Make Me Burn: Fireborne, Book 2 (30 page)

“I also brought Adam’s pictures. I was showing them to Chi, but we can talk about that later.”

When Ram moved out of the way, Greg carried her into a small living room and sat down with her in his lap. Then Chiye covered her with an afghan, her expression tender.

Greg lifted one hand from her to grip Chiye’s gently. “Thank you, Chi.”

In reaction, Chiye blushed and ducked her head. “You’re welcome.”

Greg noticed Aziza watching and grinned ruefully before pulling her closer, shifting until she was settled more fully on his lap. “Get comfortable. Now it’s time for Saint King Greg to get caught up. West sees the future? Something about sand? Did you ask him where Joseph is? If he knows more about the treaty or the Jiniyr? If he knows what will happen if you find Adam’s vial and take it?”

“All good questions,” West said as he joined them, his shirt still off, revealing his scars to Greg’s fascinated gaze. “Most of which she already knows the answers to, after someone guided her to the right source. She would have told you all of this by now, but you’ve been understandably distracted.” He set a platter full of tumblers and a plate of sliced cheese and grapes on the coffee table. “We should have another drink and take it slow. Chiye needs to be caught up so she doesn’t feel left out.”

“Let’s have it then.” Chiye smiled, kneeling on the floor at Greg’s feet with her hand on Aziza’s knee. “You know I love your stories.”

Her eyes were red. More tears. Hearing about Blade had affected her far more than realizing she’d moved from one location to another in what must have seemed to her like less than the blink of an eye.

Aziza hesitated. Should Chiye be hearing this if she was only human? Would it scare her the way it had Tabitha? “Chiye, I’m not sure you want to know—”

“Stand up, Aziza.” West spoke quietly, but confidently. “Stand up right there in front of the fireplace and show her who you are. You have enough control. Show her. Trust me, she won’t disappoint you.”

Aziza climbed out of Greg’s lap reluctantly and stood, watching the woman she was becoming friends with. Watching all of them.

“Show her, Aziza,” Ram murmured.

“Don’t be afraid,” she muttered, looking down at her hands.

Burn.

Chiye squeaked and dropped her glass on the carpet. “
Huck up.
But that’s brilliant, is what that is. Beautiful.”

Aziza smiled slightly at her excitement, looking down at her hands, which were now covered in blue-white flame. “It’s something.”

“You’re reacting better than I did.” Greg laughed. “Of course, we had no idea what she was at the time.”

Aziza turned and sent a small burst of power into the fireplace, instantly sparking the logs that were piled neatly inside, before focusing on turning down her flame.

Hot air balloons. Flying. Chiye on the aerial hoop.

When did this woman she hardly knew become her happy thought?

“It looks cool, but Aziza Jane has suffered because of this,” West told Chiye. “The people who killed her family, her parents and her brothers, and the people who killed Stacy and the others… They want to use her, and their desire could kill millions of people. Destroy worlds. That’s why we have to protect her. Keep her secret.”

“I understand.” Chiye frowned in irritation. “Well, I don’t completely understand, but I’m not an idiot, West. And I’ve kept
your
secret well enough.”

She looked over at Aziza again and smiled. “Sisters, then?”

Aziza breathed a sigh of relief. “Sisters.”

“I know you can keep a secret,” he responded. “And now Aziza does too.” He raised his voice. “Can Ram?”

Ram was sitting on the floor opposite the couch, watching Aziza. He glanced over at West and smiled. “I can. There are few things the Jinn and Niyr agree on. Fear of the keeper line is one of them. It’s something they can’t observe. Can’t control. The Mayet’s secret. You are an unknown element in our eternal chess match.”

West’s grin was infectious. “And doesn’t that just make you like me more?”

Ram snorted. “I have to admit it does. Is my word good for you?”

West sobered. “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know you could be trusted. Exile or Jinn warrior, I trust you with my life.”

“How can I disagree with a keeper’s vision?”

