Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,77
work with. He waggled the paper slip so it swayed above his grasp. “You should feel honored. I’m trusting your aim enough to put my hand in harm’s way.”
“Of course, what that actually means is you still don’t believe I could actually incinerate you.”
He really smiled then, with a cocky slant to it that abruptly made me wish I was getting a grip on him. “Glass half full, glass half empty—it’s up to you how you see it.”
He shouldn’t be tempting me, or one of these days my uneasiness about the energy that sometimes rose up inside me would be outweighed by my desire to teach him a lesson about underestimating humans… or half-humans… whatever.
I focused my gaze on the paper. Imagined that serene ocean landscape spread out through my body—and a jolt of my inner heat leaping up through that, aimed only at my target. Burn!
The paper went up in flames. If they stung Omen’s fingers, he didn’t let on. Still smiling, he closed his hand around the fire to snuff it out and then brushed away the ashes that remained. “Excellent. Now we just need to do that a thousand or so more times.”
I restrained a groan. “Suddenly I feel like I’ve become your personal shredder. I’ll have lots of practice if I ever want to take a job in covering up paper trails when all this is over.”
“There you go. I’m setting you up for new and exciting career opportunities too.” He paused, and the wry tone left his voice. “Did it feel all right? You didn’t burn yourself at all?”
“All good. Perfectly cool and oceanic.” I made a beckoning gesture. “Let’s get on with the rest of that practice, or we’ll be in Uruguay by the time I’m done.”
By taking a moment to center myself and bring up the calming imagery before each blast of flame, I managed to barbeque four more small slips of paper and then a couple of larger ones without any ill effects. Were we going to work all the way up to a complete encyclopedia set?
Of course, when I needed to extend my voodoo in the middle of a fight, I wasn’t necessarily going to have time to perform a little meditation before I jumped into the action, or I might get barbequed by our attackers in the meantime. My visualizations weren’t going to deflect bullets or daggers or laser whips.
As Omen prepped his next target, I dragged in a breath and let the cooling sensation wash through me again, as thoroughly as I could summon it. I needed to see how long the effect would last if I didn’t keep bolstering it with every surge of power.
The hellhound shifter started mixing things up by crumpling one paper into a ball, letting another wave as he dangled it, and whatever else he could think of to vary the practice. I blasted each of them one-by-one, not letting myself hesitate to gather my emotions this time. Pretend we were in the midst of the fray, and each of those scraps was a Company asshole about to slaughter me or my shadowkind allies. Burn. Burn. Burn it all…
A sharper flare of heat shot through my chest, and a flame licked up across my forearm at the same instant as Omen’s paper caught fire. I slapped my arm against the bedspread, an ache already spreading through my flesh. When I checked it, the skin gleamed dark pink.
“Fuck finicky flapjacks,” I muttered.
Omen grabbed a bottle of aloe he’d had on hand, proving he hadn’t really trusted my control all that much. “Were you concentrating?” he demanded.
“Yes, yes. But I had to pick up the pace. My powers aren’t going to do us much good if I’m stopping to praise the seas while some prick is stabbing a knife into me.”
“I’m sure you’ll get there. You’re rushing it.”
I made a face at him. “Right, I have no idea why I feel any time pressure at all. It’s not as if dozens, maybe even hundreds of shadowkind are being tortured as we speak, all to develop some sickness that’ll kill the lot of you.”
“You won’t accomplish much to stop the Company if you’re too busy scalding yourself.”
Rather than handing the bottle to me, he squeezed a dollop onto his own fingers and sat next to me to smooth the gel over my burnt skin. At least the shadowkind part of me seemed to heal the wounds it dealt me faster than any human would have recovered.