Hellfire (21 page)

Even more frightening were all
the other changes in her once perfectly normal, comfortably boring life. This
morning alone, she’d run from demon-possessed birds and found shelter inside an
energy vortex. She’d fought demons with her own sentient crystal sword. She’d
used DarkFire to close a portal between dimensions.

Ginny Jones didn’t do things
like that. At least she never had before Alton, but she wasn’t just plain old
Virginia Jones anymore. She was an immortal Lemurian with a sexy lover and an
important job.

“Oh, crap!” She slapped her
hand over her mouth.

Alton’s head shot up. “What?”

“I have to be back at Shascom
by Saturday. That’s where I work as a nine-one-one dispatcher. My vacation’s
over Friday and I’m on swing. That means I have to work late afternoon until
eleven.”

Alton’s fingers gently caught
her chin. He was smiling broadly when he turned her to face him. “Ginny…think
of what you’re saying! It’s impossible. You must tell them you’re not coming
back. Your work with me is more important.”

“What?” Ginny’s skin flushed
hot and then shivered icy cold, and she could swear she heard her heart
pounding in her throat. She wrapped her fingers around Alton’s and set his hand
back in his lap so she could finish cleaning the cuts. She couldn’t look him in
the eye, so she busied herself dabbing at the blood. “You’re a terrific guy,
Alton, and I know this battle is important, but I can’t quit my job. I’ve been
there for seven years. I’m good at what I do. How do you expect me to support
myself?” She laughed, but she knew he could tell it was forced.

“Why do you worry about
supporting yourself?” He shook his head. “I have money. You said the diamonds
were worth a fortune. We’ll sell them as we need them. Earning money to live on
should be the least of your worries. We have a war to fight.”

She slipped off his lap and
stepped back, out of his reach, aware she was shaking her head so hard she
probably looked like one of those stupid bobble-head dolls. “No, Alton. It
doesn’t work that way. I support myself. I’m in charge of myself. I don’t take
money from a man—not from you, not from any man.”

“I don’t understand.” He
leaned back on the bench and folded his arms across his chest. “You didn’t mind
taking the money to pay for this room. How is that different?”

“This is for one week, Alton,
and you sort of owe me for this one because you’re the only reason I came to
Sedona, remember? One week, that’s all, and I’m okay with that, but now you’re
talking about the rest of my life. If I’m immortal, that’s a damned long life.
I’ve got a job so I can take care of myself. That’s important to me. I take
care of me. You don’t.”

He smiled at her like she was
a complete idiot and shook his head in total denial of everything she said. “In
Lemuria, a man cares for his woman. He makes sure she wants for nothing, that
anything she needs is provided for her. She in turn cares for her man. She
makes his home…”

Ginny slashed her hand through
the air. “…a calm and peaceful place where he can relax. I know. You told me
all about women in Lemuria. Well, I may be Lemurian, but I was raised human and
in our world we’re equal partners—when we’re partners.” She paused and took a
deep breath, spun around, and paced across the room. She really needed to put
some distance between them.

“We’re not really partners,
Alton. I’m not your woman. We hardly know each other. Three days ago, you were
practically a stranger to me. Three days is not enough time to build a
relationship, much less a partnership.”

If she hadn’t been so busy
making her point, she might have been paying closer attention, but it suddenly
dawned on Ginny that Alton had gone very still, that anger practically radiated
from him in waves.

“I see. So, saving your life
doesn’t count.”

She’d never heard his voice
sound so perfunctory, his words offhand yet very precise. He leaned forward and
rested his elbows on his knees, tilted his head, and steepled his fingers
beneath his chin.

Blood continued to run down
his forearm. It soaked the towel in his lap. He ignored it, but she couldn’t
stop staring at that steady stream of crimson blood. Blood he shed from wounds
he’d gotten protecting her.

She stood perfectly still,
frozen in place, feeling smaller and more insignificant with each word he said.

“So…if what you’re saying is
true, then saving your life, making love with you…we were not building a
relationship. Taking you to my home, to Lemuria, sharing the discovery of your
heritage—that didn’t count either, I guess. Sharing your joy when you received
DarkFire, fighting shoulder to shoulder with you against demonkind…not even
when I held your hand and we ran through the rain, both of us laughing.” He
shook his head. “All these things we did together. I must have misunderstood. I
thought these were the things couples did as they built a relationship, as they
learned to care for each other. I guess I was wrong.”

