Light My Fire (8 page)

“I know I’m immortal, but that train could have
smashed me to pulp. Or cut me up into a gazillion pieces.
Or ... or ... oh, my god!”

Gabriel gently unclasped my arms from where they
were wrapped around his waist, easing me back from his
chest.

My brain did a mental jaw drop that just about had me
on my knees in surprise. The man who had saved me
from certain death wasn’t Gabriel—it was Fiat.

“What. . . what...
Fiat?”

“Ah, your wits return to you. Excellent. This way,
cara.”

My wits hadn’t returned. That’s the only reason I can
think of that Fiat got me almost out of the train station be
fore I realized what he was doing.

“Wait,” I said, pulling my arm from his grasp, looking
around me wildly. We were at the entrance of the depar
ture area, next to a bank of metal detectors and security
people checking everyone who came into the station.
“This isn’t right. I’m going home.”

“Si.
My home. Renaldo?” Fiat inclined his head to
ward the big blond behemoth who had been in front of us. I recognized him as one of Fiat’s bodyguards, a man who,
like his wyvern, was utterly ruthless when it came to get
ting his own way.

“I am not going home with you,” I said in a low, deter
mined voice, taking a few steps to the side so Fiat couldn’t
grab me. “Look, I appreciate the fact that you just saved my life—I’m more grateful than I can ever say—but I am
not going home with you. I’m going to my own home,
where I can sit and cry for a good day or so to work
through the horror of being shoved in front of an oncom
ing train. So, thank you a thousand times for the rescue, but no thanks to the domestic arrangements.”

I turned to walk away, but Fiat grabbed my arm,
pulling me up close to his body. I was reminded again just
how well built the man was—I swear there wasn’t an
ounce of fat on him anywhere. He was as rock solid as
Drake.
“Cara,
you owe me your life. You will come with me now so that we might discuss how you can pay this
debt.”

His fingers bit hard into my upper arm. I turned my
head slowly and narrowed my eyes at him, meeting his
sapphire gaze without a single waver. “If you do not let
go of me in the next three seconds, I am going to scream.”

“You will not make a scene,” he answered, yanking me
hard toward the exit.

“One, two, three,” I said quickly, then opened my
mouth in an eardrum-piercing scream. “He’s got a bomb!”
I pointed at Fiat. “Terrorist!”

Fiat swore under his breath as he dropped my arm and
spun around, his hands up as the security people rushed
toward him, guns at the ready. A second before they
reached us, Fiat’s mind brushed mine.

I am not through with you,
cara.

Goose bumps marched up my arm despite the warmth
of the evening. I rubbed them as the swarm of security
people descended upon us both, three-quarters of them
pouncing on Fiat, the rest surrounding me, belting me
with questions in French.

Five hours later I dragged myself from a ubiquitous black London taxicab, bruised, battered, exhausted, and
on the verge of what felt like a breakdown. I weaved
slightly.

“You are sure you are all right,
mon amie?”

I nodded and waved a limp hand at Rene. “Fine. Pay
you tomorrow.”

“Peh. The payment, she is not important. You are. Get
some rest, and then call me tomorrow and tell me exactly
what happened.”

“K. Night. Thanks for picking me up,” I answered
wearily, staggering slightly as I headed for the door to the
stairs that would lead me up to sanctuary.

“Anytime, my friend, anytime.” Rene sped off in a
cloud of diesel fumes as I crawled my way up to Nora’s
apartment, too tired to dig the key out of my purse. I thud
ded on the door a couple of times, leaning heavily on it as my brain whirled around in a circle of residual shock and
horror, pain, and exhaustion.

“Aisling? Is that
...
oh, my lord. Are you all right?”
The door suddenly swung open, causing me to stagger
into the living room. I righted myself and stood swaying
for a moment, blinking in the bright lights Nora had
turned on.

“Yeah, I’m OK. Just sore and tired. Going to take a
bath.”

“But—what happened to you? Is your French friend
all right?”

“Fine,” I said, stumbling to the bathroom. “Tell you all
about it in the morning. Jim, I summon thee.”

My demon appeared in a puff of black demon smoke, its
mouth open to harangue me for leaving it so long in limbo,
but for once Jim had the foresight to not light into me.

“You look like Abaddon,” was all it said.

“Feel worse,” I answered, then closed the bathroom
door in its face and gave myself over to a long, hot soak.
I knew I’d have a lot of explaining to do to both Nora and
Jim, not to mention mulling over what had happened in
the train station, why Gabriel hadn’t grabbed me, and
why Fiat
had
when my death was sure to mean the death
of Drake, his arch nemesis. But all that could wait until
the morning. Things always looked more manageable in
the morning.

I am so often wrong about things like that.

“Morning, Nora
...
oh. You’re going out?” I stifled a yawn as I squinted across a small kitchen made bright by
the morning sun. Jim was flaked out in a pool of sunlight,
cocking an eyebrow at me, but saying nothing as it read
the morning paper.

“Yes, I got a call this morning that there’s been an imp outbreak near my portal,” she answered, taking a last sip
of coffee before rinsing out the cup and setting it to dry. “Jim went out for a walk with Paco and me earlier, so it
shouldn’t need to go out right away.”

