Fire Danger (3 page)

“Open the door. Open the window. Let us in.”
Rachel struggled between the two, trying to focus on the former and ignore the latter.

Rachel hung JT’s carrier around her shoulder and then clutched her hands to her ears, as if that could keep the voices out. She wanted to run, wanted to yank open the door and go outside, obeying the commands of the red eyes. It would be so much easier that way.

Vampires needed to be invited in, didn’t they?

Vampires? Really?

She heard a whoosh and a rustle as if wings were settling. The birdman…she groped for the name, found it…Phoenix. She had no idea how she knew his name, but it was Phoenix.

“Shadow people. Not vampires. I am here.”

The voice inside her mind was different from the shadow people’s voices. Rachel’s body flooded with relief.

As if on cue, the room stopped shaking. The heat in her body began to subside. She still felt its lingering presence and saw the air around her shimmer as if a fire had burned in front of her.

“Get some things. You can’t stay here.”

Keeping JT slung over her shoulder, she grabbed her purse and a toiletry bag she always kept packed, tossed them into a handy tote, and went for the door. JT yowled, moving from side to side in the carrier.

Flinging the door open, Rachel gaped at the naked torso of the well-built man standing on her exterior landing. He seemed agitated, harried, his wing feathers askew. She squeaked but made no other sound when red eyes appeared behind him, several feet away but out of reach of his wingspan.

He followed her gaze and growled. The beings pulled back but still remained visible.

“Good thing you didn’t let them in.”

There was a hiss behind him.
“Let us have the woman.”

“Not a chance.”
There was steel in Phoenix’s tone, something she wouldn’t have thought was possible when speaking telepathically.

“Come on, Rachel. We have to go. It’s not safe.”

The world was turning upside down in a big hurry, but staying there meant death. The shadow people, or vampires or whatever they were would find a way in sooner or later. The wolves would get her. Something. Something would get her.

Why?

“JT comes.”

His brows lowered, brown slashes against his forehead. “He’s your responsibility. We have to fly. Now. Are you ready?”

Rachel gestured to the tote. “I always have a bag packed.”

“Just walk away.”
One of the red-eyed beings poked a finger at Phoenix, but its eyes were on Rachel.

He motioned to her as if there hadn’t been a mental voice. Rachel decided that it hadn’t been meant for her to hear.

“Let’s go,” Phoenix said, his voice urgent.

She put her arms around him. Phoenix frowned at the touch of her body.

“You’re hot,” he said, his voice a growl.

“I know,” she said and that was all there was time for. With a swift motion, they were up and in the air. Behind them slight, wispy figures lingered by the apartment, their eyes glowing in the night.

Phoenix and Rachel were flying near the clouds before he spoke again.

“Why do they want you so badly?”

Chapter Two

“Why do they want you so badly?”

Phoenix’s words echoed in her mind as they flew. She had no answer to the question. The moon was in its crescent phase, its light dim. After a moment she identified their destination as the expensive San Francisco neighborhood known as Noe Valley, in the central part of the city. His trajectory took them closer to the ground, and one house started to resolve itself. Although much of it could not be made out, she got an image of a contemporary structure with a generous property line.

Only a plaintive meow could be heard from the carrier. JT had to be too terrified to do any more than cling to the inside of his kitty mover and pray whatever prayers cats made. Normally, Rachel would have reassured the animal wedged between their bodies, but all she could do was keep her arms around Phoenix. The world seemed far away and a long way down. Rachel shivered.

What time was it anyway? Three? Four? She had no idea how long the “earthquake” had gone on. Or why the red-eyed vampires wanted her.

“Shadow people.”

The mind speak was going to get old really fast.

There was a light on outside the house. They continued toward it, and she caught glimpses of soft rugs she imagined were to assist landing.

Phoenix executed a turn, rotating until they were perpendicular to the deck, his orange-and-red wings slowing their flight until they hovered. Then they landed, their feet barely making a thump on the surface. Phoenix pushed the alarm code on a lighted pad and led her into the house.

He waved his hand, and the room lit up. It was a clean, neat, light-wood contemporary living room, sparsely furnished. A black leather sofa stood in the middle of the room, with a large TV mounted on the wall.

“Do you have a small room or spare bathroom? I want to put him somewhere safe.” JT lurched from side to side inside the carrier, making it rock.

Phoenix indicated a door. “Through there,” he said. “I’ll get him a bed and some food. Then we need to talk.”

After finding the bathroom tucked away off a back room, Rachel closed the door and let JT out. He cowered in the carrier, his nose twitching for a moment, then jumped out and ran behind the toilet. Once there he glared at her, his mouth opening in a soundless hiss.

“I know, honey.”

