“You sound...sad?” she asked me, playing with my hair.
“Fire is good. This is better.”
She kissed my neck, her lips warm. “Can’t argue with that.”
21
After an hour of sleep, I felt stronger and more energized than ever before, like an electric current ran straight through me, recharging my vitality.
I tugged my jeans on, Kamila slid a dress over her body, and we headed out into the night. All that overgrowth I’d seen on my way in only told part of the story. Kamila’s property wasn’t all untamed wilderness; there were hidden paths in the brambles, and we emerged into a large clearing.
The soil here was rocky, and we were able to stand far away from anything flammable, a detail I made a note of for future training. Kamila climbed up onto a rock, her hair still wild and tangled from our romp. Desire flared in me again at the sight of her, mingling with my fire to create an intense need. The energy inside me had to come out, whether through fighting, fucking, or burning the whole forest down. I needed a release. I felt like a beast.
She smirked at me. “Got ants in your pants?” She winked and stretched her back. “I’m going to hurl something at you. I want you to stop it. Remember, don’t be afraid. It can’t hurt you. We proved that earlier.”
We had, hadn’t we? I nodded and stood a few feet away from her.
The first fireball came at my head. The flames themselves couldn’t hurt me, but the force of them could. They came in at a blur; the speed faster than any baseball ever thrown by a human. I dove for the ground, sprawling in the damp earth with a muffled grunt. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t something I controlled. I dove out of pure instinct, and I could no more stop myself than I could keep my eyes open during a sneeze.
Kamila laughed at me. “That was effective. I mean, you didn’t stop the fireball, but that’s just a little detail, right?”
“Sort of.” I got to my feet and brushed the dirt from myself. It was a bad way to come down after my high from earlier. “Sorry. Instinct.”
“Human instinct. Not Ferin. You’re going to have to let go of those human instincts soon.” She didn’t give me any warning before lobbing another fireball. This one headed straight for my gut, a streak of light and heat that bore down on me with uncanny aim.
I swung hard at it like I was trying to hit a baseball. I still wasn’t thinking about it—I wasn’t trying to practice martial arts of any kind—but the visualization created an actual staff of living flame in my hands. It connected with her fireball, and for a second, time froze. Her power struggled against mine.
Then I pushed. The fireball launched out to the horizon, screaming at over a hundred miles per hour. I cringed. “I hope it doesn’t catch anything important.” I had visions of massive property damage and wildfires.
She waved a hand. “The only thing over that way is one of those fake churches. You know the ones. Praise the lord and pass the loot. Funny, they’ve been having mysterious and inexplicable fires ever since their building went up. Arson investigators can’t find a damn thing wrong with the place. Anyway, that was a good response. I liked it. It was creative, and it was instinctive. What I want to see you do next time is to do it faster and without that moment of hesitation.”
I tried not to react. I hadn’t hesitated. I’d fought to push back against her. I didn’t say a word about it, though. I didn’t get the feeling my words would carry a lot of weight. Only my actions would. Don’t think. Do.
We practiced the maneuver a dozen times, each repetition granting me speed and decisiveness. By the third time, I understood what she meant by hesitation. I might be acting on instinct, but my mental muscles didn’t fully understand where to reach for the power I needed yet. They had a general idea, but they were still clumsy and unaccustomed to their task. The only way to get there was with practice, and a clearing of my mind’s eye in order to achieve instant action.
I used other techniques to deflect the fireball because the staff shape was cumbersome and would be limited in close quarters. “I don’t know if vampires can use fire or not, but I’ve seen one recover from fire in a matter of seconds, so I have to assume at least some of them can. I don’t want to be too predictable.”
She nodded, and I could see grudging approval in her eyes. “That’s actually very smart. Some fangs can use fire. It’s not common, but I wouldn’t train you on how to fight it if I didn’t figure you might have to. I like the fire shield. It’s cute.”
I straightened up. “And it lets me defend others, like you and Tess, for example.”
“Oh, sugar, you know I’m fine when it comes to the burn. And Tess always takes care of herself. She’ll be just fine, no matter what.” She turned away. “She always is.”
Her expression hinted at more of a story there, but I didn’t push. If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. Besides, deep down, I just didn’t want to know. I cared for Tess, and I appreciated Kamila. Whatever their beef with each other might be, they had to leave me out of it if we were going to fight a war.
“That’s fine, but I also want to defend you both. Besides, if vampires will come and pester a guy trying to use the men’s room in peace, do you really think they’re going to leave civilians out of it? No way in Hell. It’s all well and good to be able to fight for myself and for Ferin, but I’m not so keen on just ignoring the civilians too, you know?”
“I guess that makes sense.” Her smile was gentle. “Maybe you are all that and a bag of chips, just like Margaret said.” She hopped down off of her rock. “We’re going to play a different game now. Bring me those two bundles of sticks now.” She gestured to two neatly tied bundles of kindling on the edge of the clearing.
I obeyed, then slowed as it dawned on me I was doing her bidding. It wasn’t the sex. It was—unity. A sense of purpose. I understood that in time, I would become something more than an errand boy with a stiff cock. I would be Ferin, in every sense of the word. I could live with that. For now.