“Oh. Thank you. Um... imps. In Green Park? I should come help with them.”

“You have dragon business to attend to,” Nora inter
rupted, putting Paco in his traveling carrier. She snapped
it shut, then laughed when she saw me. “Such a guilty ex
pression! Aisling, I knew when I took you on as an ap
prentice that there would be times when you would be unable to assist me as a normal apprentice might. This is
one of those times, and since the imps aren’t dangerous
in any way, I have no problem whatsoever in taking care
of them myself. I’m just going to remove them, then I’ll
catch a train to Chichester to deal with the kobolds I men
tioned yesterday. It was a false alarm then, but I want to
keep an eye on it. With luck, I should be back by dinner.”

I glanced at the clock. I had the dragon thing to go to
in a couple of hours. Nora might be generous enough to
excuse me from helping her with the imps, but I was too
conflicted to do that. Obviously she’d gotten along just
fine without me up to that point, but now that I was
signed on as an apprentice, it was my duty to help her wherever and whenever she needed me. “I’ve got a few
hours yet. Do you think the imps will take long?”

“They shouldn’t, no. But, Aisling, you don’t need to
come with me. I understand how important this dragon
meeting is to you.”

“Be right out,” I said over my shoulder, hurrying to my
bedroom. “Jim, stop reading the paper and get ready to be
my trusty sidekick.”

“Yes, kemosabe,” it answered, turning the page.

Fortunately, Nora’s portal was only fifteen minutes
away on foot, located in a slim belt of trees that lined an
edge of Green Park.

“And your portal is where?” I asked, searching the
ground at the spot Nora had pointed to for something that
looked like an open conduit to Hell.

“Here,” she said, standing next to a squat, prickly pine
tree. I walked around the tree, scouring the ground for the
portal.

“Where? I don’t see it. Is it hidden or something?”

“No, it’s right here,” she said, touching the tree.

“The
tree
is the portal?”

Her eyes glittered behind her glasses. I was learning to
read her expressions, and that particular glitter meant she
was smiling to herself. “Yes. You expected a gaping maw
to Abaddon, filled with brimstone and the screams of the
eternally tormented?”

“Well. . . yeah. Something like that. Or at least like
the portal that popped up in that restaurant in Budapest.
Jim—” I turned to ask my demon a question, but it wasn’t
there. I scanned the surrounding area. No demonic New
fie was anywhere in sight. “Where’d it go?”

Nora set down her Paco carrier and extracted a slim black case from her inner pocket. “It was here a minute ago. Does it normally go off on its own?”

“No, hardly ever
...
oh, there you are. Where have
you been?”

Jim smirked. “Miss me?”

“Immeasurably. What were you doing?”

“I smelled some imps nearby. Being the exemplary
sort of demon that I am, I thought you’d like me to locate
them for you. So I did. There were only a few so I took
care of them for you.”

Nora’s eyebrows rose. “Jim is trained to destroy imps?”

“Trained isn’t exactly the word,” I said, squatting next
to the demon. “Open your mouth.”

“What?” Jim asked, trying to back away, but I caught
its collar and twisted it tight. “I haven’t done anything.”

“You ate those imps, didn’t you? Dammit, Jim, you
know how high in fat they are! The vet said your cholesterol was that of an eighty-year-old man. I told you imps
were off your diet!”

Jim snarled something unintelligible, made so because
it clenched its teeth together as I pried its flews apart so I
could see along the edge of its teeth.

“Aha! What’s this?” I picked out a minuscule little
item from the depths of its lips and waved it around in
front of its face.

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re yammer
ing about,” Jim grumbled, looking away.

Nora adjusted her glasses and examined the bit of
partially chewed blob on my fingers. “That looks to be
part of an imp’s hand.”

“It is. It is also proof positive that someone has been
breaking its diet. No doggie fake bacon strips for you
tonight, buster!”

Nora bent even closer over my hand, holding it steady. “Jim
...
the imp you ate. Was it wearing jewelry of any
sort?”

“Jewelry?” I asked, peering at the remains of the imp
hand. It was an odd shade of light blue, with the usual
(for imps) three fingers. There was no sign of imp rings
or bracelets on it. “Why jewelry?”

“Did you have a chance to read the field guide to imps
that I gave you the other day?” Nora asked.

I shook my head. “I meant to yesterday on the train,
but things got kind of out of control. What’s with the
jewelry?”

Nora looked at Jim.

“If I had eaten an imp, and I’m not saying I did, be
cause Aisling could have palmed that onto my lips to
make me look guilty, but if I had, and it might have had a
nasty little bit of gold on it, what of it?”

I shook the imp hand in front of Jim’s nose. “Bad
demon! Bad!”

It rolled its eyes.

Nora took a deep breath and grabbed Paco’s carrier.
“Show us where you found the imp nest,” she ordered Jim.

It looked at me.

“Do it,” I said, demons being able to take orders only
from their demon lord.

“If you had read the field guide,” Nora said as she fol
lowed Jim into the clutch of trees, holding aside branches
as
she ducked into some dense shrubberies that lined the
fence, “you would know that imps of that particular color
belong to the suzerain. In addition to the unique color,
they are marked by the gold jewelry they wear.”