No matter. So I didn’t have the Dark to call on anymore. That was fine. I still had the fire.
And oh, the things I’d learned.
Chapter 5
The thing on my back screamed as amber fire leapt from my skin, bursting out of every pore of my body. I bathed myself in a mantle of flame, the fires licking up my fingers, my arms, dancing at the tips of my hair.
It was a useful thing to have in my arsenal, fire magic. Apart from the balls of flame, I’d used it in the past for more practical, one might almost say stupid things. Toasting bread, drying wet clothes, even keeping myself warm on cooler nights.
The trick, Carver taught me, was to up the ante, raise the stakes. Pour more fuel on the fire, as it were, and the same manifestation of magic I’d used to keep myself warm and toasty on that one date night I’d forgotten to bring a jacket was the very same one I used to scorch this fucker that was trying to cut off my respiratory system, just turned up to eleven.
From somewhere nearby I could smell the telltale scent of burnt hair. I’d turned up the heat enough to get our stalker off my back, and probably took some skin off in the process. Nice. I heard it – him – breathing heavily as it stood there, watching, waiting for its next move.
And I tried to keep my smile to myself as I watched Sterling very stealthily creep up on our freshly french-fried new friend.
One problem, though. I hadn’t accounted for what the spell would do to my clothes. I beat at myself as the flames slipped from my control and began to eat at my jeans, my jacket. Scratch that: it was one of Herald’s jackets, lent to me from one of those nights I’d spontaneously decided to sleep over.
Stop, drop, and roll, I thought.
I reached for my hair. At least the fires were obedient enough not to manhandle the actual parts of my body. I rolled in the grass, the dewy coolness enough to help smother the flames as I simultaneously willed them to die down. On my back, I caught a glimpse of the night sky as I panted and struggled to regain my breath. The stars looked back at me. I bet they were laughing.
A sickening crunch had me springing back to my feet. Sterling was locked in physical combat with the man-burnt-thing, his senses now adjusted enough to find its shape and beat it into submission. The creature made a horrible gurgling sound as Sterling aimed a sideward kick at where its – his? – stomach would be. That didn’t make it materialize, but the spray of blood that spattered the paved pathway was very real.
Banjo yowled in the background, tugging at his leash, as if desperate to join the fray.
Sterling flicked the side of his nose with his thumb – like Bruce Lee. Cocky ass. “Had enough?” he said.
The stalker’s answer came in the sound of smashing glass. Both Sterling and I watched the ground blankly as a tiny bottle of nothing broke apart.
“The fuck was that supposed to be?” Sterling said, chuckling.
Then a beam of bright yellow light rocketed from out of the bottle’s remains, concentrating into a laser-thin shaft that shot straight at Sterling’s torso.
Sunlight.
He yelped, then twisted at the last moment. The sunbeam pierced his body, boring a smoking hole through his clothes and straight through his chest. If he hadn’t dodged when he did, the sun would have struck him – pierced him – right in his heart. Sterling had very, very narrowly escaped his true death.
“You piece of shit,” I shouted, my fist wreathed in flames as I launched myself at the invisible force.
This time, there was no clinking of glass, only the whoosh of breath as a puff of dust struck me in the face. I held my fist aloft for a moment, stunned by the ineffective defense, until my nose began to itch. Until my eyes started burning.
I screamed and fell to the ground, the flames vanishing from my fist as I clawed at my face. A hundred hundred white-hot needles were stinging at each of my eyeballs, at my nasal passages, down my throat. Tears and snot and spit streamed down my face as I shouted against the agony, the last, farewell kick the stalker delivered straight to my ribs hardly registering as pain.
Footsteps beat a desperate tattoo against the pavement as our attacker ran off, the echoes of his escape vanishing as he did into the night. That left Banjo howling, and me and Sterling wailing and shouting both our heads off.
“I’m dying,” Sterling gasped. “Dusty, I’m dying.” Through a veil of my own tears I could see him kneeling on the ground and clutching at his chest.
“Shut the fuck up,” I groaned. “Shut up and never talk again. Get me some water. Fucking please.”
“Get me a bandage,” Sterling moaned, falling backwards into the grass, still clutching the hole in his torso. “Someone get me a drink.”
Heinsite Park. I swear to God.
Chapter 6
“Tell me where it hurts,” Herald said.
I was about to answer when Sterling beat me to it. “Everywhere,” he whined.