Hellfire

Chapter Fourteen

I dreamt in the depths of the healing sleep. Mostly there was nothing, just this sickly heat gripping me. My mind lost. Sometimes though I broke the surface and registered I was awake. I'd shiver from the winter surrounding me, fingers drifting along the curve of my back and my cheek against ice. I'd see his face sometimes. Lucius. He'd be focused on whatever a bat was telling him, or reading through a file, his lazy attention on whatever work he had, but he was always there, keeping me close and cool, his mind prowling the edges of mine to keep the hate in the curse from enveloping me and waking my hellfire.

But slowly, I came to. I registered I was walking. My feet slapped against something cold. At first, I thought it was stone, but gradually I realised it was ice as pitch black as night with the shine of the sea flickering over it. It was raw beneath my feet, the sort of cold that tore at your skin and ripped it clean, not that luring winter Lucius wrapped me in mercilessly. I flicked my gaze about, spying only darkness, the air stale with old blood and speckled with flecks of snow.

I blinked. My mind was lurching, shifting gear from floundering consciousness to sharp attention.

I don't like this, I thought distantly.

This felt too real. Something had drawn me into a dream. Powerful vampires could lure you into dreams to seduce or to relay information. I was something I'd experienced with Lucius whenever he tried to chase my nightmares away as a child, a guardian in my mind when that monster prowled outside my door, or Eva when she worked on creating the lock for my fire. But while Lucius felt familiar and assured and Eva gave the impression of gentle, motherly security, this felt ominous. Oppressive. Old. My skin felt sticky, my lungs sucking in shards of glass, and something gazed from that endless darkness. Something savage and unforgiving. Something terrible.

A bat swung by, much larger than I was used to, and it snatched at my shoulder. I froze, my hellfire sparking in alarm. The bat had no face, just razor teeth, its entire head splitting apart, and its fur dripped with fresh blood. I wanted to toss it free, to rip it from me and burn it. That thing wasn't normal. It wasn't a vampire bat, but something worse. But the bat grew heavier, its claws beginning to sink into my flesh, ripping in deep. It crashed its jaws together with a wet snap, its eyeless gaze blazing into me with malice. Dead. It wanted me dead.

Something breathed behind me, a savage cold creeping up my back as a hand slipped over the nape of my neck. Blood-claws dug deep, the magic in them thicker and heavier than I'd ever felt.

The blood-claws shot out, slicing through my throat, through sinew and flesh and snatching at my life. My hellfire roared instantly, bounding forward like a roaring lion, outraged and powerful as the instinct to survive blazed in me. I wouldn't die. I couldn't die! Lucius needed me to live!

I was on fire, burning brightly and my skin curling with the heat, my hair turning ashen from the silver flames howling from me. I couldn't see, only feel the bloodlust surrounding me. The need to kill me. The malice and hate and old, old madness. A broken mind that wanted me dead.

I saw movement and lashed out, desperate to defend myself, but a hand grasped at my wrist, cold and fierce, and winter was bombarding me, wrapping me up tightly and stifling me. Trying to control me.

'No!' I roared, my voice holding little of my humanity and exploding flames from my mouth.

Whoever had me refused to let me go. I felt the cold sinking into my bones and my mind, locking me to them utterly as they melded my body with theirs. I fought, I tensed up and tried to lash out, but I was slammed against a wall, held there by a powerful hand about my throat, ice sliding into my skin. Then water was raining down on me, hissing against the heat of me and washing me with sanity.