The Fire God

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sunlight woke me. Strange to have the cycle of days again, the rising and setting of the sun, the darkness of night. I slithered my hand across the sheet. I was alone in bed. It wasn't emptiness or cold that I felt. A tug drew me up. A compulsion to seek out Clarissa. A purr of music was echoing from the next room. It pulled me to my feet and I sought out my love.
"I can't believe you slept the night through," Clarissa said when I slipped into the kitchen. She was standing over the stove in a sweater and a flowing skirt. A frying pan was in her hand and she jostled it. The smell of bacon and eggs permeated the kitchen.
I went to her, pressed my lips to her neck, wrapped my hands around her torso.
She said, "I meant to be there when you woke up, but I was beginning to think you'd sleep forever." She moved her head to me, kissed my cheek.
"Syllie texted to check on you," she added, chuckling a little.
"Already worried that I'll disappear again?" He should have given me my own cell phone if he wanted to keep tabs on me.
"I thought you'd be hungry," she said, putting eggs on a plate.
My face was buried in the crook of her shoulder and my hands were under her sweater. "I'm hungry for you." I was ravenous for the unity as well as the spice of her energy.
I had the tin of salve with me and I pressed her up against the counter, shut off the stove burner. I rubbed salve over her lower abdominal muscles, along her vaginal walls and on my penis, to smooth my glides into her.
After, she said, "You came back with a libido."
"I was very fond of sex when I was alive."
She put her hand over my heart, studied my body. "How long will it last?"
"I don't take salve injections anymore, Clarissa. My heart beats of its own accord." I said, as I had the night before and so many times the previous day, "I'm alive now, Clarissa." I wanted to cleanse her mind of all the horrors I'd left her with.
She turned her back to me, continued making up our breakfast plates.
"To leave without saying goodbye, without talking to me."
"Clarissa," I said, massaging her shoulders, "I was going to hurt you."
"You were a coward," she screamed at me, forced me to loose her. "You already hurt me."
"I was going to do you physical harm."
"I could have taken it."
I pressed my cheek to hers, held her to me, her back against my chest. "You have no idea how perverse my mind had become and how hard I was trying to keep you from it."
"You killed Hector."
"Yes."
Sobs interrupted her coherence. She turned to me. I apologized again, hugged her, held her as each tear stabbed into me.
"Don't ever leave me again," she said.
"I swear I won't," I said.
*****
Max took me aside. He was able to be near me, as comfortable with me as Dirk or Tiffany. If he touched me, his mother would flee, but she would return as soon as the physical contact ended.
"Clare is raving about your progress."
"I've done it all for her," I said. As much as I wanted to be away from Max, I made myself stay for her too.
"Clare wrote a book about you."
"She said."
I was used to Max with his hands spread wide. He stood much like Clarissa, picking at his cuticles. "I—I did a lot of research for that book." He lifted his goggles to me. "My mother was able to see your life. Like a veil was pushed aside. Nothing in Arcadia, but your life as a child, when you returned to this plane with Asperia, the children you raised."
"I'm not going to read the book. I don't care to relive it."
"I wanted to tell you what happened to your mother. You were so close to her growing up. It's unfair that you never knew what happened to her."
"I know what happened to her," I said.
She faced one of two futures that day. She would have been raped by the men on horseback, possibly several of them. My baby brother would have been slaughtered or left for dead. The men were cruel, but to leave a crying baby to starve to death... I suspect they bashed in his head. My mother would have seen this. She would have seen her husband murdered, oldest son stripped from her to be sold as a slave and her daughters to be sold as whores. If she was docile, and my mother was docile, she too would have been sold as a whore. If she wasn't, she was cut down that day and left for dead in the snow with the fire raging near her body.
After a length of silence, I said, "I prefer to believe my mother was murdered quickly after facing that torment."
Max put a hand on my shoulder, tried to hide that he was blind at that moment. "Your mother is in Heaven."
"I accept that your god exists, but I don't believe in him and neither did my mother. Your Christ hadn't been born in that time. I don't believe my mother went to your Heaven."
He patted my shoulder. "She's at peace, Mricul."
