Ignited (7 page)

“Why did you stop me?” Asher bit off. “I could have taken him out!”

He sounded pissed, but I didn’t care. I was every bit as angry. I invaded his space, forcing him to take a step back or bump into me.

“And then what?” I barely kept my voice from rising to a shout. “You get your revenge on him. What then? What happens to my dad if you take out one of the only leads we have?”

I wanted to hit him. The urge rose up in me, and I had to shove it down.

“I wasn’t thinking about your dad,” Asher admitted, his voice stiff.

I kicked at the sand, spraying it over his shoes. “You weren’t thinking at all. What about Erin? She once risked her life to tell me you were alive. We found you because of her. You would repay her by putting her in danger?”

He could have hurt her when he attacked Alcais. He’d been out of control. I’d seen it in the way he moved and in his expression. The idea of my friend getting hurt sent another wave of rage through me, and I turned my back on Asher to contain it.

I counted to twenty. “Let’s go,” I said in a calmer voice. “Lucy is waiting at our meeting spot.”

He fell into step beside me as we walked up the beach. I dialed Lucy to tell her we were on our way, and she sounded scared to death. Seeing Alcais had reminded her how very real the danger was, and I could tell she’d been crying. I spent a couple of minutes reassuring her before I hung up. Asher’s struggle was almost palpable, his entire body tense with suppressed emotion. I pulled off the wig, shaking it to loosen the sand I’d gotten in it when I rolled on the beach.

“Remy,” he said. He waited for me to face him. “I’m sorry.”

His shoulders bent in shame, and my anger faded slightly. I was so damn disappointed and sad. “The only thing we have going for us is the element of surprise. You almost threw that away tonight.”

He shifted, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You’re right,” he admitted. “I saw Alcais and I lost it. Everything came back at once, and I wanted to . . .”

His voice trailed off. The unfinished thought hung in the air, and I shivered. He wanted to . . . hurt him? Kill him? Violence repaid with violence. Everything we’d done these last months heaped another helping of horror upon us.

The wind picked up, and I wrapped my arms around my waist. “What are you doing here? I thought you were following Franc.”

“He drove here. By the time I found a place to park the truck and got back to the house, Franc had gone inside. I think he sent Alcais to find Erin.”

We’d waited three days for my grandfather to leave his house. Even now, he could be with my father. We wouldn’t know because Asher had abandoned him to follow Alcais. I didn’t say what I was thinking, but I guessed Asher knew. He glanced away, the muscles in his sculpted face tensing. I thought about the look he’d worn earlier. Revenge had been his only goal. How was I supposed to trust that he wouldn’t do something like this again? What if next time he put Lucy or me in danger?

Asher reached for me. The movement was so unexpected that I stiffened and stepped back. His eyes narrowed with pain, and he dropped his hand to his side. I wanted to shriek in frustration. For weeks, I’d practically begged him to touch me, waiting around for any scrap of attention he showed me. He was the one who had asked for space, but suddenly he wanted to touch me.

“I’m scared, Remy.”

His jaw clenched. Fear was a weakness, and Asher hated being weak.

“Of what?” I asked.

He ran a hand through his hair, mussing the chocolate-brown strands. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to find the words to explain how he felt. Then his eyes lifted to some spot over my shoulder. The vulnerability I’d glimpsed in him blinked out, and once again, he’d shored up his defenses with me on the outside of his walls. The razor didn’t cut as deep, dulled from overuse.

“This is one of those times when I wish I could read
your
mind,” I told him in a soft voice. I stepped close to him. His breath touched my face, and I longed to sink into his heat. “Let me in, Asher. Let me help you. What are you afraid of?”

I dared to hold his hand. He allowed it, and I stretched out my other hand to trace his cheek. His head tilted like he savored the feel of my fingers brushing his lips. Flames leapt in the green depths of his eyes, sparking a familiar heat in me, and then his head lowered. He kissed me, his full lips parting mine. There was no hesitation in his embrace. He wrapped both arms around my waist and yanked me off balance as he pulled me into him. Instantly, I was lost in the feel, the smell, the taste of him.

