Touching Fire (Touch Saga) (41 page)

He kissed me again, a little harder this time. His fingers drifted back to cup the base of my skull.
I dropped the bundle in my arms to reach for him. My palms flattened against the warmth of his chest. They slid up to encircle his neck.

I
was pushed onto my back and found him above me, his damp hair dripped water onto my face, neck and collarbone.

“One of us needs to get dressed,” he
rasped. “I don’t think I can be trusted with you wearing so little.”

“In a minute.” I fisted my fingers in his hair
and dragging his mouth back down to mine. “I’m not ready to stop.”

He kissed my cheek, my jaw and my chin.
His hand roamed down the length of my side to rest on my waist. “Are you hungry?”

I pulled him down over me, forcing him to prop his weight
on his elbows on either side of my head as I attacked his mouth.

“
Starving.”

I would have happily stayed on that bed, under him, kissing until the end of time, except something was on fire. The harsh stench of smoke billowed through the room, drowning our beautiful moment in its eye-watering mist.

Isaiah pulled away as I coughed and turned to the door.

“Do you think—?”

He shook his head. “We would have heard an explosion.” He reached for his bag and pulled out another pair of sweats. “Get dressed.”

Pants in hand, he left the room.

I hurriedly yanked on the t-shirt and sweats and ran after him.

He and Archer were in the kitchen and both were swarmed by a plume of black smoke so thick, I could scarcely see them through it.

“What happened?” I called.

The cling of pots getting dumped into the sunk filled the silence, followed by the rush of water.

“I was trying to make breakfast,” Archer stated irritably. “No one told me it was that hard!”

I wanted to snicker, but he looked so disgruntle, I bit it back.
“Stick to cereal.”

Leaving him scowling at the mess he’d caused
, I started into the living room. The TV was on and I stopped to watch as the camera zoomed in on the arsenal of tanks and military vehicles that rumbled through the border between Canada and the US. Soldiers stood guard, brandishing AK-47s. It wasn’t just shots of British Columbia. The screen kept flipping from province to province, each showing the same.

We were at war.

“As you can see, the US government has dispatched its army to join our forces in the fight against the terrorists.”

Was Garrison a terrorist? I supposed he was. He was killing people. He was
needlessly slaughtering innocent lives in his search to find me. Did that make me an accomplice? Did that make me as responsible for their deaths? Could I have stopped this if I had just handed myself over?

“
Having reached max capacity, hospitals are turning patients away,”
the banner at the bottom of the screen said.
“Citizens are asked to come in only if injuries are serious.”
There was a list of what was now considered serious.

Loss of limb.

Severe blood loss.

Death.

The camera flipped and panned over the crowd huddled beneath tents in front of the hospitals. Children cried on cots, blood soaked through the blankets draped over them. Men and women—battered, filthy and blank-eyed—crouched on mats. Soldiers, some mummified in gauze and blankets, lay on hospital beds by the doors. Others walked through the masses, helping where they could, offering support, medicine and sometimes even food.

“God…” I sunk into the sofa and pressed my face into my hands.

The cushion next to me dipped. I felt him even before he rested a hand on my back.

I didn’t look at him. My attention
stayed fixed on the screen. It was showing the dilapidated remains of an elementary school. The caption underneath stated over two hundred dead. Sixty injured. Parents were being advised not to send children to school until further notice.

Faces of grieving fam
ilies filled my vision, drowning me in their anguish. Some were screaming for the government to do something. How could they allow this to happen? Others were begging the people responsible to stop. But the majority were just numb, as hollow-eyed as the victims at the hospital.

“Another attack … another bombing …
more deaths … fire … death … death…”

I lunged to my feet, my chest suffocating on air I couldn’t seem to regulate.
I choked. I moved to the doors. I slammed through them and then I was running. I didn’t stop until I was kneeling in the middle of the driveway, dry heaving into gravel. Sweat soaked into my shirt, plastering the thing to my back. Tears burned down my face.

“I need to go back.” I didn’t look up to know he was there, standing on the steps, watching me.
“I can stop this. I can save all those people.”

“Do you really believe that?”

I wiped my eyes on the hem of my shirt before forcing myself to face him and somehow remained unfazed by the fact that he was still clad only in a towel. “I have to. I have to do something.”

He folded his arms and propped a shoulder against the frame. “And just giving yourself to the madman doing the killing
is your solution?”

