Like the first time we'd met, Conleth had banked his fire. Crouching beside me, he would look, from a distance, like a scared human using the side of the terrace as a shield. But from up close, I could see his eyes. His utterly, totally, bat-caca-crazy eyes.
That wild gaze roamed over my face and I realized he was demanding to know whether I was hurt. I shook my head, unable to get my usually overactive tongue to form any words.
Conleth crouched in front of me, placing a hand on my cheek. I could hear the explosions still detonating, the fire behind us framing him like an eerie echo of his other, ifrit, form. He was keeping everyone well distracted and I had to give him props for his ability to multitask.
“Jane,” Con crooned again, shifting his fingers to cup my chin. My reflexes finally kicked in and I jerked my face away, but he tightened his grip, forcing me to meet his gaze with my own.
“There you are.” He giggled, and my heart went cold with terror. I responded with a heartfelt, if not particularly brave, whimper.
“Don't be shy, Jane!” Conleth said, grinning madly at me. “I know it's hard to get to know new people. I understand that.” My fellow halfling's wackadoo blue eyes burned into mine. “But we were meant to be together,” he added with an earnest nod.
I gulped, trying to overcome my panic so I could focus on surviving this little encounter. I had to humor the loony fire-man, or he'd kill me without a second thought. His hand was still firmly gripping my chin, and an occasional burst of flame skittered up and down his arm in alarmingly random bursts.
Despite all that power, he's got very little control, I realized, my fear sharpening acutely. Even if he didn't want to hurt me at the moment, I couldn't trust Conleth not to barbecue me by accident if he got too excited or angry. So I had to placate him, and fast.
Here goes nothing, I thought as I made myself smile, praying that someone—anyone—would turn around and notice that my face had been commandeered by the enemy.
“There you go. You're smiling! And you're so beautiful.” Conleth grinned, brushing my hair away from my face. I forced down the reflexive shudder that threatened to rack my frame. “I know he only goes for pretty ones, but you are perfect.”
I felt a fresh wave of nausea, realizing that by “pretty ones,” Conleth meant the women Ryu must have fed on in my absence. I hated myself for the fact that Con's words bothered me as much as they did, given the circumstances.
“I followed you tonight. They were all so busy watching each other that I could have walked right up to you and said ‘Boo!’” Conleth laughed, his hands moving over my cheeks and chin. It took everything I had in me not to pull away—I'd never realized just how invasive and personal someone touching my face could be.
“But I would never want to frighten you,” he continued. I'm not sure how he was oblivious to my terror, but I guess we all have our blind spots. “I realized how special you were after your bravery that first night. Then you talked to me through those e-mails, and I knew we were meant to be together, so we need to trust one another. Because that's what relationships are all about. Trust.” Con nodded firmly, cupping my jaw in his hands and making me look into his eyes. “I've never been able to trust anyone, Jane. But I know that we understand each other. We're like two sides of the same coin.”
My throat was dry; my lips felt like two desiccated crackers rubbing together. I licked them, trying to find my voice.
“How?” I croaked. I needed to engage him, keep him distracted. The others will be here soon. They have to be here soon…
“We're so similar, Jane.” His hands were tightening convulsively on my jaw, and I struggled not to flinch. “I know how hard you've had it, living among humans. And not being treated like an equal by the others.” He said both “humans” and “others” as if he were talking about “shit” and “crap.” Conleth had issues with both sides of his heritage, which I suppose was understandable. “And I know how strong you are. I can feel you when you're near.” He stopped clutching my jaw and started stroking my neck, then my arms. His eyes got a faraway look I recognized: the slightly predatory, slightly desperate look of a horny man. “Your power calls to mine. Fire and water.” He splayed the fingers of his stroking hands, so that his thumbs brushed the sides of my breasts. “Water and fire,” he crooned, letting his gaze drop down to my body.
“Conleth,” I said, a little too sharply. I wanted to keep him distracted, yes, but not through sex. I needed to keep him talking.
“Conleth,” I repeated, more gently. “Why me? I'm not special.”
