Child of Fire

by Harry Connolly

  “They won’t be on my side,” I said. “Get over in that corner. Get as low as you can.”

  She did. Someone was still pounding on the door. They’d be inside in just a minute or two, as soon as someone with a key turned up.

  I leapt to the other side of the bed and knelt on the floor. I jabbed the ghost knife into the floor, holding it by the barest corner so it would reach as far as possible, then I slid it along the floor, cutting a rough circle.

  The circle didn’t drop through to the floor below. I heard jangling keys on the other side of the hall door. “What are you doing over there?” the woman whispered. I wished I knew her name.

  They’d be inside in a moment. I could have taken Cabot’s gun from my pocket, but I didn’t. Instead, I jumped onto the circle I’d just cut. I heard the lock disengage.

  Wood splintered, and I fell through the floor.

  I fell about ten feet and struck a tiled floor. My knees jarred, and I rolled to the side. It hurt, but I’d managed not to twist my ankle.

  I rolled against something soft. It was a big, soft pile of sheets and bedcovers, and I missed it by two feet. There was a smear of red blood on several of the sheets, and it took me a second to realize that it had come from me. My hands were covered in blood.

  I was in a laundry room. Three big industrial washers and dryers stood against the outside wall. There were no windows.

  “Sweet sainted Mary!” A tiny old woman with a thick brogue stared at me. I stood and ran past her toward the door.

  “Keep away from the hole,” I told her. “Men with guns are going to be coming through in a moment.”

  I ran past the dryers and saw that they ran on natural gas. I stopped. The gas line joined the machines at the top. I yanked open the dryer doors, shutting off the flames. Then I traced the gas line along the ceiling to where it disappeared into the wall. There was a shutoff valve there. I cut it out.

  The old woman gaped at me.

  “Gosh,” I said to her. “You have a gas leak. Better tell those boys upstairs with the guns.”

  I saw shadows move in the space above the hole. I turned and ran through the double doors. The old woman was shouting something, but I didn’t know who she was shouting at. I just hoped she had the sense to pull the fire alarm.

  I recognized this hallway. Beyond the opposite wall was the little restaurant where Phyllis had drugged me. I ran toward the stairs. I would rather have avoided the casino, but that didn’t seem possible.

  Two men came up the stairs. One of them was Floyd. He pointed at me with his bandaged hands, and the guy next to him lifted his weapon.

  I ducked to the side as the gun boomed. I didn’t feel the bullet hit me, but there wasn’t a lot of cover in the hallway.

  There was a door next to me. I yanked it open and dove inside. Another shot boomed, and something tugged at my pant leg. I didn’t feel any pain.

  I was in a linen closet. Neat stacks of folded sheets lined the walls around me. I pulled the door shut, and the darkness gave my animal brain a moment’s comfort, tricking it into thinking I was hiding.

  I knew the wall in front of me led to the outside world, but it was also three stories from the ground. I wouldn’t make that jump.

  I lay down and cut another hole in the floor. This time, I angled the ghost knife outward so that it wouldn’t catch.

  Gunshots tore through the closet door. The sound was terrifyingly close, and splinters rained down on my back. I cursed and resisted the urge to draw Cabot’s gun and shoot back. That would be a losing game for me.

  I finished the cut, and the section of floor fell away. At the same moment, the fire alarm went off.

  I looked down through the hole. As I’d hoped, I was just above the mezzanine. I slipped through the hole and landed on one of the poker tables.

  The fire alarm was clanging loudly, and everyone stood around and looked at one another. No one wanted to be the first to head for the exit. Hadn’t they heard the gunshots?

  I jumped off the table, pushing aside a man in a UPS uniform who had a nice stack of chips beside him. I glanced over at the long flight of stairs. Rev. Wilson, still without his shirt, led several men toward the exit. They were carrying Bobby, Tiffany, and the dead chubby guy and walked straight across the floor in full view.

