Nite Fire: Flash Point

by C. L. Schneider

  A hefty forked tail thumped the ground adjacent to my hiding place. Its owner, a moss-green male, was leaning against the craggy boulder, breathing with the noisy rumble of a deep sleep. I would slit his throat first, and then the other sleepers.

  I took a last look to my left, to check on Evans, and he was gone. Within the trees was the faint shape of two forms moving steadily away from my position. Shit. I couldn’t let him get out of sight.

  Abandoning my plan, I kept low in the heavy grass and took off in pursuit. The second the trees closed around me, I realized the grove was wider and more tangled than it looked. Heavy boughs of the canopy restricted the moons’ light. Low limbs, sprouting from neighboring trunks, wound together and blocked my way. The constant rustle of life in the undergrowth disguised my approach as I picked my way under and around. Between was a soft carpet of old leaves and fallen fruit. The sunken yellow casings burst beneath my boots, giving off a spoiled, fermented odor. It was strong, but the scent of human was stronger.

  Nearing the end of the grove, the woods thinned. The darkness eased to a gentle gray, and I had no trouble making out Evans and the lyrriken beside him. Their backs to me, they were staring out from the confines of the trees, down into the valley below. Whatever they were looking at was outside my view, but I was more concerned with the sharp slope a few feet from where they stood. The small clearing before it was the perfect place for a lyrriken to open wings and take flight. If that happened, my hope of getting Evans out alive—without shifting in front of him and blowing what might be left of my cover—would go with him.

  I stepped out into the open with the knife in my hand. “Hey.”

  Evans’s posture changed. He turned. His eyes found mine with unabashed relief. In contrast, as the man next to him pivoted around, a keen sense of satisfaction sat on his heavy jaw. He was glad I was here for a far different reason.

  “Dahlia,” Evans said. His voice was steady, but his use of my first name was telling.

  The lyrriken to his left stepped forward. “Dahlia Nite,” he said with a snarky, confident smile. “I’ve been thinking about you since we met the other day. Thinking about you a lot.”

  “That’s creepy,” I cringed.

  He put a hand out. Shaking wasn’t a lyrriken custom. But was he acting human for Evans, or mocking me? “Reech,” he said, introducing himself. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

  “You mean the foot you were kicking me with?” I reminded him. “I’m not shaking your hand, Reech. Put it away. Or I’ll break it. Again.”

  “Fair enough.” Stepping back, he raised his other arm and draped it around Evans’s shoulders. Dangling nonchalantly from Reech’s fingertips was a standard issue SCPD handgun. “Your friend and I were just going for a walk.” He gave Evans an enthusiastic squeeze. “You haven’t been back in a while, Dahlia. You should join us.”

  “Thanks, but we have to go. And I’m sure you’re busy…burning things.”

  “But your human doesn’t want to go. He likes it here. He’s open-minded for the species, this one.” Reech put his other hand firmly on Evans’s chest and gave him a hearty shake. Leaving it there, his grip tightened, and the first sign of real worry developed on Evans’s face. His stare, trained on me, was equally disturbing: a lack of recognition, as if he’d never laid eyes on me before.

  He knows, I thought. Evans knows I’m not what I pretend to be.

  I avoided addressing that nightmare and scowled at Reech. “What do you want?”

  An eerie smile widened his bearded lips. “You can’t give me what I want.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it. Where’s your girlfriend?”

  “Preoccupied.”

  “Is that disapproval in your voice?”

  “You know how it is, Dahlia. Every squad has one that needs reining in.”

  “And your third? I haven’t had the pleasure yet.”

  “My third?” he asked innocently.

  “I know there were three of you in Ella’s house.”

  “Were there?”

  “Are you going to skirt all my questions?”

  “Maybe you should ask the right one.”

  My jaw tensed as I tried to stow my rage. “You’re bringing things into the light you know damn well should stay in the dark. You don’t want to tell me why? Fine. I’ll kill you and her, and then it’s over.”

  “Is it?” Challenge sparkled in his eyes.

