Flamebound (9 page)

“I definitely don't mean them,” I tell her, lowering my voice so we don't attract their attention. It's not that I think they'll try to hurt us—they look harmless enough. Besides, I'm pretty sure Lily and I can handle a few drunk twenty-year-olds. But if they come over to investigate, it's that much longer before I can figure out what the hell is going on. That much longer before I know if Declan is okay.

“Then I got nothing.”

“Neither do I.”

Just then, my phone pings. I glance at it, and nearly melt into a puddle of relief when I realize that Declan is the one texting me.

Sorry. Had something to take care of. On your front porch. Come let me in.

Something to take care of? Could he get a little more vague? Suddenly, I'm beyond annoyed. I've been to hell and back tonight worrying that something has happened to him and all he's got to say for himself is “Had something to take care of?”

Before I can type out an answer, my phone pings again.

Where are you?

My eyes narrow. The man is in serious need of a lesson, but now is not the time or place for me to give it to him. Especially since the compulsion's getting worse, the electricity zigging and zagging through me in an effort to hurry me up. Too bad it can't clue me in, because I have no idea where to go from here.

I text Declan back quickly, telling him where I am, and then I head over to the ornately carved bench Lily is standing beside.

The closer I get, the more the pain eases off, thank the goddess. “Did you find something?” I ask.

“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “But I just remembered something I heard in a class once. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time, figured it was just a wild-goose chase.”

A sliver of unease works its way down my spine. “What is it?”

“You know how nobody knows where the ACW's headquarters is?”

The sliver becomes an avalanche. “Yeah?”

“There are a few main theories, right? Alexandria, Cairo, Paris—”

“So what? What does that have to do with this?” I know I sound impatient, but the compulsion hurts. I just want to find this body, call Nate and let him deal with it.

“Well, my professor said that some people think the ACW's headquarters is in Austin.”

“Yeah, and some people think it's on the moon. But we all know it's in the Egyptian desert somewhere, probably close to Luxor.”

“Well, what if that's just what they want us to believe? My professor said that the Council moved to Texas over a hundred years ago, when the whole witch-hunt thing started to heat up over there.”

“I didn't realize they had.” I can't help looking at her a little askew. Lily's read a book or taken a class on just about everything at least once, which is one of the reasons I usually pay close attention to what she's saying. But this doesn't make any sense. The Egyptians, while definitely monotheistic now, have a deep and abiding pride in their heritage. I can't imagine that changing if they found a few practitioners of Heka.

Lily shrugs. “Me neither, but supposedly there was a rash of killings a number of years ago that sent the whole Hekan community scrambling for cover. The perpetrators were eventually found, and condemned to death, but by then a lot of the witches and wizards had gone underground.”

“Underground,” I repeat. “Not moved to
Texas
.”

She holds up her hands. “I'm just telling you what I heard—that the ACW moved their headquarters to Austin and hid it somewhere downtown.”

“Downtown. As in the Capitol grounds downtown?”

“You're the one who brought us to this little patch of grass. You tell me.”

“That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.” I throw my arms up in defeat. “But if you think you can find it, who am I to stop you?”

“I didn't say I could find it. Just that it might be here.” Still, she squats down, starts poking around. “What do you think an entrance to the ACW's headquarters might look like?”

I have no idea. But if Lily's right, we need to find it soon. Before I end up electrocuted by all this damn energy inside me. “Shouldn't it be big and decked out in gold and powerful stones or something? They aren't exactly the kind to hide their lights under a bushel.”

“They are when they're being hunted.”

It's a good point. So even though I'm pretty sure it's a waste of time, I start to look. But ten minutes later, we've still had no luck and I'm in worse shape than ever. The compulsion is riding me hard, ripping me apart from the inside out until I feel like I've been scraped raw, right beneath the skin. It's a weird feeling, an excruciating one, and I'm not sure how much longer I can take it without screaming.

