Light My Fire (15 page)

I looked at him, ignoring all the people and noise and
general chaos around us. “It’s not? In Budapest, you
wanted us apart. You didn’t want me to learn how to be a
proper Guardian. You didn’t want me signing up with a
mentor.”

Drake shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“You changed ...” My look turned to a finely honed
glare. I couldn’t keep from whapping him on the arm as
I hissed in a low voice, “You changed your mind and you
didn’t tell me? I left you because you betrayed me—you
refused to support my Guardian training. You great big
scaly, blue-clawed dragon! You could have mentioned
that you’d finally seen the light.”

“I was intending to, but you took the conversation in a
direction I had not anticipated,” he answered, glancing
down to my stomach.

Nora stepped closer. “I’m sorry to interrupt you two,
but I cannot accept your offer, Drake. Paris is a lovely city
to visit, but it is out of the question for me to live there.
My portal is here, in the city. I cannot leave it unguarded.”

Drake put his hand on my back, gently pressuring me
to walk forward, waving his hand for Nora to proceed. She clutched Paco’s carrier to her chest. “I understand.
Although it would have made things easier if you could move to Paris, what you ask is not impossible. You may
move into my home here.”

“You have a house here in England?” I asked, sur
prised. Drake didn’t seem like the sort of person who
would be happy in England. “In London?”

“Yes. It is a family house, one I seldom use. Fortunately, the family I was letting it to has left for the Mid
dle East. We will take possession of it immediately.”

I didn’t fail to notice the slight inflection on the “we.”
“Just a minute—maybe Nora has different thoughts, or friends who can put us up until we find a place of our
own. I appreciate you offering your house to us, but if it’s
a family home, it’s probably too big and too expensive for
the two of us.”

Nora frowned. “None of my friends has room for both
of us, I’m afraid.”

“We could stay in a hotel,” I said, aware that I was throwing out objections just because Drake’s domineering manner irritated me. “Somewhere cheap.”

“You are not being reasonable,” Drake said, pushing me gently toward the car. “It would be foolish to spite
yourself and Nora just because you have issues with me.”

“But—”

“The house is empty. It is large enough to house all of us in comfort but not so large it will be a strain on my re
sources. Nora will live there as my honored guest for as
long as she desires. You are my mate. My homes are now
yours. Does that eliminate all of your objections?”

He held open the car door for us. I was about to get in
when a tiny piece of mortar erupted from the building
next to me. I looked at it curiously for a moment, touching the tiny little crater in the stone facade. Drake swore under his breath, shoving me backwards toward the sole
remaining policeman, shouting for Pal and Istvan.

The latter leaped out of the car.

“There!” Pal shouted and quickly followed Istvan as
he raced around the corner.

“What—hey!”

“Stay with Nora,” Drake commanded, his eyes dark.
He bolted after Pal and Istvan before I could ask him
what was up.

“What on earth is going ...” I looked back at the damaged spot on the building, about two feet from my head. My spine stiffened as I realized I was looking at a bullet
hole. Quickly I scanned the people across the street, but
no one stood out as a potential sniper.

“Wow,” Jim said, putting its front paws on the building
to examine the bullet hole. “Someone shot at you. You’re
going up in the world. First a train, then a hit-and-run,
now a sniper. I can’t wait to see what the red dragons
think up next.”

“I can,” I said grimly, my hands on my hips as I spun
around trying to see what it was that Drake and the body
guards had seen. “Nora?”

“It looks like a bullet hole to me, too,” she said, peer
ing over her glasses at the spot on the building. “What is
this about the red dragons?”

“They’re at war with us. Right, I’m not going to stand
for this. Come on, we’re going to find whoever shot at me
and scare the crap out of them.”

“We are?” Nora looked startled.

“Damn straight we are.” I looked at Jim. “I don’t sup
pose you’d care to do the dog thing and sniff the path the
sniper took?”

Jim rolled its eyes. “Don’t even go there.”

“OK. Then it’s up to me.” I put my hand on the wall,
closing my eyes to help me focus as I opened the door in
my mind.

“Aisling? What exactly do you expect us to do?
Guardians are protectors, watchers of portals. We dis
perse beings back to Abaddon—we’re not meant to bring
retribution to those who act against us.”

“I refuse to be a victim,” I told Nora, my eyes still
closed as I tried to push out all the noise and distractions of the street. “We have power. We shouldn’t be afraid to
use it.”

The magic door in my head opened wide, allowing me
to see all the possibilities. I used my improved vision to
look across the street but saw nothing that gave me any clues to who had shot at me. Turning, I swung my atten
tion to the direction Drake and his men had run, but noth
ing there set off any warning bells, either. I spun around,
figuring I’d call the quarters like I did when I summoned
a demon, but the second I faced south, the hairs on the
back of my neck stood on end. I focused, trying to pin
point the sensation, but nothing came to me other than the
strong belief that whoever had shot at me was located in
that direction.

Who am I to quibble with a hunch?

