Into the Fire
Page 70
Vlad felt my shiver and stopped the police officer nearest us, green-eyeing him into removing his coat.
“Don’t, he needs that,” I protested.
“He’ll get another one,” Vlad said shortly.
From his intractable stare, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. After an apologetic glance at the cop, I put the coat on. It might be frigid out, but this place was now crawling with authorities, ambulances, and fire trucks, so there were plenty of blankets and additional coats for him. Most of the rescue workers spoke Russian or Polish, but from the few snatches of English I caught, they were dumbfounded that the huge warehouse fire had been extinguished without a drop of water being used.
Mencheres had his work cut out for him explaining that one.
We piled into both cars since there was no way all of us could fit into one. We were leaving Mencheres without a ride, but he could either mesmerize someone to drive him back or he could simply fly, which would probably be quicker. Maximus rode with Vlad and me, taking the driver’s seat out of habit, no doubt. Vlad pulled me tight against him when we settled into the backseat. The necromancer was unceremoniously dumped into the trunk of Ian and Marty’s car, and we drove behind them to monitor the trunk in the very unlikely event that the spell broke early and he tried to escape.
The first twenty minutes of the drive passed in absolute silence. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, then made sure not to look again. Every single strand of hair on my head had been burned off, and I was so covered in soot; I looked as if I’d dived into a pool of it on purpose.
Mencheres knows a hair-growing spell, I reminded myself. This was the second time this year that I’d need to use one. Between the tortures, the gas line explosion, the skinning, getting shot, and now this, if my body could talk, it would probably tell me it wanted a divorce.
Oddly, I wasn’t devastated over this loss the way I had been after Szilagyi’s henchman had cut all my skin off. Maybe it’s because this had been my choice versus someone’s cruel whim. In fact, Vlad was probably more upset over it than I was. Not that I could tell from his emotions. He’d concealed them behind the wall he’d dropped into place as soon as the rest of the guys had come into the warehouse.
I didn’t press him to talk. For one, we had an audience, and for another, it might be too soon. I could only imagine how traumatizing it must have been to come out of the horrible memory loop only to find me nearly burned to death at his feet by his own fire.
And it only would have taken a few more moments of my being exposed to that fire before I would have been all the way burned to death. If Mircea hadn’t told me to trick the spell into thinking that it was completed by psychically invading Vlad’s mind and interrupting the loop—
“Mircea,” I said out loud, suddenly sitting straight up instead of leaning against Vlad. “He hasn’t contacted me since we came out of this.”
Vlad gave me an inscrutable look. “Why would he?”
To rub it in that he had helped to save us, to insult me for not thinking up the secret of disrupting the spell earlier, to complain about getting repeatedly torched . . . “To make sure that we’d succeeded in keeping one of the necromancers alive,” I said, going with the most pertinent reason.
Another unreadable look. “Why would he know we’d attacked them tonight?”
“Come on, you think he wouldn’t reach out to me to find out why he was being burned within an inch of his life?” His expression clouded, and I was instantly sorry I’d reminded him of that. “I mean, um—”
“Leila.” Now the look Vlad gave me was jaded, even though his feelings briefly burst their walls to scald me with a geyser of regret. “There’s no glossing over what I did.”
“What the spell did,” I instantly corrected.
His mouth tightened as another, darker emotion shadowed his face, yet when he spoke, his tone was deceptively light. “Of course. Now tell me, did the necromancer who cast it escape?”
A swell of deep satisfaction filled me at the memory of her head rolling down the embankment. “No. I killed her.”
His shields slipped again and I was puzzled by the relief that flowed through our connection before his walls went back up. Gladness I could understand. Hell, if I were Vlad, I’d want to dance on her bones for trapping me in that nightmarish spell. But why would he be relieved by her death? He had to know that killing her hadn’t worked to stop the spell.
Or maybe, he didn’t know that. All he knew since he came out of the spell was that at some point, he’d almost burned me to death. Maybe he didn’t remember how it had been broken, or more accurately, how it had been tricked into stopping itself.
I’d tell him all that later. Right now, we had more important things to focus on.
“I’m going to link to Mircea and make sure he’s still where he was before. It would suck if we went through all this, only to find out that he’d been moved to a new location that our captive doesn’t know.”
I raked my palm across my fangs, cutting a deep line into my skin. As the blood welled, I focused on thoughts of Mircea, summoning his face in my mind and blocking out thoughts of everything else.
Nothing. I frowned, cutting myself again after that wound healed. No telltale haze indicated my surroundings falling away, no thread appeared in my mind so I could pull on it and find him on the other end . . . there was absolutely nothing. It was if my psychic abilities suddenly had an “Out to Lunch” sign on them.
