Caress of Flame (2 page)

Isis stopped for gas and went inside the station to buy a Yoo-hoo. She always celebrated a successful night with a Yoo-hoo. She absolutely loved them. It was three-thirty in the morning and there was no one about. It was quiet but for the chirping of the crickets—their last call to mate before cold weather interrupted them. The station was a large one, with bright lights and several pumps. It was situated in a very lightly populated area and there were woods surrounding the store on three sides, giving it an eerie look and feel at such a dark hour.

She made her purchase and paid for her gas, only murmuring when the clerk told her to have a nice night. Isis bent her head so that a fall of hair obscured her face as she walked away. When she exited the station she first heard the crickets, and the wind, which had picked up a little. Beyond that, so faint Isis thought for a moment that she imagined it, came the sounds of a scuffle in the dark patch of trees beyond the reach of the gas station’s overly bright lights.

The last thing she wanted to do was get involved in some kind of gang fight. Were there even gangs here in this unpopulated area? She couldn’t be sure, but whatever they were, the sounds of the battle grew louder as if their fight was bringing them closer to the gas station.

Against her better judgment, Isis walked in the direction of the fight. She didn’t know why she did it, only that she felt compelled to see what all the fuss was about. She approached the border of the trees and stared hard into the darkness.

A bright explosion of fire lit the night sky. It was so big and so powerful that Isis felt the heat of it on her face and felt its wind ruffle her hair. It blinded her for a moment, but when her vision cleared of its dancing spots she made out the form of a man bending over the lifeless lump of his fallen adversary. She couldn’t see the man’s face, it was far too dark for that, but she clearly saw the outline of his body. It was almost as if he had a faint glow about him…or coming from within him.

Isis shook her head to clear it of such fanciful thoughts and watched the man move even closer to the fallen one. With one violent thrust the man plunged his fist into the chest of the unconscious man. It must had taken a superhuman effort to do this, Isis knew, but still she saw him pull the heart from the cavity he’d beaten into his enemy.

With a loud, squishy sound the heart was in his hand, all black and gooey, and then it burst into flame.

She must have made some sound, some movement that alerted him to her presence.

The man looked up and Isis froze. She still couldn’t see his face clearly, but his eyes glowed golden orange in the darkness and he had to stand almost seven feet tall. Isis dropped her Yoo-hoo in surprise and the glass shattered on the rough pavement. The sound seemed to spur the man on and he began to approach her.

Isis immediately turned and sprinted full out to her car. She locked the doors as soon as she got in and cranked the engine with trembling fingers. Isis backed up at a wild speed, not even looking behind her for obstacles. She saw the man pause at the border of trees and she saw that his hair was long—way too long for a man—and dark as pitch. She slammed on the brakes and put her car in drive, turning around in the parking lot at a speed that stunned even her. She pulled out onto the road and stomped her gas pedal to the floor, speeding away as if the hounds of hell were yapping at her heels.

It took several minutes of very fast driving before Isis had calmed herself down enough to go over what she’d just seen. Had the dark man
really
pulled the heart out of the chest of the other? How was such a thing even possible? She’d never in her life seen such a casual display of power. The dark man hadn’t even struggled to remove his enemy’s heart. He’d punched right through the rib cage. It was incredible, but Isis knew what she’d seen hadn’t been pretend. Their battle had been very real, with a very grisly end, and she’d been unfortunate enough to witness it.

The first thing that popped into her mind was that she should call the police. Then her dislike of social interaction made her change her mind. She didn’t want to deal with the police, not tonight, not ever really. Besides, who would even believe her when Isis told them what she’d seen? Isis knew whoever she told her story to would think she’d gone mental or something. If it was a man she told, he’d no doubt think she just had bad PMS. If it was a woman…Isis didn’t know. Should she tell or not?

Not. She didn’t want to be involved any more than she already was. If the dark man could pull the heart from a body then she wanted nothing else to do with him, even if it meant bringing him to justice.

