Ivy whirled around, panicked. Hadn’t she thought earlier that the place would go up like dry tinder if she dropped a match? Had that been another premonition? But how were the spiders spreading the fire?
She shook her head to clear it. She was hallucinating. She had to be. What was happening made no sense. But the choking, acrid scent of smoke was all too real, and something inside her – some deep instinct – told her that she couldn’t afford to believe it was all in her head.
Now the flames were roaring up the stacks. Thick, black smoke plumed towards the ceiling. One of the towering piles toppled and smashed against the floor in a shower of ash that scattered across the floorboards, its smouldering edges catching the bundles of clothes and the fringes of a filthy old rag rug.
She turned for the stairs, but flames blocked the doorway, crackling red and orange, shot through with black. The heat was building, pressing in on her, and she tried to draw in a breath, choking on the smoke and the scalding air.
She screamed for help – but only inside her head.
Chapter Three
Ben was scrubbing the showers. He wasn’t on the rota, but Rory didn’t give him a hard time. He probably needed some time alone to get his head on straight. He knew how that went. Most of the rest of the squad were playing cards at the table, or sprawled on the couches and squabbling over the remote control for the TV.
Rory was reading a paperback book he’d found in one of the unused lockers.
Actually, he wasn’t. He was pretending to, turning over the pages every now and again, but really he was brooding. Ben would have described it as sulking, but Ben wasn’t there, so he could bite him.
Fact was, he couldn’t stop thinking about the half-angel mates who’d been promised to the shiften in a prophecy. It was like an ache inside him, the thought that he would never have his own mate. A woman who would love him and only him. A woman he could protect and adore and keep safe from the bad things in the world.
He tossed the book to the floor. He couldn’t keep moping like this. Living in close quarters with the other guys for days at a time, he knew how one pissy mood could sour the whole squad, turning everybody growly and snappish. And with the job they did, that was dangerous. So he’d ask to be dealt in to the game of cards , where as usual Brady was slaughtering everyone else, very nicely, very quietly, and very thoroughly. His pile of matchsticks – the Chief had nixed gambling for money from the get-go, and good thing too or they’d all be in indentured servitude to Brady – was mounting up nicely.
Rory stood up. “Hey,” he started.
Then he froze as he heard a voice in his head.
Help! Oh god, help me!
An image flashed across his vision. Orange fire. Columns of charcoal, burning and toppling. Bitter, ashy smoke. Skittering sparks.
The other guys were looking at him, waiting for him to finish his sentence.
“There’s a fire,” he croaked. “We have to go. Move out.”
They just looked at him. Some of them looked worried. Some of them annoyed. None of them looked surprised by his outburst. Had he been acting weird? Letting his misery show? How long had they thought he was losing it?
“There’s a fucking fire!” he roared. “There’s a woman trapped. Move your furry fuckin’ asses!”
Ben sauntered through from the showers, drying his hands on a rag, narrowing his eyes quizzically.
“There hasn’t been a call,” Brady pointed out reasonably.
“I don’t give a shit! We have to roll now!” Rory said frantically.
In his head, the woman was crying for his help.
Hold on, he sent in ruhi. Hold on, I’m coming.
Did he get a response? Maybe he felt something – a little flutter of thought – or maybe it was wishful thinking.
The Chief stepped out of his office. “What the fu—” he started.
Rory rounded on him, snarling. “There’s a fire, we need to go!”
The Chief looked around the room, judging the expression on each of his firefighter’s faces before he returned his gaze to Rory.
“We haven’t been called out,” he said steadily. “There’s no chatter on the police scanner – human or wolven. What makes you so sure—”
Rory exploded out of his clothes, his transformation swift and savage. It hurt – it always did when it was so uncontrolled – but he didn’t care. What hurt more was the voice of that woman, crying in his head, pleading for his help.
His bones warped, getting longer and thicker as his spine contracted. His face pushed out into a snarling, bellowing muzzle, and shaggy brown fur washed down over his body. He bellowed his pain and anger at the Chief.
The human part of him, in the back of his head, told him he was committing suicide. The challenge to the power structure – to protocol – was unforgivable. It was the action of a moonstruck shiften, unable to control his inner beast.
Around him, other members of the squad shifted, shaking fur out of their bodies like a wet dog shakes off water, falling to all fours with floor-shaking thumps. They growled deep in their massive chests, a warning.
But the Chief held up his hand. “Shift back. Now. All of you,” he said. “Don’t make me bind you.”
Reluctantly, they did, gathering up their clothes and dressing. Rory was still frantic.
Before he could speak, the Chief said, “We’re moving out.” He quelled the rumble of protest with barely a look. “We’re going. Gear up. Move out. Rory – we’ll follow your lead.”
As the others jogged out of the room , the Chief caught him by the elbow. Rory barely restrained his snarl – he could still hear her screaming in his head.
“You’d better be right about this. You challenged my authority, son.” He wasn’t angry. He sounded sad. Worried.
“I’m right, Chief,” Rory said. “I promise you, we’re going to save a life.” Then he lost his restraint again. “If we fucking move!”
