Child of Fire: A Twenty Palaces Novel Page 7

Hammer screamed in pain. The women working in the office screamed and cringed against their desks. Hammer tried to yank his hand away, but Annalise held him as tightly as an iron vise.

  She spoke to him in a clear, quiet voice. “I can ask you that question nine more times.” Hammer drew his right fist back and threw a haymaker at the side of Annalise’s face. He screamed again when he connected, then cradled his hand against his chest as though it was broken. Annalise’s face was unmarked, and she kept talking as though nothing had happened. “You’re not going to like it if I have to ask again after that. Spell book. Where?”

  The sigil below my collarbone twinged. Again, there was no wave of force, but maybe that only come the first time. The room grew slightly dark, and the HBT name tags the women wore flared with yellow flames. Then the office workers dropped their arms to their sides and stood up in perfect unison.

  They moved toward Annalise and Hammer like automatons. Annalise didn’t see them.

  “Boss!” I called.

  Annalise turned, and just as one of the women drew in a huge breath as though she was about to scream, Annalise grabbed the front of her sweater and kicked her legs out from under her. I could hear bones break from where I stood. Annalise tossed the woman over the row of desks.

  I didn’t see her hit the floor, but I thought she’d survive. I hoped to God she would survive.

  “Enough of this,” Annalise said. She struck Charles Hammer with the back of her hand. His head tore away from his body and bounced into the corner.

  I brought her here, I thought. I helped her kill these people. The thought made me sick.

  A flat-faced woman stepped forward and took a deep breath. Annalise looked at her, obviously surprised that Hammer’s death had not restored the women to normal.

  With both hands, Annalise slammed the scrap wood over the woman’s mouth just as a jet of flame blasted out of it. The fire engulfed the enchanted wood and Annalise’s hands, billowing over her wrists and setting her jacket alight.

  Annalise screamed.

  The scrap of wood exploded. Annalise fell backward, holding her burning hands in front of her face. As for the flat-faced woman, her head was gone. The stump of her neck was still ablaze as her body collapsed onto the carpet.

  The women glided toward Annalise like ghosts. A tall redhead took a deep breath, and Annalise dove toward me and rolled. The jet of fire missed her and struck another woman, who went up like she was covered in gasoline.

  The jet of fire stopped flowing from the redhead’s mouth. Her lips and tongue were charred black. She clutched at her throat and collapsed.

  Annalise curled up beside the top of the stairs. Her hands were still on fire and were blackened and shriveled. Her face was pale and her whole body trembled. I grabbed a jacket off the back of a chair and charged toward her.

  The women surrounded her. A gray-haired woman took a deep breath. I shoved a woman aside to get to Annalise and was startled to realize it was Ms. Finkler.

  Finkler knocked the gray-haired woman aside. The woman turned toward me.

  I ducked low, grabbed her leg, and spun her.

  I didn’t have much leverage, but I managed to topple her just as the fire blasted from her open mouth. I felt the same scorching heat that had burned Justin Benton as the jet of flame passed over my head. I also had the strange feeling that it had somehow already happened. It was as though I was remembering the fire at the same time I was experiencing it.

  The woman fell against a desk, blasting a jet of flame against her computer.

  I threw the stolen jacket over Annalise’s hands and hauled her into my arms. For all her power, she was tiny, barely a hundred pounds, and while I didn’t have her strength, I did have adrenaline. A lot of it.

  Then I saw Charles Hammer standing at the far end of the room. His clothes were bloody, but he was whole and healthy. His expression was one of pure, innocent astonishment.

  Someone nearby took another breath. I carried Annalise to the stairs and leaped for the lower landing. I heard flames cut loose behind me. I felt the heat but no pain.

  I hit the stairs about two-thirds of the way down. By some miracle, I didn’t twist my ankle or crack open my head.

  Annalise slipped from my grasp and bounced against the concrete steps. I jumped down beside her and yanked her off the floor. I glanced back and saw a column of flame scour the steps. I threw her over my shoulder and ran for the second flight down.

  The fire trailed me, always striking where I’d been. If one of those women-and I knew very well they weren’t in control of themselves, but I had no idea what was-had led me a little, she would have burned me to a cinder. That didn’t happen.

  I ran like hell to the next floor down, where the jet of fire couldn’t reach me.

  Figures moved down the hallway toward me. Cradling Annalise in my arms. I ran down the next flight of stairs. I reached the next landing, then the second floor. It took just a few seconds, but that was long enough for my adrenaline to ebb. It was also enough time for me to wonder why I’d gone to so much trouble to save a woman who wanted to kill me.

  Too late to turn back now.

  I ran down the last flight of stairs into the lobby. There, blocking the only exit, stood Carol, the receptionist. Her name tag was ablaze, and she stood stiffly, with her hands curled into claws at her side.

  She was too far away. I could never knock her aside before she burned me alive.

  She took a deep breath.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I willed the ghost knife into my hand. It flew out of the inside breast pocket of Annalise’s jacket. In one motion, I caught it and flung it.

