Inside the Flame (Elemental Mages Book 2)

by Rose O'Brien

  There was a conference/interrogation room off the office. A plexiglass window looked out to the main area where he’d parked the SUV.

  Moving back out to the huge main floor, he noted training mats that were torn and frayed on the edges. Rats had gotten to them.

  As he moved through the room and past the SUV, he took a deep breath and focused, sending his senses out into the building around him. The wards were still in place, thank the gods. The physical security on the place was minimal.

  He’d been given a copy of the keys before he left on this mission. When he’d landed in Baghdad more than two weeks ago, he’d swung by and grabbed the SUV, but had decided not to bunk here. It was just too creepy. Aside from the dust, everything felt like the Baghdad team had just left it and would be back any minute.

  But the place he’d been renting wasn’t set up for guests. At least, not guests in handcuffs. This place had holding cells, wards, a security system (if he could find the controls), and had plenty of privacy. He opened a door off the main floor and found a hallway with dormitory-style crash rooms opening off it. A small kitchen and bathroom were at the end of the hall. The beds were still made, and there was non-perishable stuff in the kitchen. Small bits of luck.

  Across the warehouse, he found three windowless cells with heavy duty doors, concrete walls, floors and ceiling. Each had a cot and a toilet.

  Heading back to the SUV, he hit the switch for the overhead lights. Jen came into view inside the SUV, and he stopped in his tracks for a second.

  Her long black hair was loose around her face and a little mussed. She was looking out the window, not at him. Her dark eyes were full of questions. And, no doubt, sarcasm.

  But, for the first time since he’d seen her in that bombed out market, she looked almost vulnerable. Something in his chest twisted as realization dawned on him. She was beautiful.

  He’d been focused on other things up until this moment, but here in relative safety, his brain could stop spinning long enough to take in the sight of her.

  She wore no makeup, but her skin was flawless. She was just a little too thin, and while he normally didn’t go for that look, she managed to look strong, not sick. It made her collar bones and cheekbones stand out. The dark circles under her eyes were like bruises.

  And those eyes. They were so dark they appeared black and were filled with a dangerous intelligence.

  Everything, coupled with that feisty attitude, had certainly grabbed his attention. He hadn’t been lying when he said she wasn’t his type, but damned if there wasn’t something deeply appealing about her unique blend of looks and personality.

  He shoved that thought away and tried to stuff it into a mental footlocker. Okay, so she was hot. Big deal. Acknowledging any kind of attraction to her was profoundly creepy on his part. He was acutely aware that he held all the power in this situation and she was strictly off limits. He’d only have to be around her for a few days, then he could turn her over to the Corps brass and be on his way.

  He pulled the driver’s side door open and leaned over to unlock the cuffs from the door handle.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “Local headquarters for the Mage Corps strike team.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  At her alarmed expression, he added, “The war was hard on the Baghdad team. We lost some good people. There were bombings, the insurgency. Then there’s just the natural attrition of the job. Our work is dangerous. We go up against some pretty scary stuff, and not everyone comes back. A couple of years ago, the team was down to three members. One of them got killed, and the brass transferred the last two people out. We couldn’t afford to keep throwing personnel at this site.”

  “Why not?”

  He should have known better than to get her talking. He should have just stayed silent. Answering one question always seemed to lead to more with this woman.

  “There’s not that many mages left. We’ve been policing the magickal world for over a thousand years. Our numbers are running a little thin.”

  “Why is it the mages’ job to police the other groups?”

  “We can most easily pass in the sapien world. Elves and fey have to throw glamour—that’s a type of illusion spell—so the normies don’t see them for what they are. Vampires can go out in the daylight, but they don’t like to. They have to feed more and use a lot of sunscreen to keep from blistering. And the shifters have never expressed much of an interest. They’re pretty tribal and keep to themselves.

  “But there are a few representatives of the other groups in the Mage Corps. Come to think of it, we really should get around to changing the name someday,” he said.

  She just raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

  He leaned in and watched her eyes widen a fraction. Her breath was coming just a little faster. Did he make her nervous? Guilt pinged within him, but he didn’t know how to put her at ease.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I tend to talk a lot when you get quiet,” he said. “I don’t know what that’s about, but maybe you could save me from myself and tell me a little about you.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Well, we could start with your name.”

  She laughed. It was a quick explosion of sound and it almost startled him. He hadn’t been expecting that. The sound was like breaking glass.

  “All this and you don’t even know my name?” she asked, that eyebrow cocked again. “It’s Jen. Jen Jiang.”

  Grasping her right hand, which was now cuffed to his left wrist, he said, “Nice to make your acquaintance, finally.”

  He helped her climb over the gear shift and lifted her down from the SUV. Their bodies came into contact for one brief moment before he stepped back. She looked like she was all angles, but he’d felt a hint of softness under that tank top. “So, you’re a reporter,” he said. “Where can I read your stuff?”

  “I don’t write under my real name,” she said, distracted, looking around the warehouse floor and peeking into the office.

  “What name do you write under?”

  “Sean Jameson,” she answered.