She folded her arms across her
chest so he wouldn’t see how badly her fingers were shaking. Everything he said
made her feel like an utter fool,
which
made her dig
in her feet and defend her defenseless position even more. “It’s not like
anything that’s been going on with the two of us is even remotely normal,
Alton. We’ve been thrown together under such strange, extraordinary
circumstances, that—”

Her cell phone rang. She’d
never been so glad to hear that stupid thing in her life. She clamped her mouth
shut, spun away from Alton, and dug through her pack.

She answered the call,
unbearably aware of the way Alton watched her.
Even more
aware of his thoughts battering at her mind as she kept him out.
Kept him away from all those twisting, screaming fears that were
racing through her mind.

She ended the call and looked
at him. “That was Eddy. She and Dax are waiting in the parking lot at Bell
Rock. I’ll go pick them up.” She didn’t invite him.
Didn’t
want him with her.
Not now. She couldn’t handle it if they were stuck
close together in that stupid little car.

Alton nodded as if everything
was perfectly okay, as if he wasn’t absolutely furious with her. “You do that,
Ginny. You run away and get Dax and Eddy. I will wait here.”

She nodded, a short, sharp
jerk of her head.
“Fine.
I’ll have the front desk send
someone to open up the other half of the casita. That way Eddy and Dax can stay
with us. And, for your information, I am not running away.”

Except she
was.
As fast as she could get her skinny butt out of
here.
And maybe, just maybe having her best friend here to talk to would
help her figure out why she was so horribly confused—and, why the conversation
she’d just had with Alton had left her feeling like pond scum.

It was less than ten miles but
took a good twenty minutes to get to Bell Rock from the resort. By the time
Ginny pulled into the parking lot her head ached and she was beginning to feel
physically ill from the confusing thoughts bouncing around in her mind.

Eddy and Dax sat together on a
red sandstone boulder waiting for her. The first thing she noticed was the fact
they were holding hands. How come Eddy hadn’t had any trouble figuring out her
feelings for Dax?

Ginny rolled to a stop. Eddy
and Dax got in. Eddy took the cramped backseat and Dax filled up the passenger
seat beside Ginny. Any other time she would have been laughing hysterically at
the sight they made, all of them squished into the little car. At the moment,
nothing seemed funny.

“Okay, Ginny. Give. What’s the
matter?”

Ginny glanced over her
shoulder as she backed out of the parking lot and caught Eddy’s eyes boring
into her. “It appears you haven’t lost your touch,” she said. “Later, okay?
We’ve got more important things to discuss.”

Eddy nodded, and Ginny filled
them in on the upsurge of demons in Sedona and the possessed birds attacking
them at the Boynton Canyon vortex. She didn’t mention her fight with Alton. She
couldn’t, not if she wanted her eyes clear enough for driving.

By the time they got back, the
adobe casita already had been opened up to allow access to the second bedroom,
where Dax and Eddy dumped their things. Dax grabbed a cold beer out of the
refrigerator and met Alton on the front porch, but Eddy cornered Ginny on the
small back deck off Ginny and Alton’s bedroom.

Ginny glanced up nervously as
Eddy opened the bedroom door and stepped out onto the deck. She flashed Eddy a
nervous smile. “Where’s the dog?” she asked.
Anything to
avoid the inevitable.

Eddy took a seat beside Ginny.
“She stayed with Dad. She can sniff out demons really well, and we didn’t want
to leave Evergreen totally unprotected. Dad can get in touch with us if there’s
any sign of demonkind around town.”

She grabbed Ginny’s hand and
squeezed. “Okay, now that we’ve got BumperWillow out of the way, what’s going
on? Alton looks terrible and you’re not much better. What’s the matter?”

Ginny opened her mouth, shut
it again, and then took a deep breath. “I’m not positive, but I think I’m the
matter.”

Eddy frowned. “Oh. Okay. That
makes absolutely no sense at all. Explain?”

Well, crap. If she couldn’t
even explain it to herself, how was she going to…?
Crap,
crap, crap.
She dove in. “I’m starting to care about him too much. He’s
making decisions for me, about me, and I’ve been letting him do it. I can’t
stop thinking about him.” She waved her hands helplessly in front of her,
realized what she was doing and clasped them firmly together in her lap. “See?
Look at me! I’m acting all girly, like a nervous female without a thought of
her own. That is not me. I won’t let it be me!”

Eddy’s soft chuckle wasn’t
what Ginny wanted to hear.
“C’mon, Ginny.
Alton’s not
the controlling type. I’ve never seen him do or say anything that wasn’t fair.
Are you saying he’s pushing you to do things you don’t want to do? Has he been
mean or unkind to you?” Eddy leaned forward in her chair and gazed steadily at
Ginny.

