Black Widow

by Jennifer Estep

  Otherwise, I would soon burn to death, just as my mother and sister had before me, and die in the Pork Pit, just as Fletcher had before me.

  So with my frozen-food fort complete, and my magic gone, I put my nose and mouth up against my breathing hole, closed my eyes, and waited for the flames to come.

  * * *

  There was nothing to do but keep breathing, hoping that every lungful of foul, disgusting, garbage-scented air I drew in wouldn’t be my last. I didn’t know if it was the smoke or my exhaustion, but I found myself thinking back to the fight at the warehouse all those years ago. I didn’t think that I was dreaming, but I fell into the memories all the same. . . .

  We’d gone from being in trouble to being buried alive.

  I didn’t know how long the explosions had ripped through the building. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but the concussive boom-boom-booms seemed as though they would never end. Just like my joyride inside the barrel, which rocked and rattled like a roller coaster as it was pushed every which way by the force of the explosions. All I could do was brace my arms and legs against the inside of the container and hope that it would soon be over.

  And it was.

  One second, I was listening to the roar of the warehouse shake, quake, fracture, and blow apart, with chunks of concrete, rebar, and more bang-bang-banging against my barrel like it was the centerpiece of a drum set. The next second, everything was quiet—eerily so—the barrel was still, and the only noise was the too-loud thump-thump-thump of my racing heart.

  It was so dark that I couldn’t even see the clouds of concrete dust that choked me as I sucked down breath after breath. Slowly, my heart fell back down into a slower, more natural rhythm, and my desperate pants for air eased as the dust dissipated. I huddled inside the barrel, straining with my ears, hoping to hear something, anything that would tell me that I was still alive and not just dreaming that I’d survived.

  Silence—complete silence.

  That hot, sweaty panic rose up in me again, but I ruthlessly squashed it. Breath by breath, the roar of the explosions leaked out of my ears, and small noises bubbled up to fill in the silence. The steady hiss-hiss-hiss of water from busted pipes. The crackle-crackle of a fire burning nearby. Other moans and shrieks and creak-creak-creaks, as if the warehouse were a wounded animal in the last dregs of its death throes.

  When I felt steady enough, I stretched my hands out into the waiting blackness. Rocks, pipes, and slabs of concrete covered the opening of the barrel, but they were a loose, jumbled heap, and it was easy enough for me to claw my way through them, grab hold of the edge of the container, and pull myself out of it. I slid forward, surfing down another pile of rubble, and lay there panting amid the crushed remains of the cinder-block walls, extremely grateful to have survived something I shouldn’t have.

  All of the lights were gone, destroyed by the explosions, but small fires burned here and there in the debris, along with the occasional blue-white spark of a live electrical wire, ripped free from its source. The full moon and sprinkling of stars in the sky added a pale silver glow to the ruins, softening the harsh edges and making it seem as though I were lying in the middle of an exotic lunar landscape and not the utter demolition of a building. Still, as I looked around, there was one thing I didn’t see—the barrel the old man had taken refuge in.

  “Fletcher!” I hissed. “Fletcher!”

  He didn’t respond. He might be experiencing the same ringing ears that I had and couldn’t hear me. That was what I told myself. Not that he was dead. Not that his barrel had caved in and that he’d been crushed to death by the falling debris. I couldn’t let myself think that way. I wouldn’t.

  So I wrapped my hands around a length of rebar and pulled myself up into a seated position so I could take stock of my injuries. I was in pretty decent shape, all things considered, mostly just bruised, battered, and achingly sore from all the rolling around in the barrel—

  A faint whisper of noise about fifteen feet to my left had me reaching for one of the knives still tucked up my sleeves.

  “Gin!” The whisper took on a more distinctive, welcome sound. “Gin, where are you?”

  I sighed with relief. Fletcher. I rose up into a crouch, ignored my screaming muscles, wobbly legs, and pounding head, and hurried in his direction.

