Into the Flame

by Christina Dodd

  Douglas. In the depths of her mind, she’d been waiting for him.

  Douglas had arrived to help his relatives.

  The question was—which relatives?

  She ran to the window.

  A Washington State Patrol car swerved around the wrecked limousines and ripped up the driveway with the throaty roar of a police interceptor engine at full throttle. One Varinski in a business suit was running toward the back of the house; they almost creamed him.

  The patrol car cut a cookie through a pack of snarling wolves racing to attack the group protecting Tasya.

  Wolves flew into the air, then fell to the earth in human form.

  Douglas was on their side. He had taken his stand with the Wilders.

  The car headed toward the mob attacking Konstantine. Varinskis lifted their automatic weapons and shot two bursts into the car.

  ‘‘No!’’ Firebird strained forward. ‘‘Douglas!’’

  The windshield blew out. The tires slipped on the mud. The car made a swift turn, skidded—and flipped.

  The two groups protecting Tasya and Konstantine had combined, were surrounded. As the women watched, one of the tigers leaped and brought down a fighter, broke his neck, ripped open his abdomen— and began to feast.

  Firebird and Zorana turned away, crying in horror, and when they turned back, it was over.

  But Zorana gasped, her eyes wide with terror. Brokenly, she said, ‘‘Oh, no, my love. No, I beg you. Don’t.’’

  For the first time in her life, Firebird saw her father change—change from an enfeebled old man into a huge, ferocious gray wolf with a pointed snout rich with strong teeth, and glowing red eyes. The transformation lifted the curse of his illness, and he attacked the tigers with intelligence and ferocity, proving why he was the fabled leader of the Varinskis.

  ‘‘He changes because he knows he has no choice,’’ Zorana said softly. ‘‘He sees they have no chance, so he’ll go to hell fighting . . . for us. He sacrifices his soul . . . for us.’’ She looked at the icons on the table, at their failed hope of freeing Konstantine from the damnation promised him. She purposefully walked toward the trapdoor.

  Firebird leaped and grabbed her arm. ‘‘Don’t.’’

  ‘‘If the icons can’t break the pact, then I will die beside your father.’’ Zorana yanked herself free. She went to Aleksandr and hugged him fiercely, and determination and anguish gleamed in her eyes. ‘‘Save him. If you can, save him.’’

  Opening the trapdoor, she dropped the rope ladder and disappeared through the hole.

  So it was up to Firebird. She had to save her father, her family, her son . . . her lover. She could not give up.

  At the table, she stacked the icons and placed them once more.

  Aleksandr dragged a chair over, climbed up, and shook his head disapprovingly. ‘‘No, Mama. Treasures. Gramma treasures.’’

  Outside, a crash rattled the windows and shook the house.

  As quickly as she could, Firebird returned to the window.

  In what remained of the vineyard, the helicopter lay in ruins, shot out of the sky. The passenger door opened, and a brown hawk—Rurik—flew up and soared toward the escalating battle around Tasya and Konstantine.

  Flames started out from under the hood of the patrol car. Soon, the gas tank would explode, and inside, no life stirred. ‘‘Douglas . . .’’

  Zorana sprinted across the yard and jumped the fence.

  Four Varinskis ran to intercept her.

  Knives flashing, eyes deadly, she turned to face them, a tiny Gypsy woman who would rather die than live without her husband.

  From behind the house, a huge wolf ran to help her. Jasha. Jasha would fight at his mother’s side.

  ‘‘Mama, treasures,’’ Aleksandr insisted.

  ‘‘Go ahead and play with them, little one,’’ she said. Clutching the windowsill so hard her fingers turned white, Firebird watched the destruction of everything she loved. Five minutes ago, she had been sure the fourth icon would turn the tide. Now . . . the Wilders were losing the battle.

  Then . . . Douglas crawled out, half-clothed, covered with blood and bruises, but alive. ‘‘Get away from the car,’’ she whispered. ‘‘Get away before it blows.’’

  He turned and crawled back in.

  He was crazy. Crazy.

  Firebird wiped tears out of her eyes as quickly as they formed, desperate to view every movement, to figure out what in the hell he was doing.

