Raised in Fire (Page 45)

“Wait.” Darius held his hand out, studying me. “Force the fire, Reagan,” he said in a soft, urgent voice. “Force the fire. Force it to take over. Get me through this barrier and I will help you.”

“How are you going to help her?” Callie asked.

“Blood,” Darius said, the possessiveness back ten-fold. “It helped after she killed the other demon. It has to help this time as well. I will not lose her to the underworld. She is bringing back my humanity—I will not let it take hers.”

“Well, that is unexpected,” Dizzy deadpanned. “But unless you can get her down first, you won’t be able to get blood into her.”

“Force the fire,” Darius urged me.

Yes, that was what I needed to do. Or just force this icy power down. But that meant dunking myself back into the sludge. I was afraid of it. Afraid of losing myself, like Darius had said.

Heat pricked behind my eyes, threatening tears. I’d never been this afraid in my whole life. This wasn’t death. It was a fate worse than death. Until now, I’d thought only prison qualified for that category. The prospect of losing my humanity was so much worse. Becoming a monster.

I stared directly at Darius. “Kill me if it takes over, okay? Don’t try to save me. Kill me.”

His thoughts were in French this time, and his hard face gave nothing away.

“Promise me,” I pushed.

“No. Force the fire, mon ange. Force the fire.”

“Can’t you do what I say for once?” I took a deep breath, struggling for control of my emotions. Then I reconnected with my power, feeling that dark, cold ice spreading within me. I had very little time.

“Force the fire.” His voice wound around me, urging me to obey. I soaked it in, taking courage from his confidence. “Sometimes the only way out is to go through. You can do it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and searched for the spark. The heat that felt so good when it rolled over my skin.

Darius repeated himself, his voice like that of a commander inspiring valor and true grit in his men before they marched unto the breach.

I could do this. Both powers were my birthright. Both could be controlled, I just had to figure out how to master this new one, and later, how to manage both of them in tandem.

Gritting my teeth, I tapped into the cold power, feeling every rock and speck of dirt circling me. Hearing the excitement of the neighbor’s thoughts, and the awe in Callie and Dizzy. But most importantly, I felt Darius’s raw, unyielding belief that I could do this. That I was more powerful than him, than even Vlad, and if anyone could handle a trivial matter such as a demon overthrowing one’s person, it was me.

Sometimes the only way out was to go through.

Here goes nothing.

I embodied the full force of the icy power, felt it sucking me under and turning everything black. My thoughts rolled and my breath left me. I reveled in the dark majesty of the power thrumming within my veins.

A stray thought wound through my glory.

Make her proud.

Her.

Callie meant my mother.

Emotion surged up in me. And with it, fire.

My mother had always called me her flame. She’d coaxed it out of me. She’d helped me embody it.

Now she would save my life with it.

I yanked it up and wrapped it around the horrible coldness, defusing the edges. Chopping off the seeking arms. I pushed the cold down and packed it into a tight ball, the effect lowering me in the sky, making it harder for me to keep the rocks and dirt up.

But I did.

Balls of flame sprang to life, various colors, various sizes, moving through the debris around me, making the guy hiding in the bushes do a fist pump. I rose back up and drifted forward, feeling all that horrible blackness inside me surrounded by bright light. Ice wrapped in heat.

Fire rolled along my arms and legs, but the cold stayed like a cap on my head. I’d probably still lose my eyebrows, unfortunately. You couldn’t have everything.

The sweet air rushed back into my lungs. My fingers tingled with pins and needles, coming back to life. My heart fluttered, emotion surging back in.

Finally, I pushed it all back down, the fire and ice together, a knot in my stomach now, but the start of something. I’d fuse them together one day.

My feet bumped the ground and the debris in the air slowly fell. The fire winked out. The man in the bushes ran like hell.

“Someone should help him forget,” I said, glancing at his retreating figure. “He was too excited for his own good.”

I felt the others draw near me, but no one spoke. When I turned to them, Callie and Dizzy had their eyebrows up, as if they’d just asked a question.

