Playing With Fire by Christine Pope Page A

come up so suddenly? The flames hadn’t seemed like something inanimate, but rather a malevolent, purposeful monster that had raced up the hillside so fast she could only drop everything and run. At least she’d had enough common sense to wear sturdy flat boots instead of sandals, despite the day’s warmth.  
    She’d struck out for one of the wide hiking trails and service roads that wound through the semi-wilderness beneath the Observatory, thinking if she followed it upward she could outpace the fire and gain the relative safety of the building. The place was steel-girdered and made of concrete almost a foot thick. Surely it would have offered some protection from the flames.
    But the fire had outrun her, sparks blowing past her to jump the road and spread across the hills in every direction. The final blow had come when one of the California live oaks that dotted the grounds crashed across the dirt road, effectively blocking any further progress. She couldn’t go back; the paths she had already climbed were now obscured by a swirling cloud of smoke and flame fed by vegetation that hadn’t seen rain in months.
      Now she stood in a bend of the road, every instinct screaming at her to run, even though she knew she had no place to go. She tore a strip off the bottom of her shirt and tied it over her nose and mouth.
    Just delaying the inevitable , she thought. Anyway, wouldn’t you rather die of smoke inhalation than be burned alive?
    Not the sort of question she’d ever thought she’d have to answer. Instead, she turned and eyed the hillside above her. She had no idea whether she’d even be able to scale the almost vertical incline, but maybe she could help herself along by grabbing some of the scrubby vegetation that grew there. It hadn’t caught fire yet — well, mostly. A few spots had begun to smolder, but anything was better than standing here and waiting for the fire to claim her.
    She began to reach for a manzanita bush, then stopped as a dark shadow passed overhead. Turning, she gazed upward and shielded her eyes as best she could from the thickening smoke and falling ash. Had someone spotted her and sent a helicopter rescue?
    But she heard no whir of swirling rotors. The shadow took on more solid form, resolving into something that should have been the stuff of nightmares.
    The shape seemed at home in the conflagration, the blowing clouds of haze and soot its natural habitat. Leathery wings beat against the super-heated air as he settled on the dirt road only a few feet away from her. But it was Sam’s dark eyes that looked down at her out of that alien face, and it was his voice that came to her now.
    “Care for a lift?”
    Surely the flood of relief that hit her was pure insanity, as was the bubble of laughter she felt rising in her throat. No sane person could actually be happy to see a demon striding toward her, arms outstretched.
    At the moment, however, Felicia was pretty sure she didn’t give a rat’s ass about sanity. “I’d love one.”
    He moved so quickly she couldn’t tell exactly what had happened. All she knew was that she’d been gathered into those muscled arms and clutched tightly against his bare chest, and wings that looked as if they’d been borrowed from a dragon pushed them up and away from the fire. Then they were soaring through the smoke. The Observatory, ghostly white, passed by beneath her feet.  
    They headed north and west, leaving the fire behind them. It wasn’t until Sam came to ground in the shadow of the Hollywood sign that Felicia realized where they’d been heading.
    Sam set her down, very gently, in the dry grass behind the “W.” Her legs felt as if they’d turned to rubber, and she fell to her knees. At once he was there, reaching out to her. He stopped, clawed hand a few inches away from her elbow.
    She thought she understood his hesitation. While she might have welcomed his touch when it meant rescue from certain death, she guessed he might hesitate