I staggered to my feet, my temper crackling. “I can’t just sit here and do nothing either! Look what he’s doing—”

“Exactly.” He pushed off and started down towards me. “Look at what he’s doing without you. Can you imagine what he’ll do when he has you?”

“I can’t stay here, Isaiah!” I screamed at him. “I can’t be safe when …
he wants me
.”

“No, Fallon,
I
want you.
I
need you. He wants death and destruction.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t up to you. You’re not the one who has to live with those faces in your head. You’re not the one who has to live with all that blood on your hands. I have to do that. Well, I’m making a choice. Me or the world.”

“You.” He was right in front of me, looming, dark and powerful. His face was a thundercloud of barely suppressed rage. “I told you, I will set the world on fire myself if it means keeping you safe.”

“No…”

His hands closed around my arms when I tried to take a step back. They held me tight, yanking me forward until I was pressed into him.

“
You want to do this?”

“Yes!” I snapped into his face.

His fingers tightened. “Then I’m going with you.”

“No!”

He shook me, silencing me. “Why? Because you have this twisted idea in your head that my life is somehow worth more than yours?”

“It is!”
I slammed the heels of my hand into his chest. “Let go of me!”

He let go
, but I kept hitting him, pounding my fists into his bare chest and shoulders until my arms ached and my vision blurred all over again. A sob wrenched from my chest and I found myself closed tight in his arms. My hands balled against his back.

“I can’t do this, Isaiah. I can’t. I can’
t.”

His hands held me while
I cried like my heart was breaking, which it felt like it was, and clung to him. He murmured something into the top of my head, but I didn’t hear it. Carefully, he bent down and scooped me up into his arms. I continued to cling to him as we returned to the house. The TV was off when he sat on the sofa with me cuddled in his lap.

“Fallon.” He smoothed away the wet strands of hair sticking to my cheek.
“We’re going to stop him,” he murmured quietly into my ear. “You and me. I promise. But not today, not like this.”

Sniffling, I raised my head off his shoulder to search his eyes. “When?”

Gingerly, he reached out and smoothed a thumb over my cheek. When I didn’t flinch or draw away, he moved his whole body closer to cup my face in both hands. He tipped it up and placed a tender kiss to my lips.

“When you’re ready.”

I frowned at him. “Ready for what?”

“He means once you’ve learned to control your powers, Princess.” Archer stepped into the room, glasses perfectly in place
once more.

I shook my head. “How can I do that when I don’t even know what my powers are
exactly?”

“But you will.” He held up his
rawel. “Starting with this.”

Chapter
22

They must have talked about this at some point while I wasn’t in the room, because it was thoroughly thought out. Archer would teach me how to use the rawel while Isaiah promised to teach me at least the basics of self-defense. I didn’t argue with either of them. I was ready to learn even if I was still unsure what my part was in this war. The thing I did know was that I wanted to fight. More than anything, I wanted to be able to stop Garrison the next time we crossed paths. Like any test, in order to succeed, I had to learn everything I possibly could about what I was given to work with—like my powers.

The time schedule went as follows
: Isaiah and I would practice first thing in the morning until lunch. After that Archer would teach me to use the rawel. The rest of the evening was reserved for watching the news and seeing what Garrison was up to. I liked the plan because it
was
a plan. It wasn’t doing nothing. It wasn’t running and hiding. It was preparing.

We started that very morning. Isaiah took me to the front yard
and told me to run.

I blinked at him. “I thought you were teaching me defense.”

“I am, after you run.”

“But I know how to run. Trust me.”

He laughed. “Please?”

I expelled a frustrated breath. “Fine.”

Still in his sweats and t-shirt, I set off at a steady sprint.

“Regulate your breathing.” Isaiah pulled up alongside me
with no effort at all. “Don’t guzzle air.”

I glowered at him. “I’m not guzzling.” But I was panting and we hadn’t even gotten forty feet from the house. Was I really that out of shape?

We ran around the entire clearing four times before he finally took mercy on me and let me flop onto my back on the cool grass. I thought about the shower I’d taken just that morning and wondered if he’d let me borrow another pair of sweats.

“Come on, we’re not finished.” He nudged me with the toe of his sneaker.

Groaning, I rolled into sitting position and waited for my next set of instructions.

The guy was a slave driver. I was convinced. He was evil. After the running was pushups, then curl ups and something called step ups, which I had never done, but found I didn’t like.
By the time he
allowed
me to shower, I hurt everywhere. Apparently that meant I’d had a good workout, so said the devil. I didn’t believe him. I’d seen people exercising on TV. They were always smiling. If they felt as dead as I did, they wouldn’t be. Pure logic.

