“Kitten!”
Bones’s voice broke my trance. I looked at him, surprised that he seemed to be colored red and blue. So was everything else. Bones ripped his blade through the vampire in front of him and threw him to the side. With nothing obstructing my view of him, I saw his face tighten with shock.
His gaze was fixed by my waist. I glanced down—and gasped. My arms were blue from the elbow down, covered in pulsating flames that I somehow couldn’t even feel. Orange and scarlet shot out of my hands, scorching everything in my path from my feet all the way to the roof of the house.
Bones ran to me, yanking me against him, ignoring the flames that continued to sprout from me.
“Charles, take Justina!” he shouted, then my feet abruptly left the ground. Through the red/blue haze of my vision, I watched Spade snatch my mother and shoot into the air. Gregor and the house still burned below us, but even now, I saw Gregor rolling on the nonburning part of the earth, dousing the old flames fast enough to keep the new ones from consuming him.
Murderer, I thought, that savageness rising in me again. Red smothered my gaze, and Gregor screamed, rolling faster as more flames erupted on him.
Clouds shifted, allowing a beam of sunlight to sear across my face. It hit me like a roundhouse kick to the head, clearing some of the red from my vision. And at the same instant, Bones sank his fangs into my neck, sucking hard.
The last thing I saw was the blazing colors of the dawn, looking like the flames still burning below us on the ground.
THIRTY-TWO
BARE CONCRETE WALLS MET MY VISION WHEN my eyes opened, then a dark head bent over mine.
“All right, Kitten?”
Bones’s face, streaked with soot. A heavy scent of smoke hung in the room, in fact. Immediately, I looked at my hands. They rested over my stomach, pale and innocent. Maybe I’d imagined what happened.
I sat up so fast, my head banged into Bones’s. Mencheres stood a few feet away in the small room that I recognized as a vampire holding cell.
“Easy, luv,” Bones said, smoothing his hands down my arms.
I hoped I’d passed out after setting off those detonations and everything after it had been a terrible dream. “My mother? Rodney?”
“She’s safe. He’s gone.” Bones’s voice was a rasp.
Rodney’s death had been real, which meant the fire was real, too. The fire. Coming from me.
I didn’t want to believe it, but I remembered—oh, I remembered!—the exhilaration of letting all my hate and anger surge out of me, then watching it somehow transform into the form of fire.
“I’m pyrokinetic.”
I said it out loud, watching Bones’s face, hoping somehow, he’d offer another explanation for what had happened. He didn’t.
“It seems so.”
“But how?” I asked, swinging my legs off the cot only to have them flop like limp rags. There went my idea of pacing. My whole body felt exhausted. “You told me a vampire’s individual powers don’t emerge for decades—and I thought they were directly related to their sire’s powers, too. But you’re not a pyro, Bones, unless you’ve been hiding something from me.”
“I haven’t been hiding anything from you, and even if your human years were added to the equation, I’ve never seen a vampire, Master or otherwise, manifest powers like you did so soon after changing.”
Bones sounded frustrated. I shot a glance over to Mencheres, meeting the other vampire’s cool, charcoal gaze. There was no surprise or confusion in Mencheres’s eyes—and all of a sudden, I knew why.
“You bastard,” I whispered.
At first Bones thought I’d been talking to him, but then he followed my gaze to the dark-haired vampire, who hadn’t spoken.
“He’s known all along.” My voice started to rise, as did my anger. “He knew Gregor didn’t see me in a vision and decide he had to have me because I was a half-breed, or because he was in love with me. He knew Gregor saw me as a vampire, lighting things up around me like a Roman candle. That’s why Gregor’s wanted me, so he could control the power through me. But that’s what Mencheres wanted, too. That’s the other reason why Mencheres took me from Gregor and locked him up all these years. He wanted my power on his side. That’s what all of this has been about!”
Bones didn’t ask Mencheres if it was true. His brown eyes turned green as he stared at the man he’d known for over 220 years.
“I should kill you for this.” It was almost a growl.
Nothing changed in Mencheres’s expression. Glass was more emotive. “Perhaps you will. My visions of the future only went up to this morning, so I assume I’ll be dead soon. Now that you’re co-ruler of my line, and Cat is as she’s meant to be, my people will be protected when I’m gone.”