After a cursory knock, Phoenix came in with two bowls and a large towel. He moved past her and arranged the items next to the shivering cat. Phoenix’s torso was still naked. When folded, his wings lay smoothly along his back, blending in with the strong musculature. Only the colors gave away what they were.

Winged men do not exist
, she reminded herself. She wondered if she was still in a fugue state. Maybe she only thought she’d woken up from a dream but was, in fact, still dreaming. That would explain the non-earthquake, her oddly heated body and the red, glowing eyes. A fugue state was the most likely reason.

She spread her fingers until they strained against the bone. It felt as if she was awake. Maybe the other fugue states had been like this as well. Wanting to blank the voices in her head, Rachel began humming an old nursery rhyme. It filled her brain until all she could think was “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

His head rose. “That will do for a start,” he said aloud. “You will need to learn to cover your thoughts better than that, but you have innate ability.”

Phoenix met her eyes. He was as gorgeous as she had envisioned in her dream, if she wasn’t still dreaming. With a face like an angel created by a macho god, he had great features and a body that would be at home on a fitness magazine cover. She was five foot ten, and he was six inches taller than her. And broad. His wingspan was wide, about twice the length of a person, in perfect proportion to his chiseled torso. Sweats covered his legs, but the loose fabric let her know that they were as well sculpted as the rest of him.

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose,”
she thought.

He smiled, his lips curling back like a feral dog. Like a wolf.
Wolves.

“Come. Your cat will be safe here. You look like you could use a drink, and we need to have that talk.”

He made no comment that he’d heard her impetuous thoughts. Not that it mattered. After the last weeks, she understood now that her life would never be the same. A little admiration of a sexy male body was the least of her worries.

His wings vanished, disappearing into his shoulders. One minute they were there, and then there was a noise, like a sucking sound, and they were gone. The fact that he didn’t move or otherwise register the disappearance told her this was something that had happened before.

Just like the rest of everything that had happened in the last twelve hours, it made no sense. Yet there it was.

He reached for a T-shirt resting on the back of the sofa and slipped it on. The selfish part of her missed the sight of all that beautiful naked flesh, but the logical part of her decided it was for the best.

“Drink?”

The skyscape out the large-paned windows showed the hill and the city beyond. With her salary, she could never have hoped to afford this upscale central San Francisco neighborhood. “This must have cost a fortune.” Her hand gesture took in the house and the landscaping beyond. Even if the place had been a family inheritance, this area hadn’t been affordable for decades.

Phoenix poured one neat shot of brandy and handed it to her.

“None for you?”

He shook his head. “Alcohol has no effect on me.”

“Oh.”
Too bad.

He grinned and Rachel flushed, realizing her mistake. “It really sucks that you can hear me,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“It makes me feel vulnerable.”

His gaze met hers. His eyes were a clear sort of brown that could be called amber in certain light.

“You are vulnerable,” he said brusquely, moving toward her. “Sit.”

She took the alcohol and drained the glass with one tip of her head.

Phoenix arched an eyebrow at the act. “Another?”

It would be nice to get drunk, to forget the craziness for a few hours, but all that would do was leave her with a hangover, a muzzy head and the same lingering questions tomorrow. Today. Whatever day it was, getting plastered wasn’t going to help the crazy turn her life had taken.

If this was a dream, it was a hell of a ride.

“No, that’s enough.” There was that sensation again, like someone had placed a flame under her skin. Rachel rubbed at her forearm, trying to shake the feeling. “I don’t get it, though. Why would the wolves, or you, care about me?” She waited, but he made no response. Was she really having this conversation, as casually as if they were discussing the weather?

“I don’t know the answer to that question,” he admitted. “I will need to find out.”

“
We
will need to find out,” she corrected.

He inclined his head, but his mind was shuttered.

“How do you do that?” she asked, tapping her head with her forefinger. “That whole not-let-others-know-what-you-are-thinking thing?”

“There are ways,” he said, the amber-colored bottle still in his hands. “You will need to learn them, if there is time.”

“If there is time?”

She didn’t realize she’d echoed the words in her mind until he answered there.

“If the world doesn’t end first.”

“Repeat that last bit to me?”

He turned to her, and his eyes were distant, as if focused on something far away. “Are you sure you’re ready for the answers? You’re a…damned if I know what you are. You’re different. This shouldn’t concern you, but it does.”

This. Vampires. Shadow people. Wolves. This. It made no sense.

“There are many things mortal beings have no concept of.” His voice was gravelly and suddenly sounded very old. He gestured to the sofa, and without waiting for her, sat on one side. The throw there told her this was the side he preferred. She took a seat as far away from him as she could, sitting primly on the opposite side of the sofa.

His brows knitted together, and his eyes focused in on her like a laser beam. “Who are you, and how is it you can call to an Elemental?”

Rachel wished she could have controlled her involuntary start. The sensation under her skin intensified. She was pretty sure she wasn’t in a fugue state or dreaming, but now she wished she could wake up.

