Burning (2 page)

Finn

Seattle is a gre
at city if you want to get lost or blend in even if you normally stand out.  It doesn’t matter how unique you are in a city that is bursting at the seams with diversity.  Your differentness becomes normal.  Walking along the Sound, I was just another leather-clad stranger examining the rainbow sheen of boat pollution around the docks. 

No one
minded the light rain that had been steadily falling all day.  Nor did they seem bothered by the chill caused by being perpetually wet and subjected to a cold Pacific breeze. It appeared that the cure was a strong cup of coffee; luckily, it was available on every street corner.  Man, Chloë would have loved a day like today.

Chloë… It seemed that, no matter how hard I try to leave her behind, she is always right in front of me, taunting me, intriguing me, torturing me.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with her.  If I were being honest with myself, I wanted her so badly that I was physically in pain. 

But that right there
was why I’d fought it so hard.  It felt like being on the edge of something and preparing to jump into…nothing. Everything. And that was the problem.  I sensed that being with her would either be the end or the beginning.  I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, once that line was crossed, concretely—once I’d had her in my arms without hesitation, without interruption—that would be it for me.  Hell, she was already everything to me, and we’d only kissed.  If we took that next step and she didn’t want me, it would end me. 

I
wanted forever with her.  I’d given her as much time as I could, but I couldn’t stay away from her anymore.  As the cliché goes,
ready or not
... She might not be ready, but Dean sure was.  He was beyond ready, actually.  One month away from Anita had
not
been good for him, like I’d insisted. 

Though my hearing
was not superhuman, I could tell that he had begun to quietly growl at me.  It had begun as clipped orders to hurry, but now he was literally growling.  Damn it, I hadn’t decided what I should do. 

Move in with them?  Living with my friends
—that was the ultimate college experience, right?  But living with Chloë?  Waking up in the morning, catching her with freshly scrubbed skin, wearing short shorts and a well-worn (and somewhat see-through) T-shirt? Exactly how much torture was I supposed to endure?  Live together, down the hall, this time without locks… 

“
Damn it, Finn. I can see the wheels turning, but I am reaching my limit.  Let’s hit the road, or I’m going to hit you and throw you in the bed of my truck.  Either way, we are getting the hell out of this rain and I’m going to see Anita.”

I tried hard not to laugh at
Dean, but it was a losing battle.  He had spent nearly a year “waiting” until Anita had decided she was ready to get married.  I didn’t think he had actually asked, but it had been implied.  I’d watched her clothes get tighter and smaller, and still, he kept waiting.  Funny, seeing her prancing and parading had never done anything for me.  Which said a lot.  Anita was hot—like melting.  She looked like a pixie version of Jessica Alba, a tiny, bronze goddess, but I couldn’t even enjoy the view. 

Ever since the first day I laid eyes on Chloë, I just
hadn’t felt the impact of another pretty girl.  God knows I’d tried.  I’d made out with half of the cheerleading squad trying to
see
other girls.  It hadn’t worked.  I was fighting a losing battle. 

“I’m coming,” I responded to Dean. 

“You’re moving in, aren’t you?” he asked, peering at me sideways from the driver’s side of his truck. 

“I don’t see how I can fight it,
” I sighed. 

Dean laughed
. “You never stood a chance.”

He
was right; I never had.  I’d concede this victory. If I got the girl in the end, this was a battle worth losing.  Besides, if I didn’t move in, Grey might, and that couldn’t happen. 

He
was always waiting in the wings.  Just waiting for me to screw up so he could pick up the pieces.  And I was such an ass that I kept giving him chances.  He had been so smug when we’d met up with him in Europe, so confident that everything would work out his way.  Just knowing that he had been her first, not me… I could stake his dead ass. 

“Quit crushing the rail and get in the truck
!” Dean yelled. 

“Sorry,
” I mumbled. 

“Thinking about Grey again?” I could only nod. “Good.  It’s your own damn fault.  He wouldn’t stand a chance if you would grow a pair and tell her how you feel.  You really can’t hate him, because he loves her too.  If it weren’t him, there it would be someone else, and the next guy isn’t going to give a shit about her ‘destiny.’ Remember that,” Dean advised.

“You
’re right, as always,” I grumbled. “I just… What if I can’t convince her I’m serious this time?” I asked, finally voicing my fears.

“You’re an idiot,
” Dean said without looking at me.

“
Why am I an idiot?” I asked, confused. 

“You screwed her over more than once.  Ch
loë isn’t a pushover.  It's going to take work to convince her.  You have to keep trying until she believes you this time,” Dean insisted. 

“
I don’t know if I can risk her rejection.  It’ll kill me,” I explained.

“So you
’re a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Get in or find another way home.  I’ve followed your stupid ass long enough.  I want to see someone prettier than you,” Dean snapped.

Well, I still had two hours to think before I saw her face.  I could pull myself together by then.  If not, well, time
was up. 
Ready or not, Chloë, I’m coming home.

Grey

“Uh…Mr. Grey…
it appears that we are going to be grounded at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey,” the pilot announced over the intercom.

“Exactly how long are we going to be
delayed?  I have to continue on to St. Louis this evening,” I replied, trying not to violently jab the intercom button. 

My
senses were finely tuned to detect the smallest noise, the faintest smell, and the dimmest light.  Right now, I could hear the scraping of skin against skin as he rubbed his hands together nervously.  I could also hear the increased speed of his heart while adrenaline coursed through his body.  Fear hung around him, pouring out from his glands.  I saw a muted light around the edges of the tightly sealed door.  The blue glow and the sound of fingers on a touch screen alerted me to the pilot texting from the cockpit. 

