Fireborn

CHAPTER 1

All of us dream.

Some of us even have pleasant dreams.

My dreams might have been few and far between, but they were never, ever pleasant. But worse than that, they always came true.

Over the course of my many lifetimes, I’d tried to interfere, to alter fate’s path and prevent the death I’d seen, but I’d learned the hard way that there were often serious consequences for both the victim and myself.

Which was why the flesh down my spine was twisted and marred. I’d pulled a kid from a burning car, saving her life but leaving us both disfigured. Fire may be mine to control and devour, but there’d been too many witnesses and I’d dared not use my powers. It had taken me months to heal, and I’d sworn—yet again—to stop interfering and simply let fate take her natural course. But here I was, out on the streets in the cold, dead hours of the night, trying to keep warm as I waited in the shadows for the man who was slated to die this night.

Because he wasn’t just a man. He was the man I’d once loved.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and tried to keep warm in the confines of the abandoned factory’s doorway. Why anyone would even come out by choice on a night like this was beyond me. Melbourne was a great city, but her winters could be hell, and right now it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a mutt—not that there were any mutts about at this particular hour. They apparently had more sense.

The breeze whisked around the parts of my face not protected by my scarf, freezing my skin and making it feel like I was breathing ice.

Of course, I did have other ways to keep warm. I was a phoenix—a spirit born from the ashes of flame—and fire was both my heritage and my soul. But even if I couldn’t sense anyone close by, I was reluctant to flame. Vampires and werewolves might have outed themselves during the peak of Hollywood’s love affair with all things paranormal, but the rest of us preferred to remain hidden. Humanity on the whole might have taken the existence of weres and vamps better than any of us had expected, but there were still far too many who believed nonhumans provided an unacceptable risk to their existence. Even on crappy nights like this, it wasn’t unusual to have hunting parties roaming the streets, looking for easy paranormal targets. While my kind rarely provided any sort of threat, I wasn’t human, and that made me as much a target for their hate as vamps and weres.

Even the man who’d once claimed to love me was not immune to such hate.

Pain stirred, distant and ghostly, but never, ever forgotten, no matter how hard I tried. Samuel Turner had made it all too clear what he thought of my “type.” Five years might have passed, but I doubted time would have changed his view that the only good monster was a dead one.

And yet here I was, attempting to save his stupid ass.

The roar of a car engine rode across the silence. For a moment the dream raised its head, and I saw again the flashes of metal out of the car window, the red-cloaked faces, the blood and brain matter dripping down brick as Sam’s lifeless body slumped to the wet pavement. My stomach heaved and I closed my eyes, sucking in air and fighting the feeling of inevitability.

Death would not claim his soul tonight.

I wouldn’t let her.

Against the distant roar of that engine came the sound of steady steps from the left of the intersection up ahead. He was walking toward the corner and the death that awaited him there.

I stepped out of the shadows. The glow of the streetlights did little to break up the night, leaving the surrounding buildings to darkness and imagination. The ever-growing rumble of the car approaching from the right didn’t quite drown out the steady sound of footsteps, but perhaps it only seemed that way because I was so attuned to it. To what was about to happen.

I walked forward, avoiding the puddles of light and keeping to the darker shadows. The air was thick with the growing sense of doom and the rising ice of hell.

Death waited on the other side of the street, her dark rags billowing and her face impassive.

The growling of the car’s engine swept closer. Lights broke across the darkness, the twin beams of brightness spotlighting the graffiti that colored an otherwise bleak and unforgiving cityscape.

This area of Brooklyn was Melbourne’s dirty little secret, one definitely not mentioned in the flashy advertising that hailed the city as the “it” holiday destination. It was a mix of heavy industrial and run-down tenements, and it housed the underbelly of society—the dregs, the forgotten, the dangerous. Over the past few years, it had become so bad that the wise avoided it and the newspapers had given up reporting about it. Hell, even the cops feared to tread the streets alone here. These days they did little more than patrol the perimeter in a vague attempt to stop the violence from spilling over into neighboring areas.

