Heart of Fire

by Lisa Edmonds

  “What is this place?” Lake asked as we crept along the hallway.

  “Long story. Basically, a harnad under the control of a man named John West has been kidnapping people and draining their blood. Today, Spencer Addison, a member of the harnad, kidnapped West and took over. They took you when they took West.” I paused. “How did you know to follow West?”

  “I’ve been looking into the harnad angle, like you suggested, but kept coming up empty. I finally got some information last night that West might be the leader of a large harnad group. I was watching him when I saw you and Maclin put a tracker on his car. I stayed to watch him after you left. I was calling you to ask about him when a guy tapped on my window asking for help. The next thing I knew, I woke up here.”

  I heard a crash and shouts coming from beyond a set of double doors that led to the section of the warehouse where Bobby had parked his car. West’s voice shouted something, the words indistinct.

  We reached the doors just in time to hear Addison’s reply. “She’s dead, John. I gave her a massive overdose of Black Fire. It’s just you and me now. You know how this is going to end.”

  Magic surged. We heard another crash and the floor vibrated. It sounded like Addison and West had decided to start the party without me.

  I turned to Lake and spoke in a whisper. “I need you to listen to me. If I don’t make it out of here, you need to know what’s been going on.”

  His set his jaw. “You’re going to make it out.”

  “Shut up and listen.” I laid it out for him: the blood, the drugs, Garcia, Andrews and Travers, Brody, Rachel Barrow, everything.

  When I was done, Lake was so furious that he was cold and silent. “You’ll have to fill in the blanks, find out who else was involved,” I told him. “I’ll do everything I can to see that you walk out of here, even if no one else does. No matter what else happens, get all of them.”

  He opened his mouth.

  “Stop arguing and swear you’ll do it,” I snapped.

  “I swear, Alice.” He pulled me close and kissed me.

  No one threw himself into a kiss more than a man who thought he might be about to die. I relished the kiss because I knew I would either die here in the warehouse or I’d be leaving with Sean. But if this was it for one or both of us, it wouldn’t be so bad after a kiss like that.

  When we broke apart, I looked at the double doors. Beyond them, I heard another boom and the floor shook.

  “They are blood mages,” I said, my voice low. “This is my part of the fight. When the magic stops flying and the wards come down, then it will be your turn.”

  “How will I know when the wards are down?”

  My mouth twisted in a grim smile. “Don’t worry. You’ll know.”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Ready?”

  He squeezed back. “Ready.”

  I let go of him and hit the double doors with both hands. White magic flared and the doors blew off their hinges and disappeared into the warehouse with a loud crash.

  “Nice entrance,” Lake said.

  “Thanks.” I stepped through the doorway into the room beyond.

  It was a vast area, with stacks of boxes, unused packaging and shipping equipment, and several vehicles taking up about half of the available floor space. Bobby’s red Mazda was upside down and smashed, and the blond man who’d kidnapped me lay crumpled beside his car, either dead or out cold. There was a black BMW I was willing to bet belonged to Addison, and a blue van with a ladder on the roof and Joe’s Plumbing on the side in white letters, as well as several unmarked white delivery trucks.

  Addison had ducked behind a packing machine when the doors blew into the room. As we entered, he stood up and gaped at me. That moment of shock and disbelief was all I needed to blast him with enough air magic to send him flying into the wall. He hit with a thud and slid down, landing in a heap.

  “I see rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated.” West gave me one of his cold smiles and took a couple of steps toward Addison, apparently hoping to finish him off while the other man was dazed.

  Instead, I unleashed my air magic again. West had a half-second to look startled before the magic hit and he went airborne. He smashed into the blue van, leaving a dent in the side before he hit the pavement and lay still.

  “What now?” Lake asked.

  I touched the crystal dangling from my belly button piercing. “Release.”

  Malcolm popped into existence a few feet in front of me. He squinted at me. “Jeez, Alice, your aura is like a supernova. What’s going on?”