  “Damn, you’re a pain in the ass.” I stepped closer. “Let Evans go, and you and I can discuss this in a far less civilized manner.”

  He didn’t bite. His arm around Evans tightened further. “You risk a lot coming here. Does your human know what his bumbling has led you into? Does he even know what you are?”

  I held his stare to avoid looking at Evans. “I think he might be starting to get an idea.”

  “Oh,” Reech winced. “That’s a problem.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “No,” he replied gallantly. “Allow me.” Dark scales swept over his hands. The one pressed to Evans’s chest developed a faint glow, and the t-shirt below smoldered and burned away. As smoke curled up and skin dissolved, Evans cried out, succumbing to the scalding pain.

  My option of not shifting suddenly off the table, I stepped forward.

  Evans beat me to it.

  Throwing his own head sideways, Evans smacked into his captor’s head with a loud crack of impact. Startled by the unexpected hit, Reech relaxed his grip. Evans shrugged free, grabbed his captor’s gun-arm and thrust an elbow back into his stomach. Pivoting around, Evans paused for a breath to stare in bewildered alarm at the dark plates on the limb in his grasp. Then he tabled the emotion and punched Reech; once in the throat and twice in the face. With a final jab to the nose, Evans ripped his gun from the astonished man’s hand and pointed it at his chest. “Don’t move.”

  Scales and angry admiration flowing over his face, Reech licked the blood from his lip. His gaze flicked to me. “You must have picked this one by the size of his balls, Nite.”

  Breathless, Evans demanded, “What the hell are you?”

  Reech eyed me a moment longer before looking at Evans. “All those times when you wondered if something was out there, human…in the dark, when the cold crept up your back and the hair lifted on your puny arms, when you couldn’t shake the feeling that something was there, watching…” Reech donned a slow smile “We were. We are.”

  “Cut it out, Reech,” I warned.

  “Why? You and I both know you can’t throw a rug over this. You’ve got to either tell him or kill him. Either way, he can’t go back.”

  Evans glanced at me. Worry widened his eyes. “What does he mean, I can’t go back?”

  “Nothing.” I threw Reech a glare and walked up beside Evans. A decent section of his t-shirt was missing, along with several layers of skin. The distinctive hand-shaped wound was sticky and raw. Its edges were curled, surrounded by large blisters from the radiating heat. Sweat ran liberally down the sides of his face, but his gun arm was unwavering.

  Unsure where we stood, I settled for a universal, “Are you okay?”

  His focus once more on Reech, Evans ignored my question and asked one of me. “Did you know what was in the basement? Did you know it would lead…here?”

  “No. But I tried to get you to leave the house. I didn’t want you—”

  “Are you one of them? One of those…animals?”

  His words had been firm, not angry. Still, Reech was enjoying the tension, watching us with a sly smile on his bloody lips.

  “We can talk about this later,” I said. “Right now, we need to go, before something worse than Reech notices we’re here.”

  Evans didn’t move. “He needs to pay for what he did.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “To those kids, to all those people.”

  “You can’t arrest him, Evans. I know you want to. But he’s not human. Your prisons aren’t equipped to hold him.”

  �
�I know.”

  Taken aback by his quick submission, I nodded. “Good. We’ll take him with us and find some place to question him. Reech isn’t working alone. We need to—”

  Evans pulled the trigger.

  Reech brought out his scales. They spread over his chest, impeding the projectile’s penetration. He lunged for Evans with a bullet stuck in his plate and fire billowing in his hand. He went for the gun and found Evans’s wrist instead. As the flames ate through his skin, Evans screamed and fired again. Reech recoiled as the bullet grazed the side of his vulnerable human head.

  Enraged, on his way to the ground, Reech knocked the gun from Evans’s blood-coated grip. He rose back up onto his knees and thrust out his smoldering palm. I grabbed Evans and pushed him down. Throwing myself on top of his body, fire blazed over our heads. Sweltering heat rode up my back, scorching my jacket and my hair. As the fire and the light it created winked out, I yanked Evans up. I wanted him to move, but he was shaking so badly, he could barely stand.

