Forged by Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Blood and Magic Book 6)

by Danielle Annett

  I turned to Olivia. I was pretty sure my expression was horrified, judging by the sympathy stamped across hers. “I was going to die?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “And you didn’t think I might, I don’t know, need to know that?”

  Marcella bobbed up and down on the sofa beside me. “Naw. It wasn’t set in stone yet. I didn’t want to worry you. Besides, what with my last message, it was all getting too confusing.”

  I set the coffee cup down on the side table. At the rate I was going, I was going to end up wearing most of it. “Can we take a few steps back for a minute? Before you said, ‘The TK has to die,’” I said in an ominous tone.

  “I did. And I thought a telekinetic had to die, but that was before I realize you yourself were a telekinetic. Congrats on the upgrade, by the way!” She lifted a hand for a high five.

  I scowled but gave her one away and then rubbed my forehead. This really wasn’t making any sense.

  “Okay so before you knew I had telekinetic powers—”

  “Yes. When I thought you were just a pyrokinetic.”

  “Right, so when I was just a pyrokinetic, you thought a telekinetic had to die?”

  “Exactly.” Her violet eyes were so expressive.

  “But now that you know I’m both a pyrokinetic and telekinetic,” thanks to dear old Mom and her experiments within the H.A.C., “you thought I was the telekinetic that had to die.”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay.” I could see where this was going. I still didn’t know why no one had bothered to tell me I was going to die, but at least so far, I was following the right track. “And now…?” Now I hoped she had better news for me because dying just wasn’t going to fit into my schedule.

  “Now I’ve realized you don’t have to die. Nor does anyone else with telekinetic powers.” Well that was a relief. “At least not that I know of.” She reached out and grasped my hands in her much smaller ones. “You see, just a part of you has to die. The TK part. But not all of you. Not you as a person,” she was rambling now. Her expression ernest.

  I pressed my lips together. “And this is good news?”

  She nodded vigorously. “The best!”

  “Okay then. I’ll take your word for it.” What more could I do. I’d decided a while back that I was going to leave each day as it came. Marcella’s news didn’t change that though it did feel like a weight had been lifted from me.

  “Marcella, dear. Why don’t you give us a moment of grown-up time and grab Miss Naveed a fresh cup of coffee.”

  “Sure, Mom!” Marcella jumped from the sofa and bounded toward the kitchen.

  “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s been terribly excited ever since she realized you weren’t going to die some gruesome death. She’s very attached to you. It causes her a great deal of discomfort to think of you injured or dying.”

  It caused me a great deal of discomfort too. This wasn’t what I came here for. But while we were on the subject… “What are the chances of her visions changing and me suddenly dying again?”

  She shrugged. “Marcella is still learning the extent of her powers. There is no one else like her in our Coven, so we are learning as we go just like she is.”

  Her words settled like rocks in the pit of my stomach. Great.

  Marcella returned with a fresh cup of coffee, which I gratefully took from her. “Thank you.” And then proceeded to drink half of it. “I’m glad I’m not dying anymore,” I told her.

  “Me too!”

  “But now I’m hoping you can help me find my friend.”

  “Oh, right.” She retrieved the photograph and stared at it for several seconds. I watched her with baited breath. She’d mentioned before that she could see the future—not the past—but aside from that and a few confusing messages, I didn’t know how any of this worked. Could she call on her abilities at will the way I did? Well, the way I mostly did. My telekinesis seemed to have a mind of its own but I’d managed to get my fire powers under control.

  Marcella’s face pinched in concentration, her eyes appearing to gaze into the distance.

  “Is she—”

  “Shhhh. Don’t interrupt.”

  I nodded and went back to my coffee. Seconds ticked by. Finishing my cup, I set it aside and tucked my legs beneath me.

  “Blue-black feathers dipped in—”

  I swallowed.

  “Blood. So much blood. A battle. Blades drawn and shots fired.”

  This was why I didn’t like Marcella’s visions. They never led to happily-ever-after.

  “The TK has to die.”

  See! There was that line again and personally, I wasn’t fond of dying.

  Marcella’s eyes cleared and she smiled up at me. “Does that help?”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. It didn’t. But she looked so hopeful I didn’t have the heart to tell her it just left me with more questions than answers. “It does. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She hopped up from her place on the sofa and headed out of the room. She stopped once she reached the doorway and turned back to me. “Mom says my words can be confusing and I’m supposed to clarify sometimes.” Her face pinched in concentration. “You don’t have to die. Just the TK part of you. But before that happens you’ll find your friend. You just won’t be able to save her until that part of you dies.” She turned to her mom. “Did I clarify right?”

  “Yes, dear. You did wonderful.”

  Marcella preened under her mother’s praise and left the room.

  “Well, it’s better than nothing.” I stood.

  “You’ll have to come back for coffee again under less dire circumstances.”

  “I’ll do that.” As long as Marcella didn’t give me any more of her visions. At least none related to me.

  I sighed. Sleep would be a challenge tonight.

  10

  I headed back to the Compound. There wasn’t anywhere else to go at this point. I replayed Marcella’s words through my mind again and again.

  Blue-black feathers dipped in blood.

