Burning Read Free

smallest noise, the faintest smell, and the dimmest light.  Right now, I could hear the scraping of skin against skin as he rubbed his hands together nervously.  I could also hear the increased speed of his heart while adrenaline coursed through his body.  Fear hung around him, pouring out from his glands.  I saw a muted light around the edges of the tightly sealed door.  The blue glow and the sound of fingers on a touch screen alerted me to the pilot texting from the cockpit. 
    I pushed the intercom button . “Did you hear me?  How long are we going to be here?” 
    “How… How…long sir?  U-Until morning, I believe.” 
    I had to fight back a snarl.  Instead , I stormed up to the cockpit and ripped the door neatly from its hinges.  “You are afraid of me.  I am a Watcher , so you shouldn’t be.  But if you delay me and those I am to protect are injured, you will regret it,” I warned the Council’s pilot. 
    My fangs extended . I would have liked to sink them into his flesh, rip and tear until he was no longer obstructing me.  Luckily for him, I had given up such simple and barbaric solutions after the French Revolution.
    “Leave,” I ordered in a growl. 
    The terrified pilot tossed open the nearby emergency exit and barely waited for the slide to inflate before jumping from the plane.  I examined the controls.  In my long life, I had done a bit of everything, including flying a plane.  Unfortunately, this plane was far from the World War I biplane I’d flown nearly a hundred years ago. 
    It took great control to take my cell phone out of my pocket without smashing it.   I dialed Marguerite’s number and waited impatiently for her to answer.  When she did, I explained what was happening, albeit in a clipped tone. 
    She responded in an equally irritated voice. “I’m making alternate travel arrangements as we speak.  Grey, I am going to have to find another pilot and send the plane to you in the Midwest.  I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to delay.  You are going to have to take a commercial flight.  Do you think you can avoid arousing suspicion?”
    “Marguerite, I’ve been alive for about a millennium and a half. My skin is white as bone and more than twice as hard.  My eyes shimmer in the light like black diamonds.  So no, I don’t exactly blend in.” 
    “Do your best.  Sometimes we have to improvise.” I could practically hear her gritting her teeth through the phone.
    Once on the commercial flight, I’d volunteered for an exit row seat.  There were less people to avoid there.  I sat next to the door and kept to myself.  The only person seated next to me was a businessman.  He was wearing a department-store suit and carrying a generic briefcase.  He set up his laptop on his lap and began preparing a report.  Busy and ambitious, he was completely inattentive to my presence.
    I hoped that I might escape notice, but when the flight attendant came around with drink service, he looked at me for the first time.  His jaw dropped.  The overhead light he had turned on shined off my skin like polished marble.  Chloë had once told me that I looked like David in the stony flesh. 
    M y mouth quirked up at the corner, I felt the businessman’s growing unease, and I was tempted to order a Bloody Mary and really make him squirm.  However, that would have called attention to myself, and I’d been ordered not to do that.  I ordered red wine, which still seemed to make him uncomfortable, but his fear was setting off my hunting urges, and the aromatic red liquid helped to ease them.  I used the wine like a smoker uses gum when they can’t get a fix.
    My seatmate grew increasingly uncomfortable. Perspiration started to bead at his hairline.  I heard his heart rate increase exponentially.  His breathing became shallower, and the smell of fear began to creep through his pores.  My fangs started to extend, itching to puncture flesh. 
    I looked the sweating , frightened