The Azar Omnibus
The Complete Azar Trilogy
Grace McGinty
Contents
Also by Grace McGinty
Smoke And Smolder
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Burn And Blaze
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Rage and Ruin
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Afterword
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Newly Undead in Dark River
1. Newly Undead In Dark River
This book is dedicated to my mother, who loved the first story I wrote when I was five, and has loved every one I have written since. Thank you for your never ending encouragement and support.
All my love.
Copyright 2019 of Madeline Young writing as Grace McGinty
Reprint of novel formerly known as Slow Burn.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art by Francesca Vance of Reaper Designs
Also by Grace McGinty
Hell’s Redemption Series
The Redeemable: The Complete Novel
The Unrepentant: The Complete Novel
The Fallen: The Complete Novel
The Azar Nazemi Trilogy
Smoke and Smolder
Burn and Blaze
Rage and Ruin
Dark River Days Series
Newly Undead In Dark River
Happily Undead In Dark River
Black Mountain Mates
Hunting Isla
Stand Alone Novels and Novellas
Bright Lights From A Hurricane
The Last Note
Castle of Carnal Desires
Smoke And Smolder
Book One
Chapter 1
Azar braced herself as the fire raged around her. This was the best part of her job; the smoke filling her lungs like sweet perfume, the heat from the flames stretching out to embrace her. She felt alive at times like this, when her true nature was a blessing not a curse, and the constant war she fought within held a truce for a brief moment.
She was a firefighter, but she was also Ifrit, a form of Djinn that was made of, you guessed it, fire. It flowed through her veins and along her skin. Not literally of course, she was only half Ifrit, the bastard creation of a fire Djinn, or genies as Westerners called them, and her Iranian mother. It was probably fortunate she was a half blood. She was pretty certain that Joe would freak out if her turnout gear suddenly combusted and she grew fiery bat wings and horns. Not to mention the goats feet.
Joe suddenly appeared from the smoke in front of her. Shit, she’d been standing still for too long.
“Az, what the hell are you doing?”
Well that’s what he would have said if he wasn’t busy examining her for injuries and electrocution entry points. What he actually did was give her the okay sign with his gloved hands. She returned the sign and got her head back in the game. The small residential building had caught on fire in one of the lower apartments. The fire was spreading rapidly, probably due to cost cutting measures by the construction firm.
There were a few tenants unaccounted for, and Azar hoped they were all out for dinner somewhere nice. She and Joe had been with the first responding truck, which meant it was their job to find the source of the fire and any potential victims. They swept through the burning apartment, calling out to anyone who might need help in the smoke-filled room. They made their way along the walls, away from the kitchen, where the fire had started.
As Azar walked along at a brisk pace, she sent out her consciousness to the fire. She would never be able to explain what talking to a fire felt like exactly, but it recognized her as one of its own kind. Fire didn’t consume fire. It would ignore her as it greedily ate up everything in the room. It was its greed that told her if there was someone left in the area. The fire would continue to reach until it was devouring the life force of the unfortunate victim.
Her heart sank as she felt it lurch towards the wall, desperately trying to break through the flimsy barrier to the life on the other side. She searched the rest of this apartment quickly but methodically, then touched Joe's arm to get his attention. She indicated that she’d heard something in the next apartment. A lie, but a better option than telling the truth.
Sprinting to the next apartment as fast as they could while weighed down by their turnout gear, they swept through the rooms. Azar shouted with controlled desperation as they searched for signs of life. They searched the bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and the living room with no sign of any victims.
Frustrated, she continued to look more thoroughly than protocol demanded. She knew there was someone here, and the fire had raced down the hall after them because it knew it too. They opened cupboards and closets but there was no sign of anyone. Joe motioned that they should move on, but Azar wanted to search again.
“Give me fifteen more seconds,” she yelled back. The fire had eaten through the paper-thin walls and the whole living room was quickly going up in flames. Azar stopped and concentrated, sending out her own abilities, similar to those of the fire. Then she knew.
She sprinted towards the bathroom, wrenching open the cabinet door under the sink. A little boy about three or four was curled up around the pipe, tears streaming down his chubby little cheeks from fear and the smoke burning his eyes. Azar pried the child from the pipes and he clung tightly to her neck. Joe was behind her, already radioing in that they had a victim who would need medics. He turned and strode out of the apartment towards the exit.
