Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (63 page)

Until Jac had injured Rafferty. That had infuriated him beyond all expectation. He hadn’t known what to do with so much anger and passion. He hadn’t been certain whether to kill her or seduce her. It had been almost overwhelming and more than a little confusing.

Had it been the darkfire? The pending firestorm? Or just Jac’s influence upon him? Marco didn’t know, but he recognized that her disappointment bothered him more than anything any other human had ever said to him. She’d truly awakened him and then she’d helped him to survive Jorge’s assault.

He had to make this right.

Jac was standing on the far side of the room, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared out the window. Her body language was far from welcoming, and he felt the rapid pulse of her heart. The firestorm glowed between them, so golden and inviting that Marco knew it was trying to urge him to close the distance.

He sensed that would be the wrong move. He could overwhelm her with his touch, especially with the firestorm on his side, but he wanted her to come willingly to him.

It appeared that he would choose his mate’s favor over the firestorm’s demand.

Marco had to acknowledge that she’d experienced a lot since meeting him and a great deal since the spark of the eclipse. Was the firestorm changing her as well? If he had to choose between the darkfire and the firestorm, which would he pick?

“Do you want to have a shower?” he asked.

She spared him a glance. “Alone or with assistance?” she asked, and he understood her expectation.

He folded his own arms across his chest and leaned in the doorway of the bathroom. “I’m not going to use the firestorm against you,” he said quietly. “If it’s satisfied, it’ll be because you’ve decided it should be.”

“Why would I decide that?” Jac shrugged. “If you leave it up to logic, there’s no reason to go there. That must be why it’s such a powerful force, so women
don’t
think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that conceiving and carrying a child is a big obligation. It’s life-changing stuff. It’s a path that should be chosen for a better reason than just making more.”

“Don’t you want kids?”

“I’ve always wanted kids,” she admitted, a yearning in her voice that touched his heart. “But I’ve never wanted to raise them alone, and I’ve never wanted a child who felt like an accessory.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jac sighed. She pivoted and marched to the couch, then sat down on the edge of it, facing him. “My sister is goal-oriented. Her life is all about setting objectives and achieving them, so when she got married, I wasn’t surprised that they not only had a kid but had a boy.”

“Why?” Marco sat on the chair opposite Jac. He echoed her pose, sitting on the edge of the chair, but leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. They were closer this way, which had been his motivation, but when the firestorm flared to new power between them, he saw that Jac thought he was breaking his word. “Sorry.” He stood up and paced the floor behind the chair. He grimaced. “I forgot for a minute.”

Jac watched him, then nodded, as if she accepted his explanation. “Having the eldest be a boy is a traditional choice, I guess, and satisfies people who still prefer to have a male heir.”

“People?”

“My father. Oh, he was really proud of Sam, then.” Jac sighed. “But the thing was that kid was like an accessory. He could have been the right kind of car or a house in the right neighborhood. They both continued working as much as ever—which was too much—and I don’t even think they noticed how lonely Nathaniel was.” She shook her head and Marco saw the glitter of her tears. “Maybe they didn’t know how amazing he was.”

“Tell me about him.”

She smiled then. “Oh, he was totally a science geek. He wanted to be an astronaut and establish colonies in space. I don’t know how many space stations we made out of Lego. He’d finish up the one illustrated on the box, then take it apart and make a bigger and better one. He was a sweet, smart, lovable kid.” She shrugged. “We bought two sets of sticky fluorescent stars at a museum one time, one for his room and one for my apartment, because he insisted we should always be looking at the same stars at night. He organized them with a map of the solar system, and it took us a whole day to get them just right in both rooms.” She sighed. “We celebrated with ice cream sundaes.”

“Sounds like you loved him.”

“I adored him.” Jac shook her head. “I would have chosen to be with him in a heartbeat. But it seemed that it only happened because to them I was
useful
. They were working all the time, after all.”

Marco looked down at the carpet. “There’s that word useful again.”

“That’s how my family saw me.
Useful
. Jac doesn’t have a plan for her life, so we can use her as a cheap resource.” She lifted her gaze to his. “The thing is that none of them ever valued the tasks they expected me to do, so none of them ever saw the value in my doing them. I chose to be with my mom at the end, because I wanted every minute possible with her. It wasn’t easy to be her caregiver as she died, and there were times that it just broke my heart to see her slipping away, but there were sweet moments, too. I wouldn’t trade those or lose them for the world.”

“Tell me one,” Marco encouraged.

Jac took a breath, as if composing herself. “Mom loved her garden and had always tended it herself. When she couldn’t, I did it. We went outside in the afternoons, when the weather was good, and she told me what to do. She knew that garden and its seasons better than anything else in her world. She remembered the Latin names for every single plant and also the useful traits of the herbs, so we played a game. I’d bring her flowers, one at a time, and she’d tell me about each one. Every day that we were in the garden, we built a little bouquet that way, then I’d put it on her nightstand when we went inside. She always studied it in the evening, whispering the names of the plants. It seemed to both anchor her in the world and distract her from the pain.”

She swallowed as Marco watched. “In time, she didn’t talk as much and she wasn’t as physically capable as she’d been. I had to practically carry her outside, but I knew she loved it so I did.” He watched her blink back her tears. “She was pretty light by then. When I brought her flowers, her lips would work but no sound came out. I told her what I remembered of what she’d told me, and she’d nod.”

Marco said nothing, but put his hand over Jac’s. He had no recollection of having any family, not except a brief memory of Pwyll. He supposed that the
Pyr
were his family and wished he knew them better.