I must look as bad as I feel, because Lily is suddenly by my side, easing me down onto the closest park bench. “You okay, sweetie?” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a small bottle of water. She hands it to me.

I take it gratefully, but before I can do much more than twist off the cap, Declan steps out of the shadows and into the glow of the nearest streetlamp.

“What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. Here?”

H
e looks angrier than I've ever seen him. Which is fine, because I'm pretty damn pissed myself. After the night I've had, the absolute last thing I need is for him to come in here and play the big alpha he-man with me. I know he warned me not to go wandering off without him right now, not when things with the Council are so uncertain, but he knows I can't control the compulsions. Besides, if he wanted to come with me, he shouldn't have snuck out of my bed the second I fell asleep.

“I could ask you the same question.” I keep my voice deliberately calm, refusing to give him the response he's looking for.

Declan's eyes narrow and Lily sucks in a loud breath. I half expect her to run for cover—which is fine, I've got this—but instead she puts a hand on my shoulder in obvious solidarity. And people wonder why she's my best friend? There's nobody else I'd rather have at my back. Except the enraged man in front of me, but he pretty much screwed that up when he left without so much as a note letting me know what was going on.

“I came because you told me you were here.”

“Hmm, that was nice of me. Telling you where I was so you wouldn't worry. How very mature of me.”

His jaw clenches and I can all but hear his teeth grind together, but I'm not backing down. Not this time. “This is really how you want tonight to go?” he asks, coming closer in what I can only assume is an attempt to intimidate me. Too bad it isn't working.

“You don't get to blame me. This is your choice, not mine.”

“I told you. I had something to do.”

“Yeah, well, now I have something to do.”

“Right here?” He crouches down on my right side, and with a quick squeeze of my shoulder, Lily steps back. I don't blame her. It's all I can do to hold myself up to the crushing dominance of his personality right now. Lily doesn't stand a chance, especially considering she doesn't have the same soul-deep belief that he won't hurt her that I have.

“It appears so.” I'm not giving an inch.

He reaches out, gently circles my right wrist with his fingers. Then slides his hand—slowly, slowly—up my arm and shoulder, until he reaches the bend where my neck meets my shoulder. He rests his hand there for long seconds, before continuing the journey up to my cheek. He strokes his fingers softly over my jaw, his eyes ablaze with emotion, and for the first time I realize it's not anger motivating him. It's fear.

That knowledge brings my own anger down a few notches as I try to put myself in his place. After everything that's happened to me in the last couple of weeks, is it any wonder he freaked out when I wasn't at home? Yes, it could have been avoided if he'd just answered his phone—or if he hadn't left to begin with. But that doesn't mean I can discount his concern.

“Look at me, Xandra.”

It's no less a command for the fact that he whispers it, and while I might have ignored him just a couple of minutes ago, understanding tempers my reaction. Besides, if I'm honest, I want to look at him. I want to see in his eyes the truth of where he's been and what he's been doing. I don't have a claim on him, I know that, but I've also spent the better part of the last couple of hours worrying if he was injured or dead. Common courtesy doesn't take much.

I turn my head, finally prepared to explain what is going on, but I never get the chance. Because this time it's Declan who loudly sucks air in through his teeth.

“What the hell?” he demands, fear at my disappearance forgotten. He moves in front of me, slides his fingers around to the other side of my jaw, probing delicately. “Who did this to you?” His voice vibrates with fury, with power.

It takes me a second to remember what he's talking about—so much has happened tonight that I actually forgot that the whole left side of my face looks like someone took a baseball bat to it.

“Xandra.” It's another command, one I might feel inclined to defy if I didn't already feel the healing warmth flowing in from his fingertips. The ache I've carried since I woke up from the dream about Shelby slowly dissipates under his oh-so-tender ministrations.

“It's been a rough night,” I finally tell him.

Behind me, Lily snorts. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Tell me.”

