Kiss of Fire

by Deborah Cooke

  Well, except for the dragon bit. There was a bit of blood on the floor of the arcade, which convinced her that she hadn’t completely lost her mind.

  That was when Sara realized that the golden glimmer that had been in front of her shop was gone, too.

  Had she imagined that? Or had it rolled out of sight?

  Sara wasn’t going back to check.

  It was time to go home. She gripped her book and her purse, stepped out to the curb, and hailed a cab.

  One thing was for sure: herbal tea wasn’t going to settle her nerves on this night. She’d pour herself a single malt Scotch, from the bottle she’d gotten from her parents’ home. She’d salute the man who had helped her and the one who had taught her not to give up without a fight.

  Then she’d savor every drop.

  Even if she choked on it.

  If nothing else, the Scotch would help her sleep.

  Quinn was too old to believe in coincidence.

  It wasn’t an accident that he had met his destined mate right when someone had tried to kill her. He had no doubt that the assailant was a Slayer, and not a random thug.

  His mate needed his protection.

  Since she didn’t yet know that they were destined lovers, he didn’t want to frighten her. He would protect her without her being aware of what he did.

  Quinn followed the cab that she had taken, moving like a shadow on the side streets. He didn’t have to keep her in sight, not now that he had caught her scent. He was aware of her presence, as long as she was within his proximity. He let his intuition guide him and caught up when she was stepping out of the taxi on a quiet street in the west end.

  He lingered in the shadows of a hedge, remaining so still that he didn’t attract mortal attention. She looked tired and a little jangled, and he wished he could have anticipated the attack before it happened.

  She had fought back, though. He liked that tenacity.

  She might need it before the firestorm had passed.

  She pushed a hand through her long fair hair when the cab pulled away, and only seemed to realize then that her hair was loose over her shoulders. It gleamed like spun gold. She pulled it into a ponytail and twisted it back, then rummaged in her purse for a way to fasten it. Then she jingled her keys as she walked toward an exterior staircase on a neat little Cape Cod house.

  Evidently she lived on the upper floor. Quinn watched her climb the stairs, seeing exhaustion in her every move. He waited until she was inside her apartment, certain that she would lock the door against intruders.

  Maybe she would lean against it and sigh with relief. She wasn’t, however, as safe as she might think she was.

  Quinn would fix that.

  He waited to ensure that she wouldn’t see him. She opened her windows a small increment to let in some air and turned on a couple of fans. He watched through the kitchen window as she got a soda from the fridge. She rolled the cold can across her forehead, and the sight of her pleasure made Quinn smile. When she dropped the blinds low and disappeared from view, Quinn heard water running. She was in the shower. Knowing she wouldn’t see him, he circled the house silently.

  He liked the strong aura that the house had. If he’d had to pick a house for her to sleep in, this would have been the one. It sang to him of the psychic gift his mate was prophesied to possess. Her foresight would protect her, but Quinn would give her even more insurance. With a Slayer hunting her, she needed a better protection than mere locks could provide.

  The sky was clear and he couldn’t sense any other Pyr in his vicinity—that didn’t mean there weren’t any, though. Quinn wasn’t the only one who could disguise his presence, especially in human form.

  He pulled the coin from his pocket, the one he had picked up from the arcade. It was gold and he shook his head at the fleur-de-lis that was embossed on it. On the other side was John the Baptist in his hair shirt. It was a florin, a medieval coin from the Italian city of Florence, and Quinn remembered the first time he had ever seen one.

  He wondered whether the Slayer meant to challenge him personally, or just to make it clear that he knew Quinn’s firestorm involved this woman.

  It didn’t matter. Yet.

  He’d diffuse the challenge and prove he was the Smith. Quinn closed his hand over the coin and breathed into his fist. He listened to the rhythm of the metal and shaped his song to persuade it to his will. Three times he exhaled into his hand, willing the coin to become his own.

