Burning Alive

Page 9

Logan froze Drake’s progress across the tile floor and concentrated on Helen. He reached deeper into her mind, searching for the source of that fear, seeking out some thin tendril of it that he could follow backward in time until he reached the origin.
Her mind was cluttered with worry, fear. She was terrified of fire. She’d lived through two house fires and had lost her mother to the first one. He saw the faces of many elderly humans—some who were dying, some already dead. Those who remained were the center of many of her worries, but there was one worry that didn’t fit. One that went deeper, that veered away from those faces.
He followed it, letting his mind snake along the path, watching the movie of her life replaying backward at lightning speed. He saw her grow younger, felt knowledge slip away from her. She lost the ability to do simple math, the ability to read, the ability to speak, and yet the tendril continued.
She was tiny now, unable to even roll over in her crib. The world looked huge through her eyes, and the center of it was a woman’s face. Her mother.
Logan stopped, unwilling to go back any further. He had no idea where this tendril would lead, but nothing he saw through her memories now would mean anything. There would be no frame of reference for her to understand what was happening, which meant he wouldn’t either. She had no worldly experience and wouldn’t be able to interpret anything into information he could use.
With a thought, Logan was back in Gertie’s Diner. He let time roll forward, watching Drake’s seemingly unavoidable attraction to Helen. He felt Drake’s desire for her—something beyond mere sex. He wanted something from her even he didn’t understand.
Logan still felt Helen’s fear, but lacing with it was something new. Something pleasurable. Drake was sending streams of power into her without even realizing he was doing it. Usually, releasing power was impossible for the Theronai once it was stored within them. That’s why they all suffered as they aged.They were like walking batteries, storing more and more energy until it killed them, consuming them from the inside out. The only outlet was through their luceria—the necklace and ring combination they wore. Before most of the female Theronai had been slaughtered, each one would choose a man as her partner in battle. She would take his luceria and wear it, linking them together. The necklace served as a conduit, channeling the male’s power into her where she could use it to destroy the Synestryn. A bonded pair of Theronai was a humbling sight to behold.
Logan had never seen anything quite like this power transfer before. Even if Drake could funnel off some of his power into Helen, doing so would have injured or possibly killed any human woman. This was supposed to be impossible.
Obviously that assumption had been wrong, because there was no mistaking what was happening. He could feel it happen from both Drake’s and Helen’s points of view. She was absorbing his power and she certainly wasn’t dead. In fact, she was enjoying it.
Logan felt the spark of a theory forming, but it seemed too ridiculous to even consider. He needed more information.
He moved the memories forward, saw Drake all but kiss Helen, both of them enthralled by their connection. The older lady hit Drake with her walker, which made Logan smile. Something was happening between Zach and a little blond woman, but there wasn’t enough information from either of their memories to put together what it was. Drake grabbed Helen. She fought back and finally freed herself. Drake collapsed in pain and Logan quickly pulled away from the sensation before it could overwhelm him. Logan tuned the pain out and concentrated on Helen. Drake was nearly unconscious and Logan needed her eyes.
He waited until she turned around to look at Drake and stopped the image there. Helen was frantic, worried for someone named Lexi and the old woman—Miss Mabel. He brushed past her fear, trying only to see what she saw without the taint of emotion.
Logan studied Drake through her eyes. He was frozen in a painful convulsion, his body arching up off the floor. Curls of smoke rose up from his hand and neck where he wore both parts of the luceria.
Logan squinted at the image, trying to figure out what was bothering him about it. Besides the obvious smoking flesh.
Then he saw it. Just barely. Helen didn’t know what his luceria was supposed to look like and Logan never paid attention to colors in memories because so many people saw them differently. Because of that, he nearly missed the subtle difference. Instead of being a silvery, iridescent band, the luceria was a mixture of reds and yellows.
The only time a luceria changed color was when it came in contact with a female Theronai.
Helen? No way. She couldn’t be. Nearly all their women had been killed more than a hundred years before she was born, and those who remained were carefully guarded. The notion that one could be walking around unprotected seemed ludicrous.
Logan was stunned to stillness for a moment before he managed to pull himself together. If it was true and Helen was a Theronai, then he had to have proof. He needed her blood.
No way was Drake going to let that happen. Logan knew all too well how protective the Theronai were of their women. Even if Drake didn’t know she was a Theronai, his instincts would still be there—guard and protect, his life for hers.
Logan was going to have to find a way to separate them and not just so Drake could have both hands free for his sword. He needed to get Helen alone because that was the only shot he’d have to get a taste of her blood.
