Touching Fire (Touch Saga) (5 page)

“It’s all right, Archer.”

He was no longer a demon. His face had converted back to its devilishly handsome features, once you overlooked the faint blush darkening his jaw and the fact that he looked like he’d bathed in a tub of blood. But my radar had been struck and I wasn’t falling for no pretty face.

“What are you?” I leveled the toothpick at him. “Like for real.
That…” I waved erratically at the pile of human remains. “Was like something from
Saw
, or
Nightmare on Elm Street
. Are you a telekinesis?”

“Telekinetic,” Isaiah
mumbled under his breath.

I ignored him.

Ashton grimaced and rolled his eyes heavenwards as though someone up there was going to help him with the answer. “Yes and no.” The person up there was clearly no help at all. “It’s a bit hard to explain with the limited time we have.”

“
What about him?” I stabbed at leather boy. “You know him?”

“Archer is with me,” Ashton said evenly.
“He’s my … back up.” It was said with a slight tilt of his lips, like he found that amusing.

“He’s a jerk,” I
corrected.

“Well, this
jerk
saved your pretty behind, Princess.” Archer countered and I finally recognized the hint of Ireland lacing each syllable. “Now do you mind?” He held out a gloved hand.

I stared at him,
convinced his journey through the bus stop had jiggled something loose.

“The spike, Fallon,” Ashton supplied helpfully.

I looked down at the thing in my hand and really examined it for the first time. It was long, about the length of my arm, and ivory smooth with points on both ends that could skewer a person. It reminded me of a really big toothpick.

I wasn’t wholly convinced giving the guy a weapon was a good idea, but
I passed it over. Archer snatched it out of my hand and, as I watched in fascination, he injected it through a gap in the palm of his right glove and fed it up through his arm.

“
Now
that
is talent,” I mused.

Spike
fully sheathed, Archer raised his head and smirked. He opened his mouth to comment, but the piercing whistle of sirens in the distance halted him.

“I think we should move along,” Ashton said, head turned in the direction of the sound.
“The police aren’t our only problem.”

He looked to Archer and said something in a language I didn’t understand, and from the frown on Isaiah’s face, he didn’t understand either. But Archer
pursed his lips and turned his head to scan our surroundings. His fingers flexed on either side of him as he replied in the same foreign language.

Ashton nodded. Then looked at me. “We need to go.”

It was probably a good idea. The entire street was in chaos and something told me the authorities wouldn’t believe us if we told them we didn’t do it. Ashton was still covered in blood, as was I, only the blood dripping off the hem of my dress was black like I’d gotten into a fight with a tar truck. Isaiah’s clothes were wrinkled, torn in some places and he had a gash on his bottom lip that was quickly healing, but there was no mistaking that he’d been in a fight. Archer was the only one who seemed normal, if a long, black trench coat, scuffed army boots and black jeans were normal. There was a black top beneath his coat, but even that was wrinkle free. His hair, a platinum blond that was cut short around the sides and left spiked on top, was in perfect order despite being thrown into a bus stop and even his glasses were shiny and without a single scratch. It was annoying how put together he looked compared to the rest of us.

“
Two blocks,” Archer told Ashton, jerking his pointy chin in some seemingly random direction over my shoulder.

Ashton patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t go when the two started away, not because I had some kind of desire to be arrested, but because I wasn’t fully prepared to blindly follow these two.

“Fallon?” Isaiah touched my elbow.

I glanced at him. “What is he?”

“Who?”

“The Pope!” I snapped out sarcastically. “Ashton. He’s way too strong to be a mutant and way too monsterish. What is he?”

Isaiah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Dude, how do you not know? You’ve known the guy for seventeen years. Is he like us or not?”

“I never asked.”

I knew Isaiah wasn’t stupid. He was probably one of the smartest people I knew. But his blind faith and loyalty to Ashton was a bit cultish. He never questioned him. I knew my mom my entire life and there wasn’t a day I didn’t question everything she did. It was natural. But not Isaiah. He would walk into the bowels of hell if Ashton asked him to.

“I would not,” Isaiah muttered, but his cheeks were pink.
“And it’s not
cultish
. The guy saved my life. I owe him.”

