Page 12 of New Nebraska Home (New Nebraska)

Liz

DRAGONS ARE HOT

C allum’s hand still pinned the kid against my kitchen wall by his throat as we watched the flames pour from his body onto Malik. My heart seized as I let out a scream of shock or possibly fear. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling other than the blistering heat coming from the flames, and my heart stopping, then racing.

Brock’s arms wrapped around me and pulled me away from the fire. The water coming from his hands instantly cooled my skin, but I fought his hold. I wasn’t the one that needed Brock’s water magic. I wasn’t the one that this kid had set on fire while trying to come back into the house.

Soon after Callum had grabbed the kid and we’d tried to get some answers from him, he’d been trying to set something on fire. He had burned one of the doilies my grandmother made, which pissed me off, and left scorch marks on my couch, so we moved into the kitchen where the flames and Brock’s water magic wouldn’t do as much damage.

Once we moved, he hadn’t been able to set anything alight. The one time he came close to scorching the raw wood in the door frame, Brock put it out in a second. There wasn’t even a black mark on the wood. How this kid got the juice to bathe Malik in a stream of constant fire, I would never understand. Not that I understood how elementals worked.

“Let me go,” I cried as I tried to fight my way to Malik. Brock turned me in his arms so I could see what was happening, but he didn’t let me go.

“I don’t think Malik needs our help,” Brock said in an almost awe-like whisper. It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, and then I noticed that the flames that surrounded Malik didn’t seem to be touching him. They were on his skin, dancing in shades of red and gold, but Malik seemed more annoyed than anything else.

Callum wrapped his hands back around the kid’s throat and slammed him against the wall, making the flames from his fingers finally die out.

The kid looked exhausted, his entire body covered with sweat, and he was looking even paler than he did when we dragged him in here.

“What the fuck?” Malik growled. The flames died on his skin, and where I expected to see bloody and burned flesh, there was nothing but healthy, beautifully tanned skin. His clothes had burned away. My eyes trailed down his body, taking in his broad shoulders, thick golden chest hair over powerful muscles and mouthwatering abs. He even had the most delicious happy trail from his navel down to his thick cock.

A lady would have averted her eyes, but that term clearly did not apply to me. My gaze stayed on his body, traveling down, taking in every inch of perfectly unmarred flesh until I got to his feet and the pile of ash that had been his clothes. There were even still a few glowing embers, but that was it.

When Malik let out a snarl, my eyes snapped back to his face. He wasn’t looking at me; his focus was squarely on the kid.

“You want to burn someone?” Malik growled.

“You… you… you’ll all burn in hell,” the kid stuttered.

“And what gives you the right to send us to our maker early?” Callum said, angling his body so I couldn’t see the kid, or what they were about to do. “Who the fuck do you think you are?

“He’s just a dumb kid,” I reminded the men. “He ain’t worth the trouble.”

God, I hoped they weren’t about to do something stupid they couldn’t go back from. I told myself it was because I didn’t want the hassle, and I needed the rent money they wouldn’t be paying if they were in prison, or the guilt of that boy’s death on my conscience. But there was something more, a gnawing sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was concern, not for the kid, but for the men. I didn’t want them to be in trouble because they protected me. Though I had to admit, I did like the feeling I got when I knew they cared and wanted to keep me and my brother safe.

“No,” Malik said, without taking his eyes from the elemental youth. “He threw a brick like a coward, tried to run people out of a neighborhood that he’s new to, and then he tried to burn me alive.”

“Okay,” I said, trying again to calm the situation. “He’s a really stupid kid, but he is a kid.”

“How old are you, son?” Callum said.

I still couldn’t see him, but I could hear the fear making his voice shake as the kid answered, “Sixteen, sir.”

From self-righteous indignation to ‘sir’ in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t see what Callum and Malik were doing to scare the kid, but it was effective.

“I would hardly call that a kid,” Malik said. “He actually managed to get up the magic to kill me, had his flames touched you or Leif, instead of me, then he would be on trial for murder as an adult.”

“So then call the cops,” I countered doing my best to keep my eyes from staring at the broad expanse of muscles covering Malik’s back or tracing the lines of his wide shoulders and how they tapered down to his trim waist and surprisingly round ass.

“No. He brought this fight here, and here is where it will finish.”

“Are the police here even equipped to handle elementals?” Brock asked.

That was a really good question. I had no idea. Most of the cops that I knew had left. Many of them felt that they would not be able to handle supernatural criminals, and they should police their own, which made sense, but did we have a police force yet?

I had no idea.

I tried to pull myself out of Brock’s arms again, but his grip just tightened.

“He’s just a kid, a dumb, scared kid.” I said again, trying to be the voice of reason.

“Would you be saying he was just a dumb, scared kid if that brick had hit someone? Would you be saying that if those flames engulfed you or Leif?” Callum said. I couldn’t see his face but I could tell his teeth were clenched.

“I…” he had a point. As much as I hated to admit it, Callum had a valid point. “Okay, no. He is old enough to know better, but so are you. Kids are still learning. They make mistakes. Were you raised by wolves?”

The saying just slipped out of my mouth with no thought to how many people who lived in this neighborhood were, in fact, raised by and are wolves. I was going to have to rethink a lot of the sayings that I was used to.

