Afterburn Read online

Even with her wipers on, the misty rain made it hard to see. Her headlights seemed to glare blindingly off the rain sheets and any oncoming traffic forced her to slow to a crawl on the drive from the campus to Fremont, the quirky neighborhood across the bridge from Seattle proper. Gleason had kept her under the microscope for so long that all she wanted was to curl up and leave the world for, preferably, a very long time. She hadn’t even bothered to let Landon know how wrong he was.

  She managed to find street parking only half a block from the small house she rented and trudged uphill, letting herself in through the picket garden gate set in its barren arbor. The rain-drenched lawn glistened blackly in the streetlight. The garden itself was filled with dead plants and fallen leaves from the Japanese maple because she’d just plain been too busy to get to it.

  She would.

  Maybe this weekend. Get things cleaned up for the spring that seemed so inordinately distant these days.

  “Vallon?” The raspy voice out of the darkness set the adrenaline pumping again. Someone stood next to the rhododendron bush under the eaves at the side of the house, and all Vallon could think was ‘Simon was number three’. Was she next?

  But it wasn’t black leather that materialized out of the night. Instead the figure wore a heavy camo jacket, darkened with rain. Long blonde hair hung in rain-formed dreadlocks around the figure’s thin face.

  Vallon looked. Looked again and spotted an impossibly familiar form under the swathes of clothes.

  “Fiona? Fi Murdoch?”

  “Thank god thank god thank god.” The figure lunged at Vallon, but streetlight showed a terror-filled face that Vallon knew from her distant past in the Academy. Arms came around her and the stink of cigarettes and unwashed body filled her nose.

  “Thank god thank god thank god.” It came out in a whisper, a chant, a prayer.

  But it was a voice Vallon knew, even if it was ravaged by—what? What had done this to the young woman Vallon had known so long ago in the Academy? They’d arrived on the same day, but unlike Vallon’s situation after her father was gone, Fiona had a mother—and that mother had pulled Fi out of the school when they were thirteen.

  Vallon held the matted head away. “It really is you. It’s been what?—twelve—thirteen years?” Far longer for Fiona, judging by the state of her white-blue eyes and hollow cheeks. A lifetime, maybe. The wide vacant gaze met Vallon’s but it was still difficult to pinpoint Fi’s presence.

  “It’s you it’s you it’s you.” A croon as she tentatively stroked Vallon’s cheek and hair with a long rough palm. “It’s really you.” A slow smile as Fi’s gaze locked on. “Long time, bud.”

  Her gaze jerked to something beyond Vallon and terror shattered the smile. She yanked away, tore back into the darkness at the side of the house, crashing through the foliage to the backyard and the narrow lane.

  “Fi! Fiona, wait!” Vallon peered into the street for whatever had scared her old friend, but it was only a rain-drenched residential street, cars crowding the narrow sidewalks, trees filling the yards.

  Inking shadows.

  She fought back the sense of being watched and went after Fi. In the backyard Fiona was fighting with the rear gate. The previous owner had put a child-proof latch on it. Fiona-proof, too, apparently.

  Vallon caught her shoulder and Fiona whirled, her face spasmed with terror. Her fist slammed into Vallon’s cheekbone and stars filled her head. She staggered back, but Fiona registered what she’d done.

  “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Vallon. Vallon. Vallon.” It was as if she tried to bring Vallon into being by naming her. Fiona crumpled to her knees on the sodden grass. She wrapped her arms around Vallon’s legs. “Forgive me, please. Please. Please.”

  Shivers wracked her as she pulled back to paw at Vallon’s hands as if seeking absolution, and for a moment, with the cold running down her neck, Vallon wanted nothing to do with this creature of the night. Then she shook herself.

  Helped Fi up. “Come on. Let’s get out of this rain.”

  She led them across the sodden grass and up onto the small, screened, rear porch, then in out of the pine and saltwater-scented night.

  The house smelled warm, yeasty from the cinnamon buns she’d indulged in yesterday, but something else was there, too. A faint hint of cigarette smoke? Probably Fi. She pushed the woman towards a kitchen chair.

  “Stay here.”

  She ignored the wet footprints she laid across the oak floor in the dining room, and went to the living room window that looked out onto the street. Stood hidden beside the curtains and peered out.

