Kindling the Darkness

by Jane Kindred

  At the periphery of her wyvern-enhanced vision, she was aware of something moving toward them, Oliver finally ready to use the gun, but something else moved from the other side, the juvenile wolf leaping at the larger creature in Lucy’s defense. Oliver fired the dart gun at the same moment, hitting the smaller wolf in the flank, as the hell beast turned and threw the hellhound off with a slash of its razor-sharp claws and flung Oliver back.

  The young wolf yelped and tumbled into the darkness, but the hell beast’s attention was on it now, and it stalked toward it. While Lucy scrambled for her gun, Oliver fired once more from where he’d fallen, this time managing to hit the hell beast. It turned with a snarl and tore the weapon from Oliver’s hand and backhanded him against the wall with a curled, clawed fist. The impact of Oliver’s head against a metal railing was ominously loud in the enclosed space.

  The beast’s eyes locked on Lucy’s as she got to her feet with the gun in her hand. It wasn’t collapsing, wasn’t slowing exactly, but something had given it pause. In an instant, it had taken on the form of a man—of Oliver. “I knew you had my toy,” he snarled, recoiling with a roar as she fired. He stared down at the blood on his shirt where the bullet had struck and yanked the dart out of his chest beside it. “He’s mine, and I will taste his blood. Mark my words.” Just as swiftly as it had shifted into human form, it vanished.

  Chapter 16

  Her enhanced vision fading with the adrenaline surge, Lucy felt around in the dirt for her goggles. Oliver was slumped against the passage wall with his own goggles askew, looking dazed, and the young wolf lay motionless beside him.

  Lucy crouched and felt for the wolf’s pulse at its throat. It was weak, but it was there. She could see the movement of its narrow chest now, rising and falling shallowly.

  “Oliver.” Lucy shook him. “We need to get out of here. Colt needs help.”

  Oliver breathed in suddenly as if surfacing from underwater and opened his eyes wide. “What happened? Where’s Colt?”

  “He’s right next to you.”

  He turned and checked the wolf as she had. “I think I hit him with a dart.” He rubbed his chest absently and grimaced. “But I think the wolf got in a good blow, too, before he went down.”

  Lucy moved her hand over the softly panting body and felt something wet and sticky matting in the fur at the side of his rib cage.

  She nodded. “It doesn’t look like he’s losing a lot of blood, but it definitely swiped him pretty deep.”

  Oliver got to his feet, straightening his goggles, and lifted the wolf in his arms. “We’ll take him to my place. I’ve got supplies there.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Lucy gathered up the rest of the weapons and followed Oliver back out through the mine shaft to the surface. Cold rain was drizzling over Cleopatra Hill when they emerged, and the dust on their clothes had turned to mud by the time they reached the truck.

  “I’ll drive,” she insisted. “You took a pretty good blow to the head.” She glanced at him as he laid the wolf on the seat and climbed in. “I’m honestly not sure how you’re conscious right now.”

  “I have a very strong constitution.” It was nonsense. He had something far more than a strong constitution. Only something inhuman could have gotten up and walked away from a blow like that. As something inhuman herself on occasion, she ought to know. For the time being, Lucy kept it to herself. She was still trying to figure out how the hell beast had looked like Oliver. And how it had disappeared.

  “It’s strange,” said Oliver, echoing her thoughts as she drove toward his place. “I could have sworn you were going after Colt. I mean, I saw Colt. I didn’t see anything else until the wolf jumped me.”

  “I didn’t see Colt until he came to my rescue. And I honestly don’t believe he was there, except hiding in the side tunnel.”

  “You’re saying I imagined I was seeing him the whole time.”

  “And maybe I imagined I was seeing a large wolf creature. Because we were both seeing what it wanted us to see.” Lucy glanced at him. “I also saw you.”

  “What do you mean, you saw me? What did I do?” He grimaced. “Besides get in your way.”

  “I mean the hell beast, when it got mad, after we’d finally slowed it down. It looked like you when it spoke to me.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s not a therianthrope—a human/animal shifter. It’s something far worse. Like malevolent energy personified.” Lucy’s eyes went to Colt. “And it wants him.”

  Oliver stroked the wolf’s fur. “Colt told me he was hiding from something that was after him, something dangerous. But why would that thing want him specifically?”

  “Because Colt is something young and vulnerable. It probably followed the pack of juveniles out of hell. And it may have already gotten the other three.”

  “Well, it’s not getting this one, goddammit.”

  By the time they reached Delectably Bookish, Oliver seemed to have fully recovered from the effects of the blow to his head, but Colt’s condition hadn’t changed. After cleaning and bandaging the wolf’s wounds, Oliver put him in one of the guest beds to sleep off the drug.

  Lucy watched him from the hallway as he closed the door. “You know he’s not a human child. You can’t keep him.”

  Oliver glared, arms folded as he stared her down. “You’re not going to put one of those bullets in him and send him back to hell.”

  “No, I’m not. But he has to go back. Somehow.”

  “He may not be a human child, but he’s a scared—and now injured—kid. Let’s just worry about protecting him from that thing for now. We can argue about where he belongs after we’ve figured out how to deal with the...malevolent energy.”

