Page 20 of Watch Me Burn (Sanctuary #1)

CHAPTER 19

SILVER

M y stomach lurches. I feel like I’m going to hurl.

My legs go weak next. I stumble, and Conall’s right there to support me before I drop to the icy snow beneath me.

“Bridget. Bridget . What’s wrong?”

“Was that me? Conall… did it do that?”

“What? Baby, no. No .”

There goes my belly again. Instead of lurching, it flip-flops, and I know it’s because of the way Conall just called me ‘baby’. It’s such a stupid, silly thing. He gave me a nickname almost right after we met. It wasn’t the most creative, granted; though I’m no better with my mocking Mr. Grump. I’ve lost track of how many dudes called me ‘Red’ over the years because of my hair color. But ‘baby’? I’ve never been anyone’s ‘baby’ before.

Mainly because I usually shut that shit down. Even at seventeen, I thought I was too grown for that sort of pet name. I’m thirty next year. I’m a mature fucking woman.

And, yet, because it’s Conall… grumpy, possessive Conall… I don’t mind it.

In fact, it helps calm me down. Well, the name, and how absolutely certain he sounds when he tells me that I couldn’t have caused this wildfire.

“How do you know?

He taps his nose. “Gasoline. I smell it over the burn and the char. It’s an accelerant. Someone made that fire on purpose. And they did it in between the entrance to the caves and the sanctuary on purpose.”

“To cut us off.”

Conall swallows roughly, then nods.

“Do you think the sanctuary is okay?”

How long has this fire been raging? It hadn’t started before

Who started it?

I don’t know, but I can’t leave it like this, and though Conall admits he doesn’t know, my wolf shifter is too protective of his territory to let it burn.

We have to do something?—

The fire opal!

I’m a fire witch. That’s definitely a fire. What if… what if the fire opal is all I need to boost my magic? Instead of taking it away from me, it strengthens it?

Expands it?

Gives me the power to control fire instead of it controlling me?

It’s worth a shot.

Turning to Conall, showing him the hunk of crystal he handed me, I tell him, “I can make fire. I can turn it off, too. I think I can get rid of this.”

I know I made the best decision of my life by accepting Conall as my mate because, rather than tell me that I can’t, or I shouldn’t try, he nods his head. “Go, Red. I’ll stay back here so I don’t distract you. But if you need me, shout. I’ll come running.”

I don’t doubt it.

Going up on my tiptoes, I grip his jaw, smack my lips against his, then take off running for the fire.

Conall’s right. The closer I get, the more I can tell that it’s nothing like my own flames. These ones are hungry. Cruel. They’ll eat anything in their path… unless I stop them.

And I can. I don’t know if it’s because of the fire opal or if it’s me , but I’ve been around fire before. I’ve never felt the connection that I do now, and I’m so fucking grateful for it as I take control of it.

As I do, I imagine the fire contracting.

A wind whips up. An unnatural one, full of warmth, smelling like the conditioner in my hair—raspberry and vanilla—and circling around the edge of the hungry flames. Only instead of pushing them out, it pulls them in, suffocating them.

No. That’s not good enough.

I imagine the fire simply going out.

It’s too powerful to wink away like my fireballs do. The fire opal makes me more confident in my abilities, but I’ve only been tapped into my magic for a month. In time, I could probably blink and the fire will be gone, but right now? I need a little help.

And I get it.

Rain. It’s raining in Dyea, Alaska, with temp below freezing. The only precipitation I’ve seen in the last month has been snow, but it’s raining.

Because I made it rain.

Between the wind, the rain, and me pulling the fire away from the trees, it’s only a matter of a minute or more until all that’s left is hazy, black smoke where the fire was.

The rain stops. The wind dies.

The fire is gone.

Peeking out of the smoke, there’s a gap of hard dirt in front of me, a circle where the fire melted away the season’s worth of snow. A couple of trees look torched where they rise out of the haze, but not all of them, and that’s such a relief, I nearly sink to the ground.

“I did it.” I marvel at my hands. Ever since I first shot fire out of my fingers, I’ve been worried it would happen at the worst moment. Nothing like a fireball to the brain because you innocently scratched your nose and lost control of your magic. I always expected anyone who knew the truth of my heritage to wince when I started to gesture, and it was always a soothing balm to my worries when Conall and Elise didn’t. But I’m more than just fire. I’m more than just destruction.

I made that man-made fire my bitch.

I laugh in amazement. “I did it.”

“Yes, you did.” Man-made… it’s actually a woman ’s voice calling out to me from the echoes of the smoke in front of me. My head snaps in that direction. I can’t quite make out a face, but there’s no denying the venom dripping from her tone as she spits out, “ Finally .”

I summon a quick gust of wind, just enough to banish the last of the smoke, then frown when I see the woman standing on the edge of the dirt circle.

She looks familiar, and it takes me second to place her. That’s right. She’s the witch who drove the Dyea Express after me and Elise arrived at the Skagway Airport.

“Lori.”