“Jane, how can you say that? Look at us! Look at me!” His fire, which had begun to bank as he got distracted, flared up again, dangerously close to my hair. “We are power. We have all the power of the others, but none of their weaknesses. None. We can do anything we want.”
I nodded, trying to keep my eyes wide, interested. He smiled at my reaction.
“They're corrupt, inbred. Their time is over. And humans are jokes. They wander around like sheep, being fed off of, used, bred like cattle.” He snorted, taking my hands in his. “Both sides will fall. The purebreds are dying off, and the only way they can survive in any way is to keep breeding with the humans. Creating more beings like us. We don't need anyone else.”
He then raised my hands, palms outward, to his mouth. His lips were thin and wet against my skin, and my gorge rose as his tongue brushed against my right palm in a grotesque parody of Ryu's favorite endearment. I also noticed that his shields kept pulsing up and down, along with his fire. I was right; he had no control. Conleth was entirely self-taught, and his command of his magic was more than a little sketchy.
“Think of what our children will be like, Jane. Think of their power. Your water, my fire, flowing through their blood. They'll be able to stop the world spinning on its axis, reconfigure society to their whims. Think of the world we would create.” Conleth was tugging me closer, obviously intent on kissing me, and his lower body was squirming in that telltale way that meant his trousers had just gotten tighter.
I put the brakes on my forward momentum, tugging back sharply. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth hardened, and I knew I had to distract him.
Luckily, I found my voice. Unfortunately, it didn't say what it was supposed to. I meant to murmur something endearing and soothing. Instead I said, “I'd never be safe with you. Silver practically raised you. And now he's missing.”
I'd expected Conleth to react with anger. I beefed up my shields and put as much physical space as I could between his body and mine. Which wasn't much, considering he was still holding me by either forearm.
Instead of flaring up at me, however, Conleth merely looked confused.
“Doc? Doc is missing?” he asked, his voice small.
“Don't act all innocent,” I snapped, without thinking. But he still didn't react.
“Doc…” he whispered, and I would have sworn on my Julia Child's cookbook that he was honestly horrified by the idea that Silver had disappeared. In fact, he was so surprised that his grip on my arms loosened. I'd been waiting for just such a moment, and I wrenched away from Conleth as hard as I could, just as the cavalry arrived. I'd gotten one arm free when Con was struck full in the face by two simultaneous balls of energy—one a bright white blue and the other a dark swirling green—that crashed against his faltering shields like two NFL linebackers.
Unfortunately, he still had a tight grip on one of my arms, and as the force of the strike catapulted him up and over and onto the terrace, he took me with him. We skittered to a stop against the far side of the iron fencing, just as I saw Ryu and Anyan vault over the fence where we'd been crouched a second earlier. So close, yet so far away, my brain sang, rather inappropriately, as Conleth hauled me up like a rag doll to hold me in front of him. I discovered there was nothing like being used as a human shield to give a girl serious doubts about the honesty of a boy's declarations of love.
We were at a stalemate. Balls of energy swirled in both Ryu's and Anyan's palms, but they were unable to let fly due to the fact that Conleth was crouched behind me. Ryu was obviously furious, but Anyan's rage palpably prickled off of his body. Conleth was in big trouble if the barghest ever caught up with him.
My two saviors exchanged glances, obviously communicating, and Anyan nodded as Ryu dropped his own little sphere of power. It fizzled on the ground before winking out of existence. Nell would not have approved of the waste of energy.
“Conleth, you've made your point. We know how powerful you are, how strong you are. But nobody wants Jane hurt, do we? She's shaking, Conleth. She's scared. Don't scare Jane. Let her go.”
I know Ryu was using my name, and Conleth's, on purpose, but I didn't think standard negotiating procedure was going to work with the halfling. Not at a moment like this. He was so angry, so crazy with rage and the excessive torments of his short life, that nothing would get through to him when he was threatened. All of his horrible experiences had combined to make him a survivor, in the worst sense of the word. He would do anything to keep alive, to keep going, no matter how many people got hurt doing so.