Hearts of Fire

Page 2

It was apparently the wrong thing to say, but then, she hadn’t quite figured out what the right thing to say to him was, whatever the circumstances. His eyes narrowed, glowing menacingly.
“They could try.”
“Oh, they’re going to,” she replied. “See, you may not have noticed, but vampires don’t really enjoy being electrocuted. Strangely, you keep doing it anyway.”
“If some of them learned to keep their opinions to themselves, they wouldn’t need to worry.”
Dru raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I see. What are you, the psychotic Miss Manners of Terra Noctem? People say stupid, insulting things all the time. Ignore it, and you’ll feel better.” Justin helped the vampire who’d been face down get back on his feet. When the unfortunate vamp smiled weakly, smoke coiled from his mouth. Her brother shot Meresin a glare that promised doom.
Returning her focus to Meresin, she was startled by the bleak, wounded expression in his eyes. It vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a snarl as he whirled on the vamps who had slowly, tentatively begun to close in on him. His wings flared, and his hands flexed into claws that shimmered with beautiful impending death.
“You don’t understand,” he hissed, and it took Dru a moment to realize that he was still talking to her. “You have no idea what it’s like for me.”
It shouldn’t have tugged at her heart the way it did. She shouldn’t try to hear anything but his anger—what good would that do? He wasn’t interested in letting anyone in, least of all her. But it didn’t matter how many ways she tried to tell herself that he was a bad idea. Possibly the worst idea in a long life that had seen its fair share. To her, what he said sounded like a plea. He really thought that no one gave a damn about him. And it was true.
Almost.
Dru closed the distance between them with the kind of speed no human was capable of, laying a hand on his arm. She could feel the muscles quivering with tension beneath her palm, the startling warmth of his skin such a contrast to the coolness of her own. He sucked in a breath and tried to jerk away, but she clamped her fingers around his wrist. There was a choked sound in the back of his throat, so soft it was barely audible. His violet eyes were wild as they stared into hers.
“Get a handle on it,” she said softly. “I know you can. Whatever those two idiots said, they can’t hurt you. They’re not worth this. Lock it down.”
He seemed to hold his breath for a long time, though in reality it was likely only a few seconds. Dru refused to break eye contact, silently willing him to put all that anger wherever he usually kept it. They’d done this little dance before, the two of them, but this was the first time she’d actually had to touch him. She had to admit, this was the worst she’d seen him. It gave her a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Whatever was wrong with him, it was getting worse.
When he pulled at his hand again, she let it go, very conscious of the way he rubbed at the spot where her hand had been, as though she’d burned him.
“As you wish, my lady,” Meresin’s silken voice mocked. “Happy?”
She tried to will an equally snide comment to her lips, but none would come. Her palm tingled. Her breathing was shallow. Damn it, he wasn’t the only one who needed to lock it down!
“It’s over, people. Break it up, and go find something else to do!” Justin’s narrowed eyes swept the crowd. Familiar pride flooded her as he flexed his power. He might be one man facing an angry crowd of twenty-five or thirty vamps, but he was the vampire king for a reason. At times like this, her little brother was intimidating as hell.
Justin’s eyes burned a dusky shade of red that glowed like embers. When the vamps in the crowd didn’t immediately disperse, instead either glaring at him or shuffling uneasily in place, he bared his fangs and roared in a voice that echoed throughout the city.
“Go!”
That did it. Some ran, some only stalked, but in seconds the plaza was all but empty. The two vampires who’d incurred Meresin’s wrath straggled along behind the rest, the wet one casting furious backward glances at the still-seething fallen angel.
Justin surveyed the plaza with obvious satisfaction, then spun and advanced on Meresin. Her brother’s expression was one Dru hadn’t seen in a while. Thankfully, it had been even longer since she had personally inspired it.
She moved to intercept him before her common sense had a chance to kick in. Positioning herself directly in front of Meresin, she held out a hand.