  All the color had been drained to shades of grey and black. Nothing moved except the rain on bare branches and cedar and spruce. The rain had grown heavier and bounced on the glistening pavement and car hoods. Uphill, the street crested the hill and headed on toward the new Peak Park and the Woodland Zoo. Nothing moved.

  Downhill, the houses gave way to the small trendy shops and restaurants that now made up Fremont and gave it the feel of a holdover from the sixties and seventies and the Latin motto ‘De Libertas Quirkas,’ or ‘free to be peculiar.’ She fit right in.

  An occasional car followed the leash of its headlights past the intersection with Leary Way. But the Sandhu house three doors down had too many trees in their yard and the hedge on the far side of their property made it impossible to see the sidewalk on her side of the street.

  She should just close the drapes and go make Fiona some tea. Hell, she was dripping all over the hardwood. But something wouldn’t let her turn away. Something—someone—was out there.

  Clutching the gauzy curtain she’d made in a moment of uncharacteristic domesticity, she -reached-. Downhill the night filled with the glimmer of sleeping residents, the faint candle of a raccoon busily raiding someone’s trash. Squirrels and birds slumbered in the trees. A great horned owl swooping through the dregs of the night.

  As she turned uphill, the flash of a Gifted’s presence was so bright she dropped back into herself a moment and had to force herself to —reach— again.

  Flame seared the shadows in the lee of the huge rhododendron bush in the yard of the house two doors up. Where the streetlight found the leaves they shivered like tongues held out to the rain, but shadow filled their undersides and the side away from the street. And inside that darkness was a greater darkness.

  —Reach —

  And the darkness flared and was aware of her.

  A hand grabbed her wrist and Vallon nearly screamed. She snapped back into her head and half staggered against the wall, the flame that was Fiona searing into her awareness. Strangely familiar. Vallon yanked away, fighting for control.

  “They know,” Fiona said. “They watch.”

  “Who knows? Who watches?” Vallon asked as she peered back into the street.

  It was like whoever it was heard her question. Suddenly a piece of the darkness broke off from the bush and stepped into the streetlight.

  Still dark. Black and slick and glistening and clearly male. Dark pits of eyes in hawkish, swarthy features seemed to look right at her and Vallon fell back, shoving Fiona behind her. Somehow their legs got tangled and they both came crashing down on a small side table, breaking off one leg.

  When Vallon scrambled back to the window the watcher was gone. Hurriedly she yanked the heavier, brocade drapes closed and ran to the door. Checked the deadbolt and wished she had a chain as well. Ran back to the kitchen and locked that door, too. Pulled the bright gingham curtains closed and then flicked on the lights, feeling foolish as she did so. As if four walls were any protection.

  As if she were really afraid. Just spooked, that was all—the afterburn to blame.

  But color brought life back into the room. The yellow walls, the turquoise cabinets she’d painted to create a bright friendly space—not that anyone was ever invited to visit. All immaculate. This was her safe place. Her home. Her hiding place.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled. Everything was fine, even if th
e man had looked and felt seriously like the person at the parking garage. He was probably just someone Gleason had sent to check on her. Make sure she really did spend the night at home.

  The old lino floor creaked, and when Vallon opened her eyes Fiona stood in the room, her eyes fever bright. “You saw. You saw.”

  Like a crow cawing against danger.

  “What did I see, Fi? What?” Vallon crossed to her friend and dragged her back to the white kitchen table. She tried to take Fi’s sopping camo-colored coat, but Fi panicked at the suggestion. Vallon left her to drip on the floor and put the kettle on to boil, then grabbed a thick blue towel for Fi from the bathroom. When she returned, Fiona was just sitting and looking at her hands, her face gone slack. Not like the girl Vallon remembered, at all.

  Vallon swore and began gently tamping the rain from Fi’s sopping hair and face. Demanding answers obviously wasn’t going to work any better than taking readings in a snowstorm. Cajoling probably wasn’t going to, either. She crouched down in front of her old friend and gave her the towel in case she wanted to continue what Vallon had started. Fi’s hands barely twitched to show she’d accepted the towel.

  “It’s so good to see you, Fi. Has it really been thirteen years?”

