Blaze of Heroes

by C. J. Strange

  “Okay then,” purrs Izzey, his voice so distant, “let's see what we can see, Kapitän.”

  “See?”

  My tongue and lips are dry, and the word tastes like it's burning as I say it. With my new filter on the world, which is causing my thoughts to float and my senses to fluctuate, I peer across Alfie's lap to watch what Izzey is up to.

  “You're familiar with the concept of reading tea leaves, I presume?”

  “Are you saying you're about to read my weed… leaves?” For some reason, the mental image of that is hilarious, and I'm powerless to stop the snort of amusement.

  “Precisely.” Izzey smirks again, his gaze dropping back down to the pipe. “A Reykrsýn is a mark left when one commits to receiving a glimpse of their future from the Sun Mother. It is created using the sacred element of fire, and the breath of the child herself.”

  Alfie leans into me, his scruffy stubble scratching my chin as he does so. My nerves alight beneath it and it's all I can do not to yank away.

  “Oi,” he grunts, “he means he's gonna go looking for funny pictures in the cashed portion.”

  Izzey spends hours squinting at the Reykrrök grinds left in my bowl. Actually, it's probably less than a minute, but my mind stretches it to fill forever. "Hmm," he mumbles, barely audible over the faint crackle of flame. “I'm seeing several different things here.”

  “That's 'cause Hope's right good at multitasking, eh?” asks Alfie, nudging me as if requesting some sort of chortle or chuckle for his efforts.

  “No, I'm just not entirely sure if I want to read this as what I think it is.”

  “It's not the Grim, is it?” I pipe up.

  Alfie groans. “Mate, again with that Harry Potter wanker!?” he complains, but I shrug his attempt to shame me off.

  “What?” I bite back. “OP and I are re-reading them all. Don't judge, Gryffin-bore.”

  He smirks at me through all that coppery stubble, and the hot sparkle in his eyes sends a bolt of lightning through my body. “I actually prefer to think of myself as more of a Slyther-in.”

  “... it's a Fylgja.”

  “A what?” Alfie and I both ask in unison. Izzey is squinting into the pipe bowl with both eyebrows furrowed deep, and I can't help squinting at him in return.

  “A Fylgja,” Izzey echoes. “A familiar, a follower. Sent by the Sun Mother to guard her most valuable assets.”

  I frown. My entire body is ablaze with both numbness and sensation simultaneously. It seems to take an age to react to anything around me.

  “So,” I say very slowly, “I'm going to be sent to guard something?”

  Izzey shakes his head. It may just be due to how high I am, but he looked stunned. “No. The Fylgja is a very, very, very unusual reading. I've never seen it before, I don't know anybody who has. Pan, does this look like a Fylgja to you?” he asks suddenly, offering the pipe to one of the others in the circle.

  “What does it mean?” demands Alfie. I'm surprised he doesn't know either. A few others are swapping confused glances between themselves, too.

  It's peculiar to see such a helpless, hapless mask of confusion on Izzey's face. Especially as each of his pride mates in turn confirm the shape in the cashed purple to have all the adequate traits of this rare protective omen. To declare that I feel awkward in the unexpected spotlight is an understatement I can't allow.

  It takes ages for Izzey to speak again. Or it doesn't. I'm having trouble keeping track of time.

  “Fylgjur are feline creature of legend,” he explains quietly. “Deep-seeded Novanist lore. I've never seen one. Truth be told, I'm not sure I believe they exist. But purely in terms of Reykrrök Circle symbology, it is a harbinger of a true child of Nova, a chosen one. One as strong in stature as they are in heart, in faith. One prophesized to change the country—nein, to change the world.”

  Gradually, silently, Alfie and I crane our necks to lock gazes blankly with one another. We've known each other long enough to know the other thoroughly, to know exactly what they're thinking at this exact moment in time.

  And that's why we're only able to remain still for a couple seconds, tops, before we both collapse into uncontrollable hysterics.

  “Hope? Strong in faith?” Alfie chokes out on my behalf, because I'm still choking on my own amusement at the very same thought.

  “No—” I manage, shaking my head almost violently back and forth in protest. My eyes are drenched, that's how funny it all is to me, and I imagine Alfie's doing about the same. “No, no, he's right. Honestly. While I appreciate the compliment, I doubt very much it's a, a fil-juh-luh.”

