Nite Fire: Flash Point

by C. L. Schneider

  Another would have been chosen in my absence to train her. Clearly that was the case or she would be far less capable, like she was before I left her hiding in the forest.

  Before I left her behind.

  Creed’s criteria for my list of potential enemies had been chillingly accurate. An unrequited love, someone who feels betrayed, jealous, envious or let down. Someone you disappointed or left behind. From the outside, Brynne could fit into nearly all those categories. In reality, we’d barely known each other a year before I left Drimera. Our interactions had been limited and mostly impersonal. Had I perceived our relationship so differently than she? Had I missed something? Or was this a Guild mission she was simply taking pleasure in?

  Does it matter? I thought. Regardless of her motive, Brynne had to be stopped, before she murdered Sal, or Henry, or the damn sales girl at the shoe store.

  Finding myself at the entrance to a park, I turned down the paved path. Benches, swings, and playground equipment lined both sides. Landscaped flower beds followed me to the park’s center. It was nicely laid out with bright, fresh-cut grass surrounding a low wading fountain. The afternoon was warm. Dozens of giggling children were running through the shooting streams as the leaping cascades curved high; forming arches of water that danced about the concrete circle.

  Parents and grandparents occupied the benches outside the reach of the spray, guarding empty strollers, talking and laughing, soothing impatient toddlers with hugs and boxes of juice.

  I shoved my hand, red with Creed’s blood, in my pocket. I didn’t want the sight of it to scare anyone or disturb the quiet peacefulness in the air. Losing it in public wasn’t good either, but it hit me hard to realize how nice (and how foreign) the serenity felt. There was no conflict here, no scorched bodies or trauma. Here, I was a woman strolling in the park. I wasn’t walking the fence. I wasn’t worrying about falling over too far on one side or the other. Not a single life depended on my next move or my next lie.

  Yet the tenuous bubble of tranquility I’d wandered into was a lie unto itself. Perhaps it was the biggest one yet, because there was no real peace to be had. Everyone I’d encountered since moving back to the city, everyone I encountered from this moment forward, was in danger.

  Dropping down onto an empty section of bench, I pushed the hair back from my face. I knew I shouldn’t stay. My sudden absence would have Barnes sending out the troops, and Evans (my newly assigned bodyguard), bearing the brunt of his anger. I needed to call in and pull his ass out of the fire, then go to the hospital and check on Creed. But the panic of hearing Brynne’s name had subsided. Its absence had left me drained. I needed a minute.

  Letting my thoughts wander, I listened to a young mother fret over sleep habits and baby food. A father was playing catch with his son. Laughter blended with the splash of water and the pained cry of a scraped knee. One young girl sat alone, running her fingers through the water with a distant smile on her round face. Her wispy white-blonde hair brushed the shoulder straps of her red swimsuit like the frail edge of a cloud. The strands were the same color as Carly’s, yet the familiarity that overcame me as I watched her, felt so much deeper.

  Wrapped in thought, I sensed her presence behind me only a breath before hands clamped down on my shoulders. The solid, restrictive grip cut short my reflex to attack as Brynne bent close and whispered. “Don’t you just love the park?”

  Twenty-Seven

  Her sad sigh caressed my ear. “You know, don’t you?” she said.

  I smiled slightly, enjoying her disappointment. “What’s the matter, Brynne? Reech spoil your surprise?”

  “Reech is a fool,” she spat. “I should kill him for blurting out my name like that.”

  “You think it was an accident?” I laughed. “Reech gave you up, Brynne. He wanted me to know it was you. He wants me to kill you, because you’re unstable. You’re crazy. Useless. You’re nothing but a liability to him now.”

  “You’re wrong. Not all of us are so quick to betray.”

  “Is that why you’re doing this? You think I betrayed you?”

  “Oh, sweet, Dahlia, you didn’t betray me. You broke me. Now...” Her voice turned hard as ice. “Who’s next? The lanky gas station attendant who winked at you last week? The perky cashier at the market who complimented your hair and couldn’t believe the color didn’t come from a box. Yes,” she whispered, “we’ve had a tail on you for weeks. Living here has eroded your skills right down to the level of tragic. How Naalish would weep if she saw you now.”