  “We’re taking out the trash. West is knocked out. Drain him completely. I don’t want him to be able to light a candle when you’re done.” I gestured at the blood mage lying by the van.

  “I’m on it.” Malcolm zipped over to the van and touched West’s shoulder. He began to glow.

  Lake stared at me. “Am I supposed to be able to see who you’re talking to?”

  “Nope.”

  He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  “I need you to find a way to restrain West in case he wakes up. Check the blue van; I’m betting they’ve got something in there you can use.”

  Lake limped over to the van, opened the back doors, and rummaged around inside. I watched Malcolm drain West until the ghost was so bright I couldn’t look at him anymore.

  Addison struggled to get to his feet, pushing himself up using the wall as leverage. Red and black magic spooled around his hands. “You,” he ground out. “How did you survive the overdose?”

  “I’m special,” I said.

  He released a bolt of blood magic. I held my hands in front of me and let loose my arc of magic. It absorbed his attack with a jolt that ran up my arms and made me stagger.

  Addison glanced at Lake, who was trussing West up like a turkey using some kind of cable. Malcolm hovered a few feet away from Lake as he worked.

  Addison sneered at me. “You can’t kill me now that you’ve knocked West out. You can’t break the wards or you’ll die. And you’re certainly not going to be handing me over to that half-dead fed so he can cart me off to some prison.”

  “That last part is true, anyway.” I took a step toward him, my hands clenching into fists. “You murdered Mark. You’ve been killing people and draining their blood to make Haze and Black Fire. You’re not going to prison.”

  I expected him to attack me. Instead, Addison turned and unleashed a three-foot-wide fireball of blood magic directly at Lake and Malcolm. It would kill Lake and discorporate Malcolm instantly.

  No.

  I reached out with my magic and did something else I wasn’t supposed to be able to do: I pulled the fireball to me.

  It was a gamble since I’d never attempted to absorb that much magic before, but I had no time to think. I heard Malcolm shout my name and saw Addison’s look of triumph just before the fireball hit. The impact knocked me down and sent me sliding backward across the floor a good ten or fifteen feet.

  I lay still, mesmerized by the sensation of being so full of magic that I could feel each individual cell of my body vibrating with it.

  “Alice!” Lake yelled in warning.

  Uneven footsteps approached. I rolled to a crouch.

  Addison froze in mid-step, his eyes wide. The air crackled around me in a halo of green, white, black, and red magic, with traces of gold. Malcolm and Lake stared in awe.

  “Who are you?” Addison demanded.

  “I’m Mark Dunlap’s friend.” I hit Addison with a blast of magic that sent him tumbling through the air to smash into a large piece of packaging equipment.

  As he lay stunned, I reached out with my mind and grabbed the wards protecting the building. With my Second Sight, I could see each and every thread of the wards and that they connected directly to Addison. He was controlling them and keeping them continuously powered. It was his fifth and final mistake.

  Addison felt me seize the wards. He struggled to sta
nd up, fear in his eyes. “You can’t break them,” he whispered.

  I didn’t break them; I obliterated them.

  As the wards fell, each of the landmines detonated but they were as ineffectual against my Black Fire-enhanced magic as pebbles thrown at the Great Wall of China. Addison went to his knees with a shriek, bleeding from his nose and ears.

  I advanced on him, his wards coiled around my fist. With a yank, I ripped Addison’s razor ward out through his body. His scream turned gurgling and ended abruptly as the tangle of deadly magic sliced through him with a thick, meaty sound. Then his body fell apart.

  Lake stared in stunned silence.

  “Fuck me,” Malcolm said reverently.

  “Go get Sean,” I said.

  The ghost nodded and vanished.

  Lake looked at the pile of flesh and rapidly expanding pool of blood that had once been Spencer Addison.

  “He was going to kill all of us,” I said.

  “Could you not have incapacitated him?”

