Bound by Flame (3 page)

Let’s see if it can eat fire.

She paused as her gaze followed the direction Nick had his weapon pointed.

Aimed at…nothing?

Wait. He was training his gun on—

On a bucket of paint?

Thick, white fluid slopped over the side of the bucket that hovered in midair, right in front of Nick.

Cynda blinked. Smoke rose off her cheeks and chin.

The bucket
floated
in the alley. Red flecks covered the handle and bottom in a pattern just like hands. Nick kept his Glock trained on the paint, clearly intending to pump elementally locked bullets into whatever was holding the can.

The paint can didn’t stick around to be shot.

It flew upward, above Cynda’s head, to the fire escape platform.

She was letting her power build up inside her, trying to get ready for whatever came next, but this was way past wrong.

“Shoot it,” she shouted.

“No.” Nick held fast. “We don’t know what it is.”

“Shoot it anyway!” she screeched over the pounding of her heart. Gouts of flame roared from her fingertips. “We’ll identify it later!”

Nick snarled something unintelligible, and Cynda hated, hated, hated his years of cop training in the judicious use of deadly force. If he had been a Sibyl, that paint can would have been
so
full of holes already.

When she caught sight of Nick’s face, his devastated expression struck her like a blow to her belly.

Nick
never
looked like that.

His hesitation was more than habit. Something was tearing at him, way down deep, and the sight of his pain rattled Cynda completely.

Nick didn’t want to shoot the creature.

The paint can jerked sideways. It soared upward, then turned itself upside down. White paint rained from the fire escape.

Cynda lunged sideways to avoid the bath, but paint splattered her leathers, and she barely kept to her feet. Her mind was still spinning from the look on Nick’s face. Holes opened in her bodysuit as fire spit forward, lashing out at nothing and everything.

Above her, the spilled paint coalesced on a man-shape frozen in defensive posture—and the man had wings. Two sets of them.

Big
wings.

Cynda’s mask burned straight off her face. Before she could finish processing what she was seeing, the empty can clattered to the fire escape, as if an invisible creature had dropped it from above the being now coated in paint.

We’re fighting invisible shit now?

A distinct sound, like wings pumping, came from above paint-thing. Cold swirled down, blasting her face. Whatever had dumped the paint was leaving. She knew it in her gut.

Nick spoke to the winged paint-thing in firm cop-tones. “Come down slowly. My bullets are elementally locked, and I
will
shoot.”

The thing on the fire escape laughed.

A horrible, wicked, grating sound.

Cynda’s skin crawled. She drew a rush of fire energy to her, and flames flared in her palms.

“Come down.” Nick’s words carried a grim finality. “Last warning.”

Paint-thing turned its blank face toward Cynda, and it grinned like a horror-movie skeleton.

“Fire bitch.” It raised one hand and pointed at her. Like a prayer, it murmured,
“Maroídh muidh thú.”

Her heart jerked.
We will kill,
it had said—in Irish.

She needed her sword and she needed it
now
. But the blade lay on the fire escape platform at the thing’s feet.

At the corner of her vision, she saw a new flash of red, this time right beside Nick.

“Nick! Next to you! Shoot!” She leaped toward him, pointing at the flash. “Shoot now!”

Nick squeezed the trigger and she heard something hit the ground not five feet from them.

The flare of red Nick had just shot at became visible, crouched in front of her, obviously injured. Man-shaped. Winged. Like paint-thing.

It stared at her. Not a random glance. A deep, soul-snatching study, as if it had been sent to this alley for Cynda and Cynda alone.

Cynda called a huge ball of fire to defend herself, but the creature blazed a brilliant red, burst into smoke and flames, and rained dirt in the spot where it had been. Wind danced around the smoldering pile, stirring bits of ash into the air. It stank like sulfur, only a hundred times worse.

Up on the fire escape, metal rattled as paint-thing clambered up the stairs instead of descending. When the creature had enough room to spread its wings, it jumped and sailed above their heads like a big malicious crow.

Cynda fired flames at it once, twice. Missed!

