She pulled on the ribbon of power, gathered it inside herself, keeping the frightening image that Drake had given her in her mind. Fire flowing from her hand. He thought she could do that. He was insane, but he had faith in her.

The power inside her built and heated. Her ribs ached as if being pushed out from within. The pain grew until she started to sweat and shake with the force of it. Sweat burned off her skin, rising up in wisps of steam that smelled like fear. As the power inside her built, so did the heat. She couldn’t stand it, yet no fire flowed from her hand. Her insides had to be blistered. It was too much heat. She was going to erupt into flames. Be consumed by them. She was going to die. This was how it was going to happen.

Something inside her broke, some panicked, childish part of her she couldn’t control. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to use his power that way. A deep-seated sense of self-preservation entangled with a primal fear of fire made it impossible.

She felt herself scramble away and shut down, felt her too-hot body grow cold and numb and saw her vision recede into a gray mist. She could still hear Drake urging her on, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t call fire. Not fire.

Drake felt Helen’s mind go blank with terror and shut down. Her fear of fire had won. The sword was lost.

It was time to get out of there before the two of them were as well.

He tugged at Helen’s hand, but she didn’t move. He reached out to her mind and found her cowering in terror.

He scooped her up and hauled ass out of the mine.

The pale light of dawn showed him the entrance. Even if the kajmela had followed him, they wouldn’t come outside with sunrise so near.

Wind blew across his face, drying his tears of grief. Thomas was gone. Helen was unresponsive and Kevin’s sword was still lost.

He’d failed everyone.

Helen started to regain coherence a little at a time. She felt Drake settle her in the front seat of the van and buckle her in. The door slammed. Another opened and slammed shut. She heard the engine start.

They were leaving. The monsters were behind them. She hadn’t died in a fire.

Thomas was dead. Helen couldn’t stop that thought from repeating in her mind. She was alive, but Thomas was dead. It didn’t seem right somehow—like someone had made a giant mistake and would come back any minute and fix it. They’d all go back into the mine and do it right this time.

But the minutes ticked by and that didn’t happen.

The van rocked as they made their way over the rutted country road. The mine was more than a mile behind them, but she could still feel the oppressive evil of that place, smell the rotten odor of it clinging to her skin.

Thomas was dead and they didn’t even have Kevin’s sword to show for his sacrifice. That part was her fault and her failure made her sick.

Drake sat silently as he drove, his hands tight on the wheel. The back of his right hand was blistered and swollen where a tar monster had touched him, but he didn’t seem to notice. His attention was fixed on the gravel road.

Helen’s insides burned, though whether from physical injury or from emotional overload she wasn’t sure.

Drake turned onto a paved road, heading east. The sun hadn’t broken the horizon, but the sky was growing lighter. Even though it stung her eyes, Helen welcomed the light. Instinctively, she knew that darkness such as they’d faced in that mine wouldn’t be able to tolerate the purity of sunlight.

“We’re not going far,” said Drake. His voice was rough and harsh in the silence of the van.

Helen nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She was afraid that even one word would send her into tears and she’d never be able to stop crying. As much as she wished she could let go and give in to the tears, Drake needed her. She could feel how much he was suffering. His grief dwarfed hers, flowing over their connection in shuddering waves of agony. He’d loved Thomas like a brother and she’d only known him for one night. She wanted to be strong for Drake, to find a way to help ease his pain, and if she cried, she’d be useless. Again.

There was nothing she could do to make up for her cowardice, but maybe she could offer Drake some small measure of comfort. It was the only thing she could think to do to honor Thomas.

Assuming Drake would even want comfort from the woman who had failed so completely.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

He gave her a hard stare. All the warmth in his golden brown eyes was gone.

Helen swallowed past the clog of tears in her throat. Her eyes burned against the need to cry. “I should have called . . . done what you asked.” She couldn’t even say the word fire.

“I shouldn’t have asked that of you without first teaching you what you needed to know. It’s a mistake I won’t repeat. We’re going to find a place to rest for a couple hours. Then I’m taking you home. Once you meet Gilda, you’ll have a much better understanding of what you can do.”

“She’s the woman you told me about. The woman like me.”

“Yeah. And we’ll see Sibyl, too. She’ll know what to do about your vision of your own death.”

Helen gave an involuntary shudder at the reminder. “What do you think she can do? Make me forget it?”

“No. But she might be able to tell you it isn’t real. Maybe it was something that was planted in you to prevent you from reaching your full potential.”

“You think that someone put that vision in my head?”

“It’s possible. Sibyl will know.”

There was something he wasn’t telling her. She could see it in the way he refused to glance her way, feel his guilt tingling along their link. “What?” she asked him. “What are you hiding?”

