The Burning Bush (30 page)

I swallowed. “Thank you. You were perfect.”

The blue-painted Mixie entered the room with her electric guitar and began strumming it again.

“What happened?” Zulu asked.

“We can talk about it later.”

A rumble sounded from Zulu’s chest. The Mixie stopped playing her guitar and looked like she was about to run again.

We’re really destroying RonRica’s business.

“What happened?” Zulu repeated. I sucked my teeth.

“Angel?” Zulu asked.

Still standing next to me, Angel had begun twirling a fireball in her hand and smiling at Kilo. “What’s up, Zulu?”

“Who hit Lanore?”

“I can fight my own battles,” I hissed. “Go home.”

“Kilo hit her legs, broke her hand I think, and hit her in the jaw with his cane,” Angel said with pride. “Cassie shifted and tried to bite Kilo. His guys shot at Cassie, and Lanore got her out of the way.”

With each of Angel’s words Zulu’s molten hot rage filled my cords so much that I rubbed my arm with my hand. I glared at Angel. She had no idea what Zulu was capable of.

“So then why are they still alive?” Zulu asked.

I glared back. “Because I don’t kill everyone who hits me.”

“You’re right.” Zulu slowly nodded. “You don’t kill everyone who hits you, but I do.”

Zulu rushed at Kilo, in a blur of white.

“No!” I yelled.

Zulu grabbed Kilo by the neck and flung him across the room. He landed on a table that exploded into wooden splinters from the force. The debris rained down on Kilo’s goons as they sat there, frozen and open-mouthed. I called fire to my hands, but it was too late. In a flash, Zulu was across the room, reaching a clawed hand into Kilo’s chest and searching for his heart.

Zulu let out a thunderous roar that blasted through the room. The pimp’s blood spurted out, splattering Zulu’s face and dripping down Kilo’s chest. Kilo’s eyes were lifeless. A blue film glazed his pupils. His head fell and his shoulders slumped as Zulu ripped Kilo’s beating heart out of his chest.

Zulu turned to Angel. “Which one of these guys shot at my sister?”

He hurled Kilo’s limp body across the room and prowled toward the goons. Angel gulped air, standing stiff like a statue. She didn’t blink. “The two guys wearing the black-and-white dresses and hiding under the table on your right.”

I turned away, swallowing down the bile that had risen in my throat. A crowd of Mixies gathered around Zulu. Some hooted. Others cheered Zulu on as he dealt with the two goons, but many, like me, headed away toward the exit, full of unease and disgust.

Zulu and I argued on the phone for a few hours. To Zulu, Kilo was a no-good pimp who’d terrorized RonRica and other Mixies for years, prostituted young girls, and had caned the wrong person’s girlfriend. I countered that if we killed every pimp, Mixie terrorizer, and person who hit me, then half of the habitat’s population would be missing. He believed that would be an ideal place to live.

By the last hour, we’d come to some sort of compromise. No more killing people on my behalf, unless I was about to die and needed to be saved. Other than that, I refused to stand by him while he took lives for senseless reasons.

He agreed too quickly and begged to see me, which was why I sat on Zulu’s desk in his office, wearing nothing. Glow paint was on my right. A box of drinking straws was on my left. I’d stopped at a store full of Vamps and rushed around the aisles to grab the items. Lavender candles were lit and spread all over the room. I giggled, wondering what Zulu had planned with the straws, or if it was just something crazy he had requested in the club earlier. My cell phone rang in my jeans across the room. I hopped off the desk and jogged over to it, hoping Zulu didn’t have to cancel.

“Hello?” I said into the phone as Zulu stepped into the office. Zulu took in my lack of clothes and smiled. His eyes traveled down my body inch by inch, taking his time to drink in every curve. It made me hot just having his eyes on me like that.

“Where are you and Zulu?” Rivera asked over the phone line.

In a blink, Zulu appeared an inch in front of me. He ripped off his shirt. Buttons flew everywhere, gently thumping against my skin. I laughed and cleared my throat, struggling to focus on talking to Rivera. “We’re at MFE. Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to know where the headquarters were located,” Rivera admitted. “The tracking system can’t even map it. Whatever spell Zulu’s using to hide the headquarters is probably illegal.”

“What do you want?” I asked, completely annoyed. Zulu buried his face between my breasts. I gasped as his finger teased both nipples.

“Please get off the phone,” Zulu whispered, looking up at me as his hands slipped down to my bare hips. A tingling sensation of hunger shot through me.

I bit my lip. “Anything else, Rivera?”

“No. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t at Zulu’s condo.” Rivera coughed into the phone. “I need you alive to work this case.”

He hung up without saying goodbye. I tossed my phone onto the couch. Zulu began nibbling around my right nipple. I slid my hands down his muscled biceps, enjoying the feeling under my fingertips.

Then the meaning of Rivera’s words hit me, and I froze.
Rivera needs me alive? What was he talking about?

“Zulu.” I pushed him away, my hands gripping his shoulders. “Is Cassie still at your condo or back at your mom’s house?”

“My condo.” He moved my hands away impatiently and leaned back down to my breasts, his mouth devouring my right nipple. It stiffened against his moist tongue. A crazed yearning surfaced for a moment.

“Wait.” I caught my breath. “Rivera was calling to make sure we weren’t at your condo.”

Zulu released my nipple and snapped his head up to look at me. “Why? Did he say anything else?”

I nodded, cold fear in the pit of my stomach. “He said he didn’t want me at your condo because he needed me alive to—”

A boom rocked the habitat, shaking MFE’s foundation. I fell into the wall. Zulu tried to catch me, and missed.

