Forged in Fire (23 page)

Mr. Philips had never failed to show. Frederick was beside himself. What could have possibly detained him? He dialed Mr. Philips for the seventh time and slammed his phone closed when it went to voice mail. “Damn it,” he growled.

The chauffer who had been leaning against the car, reading on some electronic device, straightened up at Frederick’s outburst.

“Take me to Redmond,” he ordered the man. “Crankshaft Tavern. I have a need to visit a tragedy.” Time to take matters into his own hands.

As they drove through the quiet neighborhood surrounding the gardens, a sliver of fear insinuated itself into his belly. He did not like surprises and did not take failure easily. Mr. Philips’s sudden and uncharacteristic disappearance was unnerving in a way he had not experienced in many a century.

Once they’d arrived at the tavern, he stepped from the limo and crossed the road to the burned-out smithy. Jean-Paul had spread his fire here in the spring. No fire can be controlled on land cursed by dragon fire. He pace through the wreckage and spotted a growth of fireweed. He knelt and brushed the long red stems. Someone knew their lore. A couple of seasons and this ground may be salvageable.

He rose, pacing toward the ruined smithy. Sarah Jane Beauhall had worked here in the spring. Now she was a willing servant of Nidhogg. What had she done here that so upset Nidhogg and set Jean-Paul in motion?

He opened himself to the carnage. The destruction sang to him; the scars of kin-flame raised the hackles on his neck—danger. They were territorial beasts after all.

“What was so important about this place?” he asked aloud.

The trailer that had burned held nothing for him, nor did any of the outbuildings. It was the smithy proper that pulled him. He stood among the blackened timbers and filth, stirring the ashes with his oxblood Berlutis.

There was a taste of something here. He knelt, running his hands across a mound of metal slag. This had been an anvil once. Its form cried to him. The dire flame of his kin had destroyed its shape, but the intent of it, the intrinsic being, remained. “Here,” he whispered. “This is where something was reborn. What did you bring into the world, young Beauhall? What memory did you stir?” He opened his senses, searching for the ancient magic that somehow frightened him.

A blade.

He stood, suddenly very aware of his surroundings. The Berlutis would be ruined and the ash might forever ruin the pants. But there was knowledge here, something Jean-Paul had known, or guessed at.

The sword. He’d been in its presence, felt a nudge in his direction when Beauhall held it. But there had been no evidence of its power. He laughed. He’d tried to buy it from her on a whim, not understanding what it truly was.

It was the blade that had drunk deeply of Jean-Paul’s blood. His was not the first. This blade, this relic of a long-forgotten past, had risen from the dust to return to hunt his kind.

He shivered as a cold wind stirred the months-old debris. Here was death for his kind. He fled back to the limo, stomping his feet as he crossed the street to remove as much of the ash as he could.

Beauhall. Her face rose in his mind, young and brash. Did she know what she’d wrought? The ancient ways had been snuffed out by the systematic efforts of the dragon high council. They had performed a careful elimination of certain elements, collection or destruction of texts, items, even whole languages.

How had this sword been reborn, and just who was this Sarah Beauhall?

He settled himself in the back of the limousine and took out his phone once more. This time he called up a number he’d never planned to dial. The thought of contacting the smith wrapped the trickle of fear that rode in his belly with a razor wire of lust and power he would always associate with Sarah Jane Beauhall. He hesitated, unsure of the words he should use. It was not like him to hesitate so. He snapped the phone shut, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

Maybe it would be better to visit the young woman in person. He opened his phone and read an address to the driver, who turned at the next intersection and headed back to Bellevue.

Thirty-five

S
kella left our apartment just after eleven in the morning, exhausted and begging for sleep. She’d ferried the Black Briar crew out to Chumstick and returned to pick us up from her place in Vancouver.

“I need to be up in time for the next shift,” she groused. “All this extracurricular work is really wearing me down.”

“Okay, sorry,” I said. “Thought this was important.”

“It is,” she agreed, stifling a yawn. “We’ll talk later.” She stepped into the mirror and was gone.

Katie pulled me to her, hugging me for a very long time. “Let’s go to bed,” she said. “Maybe even get some sleep.”

“Sounds excellent,” I said, kissing her. We worked our way to the bedroom with one or more parts always in contact while simultaneously stripping off each other’s clothes. When we got to the doorway, however, I froze, stepping back.

Behind the headboard was that doorway with the unstable threshold—a vacuum that could suck me into the ether—into the land where the eaters lived and hunted.

Suddenly I wasn’t really in the mood any longer.

“What if you’d woken up and I was just not there anymore?” I asked her, pulling away. “What if I was a hollow shell, my spirit eaten by the things out there?” I pointed to where the doorway had once existed.

She looked at the wall and then to me. “We’ve been in this bed for a long time,” she said, patiently. “And while I may have lost consciousness a few times, neither of us have left our bodies during sex.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know. But that first time could really suck.”

There was no mistaking her arousal. Her brain was working overdrive to get things moving. But she loved me and relented, if somewhat reluctantly.

“Fine, we’ll sleep in the living room,” she said. “Help me.”

We moved through the house naked, pushing the dining room table against the wall and clearing the middle of the great room. Then we carried the mattress from the other room, lay it in the middle of the room, and set it up with sheets, blankets, and pillows.

“Better?” she asked.

I nodded slowly and allowed her to pull me down onto the new bed. For a while we let the world fade away to nothing but each other.

Afterward, tangled in sweaty sheets, we spoke of a new place. A house where we could start from scratch, make our own mark.

“We could move north, be closer to Black Briar,” I offered, but she didn’t like that answer.