  Slowly, ever so slowly, Fiona lifted her gaze to Vallon, the action so stiff it reminded her of an antique automaton fortuneteller she’d seen years ago at the Pike Street Market. A small frown placed lines between Fiona’s eyes.

  “Thirteen.” A beat. “Yes.” It came out in a triumphant burst as if finding the words had taken great effort.

  Vallon sat back on her heels. There was so much she wanted to ask. She decided to use a surveyor approach—take readings, get estimates, before pinpointing her site. On the stove the kettle began to bounce and boil; water slopped onto the burner and hissed.

  Fi looked up, alarmed, as Vallon went to the stove and filled a teapot with water and Earl Grey tea bags. “You’re still an Earl Grey fan, right?”

  Hesitation and then: “Yes.” And then: “You remember.”

  Vallon cast a smile in her friend’s direction. Fiona now sat at the table with her hands crossed in front of her like a schoolgirl. “I remember all right. You and I were like this.” She held up two twined fingers.

  “Best buds forever.” Fi’s fever-bright smile settled on her face.

  “That’s right. I didn’t know what I was going to do when your mom took you out of the Academy.”

  The bright smile dimmed. Just like Fi, emotions ready to read.

  “But it was good when we were together.”

  Vallon set the pot on the table as the cat door rattled. Maggie sauntered into the room, black tail high, fur poofed against the rain like a woman’s frizzed hair. She barely gave the two women a look as she went to her food dish—empty—and then glared up at Vallon. Then she sat down and pawed at her plate. Always up-front about her wants, that was Maggie. Fi was like that, too.

  “Is she yours?” Fi asked, a childlike shimmer of excitement in her voice.

  “It’s more like I’m hers. Her servant, that is.” Vallon sighed and scooped up the food dish, filled it with canned food from the fridge.

  “How did you get her? She’s beautiful.” Fi made coaxing noises and Maggie did her usual flirting act of flicking her tail and staying just out of reach.

  “Look at her, acts like she’s saying ‘I’d love to have you pat me, but I just couldn’t possibly.’” Maggie flopped down on the floor and rolled onto her back. “‘Unless of course, you come to me.’” She set the cat food down and Maggie scooted to it, all her overtures to Fi forgotten. “I tell you, cats have very clear opinions of people. We’re meant to be servants to cats. Only servants.”

  She shook her head, grabbed two cups, spoons, and some cream and sugar before seating herself. “Do you remember that soccer game against Clover Park? The State Championship?”

  The frown again, but followed by a thousand-watt smile that almost broke Vallon’s heart. “I do! You were the star—two goals!”

  “Not the way I remember it. You passed me the ball so I could take that last shot. If you hadn’t set me up, we’d have ended up in a tie. You could have taken the shot yourself.”

  “Yeah, but you were the better shooter.”

  And that was the gracious, straight-up honesty Vallon remembered. Always there to be an honest, open friend, more so than anyone in Vallon’s life. Even Landon was more of a troubleshooter to dig her out of the messes she created.

  Vallon poured the tea, the fragrant perfume reminding her of all the times they’d sat together in their shared room at the Academy so long ago. “We were a great team. God, we made those teachers work.”

  Another frown. “I think the dorm monitors really hated us.”

  “Only because we didn’t take well to being virtual prisoners. We had our own minds. We found ways to beat them at their own game.” Vallon sipped the tea and felt the exhaustion return like a heavy cape across her shoulders. Too much had happened this day and the inhibitor was wearing off, leaving her with the usual sensation of being stretched thin as glass that could shatter in the slightest wind.

  When the afterburn had progressed this far, the only thing that helped was lots of time and rest—and preferably a good roll in the hay. One helped her start to refuel; the other brought her body back more quickly into balance. She closed her hands around the teacup for warmth and saw Fi do the same.

  “I’ll always remember that night we met those guys for a party down by the creek and there we were, a tad flagrante delecto, and the monitors found us and we took off through the woods half-naked. We had to circle back for our clothes and the damn guys had taken our panties as trophies.”

  “We lost our virginity that night.” The light dimmed in Fi’s eyes.