  I turned toward the exit I’d seen earlier. There was one man standing there. He wasn’t looking at me and didn’t seem to have seen me come through the hole in the ceiling. I rushed toward him, taking out Cabot’s gun to get his attention.

  When he did turn toward me, he looked unhappy. For a second I thought he would jump the rail.

  “Hold still,” I snapped at him. “Give me your gun.”

  He gave me his.38. Henstrick must have bought them in bulk. “Hey, man-“

  “Shut up and get these people out of the building. There’s a gas leak. Hurry!”

  I pushed past him and went through the doorway. The night was no darker than it had been two minutes ago. I started down the metal stairs, just as exposed as I was before, but as I’d hoped, there were no shots. The trip was shorter, too.

  It would have been nice to lose myself in a crowd of people fleeing the fire alarm, but the patrons were too slow and I wasn’t going to wait around for them. I ran along the back of the building, away from the gate. I needed a vehicle to get away, and a remote to open the fence. I could cut my way through the fence or the wall, but fleeing on foot would be suicide.

  I ran around the building and spotted the sport van, still parked in the same spot. The gate was closed. They’d open it for the ambulance and fire truck, but I didn’t want to wait. I sprinted for the van, cut a hole in the driver’s window, and unlocked it.

  Someone shouted, “There he is!”

  Cynthia’s Escalade backed toward me. “Get in!” she yelled, and the passenger door swung open.

  I looked back at the minivan. The remote sat on the dashboard. I grabbed it and jumped into the open Escalade.

  Cynthia gunned the engine. The door swung closed on my ankle. I cursed at the sharp pain and pointed the remote through the windshield. There was only one button. I pressed it.

  A gunshot shattered the back window. Cynthia screamed and ducked her head. Out of habit, she slammed on the brakes, but before I could say anything she hit the accelerator. The gate slowly rolled open. The parking lot was long, and whoever was shooting was going to have plenty of time to get a bead on us.

  I slid closer to Cynthia and draped my arm over her. With my forearm hanging beside her head and neck, my tattoos would provide her some protection, but not a lot.

  A bullet punched through the front of the driver’s side window and snapped a hole in the windshield. Cynthia cried out just a little. The gate slid farther open. I thought it would be wide enough for us to clear, but I wasn’t certain. I saw a woman running toward the opening. Her course put her in line with our bumper. Cynthia eased off the gas pedal, as though she was afraid to hit her. Something struck the back of my chair, passing inches from my ribs.

  I slammed my palm on the horn. The blare made the woman look at us with a startled, furious expression, then jump aside.

  More glass shattered, and I heard bullets punching holes in the SUV. Cynthia ducked low, barely peeking over the dashboard. She spit out a stream of curses. I would have cursed, too, if I could have unclenched my teeth. Instead I held on to the dashboard, hating guns, hating Phyllis Henstrick, hating Annalise and everyone who had led me into this mess, including myself.

  Just as I thought the barrage had gone on too long, and that our luck couldn’t hold anymore, we were through the gate. Cynthia wrenched the wheel to the side and we skidded along the road. The bullets stopped.

  An ambulance with flashing lights and blaring sirens raced at us. Cynthia swerved and slammed on the brakes, and the ambulance roared by. I turned around. Through the shattered back window, I could see a few people running through the open gate.

  “Oh my God,” Cynthia said, her voice s
haky. “Oh my God.”

  I still had the remote in my hand. If I pressed it, the ambulance might have trouble getting the injured people out, but Henstrick’s amateur gunmen might be delayed long enough for me to get away. I didn’t press the button.

  “Keep it together,” I said. My voice sounded loud in my ears. “Keep going. People are coming through the gates.”

  She turned the car and gunned the engine. We roared up the asphalt road, passing the supermarket. Cynthia bared her teeth. She had tears on her cheeks.

  There was a red light up ahead. She wasn’t slowing down. “Light! Light!” I shouted. I leaned over and stomped on the brake pedal. The Escalade skidded to a halt.

