The Flash of a Firefly (6 page)

I hit the first landing and stopped. I was halfway there. Whoever designed such an elaborate staircase needed to be shot. It didn’t have to form a zigzag pattern. The shortest distance from point A to point B was always a straight line. The person must have missed that day of school.

I let out a long breath and pulled myself up the last set of steps. With my bedroom door in sight, I felt a second wind. I lunged forward and shoved the door open. I sank to the floor in front of the black mini-fridge. My hands trembled as I grabbed a bag from inside.

The red liquid slid down the back of my throat in a cold stream. My veins convulsed with the sudden rush, and an icy tingle replaced the burning sensation. The room slowly stopped spinning, and I felt like I was on solid ground again.

I fell onto my back and took shallow breaths. The carpet was soft and plush. I could have fallen asleep right there. My eyelids were growing heavy.
Just a quick nap,
I thought.

There was no time to waste sleeping. I had to think of something to do before Francesca showed up again. I would start by telling Flo. Now that it was a sure thing, I was going to have to tell her. She was going to lose her cool, but the plus side to that was it would make me keep mine. One of us would need to keep a level head.

I focused my eyes on the swirled design in the ceiling and fished my cell phone from my pocket. After countless rings, music blasted through the receiver. I winced against the pain that shot through my head and held the phone away from my ear.

“What?” she shouted into the phone.

“Where are you?” I asked in a shaky voice.

“Out.” The music started to fade in the background. “I’m looking for dinner. Where are
you
? After storming out on me earlier—”

“I didn’t storm out on you,” I interrupted. I took a deep breath and decided to let it go. I would never win, and there wasn’t time. “Are you coming back here or not?”

“What happened?” she demanded.

“Why do you automatically assume something happened?” She stayed quiet on the other end. Of course she knew. She wasn’t an idiot. I never would have called if I hadn’t had a reason. The silence lingered on until I couldn’t take it anymore. “All right, I had a visit from a couple of old friends tonight.”

My stomach tightened up and my body twitched. I still didn’t have enough blood to get worked up again.
Breathe in, breathe out,
I told myself. Remain conscious. Stay calm.

“Friends?” she asked. “What friends?”

“Francesca and Davis.” I groaned in anticipation of the coming tirade.

The phone clicked in my ear, and she was gone. “Bye,” I said into the dead air before letting the phone fall from my hand to the floor. I hoisted myself into a sitting position and ripped off the end of another blood bag.

It was painstakingly slow getting downstairs. I felt like I had just finished running a marathon. Every muscle was sore, and even my bones seemed to ache. But I made it into one of the leather chairs just minutes before the front door slammed shut behind Flo. She stood there in her strangely fashionable silver sequined dress, tapping her heel against the tile. Her arms were already crossed before she uttered a single word.

It slowly came back to me why she was so exhausting to be around. Her temper tantrums and attitude problems could drain the energy out of the room in seconds. She didn’t know the meaning of
tact
, and listening to her was tiresome.

I raised my head off the headrest, but it took too much energy. My neck wasn’t ready to support the weight just yet. I let it fall back onto the cushion and shut my eyes. “Hi,” I managed to grunt.

“What the hell?” Her heels clicked all the way across the tile and then onto the hardwood in the living room. “You call me with news like that, and that’s all you can manage to say?”

“Do you have volume control?” I asked.

She was standing in front of me now, her foot still tapping away. She smelled like beer, cigarettes, and a hint of something sweet. “At least open your eyes and talk to me,” she growled.

“Stop yelling.” I opened one eye just enough to look at her. “There’s really not much to say about it. They’re here to take me back to Spain. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”

She inhaled sharply through her nose, and I shut my eye again. She started in on her lecture, and I tuned her out. There was mention of security and a lot of talk about danger. It all amounted to blah, blah, blah. Once she got it out of her system, we could hold a normal conversation. I was secretly hoping she wouldn’t let me deal with it alone, but I would never ask for her help.

“Kaden,” she yelled, “what are you going to do?”

I used the arms of the chair to push myself up into a straighter position. I looked right at her, with her heavily outlined blue eyes and bone-straight hair, and shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”

“That’s it?” Her hands flailed around her. “That’s your plan?”

It was actually the lack of a plan, but I wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that in plain English. It had been only been a couple hours since Francesca met me on the beach. Before that, it had been just a gut feeling, one I was quick to deny at the slightest hint I was wrong. There hadn’t really been time to form a solid plan. There were two basic ways to go: seek and destroy or sit and wait.

To seek and destroy could mean creating more conflict than necessary. I didn’t want to have to fight them unless I had to. I had left that kind of life behind me. At least I was trying to, but waiting could be dangerous. They would have all the advantage because I wouldn’t know what was coming. I could get caught off guard and end up on the next plane to Europe.

“I’m still debating,” I told her.

I was leaning toward my second option. I was worried. It had taken a lot of time to get to where I was. If I entered into a world of violence again, I might enjoy it. Maybe there would be no going back a second time. I didn’t want to take that chance unless I had to. If I waited and won, great. If I waited and lost, it would be the same as attacking. They were odds I was willing to take. I didn’t want to stay here if I was ruined anyway.

Flo sat down on the edge of the coffee table and scowled at me. “You’re going to let them hunt you down and drag you back, aren’t you?”

“No,” I growled. “I’m not going back there.”