As Azar reached the apartment door, a popping noise followed by a crack directly above her head made her jump back instinctively. A support beam crashed down between her and Joe, trapping her and the boy inside the apartment. The fire flared up angrily, the heat so intense that she worried the child's skin would burn. She saw the look of horror on Joe's face as he uselessly tried to shift the beam.
; “Get out! We’ll go out through the window!” she yelled at him. Joe nodded; it had been drummed into them through training that standing there would only get someone killed and helps no one. He would call in a mayday and get a ladder around to the northside of the building, because that was protocol.
Azar turned her back against the flames to protect the boy from the fires heat. When she was sure Joe would be out of the building, she broke all the rules and took off her mask, putting the oxygen over the boy’s face.
Her lungs welcomed the smoke like an old friend. It would take approximately six minutes for them to utilize their available resources and run the ladder up to the second story window. Azar predicted there was about four minutes before the entire apartment went up in flames. She ran to the farthest window from the fire to make sure she was clearly visible to her colleagues below. Breaking the window would make the fire roar to life as oxygen flooded in, feeding the fire; they would only smash it at the last minute.
She was going to have to starve the fire of oxygen to slow it down, and the only way to do that was to feed her own internal fire. She closed her eyes. She had the boy clutched close to her chest with the oxygen mask covering almost all of his little face and she kept him angled away from the fire that raged at their backs. Azar breathed deep, sucking the oxygen from the room.
The Ifrit in her rejoiced, the flames roiling under her skin, desperately trying to cover her body in spectacular flames. Her turnout gear kept the intense heat that emitted from her body from burning the child. The fire inside her grew until it hurt to contain.
Azar gritted her teeth as the flames in the room shrank back, retreating from its attack as it lost its food source. She wouldn’t be able to extinguish it. To do that she would have to surrender completely to the Ifrit, causing huge flaming wings to spread out from her back and her body would be encased in fire. But she could hold it back for a few minutes, to give the boy a fighting chance. The fire couldn’t burn her; it would just lick at her body like a lover’s tongue.
Turning back to the window, she saw Lieutenant Ryan’s head come up over the window sill and Azar remembered to cough so she appeared human. Ryan motioned her back as he smashed the glass with a small fire axe. The subdued fire roared back to life.
Azar quickly handed the boy off to Ryan. Securing her oxygen mask back on her face, she climbed through the window and followed Ryan down the ladder to the safety of the pavement. The fire flicked angrily out the window after her and she smiled to herself. She was its master. As she set her feet on the ground, and the outside team attacked the fire with the hose lines.
She was ushered over to the medics, who would fuss until they marvelled at her lack of injuries and cleared her for a return to duty. She was happy to see the boy in the arms of an extremely distraught woman. The woman spotted Azar above his sooty head and rushed over. Then she burst into a fresh bout of tears. Azar shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. She was no good with overt displays of emotion.
“Thank you so much. I have five children and he was hiding-” the mother’s voice cracked as she sobbed, “and I couldn’t find him and I didn’t know what to do. I thought I’d lost...” The rest of her words were incomprehensible over her sobs as she broke down into a fresh wave of tears. Azar patted the woman’s shoulder awkwardly. She never knew what to do when someone started crying.
“I was just doing my job. Everything will be okay now.” Azar used her most soothing voice.
In all honesty, everything probably wasn’t going to be okay. The woman didn’t seem like the type of person who could afford insurance and she’d just lost everything except her children. But Azar knew she’d be fine. If her 125 years on this earth had taught her anything, it was that humans were resilient and resourceful. Far more so than her own kind, whose numbers dwindled century by century until their population was only in the thousands.
Joe’s wife Linda volunteered with a charity that provided emergency housing and Azar made a mental note to get Joe to give the woman Linda’s number before they left.
The mother was still crying and hugging her shocked children as Azar drifted away from the ambulance toward her Officer In Charge. Captain José Fuentes was in his early fifties and had more than his fair share of gray hair. The look he shot her would have withered an oak.
