Flamebound (8 page)

“We?” I ask.

“Hell, yeah, we. You got to do all the heroics last time. This time, I definitely want in.”

“I'm not sure being tortured is actually heroic, you know.”

“It is if you end up capturing the murdering bastard in the end.” She pops a cracker into her mouth, chews pensively. Then she says, “What do you think we should do first? Do you want to try to reach out to her again?”

“I've already tried a couple of times. Nothing's happened. I think whoever hit her”—I gesture to my bruised face—“probably knocked her out.” I deliberately refuse to think of other, worse scenarios.

“So, we just wait?”

“No.” I reach for my phone, scroll through my contacts. “I think we should call Nate.”

“And tell him what?”

“The truth. He already thinks I'm psychic—that's why he asked for my help. The fact that I've connected with Shelby shouldn't even have him raising an eyebrow.”

“Maybe you're right. But you do realize that it's two o'clock in the morning, don't you?”

I freeze, my thumb suspended over his contact information. “Good point. But don't you think he'll want to know? He is the one who asked for my help, after all.”

Still, I don't press
SEND
. Maybe Lily's right—maybe I should wait until morning. I don't actually have much information for him. Maybe if Lily and I work at it—

That's when it hits me, a wave of power so all-encompassing that it sends my phone skittering out of my hand and across the table.

“Xandra?” Lily asks, leaning forward, a concerned look on her face.

Before I can answer her, another wave hits. This one actually picks me up and slams me back down into the chair with enough force to shatter the thing into a thousand wooden splinters.

“W
hat the hell?” Lily scrambles around the table to help me up, but I throw out an arm to ward her off. Whatever is happening to me isn't good and I don't want her anywhere near it.

She freezes in place. “Xandra?”

“Give me a minute.” I'm on the floor now, in the midst of the debris from the shattered chair. I have just enough time before the third wave hits to thank the goddess that I don't have a bunch of splinters in my ass. This one knocks me flat on my back. Then it lifts me up again, arching my back even as it spread-eagles me five feet off the kitchen floor.

“Xandra!” Lily wails.

I hit the ground again, this time even harder than before.

Totally disregarding my warning, Lily rushes toward me. She drops to her knees next to me, her hands going immediately to the back of my head, where she feels for bumps and bruises. “Are you all right?” she demands.

I try to answer her, to tell her to get back because the electricity is still zinging around inside me and I have a sick feeling that this—whatever this is—is far from over. But that last hit was so strong that it knocked the wind out of me. I've got absolutely no air, and no matter how hard I try to force my lungs to expand, nothing's happening.

“Xan?” The alarm on her face turns to full-out panic. “Oh dear goddess. Are you paralyzed? Are you dead?”

I shake my head, try once more to inhale. This time it works, and I suck in huge, noisy gulps of air. After a minute, I ask, “Do I look dead?”

“Kind of.” Lily sags with relief, rests her forehead on my shoulder as she takes a few deep breaths of her own. “Don't ever do that to me again!” she says finally, her voice so high-pitched she sounds more like Alvin the chipmunk than my best friend.

Before I can answer, I feel the next wave building inside me. It's welling up, the power growing more and more massive with every second that passes. Alarmed, I scramble backward, away from Lily. Something tells me this is going to be the worst one yet and I don't want to hurt—

Flames break out on my arms and legs, ripple over my skin in waves. They don't burn me—at least I don't think they do—but I'm too busy trying not to catch anything else on fire to pay much attention to what's happening to me.

Lily screams, then does a fast crawl across the floor to the kitchen sink. She pulls out a fire extinguisher, but before she can fumble the key out of it, I'm being lifted again—this time so high that I can touch the ceiling without much effort. Even with the fire still licking over my skin, the only thing I can think is that this time it's really going to hurt me when this thing—whatever it is—drops me.

Sure enough, the fire winks out one second before I plummet to the ground. I try to curl myself into a ball in an effort to protect my spine, but I'm seizing before I hit the floor, my whole body jerking and convulsing in the throes of what I'm sure looks like a grand mal seizure, but it feels like something else entirely.

Even as it's happening, I'm completely aware of everything going on around me. Lily is screaming as she launches herself at the phone to dial 911. She's got it on speaker, so I can hear the emergency operator giving her instructions in between Lily's terrified screeches. I want to tell her that I'm okay, that I'm in here and I'm just fine, but my body is completely out of my jurisdiction. Whatever magical force has glommed on to me has got me completely under its control and it's not letting go until it's good and ready.