It was impossible not to meet
her serious stare. Ginny shrugged. “It’s not that so much, though he keeps
talking about how Lemurian women don’t fight, how their entire goal is to make
their homes a calm and peaceful place for their men. Look at me! Can you see me
playing the little woman, taking care of hearth and home?”

Eddy laughed.
“Not exactly.
You can’t cook and you’re certainly not what
anyone in their right mind would consider the peaceful type. I’d put you over
in the chaos-and-crisis column.”

Ginny leaned back and folded
her arms across her chest. “So, do you see my problem?”

Eddy shook her head. “Not
really. Alton’s not about to insist you act like a typical Lemurian woman,
Ginny. For one thing, he knows you were raised on Earth and
think
like a human woman.
An independent human woman.
Besides, you’ve got a sword. The fact you’re carrying DarkFire means you’re
destined to be a warrior, not a housewife. Even Alton has to accept that. Is he
telling you he doesn’t want you to fight?”

Feeling more like an idiot,
Ginny shook her head. “No.”

“Does he try to keep you out
of danger? I mean, does he get in the way of you doing what you’re obviously
destined to do?”

“No.” Grudgingly, she added,
“He said he liked fighting shoulder to shoulder with me. We fought really well
together today. The birds I told you about? They really cut him up badly, but
he kept them away from me long enough that I was able to close the portal to
Abyss.”

“Wow. Is he okay? I didn’t
even notice he was hurt.” She folded her arms across her chest. “But that’s not
why you’re upset, is it? Ginny, what the hell is really wrong?”

Ginny grabbed both of Eddy’s
hands and squeezed. How the hell could she put her problems into words? All the
fears, the way she’d felt when she realized how badly Alton had been hurt while
he was keeping her safe. Her eyes burned with incipient tears.
Crap.
She did not want to cry.

“Everything’s wrong,” she
said, and damned if it didn’t sound like she was crying. She sniffed and
cleared her throat. “Alton’s wrong. Eddy, can’t you see it? Everything about
the man is perfect! He’s absolutely gorgeous. He’s strong and brave and he
protected me so I could do my job. He made love to me last night and it was so
wonderful. I’ve never felt the way he made me feel, but I don’t want to feel
this way!”

Eddy’s soft chuckle grated on
her nerves. “Ginny, you are not making one lick of sense. The man is perfect and
that’s what’s wrong? Explain. Please. I’m all ears.”

Eddy squeezed her hands and
Ginny felt like an even bigger idiot, but she had to make Eddy understand. “I
don’t want to care about him. I don’t want him to be perfect. Don’t you see?
It’s like I’m getting sucked into a relationship with a man who’s everything
I’ve sworn I never wanted but still everything I’ve ever dreamed about. He’s
arrogant and self-assured. He’s rich and he wants to support me. He expects me
to quit my job and fight demons with him, and I’ve only known him for a few
days. I can’t make decisions like that when I don’t even know him. What if he’s
not really what he seems like now? What if it’s all a lie and he turns out to
be just like every other loser I’ve dated?”

“Alton’s not a loser. He’s
everything you think he is and more. Can’t you trust him? Can’t you give the
guy a chance?”

“I have to be back at work on
Saturday. I’m not ready to quit a job I’ve worked at for seven years after
knowing a guy for less than a week. I don’t want to end up being one of those
women calling nine-one-one because her life’s turned to shit.”

Eddy sighed. She turned
Ginny’s hands loose, stood up, and leaned against the deck railing. “Look…when
I met Dax, I didn’t want to believe he was as perfect as he seemed, but we had
a pretty big problem that had nothing to do with whether I had time to get over
my hang-ups and fall in love. He only had a week before he was supposed to lose
his borrowed body and return to the void. In other words, he would be dead.”

She gazed off toward the
desert. Shocked, Ginny realized Eddy’s eyes glistened with tears.

“I spent half that week trying
to figure out if I really believed what he was telling me, and I almost lost
him. By the time I realized I was head over heels in love with the
man, that
it was worth loving him even though I knew I was
going to lose him, our week was almost over.”

She turned toward Ginny. Tears
fell. They left silver tracks down her cheeks as she softly added, “Then I did
lose him. I saw him die, Ginny. I held his hand. His body grew cold and I knew
he was dead. A miracle brought him back, but during those long minutes, when he
was dead and I was left alone…”

“So what are you saying?”
Ginny crossed her arms tightly, protectively, across her chest.

