Fire Master Rising

  Fire Master Rising

  WINTERS SAGA (BOOK THREE)

  by

  Jami Brumfield

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright @ Jami Brumfield

  Written by Jami Brumfield

  Edited and Proofed by Michele E. Gwynn

  Cover designed by Melgraphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review within fair use guidelines. This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real life counterparts is entirely coincidental. This book content and the characters are copyrighted @ 2016 by Jami Brumfield. All rights are reserved and owned by the author, Jami Brumfield.

  Introduction

  The Winters have been to Hell and back, but through it all, they’ve always come back together, bonded stronger and unified to face the magical world they are now a part of.

  Power in numbers they say.

  Rebecca’s pack grows stronger everyday despite rising threats and old foes come calling. Miracle and Mystery are finding their places, Savannah is slowly acclimating to her new royal vampiric life, and Hunter has grown into a strong fire witch, gifted with the power of empathy. To make life perfect, all he needs is to escape his prison, save his sisters, and live a happy life with Natalia, but life rarely works out as planned and Hunter’s life is about to embark on a dangerous roller coaster ride.

  Will he survive? Is happiness a hopeless dream? Find out in Fire Master Rising, book three of the Winters Saga.

  Chapter One

  Hunter

  IN THIS WORLD, OR ALTERNATE worlds, some things remain constant, and some change, like the butterfly effect in time travel, so it is true in alternate dimensions. That was the lesson Hunter was being taught from his short excursion to this Earth. His ice blue eyes narrowed toward the horizon. The greenish-yellow chemical haze was thick around the setting sun. It radiated evil, and put him in a state of unease. The cold front rolling in quickly did little to make him feel comfortable. He pulled his fur-lined jacket out of his backpack as a shiver ran through his body from the temperature change of blazing hot to freezing cold. The sweat on his body would become icicles if he didn’t cover up, the jacket was his first line of defense. His second was his control over the element of fire. If his body temperature went too low, he could light a fire with simple magic or heat his body from the inside out, carefully. He didn’t have any desire to experience spontaneous combustion, just a little warmth.

  Hopefully, he wouldn’t need either one for long. Ophelia promised to meet him tonight, and introduce him to a village shaman who may be able to help him with his mission.

  He prayed that would be the case as another coughing fit hit his lungs. The salty scent of the ocean and lilacs mixed with sulfur was sweet, but deadly. With each deep breath he took in, he was endangering his health. He couldn’t survive in these conditions for long. If needed, he’d head back home, acquire a respirator, and return. How the local residents of this world existed under these circumstances baffled his mind.

  In this world, Arizona bordered the ocean. California was lost to nuclear warfare from the civil war which led to the cyborg-supernatural war shortly afterwards. The people of this dimension respected magic and science, and so the witches here were far more advanced since they hadn’t had to hide in secret. They were also feared. So were the cyborgs.

  A few weeks ago he was at his wits end, ready to give up trying to find a cure for the virus that affected both of his sisters when Ophelia found him. Hope sprang in his soul when she told him of the magical advances in this world, and the possibility that a cure could be found within it. It took very little encouragement for him to pack up and take the portal here. The supernatural world had decimated his family’s purity. He was ready to fight back. As the only pureblood witch left among his true siblings – unless you counted Mystery and Miracle, twins secreted away from his family by the Convent of Souls, which he didn’t. They were nice and all, but they weren’t his sisters. Savannah and Rebecca were his family – it was his job to help his sisters. Those outsiders were simply that, invaders into his family dynamic that weren’t necessary. The burden fell on his shoulders.

  Miracle and Mystery being infused in their lives all of a sudden was the work of their mastermind, evil father, Maverick, who’d recently returned from the dead – or undead since he was a vampire.

  He kicked the reddish-brown dirt at his feet in frustration. The idea that their father hid the girls from him and his sisters was horrible, but the fact that he played dead the last ten years of their lives, and left them orphaned to live with their maternal grandmother was criminal in his book. They’d mourned their father’s and mother’s deaths. In some ways, they still did. It didn’t matter to Rebecca or Hunter that he was back as a vampire. Savvy was a different story. She begged them to give the man a chance. Hunter suspected it was more that he and she shared the same ailment, vampirism, than it was that he was a good man. Nothing about their father’s twisted behavior convinced Hunter he was a good man.

  Thanks to his warped family dynamic, he had two new witch sisters. Both of them might share his bloodline, but he had no idea how much he should trust them. There was something off about the two of them. Sure, it could be because they grew up in the witch world and he didn’t. They looked at things from a different perspective. They spent their entire lives learning spells and potions, learning how to manage their elemental powers, and he spent his whole life spellbound, forced to live like a regular child and teen; stuck on the outskirts of his destined reality looking in, oblivious to how real the supernatural world really was. He wasn’t sure which one of them had it better. And he really didn’t have the time or energy to figure that out, not at the moment. Things in his family were beyond chaotic, and he needed to focus on cleaning up the mess first.