  Fletcher had also managed to dig himself out of the debris that had blocked his barrel opening, and he was leaning against the side of the dented container, his face, hair, and clothes streaked with dust, soot, and other grime.

  I crouched down beside him, my eyes sweeping over his lean, wiry body. He seemed to be okay, although the way he clutched his arm over his chest told me that he probably had some bruised ribs. Nothing that Jo-Jo couldn’t fix, though.

  “I’m here,” I said, smoothing back his hair, which was almost white from all the concrete dust in it. “I’m all right. You?”

  Fletcher smiled, his green eyes bright. “Still holding on—”

  “Over here!” a voice called out. “I thought I saw something move!”

  Fletcher and I both snapped our heads in that direction. A pair of headlights popped on and crept toward us along the gravel road that ringed the warehouse. Looked like our attackers wanted to make sure we were dead, instead of just assuming that we’d been killed.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Hide or fight?”

  Fletcher held up his revolver. “Fight. I don’t take too kindly to someone trying to bury me alive, do you?”

  My grin was even wider and colder than his was.

  I helped him to his feet. Then, keeping low, we made our way through the piles of debris until we found a wall that hadn’t completely crumbled. We slid behind the cinder blocks, peered around the edges, and watched the headlights slowly approach.

  The yellow beams glowed like two round, giant bug eyes as they pierced the darkness. Fletcher and I ducked down as the lights swept over our hiding spot.

  A black SUV coasted to a stop about fifty feet away. The doors opened, and the two men and two women who’d shot up the poker game and blown up the warehouse got out. One of the men had a crossbow perched on his shoulder, while the other guy reached for his Fire magic, the flames of his power flickering in his palm. The two women both clutched guns. All four of them approached the warehouse debris, stopping at the edge of the destruction, not too far away from the barrels that Fletcher and I had crawled out of.

  “I heard voices, and I swear that I saw somebody move over here,” a man’s voice rumbled out into the night. “This is where they were when we blew up the warehouse.”

  “You’re being paranoid, Will,” one of the women answered him. “There’s no way anyone could have survived that explosion. Is there, Tomas?”

  “No way, Valerie,” Tomas, the second man, said.

  “Yeah,” a fourth voice, the other woman, chimed in. “We made sure that all the cops were dead, and we buried the other two alive, whoever they were. So quit worrying, Will. I want to do something fun now. Like count our take.”

  “Sonya’s right,” Valerie chimed back in. “Let’s look at our loot!”

  The two women whooped with joy, skipping back over to their vehicle, and Will and Tomas joined in with their merriment. Tomas opened the back door of the SUV, grabbed a black duffel bag, and hauled it over to the hood to use the glow from the headlights to count their ill-gotten gains.

  What they didn’t realize was that the headlights made it that much easier for Fletcher and me to see them as well. I looked at the old man. He gestured with his hand, indicating that I should go left while he went right. I nodded back.

  Fletcher and I picked our way through the debris, quietly moving from one rubble pile to the next until we reached the gravel road where the SUV was parked. We crouched down in a ditch that ran alongside the road, but we were still about thirty feet behind the vehicle, and our would-be killers were far too busy cackling and counting their money to care about anything else.

 
So we both rose up and stepped onto the road. I crossed over to the other side so that I was to the left of the SUV, with Fletcher still on the right. Once we were both in position, we eased forward, weapons ready.

  The robbers were so sure we were dead that they hadn’t done the smart thing and hightailed it away from the scene of the crime. At the very least, they should have waited until they were somewhere safe to count their money, not spill the stacks of bills all over the hood of their vehicle like it was the poker table they’d shot up inside the warehouse. Kenny Rogers would have been so disappointed in them.

  Fletcher and I were about ten feet behind the SUV when I raised my hand and signaled him. Both of us slowed our approach, creeping forward far more cautiously. We had the element of surprise, and we shouldn’t have any problems taking the robbers out—

  Crunch.

  My boot landed on something in the darkness, maybe some glass from a blown-out window that had landed on the road. Whatever it was, the ensuing noise seemed as loud as a clap of thunder announcing our presence. I cursed and rushed forward, so did Fletcher, but it was already too late.