“Well then …” She paused and ground her teeth. “We’d better tell the other two. Your wolves should know too. Phoenix is always looking to make his pack bigger, so they should be careful.”

“They’re not my wolves; they’re Sid’s wolves,” I said flatly.

“Stop trying to change the way things work.” She waved a manicured hand at me. “There is no utopia. New York is about as good as it gets with you in charge, but you can’t change the pecking order just like that. Sid’s already as independent as possible.”

If they depended on me at all, then they weren’t independent. Werewolves were bred for our protection. Vampires had used and abused them since the beginning of time. It wasn’t something I agreed with. The world was different now, and there was less need to have them around. It was about time they broke away from their chains.

“You can’t have everything,” she went on. “You can’t treat them the way you do and expect them to think things are any different than they used to be.”

I scowled at her. “I don’t treat them like slaves.”

“No, but you do tell them what to do sometimes.”

Of course I did. It had nothing to do with them being what they were. If I was stuck running the city, then it was going to be run the way I wanted. Vampire or werewolf, it made no difference to me. They were going to follow my rules and help me keep order, or they were going to live somewhere else.

“Fine,” I agreed. “I’ll let Sid know.”

“The vampires too,” she added.

Yes,
I thought,
them too.

It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it, when Sid and Reece showed up. They didn’t need to come all the way out to Old Westbury. I definitely hadn’t expected them to show up on my doorstep an hour before dawn. There they were though, sitting on my couch, not saying a word.

Sid’s light brown curls were a mess, and there were still marks on his stubbly cheek from his pillow. I must have woken him up when I sent my message. At least he had bothered to change out of his pajamas. Reece was still in black running pants and a red zip-up sweater.

“You could have just called,” I told them.

Reece shrugged. “It’s kind of something that deserves more than a one-line text.”

Flo sat on the couch gloating. She was loving the fact that I was the only one not freaking out, because we all knew Reece was right. But she didn’t know that on the inside my head was spinning, my stomach was in a tight knot, and it was taking all I had not to tear something apart. I was just better at hiding my feelings from the outside world.

“So,” Sid started, “what do you expect from us? We’ve never met Phoenix, which makes you two the experts on what to do. But, if you don’t mind my being frank with you, I’d rather keep my pack off his radar.”

I nodded. It surprised me that Sid hadn’t been scooped up long ago. The master’s werewolf pack was enormous. He collected them like a pet hoarder would collect cats or dogs. If even one whisper hit his ears of a powerful wolf, then a team would be sent out to bring him back.

Both Sid and Reece had enough experience to put them at the head of Phoenix’s pack. During the war, they had both led missions that demolished everyone in their way. Whatever they did to stay away had worked though, because they had never been approached.

There wasn’t a vampire or werewolf in the five boroughs that didn’t have a shady past. All of them were looking for something different. That’s why they were there. Even the monsters of the world didn’t necessarily want to be that way. If I had to leave, it wouldn’t be just my life that would be ruined.

“The plan is apparently to have no plan,” Flo said sarcastically.

“There is a plan,” I sighed. “I just don’t know what it is yet, and to be clear, I don’t expect anything from you. I just want you to be careful.”

“I trust you.” Reece shrugged. “I heard you always kind of made things up as you went along. I just hope it works this time.”

“I trust him too,” Sid commented. “But I’m a planner. I can’t sit here and do nothing, so I’m going to set up a bus trip. I don’t want anything to happen that will cause early transformations. Something tells me that the people within city limits wouldn’t like a bunch of werewolves running around.”

They had monthly bus trips up north. The full moon held no sway, but they did have to change at least once every cycle. If they didn’t, they would lose their control. The younger ones especially had to be careful. Anything too stressful might set them off. If they changed now, the chances of that happening would be lower.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Try to get one leaving this week if you can, before things have the opportunity to get messy.”

“Messy?” Reece asked. “How messy are we talking here?”

It was my turn to shrug. “It depends.”

Flo let out a burst of laughter. “Are you kidding me? Messy? It’s going to get down and dirty. Expect blood and gore and death. Phoenix is always ready to play hardball, and if you’re really not going to give in, that’s what you can expect.”

“Stop being overdramatic, Flo.” I stood up stiffly. I didn’t want her putting ideas in their heads. “Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Flo growled.

As she started in on another long lecture, I said good night to Sid and Reece. I was grateful that they had shown up, even if they didn’t need to. If we could be united, then it would make things easier.

Flo was still yelling at me as I headed for the stairs. I was surprised that she wasn’t trying to physically stop me, but she probably knew better. It was respect, or so I liked to think. There was something to be said about starting battles you couldn’t win.

She would be a tough opponent, but ultimately it would end in my favor. I could only hope that the same thing applied with Francesca. Alone, she wouldn’t be an issue, but that was the problem. She wasn’t alone. Davis was with her, and I was sure there were others. I couldn’t take them all on and win.

I kicked off my shoes and flopped face-first onto the bed. I half groaned, half screamed into the down comforter. I took a few deep breaths and felt myself sink into a fitful sleep.

 
Chapter 6

It had been a week since the incident at the beach, and I was tired of being stuck in the house. The first few nights I spent thinking, really thinking. All it had really accomplished was that I made myself more confused. Countless times I started out to find Francesca and settle it then and there, but I never made it off the porch.

This hesitation was new to me. It was the first time I had been put into a situation where I had to choose between following my nature or following my conscience. This was different from the everyday struggle I faced with feeding. It was much more important than that.