  Vallon grinned across at her friend’s solemn face. “Damn straight. And it was fun. Here’s to the guys. Bastards.” She clinked her cup against Fi’s. “I wrote you letters after you left. I really wanted to keep in touch.”

  Fi’s slow smile dropped totally away, and Vallon was instantly sorry she’d said it, but darn it, she had written, and it had hurt worse than anything when Fiona never replied. For years she’d been angry at Fi’s betrayal, but now -

  “I—tried.”

  Fi was gripping the cup so hard her fingers had gone white and suddenly Vallon’s fatigue was too much. She didn’t have the energy to ease around Fiona’s loss, Fiona’s fears, Fiona’s change.

  “So why’d you come tonight, Fi? You haven’t tried to contact me. Ever.”

  The fear was back, writ large in Fiona’s dilated pupils that almost erased the grey-blue. She glanced at the ginghammed window as if black figures were going to crash through the pane. “Because. I had to warn you.”

  “Warn me?” That sent the cold deeper into Vallon’s veins, so there was no way the tea was going to help anymore. The last shreds of the inhibitor wore away and she swayed where she sat. Had to grab the table to stop from tumbling to the floor.

  “Vallon?” Fear clear in Fi’s voice.

  Eyes closed, Vallon waited for the world to stop its slow, sickening turn around her. She held up her hand.

  “It’s all right. I’m just really beat.” She opened her eyes and managed to stop from wincing, even though the light was like a blade direct to her brain and her nerves were jittery as a flower pot during an earthquake. “Listen. Could we talk in the morning? I’ll get you set up in the spare room. You can use the shower, anything. Eat anything in the fridge, but I have to sleep. I’m sorry.” She heaved herself up because if she didn’t get to her bed soon she wouldn’t be moving at all. This was the worst case of afterburn overload she’d ever had. “Come on. I’ll show you your room.”

  Vallon fell onto her bed still clothed after showing Fi her room and shoving a stack of clean towels at her. The white duvet cover raced to meet Vallon and then she was gone.

  A cell phone ring drilled into her head, buzzing, ins
istent. Vallon searched her pockets but the phone wasn’t there. Had she dropped it? She looked back the way she’d come. Black pavement. White-slashed lines marking parking stalls turned piss-yellow-grey in the flickering fluorescent light. They ran away in a long row, diminishing in the distance, and the phone rang again, again. Buzzing and buzzing and buzzing so she wanted to cover her ears.

  Then another phone answered it. And another. And another, and it drilled into her head, her heart, filling her with dread because there was something important here. An important message and she had to find her phone. Ran searching back along the wall, but the ringing only increased. She had to find the phone and stop the sound. Either that or get out.

  Stairs. There were stairs ahead. But the walls shimmered around her and change licked the air. Ozone and ether. Brimstone and heat. She dove for the stairs. Had to escape before the change got her.

  Tumbled down one flight. Two flights. How many flights? But then the stairwell seemed to telescope back towards her like a horrible, constricting throat. The terror she’d been fighting slammed into her chest. No breath.

  But if she stayed here, the change would catch her as it had Simon. She wouldn’t disappear like non-Gifted. She’d die a horrible death.

  She turned, ran back up the stairs, but a dark figure waited, holding Fi in his arms—hostage—and she was trapped as the stair-throat contracted, as she felt it close, as the walls flowed over her legs, her hands. Flowed up her body until there was only her face. Only the vision of the dark figure and Fi.

  “Death and destruction. You shouldn’t have done it,” the figure said in a voice that rolled like thunder as the wall flowed over her head.

  Vallon bolted upright, gasping into half-light, and fought to pinpoint her location. Stop the sense of impending disaster.

  Grey March light came through white curtains, which meant that it was at least seven a.m. Her bed under her and from the bedside table her cell phone drilled on and on and on. She grabbed it and keyed it on.

  “Drake.” Her damn heart pounded so loud it was hard to hear, harder to understand with the fear ricocheting around in her head. What was it she shouldn’t have done?

  “Good morning, Agent Drake. Chief Gleason asked me to phone you.” E.A. Moore’s smooth, caramel voice.

  Vallon ran her fingers back through her matted hair and tried to find a normal response through the thick, sour fur on her tongue and—seemingly—in her head. The afterburn still throbbed, low down and unrelentingly sexy. God, she wanted a man.