And then there was the fact that she had
seen
the heart go up in flames in the dark man’s hand. Isis had no explanation for that. Only question after question. How had he done it? She hadn’t seen him strike a match or flick a lighter. And how had he held the flames within his palm without being burned? Isis had no rational explanation for these questions and she knew for a fact that no one would believe that part of the story if she told it. Hell,
she
hardly believed that she’d seen it.

Perhaps it had been a trick. What kind of trick she couldn’t guess, but there was just no way a man could do what the dark man had done so effortlessly. No way.

Isis slowed her car, not wanting to get a ticket for her clumsy attempt at a getaway.

She was tired of trying to rationalize what she’d seen. It was over now. Isis was growing calmer. There was no need for her to ever think of it again. Besides, she had another crisis on her hands to worry about.

With that reminder, the letter her sister had sent seemed to burn her from its safe place deep in her pocket. She’d read it over a dozen times already and the words had seared themselves into her brain. Why Maria had gone through such obvious trouble to 1reach her, Isis couldn’t guess. Maria had always had a mean streak in her. Isis knew this well from childhood, when it had been Maria who was the favored child in the family.

Two years younger than Isis, Maria hadn’t been the angel her mother and stepfather had believed her to be. Isis had been blamed for many of Maria’s misdeeds all through grade school—her parents had never even contemplated that Maria might have been at fault, not even once. Isis had paid, and dearly, for what her sister had done in malice.

And this tattered piece of paper, this horrible missive, was just another malicious act in Isis’ eyes.

It was so hard for her to believe the words of the letter. After all the suffering she had gone through while living with her family, Isis couldn’t believe the latest turn of events.

Only two years had passed since her mother had died of leukemia. Isis had found out about her mother’s death through a distant relative she’d met by chance one day in a department store. The news had hit Isis hard and she’d suffered through a bad depression because of it, but this news from her sister made that time of sadness seem like a trip to an amusement park in comparison.

It was a thirty-minute drive by highway to the small house Isis rented deep in the woods. There were no neighbors anywhere close—that was why Isis had chosen to rent it in the first place. But now, as she finally made it home and pulled into her long gravel driveway, it seemed really creepy. She put her car in park and sat for several long moments, staring into the trees that were illuminated by her headlights, before she sighed heavily and finally turned the ignition off, casting the woods back into their natural darkness.

Trying not to admit her fear by running up to the front door like a great big chicken, she slowly took one step after another until she was on her front porch, unlocking her door with purposefully steady fingers. The wind was cool and she realized as the air hit her face that she had been sweating. Wiping a hand over her face rebelliously, she went into the house and shut the door firmly behind her.

First thing, Isis shed her clothes and climbed into the shower, just as she did every night after a show. She wanted to wash away the feel of all those grabbing hands from her skin. Scrubbing her skin raw was the only way she could feel clean on a night like this. And there was an even greater dirty feeling tonight due to Maria’s letter.

Isis thought she’d become numb over the years. But the note had brought out all the old feelings of fear and rage as if no time had passed at all. She felt like she was a teenager again, hiding from her stepfather and dealing with her mother’s bipolar condition every second of every day. It sickened her, this weakness she hadn’t been able to conquer, even after all this time.

How she’d hated her stepfather. How she had loved her mother, wanting nothing but to please her and always failing. She still hated her stepdad—more now after reading Maria’s note—and she still loved her mother, forgiving her for all the hardships Isis had endured because her mother had been mentally unstable. Maria had never been the object of their mother’s rage, only Isis. Even as a child Isis liked to stand on the 1fringe of things, to blend into obscurity as often as she could, especially when her stepfather was around. Their mother had always seen this as a failure in Isis and it still hurt to think about, even now, so long after the horror of life with her family.

What hurt Isis the most was the fact that her mother had gone to the grave without believing the truth. No, her mother had chosen her husband over her child, and Isis knew nothing could have persuaded her mother to believe the truth. Isis had had to leave after that horrible winter night just two days after her seventeenth birthday. Life in her stepfather’s home would have been impossible after the traumatic events of that long-ago night anyway.

