Hellfire

Chapter One

April 1994

I was irritated and Alistair knew it. He cast me nervous glances, noting the stiff way I held myself and the tapping of my fingers along the seat of the car. My expression was steeled, my eyes glowing silver as I breathed evenly and battled to keep my anger in check. Emotions were bad for me. A spark of irritation, anger, betrayal, even sadness, and I'd be burning. Literally.

He bumped his head against the steering wheel, his shoulders sagging in defeat.

'Susan, I'm sorry.'

I stared hard at the rain-warped window. 'I don't see how it got this bad, Alistair.'

He rubbed his mouth. 'I don't know either. She just...she just remembers everything.'

I frowned at him, frustrated that he'd been this stupid. He was young for a vampire, forty-nine, which placed him in his mid-twenties, but this was a juvenile mistake, something a youngster would do. He knew better than to keep returning to a woman to feed if she kept remembering, which made it blindingly obvious he hadn't been thinking with his head at all. But the woman's stubbornness to forget was a problem that was landing them both in hot water. It meant she was a witch, which was worst case scenario, or she was a psychic, which was problematic. Neither were great options.

'I'll get it sorted.' I promised with a sigh.

He nodded limply, tearing a hand through his dirty blond hair as he returned to watch pensively. I looked to the window, squinting at the thin dusk light and blanket of rain. The street was quiet, and those wandering about had an umbrella sprouted above their head. None of them was the woman Alistair had described to have endangered.

'You said people were watching her now.'

'Yes. Too attentively.'

I grunted. That was no surprise. Scouts for blood rings would be very interested in a psychic woman - whose blood was often described as fine wine - and I knew the Beaumonts would jump at the chance of getting close enough to the Vortigern House to spill blood. A House of traditionalists and purists, vampires desiring the old gothic ways of blood and power, and sought ways to topple those with modernistic views, such as the Vortigerns. The two families had been in a cloak-and-dagger war for decades. In short, this oblivious woman was in deep shit.

A vein in my forehead pulsed painfully and heat rolled in my chest, forcing me to cough up smoke behind the back of my hand. I hated needless trouble like this. It tested my patience and control and already I could feel embers in my lungs.

Alistair stilled beside me, his breath catching and his blue eyes latched onto something in the distance.

'There she is.' He murmured.

I glanced at him, making a small note to keep an eye on him by how enamoured he was by the woman he could see, before I followed his gaze. I couldn't see her at first, she was too far for me, the world shrouded by thin mist and the car's window warped with rain, but slowly she came into view. She was tall, matching Alistair in height, her hair, clearly artificially straightened by how perfect it was, spilled from beneath a woollen hat, flowing over bronze cheeks. She seemed fashionable, wearing high-waisted washed out jeans, black knee-high boots and a sandy brown belted-trench coat, her face meticulously painted in smoky make-up.

'You said she remembered you. It's why you fed from her in the first place.'

'Yes.' Alistair muttered irritably. 'From a decade ago. She attended a business event with her father when she was thirteen. Apparently, I've changed very little the last ten years.'

He hadn't much physically, no. His aging slowed down to a crawl since he matured as a vampire and his immortality kicked in, but it was his personality that had changed the most. I still remembered him being slightly boyish a decade ago, free and rebellious, and less willing to step up as a core member of the Vortigerns, unlike recently.