Fireborn (3 page)

I walked across to him. Ashes or not, he still resembled the man I'd never get over—not in this lifetime, anyway—and it was hard not to lean into him. Hard not to give in to the desire to kiss him good-bye, just one more time.

“I'm one of them, remember?” Bitterness crept into my voice. “One of the monsters. And I'm more than capable of looking after myself.”

He snorted softly, the sound harsh. “Not in this damn area, and maybe not against the—”

“I got in here without harm,” I cut in, voice as cold as his, “and I'll damn well get out the same way.”

“Fine.” He stepped aside and waved me forward with the barrel of the gun. “Be my guest.”

I looked at him for a moment longer, then walked toward the door. But as I neared it, I hesitated and turned around. “I don't know what has happened to you, Sam Turner, but I'm mighty glad you're no longer in my life.”

And with that lie lingering in the air, I left him to his bitterness and shadows and went home.

T
he harsh sound of the alarm's buzzer woke me just over six hours later. I opened a bleary eye and glared at the alarm balefully, but it didn't take the hint and mute of its own accord. I slapped the stop button, then rolled onto my back with a groan. The already-tangled sheets twisted around me further, tugging free from the bed to expose my toes to the cool morning air.

But cold toes were the least of my worries, because my arm still hurt and I felt like shit. I had fallen into bed not long after two, but sleep had been elusive and my dreams were filled with blue eyes that were far too shadowed and filled with death. Death that would step my way if I wasn't very careful.

Despite the warning the dreams had contained, the desire to find out what had happened to Sam rose like a ghost, insubstantial and fleeting. I shoved it back in its box. Dreams aside, I couldn't afford any sort of curiosity about either him or the red cloaks. He'd made it abundantly clear what would happen if I did.

And why would I bother anyway? He'd told
me long ago that he wanted me out of his life forever, and nothing I'd seen last night indicated he'd changed his mind. I was still a monster in his eyes, still someone he believed should be dead rather than living and breathing the same air as him.

I don't know why I'd hoped for anything else.

I flung my good arm over my eyes, not ready to get up and face the world just yet. In the city streets far below our apartment, trams rattled and groaned, and the gentle hum of traffic mingled with the harsh cry of the gulls circling the nearby quay. A gentle breeze stirred past my toes, chilling them even further. Rory had obviously left the balcony doors open again.

I couldn't hear him in the kitchen, though, and I should have, given he was on morning shift at the fire station.

I tugged the sheets away from my limbs and climbed out of bed. The cool air hit my skin like ice. I shivered and grabbed a dressing gown, pulling it on as I walked across the hall to Rory's room. As I suspected, he was still asleep, sprawled naked and belly down on his bed, the blankets covering his butt and little else. But the air in his room held little of the chill that had greeted me, meaning he was in a deep enough sleep that caution had fallen by the wayside and instinct had taken over. He was radiating enough heat to warm not just his body, but the entire room.

“Hey!” I lightly kicked the foot hanging off the end of the bed. “Time to get ready for work.”

He didn't respond, so I kicked the foot again. This time he muttered something I suspected wasn't polite. I grinned and kicked him a little harder. He grunted, and this time the muttering was definitely a word. “Bitch,” to be precise.

“You're on morning shift, remember, and your captain
did
warn you last week not to be late again.”

He rolled over onto his back, and the rest of the blankets slipped from the bed onto the floor. He worked out in the gym and ran around the nearby Tan Track—a 3.8-kilometer stone aggregate track around the beautiful Botanic Gardens—so he was slender but well toned, with long, lean legs, a flat stomach, broad shoulders, and well-defined arms.

And he was, I noticed with amusement, more than a little horny this morning.

I walked around the bed and flung open the curtains. Sunlight flooded the room, turning his red hair—which was a feature of all phoenixes—to copper and highlighting the dust and the mess. One thing Rory had never been was tidy.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his deep voice gravelly and harsh as he flung up an arm to shield his eyes. “That's just cruel.”

“I thought you liked your job.”

“I do, but—”

“The only butt I want,” I said, unreasonably cheered by the fact that I wasn't alone in feeling shitty, “is yours climbing out of that bed and into a shower pronto.”

