I dropped my right hand and streamed fire from my fingertips, and then shaped them into humanoid forms that slowly grew, until the table was surrounded by fiery beings that glared at him balefully.

“What the fuck?” he said, his voice high. “Who are they?”

“The thing about attacking a spirit,” I said conversationally, “is the fact we are rarely ever alone. And we do tend to get pissed off if you hurt one of us.”

He pushed up against the cable ties again. “I can’t tell you anything.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I pulled a slither of fire from the flame form nearest his hips and let it press down on his groin. He screamed, even though I hadn’t yet started to burn.

“Where are the scientists, Frederick?”

“I don’t know. For fuck’s sake, you’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to stop him.”

“Him” being my fiery alter ego, I gathered. “Like you stopped Hunt from raping me?”

His gaze snapped to mine; this time, the panic was sharper. “I can’t give you what I don’t know.”

“So the claim that you and Rinaldo had the scientists was yet another boast?” Just as Jackson had believed.

“Yes, for god’s sake, yes. I honestly don’t know where they are.”

“I really don’t think honesty and you are all that familiar,” I said. “But perhaps the loss of a small piece of your anatomy will encourage you to become so.”

I pressed the fiery hand deeper. A pulse began to beat heavily in my head, a warning that I was once again pushing my limits. I once again ignored it. “Tell me where the scientists are, Frederick.”

His jeans began to smolder, the material peeling away from my fiery touch. The stench of burning hair soon stained the air, but I didn’t press any further. Not yet.

“I don’t know, you have to believe me, I don’t.”

His words tumbled out over one another, his gaze wide, desperate. Yet there was something in the deeper recesses of his eyes, something that spoke of cunning. He thought he could fool me. Thought I wouldn’t carry through with my threat.

I burned his cock.

He screamed. It was a god-awful sound, but I had no intention of showing him any sort of compassion or mercy. He didn’t deserve it, and not just because he’d left me to Hunt’s tender mercies, but because of what he’d helped do to those witches and undoubtedly to countless others. The virus might have made them Luke’s to control, but it had been Frederick’s magic that had helped make their capture possible.