Within the Flames (25 page)

Chapter Fifteen

A
n hour later they stood on a dark, quiet street ten blocks from Central Park, in a tree-lined neighborhood that felt removed, and cocooned, from the rush of the city around it. All the buildings were old and made of stone and brick, with little identity to differentiate one from the other.

Lyssa led him up the stairs to a wooden door and dialed an access code.

“You live here?” he asked, as she led him inside, down a narrow hall.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “I have a studio upstairs, but that’s not where we’re going. There’s a safer spot I know.”

She yanked open a door that led to the basement. Faint gouge marks were in the wood—the same shape as her claws. “This place was built almost a hundred years ago. Most of the inside has been gutted and rebuilt about a dozen times over, but some things never changed.”

They clattered down the stairs. The lights wer

The air smelled like detergent and rust, and wet concrete. Thick pipes ran along the ceiling. Ahead of them was a crudely built chain-link wall that blocked off a makeshift mechanical room.

Lyssa ignored it all and headed to a pitch-black corridor that ran to the left between the foundation wall and a slab of stone. Maintenance had hung a rope across the entrance, and attached was a sign that read:
DO NOT ENTER UNLESS YOU WANT TO
DIE.

Lyssa took off her backpack and slipped under the rope. Eddie paused. “Anything I should know?”

“Don’t pet the rats,” she said. “Come on. I do this all the time.”

Eddie frowned but followed her into the tunnel. Several feet in, she stopped and crouched.

“The tunnel keeps going into the next building’s basement,” she whispered. “But it got walled off a couple years ago. Management keeps threatening to do the same with this one.”

Her right hand scrabbled at an ancient manhole cover set in the stone floor. Eddie said, “Let me help you.”

“I got it,” muttered Lyssa, as her clawed fingers slipped through the tiny holes. Grunting, she hauled backward and lifted out the thick metal disc.

Eddie stared. Lyssa blinked at him. “What?”

“Remind me never to arm wrestle you.”

Her mouth twitched. “Get in. There’s a ladder.”

“You sure this isn’t a dirty trick?”

“Well, it’ll be dirty.”

He smiled and lowered himself into the hole. Lyssa followed, clinging to the ladder to pull the manhole cover back into place—plunging Eddie into blinding darkness. It wasn’t the same as being in a dark room. This was a sightlessness that carried its own oppressive weight: claustrophobic and immense.

Dizzy, he swayed into a set of warm hands.

“Sorry,” he said, hoarse. “I’m blind down here.”

“I won’t let you get hurt,” she said.

Words that made an unwanted memory surface.

She’s part demon
.
And there’s something else.
I knew it the moment I saw her taste that blood.

Eddie didn’t want to think about what Lannes had said. He fumbled until he found Lyssa’s arm, then her shoulder. It was her right arm. Right shoulder. He forgot that until she flinched.

“Er,” she muttered. “I’m twitchy.”

Eddie didn’t want her to feel embarrassed. “For years I didn’t like to be touched.”

“You didn’t like it . . . or you were afraid of it?”

“I was afraid. For a variety of reasons.”

Lyssa pressed her hand against his chest. He shied away from the unexpectedness of contact—and the heat that exploded from it, inside him.

Eddie caught his breath. “I guess I’m . . . twitchy, too.”

“Does it ever go away?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me if it does.” The wistfulness in her voice made his heart ache, and so did her hand, capturing his. “Come on. You’ll have to walk sideways for a while. It’s going to get narrow.”

“You never answered my question. Where are we going?”

“Down. This city is full of tunnels. Most are old and not on any map. Dug by hand in the early part of the twentieth century, used to run guns and liquor—sometimes men and women who wanted to keep their comings and goings private. Urban legend.”

“Fairy tales. A dragon in the middle of them.”

She laughed, and the sound sent a frisson of heat through his body. “When I was little, I used to pretend I was a princess. Nea py">ver the dragon.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t realize shape-shifting wasn’t normal. Being a princess, though . . . that was magic.”

Eddie had believed in magic, as a boy. And then he’d stopped.

The walls were uneven, sometimes jagged and sharp when he touched them. Cut from rock, hacked away, sloping downward at a steep angle. Eddie had to watch his breathing as he walked—not because he was out of shape but because it was too easy to feel buried alive.

He lost track of time. Lyssa never let go of his hand. Once, she pressed down on his head. “Watch yourself.”

“I could light a fire to see with.”

“Trust me,” she replied.

Do I trust you?
Eddie wondered, feeling her body tight against his side, guiding him.
What do I risk by trusting you?

Because with Lyssa, it wasn’t like trusting one of the guys. It wasn’t the same as trusting Serena to watch his back, or Roland not to stab it. It felt deeper than that, more raw. As though he was asking whether or not he trusted himself.

And he didn’t trust himself.

Eddie heard water dripping, and the squeak of rats. “How did you find this place?”

“I was desperate. There’s nothing here that burns. I can’t . . .” Lyssa paused, and he sensed her weighing words. “I can’t sleep . . . in a normal place. I have nightmares, and when I dream . . .”

“Fire,” he said. “I have a room for that.”

“Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“You seem to have your act together.”

“No.” He thought about his cage in the penthouse. He hated it. But it was heaven compared to this. “My emotions get the better of me, as you’ve seen. Sometimes . . . I think it would be easier not to feel anythito . He hatng at all.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are already too many cowards in the world. Myself included.”

Eddie didn’t know anyone else who could affect him the way she did, just with words. She was right. Not feeling anything was the easy way out. Safe. How many years had he been running from himself?