Time passes—seconds, minutes, I can't tell which—and then, finally, the energy flows out of me in one long, smooth wave. The seizing stops and my entire body just seems to collapse in on itself.

“Xandra?” Lily whispers, crawling back over to me. “Xandra, are you okay?”

My eyelids feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each, but somehow I manage to force them open. Lily's face is only inches from me and she looks like hell, like she's aged ten years in the space of the last five minutes.

I try to smile at her, but it must come out looking like a grimace because she squeaks, “Dear goddess. Is it happening again?”

“It's over,” I assure her in a voice that sounds like I gargled with razor blades.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

She collapses, stretching out on the floor next to me. “The paramedics are on their way.”

“You should probably cancel them. I don't think there's anything in the medical books that covers what just happened to me.”

“No shit. The 911 operator asked if there was any sign that something was wrong before you started to seize. Somehow I didn't think telling her you were doing a damn fine impression of the
Exorcist
would go over well.” She sighs. “Still, I think you should let them check you out. You hit the ground pretty fucking hard.”

“It feels like it,” I grumble. “Declan's going to kill me. He leaves me alone for a couple of hours and I'm right back to where I was a week ago, covered in bumps and bruises and aching in places I didn't even know it was possible to hurt.”

“Yeah, well, when he gets back, I'm going to give him a piece of my mind. This is his job, not mine.”

“I think you handled yourself pretty well.”

She snorts. “That's 'cuz you don't realize how damn close I came to peeing my pants. You caught on
fire,
Xandra.”

“Oh yeah. With the seizure and everything, I forgot.” I glance down. “Am I burned?”

“Amazingly enough, no. Like I said. Freaky. Freaky.
Freaky
. Exorcist. Shit.”

Just then, the doorbell rings. Lily groans but rolls to her feet. “You're going to need to let them check you out.”

“Are you kidding me?” I gesture to my face. “They'll drag me to the hospital for an MRI or CT scan or something.”

“Maybe you should let them.”

I growl at her, but she just blows me a kiss on her way to the door.

Reluctantly, I climb to my feet as well. Ignoring the pain in what I swear is every single muscle in my body, I walk into the family room, where Lily is letting two very nice-looking paramedics into the house. Hopefully, if I'm on my feet and lucid, they'll be more likely to believe that I'm all right.

But I've barely said hello to them when a fire truck pulls up behind the ambulance, lights and sirens blaring. Shit. Our neighbors are going to kill us.

*   *   *

It takes the paramedics about ten minutes to check me over. They do their best to convince me to let them take me to Brackenridge, but I think that has more to do with the bruises on my face and the broken chair in the kitchen.

My vitals are fine, and except for a goose egg on the back of my head, the rest of me is also relatively fine. Still, they seemed very concerned about whether I'm safe in my home, and while I really do appreciate it, I'm going to lose my mind if they don't get out of here ASAP. Because five minutes into their exam, it occurs to me why we might be having so much trouble reaching Declan. While I admit that I still don't know how this soulbound thing works, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that if something happened to him, it would definitely affect me as well. Which means that all of that weird stuff that just happened could have been my own magic's reaction to something going wrong—really wrong—with Declan.

The second I close the door behind the paramedics, I dive for the phone. But Declan's cell just rings and rings. Where is he? Why isn't he answering? I try not to panic, but it's hard—especially when everything just feels off. Even my skin feels too tight.

Sitting here worrying isn't doing me any good, though, so I might as well make myself useful. Lily is cleaning up the mess in the kitchen and I get up to give her a hand. I am the one who caused it, after all.

I've only taken two steps toward the kitchen when it hits me. I stumble into the wall, grab onto the door frame to keep from falling as my whole body starts to shake.

“Oh shit!” Lily yells, dropping the broom and rushing over to me. “Not again!”

“I'm fine.”

“Yeah, you look fine.” She reaches for her purse. “That's it. I'm taking you to the hospital.”

I shake my head as fear wells up inside me. “I can't go.”

“Bullshit. You're going.”

“It's too late.”

I stumble back to my bedroom, every step a battle against the energy raging inside me.
Please don't let it be Declan,
I pray.
Please, Isis, I beg of you, not Declan.

