“He survived.” I could at least contribute there. “He was going to go talk to another group of Ferin in Idaho.”
She sat down in another rocking chair. “Of course, he did. Everyone there had this obsession with grouping together, like overcooked spaghetti. Really, I don’t get it. This whole safety in numbers philosophy didn’t help the Mainers at all, and it won’t help the folks in Idaho either. The only thing that will help any of us survive in the long term is staying underground and invisible.”
I nodded. I didn’t know if I agreed with her about hiding as the best course of action, but I knew numbers hadn’t worked at Owl’s Head. “We’ll have to see.” She didn’t care about other Ferin, so I didn’t want to argue with her about it.
She stroked her chin. “So, tell me about the one who made you. Do you think he did it on purpose?”
I didn’t have to think about that one. “No, absolutely not. He cared about two things. Blood and pain. He wanted me to bleed to death, and he wanted me to suffer. He was definitely, ah, aroused by me being in pain.” I looked up. “Do some vampires make Ferin on purpose? I thought they all hated us.”
Kamila shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I’m not a hundred percent sure what creates Ferin, but there have been some vampires who seem to like the idea of creating a lesser race of immortals. At least that’s what some old stories say. But my experiences with them haven’t borne that out, so maybe it isn’t true. I’m just curious about the arc of your growth. If you did start lobbing fireballs months ahead of the curve, there’s probably a reason for it. But we’ll find out, won’t we?” She snapped her fingers, and a bright, hot fire sprang to life in her fireplace. “Go ahead. Put it out.”
I frowned at her. “Wait, what?”
“The fire. That’s the pretty glowing thing in the fireplace over there, hence the catchy name. I want you to reach out with your mind and with your power, and I want you to put the fire out.” She clasped her hands together and rocked in her chair. She looked perfectly serene, but no one rocking in a chair like that was ever serene. She was coiled with readiness for something. Maybe anything.
I extended my thoughts. I could feel the fire, all right. I could sense how different it was from a natural fire. It didn’t feel wrong to quench it, but somehow, my brain just wouldn’t let me do it. I tried to visualize the fire blinking out, and the flames just rose higher. I visualized the fire dying back to banked embers, and it swelled into a fireball.
The harder I tried, the worse it got. One of the little rag rugs in front of the fire ignited, and I panicked. I tried to put that one out too, but I might as well have thrown gasoline on it. Kamila laughed at me. She actually laughed.
“Interesting technique.” She waved a hand, and all traces of fire disappeared. “Don’t get me wrong. It was a useless technique, and it’ll get you and every Ferin within ten miles killed. But details, right?”
She sighed and grabbed a candle from a nearby shelf. Looking up at the ceiling, as though asking some divinity for strength, she got up from her chair and walked over to the fireplace. She placed the tall white pillar candle in the middle of the fireplace and turned to me. “Light ‘er up, kid.”
I bristled. I wasn’t a kid.
The resulting fireball almost shook the house off its foundations. Daisy jumped off the couch and hid under Kamila’s rocking chair, and Tess curled up into a little ball with a pillow over her head. Kamila stared at me, eyes bulging.
“Well,” she said, after blinking a few times. “I guess I believe you’re a fire user now.” She laughed again. “I think I can see what your problem is.”
“I’m forty-eight, and people keep calling me kid?” I gave her a dirty look.
She returned it, just as good as she’d gotten it. “No, smartass. What is it you used to do in your old life?”
“I thought my old life wasn’t relevant anymore?” I crossed my arms over my chest in a male version of a sulk. I’d about had enough of the secrecy, arrogance, and everything else, and the worst part was that the day was young.
“I’m not Margaret. Don’t treat me like I am.” She snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. “I asked you a question, Jason. What is it you used to do in your old life?”