Another wave of relief flooded me. “If you are thinking things, I thankfully can’t hear them.”

“I’m going to hate myself for saying this, but…not yet.” Callie adjusted her satchel. “You can’t hear them yet. But you will. We’ll work on that power to help you develop it. Then hopefully control it so you don’t do it all the time. I have some pretty stupid thoughts I’d rather keep to myself.”

“Me too,” Dizzy muttered.

Darius was staring at me with his hard face, but he didn’t speak.

“Right, then, one crisis averted. Now for the second.” I started toward the house. “We have to kill that demon before it can get to the underworld.”

“Do we know where the summoning site is yet?” Dizzy asked, hurrying to my side. “That’s probably where they’ll congregate to send the demon back.”

“We came here to find information, Dizzy,” Callie said, tramping behind us.

“Oh yes, right.”

“Let’s hope there’s a clue in the mage’s house.” The spell from earlier was gone. The mages must’ve taken it down before they left. They had to get through it, too. “I wonder why the demon was randomly hanging out in the yard.”

“Following you, probably.” Darius reached the door first and went to grab the handle. He hesitated. “Would you like to kick this in, Reagan?”

“How thoughtful. But no. Let’s just go inside.”

He opened the door, having already unlocked it.

“Or maybe the demon already knew you would eventually find the mage in charge. It is hard to say.” Darius stepped out of the way so we could enter.

“If he got close enough to you in that ugly man’s body, he could have heard your thoughts,” Dizzy said. “Or my thoughts. Once that door is opened, are there any secrets anymore?”

“My mom came up with a way to block that,” I said to Dizzy as I entered the house. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Oh good. Yes. Very clever, your mom.” Dizzy followed closely behind me.

I looked around, not sure where to start. “My only question is, can I actually kill the demon without losing myself?”

“You can. I know you can. When you’ve solved a problem once, that’s it. You have it.” Callie riffled through papers on the counter.

“But we still have all the mages to deal with,” I said.

“We’ll take care of the mages.” Callie pushed an envelope to the side. “I’m nearly positive I finally recruited the little witch. Her mother doesn’t monitor Penny’s texts and calls, thank God. With her power at our backs, those other mages don’t stand a chance.”

“She’s a mage, hon. An untrained mage.” Dizzy yanked two drawers out and dumped them on the ground. “You call her. I’ll help Reagan and Darius look through the house. I have an eye for picking things out of chaos. If there are clues here, we’ll find them.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“I have a check stub,” Dizzy shouted. “He doesn’t make much at his job.”

I rifled through a desk drawer in his disorganized office. We’d been at this for fifteen minutes and still hadn’t found anything solid. Or helpful.

“What does he do?” I shouted.

Darius appeared in the doorway, and I jumped, knocking the rolling chair back into the bookcase.

“Jesus, man.” I put a hand to my heart. “Don’t just pop up like a poltergeist. I’m a little jumpy right now.”

Darius held up a blue uniform without saying a word. The front resembled a police uniform, with a sewn-on patch like a badge on the arm. He turned it, and I saw security written on the back.

“Where did you say that skin suit was found?” Dizzy called.

“It wasn’t a skin suit, and it was in terminal thirty. Port of Seattle, I think. The shipping terminal.” I slipped out from around the desk and looked at the patch on the sleeve. It said security officer.

“Shoot,” Dizzy said. “I was hoping it would be the same company.”

“Perhaps they all work in security,” Darius said. “It would’ve been hard to get a body into the terminal in the later hours without being noticed. Unless you worked there and brought it in your car.”

“But they said all of the staff checked out. And yes, I realize these people probably wouldn’t have any priors, but Oscar also said none of them were magical…”

How stupid was I?

“The MLE office was keeping their mouths shut.” I shook my head. “They must’ve known a mage was responsible, and that one worked at the terminal, but they were warned away from mages, so they weren’t talking.” I bowed in frustration. “You even asked if I wanted to talk to the security people. I can’t tell most magical species, but I know mages. I would’ve felt his or her magic.”