Kissed by Fire (21 page)

I had to admit there wasn’t much. Just a
whole lot of frustration. And hurt.

Inigo, on the other hand. I heaved a sigh.
Inigo was different. He’d always been different. Special. It
sounded completely stupid, but he made my heart sing.

Yeah, how cheesy could I get?

I squeezed my eyes closed. If we were too
late, I didn’t think I could bear it.

***

Inigo’s place was a wreck. Either he’d had a
really bad day or there’d been an almighty fight. Unfortunately, I
knew in my bones it was the latter.

The thought drove my earlier chat with Trevor
right out of my head. All I could think about was the fact that
Inigo might be hurt. Or worse.

Trevor had dropped us off before heading to a
meeting. He wouldn’t say why or with whom, but I figured it had
something to do with Inigo and tried not to get annoyed. I liked
things clear and up front. And no, the irony of that statement, in
light of the things I was hiding from my best friend and my new
brother, was not lost on me.

Kabita prowled the living room, her face a
mask. I could feel the anger rolling off her in waves, but
underneath the anger was something else. She blamed herself.

“This wasn’t your fault, Kabita.”

“I should have been here, protecting him. Not
off playing detective.” She picked up a picture frame and carefully
swept the shattered glass away from the photo inside. It was a
picture of the three of us taken the day Kabita opened the
detective agency. We all had cheesy grins and big glasses of
champagne.

Inigo had insisted on champagne even though I
didn’t like it. He’d said a celebration without champagne was like
cake without chocolate. That had been a good day.

Gently, I took the photo out of her hands and
placed it on the mantle. I’d buy him a new frame. “What kind of
trouble is he in?” My voice was quiet, but firm. It was time for
answers and the only way I could get past the terror of Inigo being
hurt was to face this head on. Logically. Go Mr. Spock.

“It’s hard to say,” she sighed. “Inigo is ...
different. Some people don’t like different. Some people exploit
different.”

I figured she wasn’t talking about his
clairvoyance, though there were plenty who’d be happy to exploit
that. Something under the edge of a couch cushion caught my eye and
I crouched down. On the floor underneath the cushion was a stain.
The coppery scent hit my nose. Blood.

“Kabita.”

The minute she spotted the blood, her face
went white. She sat down abruptly on the cushion less couch. “Oh,
Goddess.”

“Hey.” I reached over and squeezed her knee.
“We don’t know this is his blood. He could have hurt his attacker.”
I refused to let my own fear show in my face. This was one time
when the power of positive thinking was the only way to go. At
least until we had proof otherwise.

My cell rang. Trevor. “Yeah.”

“Just had a meeting with my informant. A
woman was seen downtown at the old Hung Far Low building. She had a
man with her matching Inigo’s description. She had him restrained
and was apparently holding him at gunpoint. My informant says
they’re inside the building.”

“How long?”

“Twenty minutes.”

There might still be time. “Where are
you?”

“I’m headed there now. Be there in five.”

“OK, we’re on the way, but we’ll be a bit
longer,” I told him.

“I’ll check things out while I wait for you.
If I need to, I’m going in,” he said.

“Good. Turn your phone on vibrate. I’ll text
when we get there.” I hung up the phone and turned to Kabita.
“Trevor found Inigo.”

“He’s alive?” Her face flooded with
relief.

“He was twenty minutes ago. He better still
be that way, or whoever hurt him isn’t going to live to regret it.”
I felt the Darkness swirl inside me, wanting out. This time I
shoved it back down. The Darkness had enjoyed dusting Bob the vamp
and it wanted to kill whoever took Inigo. It enjoyed killing,
period. What scared me was that I might enjoy it too.

I pushed that thought aside. I didn’t have
time for introspection.

On the way downtown, I was finally able to
focus on what I learned during my chat with Trevor. I tried to get
information out of Kabita, but she wasn’t budging. All she would
say was, “I took an oath.” Seriously, there was way too much of
this oath taking shit going around. The lack of info was rapidly
fraying my temper. How was I supposed to help my friends if they
wouldn’t tell me the truth? And, yes. I know. Irony thy name is
Morgan.