I sighed and decided to be an adult again. “Middle management at an insurance company. I was divorced. I was trying to get back into long-distance running, but to be honest, I just wasn’t feeling it.” I managed a wry grin. “At least that’s changing.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. It was as gentle as I’d seen her all day, except with her dog. “Listen. I know it’s hard for you. It hasn’t been so long for me that I can’t remember that, okay?” She sat on the arm of the couch beside me. “Insurance. People aren’t generally passionate about insurance.”
I shrugged and squirmed a little. “Not on my end, anyway. They’re definitely passionate when they think they’re getting screwed.”
“And your divorce. Did you leave because of strong feelings?”
I looked away, embarrassed. “I caught her cheating. And yeah, I was kind of pissed, but not like fireball pissed. I was just...done.”
“That’s not passion, Jason.” She raised an eyebrow. “That’s the opposite of passion.”
“She said the same thing in court when she took the house.” I looked away.
Kamila stroked my face. “And let me guess. You weren’t just sitting around minding your own business when poof, a fireball came from out of nowhere and tried to get rid of your eyebrows.”
“Um.” The way she touched my face made it difficult to form complete sentences. “Yeah. I mean no. It was—I was falling from a tree. And I was worried. I thought I’d be paralyzed forever. You might say I was motivated by fear.”
“Well, fear is a pretty strong emotion.” She smiled. “And you were scared when you torched the vampire who was trying to kill pretty little Tess, too, weren’t you?”
“Yes, terrified.” I swallowed hard. Was it just me, or was it getting warm in here?
“And when you burned Margaret’s body?”
“Grief.” I looked down. “My feelings about her were complicated, but I definitely grieved.”
“Complicated. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I think everyone who came into contact with her had complicated feelings about her. And she was very—well, a lot of us are going to mourn her, even those of us who vowed never to see her again.” She snorted. “Maybe especially those of us who vowed never to see her again. Who knows?”
I wasn’t sure if Tess looked jealous when she glanced over at us, but she didn’t exactly look contented either. “So, do you think you can help him, Kamila?”
“Oh, I think I can.” She gave Tess a knowing little smile before turning back to me. “Jason, your problem is easy enough to fix. The way people live nowadays is very disconnected from their feelings, their emotions, and their passion. It’s just a cultural thing, I suppose. It started with those idiotic Victorians putting skirts on tables and such. Then everything just got out of hand.
“Some of the other talents, you can get at those by clearing your mind and focusing. I expect Mort told you to do that, and maybe you even had a little bit of success. You’re not going to have much more until you learn to reach deep inside yourself and embrace your passions, Jason.”
I stared at her. “Come again?”
She chuckled. “Fire is primal. It’s consuming. Before an object can catch fire, its molecules have to come up to their ignition point. How can you expect to bring something there if you can’t get yourself there? Or calm yourself down again? I can help teach you how.” She turned to Tess. “Go find a barn or a hotel or something. Stay there for the night.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Tess, you don’t have to leave.”
“Oh, yes she does. I’m a pretty open-minded person as a general rule, but when I’m teaching, I do have rules, buddy.” She smirked at me.
Tess held up her hands. “It’s fine, Jason. I don’t
have a problem with it. We’ve had our differences of opinion about some things, but she’s trustworthy. You’re safe here.” She patted Daisy on the head and headed out.
I looked at Kamila. She was going to try to eat me alive, and I liked her chances. There was something primal about her in a way that made the nerves in my body hum.
“Come upstairs with me.” She held out a hand, which I took. She led me up the stairs, and I followed. With each footfall, my uncertainty began to vanish.
Whatever happened next, it wasn’t going to be boring.
20
Her bedroom was a strange juxtaposition of the ancient and modern. The bed was an antique, and a well-used one, too. The bedding, on the other hand, was wholly modern, topped with memory foam and sheets so fine they dripped. I ran my hand over a quilt that covered everything. It was old and handmade, and the pattern was an archaic inlay of circles. A small woodstove huddled in the corner, ready for duty.