  “I’m worried about protecting us from that thing. I have no idea how to kill it.”

  Oliver headed into his room. “We’ll figure something out. Right now I just want to get out of these muddy clothes and scrounge up something to eat. I’m absolutely starving.” He stripped off his shirt and opened his dresser drawer to grab his pajamas, and Lucy admired his ass as he stepped out of the pants to pull on the blue-and-black flannel bottoms.

  He caught her looking and threw a sly grin over his shoulder. “So you’re staying, right?” He tossed the top of the pajamas to her, but Lucy’s answering smile faltered as he turned to face her fully. Oliver tilted his head at her look. “What? What’s the matter?”

  Where his chest had been mostly scar-free just hours ago, it was now sporting four jagged craters of healing tissue.

  Oliver followed her glance. “Oh. Yeah. Shit.”

  Chapter 17

  He’d forgotten about the newest wounds.

  Oliver rested his hands on his lower abs as he studied the marks. “I’m betting you want a good explanation for how I got these.”

  “Do you have a good explanation?”

  He glanced up with an apologetic look. “No.”

  “Oliver.”

  “Where do you think I got them?”

  “Are you serious?” Lucy’s pale eyes had that dark, suspicious cast to them. “It looks like every bullet I’ve fired at that monster has somehow gone straight into you—and then immediately healed.”

  “That’s because they have.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t really understand it, either. All I know is that ever since I came to Jerome and started looking out for its underground citizens, when one of them gets attacked...it shows up on me.”

  “You’re telling me that when I shoot or stab that hell beast—I’m actually shooting and stabbing you?”

  “Or when you or anyone else harms any other inhuman creature in the area, yes. Evidently, within at least a five-mile radius, given the attack in Clarkdale. It doesn’t hurt, though, don’t worry. I mean, it does, it hurts like hell when
it happens, but it doesn’t cause me any harm. And it heals up in just hours. As you can see.”

  Lucy was still clutching the pajama top like she was trying to decide whether to run. “Why did you lie to me about the scars I saw on you the other day?”

  Oliver sighed. “Because I didn’t know how to explain it.” He crossed the room and uncurled her fingers around the shirt. “Your hands are freezing. Why don’t you warm up in the shower and join me in the kitchen when you’re dressed? I’ll try to tell you what I know about it. But fair warning, it really isn’t much.” He kissed her—and at least she didn’t recoil—and left her to give her time to absorb what he’d told her while he whipped up a jumbo omelet with chorizo and green chilies for them to share.

  Lucy appeared at the doorway to the kitchen dressed in his pajama top just as he was dishing up the omelet. He left some in the pan for Colt in case he woke up later.

  “Perfect timing.” He smiled and set the plates on the table. “Do you want anything to drink? It’s a little late for coffee, but I’ve got orange juice if you want the full midnight breakfast experience.”

  “Juice is fine.” Lucy sat and dug into her omelet, obviously having worked up as much of an appetite as he had. And she wasn’t even burning his peculiar metabolism. “So?” She wasted no time as he joined her. “Why are you taking on other inhuman creatures’ injuries? And what does that make you?”

  “I honestly don’t know what it makes me. I don’t have any other extra-human abilities. That I know of,” he added carefully, since that wasn’t entirely true. “It never happened before I moved to Jerome, and I don’t know why it’s happening now. It’s been going on for about three years. The first time it happened was right after I moved here and became aware of the underground community. I had a run-in with a pickpocket, a young were-coyote who lifted my wallet. He didn’t realize I was onto him, so I followed him for a while to see where he’d go. It turned out he was stealing for his dealer, apparently wholly human, who was supplying him with meth. I confronted the dealer and told him he didn’t have any business exploiting these kids and that if I caught him in Jerome again, I’d kick his ass.”

  Lucy concentrated on her omelet with a slight smirk. “Sounds familiar.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m nothing if not consistent.” He smiled down at his food. “The pickpocket asked if I was their protector, and I said sure, I’d protect them if I could. I didn’t have anything against shifters and sub-vamps and whatnot, and as long as they weren’t hurting anybody, I’d defend them from anyone who wanted to hurt them. It seemed like they needed someone to look out for them. They weren’t underage, but they were still really just kids, and they obviously didn’t have a lot of human life skills. So the next night, I’m downstairs reading, and it feels like someone has knifed me in the gut. I look under my shirt and see the wound closing up. By morning it was almost undetectable. I found out later the dealer apparently came back and stabbed the pickpocket as a message to the rest of them. And the kid just got up and walked away.”

  “And you have no idea what gave you this power.”

  Oliver shrugged, eating his eggs. He had a suspicion, but it wasn’t one he was prepared to voice, because it would only lead to more doubts he didn’t want to bring up. She already suspected him of working with Darkrock, and in a way he was working with Darkrock, and the less said about it the better.

  “What about your parents?”

  “My parents?”

  “Were they fully human? Did they have any abilities?”

  Oliver sat back in his chair, pushing his food around the plate for a moment. “I didn’t know my parents.”