“He’s also the guy that helped Garrison make us,” I reminded him. “He’s part of the reason I have a time bomb inside me and you’re the key to setting me off.”

“He didn’t know!”

It was the age old argument.
I would have argued, but we were nearly out of time.

“We’ll talk about this when we get back to the motel
—”

“
Fallon?” Isaiah took my arm when I doubled over.

Sharp little slivers of glass had embedded
themselves deep into the soft tissues of my feet, no doubt from my little marathon across the sea of broken things to get to Isaiah. A steady trickle of blood spilled from the inch-long gash running lengthwise along the arch.

“Awesome,” I muttered. “Now I’m going to get gangrene and possibly get my foot chopped off. Nothing
says weapon of mass destruction like crutches.”

“Okay, we need to go… now!”
Archer and Ashton were back.

Without missing a beat,
Archer bolted forward, yanked me to him and scooped me into his arms bridal style. My squeak was ignored, as was the vicious growl from Isaiah as he took a violent step forward, hands fisted at his sides.

Ashton stopped him with a hand on his chest. He said something I couldn’t hear over the whistle of air as
Archer sprinted away, with me still cradled against his chest.

“Put me down!” I
snapped.

“Wouldn’t want to
hurt your dainty foot, Princess.”

I bared my teeth. “Oh, it’s going to hurt plenty when I kick your
junk up into—”

“
Easy!” He rounded the corner between two buildings. “I saved your life. In some cultures that means we’re married, in which case you’re going to want my junk where it is.”

Now I really wanted to hit him.
Luckily for him, we reached an alleyway and a door carved into the side of a bricked building. He gingerly set me down. I kept my injured foot elevated even as I swatted at him to get away from me.

“You have some nerve, buster!” I snapped. “Who the hell do you think you are anyway?”

He spread his arms wide and bowed mockingly. “Arcarius Blackburn. Bane Legacy. At your service, Princess.”

Chapter
3

The door was as ordinary and dull as the building surrounding it. The green paint was faded and chipped in places, revealing a puke yellow color underneath, like someone had tried to cheer the place up by painting over it. The doorknob was brass and sat awkwardly out of place where the hole didn’t secure around it properly. It rattled when I poked it with a finger. The structure around it, a rundown apartment building with a rickety fire escape bolted—barely—along the side and busted windows cut into the red bricks, was gloomy and located between a cagey jewelry shop and a pizzeria. The door was tucked away in a dank alley, nearly hidden behind a dumpster.

“
Ashton said your name was Archer,” I said, turning away from the door and confronting the figure standing behind me.

“So he did,” Archer mused slowly. “Then I suppose it must be true.”

I glowered at him. “Is it, or isn’t it?” I countered.

His head bent to the side. “Would it matter?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask whether or not it would matter if I kicked him, but Isaiah and Ashton took that moment to round the corner.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” Ashton muttered
, reaching us, Isaiah a step behind him, expression severely sour. I met his blue eyes and offered him what I hoped was a comforting smile. “It’s been years since I found myself running from the law.” Ashton stepped towards me, hands fishing deep in the bowels of his pockets. “Now where did I put that…?”

Archer reached into the pocket of his floor duster
and removed something small, slim and silver. At a quick glance, I thought it might have been a quill. The sleek design was pointed off on one end and flat on the other.

He held it out to Ashton.

“You could use mine,” he offered.

Giving up on his search, Ashton took the device and flipped a small notch at the top, near the flat end. The thing shot out, ex
panding into a thin rod that was as long as my arm. I stepped back as Ashton raised it over his head like a spear and jabbed it into the door, where the pointy end burrowed into the wood.

Slivers
of light coiled across the surface, winding and shimmering until it covered the entire length. The designs were symbols I didn’t recognize, intricate vines that interlocked in a dazzling pattern. I almost wanted to touch, except the protruding device gave a shudder and exploded with eight razor sharp talons that shot out of the handle and embedded deep into the wood. It reminded me of an umbrella without the fabric to keep the rain at bay.

The thing began to hum and glow, and the louder it hummed, the brighter it glowed until I was squinting against the prickles hurting my eyes. The stench of sulfur
and bleach impregnated the air. I held my breath even as I turned my head away.