“You’re no coward,” he told her. “Just the opposite.”

“You have no idea,” she replied. “Careful. There’s a big hole on your right.”

“I’m serious.”

“Step sideways.”

He stopped walking altogether. “Ten years on your own, surviving. I know what that means, Lyssa. I know the cost.”

“Eddie.”

“I know what it’s like to have
no one.
To spend nights sitting up, hiding in boxes with a piece of glass in your hand because you’re afraid someone will sneak up and kill you, or worse. I know hunger, Lyssa. I know every hunger imaginable. I know what it’s like, trying to stay alive without becoming the predator.”

She broke away, leaving him dizzy and alone in the darkness.

“Lyssa,” he called out, before he could stop himself. “I tried to kill myself once.”

He was horrified to hear those words come from his mouth—horrified and stunned—and then, just humiliated.

But even in that absolute darkness, he felt the heat of her stare—so he cleared his throat, and said in a hoarse voice, “Some things are too hard to live with. I didn’t want to hurt anyone . . . ever again. And I was sick of hiding, of being alone. There was no one to go to. No one I trusted well enough to ask for help.”

He was rubbing his hands, their scars, and stopped himself with a deep breath. “I got better. What I am . . . what I did . . . I can live with now. I can say it out loud. I don’t have to hide all the time.”

Which was a lie. He was still hiding. No one knew the truth of what he’d done, all those years ago. What he
hadn’t
done. This was as close to it as he’d ever come to speaking the words . . . and her silence killed him.

His beating heart was louder than the world. For the first time, he saw a glint of golden light in the darkness: two faint sparks, in the shape of eyes.

“I never tried to kill myself,” Lyssa said finally, in a soft voice. “But I thought about it sometimes. It frightens me, how close I came.”

Her words hit him hard, again. Old wounds suddenly felt fresh, and sharp. Eddie couldn’t push down the loneliness, the grief, fast enough. He folded his arms over his chest, bracing himself, holding himself up, keeping his head down—because even in the darkness, he was afraid of what she might see in his eyes.

“Like I said,” he whispered, “you’re no coward.”

“I am. In every way that matters.” Her voice broke. “You don’t know how easy it would have been for me to leave you and your friends today.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Neither did you.”

“No. But I’ve run, in the past. I’ve let people get hurt when I could have done something to stop it. I almost let the same thing happen today when I didn’t finish off Betty. So whatever you think you’ve done, or haven’t . . .” Eddie stopped, fighting for the right words, wondering why the hell he’d opened his mouth in the first place. What was he trying to tell her? Why had he vomited all these emotions that he’d thought were dead?

That slow-burning glow of her eyes drew near. Eddie looked into that light, and said, “People change. Whatever you think you are, or have done, it’s not . . . the end of it.”

“My mother used to say that. She’d tell me . . . you make up for your mistakes by
living.
You pay back the bad debts by being worth something, somehow, to someone.”

“I like your mother.”

“I loved her.” Lyssa drew in a shaky breath. “But I don’t think I’ve followed her advice. It’s easier to run than to fight.”

“I know it is,” Eddie said, on the verge of telling her about his sister. It was too easy to talk to Lyssa, to tel Lystifl the worst parts of himself. Things no one else knew. Things, he realized now, that he was desperate to unburden.

He looked down, blind and lost. Moments later, Lyssa’s hand found his. Her touch was warm, soft.

“Life is hard,” she murmured.

He squeezed her hand. “It could be worse.”

A short, sad laugh escaped her. “Yeah.”

And then she sucked in her breath. Eddie knew that sound. Full of pain, shock.

“What is it?” he asked sharply, staggering backward as she hunched over, her shoulder hitting his. Her entire body quaked with terrible violence, and a crawling sensation filled his throat.

Heat exploded against his skin, sparks of flames riding through the air. His left shirtsleeve caught on fire, illuminating the darkness.

Lyssa stood beside him, hugging her right arm against her body. She twisted, shielding her eyes from the light, and snarled.

“Put that out,” she said harshly.

“You’re hurt.”

She tried to knock him back. Eddie ignored the weak blow and moved in close. Fire shone golden and warm on her hair. She kept her face turned away from him.

“Lyssa,” he said again.

“It’s nothing. My arm. I told you, I have trouble with it, sometimes.”

“Let me see.”

“No,” she said, and shuddered. “All I need is time.”

He ripped off the remains of his burning sleeve and held it in his hand. “Are we close to where you were taking me?”

Lyssa nodded tightly. “Just down this tunnel.”

Eddie slid his arm around her waist. “Relax. I’ve got you.”

lorund She was silent a moment.

“I’m glad,” she said.

A
ccording to Lyssa, the subway tunnel that Eddie soon found himself in had been the victim of bad planning, corrupt politics, and a more powerful real-estate developer who had wanted all that underground territory for his own projects. Sealed at both ends some time in the early seventies, it was blocked off from anything functional—except for two very old tunnels, hand-dug, that had been uncovered during the initial excavation.

Eddie and Lyssa emerged from one of those tunnels, dirty and tired, and sweating.

He heard voices in the distance. She bumped him sideways with her hip and steered him across rough, uneven ground. The remains of his sleeve had burned to almost nothing, leaving him nearly blind—again.

Lyssa stopped him. “We’re here.”

Eddie wasn’t sure what that meant—until, unexpectedly, she placed his hand on a steel bar that slanted down and felt like a rail.

“Hold on,” she muttered, and he listened to her move away from him, her feet scuffing upward as though climbing stairs. His sleeve turned to ash. Eddie let it fall away from his hand, and waited in the darkness.