Firestorm (24 page)

“That should keep you from doing any parlor tricks,” he said, and flicked on the bedside lamp. He looked only a little battered from our adventures in Florida—God, it hadn't even been long enough for his cuts to fully heal—but he was his usual natty self, dressed in a cool marine-blue shirt that looked fresh and crisp. Khaki pants. A dressed-down look, for Eamon, but fully complimentary. His hair was still a little too long, but I didn't let that friendly boy-next-door look fool me. No matter how limpid and sweet his eyes and smile might be, there was something deeply disturbing inside this man.

“There we go,” he said soothingly, and he blurred out of focus again. No amount of blinking would help that. The warmth was stealing through my chest now, down my legs, up into my head. Such a nice, safe feeling. “You're all right, love. Just relax. No worries at all.”

His voice was so soft and soothing, and I wanted to believe him. I knew better, but it was almost impossible to resist that kindness.

“Sarah,” I managed to mumble. The world had turned into a candy-colored swirl of shapes. Strange tastes in my mouth. “Where?”

“Sarah is very safe, Joanne. You don't need to worry at all about your sister. I wouldn't hurt her.” His laugh was dry and mocking. “Well. Not without giving you the chance to make good on our agreement first, of course.”

I tried to say something, but my tongue was as thick as folded felt. I felt his hot fingers touching my neck, feeling my pulse, and then saw a bright hurtful glare as he lifted one eyelid. The room was doing a slow, graceful swirl.

“Excellent,” I heard from a great distance. “A nap will do you good.”

 

When I woke up in the dark, my mouth felt like a litterbox some cat owner had neglected for a month.

I was tied down, as I discovered when I tried to sit up. Ropes around both wrists. My ankles were tied together, but still anchored to something that felt rock-steady. I jerked at my bonds a few times, but got nothing but a steady rasping pain in my wrists for my trouble.

I felt dull and sick, and for a long few moments I didn't remember anything about how this had happened. It came back in flashes. Fire rolling down the road like flaming syrup. David. Dead Wardens.

Eamon.

A light flicked on across the room—a low-wattage bulb, barely enough to throw a yellow circle a couple of feet—but it burned my eyes. I winced, closed them, and then deliberately forced them open again. I wasn't in my room any longer. In fact, I doubted I was even in the same motel.

Eamon was sitting in an armchair next to the light, which was a standard-issue sort of thing with a lopsided paper shade. He wasn't an intimidating presence, generally; tall, lean, with pleasantly shaggy hair and a neat beard and mustache that gave some softness to his angular face. His hair was a color trapped somewhere between brown and blond, and although his eyes looked dark at the moment, I remembered them as that smoky color between blue and gray. He was, in a word, cute. Older than I was, but not more than ten years at a stretch.

In some ways, his hands were the most striking thing about him. Long, restless, graceful hands that should have been doing something artistic, like music or sculpting or neurosurgery. He took good care of them. His manicure was better than mine.

“How long?” I asked. My sense of time was screwed.

He tilted his head slightly, watching me. He looked a little surprised, as if that wasn't the first question he'd expected me to ask.

“An hour,” he said. “By the way, congratulations on your escape from certain death back at the fire. That was exciting.”

“You were following me.”

He shrugged. “I'm not that energetic about it. I was tracking you. I only saw a bit toward the end.”

“Why?”

Ah, that was the question he'd been expecting. He smiled. A sweet smile, with a loony's edge. “I had a strange idea that you weren't going to be looking after my interests,” he said. “Seemed like a good idea to keep my hand in.”

“Well, you've made your point. Very scary. Now let me go.” It
was
scary. I was starting to sweat again, and I really didn't like the ropes sawing into my hands and feet. The threat was implicit and precise, and the ease with which he'd handled me was frightening. He'd had a lot of experience at this abduction thing.

“Have I?” he asked. It was a neutral question, but I sensed the menace behind it. “Love, I haven't even started making my point with you. I warned you before. I need a Djinn, and I need it now. I'm not going to wait politely while you take care of your own affairs. You satisfy me first. Now.”

There was a double entendre there that I was quite sure was intentional.