That massive sense of wrongness focused in her chest, squeezing, squeezing, until she wanted to shriek from dread. Her fire sputtered. She raised her arms to knock paint-thing out of the air, but her energy was spread in too many directions. All she did was singe the being’s feet.

More flashes of red entered the alley on either side.

“Ambush!” Desperation surged in Cynda’s blood, driving back every bit of pain she’d been feeling. She threw fire, but she didn’t know if she was hitting anything.

Nick turned his sharp eyes on the flashes and started shooting, dropping red streaks wherever he spotted them.

They swarmed forward, blazing in the dark, frigid night.

Cynda’s ears rang and ached as the creatures erupted into spews of dark earth and wind and flames with each of Nick’s well-aimed bullets. She coughed from the stench.

Fear heightened to a whole new level, sending hot prickles over her skin as more and more flashes of red came toward them.

She released a rush of fire energy in all directions, powerful communication, a cry for help swirling toward short-distance communication aids. Wind chimes in Sibyl dwellings nearby, maybe in Riana’s brownstone or the townhouse on the Upper East Side above the Reservoir, where Cynda lived.

Then Cynda gathered her heat. Filled herself with it until her blood, her skin, her mind roared with the force of it. Flames rolled up and down her arms as she raised her hands toward the red streaks, held it, held it—and let it fly.

Fire blasted toward a group of the streaks coming for her. Hit them.

And did nothing.

Nothing!

Shit, shit, shit!

Paint-thing flew over their heads again, and Nick took it down with his next shot. Cynda saw the white-coated creature crash to the ground and explode into earth, wind, and flames.

More flashes of red, and more.

More! Five, maybe six?

She and Nick were friggin’ dead.

Her fire blazed everywhere, hot and wild and absolutely useless. Her clothes burned. Her skin burned.

Nick rammed his empty Glock into its holster and started throwing punches, connecting here and there with the invisible enemies. He lunged forward, then dropped to his knees and choked something Cynda couldn’t see.

If my fire won’t work and I can’t reach my sword—fuck.

Strong fingers closed around her neck as something grabbed her from behind. Squeezed so hard she gasped for air.

She drew her arms upward and swung them back. Her elbows buried themselves in what felt like flesh—yet not—as she socked whatever it was in the gut with all her strength.

The fingers went lax as the thing fell, but it yanked her back with it. Cynda cried out, grabbing for air as she fell. She hit the ground just as something whistled over her head.

Long and wooden, with a sharp point.

The tip’s brutal, unnatural gleam as it flew overhead told Cynda it was elementally locked. Way past lethal for her, and for Nick.

“Spear!” she managed to yell as she separated herself from the wheezing thing behind her.

Nick rolled off the being he’d been pounding and he crouched, looking left and right.

Another spear sang through the alley. Cynda blasted it with a jet of fire and slammed it against the alley wall. The damned elemental locking kept it from burning. She ran for it, grabbed it from the asphalt, spun and rammed it toward the place where Nick had been straddling and beating on the invisible thing.

Pay dirt.

Flesh gave. Bone snapped.

The thing on the ground flashed into view before it caught fire and turned to dirt and ash and air currents.

She yanked the spear free and spun toward another set of red flashes. A spear screeched toward her, just a few feet away.

She tried to swing her stick toward it, but Nick jumped between her and the missile.

The spear caught him in the chest, just below his right arm.

He sailed backward like something was shoving him across the alley, propelled by the force of the blow. His head struck a dumpster and his body slumped to the ground. He lay still.

“No!” Smoke rippled from Cynda’s bare elbows and knees, where she’d burned away her leathers. She struck out with the tip again and again, behind her, above her, turning red flashes into heaps of flaming earth. She kicked what she couldn’t stab, over and over, trying to work her way toward Nick.

Sweat coated her skin. Her chest hurt from breathing so hard. Her arms and legs ached from every movement.

More red flashes came toward her. Too many!