So why the hell was Sam right here in the middle of Brooklyn’s dark heart?

I had no idea and, right now, with Death so close, it hardly mattered.

I neared the fatal intersection and time slowed to a crawl. A deadly, dangerous crawl.

The Commodore’s black nose eased into the intersection from the right. Windows slid down smoothly, and the long black barrels of the rifles I’d seen in my dream appeared. Behind them, half-hidden in the darkness of the car’s interior, red hoods billowed.

Be fast, my inner voice whispered, or die.

Death stepped forward, eager to claim her soul. I took a deep, shuddering breath and flexed my fingers.

Sam appeared past the end of the building and stepped toward the place of his death. The air recoiled as the bullets were fired. There was no sound. Silencers.

I lunged forward, grabbed his arm, and yanked him hard enough sideways to unbalance us both. Something sliced across my upper arm, and pain flared as I hit the pavement. My breath whooshed loudly from my lungs, but it didn’t cover the sound of the unworldly scream of anger. Knowing what was coming, I desperately twisted around, flames erupting from my fingertips. They met the sweeping, icy scythe of Death, melting it before it could reach my flesh. Then they melted her, sending her back to the frigid realms of hell.

The car screeched to a halt farther down the street, the sound echoing sharply across the darkness. I scrambled to my feet. The danger wasn’t over yet. He could still die, and we needed to get out of here—fast. I spun, only to find myself facing a gun.

“What the—” Blue eyes met mine and recognition flashed. “Red! What the fuck are you doing here?”

There was no warmth in his voice, despite the use of my nickname.

“In case it has escaped your notice,” I snapped, trying to concentrate on the danger and the need to be gone rather than on how good he damn well looked, “someone just tried to blow your brains out—although it is debatable whether you actually have brains. Now move, because they haven’t finished yet.”

He opened his mouth, as ready as ever to argue, then glanced past me. The weapon shifted fractionally, and he pulled the trigger. As the bullet burned past my ear, I twisted around. A red-cloaked body lay on the ground five feet away, the hood no longer covering his features. His face was gaunt, emaciated, and there was a thick black scar on his right cheek that ended in a hook. It looked like Death’s scythe.

The footsteps coming toward us at rapid speed said there were another four to deal with. Sam’s hand clamped my wrist; then he was pulling me forward.

“We won’t outrun them,” I said, even as we tried to do just that.

“I know.” Sam’s voice was grim. Dark.

Sexy.

I batted the thought away and risked another glance over my shoulder. They’d rounded the corner and were now so close I could see their gaunt features, their scars, and the red of their eyes.

Fear shuddered through me. Whatever these things were, they weren’t human.

“We need somewhere to hide.” I scanned the buildings around us somewhat desperately. Broken windows, shattered brickwork, and rot abounded. Nothing offered the sort of fortress we so desperately needed right now.

“I know.” He yanked me to the right, just about pulling my arm out of the socket in the process. We pounded down a small lane that smelled of piss and decay, our footsteps echoing across the night. It was a sound that spoke of desperation.

The red cloaks were quiet. Eerily quiet.

A metal door appeared out of the shadows. Sam paused long enough to fling it open, then thrust me inside and followed, slamming the door shut and then shoving home several thick bolts.

Just in time.

Something hit the other side of the door, the force of it enough to dent the metal and make me jump back in fright. Fire flicked across my fingertips, an instinctive reaction I quickly doused as Sam turned around.

“That won’t help.” His voice was grim, but it still held echoes of the distaste that had dominated his tone all those years ago. “We need to get upstairs. Now,” he added, as the door shuddered under another impact.

He brushed past me and disappeared into the gloom of the cavernous building. I unraveled the scarf from around my face and hastily followed. “What the hell are those things? And why do they want to kill you?”

“Long story.” He reached a grimy set of stairs and took them two at a time. The metal groaned under his weight, but the sound was smothered by another hit to the door. This time, something broke.