“I'll kill you,” I said. “I'll kill you if you—”

“I'm not that crude,” he interrupted. He hadn't really even moved since turning on the light, except for tilts of his head; his hands were limp on the arms of the chair. “I'm not Quinn, you know.”

He knew. Quinn had told him what he'd done to me. Fury boiled up inside me, hot as plasma, and I didn't know how to deal with it. I'd never told
anyone
, not about what had happened to me in that darkest place, but Quinn had been shooting off his mouth to Eamon. Laughing about it over beer and chips, or whatever it was those two bastards did for fun besides tormenting others.

“No,” Eamon said quietly. “He didn't tell me. I guessed. I wouldn't have done that to you, you know. There wouldn't have been any point. I keep my business and my pleasure completely separate.”

He knew me way too well. I closed my eyes and focused on controlling my breathing. I needed calm, and I needed to have full command of my powers. Weather and Fire. I was tired, and I was waterlogged with drugs, but dammit, I wasn't going to take this. Not from Eamon.

“Yeah, but you've still got me tied up on a bed,” I said. “Do the words
sexual predator
mean anything to you, Eamon?”

“Mmm. Fifteen to twenty-five, by the laws of this particular state, I believe. If I don't kill you. If I do, of course…does Maine have the death penalty? I'm afraid I can't keep track, as often as you people change your minds about cruel and unusual.” He sounded bland and unworried. “You'll notice I tied you with your legs together. I could have done anything I liked. For that matter, I still could. You should be a little more polite.”

That edge showed for a second, naked and glittering as a knife. Eamon was a Halloween candy bar full of razors. He terrified me on some level that I couldn't even fully understand.

“Somebody's going to come looking for me,” I said to him. That got a stir from him; he sat forward, elbows resting on his knees, and tented his hands with his fingertips resting over his lips.

“The girl?” he asked. “The one who looks so remarkably like you that I had to ask Sarah about younger sisters, cousins, et cetera? I had to conclude that she was a closer relation. Daughter, I think. Very, very pretty.” He smiled, and it was an expression that curled my stomach in on itself. “And since I've fairly comprehensively established that there's simply no way you could have conceived and delivered a child without there being some kind of record of it, she's something else. Something…unusual.”

I stopped breathing, then forced myself to start up. Calm and casual, that was the only way to do this. “I'm not old enough to have a grown daughter.”

“Please, don't force me to be ungentlemanly about it. You're more than old enough. But I think I can assume this is something else. Something to do with your handsome young Djinn boyfriend, for instance, and the desire of all living things to reproduce.”

“You're crazy.”

“Very likely.” He nodded. “But your daughter is Djinn, and I want her. Need her, actually. I promise to return her unbroken, if that will help.”

There were lots of answers I could have chosen from, but the most primal one boiled up first. “Touch her and I swear, I'll rip you apart, Eamon.”

“I believe that,” he agreed. “I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as capable of violence as you, Joanne. You disguise it well, but there's nothing light in your nature when you're at the sharp end. I like that about you.”

“I mean it!”

“Oh, I spotted that right off,” he said, and suddenly he was standing. He moved that way, unexpectedly, and my heart did a funny little jump as he crossed the short distance to the bed. He stood over me. There wasn't so much light over here, and he was blocking out most of it. I couldn't see anything but a pale oval for a face, and the darkness of his body.

The bed creaked as he sat down next to me.

“I love your sister,” he said. Talk about things I hadn't expected…I kept my eyes on his unseen face. “That is very annoying, you know. I hadn't planned on feeling anything for her, beyond the occasional gratitude for being a good fuck—” He smiled at my animal noise of protest. “She's a good woman, Sarah. And she believes that I'm a good man. No doubt that bubble will burst soon, but I'd like to keep the fantasy intact awhile longer. She makes me feel—”

He fell silent. I didn't interrupt his thoughts.

“Well,” he said, finally. “She makes me feel well.”

No question, Eamon was sick on some level I didn't even want to understand. “Don't hurt her.”