  “Oh... I’m sorry, Oliver.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I had terrific foster parents. I just never got to meet my birth mother. She was institutionalized—she died in a mental hospital when I was six. And she never identified the father—my father—on the birth certificate. All I know is that he was from the UK. From Wales. He’d gone back home before I was born, and her family wasn’t able to take care of me. They’re Navajo, but I don’t know anything else about them.” Oliver waved his hand to dismiss any misplaced sympathy she looked like she was about to express. “Anyway, it’s never really affected me, since the only people I knew were the ones who raised me. But if my birth mom had any special abilities, certainly no one ever told me about them.”

  He hadn’t talked this much about himself in years—since Vanessa—and having the focus on himself was making him uncomfortable. He glanced up to find Lucy smiling at him oddly.

  “I guess we’ve all got our family skeletons. My father forced my mother to sign a nondisclosure agreement that said she would never tell us who she was when he granted her a divorce—then he hired her as the family doctor.” Lucy took a sip of juice. “And he bargained my brother’s soul to save his own while we were still in the womb. So, you know, knowing where you come from isn’t always a bonus.”

  “Yikes. I guess not. But you had Lucien.”

  “True. We fought a lot trying to one-up each other for our father’s approval growing up, but Lucien is the one person in the world I know I can be completely myself with, who really gets me, in all my ugliness. Even if he is a self-centered pain in the ass.”

  Oliver coughed on a bite of omelet that had gone down wrong. “Back up a sec. Ugliness? I can’t imagine how anyone could find you anything other than stunningly beautiful.”

  Lucy looked down at her plate, her dark brows drawn together. “Thanks, but I wasn’t talking about my looks.”

  “Neither was I.” Oliver laughed at the expression of annoyed disbelief on her face as she glanced up. “I mean, obviously, also about your looks. But from everything I’ve seen, you’re exceptional inside and out.”

  “You haven’t seen everything.”

  “I’d like to.”

  Lucy put her napkin on the table and pushed back her chair. “Okay, this just got way too serious. I should probably get dressed and head home.”

  “You don’t have to go. It’s late, and you’re all dressed for bed. Besides, I might need help with Colt when he wakes up.”

  “Oliver.”

  “Lucy.” He smiled at her exasperated look. “We’ll just sleep. That’s it.” He gave her a teasing grin. “You kind of owe me after disappearing last time.”

  “Oh, do I? I didn’t know that was required.”

  He nodded, managing a mock serious expression. “It’s in the rule book. If a man manages to give you two orgasms, you have to spend the night.”

  “I see.” Her eyes were amused. That was a good sign. “Just so you understand, we are just going to sleep. I don’t like messes.”

  “Or menses.”

  “Very funny.”

  Oliver grinned. “You’re the boss.” It was about time he finally won a round.

  After cleaning up in the kitchen and checking on Colt once more, they climbed under Oliver’s sheets as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He’d kind of expected Lucy to lie stiffly to one side, avoiding him. When he kissed her, she didn’t pull away. And he’d come to the conclusion that, as Polly had said, if you did it right, kissing was everything. It certainly was when it came to kissing Lucy.

  He drew back and studied her a moment, trying to figure out how he could be so comfortable with someone he’d only met a few days ago. And someone who wasn’t Vanessa.

  Lucy’s brow wrinkled. “What?”

  “I was just looking at your eyes. They’re so...”

  She rolled the pale blue eyes in question. “Yeah, I know. They’re stunning. You’ve never seen any so pale, especially with the dark color of my hair. I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

  “No, I meant...they’re just so serious. Melancholy, even.”

  “Melancholy?”

  “I’ve never seen that kind of gravity in the eyes of anyone who hasn’t been th
rough war.”

  The pale blue eyes blinked in surprise, a bit of brightness in them, moisture, that hadn’t been there a moment before. The question was, with whom was she at war? He had a feeling it was herself.

  He’d gotten too serious again. Oliver smiled and propped his head in his hand, playing with the buttons on Lucy’s pajama top.

  She raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms behind her head. “I thought we were going to sleep.”

  “We are.” He unbuttoned the top one. “Eventually.” Oliver smoothed her hair behind her ear and kissed her temple. Her short cut was growing on him, even though he’d loved running his fingers through her hair while she was naked beneath him. “What made you cut your hair? It looks fantastic, by the way. Just took a little getting used to.”

  “Why does something have to have ‘made’ me cut my hair?”

  “It doesn’t. You just seem like a person who very carefully considers her appearance.”

  “And I carefully considered that I needed a haircut.”

  There was more to it than that, but he wasn’t going to push it. Not when he could be doing other things.

  He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m impressed by how long that lipstick stays on. Doesn’t seem to come off on anything, either.”

  “It’s Blood Moon lip stain, specially blended for me by an aesthetician at Smok Biotech. I can get you some if you’re that into it.”

  Oliver laughed. “I’m only into kissing what’s under it, but thanks for the generous offer.”

  “You seem really curious about my beauty routine tonight. Is there something else you wanted to ask me?”

  “Not at all. Just appreciating having the time to...appreciate you.”

  “I thought maybe you were wondering about something you saw tonight.”

  He paused in kissing her neck. “What would I have seen?”

  “If you didn’t, then nothing.”