Pyromancist
Authors: Charmaine Pauls
Tags: #erotica, #multicultural, #france, #desire, #secrets, #interracial, #kidnap, #firestarter, #fires, #recurring nightmare
Seven Forbidden Arts #1
A Novel
by Charmaine Pauls
Published by
Satin Romance
An Imprint of Melange Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Pyromancist, Copyright 2015 Charmaine Pauls
ISBN:
978-1-68046-034-6
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this
book are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover Design by Caroline Andrus
For Tracy
Table of
Contents
Sneek Peak at “Aeromancist: The
Beginning”
PYROMANCIST
by Charmaine Pauls
At the same time as mysterious fires commence
to rage through Clelia d’Ambois’ home village in Brittany, France,
she starts sleepwalking. Daughter of a Japanese orphan, Clelia’s
heritage is riddled with dark secrets that threaten anyone she
loves. In a recurring nightmare she sees Josselin, the haunted man
who abandoned their village nine years earlier, come for her, but
she doesn’t know why. All she knows is that she has to run. As fast
as she can.
Leader of a paranormal crime taskforce,
Josselin de Arradon is called back to his hometown with a
mission—find and kill the firestarter responsible for
Larmor—Baden’s blazing destruction. Sensing that Clelia is the key
to solving the crime, Josselin kidnaps her to use her as bait. The
battle doesn’t turn out quite as he expected. Nothing could have
prepared him for the truth, or the depth of his desire for his
prisoner.
Chapter
One
The dream was always the same. A helicopter
circled in slow motion over the sea, the dynamic of its movement
casting a net of circles over the water while she walked down the
jetty like a bug to a windshield. Around her, the forest bordering
the island was dark, and beyond it, the village was burning.
The helicopter dipped, turned–deliberate
this time–and descended. Lower still. She could feel the wind from
the propeller on her face, fanning the flames. It landed where the
jetty expanded onto the quay. The metal body was motionless, but
the machine continued to cut through the air. Swoosh.
Suddenly it all seemed wrong. Upside down.
She could see the image of the craft disperse, as if she were
seeing it through water. The sea beneath was weightless,
atmospheric. Nothing. There was nowhere to fall. The blades made
ripples in the liquid air, a pebble thrown into a pond. It was
done. The stone had been dropped. The waves had to follow.
She could smell the ocean now, the
fermenting seaweed that broke through the clean scent with every
ebb and flow of the breeze. It mixed with the scent of wood turning
to charcoal in the fire and the diesel from the boats. The hot
carbon dioxide fumes burned her nostrils. Her senses were alive,
indicating it was real, even as her mind urged her to pull out of
her sleep. Yet, she stood watching like a rabbit rendered helpless
by the hypnotizing headlights, its extermination a forlorn
conclusion.
The hatch lifted. A masculine boot was
placed firmly on the wooden boards. The tip of a long coat slipped
from the seat, revealing the dark shine of the man’s pants. He had
to fold his body double to fit his tall frame through the opening.
His black hair, streaked with silver, fell loose down his back, the
ends whipping up around his face in the wind of the blades. Her
breath caught in her throat. It always happened the same way, and
even if she had dreamt it repeatedly, his identity always shocked
her.
Josselin de Arradon. He straightened
unhurriedly and turned slowly, his gaze targeted on her, like he
had known she would be standing there, at the top of the pier, at
that moment, on that day. For a few seconds their eyes remained
locked. She had frozen, and now he started to move. As he walked
along the jetty, his dark coat lifted to his midriff, flying to the
beat of an invisible fan. His hair billowed behind him. After the
terrible tragedy, the strands framing his face had turned white
overnight. His thigh muscles flexed and bunched as his flat boots
hit the ground. His features were older now, mature, but his jaw
had the determined set from his youth, and his gray eyes had the
same haunted look. Josselin de Aragon was coming for her. She
didn’t know why, but she knew it meant she had to run. As fast as
she could.
Clelia d’Ambois woke with a start. Beneath
her, she felt damp earth. Above her, she could see branches of the
giant pine trees holding hands in the light of the moon. A cry
escaped her lips as she shot upright. Snow, her wolfdog, sat beside
her. He yelped softly. A little way farther off, she could make out
the other three wolf hybrids, Rain, Cloud and Thunder, who started
howling when she moved again. She couldn’t tell the
time
,
but morning wasn’t far. The faint
light of the coming sunrise turned the distant horizon purple.
The pine needles rustled as the wind suddenly
picked up. She shivered. Her cotton pajamas were wet from the dew.
She felt Snow’s warm tongue on her arm.
Clelia took a deep breath and lifted her
head. Usually she liked being in the woods before sunrise. It was
like seeing a person who had just tumbled out of bed, with his face
still unwashed, the night’s dreams still in his eyes. But this new
thing frightened her. Her fear spoiled the untainted day’s beauty.