  It was his obsession; he knew that, but he couldn’t fight the desire to save his sisters. They were always there for him. They were the best sisters a man could ask for, and he was going to do everything he could to protect and save them. That is what brothers do, right? Besides, the past is what it is, and it cannot be changed. If it could, he would go back in time, and warn his sisters not to make the same mistakes which made Rebecca a werewolf and Savannah a vampire. He would, but while magic had the ability to bend space and create portals to alternate universes and dimensions, it didn’t, to his knowledge, have the ability to travel through time. All he could do now was hope to change the present.

  “Are you ready?” Ophelia snuck up behind him, her strange, accented voice sounded urgent, and broke him from his thoughts.

  After throwing on his heavy jacket he scrambled to put his magical tools in his backpack. He was more than ready, and grateful she’d finally returned.

  Three days he’d been camping out at this site, waiting to meet the local supernatural group. Another coughing fit took hold. It seemed anytime he exerted extra energy, he wound up hacking up a lung. Ophelia stood watching, uncaring to his pain. She had explained to him that the paranormal creatures of this world were not as organized as those of his own. With the exception of a few powerful groups, they didn’t stick to their species. They lived in mixed camps, and were nomadic out of necessity. Their numbers were dwindling. They were dying or taken as prisoners for experiments. The cyborg soldiers were winning. Th
ey were simply more powerful, and had greater numbers. It was like he was in one of those futuristic sci-fi movies, only, to the people of this world, it was their actual reality. In his eyes, it wasn’t a good reality, and it made him sad to think this was all they had. Maybe when he finished helping his sisters, he could return here someday to help them.

  The state of their world was the reason why Ophelia was scouting his looking for a new home. It was the reason why they ran into each other. “I’m more than ready.” He coughed lightly, and threw his backpack over one shoulder with a smile.

  “Good, let’s go.” She walked in front of him. Her raven-black hair hung straight down her back, and only tapered off at her slender waist. The black leather pants and grey cotton t-shirt she wore hugged every curve on her shapely body. To finish off the look, two daggers were sheathed on her hips, and one gun was holstered on her back making it clear she was always ready for battle. All Hunter had was his magic for a weapon. He only hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to use it. He still didn’t have it under control.

  He wondered briefly how many times she had to use those weapons instead of her claws in battle as he attempted to look anywhere but at her swaying hips. It was hard. The movement was almost hypnotic. Ophelia was tempting, but he was in love with the girl he grew up with. Natalia. No woman held a candle to her. It wasn’t just Natalia’s beauty that attracted him, it was her kindness, her constant desire to help others in need, and her moral compass that kept them both on the right track. He was hurt that she was part of the lie his family told them, but he understood it wasn’t her truth to tell.

  Thoughts of Natalia had helped to keep him warm at night. She was a witch, a guardian like their father before he was turned into a vampire. Her witch magic was more attuned to the spiritual realm and the undead. Some people called it necromancy without the dark-sided connotation of the word. While their father, Maverick, treaded the darker side of his magic, Natalia stayed on the side of light. Her focus was never about doing harm; it was always about helping. Being new to magic, Hunter could see the pull from both sides of the spectrum, the darker side being stronger to most, which made those on the light side higher in demand.

  The short trek to the camp was made in silence. There was something off about Ophelia today, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Maybe it was that she lacked any emotional vibes. He couldn’t feel if she was happy, sad, disappointed, angry, nothing came from her at all. Either she was blocking him or she was a psychopath, void of feelings. Neither option sounded good to him, not while he was traveling into the proverbial lion’s den.

  They paused at the camp’s perimeter. It was getting late, and the boundary lights were lit. The flames licked the sky like he licked his fingers after a good piece of fried chicken, a meal he could really sink his teeth into after eating military ration packets and protein bars for the last few days. The smell of a pig of some sort drifted around them. He could sense the fire, and the moist meat, which was obviously cooking on an open pit. The sweet meat made his mouth water. He was more motivated than ever to get to this meeting so he could get home and eat some real food.

  Ophelia placed her hand out. It flattened against an invisible barrier. A scan ran the length of her hand print and then asked for a code to be entered into the holographic keypad. When she was done, a very slight flash went across the surface, and she walked through. Hunter followed her. When he was through, the flash lit up the panel, and the shield was back in place. He was trapped inside, and for the first time since he went on this mission, he found himself truly worried about his safety.

  “The outside world is dangerous,” Ophelia answered his thoughts.

  He offered a stiff nod in response. Her statement did little to quell the nervous energy coursing through his veins. He’d spent a half week outside this camp, and nothing happened to him. What could be so hazardous now, and why was she not worried about his security before? “So where is the Shaman?”

  “Is this the other worlder?” A tiny girl with skin the color of mocha, and eyes the color of chocolate – which matched her long brown dreadlocks, came up to him, and put her hand inches from his cheek. “May I?” Her voice was unearthly. The air sizzled with magical power around them. Hunter felt her strength, and nodded his assent, afraid of what his voice would give away if he spoke.