“Hurry,” he added rather unnecessarily.

I galloped after him, my feet barely even hitting the metal. We ran down a corridor, stirring the dust that clung to everything until the air was thick and difficult to breathe. From downstairs came a metallic crash—the door coming off its hinges and smashing to the concrete.

They were in. They were coming.

Fear leapt up my throat, and this time the flames that danced across my fingertips would not be quenched. The red-gold flickers lit the darkness, lending the decay and dirt that surrounded us an odd sort of warmth.

Sam went through another doorway and hit a switch on the way through. Light flooded the space, revealing a long, rectangular room. In the left corner, as far away from the door as possible, was a rudimentary living area. Hanging from the ceiling on thick metal cables was a ring of lights that bathed the space in surreal violet light.

“Don’t tell me you live here,” I said as I followed Sam across the room.

He snorted. “No. This is merely a safe house. One of five we have in this area.”

The problems in this area were obviously far worse than anyone was admitting if cops now needed safe houses. Or maybe it was simply a development linked to the appearance of the red cloaks. Certainly I hadn’t come across anything like them before, and I’d been around for centuries. “Will the UV lighting stop those things?”

He glanced at me. “You can see that?”

“Yes.” I said it tartly, my gaze on his, searching for the distaste and the hate. Seeing neither. “I’m not human, remember?”

He grunted and looked away. Hurt stirred again, the embers refusing to die, even five years down the track.

“UV stops them.” He paused, then added, “Most of the time.”

“Oh, that’s a comfort,” I muttered, the flames across my fingers dousing as I thrust a hand through my hair. “What the hell are they, then? Vampires? They’re the only nonhumans I can think of affected by UV.”

And they certainly hadn’t looked like vampires. Most vamps tended to look and act human, except for the necessity to drink blood and avoid sunlight. None that I’d met had red eyes or weird scars on their cheeks—not even the psycho ones who killed for the pure pleasure of it.

“They’re a type of vampire.”

He pulled out a rack filled with crossbows, shotguns, and machine pistols from under the bed, then waved a hand toward it, silently offering me one of the weapons. I hesitated, then shook my head. I had my own weapon, and it was more powerful than any bullet.

“You’ll regret it.”

But he shrugged and began to load shells into a pump-action shotgun. There was little other sound. The red cloaks might be on their way up, but they remained eerily quiet.

I rubbed my arms, felt the sticky warmth, and glanced down. The red cloak’s bullet had done little more than wing me, but it bled profusely. If they were a type of vampire, then the wound—or rather the blood—would call to them.

“That blood might call to more than just those red cloaks,” he added, obviously noticing my actions. “There’re some bandages in the drawer of the table holding the coffeepot. Use them.”

I walked over to the drawer. “I doubt there’s anything worse than those red cloaks out on the streets at the moment.”

He glanced at me, expression unreadable. “Then you’d be wrong.”

I frowned, but opened the drawer and found a tube of antiseptic along with the bandages. As medical kits went, it was pretty basic, but I guess it was better than nothing. I applied both, then moved to stand in the middle of the UV circle, close enough to Sam that his aftershave—a rich mix of woody, earthy scents and musk—teased my nostrils and stirred memories to life. I thrust them away and crossed my arms.

“How can these things be a type of vampire?” I asked, voice a little sharper than necessary. “Either you are or you aren’t. There’s not really an in-between state, unless you’re in the process of turning from human to vamp.”

And those things in the cloaks were neither dead nor turning.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “And one I’d rather not go into right now.”

“Then at least tell me what they’re called.”

“We’ve nicknamed them red cloaks. What they call themselves is anyone’s guess.” His shoulder brushed mine as he turned, and a tremor ran down my body. I hadn’t felt this man’s touch for five years, but my senses remembered it. Remembered the joy it had once given me.

“So why are they after you?”

