Fire Danger (14 page)

Summoning his fire again, Phoenix concentrated, focusing on a spot two feet in front of Arella. Judging the space between the ceiling and the ground, he created a firenado, stopping it a foot before either surface. It hovered there, a whirl of tightly coiled fire, small flames licking out.

Arella’s eyes widened in fear again. Her head turned, taking in first the fire tornado and then Phoenix’s implacable face. “I could summon more of these and send them into your den, daywalker.” Phoenix’s voice was conversational. “I could burn you out so no evidence of your kind remained.” He shifted, and the firenado moved fractionally toward the vampire.

The room was heating up from the intensity of the firenado, but nobody moved. Except JT, who meowed and ran for the other side of the room, where it was cooler.

Everyone studied the tight spiral of fire death. The fury that beat through Phoenix made him want to turn the power on Arella and burn her to a cinder.

“Tell the other vampires there is to be no interference. Don’t side with us; don’t side with the Demonos. Whatever happens, happens. But that is between us and the other side.”

“You will lose,” she shouted, her voice harsh and raw. She paused, and it seemed as if she collected herself with an effort. Her face smoothed out and she pulled herself straight, still eyeing the red gleam of the fire column.

“We may lose,” Phoenix agreed. “We may win. It is between us. Don’t try to interfere again or there will be a reckoning.”

Arella locked eyes with Rachel, and her expression was ugly. “I hate halflings.”

Phoenix waited. When she said nothing else, Phoenix moved the firenado still closer. “Your choice, vampire.”

Rachel opened her mouth and then shrugged. She cocked her head at Arella, whose expression was disdainful. “It might hurt to be called a halfling if I didn’t know you had to have been ‘made’ at some point,” Rachel said. “However long ago, you were once human. Essentially, you are a halfling too. At least I have fire. You only have fangs.” Her lips curled, her desire to strike again clear.

Arella frowned at that, seeming to be taken by surprise. There was a long silence. Finally, her chest heaved in annoyance. “We will stay out of your business for now. You will lose. Then your fire powers will mean nothing.” Phoenix waited until Arella shifted, looking down at her feet. “We will leave you alone.” Still, he waited. Arella’s face twisted. “And we will leave your woman alone.” The words were a rasp, as if torn from her throat.

With a clap of Phoenix’s broad hands, the firenado vanished.

Arella breathed a sigh of relief before she smoothed her face out. She pushed past Phoenix, and he let her go.

His voice stopped her when she reached the shattered plate-glass door. “When I say char and burn, there are times when I mean it literally. Whether we win or lose Challenge, Arella, if you come after Rachel again, you are a dead vampire. Your entire clan will die if you lay a hand on her. That is a guarantee. I will incinerate it all until nothing is left of you but ashes on the wind.”

The only indication that she’d heard was a slight flinch of her body. Picking through the glass, Arella stood on her tiptoes at the edge of the balcony, and then, in a blur of speed, she was gone.

Once the house was clear of their unwanted visitor, Phoenix turned to the unfamiliar man.

He knew who the Ifrit in front of him had to be, but was unable to determine a name. The other man said nothing, but his gaze never left Rachel.

“I believe introductions are in order,” Phoenix said.

Chapter Ten

“Kamal,” the Ifrit said and held out his hand to Phoenix. “Rachel’s grandfather.”

Phoenix took her grandfather’s hand while Rachel’s mind whirled. She’d seen him in her visions, and now here he was in the flesh.

Almost without realizing it, Rachel put up the same high wall she had retreated behind when Arella had tried to penetrate her shield. The others wouldn’t need telepathy to know she was upset. Her silence and stiff body screamed that emotion to the world.

“Grandfather,” she said, and her voice was ragged. The man had identified himself as Kamal. Her grandfather.

“Habibti,” he said and his eyes were soft. His wings fluttered and he folded them behind his back. Letting go of Phoenix’s hand, he gripped Rachel’s shoulders.

She stood still, not retreating or accepting his touch. He had almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones and a strong jawline. Small horns were on his forehead. If she had to guess, she would have thought he was from somewhere in the Middle East—Egypt perhaps, or Saudi Arabia.

He equaled Phoenix in height and didn’t look any older than the Elemental. He seemed like her contemporary rather than her ancestor, and she wondered how long Ifrits lived.

Long enough to have more than a decade or two with an immortal Elemental?

That was a crazy thought. They were lovers, but Phoenix hadn’t said that he wanted permanence. Maybe having a longer life span than humans would make a difference.

“You have your mother’s eyes.” Kamal said and seemed to register Rachel’s stoic stance. Then he stepped back and gave Phoenix a once-over again.

Fenley was still protecting the door, his arms folded. After a moment, he moved enough to allow entry through the shattered pieces of wood that stood where a door once had been. “I must go. Be careful. Not all wolves agree with my decision. I am their alpha and they obey, but I may face my own battle soon. Many still feel that this is not our concern. It’s possible they will act even if it means expulsion from my pack. I will be keeping watch, but my assistance will not always be available.”

Phoenix tilted his head toward Fenley. “Thank you. I am in your debt.”

“I will collect.” His voice was flat and cool.

