Within the Flames

Chapter Nineteen

Three knocks inside his skull. Eddie felt them like knuckles made of thunder as he struggled to watch Nikola through that terrible distraction.

But it was impossible. His vision wavered, cut with threads of crimson light, and inside his head he heard a sinuous voice whisper:

Do not be afraid. You are in her blood. You are of us now, forever. Dragon bound.

And there are things you must see.

Eddie choked, trying to breathe, but the air was sucked out of his lungs with terrifying force. He found himself falling into a terrible darkness. The only thing he could feel was Lyssa’s hand in his, but even that became fluid and hard to hold.

Until, suddenly, the world shifted again—

— and he found himself kneeling in snow, naked and bleeding, staring at a sobbing girl with golden eyes. Her hands and feet were bound, two obsidian blades digging into her throat. Two women, holding her down, laughing and nuzzling her soft hair as she stared at him with eyes that showed a blistered, burning soul.

Lyssa, he thought, fighting to reach her — but he was bound in place, an iron collar around his throat.

“Let her go,” he said, but it was a woman’s voice that left his mouth, low and quivering with fury. “Let her go. You promised.”

“I lied,” murmured a soft voice. “Blood murders blood. That is how it works. You know this better than anyone.”

“Your mother deserved to die,” Eddie said. “She was a monster.”

“But she was mine.” Pain flashed against his back, making him stiffen with a gasp. In almost the same instant, a hot tongue raced across the wound — and he felt part of himself drift away as though tugged by a string. “Just as you will be mine. . and your daughter and husband, as well.”

“No,” he said, just as the blade sunk through his back, barely missing his heart.

The pain was beyond words — but not as terrible as seeing Lyssa’s tortured gaze — or hearing her scream for him.

For her mother, he realized, and suddenly he could feel her hand again in his, clutched so tight he barely knew where one began and the other ended. Lyssa’s scream clawed through him, changing in pitch from young girl to woman, and in his mind Eddie squeezed her hand until he thought it would break, pulling with all his strength until a hard, warm presence slammed against him — and fire exploded behind his eyes.

When he could see again, he was back in his own body, crouched on the floor beside Lyssa. Hands clutched, white-knuckled, fingernails drawing blood from one another. His head throbbed, lights dancing in his vision, but when he looked up, he saw Nikola staring with hunger and fear.

I’m on fire, he realized dimly, noting the flames crawling up his arms as though far away, distant as a star. Lyssa was burning, too, the claws of her right hand flickering with a golden light that licked the air with threads of hungry fire.

Eddie tried to stand, dragging her with him. From the corner of his eye, he sensed Nikola take a step toward them — and without thinking, he set her jacket on fire.

She screamed, twisting wildly to tear off the burning red leather. Eddie hauled Lyssa across the room, following bloodstained tracks on the floor — guessing, hoping, that it would lead them where they needed to go.

Namely, to where Jimmy’s mother was being held. Though he hoped fervently that the blood wasn’t hers.

Lyssa choked down sobs as they ran. Part of Eddie was still inside that vision, and each time her voice broke inside her throat, some of his heart broke with her. Fire skipped down her body, crossing their joined hands and riding up his arm. Fire shimmered in the air. Fire, in his blood. Rising, rising into an explosion. Not yet, but soon. His control was fraying. No calm. Nothing but thunder in his head and the feeling of a knife stabbing his back.

His life, licked away by a hungry tongue.

No, not his life, he reminded himself. Lyssa’s mother.

“Down,” whispered Lyssa, surprising him. Her tears still flowed, but there was a look in her eyes that was a pure stubbornness, and that eased some of the tightness in his chest that was making it so difficult to breathe.

“Basement?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, and gave him a searing look. “You were there in my mind. I could feel you.”

He knew what she was referring to. “Yes.”

She looked away, wiping her running nose. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“My mother was a good person,” she replied, which under different circumstances might have seemed like a random response — but in this case made sense. Especially given what he knew: truths he had figured out for himself, on top of what Lannes had told him.

“She loved you,” he said.

“She gave herself up for me. And my father.” Lyssa shot him a pained look. “I couldn’t save her.”

Eddie knew there was more to it than that, but there was nothing he could say to comfort her. He hadn’t saved his sister. No words or sympathy would ever lessen the pain.

Ahead of them, the blood-sticky tracks led to a massive oak door that stood partially open. Stairs on the other side. Lyssa inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. Light leaked from beneath her lids.

“This is it,” she said, trembling. “I need to tell you something. About what I am.”

“No,” he replied, nudging her aside as he peered down the stairs. “You really don’t.”

Empty stairwell. No sounds. Eddie didn’t trust it. This had been a trap from the start, and nothing would change that. On the other hand, he had the feeling that both of them were wanted alive. No one went to this much trouble to play mind games — literal and otherwise — just to put a bullet in someone’s head.