I’d never exercised. Gym class was the one course my mom always signed me out of. It wasn’t because I was lazy, but because, before Isaiah’s magical blood, I couldn’t
exert myself without going all savage with hunger. Back then, I ate normal human food and needed frequent snacks throughout the day to keep the monster at bay. Using a lot of energy meant eating more. So I never went to gym. I couldn’t say I missed it.

“It’ll get easier,” Isaiah assured me as I staggered my way into the house.

“Can’t wait,” I muttered, making my way to my room to shower.

A fresh pair of sweats and a new t-shirt sat waiting on my bed when I emerged moments later. I felt myself grin as I slipped them on.
Isaiah was already in the living room when I set out to find him. He looked up from the book in his hand when I approached and grinned.

“How do you feel?”

I scrunched my nose at him. “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

I sat next to him and took the book from his hands. “
Peccato Mortale
,” I read aloud. I frowned. “I know those words. I’ve seen them before on the gates leading to Ashton’s castle. What do they mean?”

“Mortal sin.” Archer strolled into the room,
rawel twirling between his long fingers.

I handed Isaiah back his book. “Why are you reading that?”

Isaiah shrugged. “Ashton suggested I should. I guess to give me a better understanding of … everything.”

Our eyes met and I knew why he was really reading it. So he could have a better understanding of me. I touched his hand.

“See you in a bit?”

He grinned
. “I’ll be here.”

With a smile, I rose to face Archer. “Ready?”

He grinned. “As I’ll ever be.” He motioned me back towards the front of the house. “If you hear explosions or screaming, just ignore them,” he told Isaiah as we made our way outside.

“You’re not going to try and kill me, are you?” I wondered.

“I could,
and
I could make it look like an accident, but I won’t,” he finished with feigned exasperation. “Prince Charming might attack me.”

We descended the steps to stand in the driveway.

I tugged my rawel from my pocket. “Okay so how does this thing work?”

“
There are fourteen rawels in existence,” he began, holding his up for me to see. “Seven gold and seven silver. Sires get the gold. It’s infused with the full power of their region and can be used by no one else. Heirs, like you and I, get silver. Still, no one but we and a Sire can use them.”

“Isaiah used yours,” I recalled. “The evening he showed me the star room back in Luxuria.”

“Yes, but only after I had already set it up for him. He didn’t actually do anything. The rawel was essentially programmed to follow through with the command I gave it. Had he tried to make it do something else, it wouldn’t have worked.”

I squinted down at the device in my hand. “So it’s a machine?”

“Yes and no.” He flipped the notch at the top of his and extended it. Gently, he set it point down on the ground between us. It stayed upright. “There are no gears inside, no cogs or mechanics to make it run. It doesn’t need electricity or batteries. It just is.”

“So how does it run?” I wondered, leaning down to peer at his.

“With our blood.” He swept a hand over the top of his and it began to glow with a golden light. “That is how it obeys our command. Once you have mastered yours, it will become an extension of your body. It will know to react even before you do. What?” he asked when I stared at him.

“Can it turn into a long … whip,
thing
?”

His eyebrows creased above his glasses. “I suppose.
I haven’t actually done it myself, but I don’t see why it couldn’t. Why?”

I told him about what happened at the military base, about how it wound itself around the soldier’s neck and knocked him out.

“That’s pretty impressive,” he remarked when I finished.

“What do you mean?”

He took a moment to twirl a finger around the top of his rawel, making images swirl and dance in the light. Butterflies and vines coiled up from nothing to shimmer before our eyes.

“It usually takes years, sometimes centuries for that level of connection. It took me almost five centuries and there are still times it gives me a hard time.
I couldn’t even get it to light up the first few years.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s good though,” he added, looking up. “It means teaching you will be simple.” He snatched up his and it instantly shrank in his grasp. “Extend it for me.”

I looked down at the slim piece of metal in my hand. I moistened my lips. “That’s the knobby thing, right?”

“The knobby thing is actually called the dias.”

“Dais?” I corrected.

“Dias,” he repeated with a shake of his head. “It’s kind of like the on button. Go ahead.”

I gingerly moved my thumb over it and watched as absolutely nothing happened. I looked at Archer
questioningly.

“Again,” he prompted.