I nodded to him. He was trying to be kind to me, trying to offer an olive branch to his sister's lover.
*****
Whether I liked it or not, there was a media blitz surrounding my return as a member of the Titan Team. Syllie forced me to be fitted for a costume. Every millimeter of my body was measured.
"Has to be fire proof. Not just flame retardant, completely fire proof."
The tailor was muttering yes to Syllie as he measured.
"I'm not going to wear it, Syllie," I said, lifting my arm for the tailor.
"When we do appearances—"
"I'm not doing appearances, Syllie."
"Mricul—"
I changed my stance when the tailor knelt to my legs.
I said, "It's ridiculous. None of us have super speed and none of us have secret identities. If I should for some reason need to put out the flames on a burning building, I'm not going to put on my costume first. And I'm not going to lounge around in the thing. I've seen Tiffany's. It's not a leisure suit."
"Can you put out a fire on a burning building?"
"Not a whole building, no. That's what firemen are for. I can control my own fire only." Which wasn't entirely true, but I wasn't going to encounter a dragon on this plane. I could control a dragon's fire to a degree.
*****
It was a month, at least Clarissa said it was a month. She started to panic at Syllie's mansion. She was darting down the hall. Her brother was with me, but she absolutely refused to talk to him. She wanted Tiffany or Aditi. I insisted and Max went away.
Alone, she confided, "I've got blood everywhere."
"Where!" I would get the salve, stop the hemorrhaging.
She took my hands away from her. "It's my period, Mri."
"Oh." That was nothing to be panicked about.
"I haven't had a period in ten years."
"Oh." I'd forgotten that. Heat burned my face.
"I just need to get some protection, go home, change my clothes." She was still sobbing, but she was tying a jacket around her waist. "I'll call my doctor later."
I was using the salve to ease our love-making and had given little thought to the healing it would do to her body. I hadn't considered how quickly the damage would be mended. After her appointment, she confirmed that the endometrial lining had returned to normal.
*****
Syllie made me put on the suit to check for fit. He gave me a harness to wear under it, insisted I wear it at all times. A metal plate for both my back and chest, to protect my heart from being struck, since that was the only vulnerability we were sure of. Beheading too, but I spiked the neck brace at him.
"Clare gave me a copy of the story you wrote, your autobiography. Max filled in the blanks," Syllie said. He wove his fingers in one another, focused on the digits. "You killed approximately five hundred people while in Asperia's company."
I adjusted the harness. The straps rubbed. "Perhaps. I never counted."
"So, that's almost two every year, from what I gather."
"No," I said, still playing with the harness. "More than once, Asperia and I would be seized by Romans who thought they could deal with us. I would be surrounded by ten men or more and would kill all of them in a blast more effective than Vesuvius wiping out Pompeii."
"Asperia could resist the blast?"
"No. I chose the direction of the flame, protected her from the heat. I would always keep her in an air pocket safe from the fire." I continued fiddling with the harness. "Most often, Asperia and I would kill off our opponents, settle in a place and live there peaceably for a decade or so. I rarely had to kill single individuals. If we could, we would use persuasion, threaten children, inflict nightmares, bribery. Bribery was the easiest. A few people were truly of strong will and resisted Asperia." I glanced to Syllie, a chill settling over me. "I know your parents were of strong will, because they're dead."
Syllie paled, bowed his head. His lip shook, but he emitted no sound.
Guilt gnawed at me, so I shifted my mind. "I killed a few senators or consuls, other magistrates. I even killed a couple of emperors who got in Asperia's way." And my string of lovers. Asperia made sure I killed all of them. That made up about a dozen of the number.
"By melting their brain?" Syllie said.
"Or heart, yes." The harness was not going to be comfortable. I abandoned it. "Usually. Sometimes I'd do something unorthodox like poison them. Romans didn't perform autopsies. The deaths went mostly unexplained. Depended on how dirty I wanted to get my hands."
Syllie folded his hands into a steeple. I wasn't used to this slimmer, mature Syllie. "I want to see this power of yours."
"You want me to melt your brain, Syllie?" Tiffany would have interjected that he didn't have one. Made me laugh, just imagining her quip.
