“I’m all that’s left of Brand House. A seat, by rights, is mine. I intend to have it. Before dinner with you, I must make my way back into magekind on my own merit. I think you know that. The seat is my priority.”

Jack almost swayed on his feet. This was too far. A seat on the mage council. The other Houses would fight it. Fight her. She hadn’t discussed this insane tactic with him. She was gambling with her life. Again.

Ferro cocked his head, as if stretching away a momentary discomfort. “So much like your father. You’re a formidable woman, Kaye. I’ll bet you’re well worth the effort. I hope you survive the rite of passage.”

She smiled.

How would Jack ever keep her alive?

“My House will be stronger than ever,” she said. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“I must say, you’ve surprised me.”

“I hope in a good way.” Again that low, smooth voice. All confidence. All sex.

“You have no idea.” Grey rose, took and kissed her hand. “Until we meet next, then.”

“I look forward to it,” she said. And if Jack wasn’t mistaken, she pushed a little fire into her skin so that she was luminous in the quiet lighting of the coffeehouse. A siren.

Grey winked his good nature at her refusal and moved toward the door. He stopped and turned back to address Jack. “What wraith task force?”

Jack kept himself level as he lied, something that didn’t come naturally. “Segue for three years.” He’d have to get Adam Thorne to cover for him. Grey would be thorough.

Grey made a noise at the back of his throat, then exited. Another man rose, a mage whom Jack hadn’t noticed, and followed Grey out the door. Still another crossed the street outside to join the pair. Mages everywhere, hiding among the human patrons, and Jack had had no idea.

Hooves pounding the ground. Screams. Bullheaded black clouds overhead, flickering with unnatural lightning. Rain in his breath. Mage-contrived winds driving against his sword arm, his strikes and slashes going awry. Unseasonable hail pelting.

Jack turned back to Kaye, frustration a living, writhing snake in his blood. She’d pushed too hard, too far, and in so doing, she’d endangered both herself and their mission. Promising sex with her looks and leans. Then angling for a seat at the Council? She might as well have asked Grey to kill her outright.

This was a mistake from the beginning. He’d known it all along.

Kaye had stood as well and was donning her coat. He was too late to help her on with it and was left empty-handed, her scent in his nose.

Like Grey, he wanted to speak with her in private. He had a few things to say.

Aaliyah Cook had kept her face angled down to her laptop, but she couldn’t help watching the exchange between the couple in front of her, both with such cold black eyes that she’d wanted to put on her sweater.

But it was the candle flame that had appeared in the woman’s hand that made Aaliyah shiver.

Thomas had said that all the shit that was happening—the monsters in the alleys, the darkness everywhere—was because of an alien invasion. That even the government had to know about it. She’d rolled her eyes, but had kept smiling, hoping he’d kiss her.

But, now, looking at the witchy woman with the red hair and the scars and the fire thing. Yeah, those people weren’t from around here.

When the couple stood, Aaliyah darted her gaze around to see if anyone else was noticing too.

And found another pair of black eyes, belonging to a man on her left, this time fixed on her like a threat.

Aaliyah brought her gaze quickly back to her laptop screen, shaking as this new man rose and stalked by her. She prayed that the darkness in those eyes and on the streets at night would, please God, pass her and her family by.

Chapter 4

Kaye went for a bottle as soon as she was inside the town house door. She left the cold blasting in behind her. Felt good. Her coat fell on the foyer floor. She needed a drink to fuzz out the burn of that first meeting. Oblivion would be even better.

She veered into the living room—some uptight person had decorated it federal style. Antiques with skinny legs. Striped, tea-colored sofa, as hard to sit on as it looked. Bland, pleated curtains. And, adding insult to injury, in the corner a bust of some bulb-nosed man. This was Hell.

Her heart urged her to grab her bag and run. She rifled through the liquor cabinet instead, found the whiskey, and flinched when she heard keys hit the table behind her.

“What did you think you were doing? A seat at the Council table? Do you want to die?” Bastian said as hard and cold as only he could.

Kaye turned, the bottle under her arm. “I’m going to my room.” There was color in there. Shadow too, with the curtains drawn. Grey had
touched
her. She wanted to wash her face, no, her whole body. “I’m tired after pulling fire this morning.”

“No. We’re going to come to an understanding.” Bastian jerked his chin toward the sofa. “Sit down.”

“I can’t talk now.” Really, she couldn’t. Facing Ferro had been more than enough. She didn’t have it in her to revisit or explain. Bastian would just have to wait. She made for the hallway.

He took her arm. “I’m not done, which means you’re not done. I hired you for a job.”

The fire leaped within her, begging for fuel. “Get your hand off me,” Kaye warned. She wasn’t above a demonstration when pushed. And legend had it that Shadowfire loved angels.