  “No.”

  Lake was silent. “I don’t even know you at all, do I?” he said finally. “You killed this man without blinking an eye. You did things no one should be able to do. Who are you, Alice Worth?”

  “I’ve told you before; I’m nobody. I saved your life twice tonight. Both times I should have died, but I didn’t. Maybe that’s all you need to know about who I am.”

  “You’re not going to tell me how you survived that overdose, are you?”

  “No.”

  He sighed and looked around the warehouse. “Putting that aside for the moment, I need to figure out how to deal with this.”

  “When your SPEMA buddies get here, tell them what I told you about John West, Addison, and the harnad. Round up the rest of the harnad and the people who manufacture the drugs. Get Brody and whoever else is on the take at the police department. You’ll solve the biggest case in the city’s history. Take all the credit and leave me out of it.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “You’ll be a hero, Lake: the man who survived torture by a blood mage, took down a harnad and a drug cartel, and saved the surviving kidnapping victims.”

  “You’re the hero, Alice, not me.”

  “I’m no hero. Just finish the job and get justice for the dead.”

  Heavy vehicles pulled up outside, their tires crunching in the gravel. Doors opened and voices shouted commands. The cavalry had arrived.

  “They’ll get justice,” Lake said quietly. “While you disappear back into the shadows.”

  I shrugged. “I like the shadows. It’s where I feel most at home.”

  Somewhere in the back of the warehouse, a door slammed open against the wall. “Alice?” Sean called, his voice echoing. Heavily armed black-clad enforcers flooded into the warehouse, with Sean and Bryan in the lead.

  Bryan led a group down the hallway toward the holding rooms. Sean stopped to check Bobby’s pulse, shook his head at Lake, and came over to us.

  He looked at the bloody mess on the floor and swore. “Who is that?”

  “Spencer Addison,” I said. “He killed Mark. He died when I broke the wards.”

  Sean inhaled and stared at me. “What is that I’m smelling on you?”

  “Addison gave me an overdose of Black Fire, but I turned it against him and used it to break his wards.”

  Sean’s expression was terrible. “Are you high on Black Fire?”

  “Yes, she is,” Malcolm said, appearing next to me. “Shit, Alice, you turned this guy into salsa. Not that he didn’t have it coming, but—”

  I didn’t like the way they were looking at me. “I had no choice. I would have died. Lake would have died. All those people in the holding rooms would have died. It was the only way.”

  “Black Fire is a highly addictive drug,” Lake said heavily.

  “Sometimes you have to make a deal with the devil.” I turned to Sean. “The survivors are down that hall. I don’t know if Felicia is there; I haven’t had a chance to look.”

  “She is,” Sean said. “I can sense her through the pack bonds now that the wards are broken.”

  “Good. I want to find Danielle and Carrie.” I headed for the holding rooms.

  Sean stopped me. “What about the Black Fire?”

  “It’ll be out of my system soon.” I shook off his hand. “Let’s get Felicia and get the hell out of here.”

  I led Sean, Lake, and Malcolm into the hall, where the Vamp Court enforcers were standing guard. In the first room we found four people unconscious on cots. Two were survivors: a young woman and a man in his forties, both ashen and weak. The other two were mages I presumed were harnad members who had been loyal to West. They were held with two sets of spell cuffs each, as West had been. I pointed out the harnad mages to Lake.

  “We’ll leave them asleep for now,” Lake said. “We need to get these people to a hospital and the harnad members to a secure facility.”

  In the next room we found two people: Danielle and another young woman. Danielle was pale but looked relatively healthy. The other woman was in such bad shape that it took me several seconds to realize who she was.

  “That’s Missy Daniels,” I said in horror. “The victim Danielle saw being picked up in the black BMW.”

  The next room held three harnad mages in spell cuffs. We found Felicia alone in the fourth room.