Callum scoffed, and I could feel Brock’s chest shake a little with laughter. But Malik looked back at me and raised an eyebrow.

“No,” he said, “I was raised by monsters.”

Then he held his hands up to the kid, placing them on his chest. I couldn’t see exactly what was happening from where I was. Brock’s arms just tightened around me, not letting me even stand on my tiptoes to see around Callum. He wasn’t hurting me, he just wasn’t letting me move.

“Calm down, kitten,” he whispered in my ear. “Cal won’t let anyone get hurt. They’re just going to scare the shit out of the kid and make sure he doesn’t do this again.”

The confidence in his voice made me feel a little better, but something in my stomach still told me the situation was dangerous and everyone was far too close to the edge to know when to stop.

“So, you want to burn people,” Malik said, his gravelly voice low and just above a whisper. I could imagine the fierce look he was giving that kid.

“No, sir, it was an accident. Please, don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again, please,” the kid begged over and over.

“Tell me why?” he barked.

“Why what?”

“Why you would terrorize this girl? This is her home, where she lives in peace. Why come after her and shatter that peace and her window?”

“Because,” the kid’s voice sounded stronger, like he gained power from his beliefs. “She is a whore who lives in sin with men unlike her, not of her kind. And keeps an abomination under her roof. A creature made from unrighteous fornication.”

“Did he really just say unrighteous fornication?” Brock whispered in my ear. I bit back a snicker. His phrasing was definitely a choice. It was almost distracting from the hatred that filled his message.

“Excuse me?” Callum said, and Malik let out a low growl that should have scared me, and maybe if he had been fully clothed and I hadn’t been memorizing the long lines of his naked backside, I would have been terrified.

Instead, it made my heart race for an entirely different reason. It didn’t help that I could smell Callum’s cologne, dark spicy and something that reminded me of old books and passionate sex in the stacks of a library—not that I had ever been bold enough to do something so scandalous.The most daring thing I’d ever done, that one time, was share an awkward fumble in the back of my ex’s pickup truck right after I’d started community college and thought I was a real adult then.

Taking that and adding the soothing warmth of Brock’s body pressed against my back and his arms wrapped around me. I was having a very difficult time focusing on the matter at hand.

“Who sent you?” Callum asked.

“I’m on a mission of the highest order, and you can kill me if you want, but it doesn’t matter. More will come. We are unstoppable and will wipe the filth like you and your whore and the abomination—”

“That’s enough,” Malik roared in the kid’s face, and I could only hear him whimper in fear.

“Don’t listen to him, sweetheart. He’s just an—”

“—an impressionable child that someone has brainwashed into believing the ignorance of those who mislabeled their hatred and the word of God.” I finished. “This isn’t my first rodeo with this kinda ugly, but I was sure hoping I was done with it.”

“Me too,” Brock said while wrapping his arms around me and holding me tighter. This time, it was not to keep me in place, but just to hold me. To comfort me. Or maybe he was looking for some comfort of his own.

Callum stepped back, letting the kid go, giving me the perfect view of what was happening.

Malik had both of his hands on the kid’s chest, fingers spread wide, and I could see the kid’s white t-shirt starting to smoke and blacken around Malik’s hands.Some smoke also seemed to linger around Malik’s lips.

“No, please,” the kid cried out again, then let out a pain-filled scream.

Malik took a step back, removing his hands, and I could see where he’d not only burned through the kids’ clothes, but also made the skin under it bright red. Not enough to blister, it was a superficial burn at worst. He was scared shitless, but he would be fine.

“Are you ever going to come back here?” Malik asked, looking the kid dead in the eyes. There seemed to be something about Malik that screamed alpha to other supernaturals.

“No,” the kid was shaking, and the scent of urine filled the air. I could see the kid’s pants darkening with the piss running down his leg.

“Are you going to tell your little psycho friends that this house is protected?”

“Yes, sir.” Tears stream down the kid’s face.

Malik leaned in closer and whispered just loud enough for me to hear. “Come back again and the girl’s mercy won’t be enough to save you.”

He let the kid go, angling his body to give him an escape route.

The kid ran hard, tripping over his own feet down the stairs onto the sidewalk.

Malik spit after him a few times and I could see the little sparks hit the back of his calves and his heels as the kid leapt in the air and ran faster.

We all watched the kid run, not really doing or saying anything for a moment.

“Were you really going to kill him?” I asked, needing to know what kind of man I let live under my house.

“Nah,” Malik said, looking back at me with a grin. “But I needed to make sure he wasn’t going to come back.”

“I think we accomplished that.” Brock laughed, still not letting me go. Both Callum and Malik looked at his arms around me with a loaded look. I couldn’t read them, but they both stared for a moment. It was making me uncomfortable.

“So next time, instead of sending an inexperienced kid, they will send someone much bigger, and a lot stronger?” I cut through the tension and shrugged Brock’s arms off of me. I instantly missed his touch.

“Let them,” Callum shrugged. Brock is the most powerful water elemental in this generation. I’m a master vampire. I am stronger and faster than any of them. And Malik is—”

He turned to Malik. “What are you?”

“Naked,” he said unapologetically as he left the kitchen and headed to his room.

“No, seriously,” Brock called after him. “I know you’re a shifter, but what kind?”

“The kind you don’t want to piss off.”