  “If you knew where I was, why didn’t you come get me?”

  She snuggled her head against mine. “I much preferred to watch you run around taking pictures of the dead, scooping their bits into little vials…feeling their pain. That is what you do, isn’t it? Feel their suffering, watch them die? I hope you enjoy it, because that is the most pathetic, useless superpower I’ve ever heard of. ”

  “Superpower?” I laughed. “Is that how you see our kind in this world, stronger, faster…able to leap tall buildings? Is that how you think they would see us?”

  “They would see us as gods.”

  “You know nothing about these people. But go ahead. Man up. Pull up those black supervillain panties of yours and shift right here. Let’s see how quickly they bow down.”

  “I wouldn’t take their worship. I loathe this world. There’s no grace here, no balance. It’s a sandbox, nothing more. Filled with toys to play with and piss on. And right now…I’m pissing on every pitiful life that’s brushed up against yours. Though, I don’t think it’s had quite the impact I wanted. Maybe I should start leaving them alive. Let their limbs burn while they watch. Let you find them skinless and begging to die.”

  My fingers clenched the edge of the bench. “If you think I’d fucking let you—”

  “I think you can’t stop me. I think you’re weak. You’re a coward. A human-lover. A defector.” I felt her smile against my ear. “A traitor.”

  “And you’re a fucking psycho bitch. What happened to you, Brynne? You were young, eager. You could have gone far in the ranks.”

  “I have. I’m second to Reech. A favorite of the Queen. I learned to wield my gifts far better than you. I took your place. No,” she said sharply. “I surpassed it.”

  “Congratulations. Why don’t you run home, so you can go back to kissing the Queen’s ass and stop hounding mine?”

  “I could. Ella is dead. All the little ends were tied and… snipped off,” she sung, clipped and satisfied. “Although, Reech should be careful when he goes home. Papa Aidric might have his head, and his arms, and his legs, and his fingers. Oh,” she giggled, “and his heart. But that still leaves you.” As quickly as it came, her amusement withered. “Reech warned me to leave it alone. He was worried if I made contact you might interfere with our assignment. So I waited. He put someone on you to learn your routine; where you go, where you live, who you talk to. He told me what he’d learned. He showed me pictures. Like that was good enough. Like knowing you’d lost your edge, your sense of home, your identity, would make up for anything.”

  “I don’t need to make anything up to you. I barely knew you.”

  I felt the claws come out on her hands. They dug in through my shirt, my human skin. Glancing around at the unsuspecting people in the park, I clenched my jaw; refusing to acknowledge the pain. “I know you’re off-mission. Naalish would never sanction public killings. So whatever retribution you think you’re due, it better damn well be worth it, because it will ruin you…by my hand or hers.”

  She squealed in excitement. “I can’t wait for you to try.”

  “Who is Ella Chandler? Was she one of us?”

  “She was an atrocity. An abhorrence.”

  “Sounds like you two had something in common.”

  Brynne’s hold on me tightened. I felt the blood well, the heat as it climbed into her claws. “To think, I looked up to you, that I wanted to make you proud. The day of my appointment, when I was given to your
squad, I thought it was the beginning of my life. But you took that life with you when you left. You took everything. No lyrriken had ever fled punishment before. None had turned their back on a squad like you. We were believed to be damaged, corrupted, spoiled…tainted by your influence. Do you have any idea what they did to fix us? What they did to our bodies and our minds? What they did to me?”

  A picture in my head I didn’t want, I shook it away. “Brynne…I’m sorry. I—”

  “The pieces went back together. It took a while and, a few might be out of order,” she said, glib and dismissive. “But the pain made me better. It made me stronger. There’s such strength in pain, Dahlia, such freedom. There’s love and purity. True pain cleanses you. It burns away the shit and the lies and the sins, and lets you see what you never could before. It lets you be what you never could. The Guild showed me that. The Guild gave me back what you took away.”

