Fire Me Up
Fire Me Up
An Aisling Grey, Guardian, Novel
Katie MacAlister
Contents
Chapter
1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
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13
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14
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15
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16
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17
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18
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19
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20
Chapter I
"You'd think that Hungary would see the light as far as
secondhand smoke is concerned, wouldn't you? I probably lost at least thirty
percent of my lung capacity on the trip from the airport."
I didn't even glance at the massive hairy black form at my
side as we disembarked from the train on a cloud of cigarette smoke. Instead, I
said through my teeth, "Language!"
Two big brown eyes opened wide with surprise.
"Stop it," I hissed, glancing quickly around us to see if
anyone had overheard. We were elbow to elbow with what appeared to be half the
population of Hungary, all intent on going to the same place at the same time as
us. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying attention to a huge black dog and its
unexceptional owner. I took a firm grip on Jim's leather leash, wrapping it
around the wrist on my left hand as I used my right to tug on the big suitcase
on wheels that kept clipping my heels.
"Oh, right, I forgot. Ixnay on the alkingtay. Bowwow. Arf.
Bark bark. Hummina hummina hummina."
I glared at the demon in Newfoundland dog form that stood
beside me as we struggled through the huge crowds at Budapest's main train
station. We moved slowly forward with the rest of the lemmings, part of the
shuffle, stop, shuffle, stop pattern of movement that characterized a large
number of people trying to pass through a narrow opening.
Jim's eyebrows rose at my look. "What?"
"You are talking," I answered, more or less grinding the
words. "Dogs don't talk, so just shut... ?!"
"Well!" Jim sniffed in an injured manner as we
shuffle-stopped our way forward a few more feet. I knew from the experience of
having lived with Jim for the past month that my furry little demon would have
an expression of profound martyrdom on its face, an expression not at all common
to most Newfles but one that Jim had perfected during our relatively short time
together. "That wasn't a direct order, was it? Because you didn't say, 'Dammit,
Jim, I said shut the farking haitch up!' which, of course, is what you normally
say when you want me to shut up. And I know that's a command, because you only
say 'forking haitch' when you're really
PO'd. So I thought I'd better check
whether or not that last 'shut up was a direct order or just a hopeful desire on
your part."
I stood in the center of the Keleti train station surrounded
by hundreds of people—nice, normal people, people who never once thought about
things like demons, and demon lords, and Guardians, and all of the strange
beings that populated the L'au-dela, the Otherworld— and I wondered for the
hundredth time whether if I tried really hard I could send Jim back to the fiery
depths of Hell.
"No," it answered my unasked question before I could do so
much as level another squinty-eyed glare at it. "You tried three times to send
me back. The last time cost me a toe. My favorite one, too. How you can make a
toe disappear right off my foot is beyond me, but the point is that I'm not
going to risk another unbalanced paw just so you can play Junior Guardian. I'm
staying put until you get yourself a mentor and figure out that whole
sending-me-back thing."
"Will you stop answering questions before I ask them, stop
telling me what to do, and above all, stop talking?"
As crowded as the platforms were, the air filled with fumes
from the fast-food restaurants that lined the main section of the station, not
to mention the ripe odor of a couple of hundred people who'd been crushed into a
busy train on a hot August day, as well as the noise those very same hot, sweaty
people made as they tried to escape the station—despite all that, my words
managed to penetrate the miasma of sound and echo with a strange piercing
quality off the tiled walls.
Several heads swiveled to look back at us. I smiled somewhat
grimly at all of them. A hurt look filled Jim's brown eyes as it sniffed, with
studied indifference, the butts of the man and woman in front of us.
We shuffled forward another few feet.
"So, that was an order?"
I sighed, my shoulders slumping in defeat. I was hot, tired,
jet-lagged from the flight from Portland to Amsterdam to Budapest, and to be
honest, Jim's presence—although annoying in many ways—was more than a little
reassuring considering just who else was occupying the same continent on which I
now found myself.
The memory of glittering green eyes filled with smoky desire
rose with no difficulty to dance before me but was squelched with a much greater
effort. "No, it's not an order," I said softly. "At least not until we're
through this crowd. I doubt if anyone can even see you, let alone notice that
your mouth is moving."
"I told you to get me that ventriloquist tape I saw on TV."
The mass of humanity rippled forward, then halted again. I
stood on my tiptoes and peered around the big sun hat of the woman in front of
me and caught sight of what was holding us up. At the far end of the platform,
where the passage narrowed to one open exit to the taxi ranks and passenger
pickup areas, several men in security uniforms had stopped the crowd as a couple
of VIPs were escorted off the train.
"What is it?" Jim asked. "Dead body? Someone throw himself in
front of the train? Are there splattered body parts everywhere? Did you remember
to bring your digital camera?"