“I don't want to. But I'm afraid that's really up to you at this point, and your daughter. I've told you what I need, and it's up to you how it gets provided to me. I've made the request nicely—”

“You abducted my sister!”

“Rescued, actually.”

“You
molested
her!”

“Yeah,” he admitted cheerfully. “I did, a bit. Sorry about that. Can see how that might rot the trust between us to some extent, but love, I was trying to emphasize to you the seriousness of the situation. Which has, I could point out, become even more serious. So
I want my bloody Djinn or I will crush your fucking throat.
”

The last was snapped out in tones that made me cold inside. Before I could draw breath, his right hand was around my neck.

I wanted to scream, but nothing came out when I opened my mouth except a choked gagging sound. He was an expert at it. He choked me just hard enough to lock the scream in my throat and make it unbearably painful to breathe. The darkness began to spark with fireworks. Oxygen deprivation. He kept holding my throat, steady and sure, and then suddenly the pressure was gone. His hand stayed, loose and cool against my burning skin, and I whooped in a convulsive breath.

“Scream and I'll kill you,” he said. It was a whisper, and it was against my ear, and he sounded utterly serious about it.

I didn't scream. I concentrated on breathing and marshaling my powers. It wasn't working. The drugs coursing through my system were interfering with my concentration and control; he must have done some research. These must have been similar to the drugs that Marion and her team used to sedate Wardens who'd proved dangerous.

I couldn't get enough power together to light a match, much less fry Eamon the way he deserved.

“I'm presuming you don't have some other Djinn in your handbag, ready to give me,” he said. “No, don't speak. Shake your head yes or no.”

I indicated no, silently. His fingertips moved slowly down the column of my throat to the notch of my collarbone, then back up. Stroking.

“Then I'm afraid it's your daughter I will require,” he said. “Cross me, and I'll kill your sister and cut my losses. No warnings. I'll just phone you up and let you listen while she dies, all right?”

I managed to croak out some words. “I thought you loved her.”

“I do,” Eamon said. “I'm afraid that doesn't change anything.”

His fingers trailed down into the open valley between my breasts. I didn't dare move. There was a tension in him that I couldn't quite understand, but I feared it. I wasn't sure he was quite in control of what he was doing.

“You and your sister,” he sighed after a few silent seconds. “I can only imagine what you'd be like together.”

Ewwww, that was an image I could have done without. I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to spit at him.

“Take your hands off me,” I said. I wasn't sure how it would come out, but it sounded cool and controlled and furious. Not edged with panic, which was a miracle.

He covered my mouth, and in one swift motion, he swung a leg over me and straddled me. I felt a hot surge of utter despairing terror, a flashback from other times, years ago, when I'd been out of control and utterly lost, and it was only at the last second that I realized he hadn't untied my ankles, and I was relatively safe from the traditional kind of assault.

But then, Eamon didn't strike me as a traditional kind of rapist, either.

“Shhh,” he whispered, and I froze as the sharp edge of a huge knife pressed against my throat. “Say hello to your daughter and tell her not to be stupid.”

Imara? I gasped and blinked, and saw her face in the darkness, pale as snow. She was crouched in the corner, wild and feral as an Ifrit. Her eyes blazed hot gold.

“No,” I croaked out, and waved one bound hand ineffectively. “Don't, Imara.”

“That's excellent advice. It takes one little slip to end your mother's life.”

No answer. No move from Imara. She just waited, staring, patient as a lion. Eamon's hand was trembling, just a little.

“I just want to establish the ground rules,” he said. “First off, I'm keeping this knife in place until I have a clear understanding between us, all right? The drug that I injected in Joanne is toxic. Slow, but sure. I have the antidote. Not on me, of course. Do what I say, and everyone comes out of this alive and happy.”

“Mom?”

“I'm okay,” I said.

“No, in point of fact, you're not,” Eamon said. “As I was saying. And if your offspring rips my heart out, you'll be buying burial plots for two, because your sister won't survive the day, either. I gave her a little shot, as well. Insurance. Now that we're clear about the cost of vengeance, I'm going to remove the knife from Joanne's throat, and you're going to be a very good little Djinn, aren't you?”