Make Me Burn: Fireborne, Book 2 (29 page)

He smiled. “Don’t make this awkward. I’m not coming on to you. I just wanted to find something out. Some of the tattoos are just ink, but this…” he ran his hand over the scars on his chest, “…this is my armor. The baptisms I was telling you about. The Mayet dwells beneath our skin, concealing us and revealing our future as we watch. As we wait. The Zhaman herself is covered with scars from her forehead to the soles of her feet, but she did it willingly, to watch after the Fireborne line. To observe your destiny.”

She swallowed. “What did you want to find out?”

He took her hand and placed her fingertips on the ridges. She could feel the sand. The small grains beneath the raised skin come alive at her touch and move closer.

“Damn.” West closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “I wasn’t sure that would happen. Can you feel it, Aziza Jane? Like is drawn to like.”

She could. The sand in her blood was drawn to him. An electrical current flowed between them where her fingers touched his skin. A communication, a connection she couldn’t deny. This was more than a zap of static—that small shock she’d felt each time he’d touched her hand or her shoulder. Her entire body was responding to this one simple touch. “How did I not know as soon as we met? Why didn’t it feel this strong before?”

He covered her hand with his, holding her there, his eyes darkening. “You, my freckled Fireborne, already had your hands full when we met. A werewolf who would claim you if he could, though he doesn’t yet understand what you need and you don’t trust what he is. A Jinn who risked all he’s ever known because even death and exile was preferable to seeing hate in your eyes. A friend who’s loved you all your life, who will push his own life and happiness aside to protect you because of
his
destiny. His connection to our shared fate. And of course…the search for your brother and the other vials.”

He’d moved closer, still holding her hand against his chest, when she jerked in surprise at his words and tried to pull away. “You see too much,
Augustus
.”

“I see you, Aziza Jane Stewart,” he corrected. “As I’ve told you, since I was a child, I’ve seen impossibly big eyes the color of sapphires and full of sadness. I used to cry for those sad eyes. I wanted to make you smile.”

Like her old Jinn Qarin. He’d felt sorry for her. She tugged her hand away from his skin and stood. “I don’t need pity from anyone.”

“Compassion isn’t pity.” He stepped away and dropped his hand, and she instantly felt the loss. “There are people around you who love you. People around you who wish to use you. People who fear you. But you are the only one who feels pity for your plight. The only one who refuses to accept the choices you made that brought you here.”

His words were like a slap in the face. The truth. She had been feeling sorry for herself. At all she’d lost…and all she could lose because of the actions she’d taken tonight.

“West, can you see how Brandon is reacting to what I did? What will happen?”

“I told you, my
cousin
works at the psychic hotline.” Aziza looked up at him, her eyes drawn to his somber smile. “In my experience, matters of the heart are fluid. Visions change with every decision we make about love. You have to live it to truly know what’s going to happen. But whatever comes tomorrow, you should take comfort in the fact that Brandon’s decision tonight was obviously made for you.”

“Why are you helping Ram so willingly? Did you know he’d be set up?” She took another sip of her drink, feeling the heat reach her belly and begin to relax her tense muscles.

“I knew bad was on its way. I saw blood, and you and Ram at the center, asking for my help.”

“Did you see Chiye in those visions?”

West frowned in surprise. “No. Aziza, did
you
see something about Chiye?”

Aziza rubbed her aching temple. “I didn’t see anything. I have dreams. I hear things sometimes. The Mayet, I guess. The other day it said, ‘Under the bridge, another will be chosen for the bloodletting. Still another will be betrayed, with no power to resist. Both are the Fireborne’s to protect’.” Her breath shuddered out of her. “Blade was chosen. I had a feeling that she and Chiye were the two I needed to protect. I thought if Ram didn’t play with her then—”

“If I hadn’t refused her so cruelly,” Ram interrupted quietly from the kitchen doorway, “she wouldn’t have left on her own.”

Aziza put down her drink, stood up and walked over to him without a word, wrapping her arms around him. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is.” His voice was grim. “I gave them the opening. I was the hard player with a reputation for being skilled in every brand of kink—including blades. I was the one stepping over the line and wallowing in my role as embittered exile instead of the Qarin at the Fireborne’s side, powers or not.”

It was an opening they’d used not just against Ram, but against her and Brandon as well. It had fractured all of them, separated them and forced her to take sides.

Brandon had known she was going to save Ram. In fact, she had no doubt that he’d wanted her to. But now that she had, she wondered if that was it for them. If there was any way they could be together now that she’d used her Vessel abilities to thwart Enforcer justice and save a Jinn.

Ram took her arms in his hands and stepped back to look at her. “West?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did I hear right? A keeper?”

Aziza could hear the smile in West’s voice. “I’ve always been told
Jinn
have excellent hearing.”

Ram sucked in his lip and nodded, still looking at Aziza. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

“I’ll make us all a tray of food and more drinks,” West said from behind her. “Aziza and I have something we need to do tonight, but you should have enough time to talk before the others come back upstairs.”

Ram took her into the small living room, this one containing none of the toys West’s townhome enjoyed, and sat down beside her on the couch. “We have a lot to talk about, but first you need to know why I went to Underbridge tonight.”

“West said you had to tell me something.”

He nodded. “I was also up in my room, before and after Blade left, screaming at the walls for someone to hear me. To tell Shev I needed to talk to her.”

She reached for his hands. “What is it, Ram? What’s happened?”

His expression scared her. “That is what I need to know. I looked through the bag Shev gave to you and found two things that shook me to the core. A note from my sister warning me about traitors and begging me to stay close to the Fireborne. She wrote it in the code we’d come up with when she was young. The one she used to send me letters when I first moved to the warriors’ barracks. I also found another book. A forbidden book. There is no way Shev would have touched it,
could
have touched it, let alone given it to me.”