A devilish light began to gleam in the warm amber depths of his eyes. “I've got a better idea.”

My grin grew, but before I could actually react, he lunged forward, grabbed my arm, and dragged me down onto the bed beside him. For good measure, he threw a leg over the top of mine to prevent me from escaping, though I hadn't actually tried.

“How about you and I waste a little time and energy?” he murmured, as he tugged at the dressing gown's sash.

“How about you try to keep this job a little longer than six months,” I said wryly, even as I gave in to temptation and let my fingers play over his well-defined arms. It would only encourage him, but the fires within hungered for closeness, warmth, and caring—no doubt to counter the cold darkness I'd faced last night.

“They won't sack me.” His expression became distracted as the sash came undone. “I'm too good a fireman, and they know it.”

He slipped a hand underneath the silky material and traced a line along the length of my hip with one heated finger, skimming the scars as tenderly as the rest of me. My breathing hitched a little and the pulse of excitement grew. But as much as I wanted to give in, I didn't. Not only because he actually
liked
this job, but because he also liked the people he worked with, and it was the first time in the four years since Jody—his human fiancée—died that he'd actually cared about anything or anyone beyond those in our
immediate circle. Despite his current nonchalance, I knew it would hit him hard if he was fired.

So I ignored those deliciously trailing fingertips and slapped his arm. “Enough. Go take a shower. A very
cold
shower.”

His gaze rose to mine, and a reluctant grin stretched his kissable lips. “You, my darling girl, are going to be the death of me.”

“Actually,” I said primly, “I believe I already have been. Two lifetimes ago, in fact.”

“Three,” he muttered; then, with a groan, he released me and climbed off the bed. “Fair warning, sweet Emberly. I intend to pick up where I left off once I get home tonight.”

“And I shall be naked and waiting.” I watched him walk into his en suite. Rory and I had been friends and lovers ever since we'd been teenagers, which was so many centuries ago now I could barely even remember them. He was my life partner, the spirit I was fated to be with forever, and the only man I could ever have children with. But we were not, and never had been, in love.

It was said that at the very beginning of time, a phoenix spurned the affections of a witch after taking her virginity. In her anger and shame, she cursed us with the inability to love one another, forcing us to forever seek—but never find—emotional completion outside our own race, thus ensuring that we would forever be left with little more than love's bitter ashes, as she had been. I'm not sure I believed the whole witch-curse thing, but it certainly held
more than a few grains of truth when it came to phoenixes and love.

As the shower came on, I bounced out of Rory's bed and headed into the kitchen to make us both breakfast. He walked in ten minutes later, dropped a kiss on the back of my neck, then swept up one of the plates of pancakes and headed for the table.

“So, did you manage to save your soul last night?”

I glanced at him sharply, and he gave me a lopsided smile. “If I can't read the signs by now, Em, something is seriously wrong. So who was it this time?”

Sam's warning shot through my thoughts as I picked up the two steaming mugs and the other plate of pancakes and joined Rory at the table. “No one important. And yes, I did.”

His expression indicated he didn't believe the lie, but he let it slide, asking instead, “What's on your agenda for today, then?”

“I don't exactly know.” I pushed one of the mugs across to him. “Mark mentioned something about discovering a critical amino acid in the molecules he was studying yesterday, so I daresay he'll be in the lab all day and I'll be transcribing his notes all night.”

“Ah, the exciting life of a research assistant,” he said, voice dry.

I resisted the urge to point out I wasn't actually a research assistant, even if that was what they'd classified me as. Mark hated interference of any
kind, even if it came in the form of help to set up and monitor experiments. After he'd gone through more than a dozen qualified assistants in less than two months, the powers that be at the Chase Medical Research Institute had given up and resorted to employing what amounted to a secretary. Meaning I transcribed his notes and generally ran around after him but otherwise didn't interfere in whatever it was he was doing.

And Rory was right—it wasn't exciting. But I'd done the whole exciting bit the last time around. Right now, all I wanted was something easy.

Besides, this lifetime was supposedly
his
turn to do the dangerous stuff, not mine. Not that
that
had ever stopped me from getting into trouble in previous lifetimes.