I reach for a pair of jeans, yank them on. Then slip my feet into the first shoes I find—the pair of purple cowboy boots my mother foisted on me the last time I was home. Then I'm grabbing a jacket from the coat rack in the hall and tearing down the hallway to the front door.

“Where are you going?” Lily demands, standing in the middle of the living room, her hands on her hips and an exasperated expression on her face.

“It's happening,” I tell her.

“What's happening?” Then her eyes grow wide. “Oh shit. No way!” She dashes down the hall to her room. “You're not going out there alone. Let me get dressed and I'll go with you.”

“Hurry,” I tell her, knowing it's useless to argue. Besides, I don't really want to do this on my own. If it is Declan's body I find . . . If it is him, I don't know how I'll survive.

The sick feeling inside me is growing with every second that passes. It's an itchiness, a low-grade vibration running through my veins. It's not bad yet, but I know from experience that this is only the beginning. But if Lily doesn't move it, I'm going to be in a world of hurt before I even step out of the house.

Seconds later, the electricity starts. Small, painful sparks that travel along my nerve endings—pop, pop, pop—one after the other. I can't take it anymore. I throw the front door open and head down the steps to the driveway. Once there, I bend over, brace my hands on my knees and concentrate on pulling deep breaths into my lungs.

The nighttime air makes it a little bit better, but with every second that passes, the compulsion is getting worse. The need to move, to search, to find, is taking me over a little more with each electric jolt that sweeps through me.

Turning to the left, I start to walk. Even as I tell myself to wait for Lily—even as my brain orders me to stop—my body keeps moving. I've waited too long. I'm firmly in the grip of the compulsion now and nothing can stop it, stop me, short of finding the body that caused all this.

I hear Lily slam the front door behind me. A string of inventive curses rings through the night air as she realizes I've taken off without her. Again I try to stop, or to at least turn, but it's no use. My body's been hijacked and I won't get it back until I've done what I need to do.

Seconds later, Lily's car engine starts up. Seconds after that, she's in the street, driving along beside me. “Damn it, Xandra, get in,” she tells me, her voice hoarse with the same fear that's ricocheting inside me.

I don't argue with her, just jog around the car and hop into the passenger seat. “Thank you.”

She just shakes her head. “I swear to the goddess, you're going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”

“I know. I'm sorry. Turn right at the corner.”

She follows my directions all the way through downtown Austin. I don't know where we're going, only where the compulsion tells me to turn—at least until we make the last turn. Then, suddenly, I know.

How could I be here again?

How could this be happening again?

Last time I'd had to charm the hell out of a cop to get on the grounds, and frankly, after how that turned out, I don't think I have a chance in hell of ever doing it again—even if I wasn't sporting enough bruises to qualify as an MMA fighter.

“Pull over,” I tell Lily, who parallel parks in the first available spot.

“So, where are we going?” she asks.

I just point before climbing out of the car and heading toward the end of the street. The compulsion has me now and it's not letting go. The electricity has gotten wilder, hotter, until every breath I take is pure agony. I waited too long, took too long to get here. I pick up the pace, start to jog down the deserted street. I want, need, the pain to stop.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Lily demands as she runs to keep up. She's about five inches shorter than I am, so the pace I'm setting is brutal for her shorter legs. I know it, even feel bad about it, but there's no way I can stop. The compulsion is pulling so hard that I'm afraid that any second it will yank me right off my feet.

“How many damn people die at the Capitol grounds anyway?”

“Too many, obviously.” But seconds before we get to the driveway in front of the huge Austin Capitol, I veer to the left. Head down the sidewalk to the small parking lot for employees on the side of the grounds.

“Someone's dead back here?” Lily whispers loudly.

“I don't know. I guess.”
Please,
I repeat for what has to be the millionth time,
don't let it be Declan. Don't let it be Declan.

We reach a small patch of grass and flowers that stand outside the gate. There's a historical sign marking it as something—I don't bother to look at it—and a bunch of other signs that give directions to various places on the Capitol grounds. At first I think I'm meant to follow the signs to somewhere, but every time I take more than a step away from the center of the garden, the pain intensifies.

“This is it,” I tell Lily. “It has to be.”

“Right here?” she demands.

“I think so.” I glance around, reach into my pocket for my cell phone and turn on the flashlight app. “Do you see anything?”

“Not unless you count that group of very drunk, and very much alive college students who must have wandered off Sixth Street.” She points to the group of guys in question.