Rachel went to Fenley, holding out her arms. “Thank you,” she said, and her eyes were moist.

The werewolf hugged her briefly, his body stiff.

“I will have my son Artur watch things. It can be his penance.”

She grinned. “He’ll love that.”

Fenley’s shrug told her it didn’t matter what Artur thought. With a wave, the giant took his leave, stepping through the debris as if it meant nothing to him.

Rachel looked at the plate-glass door, now just a series of shards on the floor. “We’re going to need a handyman.”

JT came slinking out from across the room, his belly so low to the floor she couldn’t see space between the cat and the wood. “My hero,” she said, scooping the feline up. He let her hold him, but like the wolf, was rigid in her arms. “I’ll put him in the kitchen. He’ll be safe there.”

Both men followed her movements until she had put the cat away and rejoined them. The silence was thick with questions.

She stood next to Phoenix and touched his shoulder. His heat was still high, radiating off him, matching hers. The skin over the muscles of his arms had droplets of sweat on it. She wanted to lick the sweat off him—slowly. He slid his hand into hers, lacing their fingers together.

She lowered her shields, carefully. Her mind stayed alert, ready to put it up again if needed.

“You have questions,” Kamal said in a neutral voice.

To her surprise, his hands were trembling. She heard the ambient chatter of human minds again, the low-level hum of regular mental noise. It comforted her.
“How quickly we become used to things that would have been unimaginable days ago.”

Phoenix’s mind was there inside hers, as if he had been waiting for her wall to come down. His probe held concern, anger and dismay.

“I’m okay,”
Rachel said.

“Arella is alive because of that.”

The picture he’d painted of a burned Arella was at the forefront of his mind. She saw the Saxon warrior, his face painted and a loud war cry on his lips, wielding ferocious blows with his ax. She was glad that she had such a protector, but she also needed to be able to rely on herself. She was not helpless. Her fingers tingled at the remembered feeling of fire.

Naked. She wanted to be naked with him, astride his body, taking her pleasure until they both shrieked in fulfillment. It took her an effort to yank her mind away from the images. She couldn’t remember feeling so alive.

Finally she focused on her grandfather, similar and yet not similar to her. He resembled old paintings from Sinbad and other fantastic fairy tales. He had called her
habibti
, which—after a moment’s reflection and a little subtle mind-probe—she decided was an endearment. She’d heard it before, in the memories locked away in her subconscious. It was a puzzle. She’d never been mistaken for anything other than Caucasian. Her eyes, her hair, her skin all screamed Anglo-Saxon.

“I have lots of questions,” she said when the silence lengthened.

Kamal’s expression was smooth, but his mind behind his shields seemed tumultuous and chaotic.

“In the end, though, I really only have one. Why? Why didn’t you help me? Why did you leave me to grow up with a foster family that hated me?” She let the hurt and pain of being alone lace through her mental signature, knowing her grandfather would feel it as well.

A shadow passed over his eyes, and he sagged a little. The moments stretched on before he took a deep breath and answered.

“It was the only way to keep you safe. Farouk thought you were dead. In order for him to continue to think so, I could not be a part of your life. They were sent money every month. They were supposed to tell me if you showed any signs…” He trailed off. Turning his attention to the broken door, Kamal’s lips twisted.

“How long?” he asked, and his face was bleak. “How long have you been on your own?”

She swallowed, feeling his pain wash over her. Sorrow, an old wound, rode through her mind until Rachel nearly staggered under the weight of it.

“Seven years,” she said, each word like a dagger. “They kicked me out when I was eighteen.”

The string of curses was unlike anything she had heard before, and Rachel made a mental note to learn what they meant.
Ebn el-mara
she particularly liked, which she plucked out of his mind as meaning “son of a bitch”. She tucked it away for future use.

“They did not tell me this.” His tone told Rachel that there would be an accounting. It wouldn’t go well for her former foster family. The fire side of her was glad about that. She touched each finger in turn with her thumb, wanting to “help” with that particular discussion.

“Char and burn,” Phoenix said. “Why are you here now?”

The scent of their combined fire bands and Phoenix’s firenado had left a faint smell of flame in the air, but it was rapidly dissipating in the wind. Rachel missed the smell as it faded. Part of her wanted to go up into a forested area and see what it was like to watch trees burn. It would be amazing.

“Rachel.”

Kamal ignored Phoenix’s question, focusing on Rachel.

“You know nothing of your heritage. That is my fault. You know nothing of your mother.” Rachel got an image of a woman resembling Kamal in her mind, then one of her father, blond and fair, like her. Her mother looked Ifrit, complete with wings and a dusky tint to her skin. Rachel also saw her as her father saw her, overlaid with a lighter color that made her seem exotic but not otherworldly.

Her father would only have seen the human side. Had he known? Had he been aware that his bride was something other than human? Had he known his daughter was something other than human as well?

“He knew,” Kamal said. “He couldn’t see it but he knew. They were happy, as these things are accounted for.”

The strangeness of it caught Rachel. She wasn’t human. She. Wasn’t. Human. She had fire powers and a grandfather who was something that in old fables would have come out of a lantern. A pop song about genies and bottles danced in her mind, blurring her thoughts as effectively as her nursery rhymes.

