“Get down, you idiot!” Rafa hisses, kneeling. “Unless you enjoy suffocating…”
The elf reluctantly joins him, hunkering at his side. “Dying here on my knees next to a dog like you is unacceptable. I am aprince.”
“Well, you should have said so from the start. Please, feel free to die wherever you think best, Your Highness!”
The elf rolls his eyes, but the corner of his lip curves, amused.
Rafa takes my hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze. “Alvin… If this Avatar doesn’t have anything, we can try to make a run for it. I might be able to figure out a way to use the fire against them. Maybe create some kind of torch to hold them back.” He doesn’t sound confident.
I look over my shoulder. I expect Collin to be urgently searching the rafters for some answers, freaked out like the last two million times I was in real trouble. (I honestly need to break that habit.) But he’s just sitting cross-legged next to me, staring forward, quiet, thoughtful.
The smoke has thickened on the ceiling, becoming darker as it finds more chemical-laden stuff to burn in the walls. It’s slowly drifting down, prompting me to blink out stinging tears. The pops and snaps of crackling flames outside are getting louder.
I let go of Rafa, turn my body, and touch the blond boy’s knee. I wonder if he’s given up. “Collin?Isthere a way out of this?”
He turns to me, and smiles gently. It doesn’t brighten his face. “I’ve already played through every possible scenario. If you stay here, you all die. If you try to leave, you’ll be run down in moments and almost certainly killed. You are out of options.” He ruefully quirks an eyebrow. “Except one.”
My heart sinks. He doesn’t need to say it for me to know what he means. It’s the one thing I swore I wouldn’t do.
I side-glance back at Rafa, feeling like a villain. His back is stiff, his jaw set. He’s trying to look tough and brave, but he just looks young, like he did in Stryker’s office—a strong Monster Hunter made helpless by circumstances outside of his control. And vulnerable because of the lies I’ve told him. Next to him is the elf who, despite his innate beauty, I have zero interest in. And would I even have the strength to overpower a fae prince with incubus desire? And does that even matter if saving myself means sacrificing another person, even if that person is an asshole?
I raise my fingers toward Rafa and the elf in a sort of halting wave, letting them know they should stay where they are, and slide myself away. This is one discussion I don’t want them overhearing. The fae glares at me, but neither of them say anything.
Once I’m across the room, I turn my back to them and hiss out words from deep within my burning throat. “You want me to feed…”
Meaning, you want me to try to have sex with one of them.
I’ve done some crazy, impossible things with Collin, but I really don’t think I can do this. This time, for real. Not with a building burning coming down around my head.
Collin chuckles, mirthlessly. “If you were fed, it’s true, those vampires wouldn’t be any match for you. But even if I could convince you to do it, there isn’t time.”
As if on cue, I start to cough. Short and sharp. It’s becoming difficult to breathe.
“What then?”
“There’s a lot of energy in fire. Both physicalandmagical. I think you should be able to use it against the vampires—because of what you are.”
What I am. A lot of folks believe incubi are demons, but we don’t actually have any special hellish relationship with fire. (Or Hell, for that matter.) Collin would know that.
He has to be talking about my father. Who I know nothing about.
“This is about that thing you didn’t want to tell me before, isn’t it? The thing you didn’t want Mom to learn about me?”
His frown is fierce. “I don’t want anyone to know about it, Alvin. Not until I have more information. But… if there are consequences, we’ll just have to deal with them later.”
“What do I need to do?” My voice comes out in a croak. Both Rafa and the elf are seriously coughing across the room, but they stay kneeling there, eyes locked on melike I’m the last lifeboat in a stormy sea. Rafa is doing a better job of hiding his fear than the elf, but whether we live through this or not is all on my shoulders.
“It shouldn’t be hard,” Collin says quietly, taking my hand. His warm, soft skin feels nice. “Most of it should be instinct. I think all you’ll need to do is step into the fire—and get angry.”
Oh, is that all?
Well, if I need fire, there’s for sure a lot of it. Not through the back door, where all the vampires are—that’s still clear. But, at this point, it’s everywhere else around the building.
I should probably ask Collin a ton of questions right now, since what he’s telling me to do is even crazier than the last ten crazy things he suggested. But he’s not volunteering anything else, and I don’t know how much longer I can stay conscious.
I’m dead either way. No point in waiting.
“Right. We’re needing a way out. So… front door?” I ask him, fist pressing against my mouth, trying to contain my coughs.
