Firefighter Phoenix (Fire & Rescue Shifters 7)

“Tell me,” Blaze repeated. Though he felt like he was burning from the inside out, he forced his voice to match Corbin’s calm, measured tones. “Please. I need to know. Who was she?”

For a long moment, he thought the High Magus wasn’t going to answer. Then Corbin let out his breath in a resigned sigh.

“Someone very dangerous,” Corbin said, a hint of grimness shadowing his usually level voice. “Especially to you.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped him. If he hadn’t known that the warlock possessed absolutely no sense of humor, he would have thought it was a joke. “One naked, unarmed woman is a danger to the Phoenix Eternal?”

“Yes,” Corbin said, his jaw tightening again. “And if you use your head rather than letting your beast continue to rule you, you will understand. Think, Blaze. When you looked into her eyes, how did you feel?”

Heat rose in him at the mere memory. “Like she was the only person who mattered in the entire world.”

The warlock looked at him, silently, and waited.

“The only person who mattered.” Blaze repeated his own words more slowly, ice replacing the fire in his veins as he realized what he’d said. “One word from her, and I would have gladly burned anything she asked.”

“You see now,” Corbin said.

He did. He scrubbed his hands over his face, sickened at the thought of how close he’d come to endangering the population of the entire country. Of the world.

“But who was she?” he asked, dropping his hands again. “To have such power over my beast…what was she? Some kind of witch? A rival of yours, even more powerful?”

Corbin’s severe expression turned even more icy. “Of course not. I am the High Magus. No other warlock could come close to breaking my binding of you. No. She was something else.”

The High Magus turned away, heading back into the building. Blaze didn’t need the slight tug on his binding to know his cue to follow. He fell into his accustomed place, half a step behind Corbin.

The plain gray corridors of the menagerie building were deserted. He could sense the knotted, feral fires of some of the other shifters behind the heavily-reinforced doors they passed, but none of the dimmer, steadier energies of human souls.

On a normal day there would have been plenty of people around; cleaning staff mopping out the cages, soldiers bringing in freshly-captured feral shifters, brown-robed acolytes hurrying on minor errands for their mentors. But all the residents of the complex usually made themselves scarce whenever Blaze was out of his cell.

They were afraid of him. And he knew that there were whispers about the way Corbin handled him. Mutterings that he had too much freedom, that Corbin treated him too much as if he was a person.

Other warlocks at the facility never let their familiars range out of sight. When their shifters grew too agitated, they let them vent their bestial urges hunting within the extensive grounds of the secluded, private base.

But the Phoenix was not a mere wolf or bear, to be pacified by ripping up a deer. Only wildfire soothed the creature that lived in Blaze’s soul. Corbin could hardly accompany him into the heart of the inferno, but it made the other warlocks nervous whenever the High Magus allowed him off-site.

Blaze could have told them not to worry, if they would have listened to a mere shifter. The runes around his arm bound him equally tightly regardless of whether Corbin stood two feet away or the other side of the planet. No matter how far he might fly, Corbin could always pull him back.

Or at least, he always had been able to. Blaze glanced down at his right arm, uneasily. The cuts edging the inked runes stung. Even shifter-fast healing struggled with the wounds inflicted by the binding whenever he fought it.

He hadn’t fought it for a long, long time. As far as he was aware, he wasn’t deliberately fighting it now.

And yet still the binding cut into his arm, seeping blood in slow drips.

Perhaps the other warlocks were right after all.

He looked back at Corbin, trying to judge his mood from the straight line of his back and the set of his head. With most people, Blaze could get an idea of their general thoughts from the patterns of their soul-energy…but not Corbin. Despite the bond between them, the warlock was—and always had been—utterly impenetrable to him. Nonetheless, Blaze had the impression that his mentor’s mind was working furiously.

That was comforting. Corbin was the most powerful warlock in generations. He was the High Magus, the only one ever to bind a shifter as powerful as the Phoenix. He had not only studied all the ancient lore on shifters, he had substantially added to it through his own research. If anyone would be able to work out what was going on—and more importantly, how to stop it—it was him.

“You said she was naked.” Corbin spoke without looking round, his stride measured and unhurried. “Did she also appear to recognize you?”

He nodded, knowing that the warlock would sense his assent down their bond. “She seemed drawn to me. As much as I was to her.”

The sweet, searing heat of her skin against his palm, close, so close…

Corbin shot him a sharp glance over his shoulder, and Blaze tamped down his rising fire as much as he could. He had no desire to have his power drained twice in a single day.

The warlock’s eyes narrowed slightly, but to Blaze’s relief he made no move to re-open the link. Corbin continued on, without even a scathing comment about Blaze’s lack of discipline.