"You are a sick, sick demon. There are no body parts,
splattered or otherwise. It's just"—I craned my neck— "just a woman and a couple
of guys in really expensive-looking designer clothes. They're probably movie
stars or politicians or something," The crowd shimmered as a second exit was
opened up, the mass of travelers undergoing mitosis as one part of the crowd
headed for the new exit. Sweat trickled down my back, dampening the tendrils of
hair that had escaped my ponytail until they clung to my neck. T was starting to
get light-headed from the heat, the pressure of so many bodies, and the lack of
sleep during the twelve hours it had taken to get from Portland to Budapest. I
had to get out of there.
"Come on. I think I see a break." I pushed Jim toward the
slight opening next to a couple of kids decked out in Goth gear who were sucking
the tongues out of each other's head, jerking the suitcase behind me,
apologizing under my breath as I jostled elbows, backs, and sides and squished
forward. "Why I thought coming here was such a good idea is beyond me."
"Makes sense to me," Jim answered a bit distractedly as it
smelled people, luggage, and the litter on the ground with the same unbiased
interest. The crowd thinned dramatically as people scattered once they made it
past the bottleneck of the exit. "You need training. Budapest is where it's
happening. Hey, when are we going to eat?"
"I could have had a nice vacation in the Bahamas, but oh, no,
I had to come—" My feet stopped moving. They simply stopped moving as my eyes
bugged out of my head, my heart ceased beating, and my brain, usually a reliable
and trustworthy organ, came to an abrupt and grinding halt. With no obstructing
crowd remaining, the group of people standing just outside the floor-to-ceiling
glass windows on the west side of the train station was perfectly visible to me.
Jim stopped and looked back at me, one furry black eyebrow
cocked in question at my abbreviated statement. "You aren't using crude sexual
slang, are you? No, you can't be, because I know for a fact you haven't been
get-tin' any since we left Paris."
Slowly, I blinked to make sure I wasn't seeing things, my
stomach turning somersaults, my whole being riveted on the scene just outside
the station.
Jim turned to see what held me in such thrall. "Wow. Talk
about speaking of the great horned one. I must be psychic or something. What's
he doing in Budapest?"
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It just hurt, period. I
felt like someone had used me as a punching bag for a few hours, every atom of
my body pulled so tight I thought T was going to explode into a million little
pieces.
Outside the window a small clutch of people stood before a
long, glistening black limousine, evidently there to welcome the VIPs from the
train. They consisted of three men and one woman—all Asian, all dressed in red
and black. The men wore black slacks with open-necked shirts in different shades
of red, while the woman looked as if she'd just stepped from the cover of
Beijing Vogue. She was tall and willowy, had long, straight glossy black hair
that reached to her waist, wore a black miniskirt and a red leather bustier, all
carried off with an effortless grace that spoke of years spent in expensive
Swiss finishing schools.
But it was one of the men greeting the VIPs who caught and
held my attention. The wind rippled the dark forest green silk of his shirt so
that it outlined the lovely curves of his muscular chest and arms. That same
wind was responsible for his dark hair, longer than I had remembered it,
ruffling back off a brow graced by two ebony slashes that were his eyebrows.
Despite the heat of the August afternoon, he wore leather pants—tight leather
pants—the garment glistening in the sun as if it had been painted on his long
legs and adorable derriere as he made a courtly bow to the VIPs.
"Drake," I said on a breath, my body suddenly tingling as if
it was coming to life after a long, long sleep. Even his name left my lips
sensitized, the sound of that one word strange after its banishment from my life
four weeks ago.
Four weeks? It seemed more like a lifetime.
Jim gave me a long, appraising look. "You're not going to go
all Buffy/Angel on me, are you? Mooning around bemoaning the forbidden love that
cannot be? Because if you are, I'm finding myself a new demon lord. Love I can
take, but mooning is not in my contract."
I started toward the window, unable to help myself, my body
suddenly a mass of erogenous zones that wanted more than anything on this earth
to place itself in Drake's hands. His lovely long-fingered, extremely talented
hands.
"Aisling Grey."
The sound of my name brought me out of the trance. I
swallowed hard and looked around, my mind a muddle of desire and lust and erotic
memories that damn near brought me to my knees. Names, as I have had opportunity
to point out, have power, and Jim's invoking my name had the ability to snap me
out of something I had spent every night praying for strength against.
"Thanks, Jim." Slowly I gathered my wits and determination,
thankful that in the hustle and bustle of the train station no one had noticed a
deranged, lust-crazed woman and her demon in talking-dog form. "I don't quite
know what came over me."
It raised an expressive eyebrow. "I know."
I dragged my eyes from the sight of Drake and his men waving
the VIPs toward the limo. I hauled my wheeled suitcase forward and out the doors,
purposely turning my back to the scene that had held such interest, Jim pacing
silently beside me. "I'm OK now. It was just a little aberration. I told you
when we left Paris that things between Drake and me were over. It just took me
by surprise seeing him here, in Budapest. I had assumed he'd still be in
France." Safe. Several hundreds of miles away. In a completely different
country, living out his life without me.
"Uh-huh. Right. Tell it to the tail, Aisling."