  When he opened his hand, the coin had changed. A mermaid adorned one face of it and a hammer the other. Quinn smiled at the appropriate combination. Sometimes the metal knew the truth better than he did.

  Then he flicked the coin skyward, demanding that it find its place. He saw its gleam as it landed on the chimney, spun, and settled. It would warn any attacker who approached from above that this territory was claimed and defended. Quinn knew without seeing the coin that the hammer side was up. His mate’s home was an extension of Quinn’s lair.

  But he could protect it even more.

  Quinn circled the house, keeping his distance as he identified all of the exits and entrances. He strolled through the side streets, keeping the house in view, memorizing its openings.

  Its weak points.

  Then he began to exhale his smoke, weaving it and guiding it to enclose the apartment in a protective cocoon. Once the building had been encircled three times, Quinn walked back downtown. He kept the vision of the apartment clear in his thoughts and focused on weaving an unbroken wreath of smoke.

  Only another Pyr or a Slayer would be able to see the smoke. It would be a sign of his mate’s presence and his own, but the time for secrecy was past. She had been targeted. Somehow the Slayers knew more about her than Quinn did.

  The source of their information was irrelevant; all he cared about was preventing a repeat of the past.

  He owed Elizabeth’s memory at least that much.

  Chapter 2

  “Help me, please!”

  The woman’s cry instantly brought Sara awake. It was so loud, as if it echoed inside her head, and so filled with pain that she couldn’t ignore it. She leapt out of bed and went to the window.

  It was sunny and bright, even this early in the morning, and the neighbor who loved to garden had her sprinklers on. Birds chattered as they flew through the water, but the grass was turning brown despite Mrs. Shaunessy’s efforts. The heat was already shimmering above the road and there was so little breeze that the trees were barely moving.

  Sara scanned the street, but couldn’t see anyone who might have been calling for help. Nigel Shaunessy, as rumpled and amiable as always, ambled out to move the sprinkler. The woman across the street was on the porch with her toddler, looking as sleepy as the child was active.

  But someone had called for help.

  Sara went into the kitchen and opened the blinds, because that window looked out the other way. The house she had inherited from her aunt was a sweet little house on a corner. There was a bit more traffic on the other street, and a man standing on the opposite sidewalk.

  He was looking directly at her.

  That had to be her imagination.

  Was it Sara’s imagination that he looked to be about the same size and build as the guy who had attacked her the night before?

  She closed the blind with a snap. Her hands shook as she made a pot of coffee and told herself that she was silly. She’d known it would be different living in a small town. She’d known the pace would be slower and she’d expected to miss the good bits of her high pressure job.

  She didn’t miss airports; she did miss travel to different places, on the company’s expense account.

  She didn’t miss working all night, several nights in a row, fighting to make the numbers crunch in a better way for a proposal; she did miss the triumph of being part of the team that made the deal come together.

  She didn’t miss high blood pressure, indigestion from eating the wrong food at the wrong time, stress, lonelines
s, or the sense of having no real home or roots.

  She had to admit that she missed the sense of being a part of something bigger.

  She hadn’t expected being alone to feel so lonely.

  Was she so lonely that she was making things up, to make her life sound more dramatic and interesting than it was? Sara had never craved drama particularly and she thought she was too practical for that kind of thing.

  She went back to the window and flipped up the blind. The opposite sidewalk was empty and she wondered whether she had imagined the guy standing there.

  Just the way she’d imagined someone calling for help.

  And a dragon coming to her rescue the night before. Uh huh.

  It was just a plain old Wednesday morning, and the sooner she got her thoughts collected and headed to the store, the sooner she’d get the store computerized. Sara poured herself a cup of coffee and felt more human after the first sip. She made herself a proper breakfast, because Magda’s books would wait, and felt better again.