  He backed out, dragging an unconscious Adrik after him.

  She clutched her chest in relief. Douglas had saved Adrik. He had saved her brother.

  Then the wolves arrived, snarling and brutal.

  Douglas shot the first three. They flipped, fell, twitched, and were still.

  The others kept coming, swarming around the two men like fire ants consuming a tender morsel.

  Firebird couldn’t stand to watch.

  She turned and faced into the room.

  Aleksandr stood on the chair again, rearranging the icons.

  She couldn’t stand not to watch, and turned back to the window.

  In Douglas’s face, she saw grim fury. He might be defeated, but he would think like a man—and fight like a cougar. He stripped off his pants and boots. His bones melted and reknit into the bones of a great cat. Golden hair covered his skin. His teeth gleamed and his claws slashed.

  Behind him, Adrik staggered to his feet, shook his head to clear it, and in a flash, his clothes came off, and he transformed into a great black panther. The two men, her brother and her lover, fought the Varinski onslaught with their primitive, beastly weapons: claws, fangs, pure brute muscle, and furious resolve.

  Beneath Firebird’s feet, the floor shuddered hard, once, twice.

  She braced herself. ‘‘What was that?’’

  The Varinskis must have lobbed a grenade through a window.

  But no. The shaking increased, rattling the window frames, the rafters, the furniture.

  Outside every fight came to an abrupt halt. The intensity of the shaking increased. The trees swayed violently, as if blown by a great wind. Shingles fell off the roof, and the glass in the window on the other side of the room shattered. Fumaroles opened in the valley, spewing hot water and steam.

  ‘‘Earthquake.’’ Firebird clutched the wall. ‘‘Earthquake!’’

  Birds fell from the skies. Birds . . . that, as they fell, turned into men, men who screamed in fear and hit the ground with bone-crunching force.

  She whirled toward Aleksandr, to snatch him in her arms and protect him.

  He stood on the chair beside the red-clothed table, his dark brown eyes wide. ‘‘Mama, Aleksandr make the puzzle.’’

  ‘‘What? You . . . That’s . . .’’ Impossible. She stumbled across the shuddering floor toward the table, and the closer she got to the icons, the less shaking there was. It was as if the earthquake originated with the icons, and the icons protected Aleksandr.

  He stood, his wide, little-boy grin beaming. ‘‘Look. Aleksandr make the puzzle.’’

  It was true. Aleksandr had united the icons. The four visions of the Madonna looked as glorious and new as the day they were created.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Firebird fell to her knees beside the table and rested her forehead on the red tablecloth. Grateful tears welled in her eyes, and she whispered, ‘‘Thank you. Thank you.’’

  ‘‘Mama?’’ Aleksandr patted her downturned head. ‘‘See the puzzle?’’

  She took a long breath and raised her head. She smiled at her wonderful, brilliant, darling boy. ‘‘I see. That is so good. Mama is proud!’’ Gathering him in her arms, she hugged him with all the love and joy in her heart.

  He hugged her back and placed a big, sloppy kiss on her cheek.

  Standing, she set him back on the chair. ‘‘Tell Mama what you did.’’

  ‘‘Aleksandr used Gramma’s treasure.’’ He coughed and rubbed his eyes.

  Firebird looked over at
the pieces of her mother’s treasure that had been set so carefully at each compass point. Three stones, red, blue, and black, rattled with the shaking of the earth. The white stone, the one that was purity . . . was gone.

  At last she understood.

  From the day that the pact had been enacted, the devil had feared that someone, somewhere, would put them back together and steal from him his most wicked servants, the Varinski beasts. So before he divided the icons into four, he cut a piece from the center and gave it to a tribe of wanderers—Zorana’s Romany tribe.

  That was why the seer of the tribe had a stone called purity.

  That was why the tribe had a seer at all. For even the tiniest piece of the four icons brought a great gift—the ability to see the future. A future without the devil’s pact.

  Firebird wrapped her son in her arms and held him. Just held him. And remembered her mother’s prediction.

  A child will perform the impossible.

  Aleksandr had saved them all.

  The shaking slowed and stopped. Keeping Aleksandr in her arms, she went to the window.