  A bullet whizzed past my head. Another skinned my right arm with a mist of red against the night. The third hit the ground between our shoes.

  I shoved Evans to the side. As he fell, I turned. Scales enveloped my hand, and I released my fire and my knife in unison. Struck by both, Reech, staggered to his feet; blade in his stomach, burns on his face.

  Picturing his heart turning to ash in my hand, I started to advance.

  Evans grabbed the hem of my jeans.

  I paused to give him a reassuring glance. When I looked back up, Reech was bursting out through the trees. His shadow changing shape, wings extended, and he jumped off the hillside just like I predicted.

  “Dammit.”

  The urge to follow him was strong, but I was a fugitive with a warrant of execution on my head. And Evans needed medical attention. Without it, he could die.

  I left Carly Chandler. I left those people on the sidewalk. I’m not doing it again.

  I bent and pulled Evans up with a feat of strength I didn’t even try to hide. He was half conscious anyway, with a hint of bone visible in the charred meat of his right wrist. The blister-ridden second-degree handprint on his chest was only slightly easier to look at.

  Supporting his weight, we started moving. I didn’t go back the way we came, I steered him down the slope, through the grove. It was steeper, harder terrain. He stumbled, but it kept us away from the open hillside and the crowd of lyrriken who might have already caught the scent of fresh human blood on the air.

  I kept Evans upright as long as I could. At the cave entrance his strength gave out. Slumping over unconscious, he slipped out of my grip. I slung him over my shoulder and carried him the rest of the way, across the exit back to his world and through the length of the sewer tunnel. By the time we reached the basement, his body was limp and silent. I wasn’t sure he was still breathing.

  Resting Evans carefully on the floor, I stepped back into the tunnel and ripped the lever off the wall. I tore the wires out and left them burning on the floor. If Reech, or anyone, wanted to follow us from Drimera, they’d have to use another exit. Scooting back through the gate, I pulled the lever on the basement side. The bars slammed shut. The illusionary wall shimmered into place. I couldn’t imagine the power it took to maintain such a thing indefinitely. Whoever had created the wall was one hell of an illusionist.

  Wary I’d wasted time we didn’t have, I checked on Evans. He still had a pulse, but it was weak. Even if I could risk taking him to a hospital, I wasn’t sure he would make it. That left me with two options: let him die, or do something really stupid.

  “What the hell,” I shrugged. Stupid it is.

  I took off my jacket and my tank top. Kicking off my boots, I slipped out of my jeans.

  Stirring, Evans watched me with heavy eyes. “I’m flattered…” he muttered. “But this really isn’t the time.”

  “Shut up.” I unhooked my bra and dropped it on the floor.

  That jolted him awake. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Saving money.” I knelt beside him in nothing but a pair of red panties with Tuesday printed in black on the front.

  Shivering, he squinted at the lettering. “Is that what day it is…?”

  “In a few hours.”

  “I’m not going to make a few hours.” His anxious laugh ended in shivering moan. The muscles in his face twitched as Evans struggled to hold back his emotions. He was trying hard to be brave, to combat his terror with jokes, but his eyes were misty and afraid. “Nite…” he panted, “you need to call an ambulance.”

  “So you’re back to last names now?” I took hold of his already damaged shirt and ripped the material away from the wound on his chest. His skin was disturbingly pale. There was barely anything left of his wrist. “That’s not fair,” I said, keeping him talking. “We didn’t stick to first names long enough for me to learn yours.”

  His head lolling to the side, he slurred a faint, “Casey...”

  I slapped his face. “Wake up, Casey.”

  Eyes closed, he grumbled. “Don’t we need a safe word?”

  “We’ll pick one later. Right now, I need you to not freak out. Can you do that?” With a woozy nod, Evans pried open his eyes. I put a hand under his trembling chin, holding him steady. He was in shock, and I needed to be sure he was looking at me, that he heard me. “I can’t take you to the hospital. You have wounds we can’t explain. But if it’s not too late, I have something that might help. Do you understand?”