  “Don’t act like they did you a favor, Brynne. They tortured you.”

  “They made me better. Better than you.” Her stifling grip bore in. As my skin blistered and bled, a playful malevolence seeped into her voice. “Look and see what I can do now,” she whispered. “Look and see…”

  Her eerie invitation chilled my skin. It echoed in my head as a woman on the bench to my left began to cough. Her body jerked uncontrollably. She dropped the bottle of water in her hand and a man to my right choked on his drink. The child in the stroller in front of him spit the juice from her mouth as she wheezed, fighting to catch her breath.

  Emboldened, I pushed to my feet. Before I could take a step, Brynne slammed me back down. “Sit,” she insisted. Her fingers thrust deeper. Blood dribbled down the front of my shirt. “The demonstration isn’t over.”

  The fountain water started to gurgle and bubble.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Do you feel their pain yet? Should I do more?”

  Uncertainty swept the park as ribbons of steam rose from the pool.

  Anxious, I winced in her powerful grasp. “Brynne, stop!”

  “You dare give me orders?”

  “Someone has to. Because you’ve clearly lost your fucking mind.”

  Cries of confusion became shouts of alarm as the simmering turned to a roiling boil. Parents rushed in for screaming toddlers, who were too stunned to move as the water bubbled around their feet. Trauma poured like black rain off their trembling bodies.

  “You,” she promised, “will outlive them all.”

  Throwing my arms up, I broke her hold. I had a single, swift thought of turning and incinerating her. But my legs were already in motion, taking me forward, into the pool. I pushed parents with nothing of substance on their feet out of the scalding water and threw my arms around screaming children; scooping them up and ferrying them out. I went back and forth several times, refusing to recognize my own discomfort until they were safe.

  When the fountain was empty, I knelt beside the stone lip. My skin red and stinging, I watched the water boil. Fire and heat I could command. I had no idea if I could lower the temperature of water.

  I put my hands in to find out, but the pool, dyed red and sullied with the greasy blackness of so much child-trauma, was cool to the touch. The surface was still. There were no more bubbles. The last traces of steam were drifting lazily up into the air.

  I looked back at the bench. Not surprisingly, Brynne had already fled.

  Dropping my weight back, I sat down among her victims. Guilt burned in my stomach at being grateful they were even alive, while parents whimpered and screamed, holding their scalded babies, even as blisters welled on their own exposed skin. A weeping grandmother thanked me for helping. Several others did, too. I nodded, accepting their gratitude, but I wanted to shy away. I wanted to tell them I didn’t deserve it. Because the pain they were feeling, the days and weeks of healing ahead of them—the emotional strain that would cling to their souls—I had brought that here.

  I glanced at the dark-haired woman with the blanket in her hands. It was the third time she’d tried to give it to me. For the third time, I shook my head ‘no’. She didn’t walk away like she had before, though. Evans’s partner took a seat on the bench beside me, placed the blanket on the space between us, and clasped her hands. She rubbed one thumb over the nail of the other, tracing a chip in the clear polish. Absently, she pulled down the sleeves of her uniform shirt. The midnight blue was a nice color against her olive skin.

  As Geronimo sat, offering the silent support she thought I needed, I waited for her to ask what happened. I’d been sketchy on the details. Someone had chocked my silence up to shock, and I let them. In reality, my statement wasn’t crucial. Not when they had a whole damn park full of witnesses. I certainly couldn’t lie or cover it up. I couldn’t argue that Brynne wasn’t responsible. Not now, when everyone knew our suspects were fixated on me. One of them, at least, I thought.

  Whatever Reech was up to here, it wasn’t this.

  I glanced at my bench-mate. “I hear they call you Geronimo.”

  Her thin lips lifted in a half-smile. “You jump off one little building the first week on the job, and you never live it down.”

  “That would do it. What happened?”

  “Domestic disturbance. Some guy beat the shit out of his wife and the neighbors called it in. The fire escape was his only way out. Except the idiot was jacked, and he went up instead of down. When he reached the roof, he panicked.”