  But Moore seemed to take Vallon’s hesitation as permission to move on. “He wishes you to know that the Seattle PD expect you at their Virginia Street station for an eight a.m. interview.”

  Vallon rubbed her eyes and grabbed her wristwatch off the table. Seven ten. “Shit.” Typical Moore, leaving it so late to call—her own little punishment for upsetting Gleason. Vallon scrambled off the bed and almost fell. Slumped back on the bed, because her legs felt like rubber; and that wasn’t a normal response to afterburn, but she had to get moving.

  “I’ll be there. Tell the Chief I’ll be in to work afterwards.”

  “He expects it. There is the matter of discipline.” Smooth voice with not a hint of disapproval, and that made the comment sting even more.

  “That’s a bit of an assumption, isn’t it?” It took everything she had to keep her voice steady and strong.

  “Given your past indiscretions, it seems logical. You were flagged as a potential security risk after that incident at the border.”

  Vallon bit her lip against her frustration. They’d never forgive her ‘correction’ of the work of a senior Agent who had shoved the Canadian border back a bit too far. She’d only returned it to the correct latitude, but the agent had been pissed big time and so had his boss. It led to her being transferred here and the biggest black mark against her name. So much for doing what was right.

  The phone went dead in her hands and Vallon let it drop. Stood again and staggered into the connecting white and blue bathroom, shedding her clothes as she went. A quick shower and she dragged a brush through her hair, then grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a soft, grey cashmere sweater that didn’t hurt her afterburn-sensitive skin. She topped it off with her favorite cropped black leather jacket, still damp from the rain last night. Donned them and inspected herself in the mirror. Not a pretty sight. Wide mouth, down-turned. She mustered a smile, but her skin was pretty much the color of her sweater, and her lank blonde hair just accentuated the dark circles under her eyes. She looked serious and intense.

  Just the look she was going for, for a police interview and then facing down Gleason. She flipped her hair over her shoulders, pinched her cheeks, and slapped on some pale pink lip gloss, then headed for the stairs.

  The open guestroom door stopped her. The bed looked untouched. She went to the bathroom and the stack of thick towels stood unused on the edge of the sink. The blue towel she’d handed Fi in the kitchen coiled like a discarded skin on the floor.

  “Fi?” Vallon called as she scooped up the towel for the laundry and headed down stairs. The house echoed around her more empty than usual, so she knew Fi was gone. An open back door confirmed Vallon’s suspicion even as she -reached- through the house and found only Maggie’s small flame curled in her bed beside the couch.

  She shivered, knowing she’d slept with the rear door unlocked. Anyone could have come in. But Fi had to do whatever she had to do. Whatever she’d come to say or do obviously wasn’t that important.

  Or else she was truly as terrified as Vallon had glimpsed. Clearly life hadn’t been kind to Fi Murdoch since she left the Academy.

  A warning.

  But a warning of what? Death and destruction, and she was somehow involved.

  Fi had seemed to know about the man in black, but there was something else about her, now that Vallon thought about it. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but had noticed last night even in her state.

  She checked her watch. It was something she’d have to figure out later, because if she didn’t leave now she was going to keep the illustrious Detective Bryson waiting.

  She wanted his involvement over with, and her name cleared. She needed her precious pens and paper back. She’d worked too hard making the vellum and ink, using notes she’d found scribbled in the one notebook of her father’s she’d found in his office effects.

  As she locked up the house and went out to her car, she fought down the ever-present grief and the anger. Not that her father had been the last to abandon her, or even the first. Her mother had disappeared when she was young enough all Vallon recalled of her was a scent of roses and milk tea.

  After her father, had come the men—boys, to start, and then lovers that all had left for some reason or another.

  It had taught her resiliency and self-reliance until it was her doing the leaving. She had to make her own way in the world.

  She climbed into the Subaru and went around the block and down Fremont and over the troll-guarded Fremont Bridge to Westlake and followed the string of yacht dealerships and expensive restaurants along the shore of Lake Union, then threaded her way to Virginia Street.

  The blocky, modern concrete-and-glass structure sat back from the sidewalk, with concrete seating and low hedges and a misleading welcome-garden by the door. Two sodden flags hung limp in the air that felt pregnant with the ubiquitous March Seattle rain.