“How did they die?” Phoenix asked.

She wanted to tear the clothes off him and plunge him into her. She wanted to take him and have him take her again and again. It was so powerful, heat rose along her skin and between her legs, a different fire than the previous one.

“In time, love. There will be time.”

She shot Phoenix a heavy-lidded look before she returned her attention to her grandfather. The presence of the Ifrit was making her feel off-balance. She was humming from her skeleton through her nerve endings and to the top of her head.

Phoenix shook his head when Kamal would have stepped forward. The Ifrit froze where he was standing. “We are a very private race.” There was a heaviness in Kamal’s tone and a slump in his shoulders. “Bushra’s choice to marry a human caused a fury in all the families. The other clans predicted failure, and our clan was shunned. Your grandmother and I visited rarely, by mutual decision. We were hoping the furor would die away. Do you remember those visits?”

Did she? The only time she could recall seeing him was the last time, in the fiery aftermath of the car accident, when he told her to run.

Rachel concentrated. A flash memory of the large, winged man giving her a present briefly danced across her mind. She teased the memory forward, letting it slide through until it surfaced. “You gave me…a…jack-in-the-box?”

A small smile lingered on his lips. “It was at the bazaar and it seemed like a good idea.”

Brief slices of memory came to her, small moments in time. “I remember a little. It’s like all my memories have a heavy blanket over them and don’t want to come out from under the covers.”

“I did that. After Farouk killed your parents, I blocked your memories so you could pass for human. I suppressed your Ifrit side. My intention was…” He shook his head and gave her a sorrowful look. “You were supposed to remember before this. You should have had your memories and your fire by now. I lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

“How did they die?” Phoenix asked again.

“We thought that Farouk had given up as the years passed.” He sighed, as if the memories pained him. “What I didn’t know is that every time Yadira or I visited—” Rachel decided Yadira was her grandmother, “—he was watching. Waiting…”

“To kill us?”

“Not all. Just your father and you.”

A smoky scent rose from Phoenix’s feathers when they ruffled in agitation. “Her father and Rachel.”

“Yes. Farouk was going to take your mother back, force her to marry him. We are a traditional race. She was a disgrace to the Ifrit, but he wanted her. You could not live.”

“Here I am, though.”

“Do you remember anything about the car accident?”

Rachel searched her mind and finally shook her head. “Just that you were there, telling me to run.”

“You did as you were told. That is why you are alive today.”

She made a dismissive sound. “I ran.”

“Exactly. Farouk shot your father through the window and accidentally hit your mother, to his dismay. He thought he had gotten you as well, but I clouded his mind so he didn’t see you escape. If your mother had not been dead, she would not have burned. We do not burn except in death. He would have come to check, to make sure you were dead, but the human police came before he could. Since you never surfaced, he assumed he had eliminated you as well.”

Frustrated, Rachel gave Kamal a mental push of anger and saw him wince.

“Don’t let your emotions rule you.”
Phoenix dipped his wings toward her.

“Fuck you.”

In that way they did, Phoenix’s wings made a sucking noise and then they vanished, disappearing from his body until only smooth skin remained on his back. Something in Rachel calmed when they went. No further vampires were going to come rampaging through the broken door.

Her grandfather took a step toward her. “It’s easier if I show you. May I?”

Phoenix looked at Rachel. After a moment’s hesitation, her mind roiling with the idea of being so invaded, Rachel nodded. Better to know than not to.

Phoenix looked unconvinced, but he released Rachel and stepped back.

Her grandfather’s breath was warm, with a slight hint of cigarette smoke. He smelled of cloves and cinnamon. “Open your mind.”

She gazed into brown eyes covered by thick, ungroomed eyebrows. Her breath exhaled in a rush, and she tried not only to keep her wall down but allow Kamal into her thoughts.

He put his hands on either side of her head, his index fingers on her temples.

Instantly her mind wanted to reject the invasion, but she forced herself to breathe deeply until there was only the touch of his thoughts in hers. It was as reassuring a presence as his scent. She understood that he had been there before.

Images.

They expanded, bombarding her with sights and feelings, rushing into her like a movie stuck on fast-forward. Rachel cried out in panic and the movie pulled back. The speed slowed. Kamal lifted his hands, and she met his eyes.

“Apologies.”

He put his hands back on her temples, and the images started again.

A brief whirl. Ifrit life in Saudi Arabia. They were isolated from humans, interacting with mortals only when necessary, but maintaining enough of a presence in modern-day life that they were written off as unremarkable. To be a mystery would have made some mortals want to solve it, but if they were just everyday people, then they could glide through life unnoticed. Humans had perceived her grandparents and mother as big but human when they interacted.

Faces. The other families. So few. Small clans of small families, scattered throughout the world but mostly concentrated in the Middle East, each one a self-contained unit, but all within the larger Ifrit culture.

It was a private nation. One that was secretive at its core but with the outward-facing look of normalcy. Their strangeness was concealed as with all paranormals, hidden from humanity. Their long lives meant they needed to move around periodically, before humans became suspicious. Unless they were far away from human civilization, they could never settle down for life.