  Marcella didn’t see the past, only the future, so she couldn’t be referring to the feathers we found back at the apartment. Either Melody was still bleeding or she would bleed again.

  Blood. So much blood. A battle. Blades drawn and shots fired.

  Who’s blood? Melody’s? Mine? Someone else? I was banking on it being someone else’s because whoever was stupid enough to go after Melody was in for a world of hurt.

  But what about the battle? Blades drawn and shots fired?

  Maybe a battle would take place when we rescued her? But for that to happen, I would need to know who took her in the first place.

  And for me to rescue her the TK part of me had to die. That was the cherry on the sundae of this happy day.

  Gah, this vision got me nowhere.

  Melody was still missing, still in danger, and somehow a part of me needed to die. The telekinetic part of me, apparently. Was that even possible? It had to be or Marcella wouldn’t have said it, right?

  But a psyker couldn’t survive the loss of their abilities. I’d seen that first hand when I’d absorbed Aiden’s TK abilities and watched the light fade from his eyes. I was a pyrokinetic but TK powers lived inside of me now. They were a part of me.

  I shivered just thinking about them being ripped out of me as memories surfaced of me lying on a cold metal table.

  I didn’t want to be back in that room. I didn’t want to be weak again.

  Another memory surfaced. One through Inarus’s eyes.

  I was still on the table but I wasn’t scared. I was angry. How could they do that to her? How could Viola violate her own daughter like that?

  Rage and fury fill my veins. I was no victim. I was a survivor.

  I took a deep breath. All I needed to focus on right now was finding Melody. The rest could wait.

  Robert pulled in beside me with Declan riding in the passenger seat.

&
nbsp; Declan jumped from the car and stalked to my door. Opening it, he cupped my cheek in his palm and I leaned into the touch. “What’s wrong?”

  I smiled up at him and shook my head. “Nothing. I’m good.”

  “You’re angry?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Just reliving the past. Nothing to worry about.”

  He scrutinized me. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  He took me at my word and led the way inside. Jason stood just inside the door waiting for me. I groaned. “I don’t have time to—”

  “Make time.”

  Robert and Declan came to a halt beside me. Wait, why was Robert here? He was supposed to be with Caden.

  “Look, my friend is missing. We’ll have to do this another day.”

  Jason’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed, that friendly boy-next-door demeanor of his vanishing in a flash. “Do you have a plan of action?”

  “I’m working on it.” I brushed past him and headed further into the hallways.

  “So, you’re waiting then? For news or leads but regardless, you’re waiting?”

  I ground my teeth together. “Your point?”

  Robert chuckled behind me and I shot him a furtive glare. “You’re not supposed to be here,” I pointed at him.

  “My point,” Jason said, not missing a beat, “Is that you have time to train. Let’s go.” He angled toward the stairwell that would lead to the Compound’s lower-level training room. I decided to ignore him and turned in the opposite direction, but a firm hand on my forearm brought me to a halt.

  “You should train.” Declan’s emerald green eyes stared down at me, imploring me to follow Jason.

  “Melody is missing!”

  He nodded, his gaze solemn. “She is, but worrying yourself over it will accomplish nothing. Train. Get better, stronger. You can’t let this fall by the wayside because your mind wishes to be somewhere else.”

  I exhaled with a huff. “Fine. But the moment you hear anything concrete, you come get me.” I knew the Pack would report to him first and I wouldn’t let there be any delays.

  “Agreed.”

  I turned to follow Jason. Robert and Declan headed in the opposite direction to do whatever it was they’d returned to the Compound for. Jason flashed me an arrogant smile and I had a feeling my already shitty day was about to get a whole lot worse.

  An hour and a half later, my muscles screamed in protest and my head throbbed with a deep mental ache. Jason had given me no quarter. If anything, he’d taken advantage of my distracted mind to mentally pummel me even harder. I’d complain, but I could already sense that my grasp on my telekinesis was stronger.

  Not that I’d admit it out loud.

  “You’re improving.”

  I nodded, hiding my smile. Praise from Jason was rare.

  “But you still have a long way to go.” And there was that backhanded compliment I’d been expecting.

  He tossed me a bottle of water, which I gratefully accepted.

  “How’s Inarus holding up?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and took a drink. “Fine, I guess.”

  Jason scowled at me from his seated position on the practice mats. “You guess?”

  I worried my lower lip. “He’s awake. The healers see to his needs and Dia is with him. So yeah, I guess he’s doing fine.”

  Jason’s scowl deepened. “I thought you two were friends. Your relationship is one of the reasons we took a chance approaching you in the first place.” Approached was too tame a word. Jason and another pysker—Emerson Suede—had hired a couple of thugs to bring me to them.

  Supposedly, they’d already tried the more appropriate forms of communication like phone calls and drop-ins at my office to no avail. In the end, they’d decided kidnapping was worth the risk.

  I couldn’t say it hadn’t been effective. I’d gotten the message and here we were.

  Jason worked for the H.A.C.

  Under normal circumstances that would make him my enemy, but Jason wanted out. The problem was that there were fifty-two psykers under the H.A.C.’s thumb and Jason refused to leave a single one behind unless he had no other alternative.

