Hellfire

Chapter Twenty-Five

July 1994

I woke with a snap, lurching up and unable to breathe. I scrabbled at my throat where my throat had been torn open again by sharp teeth, fire bursting from me in a loud boom and ash lodged so heavily in my lungs it was suffocating me.

'Susan!' Someone called, rushing to me and snatching me up.

For a moment, I was resistant. I couldn't see anything but the monster that wore Lucius skin, his voice purring. Calling.

But a mind crashed into me, wrenching me away from the lingering nightmare, and suddenly I could see. It wasn't the monster, not Lucius either, but Alistair. He was watching me with eyes like Lucius', but a softer, paler shade, and rife with worry.

'Can you see now?'

'Yes.' I spluttered out, embers erupting from my mouth.

'Then try to calm.'

But I couldn't. Alistair wasn't Lucius. He couldn't calm me the way I needed to be - a gentle caress of his mouth, his frosted skin against mine, his mind whirling within my head like a blizzard. He didn't just cool the hellfire; he'd settle my anger or fear. His voice would melt down my spine, his touch comforting and wanted, and his strength greater than my own. He turned me away from the anger and instead conjured up my hunger for him, a softer, less destructive emotion.

But Lucius couldn't calm me anymore. He didn't trust himself to be around me and all I could think about was that memory he shared, my throat ripped out and his need to literally eat me, compounded by these fucking dreams where he hunted me and killed me. I wasn't stable enough to be around him. No matter how I told myself he hadn't meant to, he'd warned me he'd lose control if we did more than what he allowed in feeds, or that he hadn't threatened me since, I still felt tense in his presence, not relaxed. My body would become knotted, my hellfire breathing into my blood, and I'd be hyper aware of him; the strength in him, those glittering teeth, and his predatory step, like I was watching a threat.

Then I'd be on fire.

And when I was on fire, it was so hard to stop. So, I wasn't calming after this nightmare, even with Alistair's cold touch and refusing to let me think of Lucius. My breathing was frantic and hitched, clogged up by the sticky ash I hadn't been able to get rid of, my skin burning his hands and my hair becoming ashen.

Up until Arnold swept into the room.

I gasped, stunned, when ice-cold water was abruptly dumped over me. It sunk into my bones, dousing the fire glistening over my sweaty skin, and enabled me to breathe almost instantly.

'Unorthodox, but it always helped you as a child when Lucius wasn't about.' Arnold said lightly, setting the bucket aside and handing me a towel.

I took it from him and buried my face into it, inhaling the scent deeply in an effort to dislodge the stink of smoke. I sat for a moment in my burnt, wet bed, trembling from the pain of my cooking bones and the lingering nightmare of Lucius killing me. My fingers balled into tight fists. I fucking hated those dreams. Lucius hadn't meant to. He was no threat! So, why was my mind determined to twist him into one?

'Thanks.' I grumbled absently and took Alistair's hand, peeling open his fingers and sighing with a rush of heat when I saw how bad he was burnt.

'I'm not great at cooling you, am I?' He commented lightly as he winced at my probing.

'No.' I agreed and pinched at the angry curling smoke to wrench it out of his palm.

Alistair couldn't cool me in the way Lucius could. It was more than just his cold. It was his male touch, his velvet voice, how much I wanted to just melt into him and hand over control. That was why Lucius could cool me. Because he twisted the anger into lust, something that grounded me and made me want to stop burning.