Down the stairs, silently. Breathing controlled, and soft. Lyssa stayed behind him, her back pressed to the wall. No more tears. Nothing but cold, sharp stone in her eyes.

They still held hands: wrapped together, anchored. Heat between their palms. Fire, building in their tangled fingers. Eddie wasn’t certain he could have let go, even had he wanted.

Bloody footprints covered the stairs. A trail that led to a dark hall with a stone floor and rough rock in the walls, lit in intervals by track lights that hung from the ceiling. The air was cool and held a scent that reminded Eddie of caves he had explored with his friends: a vein inside a hill always had its own scent, like air was blood and the earth the flesh.

Lyssa pulled back on his hand. “I hear pain.”

Pain. Eddie studied the hall ahead of them, which curved. “What kind of pain?”

“The cutting kind,” she murmured, and edged ahead of him with her right hand held up, palm out, clawed fingers flexing as though she was feeling the air.

It wasn’t until they were around the curve in the hall that he heard the whimpers.

There was a door in front of him, standing ajar. It was as if seeing it opened his other senses: He could hear pain, he could smell blood. He didn’t want Lyssa anywhere near those things.

Not up to you, he told himself, beginning to sweat. She needs to do this.

And he needed to watch her back. No blade was going to touch her. Not while he was breathing. Her mother’s stabbing still made his shoulders tingle, and the idea of anyone doing that to her—

Eddie tugged on Lyssa’s hand and made her look at him. Before she could say anything, he leaned in and kissed her — with all his strength, every ounce of passion he could muster, throwing open his heart.

She leaned into him, her lips soft and hot as she grabbed the front of his sweatshirt. Desperate longing filled his chest — swelling, rising, until it was hard to breathe. He had never felt so lost in another person. He hadn’t thought it could happen to him — not so fast, with such intensity.

Alone, for so long. Alone, with friends. Alone, in a crowd. Alone, in his heart, because some pain couldn’t be shared, much less spoken out loud.

“Remember,” he murmured. “Whatever happens in there, you’re not alone.”

Lyssa loosened her fingers from his sweatshirt. “When you say things like that. .”

But she stopped, and a hard look flickered in her eyes as she looked at that door at the end of the hall. For a moment, Eddie lost himself in memories not his own, and saw knives pressed to her twelve-year-old throat. A chill raced over him.

He heard a low groan, thick and heavy with pain. Dread prickled, a sickening anticipation. The bloodstains on the floor caught his eye. Nikola’s feet had been red and sticky. Walking through that much blood. .

Lyssa took a deep breath and strode toward the door. Eddie followed.

A cold rush of power rolled over him just before they reached the end of the hall. Like water, a river, flowing against his skin. Lyssa glanced at him and pushed open the door.

Blood, everywhere. For a moment, it was all he could see. A small circular room, made of stone, and a floor that was crimson and wet, and reeking of death. He saw lumps in the blood-pool. It took several seconds for his mind to register them as bodies.

Horror wasn’t big enough for what he felt in that moment. Some primal, primitive force clawed through him, tearing at his heart, ripping his soul. He wanted to scream, but his voice wouldn’t work. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t move. Part of him died, looking at that room.

Something moved, on his right.

It was a leopard.

Again, shock filled him. The cat was huge, sitting on its haunches and grooming its massive, blood-soaked paw. Blood covered its entire coat, crimson streaks obscuring its spots. Its tongue made a low rasping sound — though it stopped, once, to stare at him with black eyes.

Lyssa stepped past him, her shoes making squelching sounds.

“How dare you,” she said to the leopard, in a deadly soft voice. “How dare you wear his skin.”

The leopard blinked, and its mouth opened in a panting grin.

Eddie heard another groan, turned — and his heart collapsed.

Jimmy’s mother was slumped against the wall. Head hanging, chest rising and falling. Unconscious, but alive. Seated in blood, though it didn’t seem as if any of it were hers. Hard to tell if that was the truth.

“You’ve grown,” said a rough voice, behind him. “I suppose I imagined you as a child, all these years.”

Eddie turned, and watched as that leopard shifted shape: fur disappearing into flesh, bones lengthening, human features becoming prominent in a feline face.

Lyssa stood beside him, very still, tense, as the leopard became a brown-haired woman: pale and slender, with small breasts and narrow hips, and deep scars across her torso that looked like claw marks.

She seemed very young, hardly eighteen — until he saw her eyes. The pits of her eyes were black as a winter lake, bottomless and cold with death. He was afraid to look too long into that gaze, as if it would consume him — starting with his heart — swallowing his dreams, down to the last drop.

He had managed to push away the crippling fear that Nikola and Betty had tried to infect him with, but Lyssa was right: the Cruor Venator was something else entirely.