Then, with an audible
puff
, the light faded and smoke rose off the mark burned into the wood. It glowed red like the embers of a dying campfire. The talons ejected and sprung back into the rod and the rod shrunk back to its normal size and dropped harmlessly to the damp ground. Archer retrieved it and tucked it back into his pocket.

“
What just happened?” I asked, staring at the symbol steaming before my eyes.

It was
a seven cornered star encircled by two rings. In the center of the rings, symbols blazed in the form of words in a language I had never seen. Then, on the top, bottom and two sides, four smaller circles harbored their own individual signs.

Ashton moved forward and reached for the doorknob, which had mysteriously moved from the right side to the left and was a shiny gold with a beautiful, ornate pattern
of leaves winding across the base. He pulled out a silver skeleton key and slipped it into the keyhole. With a decisive click, the lock gave and the door swung inward to reveal a small, tiled room that looked vaguely familiar.

“I thought you would like to retrieve your things,” Ashton replied simply, moving through the opening.

I spared Isaiah a quick glance and was rewarded with a shrug. Without a word exchanged, I turned and followed Ashton.

It was a bathroom, cramped, dimly lit and smelling heav
ily of antiseptic. A damp towel lay in one corner behind the door and the lingering humidity thickened the room. The narrow cubical was still beaded with water droplets from the shower I’d taken almost an hour ago.

“How did we…?”

Words failed me as we walked into the sleeping area and it really hit me just how far we’d traveled simply by walking through a door, a door that had not been there that morning.

The motel we’d chosen had been, like all the others,
a hasty decision. I don’t think we ever actually planned which motel we’d go to next. We always just sort of wound up at them at random. They were only meant to give us a place to rest for a few nights before we moved on.

Our current crash pad was no different. The carpets were urine-free and the wallpaper still had some of its color
, but our only interest had been the beds.

There were two, but only one
had the sheets thrown back and the pillow flattened. The one I used. The one I guessed I should have made before leaving. But how had I to know my father would return with us? It wasn’t as though that had been the plan. Truthfully, I had expected a few more meetings before we did the whole house visiting thing. However, that was clearly not going to happen.

My father was standing in the center of the motel, eyeing the rumpled bed and all I could think was how bad that must
have seemed.

Isaiah and I did sometimes share
a bed. Those nights were rare and usually only when I awake from a night mare, bathed in cold sweat. But not once had we ever done anything inappropriate. Hell, we hadn’t even shared a kiss. The guy was a saint. Not that it showed, what with one bed a total mess and the other not even touched. But I had no idea how to assure him that Isaiah spent most of the night sitting by the window without making the matter worse. So I opted to say nothing.

“Why don’t you grab your things?” Ashton turned away from the bed to face me.

It was a struggle not to blush.

So
awkward.

“Why?” I asked. “
Where are we going?”

Archer moved away from the bathroom doorway and
went to the only window in the place. He pulled back the heavy curtains and peered outside.

“We don’t have much time,” he
remarked.

“You’re not safe here,”
Ashton said. “Not from Garrison … or anyone else.”

I frowned at his hesitation. “Who else are we running from?
Those creatures at the park?”

Archer and my father exchanged glances. I had no idea how Ashton could read anything on Archer’s featureless face, but he sighed and focused on me once more.

“I’ll explain everything once we’re out of here.”

“Including
the magical door in the bathroom?” I countered, raising an eyebrow.

Ashton indulged me with a small smile. “
Even that.”

Reluctant
, I moved to the bed and retrieved the duffle bag stowed away underneath. It was already packed and ready to grab at a moment’s notice. I also pulled out the second bag that was Isaiah’s and dropped them both down on the bed.

I’d lost most of my stuff while Isaiah and I had been on the run. Whatever
remained back in Manitoba was my mom’s, which was packed inside her broken down Impala, alongside Isaiah’s motorcycle and Mom’s ashes. We never got the chance to go back and get our things after we’d been kidnapped and forcibly flown three provinces over. We’d spent the last four weeks buying small quantities of supplies that we could pack and move at a second’s notice. So it weighed nothing.

“Done,” I said.

It was a warped kind of satisfaction, seeing the surprise and fascination on Ashton’s face.

He gave me a small grin.
“Ever your mother’s daughter I see.”

I dropped my gaze and
fished for my sneakers under the bed. “I’m very good at running,” I admitted with no real humor in my voice.

