Make Me Burn: Fireborne, Book 2 (36 page)

Why was that turning her on? Because he was impaling her as he was saying it, taking the heat she was giving him and pushing her boundaries. Demanding more. “Next time, I promise,” she gasped, close to climax. “Give me another order King Kinky.”

He understood. “Come for me.”

Aziza lifted her hand off his chest and over her head, releasing the heat and straining against him as he took her over the edge. “Yes, Sir!”

“Fuck.
Again,
” he shouted, his thrusts making the bed rock. “Say it again.”

She was coming. “Yes, Sir,” she cried. “All of it. Ram…
Ram!
”

Her body quaked with the explosive force of her orgasm. She was coming so hard, flying so high she might never come down.

Flying.

She was only partially aware as he pulled out of her and gripped his cock, coming on her thighs as he shouted her name and made her realize he hadn’t worn a condom. She’d forgotten. Forgotten everything but what they were doing to each other. She shivered and wrapped her arms and legs around him when he lowered himself onto her body again.

He was kissing her everywhere. Her shoulder, neck, chin…everything he could reach. Whispering her name with every breath. “Sweet Aziza.”

Ram. How could she ever regret this? Why would she deny herself this pleasure?

You can’t. You won’t.

She never would. He was alive and safe and in her arms. The feeling was too heady, too satisfying, for regret.

It was hours later, close to dawn, when she walked down the hall toward the kitchen in nothing but Ram’s T-shirt and her underwear, unable to sleep. She’d collected the books Dern had given her from Penn’s when she’d seen her aunt off. Maybe she would get a glass of water and read until her mind stopped buzzing. Stopped thinking about Shev searching out the Jiniyr, the blood rituals and Chiye’s safety. Stopped thinking about the pained resignation on Brandon’s face when he’d stepped aside, and how his people had reacted to her eruption.

“I’ve been wondering if my vision was off.” West’s voice from the living room had her turning around.

She tugged on the hem of her shirt for a minute, but she was too deliciously achy, too relaxed to care. West had seen her in less. “What vision?”

The fire was lit and his incense was out again, and he was holding something in his lap. Something that caught the firelight and glittered like copper. “What is that?”

West smiled as he watched her. “This is something Greg told me to give you, before he disappeared with Chiye into the tunnels so they wouldn’t be competing with the noises coming out of your room.”

Aziza’s cheeks heated. “That bad?”

“Safe houses aren’t necessarily soundproof,” he teased. “Come and see, Aziza Jane.”

When she sat down next to him, he held it out to her and she set it on her lap. A glass jar of pennies. The label on it read
Penn’s Pennies
in her aunt’s swirling hand.

See a penny, pick it up.

“When we were young,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on the small coins, “Adam caught Joseph and me in the backyard, planning to run away to India. We had a world atlas and three pennies between us.” She smiled fondly. “Adam wisely suggested we would need more pennies A lot more.”

For a year he’d come home every day from the grocery store, his pockets full of pennies for the two of them. Even when they were walking home from school, Adam would have the young Joseph scouring the ground in search of the coppery treasure.

See a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck.
Adam had made them recite the rhyme. He’d also suggested that so much money was dangerous to just leave laying around. They’d need to find a good place to hide it.

Look inside.

Aziza opened the jar and let the coins press against her fingers as she pushed her hands in, searching. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “Why would he send—”

She wrapped her fingers around what felt like a small container. The kind Adam had placed his rolls of film in for safekeeping. Not a vial? She pulled it out and studied it with her brows furrowed.

West leaned forward. “Open it, Aziza Jane.”

She took off the small gray lid and peered inside. Not film. Glittering black sand. “How?”

“Greg told me your aunt mentioned the pennies after Chiye told her about Adam’s pictures,” West answered. “Penn said Adam had mailed her the jar from Colorado, and told her they were her pennies and she needed to keep them safe. He made her promise. She’s kept them exactly like this since he died, never opening the jar or looking inside.”

It didn’t make sense. It was just like Tarik’s box. Tarik had sent it to Penn’s, planning on all of them coming to live there after he returned from Bahrain. And now Adam had done the same thing with something she couldn’t help but think was meant for her.

She looked up at West and he cupped her face with his warm hand, using his thumb to wipe a tear she hadn’t realized had fallen off her cheek. “Makes you want to argue with Dern for the side of destiny, doesn’t it? Makes you believe this was meant to be.”

It did. Adam and Tarik had both left something for her in England. With Penn. Aziza was always going to come here. This was always going to happen. But what she did next was her choice.

She noticed a small Swiss Army knife on the table and bit her lip. No glass vial to crush accidentally or on purpose. This was her own blood ritual. Her heart started to race with adrenaline. With it she would find answers. Find Razia. Stop all this death. She picked up the knife and opened the blade, hesitating for a moment before slicing it across her palm.

“Damn,” she said, wincing as the blood rose up to the surface and overflowed onto her skin. She reached for the canister of sand and cupped her hand, pouring the dark grains into her palm as West burned the incense.

She was dizzy. Woozy. She stood and walked closer to the fire as she watched the sand accept her sacrifice, accept her oath in blood and disappear under her skin. Her other palm was burning and she could smell the charring flesh of the brand. The third vial. Only Joseph’s left.

There’s more. There is always more.

But she wouldn’t need any more than that. Not for what she had to do.

Aziza looked into the fire and saw what she was looking for. A woman bathed in flames in the desert, a few steps away from her. The Mayet in human form. She’d changed, the way Te had changed. The Mayet had taken on a few of Aziza’s features.

They were closer. Merging.

A giant wave of water appeared behind the Mayet and Aziza pointed and called out a warning. “What is that?”