“Linda,” she corrects with a glare.

Whatever. “What are you doing here?”

She gives me a look that tells me she thinks I’m an idiot. “Setting fires. Waiting for you, witch .”

I guess it makes sense that she knows. Celeste said that our cover was set, kept secret between her, Thorn, Else and me, but maybe witches can recognize each other. I mean, I can’t , but that’s not my power.

I wonder what hers is, and why the fuck she decides to set the woods on fire.

But first?—

“Why do you have to say it so nasty like that? Witch . You’re a witch, too.”

Linda gets a stink face. “I’m not a witch. Please. I killed the witch who drove the bus out of the airport, then took her place. Unless the covens are sending more of you disgusting supernaturals to hide out, no one checks. It could be years before my cover’s blown. But I don’t need years to hunt you. I only needed a month to wait for you to stay in the caves long enough for it to be well after dark by the time the fire caught.

“Now, you’re probably wondering why I needed to wait until dark. Simple. Because my partner and I always worked best under the cover of night, and I knew the fire would attract you more if it happened at night. Of course, I needed you on this side of the sanctuary. Witch hunters aren’t supes, thank God, and I haven’t been able to find my way into your stupid, secret town. But the caves… I took the map from the other witch I killed. Sabotaged it a little so you didn’t find whatever one the head witch marked for you—that was just because it was fun to watch you waste time—and now here we are.”

To be fair, I was wondering how such a friendly-faced bus driver was really a witch hunter in disguise—because she’s obviously a witch hunter in disguise, and her latest comment confirms it—but I’ll listen to her explain that part, too.

Even if I can’t help myself from interjecting incredulously, “Hang on… are you monologuing ?”

“What? No. I just want you to know why you’re going to die before I kill you.”

Oh, this has gotta be good.

I could strike her down where she stands. With the fire opal in my pocket, I could be a precision flamethrower, and she knows it.

“Okay. And?”

“Because you’re a witch.”

Wow. I give her a slow clap.

“Supernaturals don’t belong in our world. It’s our mission to get rid of all of them, not just witches. But, I’ll admit, Stephen and I had a fondness for snatching witches off the street and having our fun with them.”

Stephen?

At my sudden look of confusion, her expression turns nasty. “You know Stephen. He’s the one who couldn’t wait to get the cuffs on you to bring you to me. But he should’ve waited for me to join him. Then I wouldn’t have had to follow you all the way to bumfuck Alaska to get my revenge. And I needed to. It wasn’t just a mission for me. I needed to watch you suffer, then watch you die.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Because, shit, that sounds personal. And I know that witch hunters work in pairs, but this is kind of excessive.

“You? You killed him!”

Technically, he killed himself, but I don’t think this is the right time to point that out.

“I loved him. He was my partner and my lover, and you killed him. That’s why I’m going to kill you, witch. And to make sure it really hurts, I’ll let this fire rage until all of Dyea is dead, too.”

Conall.

Elise.

Hell fucking no.

My hands spark. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Of course I would. You don’t need to be a fire witch to set a blaze,” Linda sneers. “A little gasoline, some kindling, and a match gets the job done. It lures out the witch,” she adds, “and the wolf.”

The what?

My head whips around. I probably shouldn’t have taken my eyes off of the witch hunter, but through the bond we just finalized, I know exactly what I’m going to find behind me.

It’s Conall. He’s back in his wolf form, and at first he was trotting toward me. He must’ve seen that the fire died out and waited for me to return to him. When I didn’t, he came padding through the woods toward me.

But I’m not alone. I’m facing off against Linda, and whether Conall knows she set the fire or not—if he knows whether she’s a witch hunter or not—it doesn’t matter. He instinctively recognizes her as a threat, pouring on the speed, baring his fangs as he races toward her.

Because Linda is a human, I underestimated her. I’m a witch. Conall’s a shifter. We could take her on no problem if necessary once she was done yapping.

But she’s not just a human. She’s a human fanatic who’s spent her whole life training to eliminate witches. Her hatred toward everything supe is clear. She wants to eliminate the entire sanctuary.

She starts with Conall.

It happens so fast, if it wasn’t for the moon catching against the bright silver weapon in her hand, I don’t know I would’ve seen Linda remove her witch hunter blade from wherever she kept it stored. She did, though, and without any hesitation at all, she takes a split second to sidestep and aim, then sends the dagger flying through the air.

It’s a perfect fucking hit.

As Conall tore toward her, she angled her body so that the knife arrowed right at Conall’s side. It finds its target in the bulk of his wolf’s side, and though I wouldn’t have thought the length of the blood would be long enough to actually reach through the fur and hurt him, I’m wrong.

The knife plunges into Conall and, between one step and the next, the wolf twists before he drops to the snow with an audible thud.

That’s bad enough. But the soft whine he releases before his eyes close is a hundred times worse.

And then I remember the knife Thorn showed me back in Clarity. It was silver.

Silver.

The only thing powerful enough to take down an alpha wolf shifter.

No, no, no.