  He shook his head in my grip. “No. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I think I can keep you alive, but you have to stay still.”

  “Did you see that Halloween party back there? And look at me…” His body shaking uncontrollably, he flashed a fragile grin. “Steady as they come.”

  “Hold onto that sense of humor. You’re going to need it.” I took a breath and shifted. Black-ringed crimson scales spilled over me. They rushed up my fingers and over my hands, covering the rest of me in seconds; arms and shoulders, face and neck, breasts, stomach, and down my back. As they engulfed the remaining parts of my body, claws pushed out. Muscles enlarged. My hair glowed like hot coals, sparking at the tips. Small, dark horns sprouted as wings and tail emerged.

  I let it all out. I hid nothing as I sat beside Officer Casey Evans, blatantly and boldly, like I had with no other true human in my entire life.

  I thought it might feel good. Liberating. I felt vulnerable as hell.

  It didn’t help that his drowsy pain-filled gaze was roaming over my body in silence. Disbelief gripped his pallid face. I imagined it would grow into fear. In centuries past, humans had mistaken us for devils and demons. I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  Raising my knife to one of my horns, I shaved some bits off. When I dropped the pieces into his wounds, I thought Evans might crawl away. When he didn’t, I assumed he was too weak or too far gone to even know I was there.

  I was wrong.

  Shock faded, and Evans mustered an unsteady smile. “You owe me ten dollars.”

  “No way.” I tried to hold my own smile as his trembled. “Technically, the killer wasn’t in the basement.”

  His eyes falling closed, he murmured, “Cheater.”

  Twenty

  I liked the brief moments after a rain, when the city felt clean. Echoes of streetlights glimmered on every surface. Shadows wrapped the alleyways. From within their darkness came the faint gurgle of gutters emptying. At curbside, storm drains bubbled and spewed. Potholes and dips shined undisturbed; left in peace by the late hour and lack of foot traffic.

  The air smelled of promise. It was almost hard to imagine the monsters were out there.

  Thirty minutes ago it had been much easier, as I’d driven back to my apartment with Officer Casey Evans slumped over, unconscious, in the passenger seat of my car. After my donation, his body had shut down to conserve energy. Sometime in the next few hours it would try to decide if it was going to heal itself or die. If he
woke, it wouldn’t be for hours.

  I’d intended to stay by his side until he woke, but my brief visit home had left me with an oversupply of adrenaline. My mind had been spinning, my muscles pining for movement. Watching him sleep had felt like torture. Leaving him alone hadn’t felt right either, but I’d already given Evans the best chance he had of surviving. If he was going to die, I didn’t need to watch. So I’d changed out of my bloody clothes, covered him up, left a bottle of water and his phone on the table by the couch, locked him in, and left.

  His car was still parked in the Chandlers’ neighborhood. Heading across town to retrieve it gave me a destination and an outlet for my energy. It also kept me from giving into my urge to wander the city in search of more exits. Until tonight, I thought I knew them all.

  Of the five I’d been aware of, in and around Sentinel City, two led to Drimera. The one Ronan and I first arrived in was located in a drainage pipe, nestled in the shadow of the old stone drawbridge on the southeastern end of the city. The other was in an abandoned section of the subway downtown. Ronan mentioned a third, where he received his orders. Clearly, there were even more.

  I assumed the Guild had taken care to hide them all; purchasing the land, building over top of the exits or blocking them off from public reach. Strays, human or otherwise, weren’t welcome on Drimera. It put a drain on resources and upset the balance of the land, which was something the elders took quite seriously. They believed their vitality and strength, their unique abilities, (and those passed onto their lyrriken offspring) were dependent on the energy flowing through Drimera. The elders preached that all dragon-kind were bound by an eons-old pact to watch over the land in exchange for longevity of the body and the soul.

  It wasn’t religion. Not as a human would classify it. It was more like legend.