  Izzey fixes his gaze on me firmly, as if he doesn't quite believe me.

  “Hmm,” he says eventually. His tone is clipped and suspicious. “Very well then. My apologies for the inaccurate reading.”

  Izzey goes to work digging out whatever flower is left in my bowl, mixing the charred with the clean in tiny small porcelain dish. Part of me wonders what we'll end up doing with it, if it will end up wasted. Nothing is wasted these days, especially by those of us who live outside the law. Everything can be kept, used, sold or traded, and used again.

  The world comes back to me.

  How long was I away from it?

  One of the others in the circle has begun a low, steady rhythm on a djembe I didn't know I was listening to, but my fingers are drumming along to the beat. Izzey is peering into the pipe and making those sexy intellectual noises. And the entire right-hand side of my lower body has gone numb from the angle I've been slumped against Alfie at for so long.

  “I see several lines, which suggests travel,” a voice in Izzey's accent is saying.

  “Wow,” is Alfie's derisive answer. “Travel, me? You’re proper clairvoyant, you are.”

  I crane my neck in time to see Izzey roll his eyes. In my high state of mind, they look like dark orbs of marble or glass, flecked with browns and greens and grays as if hiding his emotions inside like minerals. Untouched, unfelt, undiscovered.

  And now I feel like Stephenie Meyer. Fantastic.

  “Please, allow me to finish before you cast your judgments,” Izzey grinds out. “The travel is emotional, spiritual. The way these lines intersect, it suggests you have a great deal of growth and expansion in your very near future, Diesel.”

  He peers back down into the bowl with a soft hum.

  “A broken shield.”

  “Not really the knightly sort myself, mate,” mumbles Alfie.

  “Whereas an intact heater shield foretells of a strong and a lengthy alliance or treaty, a damaged one symbolizes a broken brotherhood,” says Izzey, and either I’m fading out again or he’s lowered the volume of his voice. “And one of your travel lines directly bisects the shield itself.”

  Alfie is frowning. “So,” he says slowly, “I'm going to grow because of a broken brotherhood?”

  “More likely, your growth will cause the breaking,” is Izzey's sober answer. “Es tut mir leid, my Brother. It is never easy to give possibly negative news.”

  “Might not be negative.” My words float on a note of chipper positivity as I smile up at my brigade mate, up at a freckled face I've known for far more of my life than I haven't. “Not all alliances are good, right?”

  “Right,” grunts Alfie. He does his best to smile, but I can tell the fortune is weighing on his mind. My poor, sweet maniac. He's a burnt little cinnamon bun, toasty and angry and hard. Too sweet and warm for this world.

  I rock a bit, leaning into him. He's hot, hotter even than the searing heat of the fire pit on my face. I snuggle into his side as I let myself drop deeper into the buzz, locking my arm around his and putting my head on his shoulder.

  Where it belongs at moments like this, moments of trial, of tribulation. Always has done, always will do.

  Our voices sound like we're both underwater as we laugh and banter our way in the direction we hope my camper van is. It’s anybody's best guess, at this point. The castle grounds may not be that vast, but they're surpris
ingly easy to get lost in, especially when you're higher than you anticipated being.

  “So,” I whisper, and I don't know what it is that makes me think of it, “what is it you were going to tell me earlier?”

  “What?”

  “You know. About why you freaked out.”

  I wasn't aware the warm scent of burning wood I'd been inhaling was actually coming from his skin. But as I pause, twisting myself around to face him better, I catch it in my nose again and can't help inhaling deeply.

  “You sure you wanna hear that?” he mutters awkwardly. His voice is half-muffled by his shirt as he fights his way back into it.

  “Of course.”

  He huffs out a sigh. “It's stupid.”

  “I don't care.”

  “But it's really fucking stupid.”

  “Still.” I give him my best serious face, which isn't easy, given how off-kilter I am.

  Alfie exhales again, a lot deeper this time, and slumps sideways against a nearby tree. “All right,” he says, as if he's about to tell me he can see dead people, or he's actually a sparkly vampire. “It fucked me up.”

  “What did?”

  “You. With Duncan.”