Eddy brushed the tears away
with a swipe of her hand. “I’m saying you’re a fool if you don’t take what
Alton’s offering you—a chance to explore a relationship with a perfect man.
Don’t waste a minute worrying about what might happen. We’re in a battle that’s
so much bigger than any of us. We’re fighting demons, Ginny.
Creatures
from another dimension hell-bent on destroying not only us but our entire way
of life.
We could all be dead by the end of the week. Do you want to
spend what time you’ve got with Alton debating whether he’s as good as he
seems? Good Lord, Ginny. That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’re smarter
than this.”

Eddy stared at her for a long,
silent moment. “And another thing,” she said. “Alton gave up his home, his
family, his friends—he gave up everything to fight a battle that isn’t even
his, and you’re worried about a stupid dispatcher’s job?” She shook her head as
if she couldn’t believe how foolish Ginny was acting. Then, without another
word, she shoved herself away from the railing and went inside the casita.

Probably in
search of Dax.
Ginny watched her walk away with a terrible ache in her
heart. She and Eddy had been best friends since they’d been old enough to have
friends. They had grown up on the same street. Ginny was two years older and
little Eddy had followed her around like a devoted puppy.

Never, not once in all the
years they’d known each other, had Eddy ever called her a fool. They’d been
through boyfriends and heartache together. Eddy’d been there when Ginny’s parents
died—first her dad from a heart attack and then her mom just a couple years
later from cancer—just as Ginny’d been there for Eddy when she lost her mom.

Like sisters, they’d supported
each other, loved each other, argued with each other, but never once had Eddy
criticized Ginny’s actions. Not like this. She wasn’t sure how to take it.
Wasn’t sure if she should be hurt or thankful that Eddy loved her
enough to tell her the truth.

Knowing
Eddy,
that
was the way it was meant. She was so damned honest she didn’t know
how to lie, but where did that leave Ginny? She couldn’t just give in to Alton,
quit her job, and let him make all the decisions and take over her
life,
because that’s the way it worked. Once a guy was
financially responsible, once he got a woman’s heart, he took everything. She
saw it time and time again.

As a 911 dispatcher, she’d
seen the result of controlling men who became abusive. Domestic violence
accounted for way too many of the calls she handled, and it always seemed to
start when a woman turned over her life to some guy.

But
Alton’s not abusive or controlling. He’s definitely not just some guy.

“Crap.” He was so much more
than that, which was, of course, the reason she was having all this trouble. If
he was just any guy she could walk away without a problem, but he was so far
beyond any man she’d ever known.

He’d already saved her life at
least once, and today he’d ended up slashed to ribbons while he was keeping her
safe. She still hadn’t finished bandaging his cuts, and she knew she owed him
an apology. But she wasn’t going to quit her job. She was going back to
Evergreen on Friday night and she was going to show up for work, as scheduled,
on Saturday at three.

She wasn’t ready for more. She
wasn’t!

Alton was just going to have
to deal with it.

He’d felt Ginny’s confusion
ever since she’d returned with Dax and Eddy, but he had no idea what to say or
do to make things better. Now he sensed her drawing closer, though he couldn’t
read the roiling thoughts that were flashing through her mind. He wished he
understood her better, but obviously something was getting lost in translation.

He most definitely did not
understand women.

Dax gave him an encouraging
smile and even Eddy stroked his shoulder as she walked past him and flopped
down in Dax’s lap. Alton wished he and Ginny had a relationship as easy and
comfortable as Dax and Eddy, but those two had known each other longer.

Almost two weeks, now. Maybe
that was the secret. Did he have to be patient and wait for Ginny to fall as
hard for him as he’d already fallen for her?

She stepped through the open
door and all his patience went the way of demon mist. Nine hells, she was
something. Even standing there looking so confused and unsure of herself, she
took his breath. He’d never dreamed he’d be attracted to a powerful woman, a
warrior as strong and true as any man he’d ever known, but when he saw Ginny
now and thought of how she’d looked in battle today, swinging DarkFire with all
the grace and skill of a seasoned fighter, he’d wanted to pick her up, throw
her over his shoulder, and carry her off to their bedroom.

Which would
probably really make her angry.
Dax had tried to explain what it was
with human women, how their physical strength might not be equal to a man’s,
but their sense of purpose and their desire to control their own destiny was
every bit as strong.

If that was what Ginny wanted,
he’d do his best to comply, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Alton?”

He nodded, acknowledging her
greeting.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Now, this was more like it. He
sat up straighter. “Yes, Ginny?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t finish
bandaging your injuries. If you’d like, I can do them now.” She stood there
with her hands folded in front of her like a rebellious child trying to behave,
and then she apologized for not bandaging his wounds?