“I’m okay.” I got up from the trembling ground. The habitat shook again. Intense vibrations rumbled through the floor.
This must be what an earthquake feels like.

“I’m going to check on Cassie.” Zulu tore off his jeans.

The office ceiling opened. Women screamed off in the distance. Black smoke drifted in. Fire trucks and habbie police sirens blared. Howls and barking began next, and then the crashing noise of another explosion came with yelling and crying. Zulu’s skin darkened in seconds, faster than I’d ever seen him shift before.

I dove to the couch, snatched up my shirt and jeans, quickly putting them on. “I’m going with you.”

He nodded without saying a word as his massive leather wings expanded around him. Terror creased his face and leaked through our bond. His blond dreadlocks vanished and left him with a bald black head. More fire truck sirens wailed throughout the city.

Cassie will be fine. She has to be okay.
Shivers ran up and down my entire body. I didn’t know whose fear was causing it, Zulu’s or mine.

I raced to Zulu with my shirt barely on and my jeans unbuttoned. There was no time to put on my sneakers. I had to make sure Cassie was okay. Zulu grabbed me in his arms as his wings expanded. He leapt into the air, carrying us toward the open ceiling. His hand tightened around my waist. Wind rushed past us, beating with no mercy against my skin. We’d never flown this fast before.

I glanced over my shoulder, but couldn’t make out much. Smoke thickened the air, making it almost impossible to see or breathe. Coughing gave me no relief. Rubbing my eyes only dirtied them with more smoke.

“No!” Zulu roared.

I twisted further around to see a huge mountain of fire glowing in the distance from the exact direction of Zulu’s condominium building.
Please let Cassie be all right. Please.

“She’s going to be okay, baby,” I said, struggling to believe my own words as I tried to comfort him. Fear coursed through our link and enveloped us.

We approached Yemaya District. Flashing red and blue lights lit up the whole area. People’s screams pierced my ears. I wanted to cover my ears to block out their horror and pain, but I couldn’t let go of Zulu’s shoulders.

“Dante bombed my condo,” Zulu whispered. His body trembled under my arms.

I rubbed my eyes and craned my neck to see as we hovered over the scene. Zulu’s building was twelve stories high. His condo was on the sixth floor, where the flames blazed hottest and smoke billowed into the air. The whole building had split in half, top to bottom, from the explosion. Soot-coated people with gashes on their faces and arms screamed for help and waved from the lower half of the building’s windows. Some were scrambling onto the ledges and trying to climb down.

The lower portion of the building remained intact. Fire blazed and molten metal bubbled down from Zulu’s condo. The upper portion of the building had broken apart from the lower half and toppled over, smashing into the nearby Yemaya Shopping Center. All of the surrounding restaurants and stores were on fire. Customers fled the scene in panic. Others lay on the ground, injured or dead.

“I’m going to my condo in case she didn’t make it out. I’ve got to put you down.” Zulu spat the words out so quickly I wasn’t sure if that was exactly what he said. Plus the noise from the sirens and alarms blaring altered my hearing.

“No, take me!” I yelled over a third fire truck pulling up to the scene. “You can use me. I can control the fire!”

Fire Witches circled the condos, spraying some kind of solution at the building from rubber hoses and chanting spells.

“Okay,” Zulu said. We swooped down into the heat of the fire.

My lungs filled with smoke. I coughed and covered my nose with the top of my shirt, ordering the fire to leave Zulu’s place as we landed. The flames were smothered into nothing, leaving thick smoke to linger around our legs. Zulu’s condo, once a plush luxury apartment full of beautiful furniture, was now a blackened shell.

“Cassie!” we screamed together.

I took a step forward. My foot went through the floor. Zulu caught me by my shoulders as the entire half of the living room where I was standing dropped and crashed into the floor below. His dark wings flapped furiously to keep us aloft.

“Cassie!” He held me, his eyes frantically searching the area. We flew to the side of the living room that was still intact.

“Just put me down. You search for her, and I’ll keep putting out fire,” I said.

“I can hear her beast whimpering, but I don’t see it yet.” He set me down, testing the ground to make sure it could hold me before flying off.

Shrieks and cries floated up from outside. I mentally searched for any fire I could reach in the apartment and immediately extinguished it.

“Cassie! Can you hear me?” Zulu shouted, flying toward the bedrooms.

She’ll be okay.
I nodded, trying to think positive thoughts of Cassie hiding and safe and to make myself believe them.
We’ll save her. She’ll be fine. She’s just hiding somewhere.

“Cassie!” Zulu shouted far in the back beyond black smoke and soot.

And then he stopped screaming. Fire crackled. A baby cried somewhere in the distance. I rubbed ash and sweat from my face, still extinguishing flames wherever I felt them. I’d been drawing all the fire I could find into me. I was sucking in flames even from the fifth floor, hoping that it would help everyone be safe. I needed my efforts to be something more than wasted energy.

I stood there waiting for Cassie and Zulu. Those were the longest minutes of my life. And then, with blackened eyes and a somber face, Zulu flew back to me empty-handed. No Cassie. I almost screamed,
Where is she?

“Should we split up and look for her?” I asked. “She probably went downstairs. I left my phone. Do you have your—”

He grabbed my waist and soared out of the condo with no response and without even looking at me.

“Zulu, stop! What are you doing?” I twisted in his arms, turning back to glance at the massive smoky hole that was now his old home.
She must have run out.
I frantically bobbed my head again.
She’s smart like that.