“Fucking luceria,” he grated out. “It’s nothing. Just try to get some rest. We’ll be somewhere safe in a few minutes.”

“It’s not nothing. What are you hiding? Spit it out.”

He was silent for a few minutes, his jaw bunching and relaxing repeatedly. “Logan said there was something wrong with you. I think this is what he meant.”

“Something is wrong with me? Why didn’t you say anything?” She couldn’t believe their arrogance in thinking they had the right to hide things from her. “Damn it, Drake, I have a right to know that kind of thing.”

His mouth twisted into a sneer of disgust. “I’ve told you everything I know. Besides, you can’t always believe everything Logan says. He’d twist the truth or even flat-out lie if it served his agenda.”

“So there might not be anything wrong?”

“I wish I knew. What I can tell you is that we’ll figure it out and get through it together.”

She let out a weary sigh. “I’m sick of feeling like I’m two steps behind everyone else.”

“Helen. There is no ‘everyone else’ anymore. It’s just you and me now.”

He was right. They were on their own and that was a frightening reality. Drake was strong and capable, but she wasn’t. She feared she would never be.

What if what happened to Thomas happened to Drake? They’d both given her that stupid oath—their lives for hers. Thomas’s oath had cost him his life. She couldn’t let Drake do the same.

“Stop it,” he ordered. “Things have gone badly tonight, but it will be okay.”

“How can you possibly know that? Can you see the future?”

“No, but I remember the past. As much as I loved Thomas, my grief for him will fade with time. I know because it’s happened dozens of times before. It hurts like a son of a bitch now, but in time, the pain will fade. The grief will diminish and life will go on. We don’t have the luxury of shutting down and wallowing in our grief. We have a job to do.”

“Kevin’s sword,” she guessed.

“Yes. We still have to find it. Hang it next to Thomas’s in the Hall of the Fallen.”

“Is that what you do? When one of you dies, I mean?”

Drake nodded and swallowed hard, blinking several times. “It’s how we honor them. How we remember them.”

She looked back into the empty van. No light shone in back there—there were no windows—but she could still see the gleam of Thomas’s sword where Drake had laid it. Thomas’s blood was all over it as well as some of that black goop from the monster that had killed him. It bothered her that his sword was lying on the floor of the van. It seemed somehow disrespectful of the man who had wielded it. The man who had saved her life.

Helen went into the back of the van, found a clean sheet stowed in a duffel bag, and wrapped the sword up in it, being careful not to get any of the blood or black stuff on her. She tucked it inside the duffel bag and zipped it closed.

It felt like shoveling dirt in over his grave. So final.

“We’ll find Kevin’s sword,” she told Drake. She hadn’t known Kevin, but if Thomas and Drake were willing to risk their lives to get his weapon back, then he had to have been one hell of a man. He deserved to be honored in line with their traditions.

“Are you saying you’re still willing to help me?” asked Drake, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder.

“I made you a promise. I intend to keep it or die trying.” She knew which one of those was more likely, but kept that to herself.

Chapter 14

Drake needed a little time to pull himself together before he faced Gilda and the rest of the Theronai with the news of Thomas’s death. Bad news could wait. At least that’s what he told himself as a means to justify putting it off.

It was another three hours’ drive to the compound, but there was a Sentinel house less than ten minutes away, just outside Carbondale, Kansas. He’d take Helen there and give her a chance to rest, too. She’d been up all night and fatigue and the strain of using magic had made her eyes bloodshot and slumped her shoulders.

He shouldn’t have pushed her so hard. He realized that now, but it was too late to do anything but give her time to sleep. As it was, he was barely holding himself together. He was no good to anyone like this—raging inside to the point that he wanted to scream and lash out at the world for taking Thomas from him.

His emotions were nearly overwhelming and he needed some time to meditate and ground himself. He needed to shove his grief and anger into the earth and let it absorb them deep into the stones so that they couldn’t hurt anyone. It was a tool all the Theronai learned from the time they were young as a means of dealing with the pain of their steadily growing power. Those men who couldn’t master the technique didn’t make it past their hundredth birthday.

Drake thought that when he found his lady he would no longer need that skill, but he could see now how wrong he’d been.

He pulled into the driveway of the small brick home. It sat on a few acres of land that had been recently mowed. No one lived here, but one of the duties of the Gerai—the blooded humans who aided the Sentinels in the war—was to keep these places of refuge safe. That meant giving them the appearance of being lived in so humans would leave them alone. Many Gerai earned their living by spending a few days in houses all over the country, making sure their neighbors knew that they traveled for business, or were enjoying their retirement seeing the country. Whatever story they used, they made sure it stuck and that the surrounding neighbors didn’t get nosy enough to go poking around into Sentinel business. The last thing the Sentinels needed was extra attention.

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