Sirens howled as they barrelled towards the fire – if there was a fire. Sweating inside his turnout jacket, Rory wondered if maybe his team-mates were right and it was all in his head. Despite the Chief’s order, they were casting some pretty hostile glances at him. He couldn’t blame them. If one of the others had done the same thing – especially shifting like that and trying to face down the Chief – he’d assume they were nuts too.
But as they got closer to Serenity, a little town on the way to Chicago, hardly a blip on the map but where most of their call-outs came from, everybody saw it.
There was a glow on the horizon. There was a fire.
But the voice in Rory’s head had gone quiet.
Chapter Four
The sirens died away as the squad bundled out of the engine, a couple of them unspooling the hoses and hooking them up to the fire hydrant. Brady tucked the ambulance in behind them, opening the back doors and hauling out a backboard and a bag of kit in case of casualties.
Flames licked greedily up the front of the building. The paint on the sign – The Antique Boutique – blistered in the heat, and the windows were cracked and opaque with soot. A plume of smoke spilled into the sky, smothering the stars.
Are you there? Rory called frantically in ruhi.
No answer.
Are you alive?
He fumbled with his helmet and respirator, fingers shaking as he checked the connections and eyed up the building, looking for the safest route inside. The whole façade was in flames, which ruled out using the engine’s ladder to get in through one of the upstairs windows.
The Chief raised his voice over the crackling of the flames and the rattle of the hoses. “Looks like the flash point was on the upper floor. Go in through the front door, but Rory – if the stairs aren’t safe, pull back. That’s an order.”
Rory nodded and inhaled through his respirator, checking the flow of air. The sound rasped in his ears, harsh and unnatural. As he pulled on his insulated leather gloves, he heard her in his head again, faintly but definitely there.
Help me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe…
He broke away from the Chief and headed into the building, not even checking to see who had his six. He trusted every man on the squad with his life. And with hers…
He crashed through the door, a jarring pain shooting through his shoulder as he struck it. The smoke curled thickly in the air even down here, and the flames were starting to spread to the stairs, but they were still intact.
Rory climbed as fast as he could, weighed down by his heavy equipment. She’d stopped screaming now, stopped calling out to him, but he could still feel her there, in the back of his mind, and he headed towards her, striding unerringly through the flames. She was huddled on the floor in a foetal position, tucked in a corner the flames hadn’t yet reached, her arms curled around her head as if she could shield herself from the fire. He couldn’t see what she looked like, just the pale gleam of her slender limbs and the darker fall of her hair.
He didn’t know whether she was still alive or whether she’d succumbed to smoke inhalation, and there was no time to check for a pulse.
He heard Ben’s voice in his head. Bro, the stairs are going up. Pull out!
I’ve got a survivor, he sent back in ruhi. I’ve got her.
Please, let her be a survivor. Not a corpse. Not that. His heart twisted with panic at the thought.
You’re both gonna be toast if you don’t pull out right now. Move!
Rory hauled the woman into his arms. She was utterly limp. A dead weight, something cruel in his subconscious taunted him. But no, he wouldn’t believe it.
As he barged through the doorway at the top of the stairs, he turned his back against the flames, shielding her with his body. Even through the double layer of his turnout jacket, the heat was fierce. He kicked aside a burning joist that had crashed down across the stairs, planting the sole of his boot against the flaming wood and sending it tumbling, then followed it down, stumbling to find the steps in the disorienting blackness of the smoke and the bewildering heat of the flames on all sides.
Ben was at the bottom of the staircase, the reflective silver strips on his jacket a faint glimmer in the acrid black smoke.
As Rory’s foot found the next step, he felt it give beneath his weight.
The charred staircase collapsed like a house of cards, and they fell.
Rory! Ben’s voice was a shout of anguish in his head.
As he fell, he shifted, bursting his clothes at the seams, curling his massive body around the woman’s, praying he could break her fall. Praying his bulk would shield her from the flames until the squad could pull her to safety.
Chapter Five
“Rory, for fuck’s sake, you idiot, we got her. She’s safe.”
Ivy opened her eyes. She was lying on the sidewalk, aching all over, and someone had fixed an oxygen mask over her face. So she wasn’t dead, she thought distantly. That was nice.
She turned her head painfully to the side, and saw an enormous bear. It was rearing and bellowing, trying to get back into the shop, which was little more than a charcoal shell being soaked by arcs of water from firefighters’ hoses.
“Chief, we’re gonna have to shift. Loverboy here is totally losing his shit.” The bear was surrounded by firefighters in full gear, helmets and all, and they were hanging on to its fur by the handful, hauling against it, trying to keep it from charging back into the destroyed building.
“No shifting,” rumbled an enormous man in a white helmet. “It’s bad enough that Rory’s risking exposing us.”
The bear twisted, swiping at one of the firefighters with a paw the size of a hubcap, sending him tumbling through the air to crash against the sidewalk with a bone-cracking impact.
Okay, that’s it, Julia Child. I’m going to kick your ass into the middle of next week if you don’t simmer down. She heard the voice in her head. How odd.
The downed firefighter struggled to his feet and charged back into the fray. It was a good thing he was wearing a helmet, she thought vaguely.
“Can’t you put a bind on him, Chief?”