  “Somebody’s here!” Tomas shouted.

  Tomas was the one with the crossbow, and he grabbed it off the hood, stepped around the SUV, and held the weapon out in front of him, ready to let loose a barbed metal bolt at whatever moved. He didn’t realize that he had moved into the center of one of the headlight beams, making himself the perfect, well-lit target. Idiot. He was already dead.

  Crack!

  Sure enough, the familiar retort of Fletcher’s gun ripped through the air, and Tomas crumpled to the ground, thanks to the bullet that Fletcher had just put into the middle of his forehead. Crossbows were great for snipers. Not so much when you were up against the Tin Man and his trusty revolver.

  Will, the Fire elemental, screamed in rage and reared back, ready to throw the ball of flames flickering in his hand at Fletcher.

  Crack!

  The old man coolly put him down with a headshot as well.

  That left the two women, who stood there, mouths gaping open, staring down at Tomas’s and Will’s still forms like they couldn’t believe that the men were dead. Then one of them, Valerie, I thought, shook off her daze and sprang into action, heading for the driver’s-side door.

  But I didn’t give her the chance to get away.

  I sprinted for the SUV, and Valerie and I reached the door at the same time. She lunged for the handle, and I punched my knife all the way through her hand, so that the blade scraped into the SUV’s shiny black paint. Valerie screamed and then screamed again as I ripped the knife right back out. She dropped her uninjured hand to her waistband, trying to yank free the gun there, but I lashed out with my knife and laid her throat open with the blade. She coughed and coughed, clawing at the deep, fatal wound, even as her legs went out from under her, and she hit the ground.

  The last woman, Sonya, didn’t even try to get in the car. Instead, she scooped the money back inside the duffel bag, grabbed it off the hood, and started running down the gravel road, even as she held her gun up over her shoulder and fired at us.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Her shots went wild, and I moved to the front of the SUV. Fletcher stepped up beside me. I arched my eyebrows at him in a silent question, and he swept his hand out to the side with a gallant flourish.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  I grinned and flipped my bloody knife over in my hand, so that I was holding it by the blade. Then I drew my arm back, took careful aim, and let the weapon fly.

  Thunk.

  The knife plunged into the middle of Sonya’s back, and she yelped and did a header onto the road, the duffel bag of money tumbling from her hand. She didn’t move after that.

  “Nice throw,” Fletcher said.

  “I had a good teacher.”

  “Yes, you did. Well, then, let’s check and make sure that they’re all dead.” He grinned. “Wouldn’t want them coming back to haunt us like we just did to them, now would we?”

  I grinned back.

  We checked the bodies, but they were all dead, and the dry, dusty earth was soaking up all the blood oozing out of their wounds. I pulled my knife out of the runner’s back, grabbed the duffel bag of money, and met Fletcher back in front of the SUV. The headlights were still on, casting their yellow beams out into the night. In the distance, behind the vehicle, something shuffled across the road, a raccoon or maybe a possum. Its eyes flashed crimson for a moment before it scurried off into the shadows.

  Fletcher looked out over the rubble of the ruined warehouse. “We should call in a tip about this. Anonymous, of course. I want the Colson family to know that they won’t have to worry about Officer Malone and her demands for protection money anymore.”

  “Speaking of money, what do you want to do with this?” I gestured at the duffel bag. “There’s got to be at least fifty thousand dollars in there, maybe more.”

  Fletcher peered inside at the bloody, crumpled bills. “I say we give it to the Colson family. It won’t bring back their boy, but at least they can start rebuilding their store.”

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  The old man stepped forward and zipped up the bag—

  That faint rasp drew me out of my memory and penetrated my foggy consciousness, along with something warm and wet drip-drip-dripping all over my face. I snapped back to the here and now and realized that I was still breathing, still alive, and still curled up in the back corner of the Pork Pit.

  16

  I pulled my nose and mouth away from my breathing hole, opened my eyes, and surveyed the damage.