“Do you have gods or demigods in your family? Something from the pantheons would explain your powers a little better. If not gods, perhaps Cherufe? You smell of fire.”

His words should have been strange, but they touched something inside her, a distant memory. She reached for it but it slid away, vanishing into the corner of her mind again. “Um. Do you read a lot? Or watch a lot of TV? Movies? Comic books?”

“I watch and read my share, but that is not why I am asking.” His gaze was steady on her. “Who are you? What are you?” Phoenix asked the questions softly, but she could hear his words.

A woman could get lost in those eyes, with their promise of sensual pleasure and something else—a strength that could slay dragons.

Fire. Dragons. Heat surged through her and just as quickly was gone. She felt something in his mind at the word
dragon
and then it too was gone.

Phoenix’s eyes narrowed, and there was an answering surge of fire, like incipient flames dancing on his skin. Then there was the touch of his mind in hers.

Screaming. Glass shattering. The call to “Run, Rachel, run!” from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was the first thing she had any clear memory of. The car accident. The day her life was changed forever. Rachel tried mentally to retreat but had no power against his assault. A screech. A bang. Someone hovering. Hovering? Memories of fleeing from the car and then watching it burn, her parents trapped within. Then running, compelled by a voice coupled with fear that dug its claws into her and wouldn’t let go.

“Maybe I’m a witch?” she forced herself to say, and felt the probe retreat.

Phoenix’s forehead creased. “Witches have to have some innate ability, but for the most part they are taught their powers. You will need to find out. It’s important.”

Agitated, Rachel rose from the couch and went to the window, seeing but not seeing the twinkle of early-morning city below them.

“You are not going to your workplace,” he informed her. “It’s too dangerous.”

She doubted work would want to see her tomorrow, or ever again. Rachel thought she had escaped before the fugue took her, but she was sure of nothing these days.

“Bogeyman going to get me?”

He shook his head. “They only come out at night, in a new moon. Aver, their leader, prefers it that way. You will see him if he is summoned, but not during the day.”

Ask a silly question…

“This is crazy. I’m nobody. I have a nowhere job, a small apartment and a boring-as-heck life.”

“Not anymore.” Phoenix’s voice was solemn.

She turned to face him. “You are going to have to give me a little time to take this all in. I’ve flown with you. You’re real, I think. Understand that I’ve been having fugues for the last few months, so this could all be in my head. I don’t get this. Why is this happening?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

Phoenix moved, his reflection in the glass giving him away until he stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. The tanned hands against her body were dusted with fine hairs the same color as the hair on his head, and appeared strong and unlined.

“Look, Mr. Phoenix.”

“Phoenix. Just Phoenix.”

Of course he would only have one name. “Is that what’s on your driver’s license?”

Phoenix gestured over his shoulder to the garage that she imagined was behind the house.

“I have a driver’s license and a car but I rarely use them. I have no need for a driver’s license most of the time. Between BART and my abilities, it’s irrelevant.”

She pointedly moved her gaze to his back.

His grip firmed and he turned her toward him. “As you can see, they come and go. When I have them, they cannot be seen. Humans are very easily led.”

“You say that pretty arrogantly,” she said. “They don’t see what you tell them not to see?”

He shrugged. “Humans do not see the paranormal. They see paranormals as regular people. Those of us who function in the world as they know it, anyway. Those who function solely as paranormals they only see, or feel, in nightmares. As the Phoenix, an Elemental, I am invisible to them.”

A play of emotions crossed his face, his brow creasing. The air wavered in front of her, as if a heat source were in the room. Him?

“You look like you’re trying to decide what to tell me,” Rachel said.

“Not what I can tell you. What I
should
tell you. The wolf cubs, the shadow people—they felt or smelled something in you. Either that or they were compelled to attack by my Demonos foe. You are involved in this. This is unprecedented.”

The room dipped and swam, but Rachel managed a snort. So many questions danced through her mind, and she didn’t even know where to start. Vampires? Werewolves? Demonos? A man as the mythical Phoenix? Maybe she had taken a wrong turn and landed smack-dab in Rod Serling’s brain.

“Char and burn. If I thought it would do any good, I would make you forget last night and return you to your apartment none the wiser for your ordeal,” Phoenix said.

Rachel pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. “Okay, stop. The fact that you can read my mind is weird enough as it is. Now you’re telling me you could erase my memory?”

Phoenix focused on a spot past her, his expression discomfited. “Not erase but make it appear as if it had been a dream. A bad dream brought about by too much vodka and a late-night viewing of
The Howling
.”

“Or
An American Werewolf in London
.”

“Yes. But not
Teen Wolf
.”

She was going to say more, but the heat under her skin intensified and she took a step back. Phoenix frowned again, checking her arms where she was rubbing them.