I pushed the intercom button
. “Did you hear me?  How long are we going to be here?” 

“How…
How…long sir?  U-Until morning, I believe.” 

I had to fight back a snarl.  Instead
, I stormed up to the cockpit and ripped the door neatly from its hinges.  “You are afraid of me.  I am a
Watcher
, so you shouldn’t be.  But if you delay me and those I am to protect are injured, you will regret it,” I warned the
Council’s
pilot. 

My fangs extended
. I would have liked to sink them into his flesh, rip and tear until he was no longer obstructing me.  Luckily for him, I had given up such simple and barbaric solutions after the French Revolution.

“Leave,” I ordered in a growl. 

The terrified pilot tossed open the nearby emergency exit and barely waited for the slide to inflate before jumping from the plane.  I examined the controls.  In my long life, I had done a bit of everything, including flying a plane.  Unfortunately, this plane was far from the World War I biplane I’d flown nearly a hundred years ago. 

It took great control to take my cell phone out of my pocket without smashing it.
  I dialed Marguerite’s number and waited impatiently for her to answer.  When she did, I explained what was happening, albeit in a clipped tone. 

She responded in an equally
irritated voice. “I’m making alternate travel arrangements as we speak.  Grey, I am going to have to find another pilot and send the plane to you in the Midwest.  I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to delay.  You are going to have to take a commercial flight.  Do you think you can avoid arousing suspicion?”

“Marguerite,
I’ve been alive for about a millennium and a half. My skin is white as bone and more than twice as hard.  My eyes shimmer in the light like black diamonds.  So no, I don’t exactly blend in.” 

“Do your best.  Sometimes we have to improvise.”
I could practically hear her gritting her teeth through the phone.

Once on the commercial flight,
I’d volunteered for an exit row seat.  There were less people to avoid there.  I sat next to the door and kept to myself.  The only person seated next to me was a businessman.  He was wearing a department-store suit and carrying a generic briefcase.  He set up his laptop on his lap and began preparing a report.  Busy and ambitious, he was completely inattentive to my presence.

I hoped that I might escape notice, but when the flight attendant came around
with drink service, he looked at me for the first time.  His jaw dropped.  The overhead light he had turned on shined off my skin like polished marble.  Chloë had once told me that I looked like David in the stony flesh. 

M
y mouth quirked up at the corner, I felt the businessman’s growing unease, and I was tempted to order a Bloody Mary and really make him squirm.  However, that would have called attention to myself, and I’d been ordered not to do that.  I ordered red wine, which still seemed to make him uncomfortable, but his fear was setting off my hunting urges, and the aromatic red liquid helped to ease them.  I used the wine like a smoker uses gum when they can’t get a fix.

My seatmate
grew increasingly uncomfortable. Perspiration started to bead at his hairline.  I heard his heart rate increase exponentially.  His breathing became shallower, and the smell of fear began to creep through his pores.  My fangs started to extend, itching to puncture flesh. 

I looked the sweating
, frightened lump next to me in the eye and said, “Relax.  I’m nothing to be afraid of.  You won’t even remember me after you get off the plane.” 

He blinked a couple of times and repeated robotically, “I won’t remember you.  I’m not afraid.” 

Good, my
influence
worked—or as Anita liked to call it, “mind mojo.”

My hunger
had been stronger since my injuries last November.  It took a long time to heal from the severe burns I’d received being stranded in the light.  I needed a lot of blood, but I didn’t have to kill to get it.  I could consume bagged blood; I just needed a lot more of it. Most vampires were more dangerous while they were healing from this type of injury. However, I was a very old vampire, and I was able to control my hunger. 

My desire for Chloë was a different matter entirely.  I must not give in
to my love and lust for her.  She loved me—of that I was certain—but I wasn’t her destiny.  Chloë was content to waste time with me—not that she would have described it that way.  I never would have grown sick of her.  There was no point where I would have wanted to get out. 

Chloë
would be completely immortal as long as she lived to gain her full powers.  So mortality wasn’t a problem.  The issue was that she was alive and I was not—not in the same way.  She was everything that was beautiful in this world, and that beauty belonged in the light, not hidden in the shadows. In a few years, she would feel the desire for children like most women do.  I couldn’t give her a family.  Eventually, her longing to have a family would overcome her feelings for me.  She would leave me, and I would be destroyed. 

A stronger man would have enjoyed the time she
had given me and remembered it fondly once she’d left.  I had planned on doing just that, except that every day with her had pulled me in deeper.  I’d had to let her go while I’d still been able to, before my love for her destroyed me, before my need to keep her destroyed her.  Now my only fear was whether I could be near her without breaking or begging her to take me back. 

Anita

I could feel Dean getting closer to the house.  My skin felt hot, and my heart was pounding an uneven rhythm in my chest.  I hadn’t said anything to Chloë or Dean, but I’d felt sick with him gone—like actually sick.  Suddenly, I felt like I was trying to pull something towards myself.  My body knew it was Dean.  My muscles were releasing tension, my heart rate was slowing, and my body felt slightly cooler.

“Are you ok
ay?  You look flushed,” Chloë commented, placing her wrist against my forehead. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.  I…uh…guess I
overdid it with the cleaning,” I lied. 

Chloë cocked her head sideways, studying me. 

“What?” I asked annoyed. 

“You little liar,” she sang.  “Dean is almost here and you are getting all hot and bothered thinking about it
.” Then she winked at me.