His short, sharp laugh sent a shiver down my spine. It was the sound of a man who’d seen too much, been through too much, and it made me wonder just what the hell had happened to him in the last five years.

“They hunt me because I’ve vowed to kill as many of the bastards as I can.”

The chance to ask any more questions was temporarily cut off as the red cloaks ran through the door. They were so damn fast that they were halfway across the room before Sam could even get a shot off. I took a step back, my fingers aflame, the yellow-white light flaring oddly against the violet.

The front one ran at Sam with outstretched fingers, revealing nails that were grotesque talons ready to rip and tear. The red cloak hit the UV light, and instantly his skin began to blacken and burn. The stench was horrific, clogging the air and making my stomach churn, but he didn’t seem to notice, let alone care. He just kept on running.

The others were close behind.

Sam fired. The bullet hit the center of the first red cloak’s forehead, and the back of his head exploded, spraying those behind him with flesh and bone and brain matter.

He fell. The others leapt over him, their skin aflame and not caring one damn bit.

Which was obviously why Sam had said my own flame wouldn’t help.

He fired again. Another red cloak went down. He tried to fire a third time, but the creature was too close, too fast. It battered him aside and kept on running.

It wanted me, not Sam. As I’d feared, the blood was calling to them.

I backpedaled fast, raised my hands, and released my fire. A maelstrom of heat rose before me, hitting the creature hard, briefly halting his progress and adding to the flames already consuming him.

My backside hit wood. The table. As the creature pushed through the flames, I scrambled over the top of it, then thrust it into the creature’s gut. He screamed, the sound one of frustration rather than pain, and clawed at the air, trying to strike me with arms that dripped flames and flesh onto the surface of the table.

The wooden table.

As another shot boomed across the stinking, burning darkness, I lunged for the nearest table leg. I gripped it tight, then heaved with all my might. I might be only five foot four, but I wasn’t human and I had a whole lot of strength behind me. The leg sheared free—and just in time.

The creature leapt at me. I twisted around and swung the leg with all my might. It smashed into the creature’s head, caving in his side and battering him back across the table.

A final gunshot rang out, and the rest of the creature’s head went spraying across the darkness. His body hit the concrete with a splat and slid past the glow of the UV, burning brightly in the deeper shadows crowding the room beyond.

I scrambled upright and held the leg at the ready. But there were no more fiery forms left to fight. We were safe.

For several seconds I did nothing more than stare at the remnants still being consumed by the UV’s fire. The rank, bitter smell turned my stomach, and the air was thick with the smoke of them. Soon there was little left other than ash, and even that broke down into nothingness.

I lowered my hands and turned my gaze to the man I’d come here to rescue. “What the hell is going on here, Sam?”

He put the safety on the gun, then tossed it on the bed and stalked toward me. “Did they bite you? Scratch you?”

I frowned. “No—”

He grabbed my arms, his skin so cool against mine. It hadn’t always been that way. Once, his flesh had matched mine for heat and urgency, especially when we were making love— I stopped the thought in its tracks. It never paid to live in the past. I knew that from long experience.

“Are you sure?” He turned my hands over and then grabbed my face with his oh-so-cool fingers, turning it one way and then another. There was concern in the blue of his eyes. Fear, even.

For me.

It made that stupid part of me deep inside want to dance, and that annoyed me even more than his nonanswers.

“I’m fine.” I jerked away from his touch and stepped back. “But you really need to tell me what the hell is going on here.”

He snorted and spun away, walking across to the coffeemaker. He poured two cups without asking, then walked back and handed the chip-free one to me.

“This, I’m afraid, has become the epicenter of hell on earth.” His voice was as grim as his expression.

“Which is about as far from an answer as you can get,” I snapped, then took a sip of coffee. I hated coffee—especially when it was thick and bitter—and he knew that. But he didn’t seem to care and, right then, neither did I. I just needed something warm to ease the growing chill from my flesh. The immediate danger to Sam might be over, but there was still something very wrong. With this situation, and with this man. “What the hell were those things if not vampires?”