  A woman in a Volvo station wagon loaded with groceries was waiting to pull out of the supermarket lot. She gaped up at the bullet-ridden SUV.

  The light changed, and Cynthia eased into the intersection, carefully turning the wheel with shaking hands. She checked her speedometer several times. She drove like it was her first time behind the wheel. The car rattled and clanked.

  “What should I do?” she asked me.

  “Drive to your house.”

  She did. We got out of the car and walked around it. There were two holes in the windshield. I hadn’t noticed the second, even though it must have happened right in front of me.

  Three of the bullet holes were clustered low on the driver’s door. Those must have passed under our seats. Four more were sprayed across the back panel, two very close to the back left tire. Someone had tried to shoot it out. There were two more bullet holes in the front fender. Judging by the way her engine had sounded on the way home, I suspected her engine block had gone the way of the dodo.

  “You’re bleeding!” Cynthia said. She touched my shoulder blade. I felt a tiny sting. I had no idea how I’d gotten hurt. “Come inside.”

  She led me toward her front door. I looked up at the round tower room at the top of the house. Cabot had said that Charles spent all his time at the tower now. I wondered if he was up there, and what I would do if I found him.

  Cynthia led me up the stairs to a large bathroom in the back. While I sat on the edge of the tub, she took a box of Band-Aids and a squeeze tube of disinfectant from the medicine cabinet. She took off my jacket, felt the weight in one of the pockets, and reached inside.

  “You had a gun the whole time? Why didn’t you shoot back?”

  “Someone might have gotten killed.”

  We started laughing. It was a release for her, I knew, but my own laughter only increased the pressure building inside of me. I thought about Bobby’s tooth, and the chubby guy lying dead on the floor. I thought about the way Tiffany’s face seemed to give when I hit her. I kept laughing, but the sound of it scared me. I was alive. I wanted to shout the word at the tile ceiling just to hear it bounce around me. Alive.

  I clenched my teeth and forced myself to be quiet. I shouldn’t have been laughing, because what ever I was feeling at the moment, it wasn’t happiness. Hammer Bay was full of people doing terrible things for the best reasons. It made me furious. I made me feel dark and low to the ground and ready to kill. This town was making me into something ugly and dangerous. I had to get away, but I knew I couldn’t. Not without setting things right.

  Of course, Annalise and I were here to kill whoever we had to kill to stop the magic and save the kids in Hammer Bay. I was here to do terrible things for the best of reasons, too. I hated this town, but I knew it was a mirror image of myself.

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t have to like it. I was here to be vicious, to beat, kill, or humiliate anyone I had to, and I wasn’t going to stop until all the magic had been expunged from this place and things were set right. And God help me, I was finally ready to do it. I was ready to go as far as I had to go to get the job done.

  Cynthia told me to take off my shirt. I did. She dabbed at my shoulder blade with a wad of tissues. “This isn’t bad at all. It’s barely a scratch.” I didn’t answer. “They were terrible shots, weren’t they?”

  “Most people are.”

  “No one has ever… do you think they knew it was me? Do you think they were trying to shoot me?”

  I understood. She probably had the only Escalade in town, and most people would recognize it.

  “No,” I told her. “If they had realized it was you, I don’t think they would have shot at us. Henstrick is still loyal to your family. I think they were just all worked up and not thinking straight. In fact, I think you should expect a call and an apology from Henstrick.”

  I could feel her rubbing something onto my shoulder blade. It stung. Her hair brushed my shoulder, and goose bumps ran across my back.

  “Do you go there often?” I had a hard time keeping the suspicion out of my voice.

  “No. After I dropped you off at Uncle Cabot’s office, I didn’t go for a cup of coffee like you said. I didn’t realize how I would feel when I saw you go into that building alone-for me-and I couldn’t just go off and eat a banana muffin or something while you risked your life. So I stayed close just in case. I don’t know what I was going to do, exactly, but I hated feeling like a coward.

  “So, I was parked down the street when you came out. I saw those men grab you outside the office, and I recognized Bobby, of course. I followed you to the casino and lost two grand at the blackjack table waiting for you to turn up.”