She carefully arranged each pile into its own little fire pit, each about three feet from the other. One smoked up at a snap of her fingers, and within seconds, I saw the rosy glow of small flames appear at the second.
Kamila looked over at me. “Okay. We’re changing gears here. You’re going to move the fire from the first pile of sticks over to the second. There’s a catch, though. I don’t want you to make the fire bigger or smaller, and I don’t want you to just build a new fire. It has to be the same fire.”
I stared at her for a long moment, but once again, I kept my mouth shut. I understood her words, but her instructions made no sense at all. How was I supposed to move fire from one place to the other unless—ahh. I had the seed of an idea.
I took a deep breath and focused on one flame, just one individual tongue of fire from the many. I had to use my hand to help me visualize what I was doing because nothing made any sense, but with focus and vision, I drew my awareness to a single point. I concentrated on that flame and imagined it moving, along with my hand, over to the next pile.
It worked. My breath froze in my lungs. I was fearful of moving, lest I disturb my success.
Then I did it again. Kamila had told me to move all of the fire, not just some of it. The second time was simpler, but not easy. On the contrary, it was miserable work. Sweat poured down my back and plastered my hair to my head, but I kept going. That little core of energy inside of me wouldn’t let me quit. It was as if some internal part of me wouldn’t allow me to step back and refuse the task at hand.
When every ember was moved, I looked over at Kamila, impressed with myself, but she just raised an eyebrow. “Great. Now do it again.”
I slumped, but I did it.
This time, I moved the fire faster, two flames at a time. The next time, I managed three. The time after that, I could transfer the whole inferno from one fire pit to the next just as easily as moving a bag of groceries from arm to the other. It was automatic if draining.
“Good,” she told m
e and put a hand on my sweaty back. “Why do you think I wanted you to do that?”
I opened my mouth to rattle off something snarky, but then I shut it again. I didn’t have a good answer for her. “So, I could learn control?” I was just throwing a guess out. I had no idea if it was right or not, and I suspected it was wrong.
“That’s part of it, although there are other ways to work on control. There are more ways to work with fire than just hurling it around. And we’ll work on them, I promise. But I wanted you to do some work in ways that weren’t destructive too. Think of what just moving a fire from, say, a barbecue to a trash can could do.”
I licked my lips. Sure, it would be useful. I could also just make the trash can catch fire. I’d done it once before with someone’s motorcycle back near New York.
But moving the fire would make it look deliberate, like arson, and not by my hand either. And other applications sprang to mind right away, too. “Explosives.” I grinned slowly. “If there’s a source of fire somewhere nearby, like a torch or even a candle, I could move it someplace a little more incendiary, and no one could stop me.”
“It doesn’t even have to be that big,” Kamila told me. “I got away from a vampire once because I used a lit cigarette to light up the stack of fireworks behind him. I could have just chucked a ball of fire, but that draws attention. A lit cigarette hitting all those illegal explosives? Well now, that’s just bound to happen, isn’t it? I mean, it’s an accident, but what can you do if people are smoking?”
“Pretty devious, Kamila.” I relaxed a little, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
“You have to be if you want to survive. It’s not about the big, showy actions. I’m willing to bet you never saw Margaret or Mort use their Ferin abilities, not even once. Am I right?” She leaned into me, and I breathed in the scent of her hair. There were hints of herbs and flowers, or maybe it was just her.
I nodded. “Tess told me about Margaret’s ability after the fact. I was a little suspicious at first, but she confirmed it.”
“Huh. She must have been slipping in her old age if you suspected anything at all. Well, the oldest Ferin don’t go around showing off what they can do. Fire is a difficult ability to have because it’s naturally showy. While that sounds like it would be a great advantage, your element of surprise is gone the first time you use it.”
“Unless you keep your head on your shoulders. Be creative. Be devious. Be careful.” She turned and took my hand. “You have to think outside the box, Jason, or you’ll end up in one. I don’t want anything to do with any war or anything like that. I understand you do, but just because you’re at war or a war has found you doesn’t mean you have to fight on anyone else’s terms but your own. Remember that.”
22
Tess came back the next morning. She didn’t say anything about Kamila and me, although she had to know what had happened between us. She seemed ready to get to work, though, and she didn’t lash out at Kamila the way I thought she might. I guessed she wasn’t kidding when she said getting attached wasn’t something Ferin could afford to do.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t exactly let myself feel much of anything, because the work we were doing was so critical. It was learning for the purpose of survival if only to stave off the inevitable war until we could deal with it from a position of power. I had to keep working because it was necessary; I was enthusiastic because I loved it.
The fire was part of me. It had been, ever since that first moment when I’d let out a burst of flame to save myself. Now that I was learning to control it, the fire felt even more natural than ever, braided into my existence from the beginning. By the end of the second day, I barely had to think to move the fire from one location to another, even across the practice space Kamila had built. I didn’t need to use my hands to do it, either. I only had to decide where to put it, and the fire was there. I could take an existing fire and make it bigger or smaller, big enough to engulf a house or small enough to boil water.
Kamila suggested we go into town for a little outing, just the three of us, after another few days of practice.