“Hold up, Justin. He’s not the only one who needs to cool off for a minute.”
“I don’t need your help!” Meresin snapped. “If he wants to fight me, he can go ahead. He’ll lose.”
That was something she was afraid of, actually, and had been ever since this small group of Fallen had shown up on Terra Noctem’s doorstep. Justin could take on just about anything. But immortal though he was, he had been born a man. These fallen angels had never been human. They were bigger, stronger, and infinitely more dangerous. Especially Meresin. The others cared about saving their own skins, at least, and had shown they could actually get attached to other people, to some small degree. She still wasn’t sure why Meresin had accepted the serpent-shifting Leviathan’s strange offer to escape Hell and do mercenary work for the archangels, though. He didn’t seem to care about anything, least of all himself.
“Dru—” Justin said, but she cut him off neatly as he came to a halt in front of her.
“Uh-uh. You dragged me down here. I did what you wanted. Now you get my invaluable input—let this go.”
Meresin stepped around her, and he was as careful about it as ever. Not even the tip of a feather touched her.
“Why do you always send for her?” he asked. Much of the raw fury was gone from his voice, replaced by weary irritation. For him, that was about as good as it got. He sounded tired. But then, being mad at the world had to get pretty tiring.
“I do it because you actually seem to hear her when she tells you to stop,” Justin growled. “You’re deaf to everyone else.”
She didn’t bother to look at Meresin’s face. He’d either be angry or just disgusted. There would be no breakthroughs tonight where he was concerned. When he spoke again, though, the uncertainty in his voice surprised her.
“That’s…not true.” But there was no force behind the denial.
Dru raised her eyes—even now, she hated herself a little for enjoying the fact that she had to really look up to talk to him—and frowned as Meresin very pointedly avoided her gaze. He was as aware of their odd connection as she was, but he’d never acknowledge it. Or her, unless he absolutely had to.
One of these days, she’d figure out how to quit caring. Unfortunately, today was not that day.
Justin scrubbed a hand through his short crop of dark hair and sighed. Dru shot him a beseeching glance, and he shook his head at no one in particular before addressing Meresin again in a slightly calmer tone.
“This isn’t going to happen again,” he said.
“You sound awfully sure of that.” Meresin had traded anger for contempt, which Dru didn’t find to be a wise decision. Predictable, but not wise.
Justin was unfazed. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had been a warrior himself in the days of Caesar’s Rome, and while he might not stand tall enough to look the Fallen in the eye, he never backed down when they pushed him like this.
“I am sure of that. This is my city. A city you swore a blood oath to protect, not to destroy.”
“Nothing seems destroyed to me,” Meresin said flatly. “Your people are unruly, and so stupid that it’s a wonder any survive at all. I commanded all the aerial powers of Hell, and yet they hurl insults at me in the street. You should hope they learned something: not to threaten me.”
“And you should learn not to engage every a**hole who calls you a name!” Justin snapped. “I can’t keep letting it go, Meresin. Your temper is worse, and my people are the ones who pay the price. Something’s got to give.” He tensed his jaw, glared at him, and then shook his head. “Uriel’s going to hear about this.”
Meresin stiffened, his pupils dilating strangely in the flickering lamplight. His tone, however, was as smooth as could be.
“Tattling to the angelic host? That’s your right, of course. But I expect Uriel will tell you the same thing they’ve said about me for centuries.”
“What’s that?” Justin asked.
His smile was as sharp as a blade, his eyes an abyss.
“I’m far too useful to kill.”
He took two steps back, then rocketed upward with a single flap of his massive wings. Dru moved to stand beside her brother as the two of them gazed upward into the blackness, where Meresin had quickly vanished.
“He sounds like he wishes someone would disagree,” she said softly, the bleak hopelessness in Meresin’s words echoing in her ears. It hadn’t been a threat. It had simply been a statement, and an unhappy one at that.