  That made sense, and I was grateful that she’d come for me. “The gun is Cabot’s,” I told her. “He was planning to shoot himself, but I convinced him to get out of town.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a quiet voice.

  “You saved my life to night.”

  “We’re even, then.” She taped a gauze pad onto my shoulder blade. It felt like a big pad, but the scratch didn’t hurt much. I wondered again if her brother was in the house somewhere. She patted my shoulder with a dismissive finality. “All done.”

  I stood. She was very close to me, and she seemed so small. Her hands were still trembling. I took her hand and held it in mine. I still felt a sickening rage inside. It took all the self-control I had to touch her gently. “Thank you.”

  We held hands for a moment. She felt warm and soft and impossibly fragile. I could have squeezed that hand and broken it to mash. The thought terrified me. I was as gentle as I could be.

  She let my hand go, and it fell to my side. She stared up at me. Her brown eyes seemed to have turned black. “What next?” she asked.

  “What’s in that round room at the top of the house?”

  “That’s my bedroom.”

  “Take me there.”

  She hesitated for a moment. It was just a moment. She looked up into my eyes, then took my hand and led me to the stairs. I carried my shirt and jacket.

  We entered the round room. It was tastefully decorated, I guess, with a lot of muted green pastels. Every surface had at least one candle and, for some reason, a stuffed rabbit.

  Charles Hammer wasn’t here. As far as I could tell, he had never been in this room. I was vaguely disappointed as I laid my jacket and shirt on a chair. I was absolutely ready to shoot him dead. I didn’t know if I’d ever find myself feeling so ready to kill someone again.

  Cynthia stood a few feet from me. “This is it,” she said, as if waiting to see if I approved of her inner sanctum.

  I wasn’t going to kill Charles Hammer today. “Take off your clothes,” I said.

  She did. I took mine off at the same time.

  I saw what I knew I’d see. She had a tattoo on her shoulder blade right where Cabot had his. She had an iron gate, too.

  She knew what had happened to all those kids. What was still happening.

  She lunged at me and we kissed. We were wild and desperate. I was still filled with rage, but I tried as hard as I could to keep it from her. I liked her.

  Even though she had known all along. She had known. She had known. She had known. She had known…

  We made our way to the bed. It was good to feel alive. It was good to touc
h someone. It was good to feel like a human animal, to smell and taste and hear and see someone close.

  She responded to me more powerfully than any woman ever had before, but I could not stop thinking about those dead children, about the flames, about the pale, gray worms, and that she knew all about it. It made me furious and sick at the same moment that we were grasping at life.

  When my own release finally came, my mind was full of images of murder, and there was no pleasure in it at all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I woke up without realizing I’d fallen asleep. The gray sunlight was shining on my face, and the bed jostled slightly.

  Cynthia was sitting on the other side of the bed with her back to me. She was wrapped in the top sheet. I could see the iron gate on her back. The thing that had made me sick with anger last night now seemed like another unfortunate fact of life in Hammer Bay. Who was I to judge Cynthia? Or anyone? I was not exactly pure myself.

  I reached out to her and touched her shoulder. She let me, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t seem angry or resentful. She simply didn’t react. I took my hand away.

  “Last night was powerful,” she said in a low voice. “It was wild and strange and very powerful, but I don’t think I’m going to want to do that again. Not ever. It was good. It was great, in fact, but it scared me, too. I don’t want to visit that place again.”

  “I understand,” I told her.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  She turned toward me. The look on her face made me ashamed. I wished I could start over again, more gently this time, but her expression said it all. Never again. “I’m sure.”

  “Do you want some coffee?”

  I nodded. She stood and dropped the sheet. I watched her put on pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I couldn’t help imagining her on the floor, screaming, as black steam jetted from the iron gate on her back. She told me that she would wait for me downstairs and left.

  Alone, I covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t see or hear anything. I looked inside myself and didn’t recognize what I saw.