He released her but blocked her way. “What were you thinking? Leading him on, then asking for a
seat
? Our business here is probably over, thanks to you.”

Kaye snorted. How just like an angel to take things at face value.

“Or did you see a good thing in Ferro Grey?” he pressed. “Young, powerful, and seduced by you? Did you decide to go for it all?”

She yanked her arm free. “Mister Perfect Angel Man, let me tell you something.”

“Listening,” he snapped.

“There’s no such thing as a good thing.” It was the best advice she could give him, and in her mind, the statement encompassed everything and everyone, including angels. Including Jack Bastian.

Asking for a seat at the mage Council was a desperate resort, because there
was
no turning down Ferro Grey. What he wanted he took. Kaye remembered the way her dad had looked that terrible night in his office ten years ago. His blotchy skin. The lightning strike of pain as he’d struck her.

“You said you could handle Grey, and you sure did,” Bastian countered. “The dinner tonight sounded perfect. You were back in.”

“Too perfect. Too easy,” she said. Another wisp of Shadow in her blood caught fire, compelling her to continue. “Too nice. Too charming. Too young.”

He took a small step, right in her way. “So you didn’t—”

“—buy his load of crap?” she finished. “No. And neither was I going to gift wrap another angel for whatever the hell he’d use you for.” She pushed Bastian out of the way and headed for the stairs. She groused under her breath, “Take you to dinner like some twisted hostess gift: Here’s another angel.”

Stupid. What had Ferro Grey said?
Your guard can come too.
The thought made her sick.

She was three steps up when Bastian responded. “What do you mean
another angel
?”

That strange, quelling vibration of Heaven on her skin stopped her. Years ago she’d run up another set of stairs, an angel below her looking after.

“Kaye, what do you know about the angel Michael Thomas?” Bastian’s voice had gone dangerously calm.

Halfway up the stairs, she turned around to find Bastian, not her poet. Dark hair. Penetrating eyes. He looked like a man, but every molecule of her flesh knew what he was. In any incarnation, he was beautiful. But there was no compassion in
his
eyes.

“I don’t know anything,” she answered. “He’d been tortured, and rather than escape himself, he told me to.” Could have been different. “Told me to run, which I’ve been doing ever since. That’s all.”

“How tortured?”

“I have no idea.” She remembered the chains, the dark matter leeching through his skin. “I think infected with Shadow. I saw him for less than two minutes when he was chained up in the cellar.” And then life as she knew it had ended. “I won’t deliver another angel into Grey’s keeping. I swear I won’t do it. Not even you.”

Bastian flinched. “I can take care of myself. It’s you who needs protection. You should have told me this in the beginning.”

She turned again and headed up the stairs. The conversation was over. Her guts hurt. Her eyes ached but wouldn’t water. She drew in air, but it didn’t clear her head.

“You should have told me about Michael,” Bastian called.

Kaye slammed the door to her bedroom. The oval mirror above the antique dressing table shuddered in answer. She hated this house. Hated the furniture. Wanted room service.

What in dark Shadow’s madness had she done?

For an absolutely necessary distraction, she drew out the bottle and unscrewed the cap while wetting her lips. The fire within was out of control. Then she froze when she read the label: Jack Daniels.

Jack.

The man was everywhere. She hurled the bottle at the mirror, but the shattering glass didn’t remotely satisfy.

At the bottom of the stairs, Jack stared after her. A door slammed. Then a crash sounded from above. Glass breaking.

He wanted to roar,
Do not run away from me!
His body demanded to pelt up the stairs after her. To enter her bedroom. To slam the door behind him.

And then what?

His angel mind blanked there, but his blood knew exactly what he wanted. A thousand years had passed since he’d been a man, but
yesss
, he knew this rising, determined heat.

Instead he paced like a dog and tried very hard to think. She’d flirted with—no outright
seduced
—Ferro Grey in that coffee shop. And apparently she’d done the same to him.

Fine.

God damn her to Hell, but fine.

Not to mention, she’d known all along about Michael. Of course she had. Duplicitous to the core. At least her story gelled with the events of that night ten years ago. Michael had died, yes, but seemingly not before urging Kaye to run away. And then he had sent a telepathic message to save the girl. She’d been little more than a child then.

And Jack
had
saved her.
Lifting her slack, almost weightless form from her collapse in the wet and frozen wood, and carrying her to safety while his angelic brother burned in the warded house behind him.
Just another memory Jack couldn’t escape.

And now—
total insanity
—she intended to protect him to honor the memory of Michael. This made no sense. Jack glared up the stairs. If she was unwilling to take him past the wards into Grey House as her guard, then how, pray tell, was
he
supposed to protect
her
?