The massive black guy shook his head. “He’s fighting it,” he shouted over the sound of snarling and the impact as the bear sent another firefighter flying.
Ivy lost sight of the fight as a pair of strong arms hoisted her off the ground. The stars wheeled overhead, and she fought off nausea. Then she was being jolted as the paramedic ran towards the bear and the struggling firefighters, carrying her in his arms. She concentrated on not throwing up.
“Rory, she’s safe. She’s right here. Look, man. She’s okay.”
The bear turned sharply, snarling.
The paramedic stood his ground, breathing heavily from the effort of running with her in his arms.
Then the bear dropped to all fours with a heavy thump. He huffed air from his open mouth, then sniffed, taking in her scent. And as she watched in amazement, his fur receded, sinking back into his smooth flesh. The bones of his muzzle shifted and reshaped, and he drew in on himself until she was looking at a very buff, very naked man. Sweat glistened on his soot-streaked skin, and despite everything, she couldn’t help noticing the breadth of his chest and the size of the muscles in his arms. Arms that had carried her out of the fire, shielding her safely against his body.
Oh, she thought distantly. I have gone completely mad after all.
She found that she didn’t mind all that much. It felt sort of peaceful, really.
She let herself pass out.
* * * * *
Brady set the woman gently on the floor, and Rory sank down beside her. He was vaguely aware of the Chief pulling a foil blanket out of Brady’s kit and wrapping it around him. Probably figured it wasn’t the best time to try to wrangle him back into his clothes.
She was breathtaking. Her face was fine-boned and delicate, her eyes large, though at the moment they were closed.
He looked sharply up at Brady. “She’s okay? She’s not hurt?”
“She’s going to be fine, man. You saved her.”
You saved her.
Warmth blossomed in his heart. That felt so right. She was his to save; his to protect.
Her fingers were wrapped into a fist, and he reached out and gently prised them open, careful not to hurt her. Lying in her palm was a golden angel.
He looked around sharply as two cars screeched to a halt by the curb. Somebody had notified the Serenity PD.
Deputy Chief Lombard was first out – a wolfen who was sixtyish in appearance and known to have the respect of the men under him in the KSRT. He was accompanied by a tall, broad-chested man with a grim expression on his face.
Trevor Burbank was in the other squad car, accompanied by two “Czechoslovakian Wolf Dogs” – his brothers Troy and Trent. Everyone knew who Trevor was – he was the first shiften to have found a mate since the half-angel women in the prophecy had come of age.
Wade Lombard’s shrewd eyes quickly took in the naked firefighter wrapped in a space blanket, the unconscious woman with a delicate golden angel lying in her palm.
“She’s one of the pledged,” he said. “We’re going to need to take her into protective custody.”
Rory’s bearen bristled under his skin, and he started to get to his feet, but Ben stepped in front of him.
“Lombard,” he said. “How about buying us dinner before you try to screw us?”
The older man’s face darkened. “Chief West,” he said, not taking his eyes off Ben. “Tell your man to stand down. This isn’t a case of finders keepers. We’re going to keep her safe until she finds her mate.”
The Chief walked purposefully across to the little tableau, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ben. “She’s found her mate, Wade,” he said, his voice absolutely steady and calm. “He pulled her out of a burning building.”
The wolfen with him growled irritably. “He doesn’t get to just decide she’s his,” he said. “This is a crime scene, not speed dating.”
Chief West moved his dark gaze to the man. “
What makes you think it’s a crime scene?” he asked.
“You don’t think this has Khain all over it?”
The Chief shook his head. “No way to tell. Everything smells of burnt wiring and wet ash.”
“But yeah,” Ben added. “It’s gotta be Khain, right? And that’s why she’s coming with us.”
The other firefighters stepped up, flanking Ben and the Chief, shielding Rory as he lifted the unconscious woman into his arms.
“Because Rory didn’t choose her. She chose him. She called him. And he’s the one who’s going to keep her safe.”
Chapter Six
Ivy stormed into the room, absolutely furious, if only because that stopped her from being so scared. A childhood in the system had quickly taught her to mask fear with defiance.
She’d woken up alone, on a thin mattress in a row of identical cots. She hadn’t known where she was, but it wasn’t her own bed. She wasn’t in a hospital, either, which would have been her second guess – her lungs and her throat felt raw, and she ached all over. She’d heard male voices from the next room, and that had brought back what had happened.
Her mom’s shop. The angel. The spiders. The fire…
And most clearly of all, the vision. The vision of being held against her will. The sense of a vast evil, rising. The smell of fur.
She stopped in the doorway, all eyes turning to her, and realised she must be at the firehouse. Either that or they had a pole because they were strippers, and she’d walked into an argument about who’d be Mr August in the 2018 calendar. Not a completely ludicrous thought – the guys were all well over six feet tall, and easy on the eyes too.
But the guy she couldn’t take her eyes off was the one who immediately broke off from what he was doing and strode towards her, hands outstretched as if to touch her. She took a smart step back, and he stopped short, dropping his hands to his sides. When she inched back a little further and folded her arms defensively over her chest, he looked stricken.
One True Mate: Shifter's Solace (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 2