I pressed down harder on the accelerator,
barely making it through a yellow light. I headed over the Burnside
Bridge which spit us out into downtown. To the right lay Chinatown
and the former home of Hung Far Low. The Chinese restaurant was
famous throughout Portland for its rather creative name.

I turned up 4th Street and found a place to
park not far from the former restaurant. Rumor had it they were
turning the place into upscale lofts, but then rumor said a lot of
things. For now it was an empty shell.

I sent Trevor a quick text. An instant later,
he responded and Kabita and I hustled down the block to meet
him.

“Is it Inigo?” Kabita demanded.

“Yes, it’s definitely him. He’s still alive,
but not for much longer. I don’t like doing this without backup,
but they’re still twenty minutes out. We need to go in now or he’s
not going to make it.” His gun was already out.

I didn’t carry weapons deadly to humans.
Other than my blades, that is. A little flame sparked inside me
reminding me I carried a weapon deadly to everyone but myself. I
damped it down. The Fire wasn’t for humans, either, as far as I was
concerned. I didn’t care what it wanted.

Instead I slid my dagger from its sheath.
There’d been no time to head home from the airport, so that was the
best I had.

I glanced over at Kabita. She had a gun, too.
Damn, where’d these people get guns all of a sudden?

Trevor moved to the door which swung open
quietly. I raised a questioning eyebrow. “Already picked it,” he
explained in a hushed voice.

“Is that legal?” I hissed back.

“Why? You going to report me?” The smirk he
gave me was enough to set my blood boiling. I glared at him.

We stepped through the door into what had
once been a large dining room. It was empty now, save for a broken
chair sagging against one wall and a crappy poster with curling
corners lying on the floor.

“Kitchen,” Trevor hissed.

Fortunately, the kitchen doors were those
swinging kind with the little round portholes. I peered through
then sort of wished I hadn’t. Inigo was next to the stove, his arms
stretched up above his head, chained to a support beam in the
ceiling. Additional lengths of heavy chain wrapped around his
ankles and padlocked to the stove.

He sagged against the chains, his face
bruised and swollen, hair matted with blood. I gasped in horror as
a young woman with short blond hair whispered something in his ear
then hauled off with a baseball bat and hit him in the stomach.
Inigo doubled over, or at a least as far over as the chains would
let him. Trevor had to hold me back from busting through that
door.

“Wait, Morgan, we need to go together. And
someone needs to block that back way.”

“She’s going to kill him.” In fact, I was
surprised he wasn’t dead already. I had to fight to keep the tears
out of my voice. “That bitch is going to kill him if we don’t stop
her
now
.” I didn’t know how any human being could survive a
blow like that. I probably could, but I wasn’t exactly human
anymore.

“I’ll go.” Kabita’s voice was colder and
harder than I’d ever heard it, her face grim with determination. In
her eyes I saw murder and wondered if she could see the same in
mine. Inigo was ours. And we protected what was ours.

Trevor gave her a brief nod and she
disappeared out the front door. It would take her a moment to get
around back, so we had to wait. Meanwhile the bitch inside was
going at him with that bat. Worse, I could hear her laughing.

Seriously, she was going to die.

My palms burned with heat and I struggled to
shove the Fire back down. It didn’t want to go, it wanted out and
if I were honest, I wanted to let it out. I closed my eyes, took a
deep breath and focused. Reluctantly the Fire withdrew back to
wherever it lived.

“You OK?” Concern laced Trevor’s voice. I
must have looked like a crazy person.

“Yeah, fine. Just, you know, preparing.”

“Huh.” He didn’t look convinced. “On the
count of three. One, two, three ... ”

We burst into the kitchen. The girl wheeled
around, dropping the bat and pulling out a gun so fast it made my
eyes go wonky. She was too fast for human. Then my brain caught up
with me.

“That’s her,” I whispered to Trevor. “That’s
the girl from the airport, the one who’s been following me around.
She sicced Bob on me.”

One eyebrow went up. Damn, the eyebrow thing
obviously wasn’t genetic after all. “Bob?”

“You know, the vamp that killed me three
years ago.”

“Ah, yeah.” He turned his attention back to
bat girl. “Federal agent. You are under arrest. Drop your
weapon.”