Shadow. Woman. Both inclined to madness.

Not that any of that mattered now, because by refusing Grey’s invitation, and by asking for a seat on the mage Council, of all things, she’d effectively made herself a target, rather than a subtle spy for The Order. The Brand seat meant power, and the other mages weren’t just going to let her take it.

The job was a wash, and yet, he couldn’t very well leave that walking catastrophe of a woman to her own devices after she’d aroused Grey’s interest while working for The Order. For him.

Jack gripped the stairway banister at its terminating curl. A strange, pressing kind of feeling was working its way up his throat. It had to be a good feeling, because he was smiling in spite of everything. It was a vicious kind of smile, but a smile nonetheless: Ms. Brand,
Kaye,
was protecting him. She’d refused the likes of Ferro Grey to protect him.

Why that made him so satisfied—angry still, but satisfied—he didn’t know. And he wasn’t about to think about it too much either. Or he would follow her up those stairs.

He had work to do now, anyway—a report to make to The Order and a call to make to Segue to cover his lie. He’d have to make sure Adam Thorne had only bad things to say about him, or Grey would grow suspicious. There was a known connection between The Order and the Segue Institute.

The sun had long since set when Jack heard movement upstairs. A door opening. Closing. Then nothing. A door opened again. Then a few minutes later, footsteps on the stairs.

It was time for a calm discussion. They’d make a new plan, clearly delineated, with objections settled beforehand.

When Kaye appeared, she was dressed to work out. Leggings, he thought they were called, that revealed every smooth plane and curve of her lower physique; a sweatshirt; cuffs rolled to her forearms; and running shoes.

“I didn’t think you owned sensible shoes,” he said in a bid for levity. And she was in head-to-toe black, another first.

“Yeah, well, this body that you like to look at so much requires maintenance.”

Jack was rendered speechless. Kaye was very good at that.

“I need to go for a run,” she continued. “I’d like to do it alone, but I’m guessing you’d have a problem with that.”

“I would,” he said, his brain turning over her earlier comment. Rise to the bait or let it pass? Either way, he couldn’t win. It was better to admit the truth anyway—he did like to look at her.

She gave him a once-over. “So are you going to change?”

“We have to talk first.”

She tilted her head to the side, a bit of inner exhaustion showing. “The talk would go better after a run. Take my word for it.”

Jack fought the impulse to insist on speaking first. He’d spent the last hours working out what he’d say, and just how to say it. He wanted to control the situation, as he tried to control himself. But this late at night, the delay was harmless, and her cooperation essential. Besides, a run would do him good. His blood was stirring again.

He strode across the foyer to get away from her and was just approaching the stairs when a faraway scream reached him. Female. And then another woman screamed.

Women in trouble. He denied the sudden instinct to protect; his duty lay here.

Kaye stepped into the hallway, frowning, and looked from him to the front door, a “what was that?” question in her eyes.

Then, closer, the shrill, piercing monster cry of a beast in pursuit—a wraith screech.

The sound was a thousand years old in his mind. The wraiths had been wiped out ages ago, he’d hoped for forever, but they were back these thirty years.

Their numbers had stopped growing, but it still seemed like the soulsuckers were everywhere.

When another wraith’s voice lifted to join the first, Kaye closed her eyes, her head bowing, as if weighted with knowledge.

“What?” Jack demanded.

A third screech rose from another direction, and Kaye bent farther to brace her hands on her knees, hitching for breath and swearing. Some mumbled words, of which he only caught “... so soon ... !”

“Kaye!”

She lifted her head. Her face had gone white. “Grey sent them. I’m sure of it.”

“The meeting went
that
badly?” Yes, she’d refused a dinner with the man, but it didn’t deserve an attacking army of wraiths.

“No.” She straightened, hands covering her face. Stress tensed the long lines of her body.

She was right to be scared, considering her history. She was right to be scared, regardless.

Another screech filled the air. It sounded as if the wraiths were calling to one another, organizing.

Kaye dropped her hands, but her expression was guarded. “No, the meeting went superfantastic, I’d say.”

Jack flung a hand toward the door. “He sent wraiths to kill you!”

“It’s an invitation,” Kaye said, with a sick and twisted smile. “An invitation to show off.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Kaye rolled her eyes at him. “Because you don’t understand mages. It’s a trial. I came to D.C. and went into business with Shadow, asked for a seat. Well, now he wants to see me do my thing. To prove myself.” She shook her head, and a light grew within her, the flame burning brightest in her palms. “He wants a demonstration of power.”

“In public?” Jack was incredulous.

“Wraiths are common knowledge already. The rest is up to me to control.”

A shriek lifted just outside the door.

BOOK: Fire Kissed

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