  With a start, he realized that he recognized the name.

  “Holy crap, I’ve read your stuff. I did a bunch of reading on the plane down here. You’re like one of the undisputed experts on Iraq politics and ISIS.”

  “Thanks,” was all she said.

  “But why that name?”

  “I needed a pen name that would throw off anyone trying to track me down and murder me because of my work. Writing about ISIS is very dangerous. So, I picked the most white-boy name I could think of, hoping no one would ever figure out it was actually a Chinese-American chick at the keyboard.”

  She continued, “I do write under Jen Chang, which was my mother’s maiden name. That’s mostly stuff on the rebuilding. My editors know all my names and, surprisingly, they can keep track.”

  “How’s that headache?” he asked her.

  “Better. Could use some food, though. You kidnapped me before I could order room service.” Her tone held just a little bite to it.

  It was his turn to laugh.

  “First of all, it’s protective custody. Come on. I think I saw some MREs in the kitchen. If we’re lucky, there might even be some Spam.”

  “Eww,” she said.

  He’d seen the inside of the cabinets in her apartment when he’d been looking for anything with DNA on it to run his locator spell, and she was turning her nose up?

  “Sorry. I know it’s not an entire cabinet full of ramen noodles, but it’ll have to do,” he teased.

  At her shocked expression, he flashed her a knowing smile.

  “Come on,” he said, clasping the hand that was cuffed to his own and guiding her down the hallway.

  ***

  “Well, that wasn’t...terrible,” Theron said, pushing away the remains of his MRE. “How was yours?”

  “Caloric,” she responded.r />
  They had somehow managed to eat with her right hand cuffed to his left, but they’d made it work. The meal had passed largely in awkward silence, both of them intent on getting through it as quickly as possible.

  Jen was a little afraid to ask what was next. She’d noticed the crash rooms down the hall. Her brain began to spin with escape routes. If she could convince him to cuff her to one of the metal cots and if he went and slept in one of the other rooms, maybe she could get free and...she kept picking up and discarding ideas with lightning speed.

  “I think it’s probably time we both got some sleep. It’s been a hell of a day,” he said, rising from the small table that dominated the kitchen. “Hopefully, by morning we’ll have heard back from HQ with instructions for the extraction.”

  “Why are you so keen to get me back to your headquarters?” she asked, unable to hide the slight nervousness in her voice as she rose to follow him. “Are we running late for my dissection or something?”

  “What? No! Geez,” he said, a little flustered. He ran a hand through that blonde hair and met her gaze. “Look, you’re a seer. We haven’t seen one of you in a hundred years. And the Mage Corps needs all the help it can get right now. Your gifts may save lives. You’re so important that I’m abandoning a mission I’ve been working for weeks so I can get you to safety.”

  As they continued walking, she asked, “What happens when we get where we’re going?”

  “Certainly not your dissection,” he said, clearly still marveling at her earlier conclusion. “Most likely, the Corps brass and maybe even the Council members themselves will fall at your feet and beg you to work for us.”

  “Really? All I do is talk to spirits. I’m pretty sure there are some fortune tellers in New Orleans who can do that, too.”

  “Those are charlatans. You’re the real thing. I’m pretty sure you could ask the brass for whatever you wanted. And we’re magick, remember, so feel free to get creative.”

  His smile was a like a beam of sunlight in the dim and dingy hallway. Something twisted in her stomach at the sight of it. She chalked it up to the MRE settling.

  Gorgeous, smiling, charming six-and-a-half-foot strangers aside, she wasn’t going anywhere with him. She didn’t trust people in general and especially not people who were something out of a fairy tale. Or a horror movie.

  Maybe it had to do with her job. She’d had it drilled into her from her first days of journalism school not to take anyone at their word or anything at face value.

  An editor had once told her, “If your mother tells you she loves you, verify that with two other sources.”

  She practically had that tattooed on her. It wasn’t only how she conducted her professional life, it spread to her personal life as well. She wasn’t sure if she was in a professional or personal situation right now, but it didn’t matter.

  With a start, Jen realized they had left the hallway with the little crash rooms and had crossed the main warehouse floor. There was a concrete room with no windows and a heavy steel door. Inside was a cot and a toilet. It was a cell.

  She spun on her heel and ran smack into Theron’s huge chest. Jesus, it was like walking into an oak tree.

  She stumbled backward and would have gone down hard, taking him with her, had he not caught her around the waist. His free arm came around her and brought her up against his hard body.

  “I’m not going in there,” she said, trying hard to keep the panic from her voice.

  His arm was a hot band of iron across the small of her back. She’d thought the nylon tac vest he was wearing was armored before, but she’d been wrong. No, that was just him. The guy felt like he’d been carved from granite.

  Ugh. She hated muscle heads.

  “You’ll be more comfortable,” he argued. “I can take the cuffs off. You’ll have privacy.”

  “No way!” She said, anxiety bleeding into her words. “I don’t do small spaces. You lock me in there, I’ll be screaming inside thirty seconds and a gibbering crazy person by morning.”