  My frozen-food fort had completely melted away, leaving nothing behind but singed, shriveled boxes all around me. The fire hadn’t touched me, thanks to my Ice magic, but what I could see of the restaurant was a scorched, sooty, ashy mess. It looked as if the fire had swept right up against my elemental Ice igloo, burning everything in its path, before finally running out of fuel and dying down, thanks to the sprinklers in the ceiling.

  They were the source of the water on my face, and I tilted my head up, letting the spray wash over me. If nothing else, the warm drops sliding down my skin told me that I was still alive.

  So, as the water continued to spew down, I wearily got to my feet to see what remained of the Pork Pit.

  * * *

  As I staggered away from the wall, the depth of the destruction fully hit me.

  Everything was a scorched, blackened, and now soggy mess. All the dish towels, foodstuffs, aprons, and napkins had been reduced to piles of flaky gray ash, while most of the silverware had melted to the floor and was now stuck there, as if someone had glued down all the forks, knives, and spoons as part of some weird abstract-art project.

  I was so exhausted that I dragged my feet along the floor, sending up clouds of ash and soot that tickled my nose and made me cough. I clamped my hand over my mouth, muffling the sound as best I could, and moved over to where the double doors had once stood. They’d been completely burned away, and I slowly shuffled through the opening, dreading what I knew I was going to find in the storefront.

  Utter destruction.

  That was the only way to describe it.

  The tables, chairs, and booths were all long gone, incinerated by the fire. All that remained of them were a few spindly metal legs sticking up out of the mounds of soot like crosses marking fresh graves. The patches of floor that I could see beneath the chunky, ashy debris resembled jagged pieces of black molten glass. Most of the appliances had actually survived, although the flames had burned so hot and fast that their edges were smushed and droopy, as though they were candy bars that had melted in the sun. The long counter had caved in on itself, while the ceiling tiles had all been burned away, letting me see the twisted shapes that the flames had scorched onto the brick above. Despite the water still spewing from the sprinklers, a few small fires continued to burn here and there, while exposed wires jutted out from the wall
s, sparking and cracking with bright blue and white flashes of electricity, just like they had in that warehouse so long ago. Even the bulletproof windows had melted, with thin, brittle-looking bubbles now bulging out of the once-clear panes.

  I’d known that the damage would be bad, but to see the Pork Pit, Fletcher’s place, my gin joint, reduced to . . . to . . . to . . . nothing . . .

  My heart seized in my chest, aching, twisting, and sputtering with loss. A strangled sob escaped my cracked, blistered lips, and I bent over double, my hands fisting in the folds of my T-shirt, right over my heart, as if I could ease my terrible hurt. Tears scalded my eyes, even hotter and harsher than the fire had been. I had thought that nothing could be more horrific than seeing the ruined rubble of my family’s mansion after it had been destroyed.

  But this—this was worse.

  “Well,” a low, male voice drifted inside to me. “That should finally shut off the sprinkler system.”

  I blinked and looked up. Sure enough, the sprinklers were no longer spouting water. For the first time, I realized that I could see odd, distorted shapes moving outside through the warped bubbles and melted glass of the storefront windows. I didn’t know how long the fire had raged, but it was still dark out, except for the steady swirl of blue and white lights on the street. The cops were still outside, and no doubt so were Madeline, Emery, and Jonah.

  I wasn’t safe. Not here. Not yet.

  I ducked down behind what was left of the counter, straining to hear what was going on outside.

  “We can’t go in just yet,” that same male voice rumbled again. “It’s still too hot in places, and the structural soundness has probably been compromised.”

  He laughed at the bad joke he’d made, and his sly chuckles told me he didn’t want to come inside and actually hose down what was left of the blaze. Not really. Like the police, the fire department had its share of corruption and took bribes to put out fires . . . or not.

  “Of course not, Chief,” Madeline answered him. “I trust your judgment. It’s already such a terrible tragedy. There’s no need to add to it by putting your firefighters in danger.”