  As well as more logical. Clearly, she was under stress and her mind was working overtime. She might not have her aunt’s psychic abilities, but she certainly had plenty of imagination. It made perfect sense that she would have a nightmare after her scare of the night before, even more sense that she’d see threats where there weren’t any. She carried her coffee into the bathroom and stopped cold when she saw her reflection.

  The bruises on her neck clearly showed the mark of the man’s fingers. He had wrapped his hands around her neck to squeeze the life out of her.

  And he had called her by name. The hair rose on the back of Sara’s neck.

  Or had she imagined that, too? Sara decided that she must have. After all, it wasn’t logical for her to have a stalker. She wasn’t rich or gorgeous or sexy. Accountants, no matter how ace they were, didn’t have those sorts of problems. Women in their thirties who ran New Age bookstores, reduced, reused and recycled, and lived quiet sensible lives didn’t have stalkers.

  Movie stars did. Heiresses. Maybe porn stars.

  Sara spied the empty glass by her bed and guessed the likely reason for her nightmare and her paranoia. Having a shot before bed might have worked for her father, but it clearly wasn’t the solution for her. She took her father’s beloved single malt and poured it down the drain.

  She topped up her coffee and treated herself to a piece of her European chocolate stash from the fridge.

  Better to stick with what she knew.

  Quinn liked doing outdoor art shows; the look of busy booths in the sunshine, the rumble of happy crowds, the sound of street musicians and the smell from food vendors brought back a thousand memories of a thousand times and places.

  At this particular show, though, Quinn was restless.

  The sight of his mate had haunted him all night long. He could still see her, fallen and lifeless as her attacker tried to squeeze the life out of her. Even the memory made his heart jump and his guts clench. He should have been there sooner.

  He’d been late, one more time.

  But there was more to his mate than met the eye: she’d picked herself up and carried on. She was slender and small and full of unexpected passion. She was a fighter, and Quinn liked that.

  He could still feel the heat of the spark that had lit between their fingers.

  The thrill of the firestorm, though, was tainted by the threat against her. She had been targeted because of him, after all, and Quinn couldn’t forget that, much less how familiar it was.

  He could sense her presence in his vicinity, but as soon as she had come downtown in the morning, he’d lost her in the hustle and bustle. The show was too crowded and her scent was too new to him for him to accurately target her position.

  She was tantalizingly close, but he didn’t know where.

  He didn’t have to like that.

  To the casual observer, Quinn might have seemed to be a man at ease, even if, in reality, he was anything but. He sat at the back of his booth in an old lawn chair, his straw fedora pulled low over his eyes. A passing shopper might assume he was dozing in the humid heat of July, but Quinn seldom truly slept and he wasn’t going to do so now.

  He’d never liked waiting.

  It was late morning when Quinn felt a prickle of awareness that meant the presence of another of his kind. He deliberately held his casual pose when a man stopped and glanced into the booth.

  It was another Pyr.

  There was nothing remarkable about the man, nothing that would hint of his abilities. He was tall and his hair was jet-black with a touch of silver at the temples. He wore jeans and a black leather jacket, despite the heat.

  Their gazes met. An electric shock jolted through Quinn. It was an unmistakable sensation, one that Quinn recognized even though he hadn’t felt it in centuries. It wasn’t the same man who had attacked Quinn’s mate the night before—this man was taller and leaner. He also moved differently. He was lithe and possessed a sinewy strength, while the attacker had had a stockier build.

  That didn’t prove his innocence. Anyone could have accomplices. Quinn studied him through narrowed eyes, memorizing his features.

  Two Pyr in his presence in rapid succession meant that Quinn’s firestorm had drawn interest from his fellows.

  He would have preferred to have been wrong about that.

  The stranger glanced at the sign hanging at the front of Quinn’s booth and smiled as he read it. He moved slowly into the booth, making every appearance of browsing Quinn’s wares. Quinn simply waited: he wasn’t going to make this easy.

  “You should breed,” the stranger said.