  She placed her hand on his face, and her eyes rolled backwards, leaving only the whites visible in the sockets. Hunter feared she would fall backward, but she remained standing. He bent his knees slightly to give her an easier angle, and also prepare himself to be able to catch her if she did fall.

  “Hunter, meet Brianna, our village Shaman,” Ophelia smiled.

  Hunter wanted to laugh out loud. The girl couldn’t be much older than he was, but the energy radiating from her to him was nothing to laugh about. He knew not to judge a book by the cover with Sundae Monroe. Sundae looked like a porcelain doll, only that fragile-looking girl had killed more people than she could count by the time she was seventeen. As a dream weaver, she had dominion over the dream world, and her family took advantage of that power. She taught him that even small packages could be deadly.

  Brianna broke their connection. “He has a good heart, but what he seeks does not exist.” She smiled sadly. “I am saddened for your sisters, but they made their choices, and their lives have put them exactly where they are meant to be. You, however, have some trying times ahead, and the outcome could result in death if you make the wrong choices.”

  Crap! That sounds ominous.

  Ophelia pulled out a gun from her ankle holster and aimed it at his head. “Bad news for you, young witch. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Two

  Rebecca

  REBECCA HAD LEARNED MANY THINGS since becoming privy to the magic that existed in the world, hidden just below the surface of civilized society, lurking in the darkness, and only visible to those that had the connection. Her education increased even more since she merged into a pack alpha. One valuable lesson was the rules of traveling to alternate dimensions, and how tricky that travel really was. First you had to find the right portal, and make sure it went to the right world, and then you had to make sure it didn’t drop you off in an inconvenient location, like the middle of a public place or the bottom of the ocean. Magic only helped a being get through the portal, it didn’t help direct where they went, and it didn’t conceal their arrival or departure. Dimensional travel was not for the novice supernatural. One needed to be prepared for just about anything.

  Kia, the dragon shifter assigned to help Rebecca take down the drug trafficking of Black Death in her world, suggested the portal they were using today as an alternative to the one she’d been through before. The portal they were forced to use today delivered them to a bathroom stall in a dive bar. It was troublesome. At most, only one person could travel through at a time, but it was fairly safe as long as no one entered the bathroom while they were transporting. She would’ve used the one they brought her through when Becky and her team first kidnapped her, but it was too much of a risk. They had no idea who was controlling it at the moment. It could be either the wolves or the dragons…or something worse. The biggest concern was that Becky was oddly out of communication. That knowledge didn’t help matters, and made this journey far more dangerous. If they weren’t on a rescue mission for her overzealous brother they would not be taking the chance at all. Not until they could contact her double here. But Hunter left them no choice.

  That being the case, here they were. One by one, piling up in the small, smelly, grimy bathroom that looked like it had been at least a month since it had seen a good cleaning. Her large group was almost complete; Kia, Lucky, Miracle, Mystery, Gabriel, Savannah, Natalia, Sundae, Georgie, Jackson, and now they were waiting on Maverick, who had insisted on coming despite how little Rebecca did to make him feel welcome. She knew she should be thankful her father was alive after all these years, but there wasn’t a single atom in her body that cared for the man who left t
hem without parents, and made her blame herself for their deaths.

  She heard a splash, and a string of curse words announcing his arrival. She fought off the urge to laugh, which was far easier than she expected as Savannah narrowed her disapproving eyes at her sister. When he exited the stall with a wet pant leg everyone except Rebecca had the good sense to look away. Rebecca tossed her blonde curls behind her slender shoulders and chuckled at the mess he was. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you we were arriving in a toilet.” Her sapphire eyes glared at him making it clear to everyone, he may be here with them, but she had no desire to forgive him for his hand in their mother’s death or his abandonment of them afterwards.

  Savannah, Rebecca’s twin, snatched some paper towels from the dispenser, and handed them to her father. She leveled an angry scowl at Rebecca who had the good sense to look away this time. Their relationship was still very shaky since Savannah had been sired by a vampire, and Rebecca became a werewolf. She didn't want to upset the new balance they had created too much. “Now that the games are over, can we get back to finding our brother?”

  The alpha wolf in Rebecca’s mind, who preferred to be called Siren, snarled making it clear she wasn’t happy about any of this, especially about working with vampires. Her instant hatred of the vampires was more biological and instinctual than anything else. Vampires and werewolves were genetically designed enemies; perfectly matched in every way, complete with a primal need to destroy each other whenever the chance arose. Before Rebecca and Celestia - Savannah’s sire, signed the truce to enter into peace talks, the idea of working together would have been laughable. Now, it was expected, enforced by the Authority, Convent of Souls, and Protectors. But none of that dictated she couldn’t be passive aggressive in making her father pay for all the torment he put them through, and for the fact that he hid Mira and Mysti from them.