“No,” she said. “We can’t go too far north. I don’t want to leave my kids. It’s hard on them when teachers leave in the middle of a year.”

“Well, it will take awhile for us to find a place. Maybe we can move next summer, after the school year ends.”

She sat up, running her fingers down my rib cage and over my hip. “We can’t keep the bed in the middle of the living room,” she said. “We’d never be able to entertain.”

I squirmed under her touch. “The only people who come over are Melanie and Dena.” I grinned at her. “I’m sure they’d find some use for this setup.”

She smacked my thigh and covered my mouth with hers. I guess the problem didn’t need to be solved right this moment.

Thirty-six

T
risha sat on a mat on the floor, naked and bound. Intricate knots and thin ropes wrapped around her torso in such a way as to encircle her breasts. From there, a line trailed down her stomach to a complicated array of lines and knots that wrapped around her waist and down across her naked and shaved pubic mound, the thin rope parting her labia and running back up the crack of her ass to meet the loop dropping down from her shoulders.

Justin sat in a chair across from her, naked as well, with a large book in his lap. She contemplated his pale skin, his light eyes. Had they always been so? She thought for a moment that they had been darker. And hadn’t there been another name? Why was it so hard to remember?

“Your scars make you beautiful,” he said. “They are a way of marking your life, bringing out the inner light that yearns to be released.”

Trisha whispered. “I see that now, master. Thank you for showing me how beautiful I can be.”

Justin put the book aside and picked up a small sheathed knife from the table beside him. “Are you ready for me?” he asked her.

She lowered her torso forward, cocking her head to the side and putting her right shoulder against a large cushion with her knees under her and her rear end in the air. “Yes, master. I am yours to do with as you wish.”

He knelt behind her and unsheathed the small, silver knife. He reached under her and dragged his hand from her stomach, following the rope. She gasped as he crossed her mons and gave a moaning shudder. He continued to follow the rope up over her ass and to the connecting knot at her lower back.

She cried out as he pulled the rope tighter, forcing it deep between the folds of her labia, and set the knife beneath the taut line, edge upward. He sawed across the bond three times, eliciting grunts from Trisha, before the rope parted. Once the cord dropped to the floor, he leaned forward, entering her with one swift motion.

She rose from the floor, her back taut, and cried out in ecstasy.

He held his place, not moving, just allowing her to feel him filling her for a moment. Then, as she found some moment of control, a stilling of her earnest thrusting, he began to make the first cut across her left buttock.

Thirty-seven

F
rederick arrived at young Sarah’s apartment, horrified at the low-budget arrangements for one of her stature.

The chauffer opened the door, and he stepped out, straightening his jacket. He walked briskly up the stairs to her apartment, his heart beating quicker than he wanted.
Calm
, he told himself. She had no reason to kill him. He was not a coward and not without his own powers.

Still, a bit of uncertainty assailed him as he approached the door. Nidhogg had the smith in her employ. What did that portend? He raised his fist to knock on the door and paused. He picked up two distinct voices inside. The close proximity to so many others, like rats in a warren, confused even his outstanding hearing. With a sigh, he knocked three times and stepped back, allowing the people inside an opportunity to see him through the peephole.

A woman approached the door, her steps hesitant, her smell strong in his nostrils. Middle-aged, lonely. Strong and fiery. A smith, he determined. She smelled of fire and forge.

Julie Hendrickson opened the door, smiling at him. “I guess it’s a day for visitors. How may I help you?”

There is something about her scent he realized: fear. Not fear of him, that would be more distinct. No, this was fear in general, like something had been taken away from her—a festering fear that debilitated the mind and crushed the soul.

“I’m very sorry to disturb you,” he said with his most winning smile. “My name is Frederick Sawyer. I’m looking for Ms. Sarah Jane Beauhall.”

Julie froze, the smile on her face rigid and stiff. Another woman appeared behind her, a dozen steps back. She looked and smelled like Beauhall.
Relative
, he thought. Perhaps her mother. How amusing.

“Sarah’s not here,” Julie managed to say.

He glanced past her into the tiny apartment. The other woman, this matron Beauhall, crossed her arms and looked at him as if he were something oozing and pestilent.

“My pardon,” he said with a slight nod. “Perhaps you could let her know I have urgent need of her?”

“I’m sure I can pass along a message,” Julie said, a bit of steel returning to her.

This amused him. Both women suddenly became much more dangerous. Protecting their young, he surmised. Interesting indeed.

He reached in his jacket, removed his wallet, and handed Julie a business card. “Please have her contact me at this number. It is a matter of some urgency.”

Julie took the card from him, the steel in her eyes growing stronger with every breath. “It may be a day or more before I see her, but I’ll be sure to pass this along the next time she checks in.”

Bluff
, he read. She’ll call her the second his limo leaves the lot. He bowed, thinking of Mr. Philips. “As you will,” he said. “Thank you for your time.”

She had the door shut before he straightened. It had been a very long time since he’d had such a strongly negative reaction from one of the chattel. Had she known who he was? It was not unthinkable, being a compatriot of young Sarah, but he knew he had never met either of these women before in his life.

The other woman, however. Sarah’s … he sniffed. Mother, if he was not mistaken. There was something about her. It wasn’t until he had climbed into the limo that he placed the feeling. She was marked. He was absolutely sure of it. Marked by another of his kind, ownership established, brand burned into her skin somewhere. Neither Nidhogg’s nor Jean-Paul’s.

Very interesting. “Take me back to the hotel,” he told the driver. He leaned back, poured himself a scotch, and let the whiskey burn its way down his parched throat. Better to flush out the stench of that place, the overcrowded life they led, these furtive humans. Did none of them have a sense of smell?