  One well-trained psyker was a powerhouse. Fifty-two was an army. My mother and the H.A.C. had been recruiting psykers for the past five years with a good amount of success. But their prejudice was getting the better of them.

  They’d started experimenting on their own in an attempt to take out the part that made psykers what we were—our abilities—and make us strictly human.

  I had a feeling I was the reason for the recent experiments. Regardless, several had died. Jason and Emerson knew what was going on, but a lot of the psykers within the Human Alliance Corporation either didn’t know or refused to believe what their fellow peers were telling them.

  Jason needed time to sway his people and when he managed that, he then needed the Pack to offer them a safe haven.

  “We are. Things are just … complicated.” Much like everything else in my life these days.

  Jason leaned back on his hands and waited.

  I sighed and then let the word vomit pour out of me. “He was in a coma.”

  He nodded. Inarus’s condition after our most recent confrontation with the H.A.C. wasn’t a secret. It was also one of many reasons we hadn’t responded to my mother’s most recent attack and why we hadn’t tried pulling Jason’s people out of the clutches of the H.A.C. yet.

  “His mind was awake but his body couldn’t bring him to consciousness. I had to communicate with him on the mental plane and anchor myself to him to bring him out of it.”

  Understanding dawned on Jason’s face. “You’re experiencing his memories and emotions where you’re concerned.” It wasn’t a question, but I nodded my head anyway. “I imagine that makes things awkward, to say the least. It’s no secret he has feelings for you.”

  “We’re friends.” I countered.

  He snorted. “He loves you. I know it. He knows it. I’m sure Declan knows it too.”

  It was that last bit that bothered me. I didn’t want Declan to feel threatened by Inarus. We were in a good place. I didn’t want to jeopardize that, but I didn’t know how to find a balance between the loyalties I had to my mate and the loyalties I had to my friend.

  “I’m sure he does too.” The words were little more than a whisper and the bond connecting me to Declan clenched as though he’d heard my spoken words.

  “So, what are you planning to do?”

  I shrugged. If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn’t be avoiding Inarus the way I had been.

  “Whatever it is, I suggest you figure it out soon. We have too much going on to contend with your personal problems. Avoidance isn’t the answer and a distracted mind will find you hurt or worse, dead.”

  I agreed. That didn’t make what I needed to do next any easier.

  Climbing to my feet, I tossed my half-empty water bottle to Jason. “Thanks for the workout. I’m sure I’ll see you around soon.”

  He inclined his head. “Next time, put up more of a challenge.”

  I snorted. “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  Jason teleported from the room. Something I’d only ever accomplished once and while under duress. It was definitely one of the telekinetic abilities I looked forward to taking advantage of in the future.

  11

  I strode into Inarus’ room with a confidence I didn’t feel. He stood by the lone window in the room, a somber expression on his face. My boots thudded across the stone floor as I walked further into the room. Inarus turned around and his blue-grey eyes widened in surprise for a fraction of a second before he schooled his features into a mask of indifference.

  “Hey.” I came to a stop beside him and followed his gaze out the window to the thick forest that surrounded the Compound.

  “Hey.”

  Well, this wasn’t awkward at all. “You’re out of bed. You must be feeling better?”

  He nodded. “I am. I’ll be
leaving soon.”

  I stiffened. “Leaving?”

  “Don’t you think it’s time? The shifters don’t like outsiders within their walls. I’ve been here long enough. We should all do our best and get on with things.”

  I made a sound of agreement. He was probably right. It would send the wrong message if he stayed much longer. But even knowing that, I was hesitant to see him leave, especially given that he was still recovering. At least here, the Pack healers could see to any complications he might still have with his recovery.

  “You’ll go back to Sanborn Place then?” Inarus had been staying in the apartment above our offices prior to the injury. It was convenient and I’d gotten used to seeing him each day when I went into work.

  He lifted his shoulders and adverted his gaze. “I don’t know.”

  I jerked my head towards him, searching his face. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  Inarus’ eyes pleaded with me to understand. “I think space might —”

  “No.” I shook my head, my eyes smarting. I knew this was going to happen. I never should have agreed to pull him out. We should have waited a few days. Then Dia could have done it and then we wouldn’t be here.

  His forehead wrinkled. “Aria, you know this isn’t good for either of us. I’m not going to delude myself into believing staying here is a good idea.” He turned as if to walk away from me. “You shouldn’t either.”

  I grabbed for his hand, a hitch in my voice. “We’re friends.” I threaded my fingers through his, silently begging him to let it be enough. I’d lost too many people. My parents. Mike. I couldn’t lose someone else I cared about. I couldn’t lose him. Not when I knew we could fix whatever this gaping hole between us was.

  “You know I care about you.” I was going to go to hell for this. “Can’t that be enough?”

  He looked away.

  “Please.”

  His eyes landed on mine. I saw hesitation there and decided to jump on it.

  “Just wait a little longer. If you still want to go once things settle down, I won’t stop you.” It was a lie and guilt tugged at me, but I pushed on anyway. “You’re still not at one hundred percent. Wait. At least until you’re fully recovered.”