  The tigers, the wolves, the wild dogs, the birds of prey were gone. Men, naked men, stood in their places. Humans with nothing special about them.

  Douglas was a man again. Adrik, Rurik, Jasha were men again.

  Konstantine was a man again.

  And they were smiling.

  The Varinskis had prospered only because of the power given them by Satan. Now they were nothing, for they didn’t know how to be mere mortals.

  Now they were Wilder prey.

  ‘‘Come on, little boy. It’s time to go.’’ She walked toward the trapdoor, her son in her arms, free from the horror that had held them in thrall for all their lives.

  Smoke oozed out of the opening as if it were a chimney.

  Aleksandr coughed again. ‘‘Mama, I can’t breathe.’’

  She looked down into her bedroom. Fire crawled along the floor and spread up the walls.

  Her heart thumped, began to race.

  She slammed the trapdoor shut and ran to the front window. Flames leaped past the glass, and the heat drove her back.

  ‘‘Mama?’’ Tears filled Aleksandr’s eyes. He coughed and buried his head in her shirt.

  She ran to the back window. The horse barn burned with all the vigor of dry wood and hay. The giant tree that grew outside her bedroom blazed feverishly.

  This was no normal fire. The inferno consumed the house too quickly, and from all sides. Someone— some Varinski—had set the blaze.

  Her family would live and prosper.

  ‘‘Mama?’’ Her child was heavy in her arms.

  She and Aleksandr were going to die.

  ‘‘It’s okay.’’ She went to the crib and got his blanket and Bernie, the soft yellow duck with the bright orange bill. She opened a bottle of water, thoroughly wet the blanket, and threw it over Aleksandr’s head.

  Ignited by the heat, the red cloth beneath the icons caught on fire, and the paint on the table crackled and bubbled. Fire ate at the edges of the trapdoor, and the hinges glowed red. The floor grew hot under her feet. The boards smoked and warped. Flame ignited along one long crack, then another, chasing her from place to place.

  It’s all right. I can still breathe. Aleksandr is still alive. We have a chance.

  They had no chance. She knew it.

  But she opened another bottle of water and splashed it on the floor. It steamed, then boiled.

  The trapdoor fell into the blaze below. With a roar, the wall behind her went up in flame. The floorboards cracked and tilted toward the open hole in the floor. The angle grew greater and greater, until she could no longer stand, and with a scream, she slid right into the heart of the inferno.

  She landed on the floor of her bedroom. All around her, flames ripped through the house, but somehow, she’d landed on the one spot where the fire had winked out.

  Lucky, she thought. And, I can still breathe.

  ‘‘Mama!’’ Aleksandr peeked out from under the blanket. ‘‘Let’s go.’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ She wasn’t going to sit here and wait for the house to collapse around her. She didn’t know how to give up. She had to try to escape. She had to try. ‘‘Let’s get out of here.’’

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Douglas stood back-to-back with his brother Adrik and laughed aloud. He was battered, bruised, broken, in pain. Yet he laughed because he had a family, a brother who fought for him, and he was free from the devil’s control.

  And because somehow, he would make Firebird his.

  It wouldn’t be easy. He knew that. He knew she wouldn’t easily forgive him. He might not deserve to be forgiven. But if they’d managed to come this far, to live through the plunge into the ocean, to unite the icons and break the pact, to fight against insurmountable odds and win—he could find some way to make her love him again.

  Adrik laughed, too. He had a huge bump on his head, he bled from a myriad of tiny cuts caused by the shattered windshield, and still he laughed.

  Here and there, across the field of battle, Doug heard other laughter.

  His family, his family, was laughing. Laughing with joy, with pride, with relief. They stood on their own soil in their own valley, amid destruction and death, and knew they had won the greatest battle of all.

  The Varinskis were not laughing.

  They stood stunned, lax, released from the devil’s pact . . . human. All human. They had all changed into beasts. They had abandoned their clothes, their rifles, their knives, their pistols, to effect the transformation. Now every Varinski and Wilder on the field was naked, their only weapons their fists and their fighting skills.

  ‘‘This is going to be one good brawl,’’ Adrik said.

