Page 4 of Of Flame and Fate

Yeah, he’s a little irate. I start to defend Edith, but she is Edith and those were some pretty suggestive licks.

“Baby,” I say.

“Don’t.” He huffs. “Nothing you say changes the fact that you’re working for the leeches.”

“You know why I’m doing it,” I tell him. I groan when he all he does is stare ahead. “I have to protect my sister.”

“No,Ihave to protect her,and you,” he fires back. “I can’t do it if I don’t know where you are.”

“I didn’t mean to run off, but we needed the relic of Dirpu.” He narrows his stare. “Well, we did,” I insist. “And FYI, I totally snagged it. It was in Egypt.”

“I know,” he snaps. “Reports of fire raining down in Giza was my first clue to your whereabouts.”

“That was an accident,” I say, pointing at my right arm. Its stark white appearance glows like a strobe at the mention, lighting the dimness of the cabin and blanching the rest of my olive skin. “You know how she gets when . . .”

“Your life is in danger?” he offers when my voice trails.

I press my arm against my belly, stroking it with my other hand. My right arm is a combination of magic I was born with, and magic as old as time. My left is all me, my original fire and lightning.

I have complete control over the power radiating through my left arm. My right, not always, especially when she’s angry.

“It happens, Tomo,” I add quietly.

He stiffens at the sound of his real name. When we’re alone at night, or at times when I want to feel close to him, it’s the name I use instead of the nickname he goes by. I don’t feel close to him now, not with his anger erecting an invisible wall between us. But I want to.

I love him. I don’t want to go back to how we were all those months we were apart, miserable, hurt, and bitter. It took so much for us to reconcile. The last thing I want is for something else to drive us apart.

“It only happens when you’re in places and situations you shouldn’t be,” he says.

He’s still angry, but his quieting voice assures me he doesn’t want to be. “The relic of Dirpu opens portals to the demon domain,” I explain. “I couldn’t chance the Dark Legion seizing it once its location was leaked.” I twist to better see him. “Try and understand, whatever evil is threatening to rise could have used it to summon a warrior demon, an evil spirit, or something just as deadly to kill Celia and her baby. I can’t let that happen.”

He pulls onto the highway leading back to Dollar Point. “Was that how the leeches spun it?”

“What?”

We’re driving fast, too fast. He eases his foot off the accelerator as we round the curve and Lake Tahoe comes into view.

“Taran, at last count there were two-thousand, seven-hundred, and thirty-eight documented relics of power. At least half can open portals, a third can summon darkness, and close to eighteen can bring on Armageddon and divide the sun in half.” He glances at me. “Did the vamps happen to mention that?”

No. But holy shitballs. I cross my arms, the motion turning off the fluorescent bulb that is my right arm. “Well, now there’re one less to worry about.”

He punches the gas, accelerating up the hill. “You can’t go after every relic that presents itself—no one person can—which is why my pack works as a team to secure each that’s located. How do you think we found the dagger?”

I knit my brow. “Are you talking about that fucked-up singing knife?”

He scrunches his face. “Don’t insult it, it can hear you.”

“It can hear me?” I glance out the window in the direction of the woods, then back toward the lake where the moonlight streams rays of silver light across the gentle waves, waiting, just waiting, to hear O Fortuna begin to play. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

He shakes his head slowly. “The Dagger of Aberlemno sees all, knows all.”

I still. “Please tell me it’s not one of those things that can split the sun.”

“It’s not.”

My shoulders slump. “Oh, good—”

“But its brother can.”

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