He hadn’t kissed me like this since Blackwell Falls, and all the pent-up longing I’d stored poured out of me and into our kiss. I dropped the wig to the sand. My hands explored his back, tracing his shoulder blades and following them down to his hips. I couldn’t get close enough. It had been so cold without him. He smoldered, and I wanted to throw myself into the blaze.

Without warning, he shoved me away. I stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t steadied me. I blinked at the pained grimace on his face, still lost in the haze.

“This,” Asher bit out through gritted teeth.

I stared at him in confusion, and he lifted my hand. That’s when I noticed the green sparks crackling where our skin touched. I’d forgotten how the air glowed so brilliantly when my body tried to heal his. I’d lost control of my powers, and I snapped my mental walls back into place. Reason returned by slow degrees, and I understood that he’d kissed me to make a point. I’d confused passion with manipulation, and I felt incredibly stupid.

“
This
is what I’m afraid of, Remy. Every time I touch you, the longer I’m with you, the more human I become.” He dropped my arm and stepped back, taking his heat away. The sparks faded, along with any passion I’d felt. “Didn’t you see me tonight? See how slowly I moved? How easily you overtook me? When have you ever been able to do that?”

Never. I’d tackled Gabe a couple of times, but he’d always overpowered me. Truly, I shouldn’t have been able to take Asher down the way I had, but I hadn’t hesitated. The wind tossed my hair in my face, and I scraped it back, tying it into a knot at my nape as I tried to think of a response that didn’t include slapping him.

Asher’s hands disappeared into his pockets, and he rocked back on his heels. “I’m losing my powers, Remy,” he said with despair weighing every syllable. “What good am I to you as a mortal?”

The despair broke through my hurt. My shoulders lifted in a helpless gesture. Once, Asher had longed to be mortal and prayed I could cure him. No longer. The man in front of me hated what he’d become and suffered constantly because of it. To see Asher brought so low made me want to weep.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes when I insisted, “Your powers didn’t make you a Protector, Asher. That was you. It’s who you are and what you believe. Other Protectors would have killed me on sight, but not you. You’re a good person, with or without your abilities.”

His expression didn’t change. I hadn’t convinced him. Another breeze swirled sand into the air, and it stuck to my cheek. I swiped at it and felt the wetness of tears. I wished I’d never loosened that spigot. What was the point of crying? It didn’t fix anything, and I never felt any better.

“I’m a liability,” Asher insisted. “One day they’re going to use me against you, and it’s going to kill me.”

I shook my head. “What do you want me to say? I can’t predict the future. I don’t know what will happen.”

He bent at the knees to put our eyes on level and caught me with a determined stare. “Promise me that you won’t sacrifice yourself to save me. Promise me that you’ll walk away if they ever capture me.”

Never.
I would never abandon someone I loved. My mother had died because I’d left her alone with my stepfather. I wouldn’t do that again. I didn’t have to say a word. Asher read my answer on my face. He straightened, his mouth turned down in disappointment. We always seemed to come back to this fight. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save me, but he couldn’t accept that I would do the same.

“Where does that leave us?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Later that night, I stood under the shower with hot water pelting my skin and washing sand down the drain. Lucy had gone to her bedroom as soon as we’d returned to the house. Asher hadn’t joined us. Franc’s car had left Alcais’s house by the time we’d met up with Lucy and dropped Asher at his truck. He’d texted me that he was going to stake out my grandfather’s house again and would call in the morning. I didn’t argue with him, and that said more about our relationship than I wanted to admit.

Tonight it had become very clear that we were broken, possibly beyond repair. How could you be with someone who was afraid to touch you?

An ache expanded in my chest. Asher had admitted that his powers were disappearing, but that was only one problem. Tonight, I had felt stronger and faster than ever before when I tackled Asher. The two things had to be connected because that was the way our luck ran. I would bet anything that the energy I stole from him when I “healed” him had given my powers a boost. That was going to go over well when he figured it out.

I leaned against the shower wall, my thoughts tangled in what the changes in my body could mean. I was already losing Asher. What if I was losing myself, too?