"I want you to show me the full extent of your power. I want to know what I'm dealing with."
I picked at my nail. Syllie was holding out the harness, but I ignored it.
"I've seen the full body flambé. I want a demonstration of everything."
I folded my arms. Syllie had always expected me to cooperate. Absurd that he still expected that now. I'd only ever truly released myself in the presence of dragons. They could handle me, even stop me if need be.
I lit my entire body, forced Syllie to retreat several paces across the room. The costume remained intact.
"Wow, dude. You are scary."
I rubbed my lips. "I destroyed the caverns at the Yukon dig."
"Max said you did." Syllie shook the harness at me. "Mricul."
"I'm not wearing it." I folded my arms, paced toward Syllie. "Max was blind. He didn't see the destruction I wrought on the place that night, before your team showed up."
"I want to see everything."
"You're a demanding little man." I lit a finger, held it under his chin, missed the multiple layers.
Syllie took my hand, shoved my fingers into his mouth. I jerked back, wiped my skin on the costume. Slimy and disgusting. My nose was wrinkled as I clenched my teeth.
"Don't threaten me, Mricul," he said. "You're not going to hurt me."
"And we just determined that I murdered five hundred people."
"You're not a murderer anymore."
"Are you sure?"
"I've dealt with murderers. You're not."
The air that I breathed in shivered. If I clenched my teeth any tighter, I'd grind them to dust.
"One little demo," he said, his arm around my shoulder. He had the harness in his hand and was pushing it into my chest.
I ripped it from his grasp, superheated my hand, watched the metal melt. Tungsten, if I wasn't mistaken. The liquid lava oozed to the floor, pooled and burned the shag rug. Some "retro" thing.
As wide as his eyes were before, they were saucers staring at the metal puddled. I pushed Syllie off of me.
"I am a god," I growled. "You will not harass me."
*****
"There's a bomb testing facility..."
My back was to him and I was walking away. "Your tenacity hasn't changed."
"News people are salivating to see you in action," Syllie said. His eyes were wide and once again he had his hand on me, on my shoulder, though I was taller than him. "We could get gaming options, your likeness as the Fire God."
I was done with the subject. However, I did consent to show them my methods of murder.
Aditi's eldest son had a pet snake. That required mice for feeding. Aditi thought she knew the depths of my depravity, but chills ran through her as I pressed my finger to each mouse's forehead. Syllie examined them for marks. He took one back for his resident doctor to autopsy.
Clarissa took my hand, led me away after the demonstration. The bloom of her cheek was frosty.
"Once upon a time," she said, "you told me you couldn't have children."
"That was before," I said. "My ejaculate is normal now."
She bit her lip, raised her gaze to the ceiling and started moving her eyes over it. Then she squeezed them tight.
She constricted her grip. "My period's late."
I pressed my hand to her abdomen, began to fathom the possibility.
"The doctor said my period might be sporadic. That it might take some time."
My head was swimming.
Her hands were kneading a tissue to shreds. She rocked on her heels. "You've barely been back."
I moved my hand to her cheek, tried to lift her chin, to get her to look at me. "It feels like I've always been here."
She twisted the hanky. "I love having you next to me, sleeping the night through in your arms."
I made a point to repose nearest the door, to block her against any assault, to wrap my leg over hers and to shield her body with mine, even when I was asleep. As much for the pleasure of her touch as for her protection.
"What if I'm pregnant?"
I reached into my pocket, had been carrying it with me since I'd left Arcadia. I presented the bluish green glass-like ring to her.
"I knew before I saw you again and I was sure when I touched you," I said. Saliva was flooding my mouth. "I wanted to wait, to know that it was what you wanted too."
She seized the ring, slipped it onto her ring finger and hugged me. Dirk leaned his head down the hall, but when he made eye contact with me, he darted away.
"It fits perfectly," she said, admiring the shade against her finger. "How did you know my size?"
"I made it from unicorn horn, the one I always carry. The horn knows. It adjusts to your comfort."
Then she was kissing me, opening my mouth, pushing her fingers through my hair and tumbling with me.