Her presence felt like a vacuum, sucking away on the edges of his soul — nibbling and tearing, and tugging with sharp teeth all the bits of himself that mattered. He wanted to scratch his skin and twitch. His heart pounded. Cold waves of power rushed over him, tendrils breaking through his immunity.

It made him sick. Fear crept. He wanted to cringe.

Instead, Eddie forced his spine even straighter and met her gaze. This woman, he told himself, was nothing but another Matthew Swint — a monster hiding in a human shell — and he was not going to be a coward again.

He was not going to be cowed.

The Cruor Venator smiled faintly. “You have balls, young man.”

“Don’t look at him,” Lyssa whispered.

“If I were not too old to breed,” replied the witch, ignoring her, “you would tempt me. I like how you stare into my eyes, as though it is a challenge.”

An imaginary tongue raced across an imaginary wound in Eddie’s back, and he fought down the shudder that crawled up his spine into his throat.

Lyssa stepped in front of him. “You found me. I’m here. I got your messages.”

The Cruor Venator rolled her shoulders, dark eyes glittering. “You’re here, but you’re hardly ripe. Or perhaps you’re far more coldhearted than I gave you credit for being.”

Lyssa quivered. “Ripe.”

“You haven’t killed. I can see it in your eyes. You have not yet embraced your blood,” said the Cruor Venator, giving her a look filled with curiosity and disdain. “Your mother was never so stupid, but we were from a different age. Death was once a quiet thing, as accepted as water and air. To kill was to survive.”

“I survive,” she whispered.

“But you do not live. How many excuses do you need, little one? I show you the wounded body of someone you know. I kill your friend. I threaten the lives of others in your care. I practically give you Nikola and Betty, whom I know you could have killed with just a thought. Indeed, I thought you might have taken Betty’s life. . but alas, no.”

The Cruor Venator smiled. “I murdered your mother and your father. And yet, you still pretend. You refrain from death.” Her gaze ticked left, to Eddie. “Perhaps you are ashamed. Does he know what you are?”

Lyssa tensed. Eddie placed his hands on her shoulders, heat spreading from his palms as he summoned all his strength to make his voice sound steady, and calm.

“She is a Cruor Venator,” he said, too gently. “And she knows she has nothing to be ashamed of with me.”

Beneath his hands, Lyssa stilled.

Then, in a voice that trembled, said, “Why are you doing this, Georgene? Why bait me? Why try to force my hand?”

“Because we’re family,” she said, which didn’t surprise Eddie nearly as much as it should have. “And it has occurred to me, over the years, that it is a sad thing to be the last of one’s kind. I will make no pacts with a demon for immortality. And likewise, no fae would grant it to me. So when I die. .”

“You should have thought of that before you killed my mother,” said Lyssa.

“Your mother,” replied the woman, “had it coming. And if your father hadn’t stolen her from me before I was done—”

The Cruor Venator never finished that sentence. Fire roared off Lyssa, a blast so furious the blood began boiling beneath their feet. Flames engulfed the witch, whose skin crackled and peeled, her hair lifting up as hot air slammed her face.

But all she did was bare her teeth and smile.

“Not yet,” she said, her voice almost lost beneath the hiss of fire. “You’re no Cruor Venator to kill me. Not until you take a life of your own.”

The witch pointed behind them. Tina was still unconscious

“Kill her,” whispered the Cruor Venator, holding Lyssa’s gaze. “Take her blood, then neither of us will be alone. You will be a true Cruor Venator.”

“And me, as well?” asked a soft voice from the door.

Eddie turned and found Nikola just outside, watching them. A blade in her hand. Gaze steady and cold.

“Darling,” said the Cruor Venator softly. “Of course, you.”

Nikola smiled, her feet making sticky sounds with each slow step. “And am I too late?”

“For the killing?” murmured the witch. “No, dear. Not too late for that.”

“Good,” Nikola said, and threw her dagger at the Cruor Venator. The blade sank hilt deep into her throat.

Eddie moved in almost the same instant, grabbing Lyssa around the waist and swinging her away from the witch. He didn’t have to worry, though. Nikola snarled, leaping across the blood-soaked floor to slam fists into the Cruor Venator’s chest.

“Tina,” Lyssa gasped.

Fire filled his hands, racing up his arms as she squirmed away from him, slipping and sliding across the slick floor to Jimmy’s mother. The woman was unbound. Lyssa grabbed her arms and began dragging her to the door. Eddie moved to help her, just as a cold wave of power slammed into him.

It was from the witches, who were engaged in an eerily silent contest of blood and wills. The Cruor Venator made not a sound as Nikola stabbed her, but he knew in his gut that no matter what damage they did. . she would survive.

And then this would begin again.

Without looking back, he went to Lyssa — picked up Tina in his arms — and they ran like hell from the nightmare.