  He’d had his mouth open to argue, but shut it, giving her a thoughtful look. He looked at the cell, then back at her once more.

  “Okay,” was all he said.

  She followed as he moved back toward the crash rooms. It was that or be dragged. On the way there, he stopped at the SUV and grabbed the bags with her extra clothes and toiletries.

  Opening one room, he grabbed the metal frame of the Army-style cot and dragged it to the room across the hall, positioning the twin beds so they were about a foot apart.

  “Will this work?” he asked.

  “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the cell, I guess.”

  Sighing with resignation, she kicked off her boots, pulled back the slightly dusty blanket and shook out the sad little pillow one handed while Theron stood over her. She climbed between the sheets, still fully clothed.

  The pathetically thin mattress barely kept her from feeling the cot’s springs.

  As they lay down, their cuffed wrists hung between the bed frames.

  Theron was asleep in minutes, but she didn’t fool herself into thinking that it was a sound sleep. She knew his type. He’d be on his feet in two seconds flat if there was a sound much above a whisper.

  She lay awake for a long time, listening to the quiet sounds of his breathing and feeling his gentle movements where their hands were linked.

  There was no hope of escape like this. The guy was too smart, too cautious. He knew she’d run the first chance she got.

  She wasn’t sure how much later it was, but she felt her eyelids growing heavy. She rolled on her side toward him, her arm still extended and watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest in the shadows.

  A part of her wanted to acknowledge that Theron’s heart was in the right place in this situation. He genuinely just wanted to protect her, it seemed, and keep her from ending up in the hands of dangerous people. There was no malice in him. He was just a guy trying to do the best he could. In other circumstances, she would have liked him.

  It was just that she didn’t trust anyone to look out for her interests but her. No one made her choices for her and she would never be at the mercy of other people’s decisions ever again. That way lay disaster.

  She shifted just a little, and the fingers of her right hand came to rest against his. They were warm. Something in her said she should move, but she didn’t want to.

  Jen felt him stir, just a little in his sleep, and his fingers curled around hers.

  Chapter 4

  As Theron came to consciousness, he was instantly aware of Jen. By the sound of her breathing, she was just coming awake. He rolled toward her and saw her stretch and yawn, her eyes squeezed shut and a slight smile touching her lips.

  As her beautiful dark eyes opened, they came to rest on the handcuffs that bound them together and then his face. It was like a storm cloud passed over her features. Those eyes became chips of flint and her mouth narrowed to a hard line.

  She turned her head toward the door and jerked like she’d been slapped. A sound like a strangled scream was caught in the back of her throat.

  Jen turned to look at him and then back at the door. She sighed. “You can’t see him, can you?”

  “See who?”

  “The dark-haired creep standing in the corner,” she answered. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, dead guy. You know, it’s not nice to scare the crap out of people like that.”

  “There’s a spirit here?” Theron asked.

  “If you can’t see him, it’s a good bet that’s what he is.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “About six-foot-two, black hair, muscular build. He’s dressed in black. Hard to see his eyes, they’re really shadowy and sunken. They might be blue,” she said. “Someone you know?”

  At her description, a hard knot had formed in Theron’s stomach. It sounded like Rafi, the water mage and team medic that had been assigned here. He and Theron had been at the Academy together and in th
e same year. They hadn’t been friends or anything, but Rafi had been a good guy.

  “Yeah, I think I do,” Theron said past a throat that had gone as dry and rough as sandpaper. Jen sat up and faced the corner, her right arm stretched behind her from the cuffs.

  “Did your friend have a birthmark, right here?” she turned back to him and indicated her throat.

  Theron’s stomach felt like it was in his socks. There was no way that Jen could be making this up. Rafi had, indeed, had a small, dark splotch of a birthmark on the right side of his neck.

  “His name is Rafi. He was a mage. I knew him,” Theron ground out.

  Jen nodded and rose slowly from the bed and he went with her, eyeing the corner she seemed to be focused on. He didn’t see a damned thing, not a shimmer, not a shadow. It didn’t even feel cold in here.

  “Hey, Rafi. I’m Jen,” she started. “Yeah, I can see you.”

  She paused like she was listening.

  “Yeah, I’ve been told that’s rare. Hence my new silver bracelet, here,” she said indicating the handcuffs. “Your friend, Theron, thinks I’m some kind of unicorn and he’s hauling me back to your secret base. Or something like that.”

  She paused again and then a slight smile touched her mouth.

  “Rafi laughed and said you always did do things the hard way.”

  “Ask him what he’s still doing here,” Theron told her.

  Jen glared at him.

  “He can hear you, dude. And he says he’s not sure why he’s stuck here. He didn’t even die in the building.”

  The concept of spirits was a little new to him. He’d always thought you died and that was it. No white light, no pearly gates, just oblivion.

  But here was hard evidence that they were real. And that Jen was the real deal. A small part of him had held out the possibility that Jen thought she saw the dead, but was really just mentally disturbed.

  But she was talking to Rafi, who’d been dead for years.

  “Can you do anything for him?” he asked Jen. “Direct him to the light, or something?”