“I got that,” Justin said, and then blew out a breath. “I meant what I said. I’m going to talk to the other Fallen, and Uriel, if I can reach him.” He focused his deep red eyes on her, and he was no longer the vampire king—just her brother, loving and worried. “I know you have a thing for him, but he’s getting worse. He can’t go on like this. And neither can we.”
“I know,” she said, looking back up at the darkness that concealed the dome of the cavern far above. “I know.”
Chapter Two
Damn her.
Meresin perched atop the roof of a church, just a shadow in the dark. A statue. Sometimes he wished he could find a way to make that happen, to just turn himself to stone so that he could be in the world without wreaking havoc. Stone couldn’t react before thinking. Stone didn’t need to avoid sleep because of nightmares that made it wake up screaming. And a statue wouldn’t be sitting here remembering the feel of a woman’s hand on its skin, wishing there were some way to get close to her without inflicting damage on them both.
Dru shouldn’t have touched him. She shouldn’t have kissed him, either, though he still dreamed about it, and those dreams managed to crowd out the nightmares from time to time. He knew every contour of her beautiful face, though his hands had never touched it—her expressive red-amber eyes, the ruby lips that were so quick to smile, and so unforgettably soft. He couldn’t get her out of his head. Just another little piece of Hell he carried with him, he guessed.
He pulled his knees into his chest, rested his arms on them, and dropped his head wearily. One of these days, maybe he’d figure out why he was so determined to keep living even though it would probably be better for everyone, himself included, if he took a flying leap into an active volcano. He had begged for death once, long ago, and been denied. Begged to live, and been mocked.
Begged for forgiveness, and been answered with silence.
He wasn’t like his brothers. There would be no redemption for him. Only this life. So he would take what he could. His begging days were over.
“Meresin.”
He jumped at the voice that sounded just behind him, though when he turned his head to look he wasn’t surprised to see who had sought him out. A pair of pale blue eyes gleamed in the dark as Levi sat beside him, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the roof. Meresin supposed that if he were anyone’s responsibility, he was Levi’s, if only because it was Levi’s fault he was here instead of occupying some small amount of space in Hell as a pile of ash.
His opinion as to whether that was truly a good thing varied by the day.
“How did you get up here?” he asked. “Last I checked, you hadn’t grown a pair of wings.”
Levi’s expression, as inscrutable as it ever was, changed slightly as he raised an eyebrow.
“I can get wherever I want with a little effort. I don’t need wings.”
Meresin narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to tell me, you mean.”
“No. I’m not.”
He blew out a breath, irritated. “Fine. Say what you need to say, and get it over with.”
Levi said nothing for a long moment, and Meresin continued to stare out over the endless ocean. In the short month since Terra Noctem had come to rest beneath the ground here, this little church by the water had become a favorite haunt of his for one simple reason—no one expected he’d go anywhere near a church, so no one bothered him here. As a bonus, he had discovered that the rhythmic sound of the ocean waves actually helped him center himself, helped some of the pain recede so he could continue functioning. When he blocked out everything but the ocean, he could breathe, focus, and pull some of his terrible power back inside. Power that was always fighting to get out.
At this point, succumbing was only a matter of time.
Levi’s eyes burned into him.
“I just came from a meeting with Justin,” Levi finally said.
A strange sensation, ice cold and dagger sharp, slid down Meresin’s spine at the words. It took him a few seconds to realize it was fear, something he’d thought he was no longer capable of.
This is it, then, he thought to himself. He’s going to tell me to get my things and get out, that I’m not needed, not wanted, and no longer allowed. That I’m not worth the trouble, or the risk, anymore. His chest tightened, making it hard to breathe. His fingers curled into his palms. He’d known this was coming, hadn’t he? But he’d pushed it away.
He no longer called the storm. He’d become it.
When Levi said nothing after what felt like hours of waiting, Meresin finally snapped his head to the side and glared directly at him.