Spear slashes burned into her calf, her arm. Something grazed her side. Yanked her hair. Her muscles sizzled and throbbed from fighting, but the invisible demons kept coming.

A foot closer to Nick. Another few feet. How long had Nick been out? Was he bleeding too much? She was bleeding. Fire crackled from every inch of her body now.

Almost there.

She’d help Nick. Push the spear out of him, use her fire to seal the wound. If she could wake him, he could change to his
other
and heal himself. She had to get there. Had to!

Something brushed past her. She snarled, whirled to stab it, in time to see Nick’s gold chain lift off his neck—then snap. Torn from his throat.

Cynda grabbed for the floating chain.

Nick’s talisman. Without it—

Whatever had hold of the chain didn’t try to dodge her. It let her snatch the thick strand of gold.

Then the being tackled her.

As the thing took her down, she caught the scent of something like a spicy breeze blowing through a Caribbean town. A bizarre flash of thought in a split second.

Cynda hit the alley pavement again. Crushed into it by the thing that had taken the chain. Her head and shoulder slammed against asphalt. Cold agony shot through her joints, her muscles. Her thoughts got fuzzy, but fire blazed along her back.

Whatever creature had knocked her down was already gone and out of reach of her flames.

She gasped for breath.

Through the smoke in the air and the haze in her mind, she saw Nick rising from the ground.

Only he wasn’t Nick anymore.

He was the
other
.

A huge golden god of a Curson demon that would kill and grind and eat and stomp with absolutely no regard to who was friend and who was foe.

Without his chain talisman around his neck—

Red streaks scattered in every direction, running from Nick.

No…not Nick.

They were getting away from the
other
.

Breathe
. Cynda gripped her sides. Blood coated both of her hands.

Nick-
other
started pummeling red streak after red streak before stopping and roaring so loud it echoed down the alley.

Cynda sucked in her breath.

No red streaks left.

All gone. Or dead.

Like she was about to be.

The hulking, golden Nick-
other
started toward her. In his
other
form he wouldn’t recognize her.

Crap!

She held up the chain out of reflex and commanded the Curson demon. “Don’t move.”

Nick-
other
came to a halt. And stared at her. Huge and fierce and angry at being controlled. Energy rippled off the being, pushing at her, shoving at her, challenging her. Daring her to let it take another step.

Through the smeared lenses of Cynda’s goggles, Nick’s golden glow fractured like sun through a piece of crystal. She snatched off the goggles with her free hand and flung them to the ground. Muscles screaming with pain, Cynda kept her eyes focused on the Curson demon and pushed herself to her feet.

“Don’t…move,” she commanded again as she slowly edged toward it.

The
other
’s shoulders heaved up and down with every deep breath it took. The eight-foot golden being’s muscles bulged and she could tell it was fighting against her control.

She eased forward. “Nick, I’m going to put your chain back around your neck.”

More deep breathing from the
other
. A rumble rose up in its chest and her heart skipped at the sound. She was half-afraid her control wouldn’t be enough, and she’d be so much Silly Putty in its big golden fists.

“Nick…” She reached him and raised the gold chain. “Kneel and bow your head.”

The
other
growled, louder this time, and Cynda almost jumped back.

Seconds passed, each one longer than the last.

With a furious snarl, Nick-
other
knelt on the asphalt, still glaring directly at Cynda.

Finally, it bowed its head.

Letting out a painful breath, she draped the chain around his neck. Shaking with a little fear and a lot of adrenaline and exhaustion, she took the broken ends, centered a burst of heat, and melded the ends together.

Instantly, the transformation began, and she stepped back.

Cynda forced her bruised, bleeding body to remain still as she watched Nick’s golden sinew fade into bone, then muscle, then flesh, and finally, back into the human Nick. On his knees on the frozen alley stones, naked.

Cynda sank down in front of him as he stared at her, unmoving.

Every part of her body throbbed, but her focus quickly shifted to Nick, who looked miserable all over again. No, it was past miserable. The man seemed half-destroyed. She knew it was because he had to kill some of the creatures attacking them—yet, it was more, too.