desire to burn endlessly, to revel in what he was, what he had been created to do. The insistent reminder of how glorious the flame was licked at him, mocked him when he refused.
But the cool weight pressed against him kept him there, intact. Relative cool. It had a heat of its own, almost forgotten, the heat of flesh. Human flesh, so tender against the ravages of flame, unprotected and delicate. Skin would blacken, the moisture drawn out, the lungs seared, if he did not protect it.
The sound of ragged, frightened, smoke-clogged breathing reached him, and the faint remnant of what he had once been reasserted itself. He was the firebreak, set to stop this inferno in its tracks.
Except that no matter what he did to this fire, no matter what command he gave, it refused to stop, would not cease, would not douse. It was the worst fire he could remember seeing in all the endless time he’d been trapped as a Spark, a stubborn and willful fire, refusing to be put down. He knew instinctively, feeling its heat against his own, that there was only one sort of flame that could match the will of a Spark.
Another Spark’s work.
He glared at the nearest, thickest section of flame. “Who sent you?”
The fire crackled and laughed around him, trying to pry itself into his form, to reach the mortal sheltered within his arms. “Who sent you?” he demanded again. “Who set you?” A pointless question. Sparks merely were, with but one instinct—to claim, to possess and to burn. It would be lingering, somewhere, to watch the destruction, but it would not listen to reason or plea to stop.
No mortal means could extinguish Sparkfire; the man he had been knew that all too well. Even if firefighters had arrived, they could have done nothing but watch while the structure burned down, and prayed that it would not spread to the surrounding trees.
This was why he had been called. Only another Spark could stop a Spark-driven blaze.
In theory.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?”
The mortal—a woman, her short brown hair in sleep-tousled curls around her head, lifted her face to look up, as though seeking reassurance. He risked taking his attention away from the flames for just an instant, an ancient and impossible response, and he was trapped by two large, almond-shaped eyes, tear-and smoke-reddened but still impossibly blue, like the depths of a tranquil lake. Those eyes widened at what she saw, looking at him, and her pale pink lips trembled, but she didn’t look away. “What are you? What’s happening?”
She was speaking to him.
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