  The moment we walked into the room, the force of Sean’s rage almost made me stagger. As Adam and I had seen in his visions, Felicia was restrained by her wrists and ankles with silver shifter cuffs. Her flesh was seared by the silver, and she was thin and deathly pale.

  “Get her out of these cuffs,” Sean ground out.

  I broke the silver cuffs one at a time with my fire whip as Sean held out her arms and legs. “She needs to stay asleep until you can get her back to her family,” I told Sean as he picked her up. “She’s going to be in a lot of pain and be very angry and confused when she wakes up.” I looked at Malcolm. “Will you go with him and break the sleep spell when they have her in a safe place?”

  “I’ll go with him. I can help heal her injuries on the way,” Malcolm said.

  Sean cradled Felicia tightly, obviously torn between needing to be with Felicia and worried about the Black Fire still burning in my veins. “Where are you going after this?” he asked.

  “I’m going home. You need to take care of Felicia,” I told him. “Her mother and brother must be frantic. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  With one last look at me, Sean left at a run, Felicia in his arms and Malcolm at his side.

  Lake and I continued through the holding rooms. Only about half the beds were occupied. We found the two vampires locked in a silver cage. There were sixteen survivors total, plus the seven harnad members and the vamps.

  Carrie was not among them.

  I stood over the unconscious body of John West with blood magic sizzling on my fists.

  Footsteps came up behind me. “You can’t kill him.”

  I didn’t turn around. “That doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize about it.”

  We stood silently for a long time.

  “Promise me he will never see daylight again,” I said finally. “I want him buried so far underneath Colorado Springs Ultra-Max that he forgets what the sky looks like.”

  “I guarantee that’s where he’ll be until the day he dies.” Lake leaned against the side of the van. He was haggard, but still on his feet somehow.

  “You ready to call in your SPEMA buddies and take this operation down?”

  “More than ready,” he said. “We’ll get the survivors to the hospital and the mages into custody. We’ll have the rest of the harnad by morning and the drug ring by the end of the day.”

  “Everyone needs to know immediately that the vamps had nothing to do with this,” I told him. “The protests and the attacks on vamps have to stop.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he promised.

  We stared at each other.

  He touched
my face. “Get that Black Fire out of you before you start to like it too much and forget how it was made.”

  I already liked it too much. “It’ll be gone as soon as I get home.”

  “Which will be when?”

  “As soon as I can get a ride.” I waved at Bryan, who was headed for the warehouse door. He changed direction and joined us by the van. “Is that offer still open for the use of a Court vehicle?” I asked him.

  “Yes.” He studied me. “I think I’ll drive.”

  “I think that would be a good idea,” I said.

  25

  Bryan didn’t take me home—at least, not immediately.

  It didn’t take long for me to figure out we were headed north and not toward my house on the east side. I had a feeling I knew where we were going.

  Our destination turned out to be the mansion belonging to Charles. The gate swung open as the SUV turned into the drive. Heavily armed guards patrolled along the high brick wall. Bryan drove up the long driveway and parked in front. Another enforcer opened my door and I stepped out of the SUV.

  The front door opened as we approached, revealing Adri. “Come in,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  I followed her through the living area and past the piano to a set of French doors that opened onto a wide veranda. There were no lights on in the backyard but there was plenty of moonlight to see the man sitting alone in a wicker chair, a crystal decanter and two glasses on the table at his elbow. There were two envelopes on the table: one large and one letter-sized.

  He rose as we approached, his eyes silvery. I remembered I was still wearing the see-through shirt and bustier. On another night, I might have been concerned they would send the wrong message. Tonight, I found I didn’t care.

  “Alice.”

  “Charles.”

  He gestured at the chair opposite his. “Please.”

  I sat. Adri moved to stand next to my chair as Bryan took up a position next to Charles. It appeared I now merited the presence of two enforcers instead of one.

  Charles turned his attention to me. “I have received a report from Mr. Smith, but I wish to hear your account of what you found at the warehouse.”