"Oh, please." Alexandra stared at the guard, and the hall filled with the scent of lavender. "Put down that weapon, you moron."

The guard lowered his gun.

"This is why the NRA needs to be disbanded." Alex went over and snatched the weapon out of his hand, removing the clip before shoving it in his holster. She looked into his eyes. "You will wait here and do nothing until we're gone. Then you will go home and forget us. Clear?"

"Clear," the guard murmured, smiling at her.

"You'll also resign from this job and get one that gives some meaning to your life." Alex continued. "Like work with underprivileged kids. And you will get rid of all of your guns. Including that one you keep thinking of using to shoot your brother-in-law, Dave."

"Meaning," the guard agreed. "Kids. Guns."

"Come on," she said to Michael, walking down to the office. She handed him the files and unplugged the laptop sitting on the desk, tucking it under her arm.

"There is probably nothing on the computer," he told her.

"Probably," she agreed. "But they're insured, and it's a better model than the one I've got in the lab." She gave him a curiously guarded look. "When we get back, I need to go into the city and see someone about these medical records. Alone."

If Michael had learned anything about his sygkenis, it was when to let her go. "As long as you come back to me."

Alex didn't reply.

* * *

Chapter 19

Kyan pulled the water under his control back from Melanie and the cabin, and brought it to the woodshed. He sent it into the ropes binding his limbs, coating them with it rather than soaking it into them, so they wouldn't swell. The water acted like invisible hands, untying the knots until his arms and legs were free.

His head spun as he stood, but the dizzy sensation passed and he kicked out the door of the woodshed. Once he was outside, stinging sheets of rain saturated and revived him. He took a moment to turn his face up and drink from the sky, and then scanned the area. The girl and the maledicti were still inside. They would not be going anywhere. He had to find Melanie and secure her before he dealt with them.

He ran past the cabin and followed Melanie's trail down to the lake.

Once he eliminated the girl and her demon lover, Kyan decided, he would take Melanie back to China with him. Independent as she was, she would resist at first, but there were ways he could use to persuade her. The island he lived on in the South China Sea was small, and the house he had built on it simple, but it was in his power to give her anything she wished. No one would ever spit at the sight of her again, and he would no longer have to live alone.

She was standing at the helm of the boat, Kyan saw as he approached the pier. The rain had soaked her clothes and plastered her bright hair to her skull. He was prepared to call out to her when he heard her speaking in rapid Chinese.

"Yes, I can confirm the ID," she was saying in a brisk voice that sounded nothing like her own. "He is not going to be a problem." She listened. "Of course I can. Do I have approval? Fine. What about the maledicti? I don't think a recovery attempt is wise. His allies will be arriving soon."

Kyan blinked the rain out of his eyes. Melanie was speaking to one of his superiors. She was holding a satellite phone exactly like the one he used in the field to contact Rome.

She was an operative, like him.

"I'll call in when it's done. Remain in the light, brother." She switched off the phone and stepped out from under the canopy.

He walked across the pier, meeting her at the edge. "Why didn't you identify yourself to me?" he demanded.

"So you could dust me like that guy in Atlanta?" Contempt changed her face and made it seem older. "Oh, yeah, I was going to do that."

"You are a terrible operative," he ranted. "You became intoxicated. You had sex with me."

"I pretended to get drunk to have some fun with you," she corrected. "Like the sex, it was good exercise."

"Fun? Exercise?" She was insane; he was convinced of it.

"If you don't blow off steam now and then, this job gets really old," she said. "Besides, sex and bar fights are more fun than aerobics. Anything else?"

"You should have told me," he said bitterly. "I could have used your help with the target."

"She was never my target, Kyan." Melanie smiled, but this time her dimples didn't dent her cheeks. "You were. And I'm sorry, but I have to finish my mission." She raised a gun and fired.

The round struck him in the face and sent him over the edge of the pier into the lake.

The sound was muffled by the storm, but Jaus knew gunfire when he heard it. It sounded as if someone had fired a pistol down by the lake.

"Stay inside," he told Liling as he quickly dressed.

She pulled the quilt around her. "Be careful."

As Valentin emerged from the cabin, Melanie stumbled up to him. She was dripping wet, and she carried a gun in her hand. She was sobbing.

"Melanie." He grabbed her shoulders to steady her.