“Later.” Declan's touch muted the compulsion for a couple of minutes, but now it's back, worse than ever. I feel like I'm going to jump out of my skin—or worse, claw it off my body—if I don't figure out what this small, plot of grass is trying to tell me. “I have a body to find.”

Declan freezes. “What, here?”

“It appears so. Goddess knows the compulsion won't let me move more than three feet in any direction. But we can't figure out where the victim is hidden.”

Declan steps back, pulls me gently to my feet. “You're sure it's here?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Fuck.” His hand wraps around the back of my head, pulls me closer as he leans down and presses his forehead gently to mine. For long seconds he doesn't move, doesn't do anything but stand there—as if he's gathering strength from me even as he's loaning his to me. The last of my anger abates. It's hard to stay mad at a man who literally trembles at the idea of me being hurt.

“We're going to talk about everything I missed tonight later.”

“I'll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Somehow I figured that was how it was going to be with you.” Still holding me tightly, he takes a few deep breaths—it's probably fanciful thinking, but I swear it feels like he's drawing my scent deep inside himself. Goddess knows, that's what I'm doing. The wild cinnamon scent of him is a gift to my senses even after the night I've had.

Eventually, Declan pulls away. “I think I know where your body is.”

“Goddess, I hope so. Because I'm about to jump out of my skin here.”

“I'm so sorry you have to go through this, baby.” He kisses me softly, sweetly, then steps back. He walks over to the historical sign I paid absolutely no attention to, then turns to look at Lily. “I'm not really sure how this works. Go stand near Xandra and both of you stay back for a little bit. Just to be safe.”

“What are you doing?” I ask. “We've already looked over there. There's nothing.”

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

I glance at Lily whose eyes are wide, but probably no wider than mine at this point. She looks about to swallow her tongue and I don't blame her. Because insane as it sounds, I'm beginning to think that maybe—just maybe—she was onto something earlier with that whole ACW headquarters spiel.

Declan lifts his hands to about shoulder height, spreads them wide. And then he doesn't move again for what feels like forever. Seconds become minutes and I'm starting to wonder if he's entered a trance, when it occurs to me what he's doing. Safeguards. He's unraveling safeguards. Holy shit. Lily was right.

Finally, finally, Declan drops his arms. He glances back at us—to check on us or make sure we're both following orders or maybe both. Once he's satisfied that we're staying out of trouble, he starts to chant, loud enough that I can tell he's speaking Ancient Egyptian, but not so loud that I can decipher what it is he's saying.

Intrigued, I step closer. I may not have had my powers very long, but I've spent my life around Heka—and most of my adolescence trying to be the überwitch my mother so desperately wanted me to be. If he's working an actual spell, and not something he's just put together himself, I should recognize it. I want to recognize it. Because what we're doing now is
Twilight Zone
stuff and I want to know how it happens. How I can do it on my own if I ever need to.

Admittedly, my magic isn't like Declan's. I can't just mutter a spell and have it work. He has a real talent for those things human beings refer to as magic because they don't know any better—transubstantiation, moving from one place to another by manipulating the time-space continuum, creating things from nothing, interpreting safeguards.

I'll never be anywhere near as talented as he is in those areas. But that doesn't mean I can't practice, can't learn how to do the basic stuff. Goddess knows, on nights like tonight, it would really come in handy.

Not that I think what Declan is doing is basic. The ACW is made up of nine of the most powerful witches, wizards and warlocks in existence. If, by some miracle, Lily and I have actually stumbled upon their mystical headquarters, then I have no doubt the wards they have protecting them are the most potent, most dangerous in existence.

And yet Declan thinks he can get around them. No, I tell myself as the ground beneath his feet starts to tremble. He
is
getting around them. Unbelievable.

Moments later, the whole area starts to shake. My knees go weak, as if they're going to collapse beneath my weight at any second. But as I look down, I realize it's not my knees that are the problem. It's the ground I'm standing on. It's bucking and rolling, just like it does when there's an earthquake—I remember from when I was caught in one in Los Angeles years ago.

