Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4))

by Amy A. Bartol

  “No, that is their hallmark, Evie. They’ll consume you until there is nothing left of you and then they’ll destroy you,” he replies. “I know you need time to figure all of this out—”

  “There’s no time to figure it out, Reed. There’s never any time,” I whisper, before walking away in the direction of the bathroom.

  Reed calls to me, “He saw his entire future with you. When you left Brennus, Evie, he…” Reed’s voice is rough, and I pause, listening. “He was left with just his life as it was before you came into it and he…he realized that there is no life without you—nothing matters. You stole his life from him and it slowly began to take him apart. Everything else is the same, but it takes on such…drabness…you have no idea.” Reed gives a humorless laugh. “He can still taste you on his lips, smell your scent in his memory, remember when you smiled just for him, and the thought of never having that again is…harrowing. So, he’s willing to hurt you because he’s focusing on the pain to try to kill everything that you were to him…so that he can survive it.”

  A tear runs a path down my cheek. An instant later, Reed’s arms wrap around me and pull me to his chest. “I’m so sorry I did that to you,” I croak.

  “Shh,” he hushes me. “All that went away when you came back to me.”

  “I never—”

  “I know,” Reed replies, rubbing my back. “And sometime soon, when this is all over, we’re going to have all the time we need. I promise you that we will.”

  “My father is coming here,” I say in a small voice. “What am I going to say to him?”

  “Well, I never had a father so…I,” he stammers.

  Russell says, “You won’t need to say anythin’. He’ll like you no matter what.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, sniffling. “We’re kind of freaks, remember?”

  “Yeah, but you’re his freak. His little baby strange,” Russell says, grinning.

  Frowning, Reed says, “Tau is also an angel, Evie. He might not be like you expect him to be.”

  My brow furls. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “He’s not human, so don’t expect him to behave like one,” Reed says. “He’s never had a model either—he’s never had a father in the sense that you’re accustomed to with your Uncle Jim.”

  “Oh,” I murmur. “So you’re saying he may not like me.”

  “No, I’m saying you may not like him,” he replies worriedly.

  “This is not how I planned on meeting him,” I mutter, looking down at myself. “Does anyone have a toothbrush?” I ask, feeling like I might cry again.

  “I think that there’s an unopened one in the office…” Reed trails off, looking at the T.V. screen again. Brennus’ face is on every one of them.

  “Turn it up,” Russell says, looking intense.

  Reed uses the remote. “Genevieve is da light of our family,” Brennus says, his expression grim. He looks calm and regal in a dark suit with his dark hair slicked back in corporate elegance. “She is…irreplaceable.” His voice is like silk, drawing in the female reporter who is all but touching him now. He is one of the most beautiful and poised men I have ever seen, but he’s not a man. He looks colder now; he’s more like a statue: hard and untouchable.

  “Do you believe she is now with either this Reed Wellington or Russell Marx?” an interviewer asks Brennus in English.

  “I do. We believe dat she’s being held against her will by both men,” he says, looking like he’s truly in pain as his light green eyes show his misery.

  Russell wrinkles his nose. “Ahh, you creepy, cold freak!” he says next to me, while running his hand through his tawny hair. “It’s gonna feel so good knockin’ your head off!”

  As I listen again to the television, Brennus says, “’Tis our understanding dat Genevieve was last seen in Torun. Any information from yer viewers would be a great help ta us in da investigation. We can na even begin ta put a price on whah dat kind of information would mean ta us. Yer viewers will have ta decide whah is a fair reward for it.”

  “Why not just put a bounty on our heads, Brenn?” I ask the T.V. screen.

  “He just did,” Reed replies, his green eyes looking even darker.

  “Did he get a spray tan?” Russell asks incredulously next to me.

  “I think so…I suggested that. It looks good,” I say absently. Russell turns his brown eyes on me like I’ve lost my mind. “What? I’m just saying…it makes him look less, you know, dead.”

  Russell scowls. “He looks orange to me,” he says, and I shrug guiltily.

  “What would you like our viewers to know about Genevieve?” the interviewer asks Brennus, probably trying to push the human-interest angle of the story.