  Carol had just finished inhaling when the spell entered her throat, passed through, and exited the back of her neck.

  I darted to the left. Although the ghost knife had left no mark, a jet of flame spurted out the front of Carol’s neck, then a second shot out the back. Fire curled out of her mouth, but the pressure behind it was gone. The flames touched off her face and hair. She buckled. Fire blasted down the front of her clothes, the flames spreading. She didn’t make any sound at all as the fire engulfed her.

  I ran around the flames and pushed through the front door into the morning drizzle. The ghost knife lay on the sidewalk as though waiting for me. I hoisted Annalise higher on my shoulder and reached out to my spell. It flew into my hand.

  Sprinting across the lot toward the van, I did my best not to jostle Annalise, but I doubted she could feel my shoulder bouncing against her stomach. But her hands… She let out a tiny whimper and pulled her knees closer to her chest. Unfortunately, my rib cage was between them.

  “Ease up on me,” I said gently. I had to gasp for air between every word, and I wasn’t sure she could hear me through her pain. “Ease up.”

  She did. We reached the van. I unlocked the passenger door and lifted her into the seat. I pulled the shoulder strap of her satchel over her head and threw it onto the floor, then clicked her seat belt over her.

  At the same moment, I felt the now-familiar twinge against my chest. Memories were being erased. Was it because of the fight we’d just lost, or was another kid being killed across town?

  I ran around the front of the van, got in, and started it up. Within seconds we were on the street.

  “Annalise,” I said. She didn’t respond. Her hands were blackened and shriveled. Her face was pale and covered with sweat. I touched her cheek. Her skin was cold. She was going into shock.

  I pulled over. We were only a block and a half from the plant, but I needed to get her feet elevated or she was going to die on me.

  “What are you doing?” she said. She didn’t look at me. “Remember the supermarket we passed on the way into town? Go there.”

  I did remember it, but only vaguely. I pulled back into the street and drove north until I hit Main Street, then turned right. It was only another half mile or so to the gas station where I’d bought the map, then another few hundred yards to the market.

&nbs
p; I parked as close to the entrance as I could and took the plastic from Annalise’s glove compartment. She told me the PIN and said to buy lean beef for her. Lots of it. I laid her down between the seats and wadded my sweaty windbreaker under her feet. “Hold on,” I told her. “I’m going to be back as soon as I can.”

  “We can find you,” she said, “if you don’t come back. I put those spells on you and they don’t come off. Any peer in the society can find them, and you.”

  I closed the door.

  With a couple bucks’ worth of items from the house-wares aisle, I could have stolen any of the cars in the lot in less than twenty seconds. I’d done it hundreds of times before. I could have been halfway to Oregon in an hour. Leaving Annalise to die-and I had no doubt that without help, she would die, and very soon-would solve many of my immediate problems, what ever her threats. But I wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t just that I had no idea what would happen to the spells she had put on me, and it wasn’t just that the peers would hunt me down and tear me apart, although both of these were damn solid reasons. And it wasn’t just the power Annalise had, although power like hers was irresistible to me.

  It was also Justin Benton. Someone had to stand up for Justin Benton.

  I followed signs to the meat department, then started loading beef into my basket. I didn’t know much about choosing cuts, but I knew the white stuff was fat, the hard stuff was bone, and the red stuff was meat. I picked packages that were mostly red. I selected about ten pounds’ worth, then grabbed a wide plastic cutting board from a hook above the case and hurried to the checkout line.

  There were two people ahead of me. I had a little too much time to think.

  Hammer knew we were coming after him now. He would either move against us right away or withdraw to somewhere safe, maybe somewhere out of town. If I were him, I’d be trying to figure out a way to kill us before the hour was up, but judging by the way Hammer had looked as Annalise had done her thing, I didn’t think he’d be that together. I figured he’d run.

  It was my turn at the register. “Nice town you have here,” I said to the middle-aged cashier.

  “Thanks!” she said.

  “Isn’t there a family somewhere still around here, the one who founded this town? The Hammer family?”

  She looked immediately suspicious. “Maybe.”

  “They live in town? Where would I find them?” I asked, figuring that the town wasn’t small enough for everyone to know everyone, but it would be small enough for everyone to know their first family.

  “What do you want with the Hammers?” the man behind me said. He was about forty, with a thick biker’s beard and heavy muscles in his arms and shoulders.

  I hadn’t thought this through, and it was turning sour. I swiped Annalise’s card and punched in her PIN. “I just wanted-”

  “Don’t bother,” the cashier said. “I know exactly what you want.”

  “And you ain’t gonna get it.” Biker Beard stepped up very, very close to me. “Ain’t nobody in this whole town gonna answer a question like that for you.”

  The cashier glared at me. “Time for you to go.” She held the bag out to me, then dropped it on the floor.

  I turned back to the big guy. My adrenaline was too high and I’d spent too many years behind bars to back down from him. Annalise was dying out in the van, and her medicine was lying on the floor beside me, all spilled out of its flimsy plastic bag, but I couldn’t turn away. I was risking everything, but I couldn’t turn away.

