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Flameborn
Corinna Rogers
Book 2 in an intense, thrilling and erotic, m/m urban fantasy series from an exciting new author in the genre!The follow up to Icebound.
Flameborn
Mortals & Myths Book Two
CORINNA ROGERS
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016
Copyright © Corinna Rogerts 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com (http://www.Shutterstock.com)
Corinna Rogers asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780007562213
Version 2016-07-11
Table of Contents
Cover (#ue1d39569-49cf-55b5-a7dc-03484105ac90)
Title Page (#u23a7f79b-9532-568a-9a21-a6e65c5ded64)
Copyright (#ua8ab0301-b126-5e84-83ca-2f13a559e2c2)
Chapter One (#u5d4a97e0-6d9e-522f-a623-7aca466702c7)
Chapter Two (#ua35eb285-b8f3-5fb1-9737-c7266c9e9ecf)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Coming Soon From Corinna Rogers (#litres_trial_promo)
Corinna Rogers (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u8aefdd2e-ce66-5358-a5ea-378fa97edd36)
Fire lances out of the building, propelled not by physics but by the deft hand of a monster with a plan. Drake moves, but he’s too late for the swift arc of flame, for the way it reaches out for him, lashing in a broad arc, the heat searing his lungs even from this distance.
A hand grabs his arm, yanking him back to safety. Right. I have a partner.
That simple thought spurs Drake into action. He leaps forward, unsheathing the sword from his back and charging towards the burning building. It’s fine to be a little reckless, he tells himself, because there’s someone to watch his back.
The Inferna has taken up residence in a shitty motel, operating out of Room 183. Grumbling that it should at least have the decency to be in Room 666, Drake draws back and slams his foot into the door, splintering the wood as he dives to the side to make sure he doesn’t get hit by the blast.
When no blast follows, he blinks for a second. The door is off its hinges; a fierce wind whips sideways, yanking the fire away from him and saving him from the scorching that would have been a bitch to heal. Not only that, but an Inferna’s flames are never just fire. If any one of those had hit him, he’d be feeling a lot more than a horrendous burning sensation, which means the wind is also magical. He turns his head and catches the barest glimpse of a familiar face, tense in concentration.
“Go!”
Drake nods. They both know what it’s like, fighting for time when there isn’t any. The first step inside the motel is confusing, heat at his front, cold wind at his back, but then the hot air buffets him and he has a hell of a lot more to worry about.
Opening his eyes is always harder inside a burning building, and Drake would give almost anything not to know that so well. They water in less than a second, and the sound of the wind behind him is second only to the creaking, breaking beams of the motel itself. “Cheap plywood and plaster,” he calls over his shoulder, throwing an arm over his mouth before he tries to breathe. The heat of the air sears his lungs, no matter how much of it is whipped away from him by the wind. “It’s going up fast, so look hard!”
“I can’t keep the wind on you and look magically at the same time,” Shane shouts back. “Get out for a second.”
Drake hesitates and a beam falls. He barely rolls to the side in time, reflexively patting himself down to make sure his heavy denim and flannel haven’t caught fire yet. A spark tries to start in his beard and he swats it out, hardly feeling the prickle of pain.
“Go! You’re wasting time!”
Reason tells Drake that he has to leave, has to let Shane do his thing, because he’s the only one who can find the creature fast enough. If they put the fire out, the Inferna will simply disappear, bursting into life at a new location with a new set of lungs to breathe out the flame. Judging by the state of the motel, Drake hazards that they have four, maybe five, minutes until the whole thing comes crumbling down.
Still, instinct makes him hesitate. Shane might be able to find the creature on his own, but dealing with it is a different story. Inferna are strong, and—
Shane whacks him in the head, turning to physically kick him back out the door. The long boots he wears are heavy, even without the force of a grown man’s kick. Drake takes the blow easily, but catches sight of Shane’s exasperated, worried face. “Fine!” he shouts, and ducks out the door.
Time passes much more slowly when he’s not in the thick of the action. It wears on him, pacing back and forth outside the crumbling building, able to do nothing but wait. He tries taking a peek through one window, but even getting that close is dangerous. One of the windows near him shatters, glass exploding outwards, and Drake doesn’t take the chance that the one he’s looking through will do the same thing.
From outside, all he can see is a sphere of white light. It’s difficult to make out in the midst of all the flames, but Drake manages to keep his eyes on it. A slow swirl of magic emanates from it in a way he can feel in his bones, at least when he’s in contact with the sword he holds. Every instinct he has tells him to run inside, to find the culprit, to make sure everything is fine. That’s what he does, after all, and to be stuck on the outside looking in…
It’s anathema.
The light suddenly streaks across the room, cleaving through a wall. Drake runs left, following the light with his eyes. Shane wouldn’t move like that unless he’d found something, he reasons, and breaks the next door open with a full-body slam. He draws the sword, feeling the sweet peace of its blade surround him, and charges into the unrelenting flames.
The world splits.
Part of him is still present, fighting through the flames. Drake feels his body moving, muscles cording under the skin as he dashes in, scanning the burning motel for the Inferna’s presence. Shane had moved, so it has to be close. There—a dark blob, like a sunspot against the orange tongues of flame, darts first to the left, then to the right, evading Shane’s strikes.