"I had to do it," she said, her voice shrill with hysteria. "It was Kyan. He got out of the shed. He was going to set fire to the boat."

"You shot him?" Jaus asked.

She nodded frantically. "He had the gun and he was going to shoot me. I struggled with him and it just went off. I think I killed him. He's in the water. Please, can you come and see if he's dead?"

Valentin looked out at the lake. The surface churned violently, as if it were boiling. "Go inside, child. There is nothing you can do for him."

The storm suddenly intensified, and lightning began shooting down out of the pitch-black clouds and striking the trees all around the cabin.

"We have to get out of here." Melanie shouted, stumbling away from him and running toward the pier. "I'll start the boat. Get Liling and hurry!"

Valentin ran toward the cabin. Halfway there, a bolt streaked down, striking the propane tank on the side of the house, causing it to explode. Another struck the roof, sending shingles flying like shrapnel in every direction. Yet another bolt landed behind the house, and Jaus heard another explosion. Two more strikes hit the cabin from either side. A huge ball of fire erupted inside the structure, tearing the roof off the cabin.

Rain and wind screamed, but not as loudly as he did. "Liling."

As fire exploded all around her, Liling wrapped the quilt around herself tightly and went down on her hands and knees. Black, dense smoke filled the air, and the cabin itself shuddered, as if it meant to come down around her. She crawled across the floor and out into the hall, but flames blocked the cabin's back exit. She changed direction and made her way to the kitchen, cringing as the fire shot across the ceilings and down the walls, greedily consuming everything in its path.

If she didn't get to a door soon, the heat would cook her alive.

The fire was blazing out of control by the time she reached the kitchen and stood up. The thick smoke made it impossible for her to see, and the heat pressed against her from every side. She knew it wanted to devour her, and it would, very soon, unless she did something.

She wasn't afraid of death or fire. What she feared was never seeing Valentin again. And for all that life had taken from her—her parents, her freedom, her twin, Chen Ping—she was not going to give up the man she loved. Not when there was still a chance.

We only just found each other. This can't be the end. Not yet.

Something inside her rose and blossomed, something she had not felt in many years. It filled her like sunshine, like the scent of a thousand gardens. It didn't want to run away, or huddle and hide. It wanted to touch the fire. It knew the fire; it called to it.

Flames raced up the quilt and set it alight.

Acting on instinct. Liling lifted her hand, turning it as she fell the heat from the burning quilt touch her skin. Illness, disease, and infirmity weren't so different from fire. Both could become infernos that burned, scalded, and shriveled. The flames from the quilt jumped to her hair and burned it away, but she felt no pain. She knew suffering, and how to remove from the bodies of others; that was her gift, her power. Valentin's blood had done something to that, had awakened the part of her that she had tried so hard to escape. But what she had feared as a child now came through her as power, vibrant and absolute, and invaded every cell in her body.

Although it seemed impossible, she knew the fire was, like pain, hers to control.

A pocket of cool air formed around Liling as she focused, drawing on the outrageous heat building around her, the same way she had drawn on the suffering of others. She no longer had to channel it into herself, not now that she could feel the tiniest parts of it. She could change them, or disperse them.

The quilt stopped burning, and then the flames around her began to dwindle and then died away.

She walked out of the kitchen and into the hall, where the smell of gasoline from the generator that had exploded was thick. She sensed the burning gasoline as she might the symptom of a disease, and sent out her power, using the fire feeding on the fuel to take it apart and render it harmless.

When the hall stopped burning, she went back into the bedroom and extinguished the flames she found there.

All of the windows had been broken, and through them air rushed in, eager to defeat her efforts and reawaken the flames. She pushed it back out simply by thinking about it. Wood smoldered around Liling as she moved through the cabin, tending to each of the lightning-born fires. One by one they winked out, until there were no more to burn.

Her skin tightened for a moment as she looked at the black ruin around her. This was what they had wanted her to do. To destroy instead of grow.

Take, not give.

She walked out of the front door of the cabin, the burned remnants of the quilt still wrapped around her. Rain whipped at her, furious and cold. Then Valentin was there, his hands and face burned.

"Liling."

He reached for her with his scorched hands, and as soon as he touched her she sent her power into them, taking away his pain, healing the blackened skin. She put her lips to each burn on his face, smiling as they shrank and disappeared.