“Take off your air again, Nazemi, and I’ll put you on suspension. Hell, I might even leave you up there for being so stupid.” He pointed to the burning building which still had smoke pouring out of several windows.
Azar smiled. “Yes Sir,” she said in a semi-apologetic tone. They both knew that if the need arose again, she’d do exactly the same thing. The chastisement was merely to release the tension of almost losing a man. Joe came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“You had me worried. I didn’t know how I was going to tell Linda that you wouldn’t be able to make her Zereshk Polow for dinner ever again.” He smiled at her, relief evident in his eyes. Zareshk Polow was an Iranian dish her mother had taught her. It was one of the few dishes that Azar could actually cook with anything resembling edibility.
“I would have run straight for the hills if I was you.” She nudged the crook of his shoulder with her head. “Speaking of Linda, could you give her number to the kid’s mother? She seems pretty desperate.”
Joe nodded, pulling out one of the cards he kept in the pocket of his coveralls for just this kind of occasion and strode over to talk to the boy’s mother. He was tall, easily matching her six feet, and his stride ate up the pavement with a purposeful swagger only gifted to those with extreme confidence.
Captain Fuentes addressed her without taking his eyes off the operation in front of him. “The medics clear you for duty?”
She nodded.
“Good. Stop standing around and go help your Lieutenant put a secondary line to the charlie side.”
And just like that, she went from conquering hero to dismissed subordinate. She smiled. This wasn’t the industry for showboating; you got things done, saved lives and went home safe.
Hours later, the fire was finally extinguished and Azar helped Joe repack the equipment. The apartment building was a sooty, soggy mess and she felt a momentary twinge of sadness for the people that lived inside, especially those who’d just lost everything. It was always the same in these cases. The buildings were nothing more than demolition jobs once the fire was finished. Joe stood up from where he was rolling hose lines and looked over her shoulder.
“Uh oh, your favorite person has just arrived.”
Azar stiffened. She knew Joe could only mean one person.
Keenan Reilly. What a snake.
He was an Arson Detective for the NYPD. Azar seriously disliked the pompous jackass. He was from the old school and believed the fire and police departments were a man’s domain. A woman still belonged in the home, where she could be ignored and insulated from the big bad world.
Azar had first met him at the FDNY 233rd battalion Christmas party about five years ago, just after she’d started working at the firehouse. He’d been standing in a group of women, looking sexy as sin; all tall, dark and devilish. Joe had introduced them, and Keenan had smiled and asked whose wife she was. She’d smiled back politely and told him she was a firefighter, not someone’s arm candy. He’d had the good grace to look abashed, but from that moment her mind had been made up about Keenan Reilly. He was a chauvinist and a playboy, and she tried to have as little interaction with him as possible.
But everytime they were in the same room, sexual tension sparked between them like an Ifrit in a fireworks factory. There had been several almost kisses, and even more stand up arguments at interdepartmental functions over the years.
The sexy snake in question strode over to Joe and shook his hand.
“Maconi, Nazemi.” He reached out a hand to Azar and she took it, letting go as quickly as possible. Not because it was sweaty or disgusting, but because of the jolt of excitement that always hit her stomach whenever the
y touched. Azar had tried to convince herself that it was a physical manifestation of the disgust she felt toward the man, but she wasn’t that delusional. It was the thrill of physical attraction.
Reilly was stunning.
Black Irish, with blue eyes and jet black hair, pale Irish skin like marble and a good five inches on her six feet height; he made her mouth water. It made it doubly disappointing that he was such a jackass.
Keenan turned to Azar. “Fuentes would like you to join us while I do the inspection of the crime scene.”
Azar nodded and shucked off her turnout gear to put back in the truck. Joe’s eyes glittered with mirth. He was getting a real kick out of the Nazemi/Reilly show. “Don’t wait around. I’ll walk home from here. Give my love to Linda,” she said, giving him the bird when he waggled his eyebrows.
She trailed after Reilly as he strode towards the building, appreciating the view. She liked that his height exceeded her own. It was pretty difficult to find these days; next to most men she looked Amazonian. It was a pity that his good points stopped at his physical aesthetics.
The Azar Omnibus: The Complete Azar Trilogy (The Azar Trilogy Book 0) Page 1