  “He jumped?”

  “He was aiming for the dumpster to break his fall. It broke his leg instead. He struck the side when he fell in and broke the bone in two places. I broke the other one when I landed on him.” A slight blush darkened her cheeks. “Anyway, I’m Veronica.” She held her hand out and I shook it. “But everyone calls me Ronnie, or Ron, so Geronimo kind of fit.”

  “It’s catchy. I like it.”

  “Everyone gets a nickname. You’ll earn yours soon enough.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Just be sure to own it. Otherwise, you’ll have something new to live down.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” she said hurriedly, catching me off guard. “You didn’t hurt these people. You aren’t responsible for her actions.”

  “I’m pretty sure I am.”

  “Do you know why she’s doing this?”

  I hesitated. “I let her down once.”

  Ronnie nodded. “Sometimes once is all it takes.”

  I glanced away.

  “Why don’t you let me take you home?” she said. “You look exhausted.”

  “I am. But you shouldn’t give me a ride. You shouldn’t be sitting here. You shouldn’t be anywhere near me. Brynne is coming after me last, which makes all the rest of you targets.”

  “We’ve cleared the park, Miss Nite. There’s no one here. No one is watching.”

  Bullshit. Brynne was Guild trained. She was watching.

  When I didn’t argue further, Ronnie stood. “Did the paramedics see you yet?”

  “They’ve been a little busy.”

  “You said the water was cooling by the time you went in after the kids, but your hands and arms are still red. And you have some marks where it splashed on your neck,” she added, gesturing at her own.

  “They don’t hurt. I’m sure they’ll fade soon.”

  “Of course. But let’s get those cuts on your shoulders checked out before we leave.” Her shrewd gaze ran over the bloody charred rents in my shirt. “How did those happen? I’m not sure you mentioned it before.”

  She damn well knew I didn’t. “Brynne came up at me from behind. I don’t know what she had in her hands. Some type of blade, I guess. I couldn’t see it.”

  “Looks like finger marks…or claws. Didn’t Detective Creed find some sort of claw at the hospital?”

  “He did.”

  “And you have no idea how she made the fountain boil?”

  “Something chemical. And no doubt untraceable.”


  “Forensics will have a go at it. Maybe they’ll come up with something.” She looked over at where her partner stood, speaking with anxious family members. “Evans won’t let anything happen to you. None of us will.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Officer, but it’s not me I’m worried about. And I’m not sitting on my ass in some safe house under police protection. I’m going home. I’m going to shower and sleep, and then I’m going to get up and work this case like it has nothing to do with me. If you want to tag along, be my guest. But you need to remember that I’m not a cop. I’m not bound by the same protocols and procedures you are. If you have a problem with that, you can arrest me or look the other way.”

  Ronnie chewed her bottom lip, thinking over my words. Annoyance had narrowed her pretty eyes, but her voice wasn’t near as angry as I’d expected. “Does Detective Creed look the other way?”

  “It hasn’t come to that.”

  “And when it does?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you own a gun, Miss Nite?”

  “And a knife.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes.”

  Ronnie nodded; the muscles in her face tight. “You know I can’t let you do anything illegal.”

  “What about immoral?”

  A brief, somber grin broke her stern façade. “I know you’re upset, but if I’m hearing you correctly, you’re asking me to risk my job because you don’t know where to draw the line.”

  “No. I’m asking you to risk your job because she doesn’t know where to draw the line. If you don’t believe me, ask the parents who just watched their children’s blood color that fountain.”

  Heat crept into Ronnie’s face. I thought maybe I’d said too much. Making the woman think I was a crazy chic with an arsenal in my closet wasn’t the brightest idea.

  Impatient, I said, “What’s the verdict, Officer?”

  She stared at me a moment longer. “I heard Creed throw it around the station a couple of times. Evans agreed. But looking at you, I didn’t see it. Now I do.” Ronnie turned away. “See the paramedics so we can get you home to rest…” she threw me a brief, serious squint, “Barracuda.”