“The river of time the keeper navigates,” she answered softly. “A gift from me to protect both your lines. But the river is vast, and she cannot always see where it will lead.”

It washed over them and then it was no longer a wave of water, but light. She saw a boy who looked like West drawing a picture of her in his bedroom. The Mayet pointed in the other direction and she saw a man in an old-fashioned suit taking notes—a man who looked like he could be Dern’s twin. The same height, the same dark-red hair. His great-grandfather?

“You can see the past,” the Mayet assured her, pointing toward a wet alley where a younger Chiye huddled, her knees bent to her chest, crying as she let the rain wash the blood off of her hands.

What had happened to her? Aziza wanted to go to her. Protect her. This Chiye looked terrified. Crazed. How had that girl become the loving, upbeat woman in Greg’s bed?

“Choice and destiny. Both are true. You were always destined to be Fireborne, but your choices, your heart will shape us both.”

The Mayet pointed again and Aziza was in a small living room scattered with colorful silk pillows. The house where her mother and father had lived until she was almost two years old.

Zayid Ammu was swinging the young Aziza in the air, swaying with her to a song playing on an old-fashioned phonograph.

Come Josephine in my flying machine

Going up she goes

Up she goes

Balance yourself like a bird on a beam

In the air she goes

There she goes

“Do you promise, Papa?”

Zayid chuckled gently. “I promise, Aziza. Whether the new baby on the way is a boy or girl, they will be named after this song. Josephine if it’s a girl and Joseph if it’s a boy.”

Aziza watched her younger self in awe, unable to believe she’d forgotten this moment.

“I hope she’s a girl, Papa. Then she can play with me.”

Zayid shook his head. “That doesn’t matter, Aziza. Either way, when the baby is old enough, I will take you both to where I found this.” He dipped the child and she squealed, not seeing what Aziza did, the unusually shaped amulet he was pointing to on the table beside them. It looked like a piece of it was missing. Like it was supposed to fit into something.

“We will have an adventure, Aziza,” he promised. “And when we do, you will understand how precious you are.”

Aziza looked away from the memory, turning back to the Mayet. “Why are you showing me this? Will it tell me what I need to know about the blood ritual? About soul casting? I need to stop the murders.”

“You have.”

She shook her head in frustration. “I didn’t do anything. I haven’t stopped anything. Four girls died and Chiye could be in danger next.”

“Do not let them use your heart against you,” the Mayet repeated again. “Do not let them take the power away from you. Do not trade it to save a single life.”

The Mayet held out her palm, glittering with black sand, and blew the grains toward Aziza. As she blinked the woman disappeared. Joseph was standing in her place.

“Joseph…” she reached for him, “…I’ve been looking for you. Where are you? Tell me what I need to do to find you.”

Joseph smiled sadly and shook his head. “You need to listen. To see the truth.”

Suddenly Aziza was standing in the corner of a dimly lit room, watching the Alpha gesturing emphatically to a group of men in faded robes. “I ordered his death,” he insisted. “What does one exile matter when that bitch humiliated me in front of my family? My people. You told me she could be manipulated.”

The Jiniyr. The Alpha was talking to the Jiniyr about her. This wasn’t the past. This was happening now.

“The fault lies with you, young Billy.” Razia’s voice stung her ears. The aging punk rocker was now dressed more like a monk, the tattoo on his bald head and his demon-black eyes the only clues that he was not what he appeared. “We played our roles to perfection. A little blood and a few bodies and she danced well enough to our tune. Shame you couldn’t have been more convincing, that your son couldn’t have been more obedient, but it isn’t our problem. Perhaps we made a mistake all those years ago, allowing you to be the Alpha instead of your brother.”

She watched her family’s killer, unable to move as he walked across the large room. Its walls were made of a strange sort of marble unlike any she’d ever seen, the floors etched with symbols that curved around a circle stained with blood. She could sense the pain. Hear the echoes of agonized cries. This was where the other women had been taken, tortured and killed.

A woman stood in the middle, her back to them as Razia smiled at the swearing Alpha.

“Hah,” William Nash laughed, but it was obvious he was nervous. “Your posed, blood-drained dolls didn’t close the deal. My people made that happen with the slit of a single throat. Forced her to take the Jinn’s side and allowed me to order his death. What did
you
do?”

 
“Everything else.” Razia shook his head condescendingly.
 
“Leave now. See if you can use that CEO line on your own people, now that the Vessel of Fire has set you adrift. Be grateful we didn’t punish you for your failure in a more creative way.”

The Alpha turned without a word and disappeared, one of the robed Jiniyr following behind him. Razia turned toward the others. “He is a loose end we may need to tie up sooner than we thought.”

A male she didn’t recognize stepped forward. “Allow me.”

Razia waved him off. “No, I’m curious to see how he will wriggle out of the trap he set for himself by proclaiming her the last Alpha.” He smirked. “That wolf might love theatrics more than I do. Forget about him, let me see the book.”

Another figure handed him a thick, ancient-looking tome that made Aziza want to scream in denial. They couldn’t have it. It was safe from them. Safe from all of them. Razia started to laugh in true delight. “A stroke of genius, this,” he said to no one in particular. “He always did like games. Perhaps that is why he appreciated your idea. The Jinn are out for blood, searching for the contents of the now-empty vault, the Niyr are in a panic over the Fireborne’s increased disruption of time, and the Enforcers are at each other’s throats. Chaos reins and soon everything will be perfect. The Fireborne will be ready and we will have the knowledge we need to set her free.”

Free her.
The Jinn mother. They were planning to use the soul casting ritual to free the soul of the Jinn’s mother, the warrior, from wherever it was held. Aziza knew it was true. But she was still missing something.