The other part of Drake is anything but present.
Every gust of heat takes him farther away, showing him not the motel in front of his eyes, but memories. They don’t make sense, not all at once, but the gasping surges of fire drive him out of reality and into his mind all the same.
He’d stumbled into an Inferna lair once, in his late teens. Even that memory sends him back. Shane had been a few steps behind when Drake had tripped, stumbling into a hole as they searched for their bounty. The Inferna’s cave had exploded into flames, and Drake had found himself on a roller coaster with his mother, laughing at his father and sister, afraid of heights on the ground. Moments later, Shane had pulled him free, slapping his face, and it had taken long days for Drake to recover from the intensity of that memory.
Bright white light gleams suddenly, slicing through the flames as well as any wind could have. Shane’s light is blue and on the other side of the room; the light that deals with the Inferna’s magic comes from the sword in Drake’s hand, sanctified magic protecting him from the worst effects of inhuman magic. The memories still flood him—
“You’re such a dork!” his sister Clara laughs, and moves to sit with her friends on the school bus, even on her first day of school.
—Drake remembers where he is, and he can still move.
A sudden burst of wind and light from Shane manages to isolate the Inferna. Drake’s long legs carry him close, and the creature spits out fire—
“Why isn’t your last name Nelson?”
“They’re just foster parents. It’d be Cooper-Walker-Jones-Remmington-Nelson by now.”
—Drake takes the blast full force and hears himself let out a noise like a roar when he breaks through, slamming the sword through the creature’s writhing body, pinning it to the wall. It tries to climb up the blade, but Drake doesn’t let go, lashing out with a foot to slam it back to the wall, ignoring the—
Shane’s touch, his lips ghosting down over Drake’s spine, his voice ragged and needy, begging, hands urgent, teeth sharp—
—Drake yanks the sword free and spins, using his body weight to drive his next slice home.
The Inferna’s head rolls slowly away from its body, now sad and corporeal. It shrivels down to a coal, the inner light dying out and leaving nothing but a wrinkled skin over charred black insides. Drake exhales deeply and sheathes the sword on his back. It’s a quick draw, less than a second from the impulse of danger to the sword being in his hand and ready to use, and keeping his hands free has saved his life more times than wandering around with a drawn sword has. “Clear?” he yells, hoping Shane can hear him.
“All clear,” the call comes back. Shane peels himself away from the wall and drapes over a fallen beam. He coughs, then inhales deeply, magic tingeing the air in front of his nostrils, and breathes out deeply this time, with no trace of a wheeze. “You need an inhaler?”
Drake shakes his head. “Sword protected me. It doesn’t snap back like that.” He does feel his usual aches and pains now, the ones that come with age and a lifetime of being beaten up that are suppressed by the power the sword gives him. He nudges the coal of the Inferna’s body with a toe and it starts crumbling. “They seem like they’re getting stronger to you lately?”
“Maybe you’re just getting slower, old man,” Shane teases, and makes as if to come over and stand next to him. He thinks better of it a second later, heading for the door instead. “You get singed in that first charge, baby?”
“Got worse from the stove.” A glint of light in the center of the coals catches his eye and Drake grimaces. “Hold up, this one might still be alive. Lemme stomp it out.”
“That’s a little cruel. Let it skulk back to its master. Maybe we can follow it.”
Drake kicks the coal a little harder and it fractures into halves, then a dozen pieces when each half hits the ground, the size of a luggage carry-on when it’s split. At the center, a deep orange-red glow pulses and ebbs, startlingly bright in the center of the coals, like concentrated fire made liquid. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. “I’ve cracked open a lot of Inferna.”
“Probably not as many as I have.”
Drake raises an eyebrow and Shane shrugs, coming to kneel next to the coals. “I did work for the Fire Queen’s mortal enemy for ten years.”
“I thought they were husband and wife.”
“Pretty sure they’re brother and sister, too. Doesn’t mean they aren’t mortal enemies.”
Drake snorts and prods the Inferna’s corpse with the toe of his boot. The liquid sticks to his boot for a moment, more like gel than anything, and then slowly detaches and slides back into the coal. If it weren’t for the changing play of colors, there’d be no reason to think it’s alive, much less that it’s some part of the Inferna itself. They’re small, but Drake has never had a problem with seeing them as creatures of flesh and blood before they burn away to coal. He sighs and stands up. “Can you freeze it or something? It’s bothering me and I’m not sure stomping will help.”
Shane shrugs and points a finger. A thin stream of water swirls out of the air, soaking the coals, and has no effect on the little pool whatsoever.
“Uh…”
Shane flushes hot, frowns, and points again, more firmly this time. Another jet swirls down, this one freezing as it does, though just enough that a few ice crystals form in the middle of the water. At this, the liquid flinches, glows for a moment, then settles.
“I think your finger is broken.”
“It’s not supposed to do that!” Shane stares down at his own hand, then turns and stalks out of the burned-out motel, cursing to himself and shaking his hand out at the wrist.
“Don’t worry,” Drake calls, a hint of a grin in his voice. “Happens to every guy as you get older.”
