As if Karma decided to punish me for my moment of mean-spiritedness, Aura looked up at the monitor for the surveillance cameras and her eyes bulged almost comically.
“Oh, shit.”
I wheezed out another little laugh. “We’re on fire, aren’t we?”
James…
I was the first to scent the smoke from the fire, spiraling lazily over the trees. “Is that …” I angled my head, “your cabin, Steve?”
It was always the small things that made us look the most inhuman, like the unnatural speed with which my friend’s head shot up, eyes instantly black.
“No. That’s Aura’s!”
Amazing,I thought,just how quickly our kind could move when properly motivated.The ground was blurring beneath my feet and Steve’s, though our allies remaining from the battle against Laurent’s repellant children followed more slowly, many still recovering from injuries.
The black smoke was boiling from the clearing where Aura’s cabin was located, and when Steve saw his truck parked carelessly sideways in front of it, he let out a roar that should have flattened the trees around the inferno. I circled in the other direction, searching for a way in.
Meghan…
I was leaning against the steel wall of the safe room, watching the monitor as the flames raced through the house until all the interior cameras shorted out. “You’re sure this place is fireproof?” I asked.
“You’ve asked me four times now, and yes, it has a separate air ventilation system and these walls are fireproof and insulated. Half the forest could go up in flames and we’d be okay,” answered Aura, pacing anxiously.
Looking around, the bunker seemed pretty sturdy. There was just enough room for the little bed, a counter with a couple of chairs in front of the monitors, a toiler, sink and a mini-fridge, but the filtration system was really fancy-looking.
“Steve must be freaking out right now,” Aura sighed, moving from monitor to monitor, trying to spot him.
I wondered if James was, too. I wondered if that insistent tugging I’d felt came from him. I hoped so, because it was still there, like a small, insistent toddler’s finger, tapping out a morse code demand for more candy on his mother’s knee. Faint, but unrelenting, and when it seemed to slow, I held my breath until it started up again.
Aura managed to switch over the monitors to the surveillance system Steve had put up when she first moved in. The view from the massive pines surrounding the cabin showed how little was left of it.
“What is it with these people and fire?” she spat. “I’d just moved everything I own up from Seattle! I’m glad all my important stuff is at Steve’s place.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to make my battered brain focus. “Who set this one? All the scumbags should have been over hanging out with that French lunatic.”
“I dunno,” she admitted, “they must have followed us from there?”
I was woozy from the small dose of pain meds I'd dared let Aura give me and was generally feeling half-insane from this completely shitty evening. “Yeah, flying over us? Like some big-ass, scuzzy bat?”
Even Aura started giggling, “At this point? I could almost believe it- hey, there’s activity and- oh, shit….”
It felt like something rotted, wriggling with larvae and dripping disease had latched onto my brain stem. I felt profoundly soiled and moaning, scrubbing at the base of my neck, I leaned forward.
“Oh, no! Who's this fucking guy?” Aura groaned.
“I think-” I stopped, gagging and heaving. “I think it’s James’ sire.”
James…
“My child.”
The voice was exquisite. Rich and deep, sonorous and smooth, rubbing along my nerve endings like silk. But it left a jagged finish, like broken glass buried under the caress. It had been almost two centuries since I’d been forced to hear it, but my sire’s voice nearly brought me to my knees. Clumsily, I forced myself to turn to look at the thing that had made me a beast.
“Volkov.” The word was a razor blade in my throat, but I gritted it out.
The monster was beautifully dressed, much like myself, in an expensive, bespoke suit. Long, long arms spread wide, spidery fingers wiggling a bit in eagerness.
“Come, my son. It has been so long.”