The pain of her childhood had shaped her into the loner she was now, and Isis knew it. She hated to hear people blame their parents for their problems, but Isis secretly
did
blame her parents. Or her stepfather, at least. Isis often used to wonder what she would be like today if she’d only had better parents, but she’d long ago given up that path of thought. It did no good to ask, “What if?” What if had no bearing on the present and Isis had eventually accepted that.

Or so she’d thought.

Damn her sister. And damn her stepfather. Isis had left them both behind and never looked back. Why had Maria felt it necessary to tell Isis the horrible news?

Again, though it pained her, Isis admitted to herself that it had been out of malice.

What else could she believe? The contents of the letter were only grisly descriptions of things best not thought about—best not even imagined in nightmares. Isis could have died happily not knowing the news the missive contained.

After her shower, Isis retrieved the letter and grabbed a half-full bottle of Jagermeister from the fridge. She opened the bottle and drank from it, not bothering to get a glass. The liquor burned its way down her throat, filling her mouth with the taste of licorice and warming her throughout. Isis took two more large swallows and sat at her kitchen table, laying out the paper before her.

Isis stared off into space, imagining herself somewhere else,
anywhere
else. Every few minutes she’d take a drag from the bottle of Jager, until her head was abuzz with the warmth of a good bout of drunkenness.

She eventually passed out, her head falling to the table, her face pressed on the rumpled letter. The now-empty bottle of Jagermeister fell unheeded to the floor beside her chair and then all fell silent within the house.

* * * * *

Isis woke up in her bed just as the sun was going down. She’d had strange dreams all night, of men fighting and burning hearts and her sister fat and pregnant with a self-satisfied grin on her face. Isis frowned as memories from the previous night became clearer in her mind.

How had she gotten into her bed?

1“What the fuck?” she asked aloud to no one. Thankfully she heard no reply, imagined or real.

Isis was still in her bathrobe and her head ached from too much liquor, but she was certain to a point that she’d been at her kitchen table when she’d passed out. Had she been sleepwalking? Is that how she now found herself in bed? Isis had never done it before so she didn’t know how to tell if she had been.

Whatever. At least she’d slept the entire afternoon. That in itself was a blessing—

she hardly ever slept a whole day. In fact, she usually lived on a few hours of sleep, no more. Sometimes a sound outside would wake her and she’d be up the rest of the day, checking the locks on her windows and doors, keeping her drapes closed so that the interior of the house was cast in a constant shadow. Other times she just couldn’t make herself sleep, no matter how tired she might be. And when she did sleep it was broken by nightmares and a constant sense of dread, waking her up every couple of hours.

Rising with a wince for her aching head, she dressed for the evening, wearing simple jeans and an oversized poet-style shirt. She took two aspirin for her hangover and made her way to the kitchen. Isis was due at work in an hour and she had just enough time to make a grilled cheese sandwich and some tomato soup and scarf it down. Never in her recent memory had she slept so late as this.

It took moments to grab her purse and her keys and leave, locking the door tight behind her. It was an old habit, even though she doubted there was anyone near who would want to plunder her sparsely decorated home. But then again, one never knows, so she always made it a point to lock up as she left.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Isis clutched her purse to her chest and looked around suspiciously. She had the distinct feeling that she was being watched.

The woods surrounding her house were dark and impenetrable to the naked eye. Isis couldn’t see much of anything, but she still couldn’t shake the creeping feeling that somewhere, eyes were following her every movement.

As she approached her car she could have sworn she heard a twig snap in the woods. She hurriedly unlocked the driver’s side door and climbed into her car. Laying her head against the steering wheel, she gave a heavy sigh. She was growing too paranoid. It had to be because of her sister’s letter, and maybe, just maybe, because of the strange sights she’d seen the night before. Isis lifted her head and slammed her hands against the steering wheel in frustration.