  “Oh.” I blink at him. “Ohhh. Wait, really?”

  Alfie nods, still grumpy.

  I purse my lips. While there's always been a very thin string of possessiveness between the two of us, it's never been an issue like this. Not on such a sobering, serious level.

  “Why do you think that is?”

  He shakes his head, red hair catching the moonlight, which turns it purple. “Fuck knows. I'm all high and loopy, I'll probably come up with some stupid flipping reason, like being jealous or some shit—”

  “Jealous?”

  I can't help how surprised I sound, my inhibitions slackening under the influence of the Reykrrök. I immediately snap my mouth shut. “Sorry,” I start, but he's ahead of me, speaking with maturity I may only have seen him use a handful of times in his life.

  “It's not like we never thought of it before. Both of us. Do you think that ever really goes away?”

  Bullseye. His sentiment tugs at something warm and squirmy I've kept under iron lock-and-key for almost a decade and a half. Something I do my best daily to deny even exists.

  I give him a pointed stare, smug and sassy. My own brand of self-defense. “Primary school? We dated for what, a hot minute in Year Three, Year Four? And then you broke up with me because I scratched Hawkeye's face off the front of your lunchbox.”

  Alfie grumbles. “You knew he was my favorite.”

  “Well, you deserved it. You told that Kimberly James girl you wanted to snog her at playtime. And I thought Iron Man was your favorite?”

  “I happen to have lots of favorites,” Alfie says dismissively.

  “So do I.”

  My comment catches him off-guard. There's a sense of visible realization that floods his tight, pinched face as the cogs in his brain click and turn. Processing it all. By the grace of his own goddess, he might be finally beginning to understand.

  After several long seconds of deep thought, his brain likely as hazy as my own, Alfie lifts his eyes to mine. “So,” he says, his tone a double-edged sword of anxiety and pure cheek, “am I one of them, then?”

  That sweet, smoky scent of his skin fills my head and incinerates all rational thought as I step into him, crushing him against the tree. His mouth opens to protest, or maybe to egg me on, but my own instantly closes on top of it, and for the first time I'm able to taste that sweet smoke as well as inhale it.

  11 Alfie’s Sex-cond Chance

  My blood is beating hard and fast and right under the surface my skin, as I wrap my hands around the one thing that I've wanted for as long as I bloody well can remember. Penny makes a noise, her eyes flickering shut for a moment before she glares hard up at me.

  A crazy smirk twists my lips.

  “What,” I hear myself say through the fog, “can't handle a bit of rough-housing? Didn't we used to play WWE all the time when we were kids?”

  Her eyes flash with the proposed competition, and she shoves me hard. I stumble back, the grass soft under my feet in a way that nearly takes me down.

  “Oh, I can handle it, but I don't think you can.” She smirks. “John Cena.” She launches at me, both feet off the ground, and I catch her as she thuds into my chest. Her mouth finds mine, and it's instantly teeth, the pain sharp as she bites my lower lip. A groan rips out of me and I reach for her shirt.

  “Bitch,” I growl, my fingers tugging at the fabric, yanking it up her body. I want to see all of her. My cock is solid already, the combination of years anticipating this moment plus the pleasant fog of the Reykrrök in my system making everything somehow more everything. “You know how much I fucking hate Cena.”

  The moonlight falls on her skin and my breath stutters in my chest as her shirt hits the ground. She's pale skin all over, white like porcelain. There’s inches of it just begging for my mouth, my teeth, my fingers, to mark it up. Maker her up. I want to leave trails of red everywhere, lay my claim, let the other guys know exactly who's been touching her and where. Nobody leaves a calling card like I do—and I know exactly how much heat to use to make it good for her.

  She doesn't know that yet. She's gonna fucking learn.

  Penny puts her hands on those athletic hips, taking a step back, challenge in her eyes.

  “I think somebody likes what he sees.”

  “Nah, not really,” I say before I can stop myself, because I won't be controlled, or told what I'm feeling. There's a flicker of something on her face, some emotion I don't want to catch, because it'll send us in another direction.

  Not now. I've waited too long for this. I've waited too long for her.