Helen stared at the soothing blue wall in front of her, trying to shed the sickening disorientation that spun in her head. Whatever Logan had done to her, she did not want him to do it ever again.
“How do you feel?” asked Logan, looking at Helen with those too-pretty silvery blue eyes that almost seemed to glow.
She closed her eyes, trying to block out the light in hopes that it would help her spinning head. “Like I just got off one too many roller-coaster rides.”
“That will pass in a moment. And you, Drake?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but it sounded like a lie, making her think he probably felt about as bad as she did. “Did you figure out what’s going on?”
“Perhaps.”
Helen felt Drake’s fingers tighten on her wrist for a moment. “Vague answers are a really unhealthy idea for you right now. Cut the mysterious shit and tell me what’s going on.”
“I have a theory, but that’s all. Whatever it is that’s going on between you, this is the first time I’ve ever encountered it.”
She heard Drake’s irritated sigh and slanted a narrow glance at him. She really wished she hadn’t turned on quite so many lights now. The brightness was killing her.
“Turn out the lights,” Drake told Logan as if reading her mind. Then again, maybe his head was feeling the same way.
Logan flipped off the overhead and both lamps, leaving only the rectangle of light from the bathroom doorway.
“Better?” Drake asked, looking at Helen. He was doing that gentle fingertip caress thing along the inside of her wrist that made it hard for her to think about anything else but the feel of his bare skin gliding over hers. A little shiver rode along her spine and settled low in her abdomen.
She swallowed, which didn’t loosen up her voice, then cleared her throat. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Drake gave her a nod and a wink. “Let’s have it, Logan. What do we need to do?”
Logan propped his perfect butt on the edge of her dresser and crossed his lean arms over his chest. “I think it’s the way you broke contact last time that was the problem.”
“What do you mean?” asked Drake.
“Helen was afraid. Frantic. She was fighting to get away and you were fighting not to let that happen. I think that it was the violence of the separation, or maybe the fact that you didn’t both want it, that was the problem.”
“So what do we do?” asked Helen.
“Take it slower. Ease the two of you apart. Make sure it’s what you both want.”
“It is,” she told them. “I mean, I’m sorry that I hurt you last time, but we really have to fix this.” Before either one of them had to use the bathroom. Wouldn’t that be fun?
“She’s right. We’ve been here fifteen minutes already. Zach will only be able to hold them off for so long.”
Helen felt her shoulders tense. “Hold who off? What are you talking about?”
Drake’s mouth flattened and he looked away as though he wished he had just kept it shut.
“You may as well tell her,” said Logan.
Drake sounded angry, but Helen had no idea why. “The less she knows, the easier the mind wipe will be on her.”
Mind wipe? That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded distinctly not good. “What is that?”
“Can you feel her starting to panic?” asked Logan. “If we don’t explain what’s going on, she’s going to go over the edge and that won’t be good for any of us. We have to tell her.”
Helen was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like what she heard, but she was also sure that not knowing had to be worse than knowing, even if it was terrible.
Drake spat out a single, violent word and scrubbed a hand over his face in frustration. “Fine. We’ll tell her, but I swear to God that if you aren’t careful with her memories, I’ll make sure you remember it for a long, long time.”
Logan smiled at Drake as if he were two years old and he’d just done something cute. “I’ll be gentle with her. I swear it.”
O-kay. This was sounding worse by the second. Exactly what were they going to do to her memories and why was Drake so worried Logan wouldn’t be gentle? Even worse, what would happen to her if he wasn’t? This whole situation was way too messed up to be real.
“She’s panicking,” said Logan.
“I realize that,” said Drake from between clenched teeth.
“I can put her to sleep for you, if you like.”
“No!” shouted Helen, trying not to freak out. Drake was stroking her wrist as if to calm her, but it wasn’t working. Not even those tingling streamers flowing into her were doing any good right now. “No one is doing anything else to me until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay,” agreed Drake a little too quickly. “I’ll tell you. Just relax, okay?”
Relax? Not freaking likely. “Spit it out. Apparently we don’t have a lot of time before they get here. Whoever they are.”
Drake pulled in a deep breath that stretched the fabric of his shirt, showing off more muscle than Helen had realized he had. Oh, man, she was so far in over her head she was never going to get out of this.
“Our friend Kevin was killed a few days ago. We’re going after his killers.”
As revelations went, that was a doozy. He’d lost a friend and she was too wrapped up in her own problems to even think about the ones he was dealing with. Some of the tension drained out of her. “Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, shouldn’t the police be the ones to do that?”
“Not in this case.”
“Why not?”
He took another deep breath and paused as though he really didn’t want to tell her more. “Because those killers aren’t human. They’re monsters called the Synestryn.”