Cold Fire

Okay, she told herself, the story to date. Ironheart is a man with t sadness at his core, probably because of being orphaned when he was only ten. Let's say he's spent a lot of his life brooding about death, especially about the injustice of premature death. He dedicates his life to teaching and helping kids, maybe because no one was there for him when he was a boy and had to cope with the deaths of his mother and father. Then Larry Kakonis commits suicide. Ironheart is shattered, feels he should have been able to prevent it. The boy's death brings to the surface all of Ironheart's buried rage: rage at fate, destiny, the biological fragility of the human species-rage at God. In a state of severe mental distress bordering on outright imbalance, he decides to make himself over into Rambo and do something to fight back at fate, which is a weird response at best, absolutely nuts at worst. With weight lifting, aerobic endurance training, and Tae Kwon Do, he turns himself into a fighting machine. He learns to drive like a stuntman. He becomes knowledgeable in the use of all manner of guns. He's ready.

Just one more thing. He teaches himself to be a clairvoyant, so he can win the lottery and be independently wealthy, making it possible to devote himself to his crusade-and so he can know just when a premature death is about to occur.

That was where it all fell apart. You could go to a place like Dojo to learn martial arts, but the Yellow Pages had no listing for schools of clairvoyance. Where the hell had he gotten his psychic power? She considered the question from every imaginable angle. She wasn't trying to brainstorm an answer, only figure out an approach to researching possible explanations. But magic was magic. There was no way to research it.

She began to feel as though she was employed by a sleazy tabloid, not as a reporter but as a concocter of pieces about space aliens living under Cleveland, half gorilla and half human babies born to amoral female zoo keepers, and inexplicable rains of frogs and chickens in Tajikistan.

But, damn it, the hard facts were that Jim Ironheart had saved fourteen people from death, in every corner of the country, always at the penultimate moment, with miraculous foresight.

By eight o'clock, she had the urge to pound her head against the table, the wall, the concrete decking around the pool outside, against anything hard enough to crack her mental block and drive understanding into her.

She decided that it was time to stop thinking, and go to dinner.

She ate in the motel coffeeshop again just broiled chicken and a salad to atone for lunch at the bakery. She tried to be interested in the other customers, do a little people-watching. But she could not stop thinking about Ironheart and his sorcery.

He dominated her thoughts later, as well, when she was lying in bed, trying to sleep. Staring at the shadows on the ceiling, cast by the landscape lighting outside and the half open Levolor blinds on the window, she was honest enough with herself to admit he fascinated her on other than professional levels. He was the most important story of her career, yes, true.

And, yes, he was so mysterious that he would have intrigued anyone reporter or not. But she was also drawn to him because she had been alone a long time, loneliness had carved an emptiness in her, and Jim Ironheart was the most appealing man she had met in ages.

Which was insane.

Because maybe he was insane.

She was not one of those women who chased after men who were wrong for her, subconsciously seeking to be used, hurt, and abandon She was picky when it came to men. That was why she was alone, for God's sake.

Few men measured up to her standards.

Sure. Picky, she thought sarcastically. That's why you've got this thing for a guy who has delusions of being Superman without the tights cape.

Get real, Thorne. Jesus.

Entertaining romantic fantasies about James Ironheart was short sighted, irresponsible, futile, and just plain stupid.

But those eyes Holly fell asleep with an image of his face drifting in her mind, watch over her as if it were a portrait on a giant banner, rippling gently against cerulean sky. His eyes were even bluer than that celestial backdrop.

In time she found herself in the dream of blindness again. The circular room. Wooden floor. Scent of damp limestone. Rain drumming on roof Rhythmic creaking. Whoosh. Something was coming for her, out of the darkness that had somehow come alive, a monstrous presence she could neither hear nor see but could feel. The Enemy. Whoosh. It closing in relentlessly, hostile and savage, radiating cold the way a fu radiated heat. Whoosh. She was grateful that she was blind, because she knew the thing's appearance was so alien, so terrifying, that just the sight of it would kill her. Whoosh. Something touched her. A moist, icy tentacle At the base of her neck. A pencil-thin tentacle. She cried out, and the tip of the probe bored into her neck, pierced the base of her skull Whoosh.