“Don’t, he needs that,” I protested.
“He’ll get another one,” Vlad said shortly.
From his intractable stare, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. After an apologetic glance at the cop, I put the coat on. It might be frigid out, but this place was now crawling with authorities, ambulances, and fire trucks, so there were plenty of blankets and additional coats for him. Most of the rescue workers spoke Russian or Polish, but from the few snatches of English I caught, they were dumbfounded that the huge warehouse fire had been extinguished without a drop of water being used.
Mencheres had his work cut out for him explaining that one.
We piled into both cars since there was no way all of us could fit into one. We were leaving Mencheres without a ride, but he could either mesmerize someone to drive him back or he could simply fly, which would probably be quicker. Maximus rode with Vlad and me, taking the driver’s seat out of habit, no doubt. Vlad pulled me tight against him when we settled into the backseat. The necromancer was unceremoniously dumped into the trunk of Ian and Marty’s car, and we drove behind them to monitor the trunk in the very unlikely event that the spell broke early and he tried to escape.
The first twenty minutes of the drive passed in absolute silence. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, then made sure not to look again. Every single strand of hair on my head had been burned off, and I was so covered in soot; I looked as if I’d dived into a pool of it on purpose.
Mencheres knows a hair-growing spell, I reminded myself. This was the second time this year that I’d need to use one. Between the tortures, the gas line explosion, the skinning, getting shot, and now this, if my body could talk, it would probably tell me it wanted a divorce.
Oddly, I wasn’t devastated over this loss the way I had been after Szilagyi’s henchman had cut all my skin off. Maybe it’s because this had been my choice versus someone’s cruel whim. In fact, Vlad was probably more upset over it than I was. Not that I could tell from his emotions. He’d concealed them behind the wall he’d dropped into place as soon as the rest of the guys had come into the warehouse.
I didn’t press him to talk. For one, we had an audience, and for another, it might be too soon. I could only imagine how traumatizing it must have been to come out of the horrible memory loop only to find me nearly burned to death at his feet by his own fire.
And it only would have taken a few more moments of my being exposed to that fire before I would have been all the way burned to death. If Mircea hadn’t told me to trick the spell into thinking that it was completed by psychically invading Vlad’s mind and interrupting the loop—
“Mircea,” I said out loud, suddenly sitting straight up instead of leaning against Vlad. “He hasn’t contacted me since we came out of this.”
Vlad gave me an inscrutable look. “Why would he?”
To rub it in that he had helped to save us, to insult me for not thinking up the secret of disrupting the spell earlier, to complain about getting repeatedly torched . . . “To make sure that we’d succeeded in keeping one of the necromancers alive,” I said, going with the most pertinent reason.
Another unreadable look. “Why would he know we’d attacked them tonight?”
“Come on, you think he wouldn’t reach out to me to find out why he was being burned within an inch of his life?” His expression clouded, and I was instantly sorry I’d reminded him of that. “I mean, um—”
“Leila.” Now the look Vlad gave me was jaded, even though his feelings briefly burst their walls to scald me with a geyser of regret. “There’s no glossing over what I did.”
“What the spell did,” I instantly corrected.
His mouth tightened as another, darker emotion shadowed his face, yet when he spoke, his tone was deceptively light. “Of course. Now tell me, did the necromancer who cast it escape?”
A swell of deep satisfaction filled me at the memory of her head rolling down the embankment. “No. I killed her.”
His shields slipped again and I was puzzled by the relief that flowed through our connection before his walls went back up. Gladness I could understand. Hell, if I were Vlad, I’d want to dance on her bones for trapping me in that nightmarish spell. But why would he be relieved by her death? He had to know that killing her hadn’t worked to stop the spell.
Or maybe, he didn’t know that. All he knew since he came out of the spell was that at some point, he’d almost burned me to death. Maybe he didn’t remember how it had been broken, or more accurately, how it had been tricked into stopping itself.
I’d tell him all that later. Right now, we had more important things to focus on.
“I’m going to link to Mircea and make sure he’s still where he was before. It would suck if we went through all this, only to find out that he’d been moved to a new location that our captive doesn’t know.”
I raked my palm across my fangs, cutting a deep line into my skin. As the blood welled, I focused on thoughts of Mircea, summoning his face in my mind and blocking out thoughts of everything else.
Nothing. I frowned, cutting myself again after that wound healed. No telltale haze indicated my surroundings falling away, no thread appeared in my mind so I could pull on it and find him on the other end . . . there was absolutely nothing. It was if my psychic abilities suddenly had an “Out to Lunch” sign on them.