“You've never done well coping with a staid and boring life,” he added, obviously guessing my thoughts. “And I'm betting you won't last much longer working for that crazy old man.”

“They're paying me damn good money to run after that crazy old man, and that makes up for the boring. Besides, for an old guy, he's not bad scenery—he has nice legs and an eminently watchable ass.”

“So have you,” he said dryly. “He made a play for it yet?”

I snorted softly. “He's old, remember? Besides, I seriously doubt he notices anything not connected to his microscope or his books. Not everyone in this world is as randy as you.”

“That he's in his sixties doesn't make him dead
from the waist down—a fact we've both proven over our many years together.” He glanced at his watch, then gulped down his coffee and pushed away from the table. “Five minutes to go. I'd better run.”

So had I. If I didn't hurry, I'd miss the train. Mark was a man who meticulously planned every minute of his day, and my being late would not only upset his timetable, but turn him into an unreasonable grump for the rest of the day. Although his somewhat unpredictable temper wasn't the only reason I was getting higher pay; he believed I should be available to work whenever
he
wanted me, be that day or night.

Rory kissed my cheek, then headed for the door. Twenty minutes later I ran out of the building and headed for the train. I squeezed out at Footscray Station, then walked down to Byron Street and the big white building that housed the Chase Medical Research Institute.

Ian Grant—the day shift security guard, and a bear of a man with a close-cropped head of gray hair and very little in the way of untattooed skin—gave me a wide grin of greeting as I entered the foyer.

“Hey, Em,” he said, “Lady Harriet's office has been trying to contact you for the last twenty minutes. You got your phone off again?”

Harriet Chase had founded the institute some fifty years ago, and it was still one of the biggest privately funded organizations for biological and medical research in Victoria. The old dear was
also something of an elitist, hence the not-so-affectionate moniker.

But I had no idea why the hell her office would be chasing me.

I dug my phone out of my purse and, sure enough, there were seven missed calls. I glanced up at Ian. “I gather she's been on the phone to you?”

“Well, it was Abby rather than herself, but she wanted me to get you on the phone the minute you walked in.”

Abby was Harriet's overworked but not underpaid assistant. Ian duly picked up the phone and called her, and I suddenly wondered if I was about to get sacked. I couldn't think of any other reason for Lady Harriet's office to be ringing me, especially given she or her staff rarely spoke to anyone less worthy than the heads of the vari- ous research departments. Although the security guards did at least get a smile of greeting every morning, which was more than could be said for the rest of us.

“Abby, I have Emberly Pearson here for you.” He paused for a moment, then handed the phone across to me. I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry about the missed calls, Abby, but I was on the train and didn't hear—”

“Never mind that now,” Abby said, her voice sounding more than a little harassed. Lady Harriet had obviously been in one of her moods this morning. “You need to get over to Professor Baltimore's place. He's due to make a presentation to
some investors in half an hour, and he hasn't arrived and he's not answering his phone.”

I frowned. It wasn't like Mark to be late, so something had obviously gone wrong. But why was I being asked to fetch him? Granted, I was the one being paid danger money to be his beck-and-call girl, but if this was so urgent, why not send someone else? It wasn't like this place was lacking in research assistants. I said as much to Abby.

“We did send someone else,” she said, “but he's not answering the door. You're keyed into his security system, aren't you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then go,” she cut in. “Make sure you get him back here fast.”

She hung up before I could reply. I handed the phone back to Ian. “Well, there goes my peaceful morning.”

Ian grinned, his teeth spectacularly white against the inked darkness of his cheeks. “I'd run.”

I did. Thankfully, like many of the senior staff at the institute, Mark lived nearby. It saved time traveling back and forth and allowed them to work longer hours. Nothing like being addicted to your job—which was something
I
could never claim. Hell, I couldn't even claim that I'd
liked
many of the things I'd done over the centuries Rory and I had been alive.

Mark's brown brick building came into view. It was a squat, three-story building with vinyl windows that were double-glazed and butt-ugly. They'd been the rage about fifty years ago, and I
could only thank the designer gods that the damn things had finally gone out of fashion.

A man with burnished auburn hair and the most amazing pair of emerald-green eyes I'd ever seen exited the building as I approached and, with a wide smile, he held the door open.