worry about and might as well have been in another universe than Cecile.
“There’s some kind of heat inside of us,” she said. “Full Bloods, I mean. Those big dogs too. Are they Half Breeds?”
“Yes.”
“I remember Randolph mentioning that now.” According to the look on her face, Cecile was hearing plenty of things in her mind at that moment. She winced at the screams the same way Cole had when he’d been awakened to his new world. “The heat is real. I can feel it all the time. It’s some sort of power,” she continued. “Randolph described it as the fuel that allows them—I guess us—to do what we do. I thought it sounded crazy, but I can feel it working when I change. It’s like a match is always on inside me. Kind of like, you know, inside a furnace?”
“A pilot light?”
She nodded and then smiled wistfully. “I used to like watching my dad light the pilot light at the old house back in West Virginia. Sometimes I snuck down there and left the little door on the side of the furnace open so that little flame would go out. Dad would go down there with a coat hanger he’d twisted up to hold a match and I’d follow him to watch.”
A semi pulling a trailer rumbled down the interstate. After it passed, a stray breeze swept across the camp. Her hair fluttered like streamers against her unmoving face. Crossing her arms and standing against the wind, she looked less like she was bracing herself against the elements and more like she was giving them silent commands to function around her.
“When my dad would light the match and stick it into the end of that bent metal hanger,” she said, “he told me to stay back. Then he stuck the match into the furnace and . . . whoosh!” Even as she said that word, her eyes sparkled as if she was looking at the little spectacle that had captivated her all those years ago. “The flames just exploded in every direction. They filled the whole furnace and all these streams of fire came out of all those metal pipes or whatever was in there. You know the ones I mean?”
“Yeah,” Jessup replied. “I do.”
She nodded, acknowledging him, but just barely. “That’s what it feels like when I change. Inside, there’s this little flame in me. Always burning. When I change, though . . . whoosh. It fills me up. Kind of like sex, but more.” She glanced over at him with the sly expression of a girl who’d done the deed, but not enough times for it to have lost its shock value. When Cole failed to react in kind, she rolled her eyes and nodded. “I’ve had sex, don’t you worry about it.”
She was just learning to use her sexuality as a tool. If he’d been about fifteen years younger, it would have had a lot more of an effect. Instead, he was able to see her as the young pup that she was. “So what’s this got to do with the Breaking Moon?” he asked.
“All the Full Bloods—and I don’t think there are a lot of them—we’re like the flames shooting out of those pipes. We each have some of that fire in us and we can use it however we like. Randolph says that part just goes into living, but we get to live for a real long time.”
Cole felt like a spy who’d found himself sitting at the dinner table inside an enemy’s camp when he asked, “How long?”
She glanced over at him, smirking like an officer who’d just found a spy sitting at her dinner table. “A long time. That is, unless we’re hunted down and murdered by some psycho with a Blood Blade. Oh yeah. He told me all about that too.”
“Sounds like you werewolves do a lot of talking.”
“I haven’t slept since that first change. That leaves a lot more time for talking.” After that, Cecile became more focused. “So anyway, we all get our share of the fire and the whole world is the furnace. Like, the ground. The earth. That sort of thing. We pull it up and draw it in to . . .”
“Recharge your batteries?” Cole asked.
Cecile snapped her fingers. “Exactly! Wherever it comes from, it’s tied into the moon cycles. He told me I wouldn’t be able to become all of what I can be until I pass some sort of Blood Moon trial.”
“You mean a lunar