Jac cleared her throat. “Near the end, her favorite rose bloomed. It was June and I knew it would bloom soon, but she was slipping away and I wasn’t sure there would be a flower in time for her. There was, although she was in a lot of pain and staying in her bed by then. I put the flower under her nose and she inhaled the scent, then gave me the sweetest smile in the world. She whispered its name. I wrapped its stem in a damp paper towel and wrapped her fingers around it, so she wouldn’t have to move to smell its perfume.”

She took a shaking breath. “I believe it put her back in her garden in her mind at least and that she died in her favorite place in the world. I’ll never forget the serenity of her expression or my conviction that her pain was finally gone.” Jac cleared her throat. “I couldn’t care about much of anything for a long time after that.”

“Your family must have appreciated that you were there.”

Jac shrugged. “I guess so. The thing is that they didn’t think I had anything else to do. Sam had to fly in from grad school and she almost arrived too late to say goodbye. My father had been working like a fiend, as if he had to find a reason not to be home, so even he nearly missed her passing. They were there for the funeral, of course, and my father gave me money for helping out. He sold the house right away and the new owner backhoed the garden to put in a swimming pool.” She exhaled. “It’s funny, but that’s the incident that sticks in my craw, even though it wasn’t his fault. I couldn’t bear that her garden was gone, and that I didn’t even have the chance to dig up that rose. It probably wouldn’t have survived a transplant, anyway, it was that old, but still.”

“You could plant one of the same variety beside her grave,” Marco suggested, more than ready to help with that task.

Jac glanced up at him with surprise. “I did, although I’m the only one who ever goes there.” She shook her head. “I’m not even sure my father even knew that I did it. I’m sure Sam doesn’t.”

Marco leaned on the back of the chair and held her gaze. “Did Nathaniel know?”

Her smile sent a pang through his heart. “Yes. We always went there together and took care of the rose. Mom died before he was born, of course, so I felt like she needed to get to know him a bit.”

Marco nodded, understanding her impulse very well even though he’d never had a similar experience. He knew that he had to tell her as much.

He had to share a bit of his past to put them on even footing.

He was surprised by how instinctively right the choice felt, and by how much he wanted to do it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I never knew my parents,” Marco admitted quietly and felt Jac’s heart leap as she watched him. “My father was killed by a
Slayer
right after the consummation of his firestorm. He died without revealing my mother’s identity, in order to protect her.”

Jac’s lips parted in surprise.

“I always thought that said a good thing about his character.”

“Was he tormented?”

“Probably. He was killed and incinerated.”

She paled. “And your mom?”

“She died in childbirth or shortly thereafter.” Marco frowned, knowing the story but not actually remembering it. “I’d been rescued by another
Pyr
who realized what the
Slayer
had done. He knew my father and wanted to help my mother. He managed to get my mother to a sanctuary where she could have me.”

“Is there a sanctuary from
Slayers
?”

“There was then, at least for a while. There wasn’t any Elixir so they couldn’t spontaneously manifest elsewhere. In those days, only the Wyvern could do that. My mother was taken to the lair of another
Pyr
. His name was Pwyll and he was the grandfather of Rafferty, the
Pyr
who saved my mother from the
Slayer
.” He fell silent then, thinking of Pwyll.

“The same Rafferty I shot?” Jac whispered.

Marco nodded.

She exhaled. “I’m sorry. Did he die?”

“Not yet.”

She winced. “Is he okay?”

“Not yet.” Marco didn’t actually know Rafferty’s state, but he feared it was bad.

They sat in silence for a moment, their hands clasped. “What happened after Pwyll took your mom in?” Jac asked softly.

“She had me.” Marco frowned. “Just as all
Pyr
and
Slayers
feel the spark of a firestorm, they sense the birth of a new
Pyr
, no matter where it happens in the world. We say we hear the child’s first cry, but really, it’s the beat of his heart. We feel it, like he’s our son in a way.”

“And the
Slayer
felt your birth,” Jac whispered.

Marco nodded. “But Pwyll hid me. He tricked the
Slayer
and raised me in secret.”

“You must have loved him.”

“I did because I owed him that debt, but I didn’t know him very well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Pwyll was the Cantor of our kind. He sang the songs of the earth as well as the hymn of darkfire. He saw that I could only survive if he could
really
hide me.”

“Because dragon shifters have such keen senses.”

“And so he enchanted me to sleep until it was safe for me to awaken.” He swallowed. “I was cursed to sleep until the darkfire burned.”

“Hasn’t the darkfire always burned?”

“Pwyll trapped it in three crystals. It wasn’t until the first crystal was broken and the darkfire released that the spell was broken.”

“When was that?”

“December 2010.”

“How long were you asleep?”

“Fourteen or fifteen hundred years.”

Jac’s mouth opened, then it closed. “Is there any way to find out whether Rafferty is going to be all right?”

“Want to come with me and see?”

Jac looked around the room then shook her head. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous for us to stay together? Doesn’t the heat of the unsatisfied firestorm draw
Pyr
and
Slayers
like moths to the flame?”

“It does, and that’s one good argument for satisfying it.”

“That didn’t make a lot of difference to your mom.”

“No, it didn’t.” Marco straightened. “That’s why I want to retrieve the darkfire crystal from Sloane’s house and give it to you.”

“Who’s Sloane?”

“The Apothecary of the
Pyr
. I took Rafferty to him and left the crystal there.” Marco squeezed her hand. “You can fire it, so you’ll be able to defend yourself.”

He could see by the way her eyes lit that the prospect pleased her but she protested anyway. “That has to be against someone’s rules.”