Baffled by its sudden defiance, I flicked it again. Still nothing.

“It did work!” I
protested. “It lit up and grew into this long metal rod thing…”

“Hey, it’s okay. Like I said, it’s temperamental. Sometimes it’ll want to work and sometimes it won’t. But we’re going to train it to work every time you tell it to.”

That
every time I tell it to
wasn’t that night. In fact, we spent most of that night keeping me from pitching the thing across the yard. It refused to even twitch. After several minutes of me cursing and threatening it, Archer changed gears and decided to give me a history lesson instead.

“
When the first seven sins were born, they were sent to Agartha where they broke the land into seven equal pieces. Each took a section and gave it a name.”

He gave his rawel an impressive twirl between his fingers.

“From this agreement, the regions were born. Luxuria, Aumon, Beran, Ira, Hybris, Toren, and Acedia. For many centuries, things were good. The regions grew as the sins of man grew. Of course Luxuria became the most dominant. At that time, the ruler was Orm, a fearsome and vicious being. What we had wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to be able to walk amongst the mortals, not sit idly by as little trickles of sin poured into our realm. He wanted more.”

“Of course he did,” I mumbled. “There’s always one in every herd.”

“Hey, he was your ancestor.” He grinned when I made a face at him. “So Orm gathered the other rules and convinced them that it was our right. We were birthed by mortal sin, why were we being kept from those who gave us life? Anyway, long story short, he swayed the fire giants to make seven objects that would help him move between the doors.”

“Fire giants?”

Archer nodded. “You would know them as Nephilim.”

I squinted at him. “You mean the children of angels and human women?”

“One and the same, but because of their creation, they too were banished into Agartha.”

I frowned. “Why? They’re not…”
I trailed off as I realized where this was going.

Archer beamed. “Catching on, Princess. They are a sin. Angels and humans … a big no-no.
They are a product of lust and greed. So they were given a home on the border of Luxuria and Aumon where they create metal work for Agartha.”

Human history was never this entertaining. I was riveted and intrigued.

“So what happened?”

Archer paced as he spoke. He made wide hand motions
to weave his tale. “The fire giants designed the rawel, advanced apparatuses that bestowed the wielder unlimited power. They showed the Sires how to use them and how to move through the nexus. But there was a catch.” He stopped and faced me, one finger pointing up towards the sky. “Only a Sire could pass through and they weren’t allowed to bring mortals back with them. Because of these rules, the giants created the guard, metal beings with living flame running through their skeleton. The guard was meant to keep the rules in order.”

“If there are seven
rawels, and only the Sires are allowed to go into the mortal realm, then how come you and I have one?”

“
These ones,” he held up the silver rod so it glinted in the late afternoon light. “Aren’t nearly as powerful as the ones the Sires wield. They’re basically training wheels to prepare us for when we take the helm.”

“
Do you want to? Take the helm, I mean.”

He shrugged and stowed away his
rawel. “Maybe one day.”

I looked down at the rod I was absently rolling between my hands. “Ashton says I’m the next in line, too.”

“You don’t sound happy about that.”

I barked
a sardonic laugh. “How can I be? I can barely take care of myself. How the hell am I supposed to take care of an entire … world?”

“Well it won’t be tomorrow. It could be eons from now.”

I nodded. “Right, because Ashton has to die first and being immortal, that probably takes a while. What?” I asked when Archer stopped moving and turned to me.

“He
didn’t tell you?”

Why did people say that?

“We didn’t exactly have a lot of time to discuss it … tell me what?”

“There are two ways for
a Sire to die and for a new Sire to take his, or her place. The first is if the descendant kills him and takes it.”

“Whoa!” I leapt to my feet. “Ar
e you telling me that if I become Sire, I have to kill Ashton?”

“Why do you think there are no previous
Sires around?

“I thought they died!” I exclaimed
, horrified. “I’m not killing my dad!”

He snickered. “We’re immortal, Princess. We don’t die unless we’re killed.”

“Okay, you said there are two things. What’s number two?”

“The second way is if he willingly submits his rawel to the next in line.”

I shrugged. “That’s not so bad!”

Archer grimaced. “Actually,
Sires are bound to their rawel the way a mortal is bound to their heart. Without it…”

“Are you kidding?” I cried. “So no matter what, my dad has to die.”
I pitched my rawel down on the steps. It made an almost hollow clinking sound as it struck stone. “I won’t do it. He can find someone else to kill him.”