  Quinn was startled. It had been centuries since he had heard old-speak, the guttural communication favored by his kind. Old-speak was brief and deep and ancient. Its low frequency sounded like a faint rumble to perceptive mortal ears, but was clear to the keen senses of the Pyr.

  “Why?” he responded in kind, his lips barely moving.

  The stranger picked up a door knocker in the shape of a fist, as if considering a purchase. “We are too few.”

  Quinn didn’t see this as his problem to resolve, although it was interesting to have the argument made so soon after his encountering his destined mate. Again, he doubted that it was a coincidence. “You breed, then.”

  The stranger glared at Quinn, his eyes a blaze of green. “We are too few. Better we all breed.”

  Quinn owed this stranger no answers. He sighed, as if weary. “But, so few princesses.”

  The stranger smiled again. “Fewer virgins, perhaps.” Their gazes met and held, some camaraderie flickering to life between them.

  Quinn didn’t trust it. He didn’t trust any Pyr and he didn’t want to make any friendly connections. He glanced over the crowd that filled the street. One woman paused before Quinn’s booth and returned his glance with a boldness that made him smile.

  “Perhaps,” he conceded.

  The stranger snorted, his cutting glance toward the woman making her move on. He surveyed the street in his turn. “No shortage of damsels in distress,” he mused.

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed.

  The stranger took a step back and stared pointedly into the throngs of people. The street was packed with bodies in the sunshine. Quinn saw the crowd part, seemingly of its own volition.

  But the break was too neat and too many people moved in unison.

  It wasn’t an accident.

  Especially since directly in Quinn’s line of sight was his destined mate. She looked more tidy and composed, her hair twisted up and her linen shirtdress neatly pressed. She had a bright scarf knotted around her neck, but Quinn didn’t need to see the bruise to know that it was his mate.

  Or that the other Pyr knew it, too.

  Quinn sat straighter, unable to hide that he was impressed.

  “Tasty,” the stranger said with another appreciative survey of Quinn’s woman. He put the door knocker back in place on the display, glanced at Quinn, and smiled a knowing smile. “Breed. While you
can,” he counseled, then left.

  “Hey!” Quinn called audibly, but the stranger didn’t look back. Quinn got up to follow, but his visitor had disappeared into the milling crowd.

  As surely as if he had never been.

  Which was saying something, given Quinn’s keen eyesight.

  Quinn stood at the entry to his booth and pushed up the rim of his straw fedora, looking for a hint of the stranger’s passage even as he knew he wouldn’t find one. The other Pyr was old and skilled; he had powers Quinn hadn’t even known were possible and he was more aware of the location of Quinn’s mate than Quinn was.

  This didn’t look good.

  Sara blinked.

  It was the strangest thing. She’d gone out for a coffee, as morning business was slow in the shop, and had been pushing her way through the throngs of shoppers. The art fair had drawn a lot of tourists, and South State was jammed. It was hard to get angry at people having a good time, but still she felt guilty to have left the shop closed for so long.

  She’d just started to despair of getting back to work soon, when the crowd had parted, all at once. A passage had opened, the way the Red Sea had divided before Charlton Heston.

  Right across the street, she could see a booth. There was a man shopping in the booth, but that wasn’t what caught her eye.

  It was the man lounging in the lawn chair at the back of it. She felt the same heady tingle of his gaze upon her as she had felt the night before. Her feet seemed to root to the spot.

  It was her guardian angel.

  Sara couldn’t help but stare. She told herself that she was confirming her suspicion that he was who she thought he was, but she knew it was a lie. She was just looking.

  Or maybe she was ogling. He looked every bit as good as she remembered, even in daylight, and her pulse responded to the sight of him in exactly the same way it had the night before.

  She should thank him.

  If it was someone else, it would be better for her to not make an idiot of herself. Confirming his identity was a perfect rationalization for standing and staring, although it wasn’t the real reason Sara did so.