Flame Unleashed (Hell to Pay) Read Online Free

said.
    “Did you complete your assignment last night?”
    Although his voice wavered, those pale blue eyes shone with sharp intelligence. His centuries-old strength and energy had waned, but his mind was as keen as when he rubbed elbows with Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors.
    Ruth would never lie to him. She loved Barnaby, her mentor and her friend. He knew precisely what her job entailed, since he’d been an Indebted for hundreds of years until he broke his contract to be with his wife. He rarely mentioned that period of time forty years ago when he changed to mortal, but it had to have been momentous. No one broke his or her contract, right?
    Not exactly. Barnaby did it, and his friends Peter and Dante attained their freedom, too. All right, so it must be possible to escape this hell, but how? By what rules? Damn it, she had no guidance, no idea of how to try to attempt her own liberation.
    Breaking their contracts nearly cost those men their lives, but they’d succeeded. All three men had achieved the Meaningful Kill. Jealousy churned in her gut.
    Maybe there was hope for her. Or maybe not, with Jerahmeel keeping closer tabs on his employees nowadays.
    “No, I didn’t get a kill.” Damn it, she snapped at the one person she’d come to love and respect over the years. The man closest to a father and a friend.
    Mean acid melted to muddy shame inside of her.
    While she wouldn’t lie, she refused to trouble Barnaby with her concerns. Ruth hadn’t been a burden to anyone since 1864. She wouldn’t start now.
    “Couldn’t find an appropriate candidate?”
    She shrugged with a nonchalance that even she didn’t believe. “It’s okay. I’ll find someone this evening.”
    “Of course you will, my dear.” When he patted her on the arm, the bones in his hands stood out stark beneath his thin skin.
    “Barnaby, how did you get the Meaningful Kill?” she blurted out. Hot guilt crawled over her chest. “I’m sorry. I realize that you can’t tell me. Forget that I asked.”
    Staring at her for so long it made her squirm, Barnaby finally sighed. Anyone who knew him for a minute could see how he’d loved his wife, Jane. Sadly, her life had been cut short by illness, and Barnaby had carried on alone for the past twenty years.
    He answered, his voice gravelly. “My dear, I would tell you if I could. Forsooth, I want for you to escape your Indebted contract. But I am bound by Jerahmeel’s rules never to speak of it.”
    “You helped Peter and Dante.”
    “Not directly, and certainly not by telling them how I did it. To be fair, as I witnessed their changes and my own, I realized that the solution to the Meaningful Kill is different for each Indebted.”
    She brushed nonexistent wrinkles from Barnaby’s clothes on the bed. “That doesn’t help me, does it?”
    His mouth pulled into a wry smile. “This existence wears on you, doesn’t it?”
    “I don’t want to burden you ...”
    “Nonsense. I think of you as the daughter I never had, Ruth.” He coughed for a few moments until he caught his breath. “I so want you to have a good life, my dear.”
    “My life is good, working for you.”
    “But not good, right?”
    “It’s not ... what I would have wanted.”
    Emptiness weighted her shoulders every day—a black tunnel of death and murder with no end in sight. No one would want such a reality.
    “No, I want you to have your own life, on your own terms. With someone who loves you, er, differently than I do.” His grin folded his eyes into numerous wrinkles.
    She ran a hand over her neck until she caught herself. “It’s not in the stars. I had my family, years ago, and I ruined everything. But yes, it would be nice to live a life without the need to kill always pressing me.”
    “I understand.”
    Folding the remainder of his clothes, she laid them in a perfect, neat row. A useless exercise, considering he would wear these garments soon, but the precise activity and attention to detail calmed her. “Of