Snow nudged her with his nose. She trailed her fingers down the
white fur of his back.
“Oh, Snow. Not again. How long have I been
here?”
Snow trotted to the outer circle where the
other dogs stood guard. They immediately obeyed their alpha by
falling in line.
Clelia got up and made her way back to her
grandfather’s fishing cottage, her feet light but her heart
heavy.
The cottage stood alone on the French shore
of the Gulf of Morbihan, on the Island of Berder, the Breton name
that meant The Island of Brothers. It was high tide. The sea had
washed up to the stonewall of their terrace. Her grandfather
Erwan’s small fishing boat was gone. He would have left at four in
the morning with the turn of the tide. Beyond the smooth surface of
the ocean, their house rose white against the black grass hill that
would turn a luminous green in the light of the day. It was a
simple home with a kitchen, bathroom, shower and two bedrooms.
Around the back, they had a chicken coop for rabbits, hedgehogs,
and turtles, a shed for Erwan’s fishing gear, and wooden houses for
the dogs. The stray cats slept wherever they could, usually inside
the house, as far away from the wolfdogs as possible.
At the backdoor, Snow sat down on the rock
slab next to the wild rose bush while the other dogs ran off to the
beach. Tripod, a three-legged mongrel, lay in the kitchen on a
cushion by the cold stove. Clelia filled the black kettle with
water and lit the gas for Erwan’s tea. She laid the table with
baguette, butter, and mulberry jam. When the water
boiled
,
she turned off the gas and poured
it over tea leaves in a pot. She first fed all the animals and then
went upstairs to her attic room to get dressed. She washed her face
and brushed her teeth in her ensuite bathroom cubicle. Her
straight, black hair reached her shoulders. She made a braid and
tied it with a ribbon.
She stared at her Asian features in the
mirror, the dark slanted eyes that were too big, dominating her
heart-shaped face and pale skin, and the curve of her eyebrows that
showed just under the curtain of her fringe. She looked nothing
like the Larmoriens who inhabited the islands or Larmor-Baden on
the mainland. Her physical appearance had always set her apart,
reminded the villagers that she didn’t belong. She was an outcast
and people her own age were weary of her. They disliked her, teased
and degraded her, because of who her mother was. Even if her mother
had been dead for twenty-three years, the tradition-fast Brittany
people remembered. No, there was no chance of her being accepted
through the slow process of forgetting. They were a community who
held fast to their roots, who told the same tales their pre-Celtic
ancestors, famous for erecting their standing stones, had. To a
people who had held onto their culture for more than six thousand
years, twenty-three was a drop in the ocean. Only a few of the
older people had learned to live with her, had managed to look past
who she was.
From the window in the tilted roof, she saw
Erwan’s red boat approaching from the east, from the direction of
Île Longue. Quickly, she pulled on denim shorts, a pink T-shirt,
and white flip-flops. She went downstairs and through the
sea-facing door of the kitchen to watch Erwan remove his rubber
boots on the stone steps of their veranda. His boat was already
anchored. He had no net, no crates. He rolled up the legs of his
blue pinafore and left the pipe that always seesawed in the corner
of his mouth in the astray on the garden table.
“Mat an traoú,” he said by way of
greeting.
Erwan still maintained the Breton tongue and
encouraged her to keep the language of the ancient ways, even if
everyone else her age in the village spoke French these days.
“Ya, mat-tre,” she said.
He patted her with a weathered hand on the
shoulder as he entered the house, his shoulders stooped and his
wrinkled face yellow from the long days on the salty water.
Clelia followed and poured the strong tea he
liked into his breakfast bowl.
“You didn’t go fishing
,
Erwan,” she said.
“Nah. I didn’t go fishing.” Erwan placed his
palms on the table and lowered his body with a flinch into the
chair.
Clelia watched him with fondness from under
her lashes. He was getting too old for taking out the boat, even if
he wouldn’t hear anything of retiring. She had never called him
grandfather. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t because he wasn’t her
biological grandfather. She just grew up with his first name always
on her lips. She put the bowl in front of him and waited until he
cupped the warm brew with both hands, sighing approvingly.
“Where did you go?” she said, even if she
knew the answer.
He blew vapor over the edge of the bowl.
“Larmor.”
Clelia closed her eyes fleetingly. “There was
another fire, wasn’t there?”
Instead of answering, Erwan slurped his
tea.
“Which one was it this time?”
He took a while before he answered, and when
he spoke, he didn’t meet her eyes. “The mayor’s house.”
She inhaled sharply. “Was anyone hurt?”
“It started on the kitchen side of the house.
Brendan and Petrounel woke up before the flames got near the
bedroom.”
“And the house?”
Erwan only shook his head.
Clelia took a shaky breath. “At what time did
it happen?”