Caress of Flame Read Free

what she’d just seen. Had the dark man really pulled the heart out of the chest of the other? How was such a thing even possible? She’d never in her life seen such a casual display of power. The dark man hadn’t even struggled to remove his enemy’s heart. He’d punched right through the rib cage. It was incredible, but Isis knew what she’d seen hadn’t been pretend. Their battle had been very real, with a very grisly end, and she’d been unfortunate enough to witness it.
    The first thing that popped into her mind was that she should call the police. Then her dislike of social interaction made her change her mind. She didn’t want to deal with the police, not tonight, not ever really. Besides, who would even believe her when Isis told them what she’d seen? Isis knew whoever she told her story to would think she’d gone mental or something. If it was a man she told, he’d no doubt think she just had bad PMS. If it was a woman…Isis didn’t know. Should she tell or not?
    Not. She didn’t want to be involved any more than she already was. If the dark man could pull the heart from a body then she wanted nothing else to do with him, even if it meant bringing him to justice.
    And then there was the fact that she had seen the heart go up in flames in the dark man’s hand. Isis had no explanation for that. Only question after question. How had he done it? She hadn’t seen him strike a match or flick a lighter. And how had he held the flames within his palm without being burned? Isis had no rational explanation for these questions and she knew for a fact that no one would believe that part of the story if she told it. Hell, she hardly believed that she’d seen it.
    Perhaps it had been a trick. What kind of trick she couldn’t guess, but there was just no way a man could do what the dark man had done so effortlessly. No way.
    Isis slowed her car, not wanting to get a ticket for her clumsy attempt at a getaway.
    She was tired of trying to rationalize what she’d seen. It was over now. Isis was growing calmer. There was no need for her to ever think of it again. Besides, she had another crisis on her hands to worry about.
    With that reminder, the letter her sister had sent seemed to burn her from its safe place deep in her pocket. She’d read it over a dozen times already and the words had seared themselves into her brain. Why Maria had gone through such obvious trouble to 1reach her, Isis couldn’t guess. Maria had always had a mean streak in her. Isis knew this well from childhood, when it had been Maria who was the favored child in the family.
    Two years younger than Isis, Maria hadn’t been the angel her mother and stepfather had believed her to be. Isis had been blamed for many of Maria’s misdeeds all through grade school—her parents had never even contemplated that Maria might have been at fault, not even once. Isis had paid, and dearly, for what her sister had done in malice.
    And this tattered piece of paper, this horrible missive, was just another malicious act in Isis’ eyes.
    It was so hard for her to believe the words of the letter. After all the suffering she had gone through while living with her family, Isis couldn’t believe the latest turn of events.
    Only two years had passed since her mother had died of leukemia. Isis had found out about her mother’s death through a distant relative she’d met by chance one day in a department store. The news had hit Isis hard and she’d suffered through a bad depression because of it, but this news from her sister made that time of sadness seem like a trip to an amusement park in comparison.
    It was a thirty-minute drive by highway to the small house Isis rented deep in the woods. There were no neighbors anywhere close—that was why Isis had chosen to rent it in the first place. But now, as she finally made it home and pulled into her long gravel driveway, it seemed really creepy. She put her car in park and sat for several long moments, staring