Isaiah moved forward and grabbed his duffle. He slung the strap over his shoulder before
reaching over and taking mine while I cleaned the gash on my foot and wrapped it with the small emergency kit I’d taken to carrying around in my bag. I donned my comfy, normal shoes.

“Are we going through the bathroom wall?” I asked, tilting my head ever so slightly to the right to peer into bathroom
and see if the doorway we’d magically conjured in the far wall was still there. It wasn’t.

“No,” Ashton said. “Every n
ew location needs a new gateway, although, if you wish to return to the alley, I suppose you could use the same portal.”

“Portal? Like
Star Wars
?”

“
Star Trek
,” Isaiah whispered just barely under his breath.

I rolled my eyes. “Same thing!”

We’d had that argument so many times, it no longer even registered. I could never tell the two apart and truthfully, it was just too complicated for me to want to.

Ashton chuckled. “
It’s a bit more complex than that, but I promise to tell you more once we’re safely home.”

That word again. No matter how it was said, it continued to rain shivers down my spine in a strange surge of dread and anticipation.
It was daunting how excited I was to see this
home
business for myself. It felt like I was going to meet a celebrity or a mythical creature. I knew homes existed, but I never dreamed of meeting one! Yeah, it was pathetic.

“The
guard,” Archer muttered, pulling away from the window to turn to Ashton. “We need that gateway … now!”

My mouth opened, the question poised on the end, but Archer moved then, digging into his coat pocket and tossing Ashton the magical portal making quill—my name for it.
Ashton caught it in midair with a single flick of his wrist. But rather than extend the rod and stab it into the wall, he turned the palm on his free hand over and cut a long, clean cut from heel to finger. Blood bubbled and pooled. He smacked his hand against the wall before I could say a word about the dangers of infection.

“Luxuria!” he said
and yanked his hand back.

I expected to see a smeared, bloody
handprint marring the faded wallpaper. Instead, there was a mark, the same one that had appeared on the door we’d used to get to the motel. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to represent nor was I given the chance to ask when it gave a pulse and blazed crimson. Splinters of light shot across the wall in a perfect rectangle, the exact shape and size of a large door.

The wall and its dull wallpaper shimmered out of sight and
were replaced by a door in tarnished gold. Intricate symbols were carved into the polished metal. A small, rectangular window was cut into the top and was frosted over from the other side. The handle, an elaborate contraption with gears and cogs was bolted lengthwise into the frame and woven to resemble flames. At the base was a spinning wheel in bright silver. Seven cylinders were mounted where the hinges should have been.

“Step back,” Ashton said to me, putting out an arm and maneuvering me
where he wanted me.

I did and watched
as he stepped closer. His hands closed around the wheel and gears groaned as it was twisted clockwise. The cylinders along the side gave seven individual pops and the door came away from the iron frame with an audible hiss. Steam billowed from the seam. It wafted across the ceiling and along the floor around our feet.

I took another cautious step back.

It opened into a dimly lit tunnel that smelled strongly of sulfur, burning fabric, gasoline and rotting meat. My gag reflexes hitched once before I caught myself.

Ashton cast one glance in Archer’s direction before ducking his head and stepping through the opening.
I followed with Isaiah behind me and Archer taking the tail. He pulled the heavy door shut, sealing us in with the foul stench. But not before I saw
them.

The …
things
that entered were massive, ten feet of tarnished black iron and billowing fire. They broke down the motel door and took up the entire doorway, a trio of scary looking knights. Black armor covered their entire bodies. There were swords strapped to their hips, four jagged spikes on each of their shoulders and spikes on the knuckle of each of their hands. The helmets on their heads had two protruding horns jutting from the top, reminding me of a bull’s head. Flames shot from the gaps in their armor, spewing out at random intervals, like a busted furnace. A burst of it shot out from the seam connecting the shoulder to the arm of the creature in front and singed the doorframe.

“What—”

“The guard,” Archer said, propelling Isaiah and me after Ashton. “Go!”

Having no desire to get caught by those things, I made no
protest. I turned tail and moved as quickly as was possible after my father’s pale shirt as he moved with deft sped through the torch-lit shaft. I heard Isaiah and Archer behind me, their movements barely audible.