“You can’t.” West leaned back in his chair. “The Zhaman, who sees more of the future than I could ever hope to, knew these events would unfold,” he began, his southern drawl hypnotic. “Time is the river she navigates, and in that river all points converged on the one destined to embrace everything the Mayet had to offer. One woman who would face Death in his own house, whose existence would bring us full circle after thousands of years. Those are her words, not mine. I had to memorize them as a child.”

“Dern says it’s not about destiny,” Aziza said quietly. “It’s about choice.”

“Who is Dern?” Greg’s words sounded slightly slurred. Strange. “And if she always knew it would be Aziza, why did she send the sand to her brothers?”

“To allow the chain of events to unfold as they had to,” West answered, his voice warmth and whiskey. Peaceful. “Some destined events cannot be changed by choice, no matter how difficult they are to face. There was no future where Emma Stewart and Zayid Ammu could remain together to love each other and raise their children in peace. No future where Tarik and Adam survived. No choice but to give Aziza the chance to fulfill her destiny. The sand was sent for her to find. It was a convenient excuse for those waiting in the shadows to act.”

Aziza’s legs gave out and she dropped to her knees, the fire warm against her back.
No future where they survived.
“The Mayet said Joseph is being hidden to protect me.”

West’s voice lowered in sympathy. “Aziza Jane,
hidden
sounds like alive to me. You knew it weeks ago and now you are sure. Take comfort in that, if nothing else. Would you really want him to be found when so many eyes are focused on you? He has no way to protect himself. They will use him against you.”

Looking for him is selfish.

She didn’t need to use her abilities to understand what he was saying. Her head began to throb and the room was starting to sway slightly as she caught a scent in the fire. “What is that smell?”

“Incense.” West sounded farther away. “It’s a family recipe. I should warn you, it has a potent effect.”

“Dern mentioned incense and the keepers…but I don’t have the incantation. I left it at Penn’s with the other books.” Aziza waited passively as he knelt down beside her and guided her body until she was facing him in front of the fire. Then she studied his chest again. The marks. “Did you drug us, West?”

“I knew you would ask me that. Maybe, but I’m still not a vampire, no matter what Tabitha thinks.” He reached for her hand and placed it on his scars, hissing through his teeth. “I saw this. Your Niyr Qarin pointing you in the right direction, the direction we wanted her to. But as much as you love to read, Dern relies too much on his old notes and journals. You don’t need an incantation, you need to get out of your own way. Your scene with Ram helped bring her to the surface, but the fear and doubt, the guilt you continuously cling to, these are all useless emotions that create obstacles to your finding what you most need to know. This is how you get there. I can take you.”

The keeper’s child can guide you.

She was hot. Roasting.

“That’s it, Aziza Jane. Let it go.”

“So you aren’t coming on to me?”

“Definitely not. You are irresistible, it’s true,” he mused. “You shine. It’s no surprise they all want you.”

“You’re beautiful too.” Aziza frowned. “Stop flirting.”

West bit his lower lip. “That’s not what tonight is about, but you make it hard to remember.” He glanced over to the others, whom she’d forgotten about. “At least, that’s not what tonight is about for us.”

What did he mean? Aziza followed the direction of his gaze and gasped. Greg and Chiye had pushed the coffee table out of the way and were stripping off each other’s clothes. Right in front of them? Right now? “What are they doing?”

“I want you, Aziza.” Ram was sitting in the chair West had vacated, his sweatpants pushed down and his hand around his deliciously hard erection as he watched her with dilated emerald eyes. “Every time I close my eyes I see you. I feel you around me, crying out as I fucked you in the garden. I see you screaming my name as I whip you with a dragon tail, and us together on my bed the way we were that night. Just watching each other come. I want you any way I can get you. Whatever makes you burn.”

“Oh my God.”

West caressed her hand where it rested on his chest. “There was no other choice. The incense in the fire contains the essence of Mayet. It is meant only for those who are joined with the sand. Keepers and Fireborne. I have found it simply erases others’ inhibitions completely. Shows us the desires that lurk beneath the surface.”