Tess objected. “Ordinarily, I’d be all over it because I think it’s good to get out and stretch our legs or whatever, but have you forgotten there’s a war on and everything? If we’re attacked in the middle of town, it’s over. There’s no way we can avoid drawing attention to who and what we are.”
Kamila gave her a wintry grin. “Do you think the fangs are keen to show themselves off in front of God and everyone? Come on, Tess, be real. They’re not going to start tearing out throats on Main Street. It’s a shopping run, not an invasion.”
We rode in Kamila’s big white van. I held my tongue about the vehicle, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had shag carpet and a duffel bag full of human heads under the seat. It looked like that kind of van.
When we got to town, I could see why she kept the old van around. It wasn’t the only ugly relic of a vehicle parked on those streets, although it was in better shape than the rest of them. Tess winked at me when she saw the look on my face. “You’re learning,” she told me. “I’ll give you that much.”
Kamila had another reason for wanting to go to town. She knew someone there who could set us up with IDs. For someone so solitary, it seemed strange for Kamila to have any close relationships with humans, but I’d only know her for a few days. There was probably a lot about Kamila I didn’t know.
Tess and I both got IDs—driver’s licenses and passports—stating we were from Raleigh, North Carolina and had lived there our whole lives. Getting the fake credentials didn’t even take long. I wondered why someone out here in the ass-end of nowhere had the material to make these IDs, but in reality, fake documents were a mobile profession. They could happen anywhere there was technology and cash.
The strange places my new life took me felt almost normal now. If I tried to go back to the insurance business, I would have been at a complete loss, even though I’d done it for twenty-six years. It was funny how the human mind adapted to new circumstances.
We left town, documents in hand and our heads on a swivel. The territory on the way back to Kamila’s place was distinctly rural, and the smell of agriculture—meaning cow shit—hung heavily in the fall air as we made our way back to her cottage. As the van rattled along poorly maintained roads, I picked out a different scent over the distinctive aroma.
“Something’s on fire,” I told them, sitting up straighter.
Tess didn’t seem bothered. “Was it you?” she asked from the back seat.
“No.” I turned to Kamila, who was driving. “Maybe up ahead, just a little bit?”
She nodded, her generous mouth pressed in a thin line and sped up. It didn’t take us long to find the fire in question. Huge flames shot out from an old wooden barn, not too far out from the owner’s house. I didn’t know why no one had done anything yet. If we’d smelled it, surely the owners would have picked up on it and called for the fire department.
Kamila pulled the van over. “I’ll deal with the animals. You deal with the fire. Tess—”
“I’ll check on the farmers.” Tess jumped out of the van and ran over to the farmhouse, which was still dark.
I gazed at the fire. It spun out of control, huge and aggressive. It consumed every bit of wood and straw in its path, but underneath those heavenly smells, I picked up a different odor. The fire hadn’t started naturally or accidentally. I’d bombed chemistry in high school so I couldn’t name the types of accelerants used. I just knew they were petroleum products, and they stank.
Kamila raced toward the barn. “Don’t stand there admiring it,” she snapped on her way past.
Right. I was supposed to be dealing with the fire. Only, I’d never dealt with anything this big, this destructive, or this beautiful.
Well, Kamila had given me an order, so I had to try. I took a deep breath and pulled as I inhaled.
The process had wor
ked when I tried to put out Mort’s campfires, and it sort of worked again. I felt the flames draw up into me, circulating through my veins like the purest air. I’d drawn in enough to reduce the flames a little, but not enough to put it out. Inside the barn, horses screamed in fear, a sound that made my teeth clench together in fearful concern.
I had to try something else, fighting the edge of panic at the size of the fire. The inferno was more than anyone being could handle. I reached out with my mind, and I pulled the fire toward me, because moving fire was in my skill set, if on a much smaller scale.
I couldn’t grab it all in one go. I had to work in batches, but each effort took enough of the fire to make a difference. I worked as fast as I could, and within a minute, the flames were out.
The parts of the fire fed by accelerant felt different inside of me than the natural fire; there was an uncomfortable tang to them that reverberated through my body. At the end of the day, fire was fire, but for this variety of flame, my body began processing them in different ways. The nearest analogy was food. The best food was good, healthy food made with pure ingredients, but sometimes, I ate greasy fast food to cure a hangover or out of sheer rebellion toward my former middle-aged body. The greasy fast food tasted good at the time, but it would land in my gut with a thud. The chemically enhanced fire felt like that, but without the brief thrill of fat, salt, and flavor.
Now with the fire under control, I spread my awareness of the situation at hand. Kamila was still bringing horses out of the charred remains of the barn, which was structurally unsound, resembling a large, blackened skeleton of giant bones. The horses seemed to be a lot more cooperative now that the fire was out. A few had slight burns, which likely didn’t feel slight to them, but for the most part, we’d gotten to them before they could be too badly hurt. Their whimpers and cries were less fevered with each step away from the barn.
I raced up to help Kamila corral the horses. I was no equestrian, but they were docile enough once they saw they were being moved into familiar and safe territory. “Why would someone torch the barn?” I asked Kamila. “Those horses were helpless.”
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