  Vallon pushed through the glass doors and into the typical circulated air of an office building but this carried the slight, unpleasant tinge of unwashed bodies and coppery blood. After registering her name with reception she paced, waiting for the Detective to grace her with his presence. She should have made herself coffee before leaving home, or have picked some up on the way in.

  Another track across the foyer. She turned and found herself confronting Detective Bryson. Realized—again—how tall he was compared to her five foot seven. His espresso-colored gaze was a little disconcerting, beca
use, dammit, he was just as good looking as he’d been last night.

  Even the scent of his aftershave—something smelling lightly of mornings and sea-air—was good enough to eat. She’d hoped it had been just the afterburn talking, but now the afterburn flared.

  “Detective.” She stuck out her hand in an effort to control herself. “I received word you wished to interview me this morning.”

  “Agent Drake.”

  His palm was long and hard and warm against hers and just shaking it was far too intimate. She could lap him up like a cat with cream.

  “I appreciate you coming in.”

  She flicked her hair behind her shoulders. Dammit, she was preening like some stupid schoolgirl. “So, should we get this over with? I have to get to work.”

  A half nod of his head and a bit of a smile. “I hope the officer’s cuffs didn’t leave any marks or bruises.”

  “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before, if that’s what you’re worried about. I understand they were doing their job, though if they’d taken the time to listen, the whole thing could have been avoided. A misunderstanding.”

  “Aah.” But there was amusement in his gaze as if her comment sounded like made she played with cuffs for fun.

  The little hairs on the back her neck stood on end, and she almost wished she’d worn her one-and-only business suit because its structure would hide some of the physical reactions she felt towards this man.

  He led her to an elevator and up to the second floor, then along the hallway to a small, windowless interview room. Well, windowless except for the one-way glass on the wall.

  The room held only a square meeting table and two chairs. Two files and a pad of writing paper sat in the middle of the table. He motioned her to one chair and she sat, then wished she hadn’t because he stayed standing. A blast of cold ceiling air chilled her still-damp hair and made her keep her jacket on.

  She looked expectantly up at Bryson and knew this was his power play.

  “If you have a pen I’ll write out my report.”

  Again that flicker of amusement as he splayed his fingers over the back of his chair.

  “I thought we might have a little conversation, first, Agent Drake. You seemed mighty upset last night and not quite clear. I thought things might go better today.”

  There was not-quite condescension in his voice that made her jaw clench. “Fine. Ask your questions.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  She seriously would have liked to say yes, but sitting where she was, and Agent Bryson’s gaze, made her just want out of here. She made a point of checking her watch.

  “No thanks, I’d like to keep this as short and to the point as possible so I can get back to the office.”

  “Such devotion to duty.” Sarcasm now.

  “What can I say, I love my job.” At least it was true. Working with the AGS was the only thing she wanted, or knew how, to do. The use of her Gift was, well, why she got up every morning - and where else could she be paid to use it?

  “And just what is it you do, Agent Drake? As I mentioned last night, I wasn’t aware that the American Geological Survey was linked to Homeland Security. I did a little research. The AGS isn’t the same thing as the US Geological Survey.”

  Cold pimpled her skin. She met his gaze and stood.

  “You were told last night, that information is classified. If that’s the direction of these questions, then I suggest you speak to Chief Gleason.”

  “Sit down, Ms. Drake.” He faced her across the table, still loose, still handsome, but his face had gone harder than she wanted to see.

  She remained standing and watched the hard edge smoothed away with effort. She needed to make sure this went quickly, and that meant allowing him to get what he needed but not so much she was violating national security.

  “Detective Bryson, I can explain, in very general terms, my agency’s affiliation with Homeland Security, but anything further you will have to go to my chief. Do you understand?”

  “I understand that you’re standing when I asked you to sit and I understand that the more you avoid answering my questions the more my partner and I are going to consider you a suspect in Simon Lamrey’s murder. Now sit down.”

  He said it with a cold precision that she was sure he reserved only for those he was seriously going after, and for a moment she couldn’t decide what to do or how to answer.

  So she did the only thing she could think of.

  She sat.