The stove would not be needed. As soon as we got up into her bedroom, she took off her clothes without any fuss or drama; the motions were practical and even. She just pulled her dress over her head, and there she was, as naked as the day she was born. If I’d had any doubt about how this was going to go, she dispelled it with the magnificence of her body.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, not wanting to say no but curious about the true purpose of what she was doing. “I thought we were supposed to be working on fire,” I said, even though my blood fizzed with desire.
Ah, the joys of renewed youth. You have all the vigor and virility of twenty, with everything you’ve learned over the past twenty-eight years reminding you why you should ignore it.
“I am,” she said. “Have you already forgotten the conversation we had downstairs, or has the blood rushing south stolen your memory too?” Her little laugh was like the ringing of bells. She stepped closer to me, and I could smell her. She wasn’t faking her arousal. “You’ve got plenty of power, and you’ve had good results with fear and grief. However, you have to be able to access the rest of your passions if you want to succeed.”
I gritted my teeth. I’d never wanted to yield so badly. “Okay, this is something I want, but it doesn’t seem like the right time. There are vampires, and they want us.”
“They are.” She put a hand on my arm. “And if you want to be able to fight them, you’ll trust me and listen to your instincts.”
I let out a long, slow breath. “My instincts are transparent, but I have a question. Is this training? Isn’t training to be a fire Ferin the hard part?”
She stood on her toes and brought my lips down to hers for a searing kiss. Her breasts pressed against me, and my hands had no place to go besides her hips. Her skin was silken, soft to the touch and warm as a sun-kissed rock on the bank of a river. She even tasted warm. Not destructively hot or the kind of warm that burns everything in its path, but warm and precious in a way that brought plants from the ground in the spring.
Warm like the sun. Warm like a woman.
She pulled back for air. “That’s guilt. That’s something you’ve been taught, growing to become a worker bee in your little insurance hive. And it probably served you well enough because the life you led required order and consistency. It required discipline. Jason, that’s not the life you’re leading now. And I know you didn’t ask for it. Believe me, I know. I know you didn’t want it, but it’s what we’ve got. It’s up to you. Do you want to gutter out and die horribly, or do you want to burn bright and beautiful, consuming everything that means to harm you and yours?”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. Her words had won me over, like smashing down a wall to free some caged-up animal. I could almost hear bricks clattering to the floor as I shrugged my way out of my clothes, tossing them away with disdain to stand bare and erect before Kamila. She smiled, proud, and ran her hands over my body. Her touch was electric.
“Good. That’s the first step, Jason. Don’t hold anything back. Reach inside of yourself and let it all out.”
I claimed her mouth with a desperation that probably seemed foolish to Kamila, but she didn’t laugh. Instead, she just grabbed me and began to hum encouragement. All of my grief, all of my fear, and all of my joy went into that kiss. I had experienced plentiful grief and fear since being bitten, but there had been joyful moments too. Making love to Margaret and Tess had been a kind of pure pleasure, I thought I would never know. Those few training sessions with Mort, when I’d played with the flame just for the exhilaration of it, had brought me nothing but pride and a sense of achievement.
I brought my hands up to Kamila’s breasts, letting them roam freely over the delicacy of her skin. Feeling that happiness, awe, and wonder I found buried inside of me, wasn’t enough. I needed Kamila to feel it too. I wasn’t an empath like Margaret had been. I could only think of one way to share it with Kamila, and for a flash, I felt the sting of inadequacy. Then she took over with her hands, and I knew I was in the right place. The right time. Kamila was the right vessel to bring my fire under control, by helping me lose control.
She groaned in pleasure as I played with her nipples, teasing and tugging them with one hand, then the other. Her body was a wonder, defying gravity and plush all at once. Her scent was an invitation I could not deny.
I knelt before her, pushing her back with a willing collapse as my tongue darted forth. I explored slowly, then with some urgency as her hips began to tell the story her words would not. She threw her head back, smiling and laughing with glee, free and lusty. It made the next move that much easier as her greens eyes narrowed in challenge.