  “I fucking love it,” I say, saving us both from something that's lurking around the edges of this moment, threatening to drag us under and rip us apart. A pretty blush breaks out on her cheeks at my words and I reach out for her, tugging her in close for a hard, eager kiss. Her fingers spear into my hair, fisting there and tugging, almost like she's begging for mercy. She will be before I let her come, and the thought of watching her shudder under me, begging me for it, makes my hips surge into hers.

  Her hands slip down my neck, down my back, and under my shirt.

  The instant her fingers touch my skin, I groan into her mouth, licking into it, and I want to lift her up so she can wrap her legs around my hips tight. I need something to press her into. A large, shading tree will do the job nicely, and I force her backward. She's getting my shirt off, up around my neck, but I've got her back into the steady trunk of a tree, pinning her there. Her body squirms, and she makes a noise like she's pissed off that I've got her right where I want her.

  Well, too fucking bad, love. I want to fall to my knees, layer hot kisses down her belly, find out what she's got under those panties that she's made me wait so long for. Tease her until she's begging me for mercy. The thought of getting her there, until she's desperate for it, distracts me as she tugs at my shirt.

  “Stop it, woman,” I grumble; she's got me all tangled in it, and I have to work my arms behind my back. “You serious right now? And you birds have a mind to tell us we’re shit at bras?” I complain, and Penny makes an amused sound in the back of her throat.

  “You think that was an accident?” The gentle brush of her fingers over my wrists makes me freeze, and then she smirks, and everything shifts. My fabric caught up around my forearms, goes heavy and hard, changing from fabric to metal in an instant. I stumble back, shoulders straining.

  “The fuck?!” I squawk, and Penny laughs.

  “Thought you had one up on me,” she says, swaggering toward me, and I growl. She's beautiful and mad, and I yank hard at the bonds she's got me trapped in. When I get out, she is fucked. Completely, totally, and utterly fucked.

  “Penny,” I say through gritted teeth. She reaches up behind her and suddenly her bra is fluttering to the ground.

  We
ll, shit.

  I swallow whatever rude, impatient words I'm about to say in favor of staring heavily at her breasts. They're fucking magnificent and creamy and begging to be bitten. My arms fight at the metal restraining me, and I shiver when she comes in close, kissing me softly for a moment, her chest brushing against mine. Rosy nipples drag themselves up my chest. I want to hold her so bad. Her fingers run down my chest, pinching at me, scratching me and I growl into her mouth.

  “Let me go,” I hiss, and she laughs, bending to kiss the side of my neck. My eyes shut hard when I feel teeth, standing there like a fucking idiot. Duncan wouldn't let this shit stand, and neither will I. A shiver rolls through my body as I concentrate as hard as I can on heating up my wrists and arms, my powers glowing under my skin, to warm the metal enough that I can get free.

  It's hard with Penny's soft little mouth finding sensitive spots along my collarbone, her fingers at the button of my jeans. She's so close to my cock, that my hips jerk. She looks up at me as my trousers drop, and she follows them down, kneeling on the grass. A desperate need to wrap my fingers in the silky strands of her hair overtakes me, and I groan, my arms flexing. The metal is hot, but not as hot as my skin, and my muscles shake as I pull hard.

  Penny's breath is hot against my thighs. Her mouth is maybe an inch away…

  The metal softens, stretching around my arms, and I surge forward as it drops to the ground with a dull thud, freeing me. Penny falls back with a startled cry, and I'm on top of her in the next second, my skin smoking hot as my knees dig into the grass.

  “Gotcha.”

  My voice is low, her eyes widening at the ferocity in it as I fully cover her body with the heat of mine. She's not fighting as my mouth wraps around one of her breasts, tongue teasing the nipple until she arches under me. My jeans are still around my ankles, caught on my shoes, but I don't fucking care. I'm getting what I want now she's pinned under my weight, whether she wants to lock my feet together with her fancy Magick or not.

  Her breath is shuddering out of her, the lines of her fit body so sexy as she moves. She arches right into my hands as I push her pants down, snagging her underwear in my fingers. All of it is in the way of everything I want: her pussy, her clit, her arse, the sound of her screaming for me and around me. Her eyes slam shut when my hand works between her thighs, stroking over her once before I sink two fingers into her without any warning. She cries out, and I growl at the wet warmth of her, exactly what I need right then.