  ‘‘You’re right.’’ Doug leaped into the fray, smashing skulls, breaking arms and legs and ribs.

  The Varinskis fought back with slowed reactions at first, then with increasing desperation. One whimpered. One wept.

  Did they never think this moment might come? Did they not imagine someday they’d have to fight fair?

  Well, if fair was fighting with overwhelming odds still in your favor. Thirty Varinskis—or was it forty?— fought on the battlefield against a contingent of Wilders and their allies.

  Doug attacked, feinted, dodged. Varinskis surrounded him and Adrik, teaming up on them, but the two brothers were protecting their home and family, and they attacked with an enthusiasm the Varinskis struggled to effectively meet. Doug punched at one behemoth of a Varinski, hitting him over and over in the hardest head Doug had ever had the privilege of meeting, when the guy stopped. Just stopped. And stared over Doug’s shoulder, his eyes getting wider and wider.

  Doug smashed him in the face.

  He staggered away, and still stared.

  At his back, Doug felt Adrik jolt as if he’d been given a fatal wound. ‘‘Fire.’’ His voice rose. ‘‘Fire!’’

  ‘‘Pojzar!’’ the Varinski said.

  Fire? Doug heard the crackle of dry wood. He flung himself around.

  The Wilder house was in flames.

  Across the battlefield, Zorana screamed, ‘‘My babies!’’

  Her babies? Who was in there?

  She had been using her knives, slashing her way through a crowd of Varinskis that surrounded Konstantine and Tasya.

  Now, Doug didn’t see what she did, but Varinskis were on their backs, dead or dying, and she tore toward the house.

  ‘‘Mama, no!’’ Adrik knocked their attackers aside to intercept his mother—their mother—before she ran into the inferno.

  In Adrik’s moment of distraction, a Varinski went for his back.

  Doug scavenged a knife off the ground and threw it squarely between the guy’s shoulder blades, dropping him where he stood.

  Then Doug ran, too, dread coiled like a snake in his gut.

  Adrik trapped her before Zorana reached the fence. ‘‘You can’t go in!’’ he shouted.

  She struggle
d, fighting like a wildcat. ‘‘Firebird! Aleksandr!’’

  No.

  Doug couldn’t breathe.

  No, it isn’t possible.

  He couldn’t see for the red that washed across his vision.

  Firebird and Aleksandr . . . were in there? In the fire?

  He felt a stabbing pain in his shoulder, looked down, and saw a knife protruding from his biceps. He looked up. One Varinski had collected the knife and thrown it. Now he and another Varinski charged.

  Afterward, Doug didn’t know how he’d done it, but one Varinski was on the ground with his throat slashed; the other was fleeing toward the forest. Then Doug sprinted past Adrik and Zorana toward the house.

  The heat was so intense, the picket fence around the yard was smoking. He jumped it without pause. The air was so hot he couldn’t breathe. The flames licked at him, shriveling his skin. He felt his eyebrows melt, his hair frizz and die. But he couldn’t let his love die in there. He couldn’t let his son die before he had lived.

  A huge weight hit him from the side, knocking him down, rolling him away. Someone, some man, pounded on his head, shouting, ‘‘You’re on fire.’’

  Doug tried to catch his breath. Instead he coughed. He struggled, but someone else grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him. Men were talking, shouting at him, while he fought. At last he heard Adrik’s voice, recognized Adrik’s voice.

  ‘‘Douglas, listen to me. You can’t go in there. Listen to me. The fire’s too hot. The house is going to fall. Douglas, they’re already dead.’’ Adrik’s voice broke. ‘‘Firebird and Aleksandr are already dead.’’

  Dimly, Doug heard women screaming. But maybe not. Maybe that was the fire that roared in his ears.

  He looked up into the dirty, scratched, bruised, strong faces.

  Jasha. Rurik. Adrik. Zorana. Konstantine. The two daughters-in-law . . . he couldn’t remember their names now.

  Everyone had fought bravely.

  Everyone was crying now.

  He pushed them away.

  One by one, they stepped back.

  He stood. He looked at the house, at the flames reaching for the sky. He tried to comprehend, to feel sorrow. He knew the agony was there, waiting to pounce, but right now, he felt nothing.