He studied me for a moment, his expression closed. “Officially they’re known as the red plague, but, as I said, we call them red cloaks. They’re humans infected by a virus nicknamed Crimson Death. It can be transmitted via a scratch or a bite.”

“So if they wound you, you become just like them?”

A bleak darkness I didn’t understand stirred through the depths of his blue eyes. “If you’re human or vampire, yes.”

I frowned. “Why just humans and vampires? Why not other races?”

“It may yet affect other races. There are some shifters who seem to be immune as long as they change shape immediately after being wounded, but this doesn’t hold true in all cases. More than that?” He shrugged. “The virus is too new to be really certain of anything.”

Which certainly explained why he’d examined me so quickly for wounds. Although given I could take fire form and literally burn away any drug or virus in my system, it was doubtful this virus would have any effect.

“So you’ve been assigned to some sort of task force to hunt down and kill these things?”

Again he shrugged. “Something like that.”

Annoyance swirled, but I shoved it back down. It wouldn’t get me anywhere—he’d always been something of a closed shop when it came to his work as a detective. I guess that was one thing that hadn’t changed. “Is this virus a natural development or a lab-born one?”

“Lab born.”

“Who in their right mind would want to create this sort of virus?”

“They didn’t mean to create it. It’s a by-product of sorts.” He took a sip of his coffee, his gaze still on mine. There was little in it to give away what he was thinking, but it oddly reminded me of the look vampires got when they were holding themselves under tight control. He added, “They were actually trying to pin down the enzymes that turn human flesh into vampire and make them immortal.”

“Why the hell would anyone want to be immortal? Or near immortal? It sucks. Just ask the vampires.”

A smile, brief and bitter, twisted his features. “Humankind has a long history in chasing immortality. I doubt the testimony of vampires—many of whom are unbelievably rich thanks to that near immortality—would convince them otherwise.”

“More fool them,” I muttered. Living forever had its drawbacks. As did rebirth, which was basically what vampires went through to become near immortal. But then, humans rarely considered the side effects when they chased a dream.

I took another drink of coffee and shuddered at the tarlike aftertaste. How long had this stuff been brewing? I walked across to the small sink and dumped the remainder of it down the drain, then turned to face him again. “How did this virus get loose? This sort of research would have been top secret, and that usually comes with strict operational conditions.”

“It did. Does. Unfortunately, one scientist decided to test a promising serum on himself after what appeared to be successful trials on lab rats. No one realized what he’d done until after he went crazy and, by that time, the genie was out of the bottle.”

And on the streets, obviously. “How come there’s been no public warning about this? Surely people have a right to know—”

“Yeah, great idea,” he cut in harshly. “Warn the general population a virus that turns people into insane, vampirelike beings has been unleashed. Can you imagine the hysteria that would cause?”

And I guess it wouldn’t do a whole lot of good to the image of actual vampires, either. It would also, no doubt, lead to an influx of recruits to the many gangs dedicated to wiping the stain of nonhumanity from Earth.

I studied him for a moment. For all the information he was giving me, I had an odd sense that he wasn’t telling me everything. “The red cloaks who were chasing you acted as one, and with a purpose. That speaks of a hive-type mentality rather than insanity to me.”

He shrugged. “The virus doesn’t always lead to insanity, and not everyone who is infected actually survives. Those who do, do so with varying degrees of change and sanity.”

I frowned. “How widespread is this virus? Because if tonight is any example, there’s more than just a few surviving it.”

“About sixty percent of those infected die. So far, the virus is mostly confined to this area. We suspect there’s about one hundred or so cloaks.”

Which to me sounded like a serious outbreak. It also explained the patrols around this area. They weren’t keeping the peace—they were keeping people out and the red cloaks in. “And everyone who survives the virus is infectious?”

“Yes.”

It was just one word, but it was said with such bitterness and anger that my eyebrows rose. “Did someone close to you get infected? Is that why you swore to hunt them all down?”

He smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant thing to behold. Far from it. “You could say that. Remember my brother?”

I remembered him, all right—he wasn’t only the first child his mom had been able to carry to full term after a long series of miscarriages, but the firstborn son. And, as such, had never really been denied anything. He’d grown up accustomed to getting what he wanted, and I’d barely even begun my relationship with Sam when he’d decided what he wanted was me. He certainly hadn’t been happy about being rejected. Sam, as far as I knew, was not aware that his older brother had tried to seduce me, although there had been a definite cooling in their relationship afterward.

“Of course I remember Luke—but what has he got to do with anything?”

“He was one of the first victims of a red cloak attack in Brooklyn.”

If he’d been living in Brooklyn, it could only mean he’d truly immersed himself in the life of criminality he’d been dabbling with when I’d known him.

“Oh god. I’m sorry, Sam. Is he okay? Did he survive?” I half reached out to touch his arm, then stilled the motion when I saw the bitter anger in his expression. It was aimed at himself rather than at me, and it all but screamed comfort was not something he wanted right now.

“Luke survived the virus, but his sanity didn’t.” The fury in Sam’s eyes grew, but it was entwined with guilt and a deeper, darker emotion I couldn’t define. But it was one that scared the hell out of me. “I was the one who took him down, Red.”

No wonder he seemed surrounded by a haze of darkness and dangerous emotion—he’d been forced to shoot his own damn brother. “Sam, I’m sorry.”

This time I did touch his arm, but he shook it off violently. “Don’t be. He’s far better off dead than—” He cut the rest of the sentence off and half shrugged. Like it didn’t matter, when it obviously did.

“When did all this happen?”

“A little over a year ago.”

And he’d changed greatly in that year, I thought, though I suspected the cause was far more than just the stress of Luke’s death. “How the hell could something like this be kept a secret for so damn long?”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t want to know.”

A chill went through me. It wasn’t so much the words, but the way he said them and the flatness in his eyes. I had no doubt those words were a warning of death, but even so, I couldn’t help saying, “And what, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means you tell no one about tonight, or it could have disastrous consequences. For you and for them.”

And there it was, I thought bitterly. Fate’s kick in the gut. When would I ever learn to stop interfering with the natural course of events?

Sam stalked over to the bed, placing the shotgun in its slot and then picking up a regulation .40-caliber Glock semiauto pistol—a partner to the one he already carried. “We need to get out of here.”

“But I want to know—”

I stopped as his gaze pinned me and, with sudden, sad clarity, I realized there was very little left of the man I’d known in those rich blue depths. Only shadows and bitterness. I might have saved him tonight, but the reality was I’d been about twelve months too late. This was nothing more than a replica. He might look the same, he might smell the same, but he held none of the fierce joy of life that had once called to me like flame to a moth. This man’s world had become one of ashes and darkness, and it was not a place where I wanted to linger.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Don’t bother, Sam.”

He briefly looked confused. It was the second real expression I’d seen—the first being that moment of surprise when he’d realized who’d saved him. “What do you mean?”

I walked across to him. Ashes or not, he still resembled the man I’d never get over—not in this lifetime, anyway—and it was hard not to lean into him. Hard not to give in to the desire to kiss him good-bye, just one more time.

“I’m one of them, remember?” Bitterness crept into my voice. “One of the monsters. And I’m more than capable of looking after myself.”

He snorted softly, the sound harsh. “Not in this damn area, and maybe not against the—”

“I got in here without harm,” I cut in, voice as cold as his, “and I’ll damn well get out the same way.”

“Fine.” He stepped aside and waved me forward with the barrel of the gun. “Be my guest.”

I looked at him for a moment longer, then walked toward the door. But as I neared it, I hesitated and turned around. “I don’t know what has happened to you, Sam Turner, but I’m mighty glad you’re no longer in my life.”

And with that lie lingering in the air, I left him to his bitterness and shadows and went home.