Flameborn. Corinna Rogers

out the door. The long boots he wears are heavy, even without the force of a grown man’s kick. Drake takes the blow easily, but catches sight of Shane’s exasperated, worried face. “Fine!” he shouts, and ducks out the door.

      Time passes much more slowly when he’s not in the thick of the action. It wears on him, pacing back and forth outside the crumbling building, able to do nothing but wait. He tries taking a peek through one window, but even getting that close is dangerous. One of the windows near him shatters, glass exploding outwards, and Drake doesn’t take the chance that the one he’s looking through will do the same thing.

      From outside, all he can see is a sphere of white light. It’s difficult to make out in the midst of all the flames, but Drake manages to keep his eyes on it. A slow swirl of magic emanates from it in a way he can feel in his bones, at least when he’s in contact with the sword he holds. Every instinct he has tells him to run inside, to find the culprit, to make sure everything is fine. That’s what he does, after all, and to be stuck on the outside looking in…

      It’s anathema.

      The light suddenly streaks across the room, cleaving through a wall. Drake runs left, following the light with his eyes. Shane wouldn’t move like that unless he’d found something, he reasons, and breaks the next door open with a full-body slam. He draws the sword, feeling the sweet peace of its blade surround him, and charges into the unrelenting flames.

      The world splits.

      Part of him is still present, fighting through the flames. Drake feels his body moving, muscles cording under the skin as he dashes in, scanning the burning motel for the Inferna’s presence. Shane had moved, so it has to be close. There—a dark blob, like a sunspot against the orange tongues of flame, darts first to the left, then to the right, evading Shane’s strikes.

      The other part of Drake is anything but present.

      Every gust of heat takes him farther away, showing him not the motel in front of his eyes, but memories. They don’t make sense, not all at once, but the gasping surges of fire drive him out of reality and into his mind all the same.

      He’d stumbled into an Inferna lair once, in his late teens. Even that memory sends him back. Shane had been a few steps behind when Drake had tripped, stumbling into a hole as they searched for their bounty. The Inferna’s cave had exploded into flames, and Drake had found himself on a roller coaster with his mother, laughing at his father and sister, afraid of heights on the ground. Moments later, Shane had pulled him free, slapping his face, and it had taken long days for Drake to recover from the intensity of that memory.

      Bright white light gleams suddenly, slicing through the flames as well as any wind could have. Shane’s light is blue and on the other side of the room; the light that deals with the Inferna’s magic comes from the sword in Drake’s hand, sanctified magic protecting him from the worst effects of inhuman magic. The memories still flood him—

      “You’re such a dork!” his sister Clara laughs, and moves to sit with her friends on the school bus, even on her first day of school.

      —Drake remembers where he is, and he can still move.

      A sudden burst of wind and light from Shane manages to isolate the Inferna. Drake’s long legs carry him close, and the creature spits out fire—

       “Why isn’t your last name Nelson?”

       “They’re just foster parents. It’d be Cooper-Walker-Jones-Remmington-Nelson by now.”

      —Drake takes the blast full force and hears himself let out a noise like a roar when he breaks through, slamming the sword through the creature’s writhing body, pinning it to the wall. It tries to climb up the blade, but Drake doesn’t let go, lashing out with a foot to slam it back to the wall, ignoring the—

       Shane’s touch, his lips ghosting down over Drake’s spine, his voice ragged and needy, begging, hands urgent, teeth sharp—

      —Drake yanks the sword free and spins, using his body weight to drive his next slice home.

      The Inferna’s head rolls slowly away from its body, now sad and corporeal. It shrivels down to a coal, the inner light dying out and leaving nothing but a wrinkled skin over charred black insides. Drake exhales deeply and sheathes the sword on his back. It’s a quick draw, less than a second from the impulse of danger to the sword being in his hand and ready to use, and keeping his hands free has saved his life more times than wandering around with a drawn sword has. “Clear?” he yells, hoping Shane can hear him.

      “All clear,” the call comes back. Shane peels himself away from the wall and drapes over a fallen beam. He coughs, then inhales deeply, magic tingeing the air in front of his nostrils, and breathes out deeply this time, with no trace of a wheeze. “You need an inhaler?”

      Drake shakes his head. “Sword protected me. It doesn’t snap back like that.” He does feel his usual aches and pains now, the ones that come with age and a lifetime of being beaten up that are suppressed by the power the sword gives him. He nudges the coal of the Inferna’s body with a toe and it starts crumbling. “They seem like they’re getting stronger to you lately?”

      “Maybe you’re just getting slower, old man,” Shane teases, and makes as if to come over and stand next to him. He thinks better of it a second later, heading for the door instead. “You get singed in that first charge, baby?”

      “Got worse from the stove.” A glint of light in the center of the coals catches his eye and Drake grimaces. “Hold up, this one might still be alive. Lemme stomp it out.”

      “That’s a little cruel. Let it skulk back to its master. Maybe we can follow it.”

      Drake kicks the coal a little harder and it fractures into halves, then a dozen pieces when each half hits the ground, the size of a luggage carry-on when it’s split. At the center, a deep orange-red glow pulses and ebbs, startlingly bright in the center of the coals, like concentrated fire made liquid. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. “I’ve cracked open a lot of Inferna.”

      “Probably not as many as I have.”

      Drake raises an eyebrow and Shane shrugs, coming to kneel next to the coals. “I did work for the Fire Queen’s mortal enemy for ten years.”

      “I thought they were husband and wife.”

      “Pretty sure they’re brother and sister, too. Doesn’t mean they aren’t mortal enemies.”

      Drake snorts and prods the Inferna’s corpse with the toe of his boot. The liquid sticks to his boot for a moment, more like gel than anything, and then slowly detaches and slides back into the coal. If it weren’t for the changing play of colors, there’d be no reason to think it’s alive, much less that it’s some part of the Inferna itself. They’re small, but Drake has never had a problem with seeing them as creatures of flesh and blood before they burn away to coal. He sighs and stands up. “Can you freeze it or something? It’s bothering me and I’m not sure stomping will help.”

      Shane shrugs and points a finger. A thin stream of water swirls out of the air, soaking the coals, and has no effect on the little pool whatsoever.

      “Uh…”

      Shane flushes hot, frowns, and points again, more firmly this time. Another jet swirls down, this one freezing as it does, though just enough that a few ice crystals form in the middle of the water. At this, the liquid flinches, glows for a moment, then settles.

      “I think your finger is broken.”

      “It’s not supposed to do that!” Shane stares down at his own hand, then turns and stalks out of the burned-out motel, cursing to himself and shaking his hand out at the wrist.

      “Don’t worry,” Drake calls, a hint of a grin in his voice. “Happens to every guy as you get older.”

      “Fucking suck my dick!”

      Drake laughs, and in the second