He’d found? “Have you done this before?”

“Do I look like a saint to you?” He nodded at Chiye. “Look at how happy our girl is. I hope they stay together. Love and friendship could save her.”

Our girl.
She had to protect her.

Aziza looked back at the couple and her eyes widened. Chiye was naked, stunning on her hands and knees, her head thrown back, facing Aziza as Greg knelt beside her and spanked her with a firm, cupped hand.

“Yes,” Chiye cried. “Yes, please.”

Greg hummed his appreciation. “I would love to see you tied up on this floor, showing everyone how beautifully you beg for more.”

She knew she wasn’t meant to see this, but she couldn’t look away. She’d never imagined Greg as a top. She watched him command Chiye to spread her legs and he began to spank her sex, feeling an answering heat between her thighs when the woman begged and pleaded with him for more and moaned when his erection pressed insistently against her side.

“Is that what you want?” Greg demanded. “Do you need it again so soon, baby?”

“Yes,” Chiye whimpered. “Yes, please. I need it again.”

Again?

Swearing, Greg spanked her again and then grabbed her hips and slid her around roughly. “Good answer. Because I fucking need it too.”

His cock, flushed with blood and need, disappeared inside Chiye’s sex with a powerful thrust. “Yes,” he shouted. “God, you are perfect for me.”

Aziza couldn’t believe what she was thinking. “Greg is
sexy
.”

West chuckled. “Hush now, you already have more men than you can handle. Share the wealth. Look at them. All those two can think about right now, in the midst of all this danger, is what they’ve found with each other. But Greg will be there when you need him. And you
will
need him. You’ll need us all by the end.”

When she looked back toward Ram, she moaned. His eyes were closed as he stroked himself, her name like a prayer on his lips. She wanted him too. Wanted to go to him. Wanted to straddle his hips and ride him until she’d gotten him out of her system. Until neither one of them could move. “Ram.”

“Aziza Jane,” West spoke firmly. “Look at the fireplace.”

She obeyed and gasped again. “It’s the desert from my dreams.”

“Is that what you see?”

Aziza nodded. She always seemed to return to this place. The place where her line was born.

West spoke softly as he helped her to a standing position. “The place where all the lines converge. Where things began. Where they could end.”

The world was in flames, the sky on fire above her head, and a thousand voices were calling her name. Screaming for her help. She wanted to run—whether it was toward them or away, she wasn’t sure—but her feet were suddenly buried in sand. The same black sand that had changed her, that had given her its gift while taking her over from the inside out, was holding her in its grip and trying to pull her down. Bury her alive. She couldn’t escape it. Knew she would never escape it. Soon it would be the only thing that remained and everything Aziza was would simply disappear.

“No, Aziza,” West answered as if he could hear her thoughts. “You aren’t trapped. The Mayet already told you she isn’t destroying you. She’s a part of you. What you want, she wants. Your nightmares don’t come from her. They come from your fear. Fear that you won’t be able to handle what’s to come. That you aren’t good enough to be loved. That you aren’t strong enough to save all those people calling your name. Your fear is holding back her truth. A feather can fly, carried by a soft wind, but it’s torn apart in a storm.”

Aziza was the center of the storm.

So this was all her? The bodies? The sandstorms? Her endless nightmares? She knew the sand held a darkness. She could feel it. It wasn’t just her fear.

“You have that in common, Aziza Jane. She was born in darkness and her fury was unappeasable. For a time, that was all the she was. Righteous rage and knowledge. It was the knowledge that saved her. Shaped her. And she used it to save us all. That’s what is inside you. A gift of knowledge so that you can follow in her footsteps. You are the one, Aziza. She chooses you. Not because of your family or because you were the last available Ammu. You were always the only choice. Your soul. Call upon Mayet’s Truth now. Here. Can you feel what I’m saying is right?”