Lily whimpers, throws an arm out to help keep her from falling. I grab onto it, pulling her in close even as I plant my feet firmly on the constantly shifting grass. I might be the one wearing all the bruises these days, but she's always been the one with major balance issues. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I let her borrow some of mine.

The rolling stops as suddenly as it starts. Lily breathes a sigh of relief, starts to pull away. But before she can get more than a step or two, the ground starts to shake violently. It's mimicking a different kind of earthquake, one I've never been in. And though it seems more violent, and harder to stay upright, I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that it's the rolling quakes that cause the most destruction. The shaking ones just scare the hell out of people.

Goddess knows, it's scaring the hell out of me. Lily, too. Declan's the only one who seems unaffected as he stands upright in the middle of the small garden, completely calm and cool as the earth beneath us does its worst.

“Are you two okay?” he calls over his shoulder.

Before I can answer, the wind picks up, going from almost nothing to slapping against us with the force of a stage-one hurricane.

“Shit,” Lily gasps, bending nearly double to protect herself from the leaves and twigs and rocks the wind has transformed into missiles. “Your boyfriend sure has pissed someone off.”

“It's a talent of his.”

She looks around, nearly gets a twig in the eye for her trouble. “I guess.” She opens her purse, fumbles around for a minute. “Why didn't I bring my sunglasses?” It comes out as a wail.

“Because it's the middle of the night and neither of us was anticipating playing the role of Wicked Witch of the East.”

She looks confused. “Don't you mean the West?”

“The East is the one who got caught in the tornado and had Dorothy's house land on her.”

If possible, Lily ducks even more. “Great. Now I have to look for flying houses,” she mumbles under her breath.

“Flying houses might be the least of our problems,” I tell her as huge, angry-looking storm clouds move in directly above us. Though no rain is falling, lightning is flashing and thunder rumbling. “You need to get out of here, Lily.” I give her a little shove back toward the car.

“And what? Leave you here? I don't think so.”

“I'll be okay.”

“Then so will I, because I'm sticking right next to you.”

Scared for her, and for the man who has come to mean so much to me in so little time, I scream his name to be heard over the wind and thunder. “This isn't safe. You guys need to get out of here.”

“I'm almost done,” he shouts back at me. “It'll be fine in a minute.”

His definition of fine must be very different from mine. Because at that moment, a huge lightning bolt shoots out of the sky and slams into the earth only a couple of feet from where Declan is standing. The next thing I know, he's hurtling backward through the air.

“Declan!” I take off running straight at him, Lily right behind me. Has he been electrocuted? What kind of shoes is he wearing? Is he—

“Stay back!” he shouts, sounding a little worse for wear.

Still panicking, I ignore him. But the closer I get to him, the more my feet start to tingle. That's when I remember that I'm wearing boots instead of tennis shoes—the ground must still be holding on to some of the charge.

It doesn't hurt, though, doesn't burn, so I keep going. By the time I reach him, Declan's pushed himself back to a standing position. I glance down at his feet. Thank the goddess. He's wearing thick, rubber-soled hiking boots.

“I thought I told you to stay back,” he tells me even as he wraps his arms around my shoulders.

“Yeah, well, you aren't the only one who doesn't listen to directions.”

“Obviously.”

“What the hell have you done, Declan?” Lily yells from a few feet behind us. “Unleashed Armageddon?”

“Close enough,” he answers, reaching out for her wrist and yanking her—and me—behind him, just as another bolt of lightning strikes the garden. “Hold on.”

“What now?” Lily demands.

He doesn't answer, just turns his back on the spot where he'd unraveled the safeguards, wraps his arms around us to shelter us. “You don't want to know.”

“What's that supposed—”

Before I can finish, a loud crack sounds, ripping through the night air. It silences the thunder, stops the lightning and the wind, even stills the shaking ground. Then, before Lily's and my astonished eyes, the ground in front of us splits wide open.