Kane and the Flame

Kane glanced sideways at her. She was standing — he hadn’t even noticed when she’d gotten up. Thin, almost transparent, but her stance showed breeding, training. The stance of someone who’d been taught to kill since childhood. Or to defend herself.

“You can see through the fog?”

“I can feel,” she corrected. “The fire inside knows where to extinguish.”

She stepped forward, drawing level with him. Kane saw that her eyes were glowing. Faintly, barely noticeably, with an amber warmth — but in the chapel’s twilight, it was enough to make out every line of her face.

“Don’t even think about it,” he snarled, grabbing her arm.

Her arm was thin as a twig, but beneath the skin stretched over her bones, muscles as hard as cables rolled. And hot. Too hot, as if she had a high fever.

“If you light up, they’ll come running from the whole district,” he hissed through his teeth. “There won’t be twelve, there’ll be a hundred. Drawn by the smell.”

“I know,” she didn’t pull her arm away, but she didn’t try to step back either. “But if I don’t light up, they’ll eat us right here. You heard them.”

Kane swore through his teeth — long, filthy, with feeling.

The wet cough came again, right at the entrance. The shadows in the doorway thickened, taking shape.

“Fine,” he said, releasing her arm. “Stay behind me. And if I say ‘burn’ — burn so that nothing’s left of this hole. Got it?”

She looked at him. For the first time in their conversation — with a slight, barely noticeable surprise, almost gratitude.

“Do you trust me?”

“I trust what I saw in the dead end by the wall,” Kane snapped. “You burned three and didn’t even choke on the smoke. That means you know how to control it. The only question is — how much.”

She was silent for a second. Then nodded, and there was something military, practiced, in that nod.

“I’ll try not to roast you ahead of schedule.”

Kane grunted. Her sense of humor was better than some of the mercenaries he’d drunk with at the Rotten Tooth.

The shadow in the doorway thickened to blackness, taking shape. A Rattler stepped inside — a shapeless clot of darkness, in which spindly limbs and a huge maw full of needle-like teeth could be made out. Behind it, a second. A third.

Kane struck first. The sword sank into its throat — sludge sprayed.

Shit.

He rolled away from the second one’s claws. Scrambled to his feet.

Kane expected screaming. Expected the girl to latch onto his back, shriek, and ruin everything. Instead—

“Left!” she shouted.

Kane ducked on pure instinct, and a clot of darkness whistled over his head, nearly taking it off. She wasn’t just yelling — she was reading the fight.

“Stay close!” he barked, settling into his stance.

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” came the voice right by his shoulder. The heat from her body burned his back even through his jacket, but her voice was calm. Creepily calm, like someone who had already said goodbye to life.

Not running. Not screaming. Watching his back, flashed through Kane’s mind as he cut down the third one. You don’t abandon people like that. Even if you were paid for them.

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