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

I
woke early the next morning with a nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something. I hadn’t slept well, and it would take a crowbar to pry my eyes open. I’d waited up for Asher, and he hadn’t come in until around three. I rubbed my feet together like a cricket and huddled under the covers to fight off the chill in the air. I started to drift off again when I remembered Erin. I was supposed to meet her on the ferry at nine.

I threw off the covers and checked the time on my phone. It was almost eight, and I would have just enough time to dress and head to the Embarcadero. Erin would be boarding the ferry at the Ferry Plaza. That meant someone would be seeing her off, and I couldn’t risk running into them. But the same ferry would stop at Pier 41 to the west before crossing the bay to Tiburon. I could hop on at the second stop with less risk.

The problem was Asher and Lucy. I’d forgotten to tell them about the meeting the night before. I could tell them now, but they would argue with me and want to examine the meeting from every angle. By the time we decided on a strategy, the opportunity would have passed.

I dressed in jeans and a T-shirt in a hurry, considering my options: (a) tell Asher and Lucy and spend time we didn’t have arguing, or (b) go without them and pay the price for it later. Either way, I intended to go because Erin could help us find my father. That fact was all it took for me to decide. I left a note on the table, grabbed the Mercedes keys, and tiptoed past Asher and Lucy’s rooms on my way to the garage.

A half hour later I parked the car in a lot across the street from Pier 39, a famous tourist destination. Even this early in the morning, tourists swarmed the bright souvenir shops lining the wooden walkways. I bought a San Francisco sweatshirt for five bucks and pulled it on, along with my San Francisco baseball cap and Lucy’s wig. I trailed behind the other tourists, blending in as I pretended to peruse the magnets, shot glasses, and key chains shaped like cable cars or the Golden Gate Bridge.

I bought a ticket for the ferry at Pier 41 and surreptitiously searched for Protectors or Healers. My spidey-sense didn’t pick up on anything. The ferry was already boarding passengers, and I lined up with the others embarking the boat. Erin wasn’t on the lower deck, so I headed up the stairs. Despite the amazing views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, few people had decided to brave the cold winds cutting across the open upper deck. I found Erin sitting alone on one of the wooden benches, wrapped in a peacoat, a knit cap, and a scarf. She gazed out at the gray-blue water and the painfully blue, cloudless sky.

“Hey,” I said, sitting next to her.

She started. “Remy! I thought you couldn’t make it.”

“I wanted to be sure you were alone,” I explained. “How were things last night? I was worried about you.”

She shrugged. “No need. Alcais was just being Alcais.”

An evil prick, then.

A smile curved her mouth as if she’d read my thoughts. “You really hate him, don’t you?” My brows rose, and she added, “I saw your face last night. And your friend’s.”

I frowned. “I’m sorry about him. I think maybe there are things you don’t know about your brother. Things that he’s done.”

“Like what?”

Her brown eyes shone with an innocent light, and I debated how much to tell her. Would I be putting her in danger if I shared too much? Then again, if she knew what Franc and Alcais were capable of, maybe she would be willing to help.

She touched my hand, her pink knit mitten forming a barrier between her skin and mine. “It’s okay. You can tell me. I know Alcais isn’t a good person.”

Of course she knew. As his sister, she was his most frequent victim. Despite that, I didn’t think she understood exactly how cruel Alcais could be. Could I really tell her what a monster he was? With my father’s life in the balance, I would do almost anything, and shattering her illusions was a small thing. We had a twenty-minute ride, and I used most of it.

Erin’s face blanched white when I told her about the things my grandfather and Alcais had done to Asher and me. The kidnapping. The torture. The ways Franc had manipulated me. Then I told her about Yvette and the other Healers whom my grandfather had sacrificed to buy the cooperation of a few Protectors.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping into her scarf. “I knew her. Yvette was one of the kindest people you could meet. She helped as many people as she could.”

I don’t think Erin knew how she shook, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder, ensuring my guard stayed up. Once I’d touched her with my defenses down, and I’d almost attacked her. That was the first time I’d learned that in some ways I was like other Protectors, and that I could steal a Healer’s energy. I had to be careful around them, or risk hurting them.