  Giving the female interviewer a small, alluring smile, Brennus replies, “She’s jus very…sweet…”

  “Tastin’,” Russell interjects.

  “And naïve,” Brennus continues. “She’s too trusting—’tis her only flaw. She’s always ready ta champion a lost cause. It may sound like I have a callous heart…”

  “You mean the one that’s not beatin’?” Russell says sarcastically to the television.

  “But, I’ve suffered since I’ve lost her,” Brennus continues, looking wrecked.

  Russell growls, “You’re gonna suffer more, freak.”

  “And if you could say something to her now—if she was listening, what would that be?” the interviewer asks Brennus in a soft, reverent tone.

  Brennus’ nostrils flare as he tries to suppress the violent emotions he’s feeling just below the surface. “Together we were invincible…we will be again,” he says in a raw voice.

  “And to her captors?” the interviewer asks.

  A surge of adrenaline pulses through me, awaiting his answer. Watching Brennus, he pauses, before frowning. Then he pulls his phone from his pocket. He scans its display before a small smile creeps over his face. Reaching up, Brennus unclips the microphone on his collar, pulling off the receiver on his back.

  “Mr. de Graham?” the interviewer asks in a startled voice, but Brennus simply walks off the set, leaving the interviewer to awkwardly try to deal with the aftermath of his unexpected departure from her interview.

  “Uh…that’s not good,” I murmur, turning to look at Reed, my eyes wide.

  “Ahh…shit, Red! You feel that?” Russell asks as a ripple of energy passes over my skin, causing the fine hairs to rise.

  “RUSSELL!” I shout, feeling panic hitting me as I try to pull all of that energy that I can to me. “WE NEED A—”

  In an instant, my world explodes. I lift off the ground and spin in midair like a tornado. The entire room cascades and whirls around me while I hover above the ground.

  “DO SOMETHING, RUSSELL!” Reed shouts, flying to me and trying to hold on to me. He extends his wings and attempts to stop me from spinning, but it causes him to whirl with me.

  “OY, RUSSELL, WHAH ARE YE GONNA DO?” Lonan calls from the stairs, having blown the doors off the hinges in a cascading flurry of splintering wood. Alastar and Cavan are by his side and the wind carries their heavy scent to us.

  In the next instant, I stop spinning, but I feel like I’m a penny in the path of an electromagnet. The only thing holding me back from streaking across the room, straight into Lonan’s arms, are Reed’s arms around me.

  “Ughh,” I groan, feeling like my insides are going to spill out of me. “Shield,” I whisper weakly.

  “Where’s Brennus?” Russell calls to the Gancanagh, scowling as he watches Reed struggle to keep me in his arms.

  “He’s on da way,” Lonan replies smugly.

  An antagonistic scowl crosses Russell’s lips. “Why does he keep sendin’ the B-Team? Is he afraid to face me?”

  Lonan playfully replies, “We requested da honor o’ meetin’ ye now, da other. Do ye remember Ultan?” Beneath Lonan’s archness, he’s seething with a desire for revenge.

  Russell lifts his eyebrow. “You mean Zoltan? Yeah, I remember him. He was th
e first vampire I ever made really dead,” he smirks.

  “He was Gancanagh! Me brother,” Lonan snarls with loathing.

  “Really? I can’t tell, ‘cuz all y’all look the same to me,” Russell replies, shrugging.

  Cavan grinds his teeth. Winding back his hand, Cavan throws an elf dart at Russell. The fiery ball swirls and hisses through the air like a teardrop from a melting star.

  Raising his hand, Russell whispers words that cause the flaming ball of fire to reverse course, plowing back towards Cavan. Cavan dodges the inferno by mere centimeters, lunging to his side and falling into Alastar. His eyes go wide in shock at Russell’s ability to manipulate his spell.

  “Y’all wouldn’t last a second in MLB,” Russell heckles them.

  “Russell, block their spell on Evie,” Reed demands, straining to keep me with him.