“You’re out. Come in,” she told me.
I did.
I slid into her easily. She groaned as we relished the sensations, her hips folding wide in welcome, knees akimbo as she pushed back in defiance against my invasion. I’d always believed a man should be quiet in bed to truly be present, but Kamila had specifically told me to hold nothing back. If that was what she wanted, I would give it to her.
I snapped my hips back and thrust into her again and again, adjusting the angle to hit the spot inside her walls that I would have never sought before. I did it for the pleasure, and the pain, and the desire to find the core of my fire and let it loose with a vengeance. I did it for my years of crawling as a nobody, and I did it for the sheer of joy a woman whose shape made me grunt like a wild boar, her every detail a feast to my eyes. I did it for the heat, and the chill of her touch, and finally, when we were both close, I did it for the raw need to come without fear.
I let myself go as she clamped around me, her eyes locked on mine before she pulled me to her for a furious kiss. The spark began, not as a light, but a hint. A possibility. My orgasm raged on, well past the short, dutiful sessions with my ex-wife. This was something new. This was primal.
Light began to fill my sight, and between us, fire spread in a wavering sheet.
“Is—” I began, but she kissed me again, her tongue a serpent of heat that made me quiet.
If she wasn’t worried about fire, then I wasn’t. She was Ferin. So was I. Between us, the fire grew, burning nothing except the air around us, rich with the scent of sex and ash.
“It doesn’t even feel like it’s pulling from you, does it?” she asked in a soft, happy tone. She shifted, but the fire stayed where it was. “We made that together, you and me. Our passion did that. And it wasn’t even difficult, was it?”
I couldn’t look away. The fireball coalesced into a perfect sphere. It was beautiful, even painfully so. “I wasn’t thinking about fire.” I licked my lips and got into the bed, so I could hold her. “I was focused on you. I wanted to make you happy.”
“Aren’t you giving?” She patted my head and smiled at me, maybe a little smugly. “Think about what went into that.”
Thinking was difficult with the sphere of flame before us and the scent of us in the air, but I managed. “Desire, obviously. And, well, I don’t know the name for this one. I wanted you to feel like someone
had put you first.” I reached out to touch the fireball. It didn’t hurt, but I could feel every bit of the heat. “I’m sure there’s a word for it in some language, but I don’t know what it is.”
She laughed. “Jason, you mean to tell me you were married for how long and you don’t know what love is?”
I almost jumped. I’d only met her today. People didn’t fall in love in a day.
She swatted my arm playfully. “Relax, Jason. No one is trying to trap you into a lifetime commitment here. Love is a valid emotion, and it’s fine for Ferin to feel it for more than one person. A million people or a billion, if need be. You love Tess. Don’t you blush. I could see it the moment I brought out the shotgun. She’s more than capable of defending herself, and you know it, but you still didn’t think she should have to. I suspect you loved Margaret. You probably still love your ex-wife, even if you’d be perfectly happy never seeing her again. You’d still destroy someone who tried to hurt her, right?”
I started to blush anyway, aware of the fact that my cock still pulsed within her as she spoke of Tess. Then I pushed any shame away. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. “I would. I’d do that for anyone, or almost anyone.”
She sighed fondly and kissed my cheek. “Now see if you can make the fire go away.”
I remembered how I’d done it when I’d been at Owl’s Head. I remembered the rocky beach and the sound of the waves; the lonely gull and the tang of salt. I remembered how much I’d loved that fire, and how much I hadn’t wanted to just extinguish it. I breathed deep, deeper than I’d ever breathed in my life, and took the fireball into myself.
She lifted her eyebrows. “Well that’s one way to do it, I suppose.” She yawned and snuggled into my side. “Let’s rest a little while. Bask in the afterglow. When we’re done, we can head outside and set some things on fire.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
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