Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell) - By Jenn Bennett Page 0,1
fire on my back, spreading across the wood siding. I yelped in pain, then ducked into a crouch as a sudden boom! rattled the house. Flames burst from the open window, a column of orange fire like dragon’s breath. It spewed over our heads, just missing one of Lon’s horns, then retreated. Mostly. Flames continued to cavort around the window and surrounding wall.
The scent of burning hair wafted. I furiously patted my bleached white Bride of Frankenstein streak, which hung over my shoulders and stood out against my otherwise dark hair. “How is he doing that?” I hissed.
“Hell if I know. Even transmutated, there’s no way he should be able to do this.”
But Merrimoth wasn’t transmutated, which made even less sense. Many Earthbounds have a demonic ability, what they call a knack. Lon’s an empath. He can read your emotions. Transmuted, like he was at that moment, he can also read your thoughts. Merrimoth possessed a knack I once would’ve classified as harmless: temperature control. Last time I saw him, he could warm my hand with a touch. But creating giant blasts of fire? This was new.
“Ha!” Merrimoth’s joyful voice called out from inside the house. “I am God—no, the Devil himself. I’ve never felt so alive!”
And I’d never felt so angry. Come to think of it, I’d felt nothing but hate for David Merrimoth since I met him at the Hellfire caves several months back. Not only because the elderly Earthbound tried to feed Lon to a caged Æthyric demon in a fighting ring, but also because he wanted to herd me into an Incubus orgy.
“Stay right there, won’t you?” Merrimoth hollered from inside the house. His batshit-crazy laugh was lost in the crackle of flames that licked around the window frame.
Lon pulled me to my feet and craned to see inside the window. “He’s going downstairs.”
Heat from Merrimoth’s fire caused sweat to trickle down my back. We weren’t circus lions. No way was I jumping through the ring of a window on fire, but I wasn’t going to stand there and wait for Merrimoth to come back and shoot us. I gazed at the balcony and resigned myself to a tightrope act. “I’ll go first. Wait until I’ve crossed.”
“Like hell. I’m not going to stand here and watch you fall. We both go.”
Fine. If our combined weight destroyed the ledge, maybe I’d get to give him an I-told-you-so on the other side. I flattened my back against the house and gingerly sidled onto the cedar ledge. My heart drummed inside my chest as salty ocean air filled my lungs. I stretched out an arm and guided myself forward with an open palm on the siding for balance. One step . . . two steps. . . . The ledge creaked.
“Slow, Cady,” Lon’s voice said somewhere behind me.
I was inching forward one foot at a time—how much slower could I go?
Something fell on my face. A sharp pinpoint of cold. Then another. Plop.
“Shit.” So much for clear skies. A handful of plops, then the heavens just opened up without warning and dumped a torrent of winter rain.
“Keep going,” Lon said.
Christmas was next week, for the love of Pete. I should be wrapping presents right now and preparing myself to meet Lon’s extended family—not running from fire and tightroping across the side of some nut-job’s house in a storm.
At least the anger was motivating. Three more steps and we were halfway there. Or were we? It was hard to tell—I couldn’t turn my neck to look back or I’d lose my balance. Blustering wind thrashed my hair and fanned a hard sheet of rain across my face. Vertigo turned my knees to jelly.
“Ignore it!” Lon barked at my side.
He was right. Too late to turn back now. I had to press forward. Had to make it. All I needed to do was slide one foot, fingers reaching, slide second foot, and repeat. But during the next step, I felt the house rumble against my back.
“What was that?” I whispered.
Something behind us, on the safe little island of roofing we’d left. I’d fall if I glanced back. Lon must’ve detected something with his knack because his hand suddenly gripped my shoulder. All my muscles went rigid as a breath stuck in my throat.
A gun’s report cracked the night air.
My back stiffened. Fingernails gouged the rain-slick siding, scrabbling for purchase. Lon swore indecipherably.
“You couldn’t hit a buffalo with this old thing,” Merrimoth’s voice shouted into the storm.