  Russell scowls seeing me lurch forward as Reed’s grip slips a little. He pulls energy in the room to him and whispers words I can’t hear. The brief silence gives way to a trembling vibration as an incredibly loud hum erupts from Russell’s chest. The vibration moves the very air like a woofer trembles with sound in an amp. A wavering bubble of low frequency waves swirls out around us like steel-gray water in a pool. The tremor shudders the cellar as it pulses forward. I flinch in agony at the noise, grateful that I’m behind the sound, not in front of it. The thunderous roar from the deep-frequency noise shakes the ground as the tempest cracks the floors and surges ahead. The sound collides with chairs and tables in its path, disintegrating them into poofs of splintering wreckage. Disbelief shutters over Lonan’s features. When it reaches the fellas, it blasts Lonan off his feet, hurdling him back outside along with Alastar and Cavan.

  Lonan’s pull on me severs and I hug Reed to me. “We need a shield, Russell,” I manage to say. Reed lands with me on the floor by Russell and Anya.

  “Okay,” Russell replies. Immediately, he forms a wall of energy in front of us.

  “Uhh,” I groan, gripping my head in my hands. My universe is still spinning.

  “Somethin’s comin’, Red,” Russell warns, while crouching in a defensive posture. “Reed, tell Anya to get behind me.”

  At the doors at the top of the stairs, shadowy figures creep around the doorframe, moving down the walls of the stairwell. “Werree,” I shiver, taking a step back and feeling an eerie chill. Shadows move between the crevices as the disembodied demons stalk us. They’re not alone because a wave of Inikwi have joined them, speaking in garbled voices as they cautiously climb down the stairs on all fours.

  Reed’s need to protect me shows as he inches in front of me, cutting off any direct line to my position. “Light—” Reed says, “we need light to kill the Werree, love.” He assesses the windowless walls. “I can kill Inikwi. You focus on the Werree.”

  I nod, hoping the room stops spinning for me soon.

  Inikwi group together in a pack like wolves. Moldering skin and the scent of mildew-decomposition makes the windowless cellar musty and nauseating, but it’s their absolute contrast to each other that makes them eerie as well. If they were “normal” humans, they probably wouldn’t be together. An elderly woman with a lime green headscarf covering her wiry gray hair shifts agilely to the right, her white orthopedic shoes make no noise on the stone steps. The extremely tall, middle-aged man, who must have died from the gaping slash across the base of his throat, accompanies this lady. A twenty-something hipster inikwi with skinny jeans goes left, his once cunning scarf frayed and dragging behind him. He’s followed by a grizzled, ancient-looking corpse in a brown nylon suit.

  In the center of the inikwi, a thirty-something female corpse with wheat-colored hair and unnaturally milky-blue eyes gives the others a garbled-voiced command. One of her cheekbones has been crushed in and discolored. Black liquid mold slips from the corners of her mouth to speckle and mar her ivory coat. A second later, she breaks from their ranks, running straight at Reed while the other four try to flank us on all fours like dogs.

  Reed speaks to Anya in Angel, giving her some kind of order. Anya notches a gold-tipped arrow in her bow before lifting it and letting it fly. It strikes; the arrow pierces the charging inikwi in the chest, spewing silver blood in a growing circle on the ivory fabric of her coat.

  The blond inikwi’s head shifts forward while her hair obscures her face. The host carcass crumples to her knees, and then she tumbles backward to the floor. A thick, snake-like creature begins wiggling out of the dead woman’s gaping mouth. It almost looks like her large intestine is trying to liberate itself from her body. Crrcrrack, her jawbone breaks apart as the wet tail slides over her teeth. Anya’s second arrow punctures the slimy flesh of the silvery inikwi, tearing a hole through it.

  As I look away from the gruesome scene, I see Reed already tearing the hipster inikwi apart, cutting it off before it could coordinate an attack with its nylon-suited partner. Having been distracted by the Inikwi, I completely miss the Werree coming at me from above.

  A shadowy werree notches an inky arrow that is really an extension of itself. It lets the arrow fly at me. The projectile pierces my side, propelling me backward from the force of the strike. The dark arrow melts into me and is absorbed into my skin. Frigid poison corrodes up my side and down my leg.

  I let out a whimper of pain, trying to grasp the shaft and pull it out of me, but it’s not solid and the poison continues to seep into my side. “Russell!” I grit my teeth.

  Russell growls as his face becomes a mask of indecision. Instantly, he crouches at my side, asking, “How do you get this out, Red?”

