Fireborn Read Free Page B

too close, too fast. It battered him aside and kept on running.
    It wanted
me
, not Sam. As I’d feared, the blood was calling to them.
    I backpedaled fast, raised my hands, and released my fire. A maelstrom of heat rose before me, hitting the creature hard, briefly halting his progress and adding to the flames already consuming him.
    My backside hit wood. The table. As the creature pushed through the flames, I scrambled over the top of it, then thrust it into the creature’s gut. He screamed, the sound one of frustration rather than pain, and clawed at the air, trying to strike me with arms that dripped flames and flesh onto the surface of the table.
    The
wooden
table.
    As another shot boomed across the stinking, burning darkness, I lunged for the nearest tableleg. I gripped it tight, then heaved with all my might. I might be only five foot four, but I wasn’t human and I had a whole lot of strength behind me. The leg sheared free—and just in time.
    The creature leapt at me. I twisted around and swung the leg with all my might. It smashed into the creature’s head, caving in his side and battering him back across the table.
    A final gunshot rang out, and the rest of the creature’s head went spraying across the darkness. His body hit the concrete with a splat and slid past the glow of the UV, burning brightly in the deeper shadows crowding the room beyond.
    I scrambled upright and held the leg at the ready. But there were no more fiery forms left to fight. We were safe.
    For several seconds I did nothing more than stare at the remnants still being consumed by the UV’s fire. The rank, bitter smell turned my stomach, and the air was thick with the smoke of them. Soon there was little left other than ash, and even that broke down into nothingness.
    I lowered my hands and turned my gaze to the man I’d come here to rescue. “What the hell is going on here, Sam?”
    He put the safety on the gun, then tossed it on the bed and stalked toward me. “Did they bite you? Scratch you?”
    I frowned. “No—”
    He grabbed my arms, his skin so cool against mine. It hadn’t always been that way. Once, his flesh had matched mine for heat and urgency,especially when we were making love— I stopped the thought in its tracks. It never paid to live in the past. I knew that from long experience.
    â€œAre you sure?” He turned my hands over and then grabbed my face with his oh-so-cool fingers, turning it one way and then another. There was concern in the blue of his eyes. Fear, even.
    For
me
.
    It made that stupid part of me deep inside want to dance, and
that
annoyed me even more than his nonanswers.
    â€œI’m fine.” I jerked away from his touch and stepped back. “But you really need to tell me what the hell is going on here.”
    He snorted and spun away, walking across to the coffeemaker. He poured two cups without asking, then walked back and handed the chip-free one to me.
    â€œThis, I’m afraid, has become the epicenter of hell on earth.” His voice was as grim as his expression.
    â€œWhich is about as far from an answer as you can get,” I snapped, then took a sip of coffee. I hated coffee—especially when it was thick and bitter—and he knew that. But he didn’t seem to care and, right then, neither did I. I just needed something warm to ease the growing chill from my flesh. The immediate danger to Sam might be over, but there was still something
very
wrong. With this situation, and with this man. “What the hell were those things if not vampires?”
    He studied me for a moment, his expressionclosed. “Officially they’re known as the red plague, but, as I said, we call them red cloaks. They’re humans infected by a virus nicknamed Crimson Death. It can be transmitted via a scratch or a bite.”
    â€œSo if they wound you, you become just like them?”
    A bleak darkness I didn’t understand