Aziza’s head was spinning. “What are you talking about?”

“This particular book is the only one of its kind. It was locked away in a vault over a thousand years ago. I didn’t mention it before because I’d forgotten about it. It was never to see sunlight again, since it contained the most thorough unburied account of the last blood ritual, a story handed down from father to son and printed before anyone knew what it truly contained.”

“And
that
was in your bag?”

When he nodded she swore under her breath. “The Jiniyr have been so determined to set you up as being connected to them, to the first three ritualistic murders, that it makes me think that Shev and I must have been wrong. It can’t just be about hurting me or separating me from Brandon. There has to be more.
Everything
pointed to you. Underbridge, a particular type of girl—with no family to speak of. A particular type of play—knives. And now this book about blood rituals that no one should have, all wrapped up in a bow in your bag. Why can’t they see that it’s too perfect to be anything
but
a setup?”

Ram shook his head. “Whoever put it in there without Shev noticing had to have been someone who didn’t draw suspicion. Someone who knows her. Someone with friends in the highest halls of Qaf. She couldn’t have known—but she must have suspected something was wrong. I believe she must have instructed Hania to write that note. To warn me of her suspicions.” He swore. “If that book were discovered to be in my possession, the Jinn might kill me themselves, and anyone who’d learned of it, whether or not the wolves had gotten ahold of me. But what reason other than you would they have to put me in the Enforcers’ path? I am just a soldier. An exiled soldier.”

“You’re my Qarin. That was reason enough to kill the others.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “But what happened tonight—it doesn’t fit. Brandon said Blade had her throat cut and she was left in an alley. Nothing like the other killings at all, except it still pointed to you.”

“I turned her down,” Ram reminded her. “Maybe if I hadn’t they would have followed their pattern. I made a different choice and they had to change their plans.”

He took his hands from hers and clenched them into fists. “I don’t know, Aziza. We’re missing something. But until we figure out what it is, we must protect the book with our lives. Or destroy it. From what little I read, it is the closest the Jiniyr will get to the perfect recipe for any blood ritual, including soul casting.”

Something horrible occurred to her and she pressed a hand to her chest at the pain it caused. At the panic that seized her. “What if Shev is in danger? Whoever gave her that book might know she was growing suspicious. Might want to tie up loose ends before we can tell her. What if she’s already dead?”

Getting off the couch, Ram knelt down in front of Aziza and tried to reach for her, but she shook her head, pushing him away. “No. I should know what to do. I’m Fireborne. I’m supposed to be justice. People are not supposed to die around me. How do I fix this? Go out into the street and scream her name? Try to force open a door again? I can’t lose anybody else, Ram. Not you. Not Brandon. Not even Te. I can’t do it.”

“Breathe, Aziza. Listen to me. I understand. You know I understand. I never believed I could live without my connection to Shev. My center. The place in my heart where accord is found.” Ram’s gentle, familiar words sent tears streaming down her cheeks. “She was more than family to me. She was a piece of my heart. And when I dove into the water, I knew the instant she’d made her decision to sever our bond. I could feel it as if I’d been gutted. I kept breathing, my limbs kept pushing me forward, but it was like dying.”

He caressed her hair, pushing it out of her face, behind her ears. “For a while I hated you. Hated poor innocent Penn. Hated Shev. I didn’t know what I was. Who I was. I had no direction, or hope that any was coming.”

He laughed. “That’s a lie. I had hope. In you. You never stopped. You didn’t nag or lecture. You didn’t judge, and you certainly didn’t lie and declare your undying love for me to fool me out of the darkness. You took me to your damn circus school instead. You showed up to watch me take out my sexual frustrations on other women. You were just there.”

Ram kissed her forehead so lightly she almost missed the caress. “Then one day I woke up and realized that the pain wasn’t quite as deep. I didn’t hate everyone. Shev is still there, you see. Even though the bond is broken…I’d had it. I’d learned to be a better Jinn from watching her. To look for truth when the lie is easier to believe. To be strong. I’d like to think that I taught her how to be more irreverent. How to laugh, something she never did as a child before our spirits merged. I know, in my heart where our link used to be, that she is still alive.”

Aziza sniffed and bent down to kiss his forehead in return. “I think you’re special all on your own. But don’t let that go to your head.”

Ram closed his eyes as if reveling in the innocent kiss. “If you hadn’t distracted me, I would have come up with a moral to my story that would have tied things up perfectly. Never interrupt a story. We’ll let that be the moral.”

Aziza couldn’t believe she was smiling, no matter that her lips were still trembling. “I think the moral is obvious—love never goes away. As long as we remember it, it exists.”

Now she was quoting Te.

Love never went away, but people did. She didn’t want memories or mental recordings. She had too many of those already. Too much lost love. She wanted the real thing. “The story doesn’t tell us what to do. Doesn’t tell us how to get that book we’re supposed to protect with our lives either. Or the one that tells me what I’m supposed to be doing right now.” She’d left the journal Dern had given her at Penn’s.

“Did somebody order a bag of books?”

“Greg.” Aziza spun around and then ran to him. He dropped the bag and opened his arms, lifting her up in his strong, comforting embrace. Home. His arms always felt like home and family. She needed that now, and he didn’t hesitate to oblige. He never did.

“I’m here, babe. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” he murmured, as if soothing a child. Aziza buried her face in his neck and he rocked back and forth on his heels, holding her close. “I called, and Hillary is at the flat to protect Penn. Devil should be there by now too, since he came in for the party I’m now even
more
excited about going to. And did you know there are tunnels that lead all over town?”

A dainty, feminine hand rubbed small, gentle circles on her back. Chiye. “At least, one that goes back to our place in Soho. We picked up a few things, including Ram’s bag. West said he would need it.”