  My teeth chatter from a growing coldness bleeding through me. “I dddon’t know,” I whimper, and I close my eyes to think. When I open them again, I scream, “Russ—behind you!” I warn, pushing Russell aside to focus on a group of werree above us. I lift one hand and murmur through gritted teeth, “Darkness hides the light. Light destroys the night,” while all of the energy I collected flows from my body.

  A beam of white-hot energy bursts forth from me, shining directly on the Werree. The light licks at them as if it were orange embers destroying decaying brown leaves; it causes them to fall from the ceiling and writhe in agony as they turn to ash and smoke. The Werree that remain change direction then, slinking backward away from us—retreating to the stairway and out of the bar.

  Russell’s expression is anxious. “Red, you’re wounded,” he states, hovering near me.

  “I’m…not…” I murmur, running my hand along my side and feeling for the arrow, but it’s not there anymore. “But, I was.”

  “What’d you do? Heal yourself or somthin’?” Russell breathes, seeing that I’m no longer bleeding as he lifts my shirt to help. A red scratch is all that is left from the Werree’s black, shadowy arrow. “How’d you do that?”

  “Maybe it was the light?” I ask. Then, I witness two inikwi knock Anya down. One is stomping on her chest, while the other is easing around toward her head.

  Russell sees it too and moves fast, plucking an inikwi off of Anya’s chest and hurling it into its buddy. The creatures fall back into the wall. Russell follows them, picking one up in each hand; he bashes them together like he’s pounding dirt off the bottoms of a pair of shoes. Silvery blood oozes out of their mouths, a sure sign that whatever was in them is definitely dead now, but Russell doesn’t stop pounding them.

  It’s quiet; the only sound now comes from Russell beating the dead inikwi. Reed has already killed the rest of the inikwi and is now crouching over Anya, helping her to sit so that he can check her wounds.

  “Russell,” I say, but he’s not hearing me; he’s still beating on the clearly dead inikwi. I put my hand on Russell’s arm to stop him.

  Russell’s face is growing pale. “Is she all right?” he asks with fear in his tone, like he’s afraid to turn around and see for himself.

  I glance at Anya. “Reed, how is she?”

  Reed tears a white tablecloth into strips and starts wrapping Anya’s ribs. “She has two broken
ribs and a laceration on her forearm. She should heal quickly,” he reports.

  “She’s going to be okay,” I say to Russell, touching his arm and indicating that he should drop the Inikwi in his hands. He does, turning slowly to look at Anya. “She’s an ass kicker,” I comment, watching her cringe as Reed pulls the binding tighter on her ribs.

  “I should’ve had her back,” Russell says with stiff remorse.

  “You just did, Russ,” I say, indicating the pulverized corpses on the floor.

  Russell’s expression darkens again. “She shouldn’t be here,” Russell says, turning on me ominously. “We have to make her go home.”

  “She doesn’t look like she wants to go, Russell.”

  His frown deepens. “Then we gotta make her go somehow,” he replies with a grim twist of his lips.

  “How?” I ask in confusion.

  “I don’t know how, but I can’t keep track of both of y’all,” he replies angrily.

  I frown. “But, what if—”

  “Naw, Red! Don’t argue with me! You made me stay here, so now you gotta help me!” he counters in a tense tone of intimidation, his brown eyes stormy. Stabbing his finger in Anya’s direction, he says, “I don’t know exactly what she is to me, but she’s somethin’ and I…you just gotta help,” he says between clenched teeth.

  “Okay,” I agree, feeling a wave of guilt hit me because I did make him stay here with me when I healed him. “But, first we have to get out of here.”

  “I’ll go do some recon,” Russell says, instantly sending out his clone. His body sags and I catch it before it falls on the ground. Gently pulling Russell to the floor with me, I hold him as his consciousness travels with his clone.

  The instant Russell returns, I know it because he lurches forward out of my arms, saying stonily, “We’re not goin’ anywhere.”

  “Why,” I ask, feeling Reed standing by our side.

  “You ever see that old movie—the one with all the black birds?” Russell asks, his hair standing up like wires on his arms. “Hitchcock?”