“This way.” I grabbed Jim’s leash and weaved my way
through the throng of people slowly passing the remains
of our building. The people on the street faded slightly
into the shadows, as if the something that drew my atten
tion was casting darkness on everything else.

“Aisling? I’m not sure we should be doing this,” Nora
said slowly, following Jim and me as we dashed across a busy street. “Drake would probably not like you running
off if the situation is dangerous—”

“He said to stay with you. I’m doing that. And don’t
worry, Drake has been around me enough to know I don’t
wait for someone else to rescue me. I’m perfectly capa
ble of saving my own ass. Over here. We have to take the
tube—I don’t think it’s terribly close.”

Nora cast out a few more gentle protests and sugges
tions that we wait for Drake or one of his men to help us,
but I nixed that idea. “No time. I don’t know where Drake
is, and since I keep forgetting to get his cell phone num
ber, I can’t call him up to chat about the situation. Besides, I don’t intend to corner whoever shot at me—at
least, not unless he or she is alone. I just want to find out who and where they are; then we’ll go in with a beefed-
up force and deal with things.”

“All right, but I reserve the right to call for assistance if
the situation becomes too difficult,” Nora answered. We
sat side by side on a short bench in the Underground train
that whisked us to an outlying part of London. The feeling that had first caught my attention continued to grow. I still
couldn’t pin down any particular sensation other than a
strong belief that I needed to go in that direction.

“Wait
...
I smell something,” Jim said as we emerged
from the station into Islington, a chic neighborhood in
northern London.

“What? One of the red dragons? Which one, do you
know?”

Jim spun around, its nose high in the air. “Not a red
dragon.”

“What then? A silver one? Blue?”

“Neither. Something better.” Jim stopped, one paw
lifted, its neck thrust forward as it tried to assume a posi
tion better suited to a pointer. “Indian take-out!”

“Oh for god’s... I swear, demon, there are times
when I seriously think I’d be better off without you.”

Jim grinned at Nora as I snapped its leash and hurried
down the crowded sidewalk. “It ain’t easy being the comic relief.”

Nora made no comment, but every time I glanced back
at her, her eyes were worried. A frown wrinkled her brow,
and the closer we came to what I was sure was the loca
tion of the red dragon who’d shot me, the slower she
walked.

“Is everything OK?” I asked when we reached the cor
ner of a suburban street.

She shook her head. “I feel... there’s something here,
Aisling. Something big. Don’t you feel it?”

I opened myself up for a few minutes but felt nothing
out of the ordinary. “Nope. Something like what?”

“I’m not quite sure. It’s nothing that I’ve ever felt be
fore, but I think
...
I think it’s very bad.”

I looked across the street at the plain white building
that stood on the end of a row of almost identical white houses. They were three stories tall, probably late Victo
rian row houses, now done up and home to yuppies. The
house that interested me looked no different from any
of the others: black railing out front, windows screened
with white lace for privacy, little flower boxes at the win
dowsills.
...
It all looked perfectly mundane.

“Well, I can’t just stand here and wait for one of Chuan
Ren’s people to show. I’m going to see if anyone is home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Nora said slowly. I
dashed across the street at a traffic break, marching up the stone stairs to the black lacquer front door. Just as I raised
my hand to knock, she lunged at my arm, jerking me
down a couple of steps. “No! Aisling, you must not!”

“Why?” I asked, confused by the terror I saw in her
eyes. “Nora, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, pulling me down the rest
of the stairs until we stood on the sidewalk. “I’ve never
been what you would call psychic about places, but I do
know that something big is in that house. Something ...
terrible. And you must not face it.”

I glanced back at the house. I got nothing from it other
than the sense of confidence that what I sought was in
there. “I’m pretty sure that’s the place we want. Jim? You
get any weird emanations from the house?”

“Weird emanations? What, I’m a medium now?” Jim shook its head. “Feels perfectly straightforward to me.”

“Hmm.” I wasn’t a fool. Much as I wanted to investigate whomever it was who was in that house, Nora was
an experienced Guardian, and if she wasn’t happy with a
location, then I would heed her warning.

For now.

“OK, then,” I said, slipping an arm around her shoul
ders as I gently steered her back toward the zebra crossing. “I won’t go in by myself. We’ll just make note of the
address, and when Drake and his guys are available, we’ll
check it out together.”

“No, you must not. In there is”—she cast a worried look over her shoulder at the house—”something truly
evil.”

We walked away in silence, returning to the remains of
Nora’s destroyed home, Nora breathing easier with each
step we took, while I pondered who could possibly be be
hind the attack. We arrived to find Drake storming around
shouting for me.

“Where have you been?” he snarled, marching up to
me. “I distinctly remember telling you to stay here—”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said in a soft voice,
watching Nora carefully. She flashed a smile to Pal, who
hurried around to take Paco’s carrier from her and help
her into the car.

“I wish to be told now. I dislike being made to wait,”
Drake said crossly.