The girl sneered. “Drop yours,
agent
.”
She said
agent
like it was a dirty word. “I’m faster and far
more deadly than you could ever hope to be.”

“That may be true,” I spoke up, “but you’re
not faster than me.”

One minute I was standing next to Trevor, the
next I was across the kitchen with my knife at her throat. It
wasn’t because of the Hunter thing, either. The Darkness had risen
unbidden.

Swifter than the eye could see, she had the
gun pressed to my temple. Shit. Not good.

With a heave the Darkness surged up out of
me. It reached out with my hand and slapped her hand back, sending
the gun flying. With a shriek of rage, she was on me, her own knife
drawn.

We went down in a tangle of limbs and blades.
She was small, but she was strong. Really strong. Stronger than me
except for one thing: the Darkness evened the odds. Hell, it blew
the odds clean out of the water.

I grabbed her by the throat and flipped her
over, smashing her head against the floor. Hard. If she’d have been
an ordinary human, she’d have been dead. As it was, it stunned her
long enough for me to snap her wrist. Her knife fell with a clank
to the floor. She screamed with pain, but it didn’t stop her
grappling for my knife.

Using her legs for leverage she flipped us
both over so she was on top, digging into my knife arm with her
good hand. I threw a punch at her face with my left hand, but she
saw my fist coming and dodged. Her hand pressed harder on mine,
bringing the knife closer and closer to my throat.

The Darkness screamed in anger and for a
moment I pushed back harder, but the angle was wrong. I couldn’t
get the leverage I needed. The blade kept coming closer. I suddenly
realized that Darkness or not, there was no way I was winning this
fight. Unless I was willing to let loose the Fire.

“Stop right now, bitch, or I’ll blow your
head off.” Kabita’s voice was stone cold. Her gun was pressed up
nice and tight against the back of the girl’s head.

The blonde froze, but her eyes still burned
with hatred. Slowly she raised her hands. Kabita backed away just
far enough to let her get up off me. The Darkness had other
ideas.

With a snarl I flipped the girl back under
me. My right hand burned. I glanced down to find it glowing white
hot, fingers cherry red. Fire danced at the tips of my fingers. I
glanced back at the girl and raised my hand. The sneer left her
face and for the first time she looked truly afraid. I lowered my
hand toward her chest as the Fire roared inside me.

“Morgan, stop!” Inigo’s voice cut through the
haze in my head. I glanced at him, confused. “Morgan, we need her.
OK? You have to stop.”

He knew. Inigo knew about the Fire. How did
he know? I glanced back down at the girl under me. She suddenly
looked incredibly young and scared. The glow in my hand dimmed to
orange, then red, and finally turned normal, the Fire slowly
receding as my anger ebbed.

I glanced back up. Kabita was getting Inigo
out of the chains and Trevor had a pair of handcuffs out. He
motioned me to get up.

Dazed, I climbed off her and let him do his
agent thing. She didn’t even struggle, as he snapped the cuffs
around her wrists. I felt like I’d just woken from a dream,
everything felt so out of focus and confused.

I ignored Trevor and his prisoner and headed
over to where Inigo had sunk to the floor. I was pretty sure the
only thing holding him up was the stove. Kabita had found a first
aid kit somewhere and was trying to clean him up.

“Here, let me.” I knelt beside them and took
the kit from her. She gave me a strange look, but nodded and moved
back. I pulled an antiseptic pad from the kit and gently swiped it
over a cut above his eye. He hissed as the medicine went to work
cleansing the wound. “You really ought to see a doctor. She beat
you up pretty good.” Not to mention there were chain shaped burn
marks on his wrist and across his throat. Weird.

“No doctor.” His voice was rough. “She didn’t
do any damage that won’t heal.”

“Excuse me? She hit you in the stomach with a
bat. You could have internal bleeding, you stubborn man.”

“No doctor.” His voice was firm.

I clenched my jaw. I didn’t care what he
said, he needed a freaking doctor. Sooner rather than later. “How’d
she get you in the first place?” I knew from experience Inigo was
not an easy person to sneak up on. His clairvoyance probably had
something to do with it.

“She’s a Hunter. She caught me off
guard.”