  A little old lady came around the end of the counter and picked up my groceries. “Oh, enough of that, you two,” she said, and took hold of my elbow.

  Her grip was strong, but she couldn’t have pulled me away unless I let her. I did. There were half a dozen good reasons for me to back down from Biker Beard, but the one that really mattered was that I didn’t want to be the guy I was in jail. I wanted to be someone better.

  The old woman had tiny half-glasses perched on the end of her nose and a thin, pinched mouth like a snapping turtle. I took the grocery bag from her when she handed it to me and I followed her outside. “You must be having a barbecue or something?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Of course, dear. Which one is yours?” I waved in the direction of Annalise’s big white van. “Wonderful. You just get in that van and drive right out of town, understand, dear? There’s no reason for you to stay here. We protect our own, and we don’t want you here.”

  I glanced at her and back at the cashier and the small crowd that had gathered by the door. So much for small-town hospitality. At least I knew how to pick a fight, if I needed to. I nodded to the old woman and rushed back to the van.

  Annalise was still alive. I pulled out of the supermarket parking lot with them still watching me. I drove a block toward town and parked beside a dry cleaners. Then I crouched behind the passenger seat with the front wheel of her motorcycle poking me in the back. I laid a hunk of meat on the cutting board and shaved off a slice with my ghost knife. Ghosts, magic, and dead things. Then I cut crisscrosses through the meat, being careful not to touch the cutting board. The ghost knife could cut straight through the bottom of the van and I wouldn’t even feel it. The board was only there to keep the raw beef off the metal deck of the van.

  I had to feed the bits of meat to her, of course. She took them almost blindly, like a baby bird. After she had eaten a pound or so, the color started to come back into her face. After three, her face no longer felt cold.

  She rolled onto her side. She was more alert but also wary. I kept cutting meat, kept feeding her piece by piece. She watched every morsel move from the board to her mouth as if watching for some trick.

  After she’d eaten half the meat I’d bought, Annalise said: “Help me up.”

  I did, lifting her by her elbows so she wouldn’t have to lean on her injured hands, then opened the side door and supported her as she climbed down. She let me.

  She turned toward the van, putting her back to the parking lot, hunched over, and held her hands out of sight. She flexed them slightly. Flakes of black skin broke off her fingers and fell to the pavement.

  My whole body tingled and I closed my eyes. Of all the things in the world I didn’t need to see, that ranked pretty high.

  With my eyes closed, I suddenly remembered Carol the receptionist. I remembered the way my ghost knife had cut through her neck, and the way she had burned away because of it.

  I opened my eyes. The blackened skin of Annalise’s hands had peeled off like burned paper, mostly. Beneath was raw, wet red flesh, and not much of it, either. Her hands looked scarily reduced. She touched her fingers together and gasped.

  “Go back in,” she said, not looking up. “Get more meat. Then we’ll get out of here.”

  I did. I drove back to the supermarket and bought most of the lean meat remaining in the case, along with a box of plastic forks. I didn’t speak to anyone and stood in a different cashier’s line. No one threw me out. When I got back to the parking lot, Annalise had returned to her seat.

  I put the groceries in the back, closed the passenger door, and buckled Annalise in, taking care not to touch the seat belt to her raw hands. She looked at me strangely, but I didn’t think about that.

  We pulled out of the lot.

  “What happened back there?” I asked.

  Annalise didn’t answer at first. Finally, she said, “I don’t know. Charles Hammer was the source of the magic in Hammer Bay, but I don’t think he knew what was going on.” She was quiet for a moment, as though the effort of speaking exhausted her. “Did you see the look on his face when those women all stood up at once?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “He was surprised. Bewildered. He was the source of the magic, but he didn’t control it.”

  “You mean he doesn’t control it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s alive. I saw-”

  “Bullshit. I took his head off.”

&nbs
p; I shook my head. “Just before we got out of there,” I said, “I saw him standing by the desk. His clothes were soaked in blood, but he was whole and alive.”

  “Shit. It fits, I guess. I just hate it when they won’t stay down.”

  “Do you think Charles Hammer has someone behind him, pulling his strings?” I tried to imagine him with his own Annalise sending him out to fight and die.

  “It’s possible, but the spell I touched to him shot sparks. That means predator, and a powerful one.” After that she was quiet.

  I thought about that column of fire on the stairway, always striking where I had just been, never anticipating me. I mentioned it to Annalise.

  “Some of the predators don’t have concrete understanding of time, or three-dimensional space. It can be a weakness for them sometimes.”

  She fell silent again. I didn’t press her for more information. I didn’t want to push my luck.

  We arrived at the motel. I fished Annalise’s key out of her jacket pocket and opened her door. She collapsed onto the bed, exhausted from the effort of walking into the room.

  I fetched the meat and cutting board from the van. The room had a small, round table, where I put the supplies down. I locked and barred the front door, then made sure the curtains were fully closed and began cutting the meat.

  This time I fed Annalise with a plastic fork. It was more dignified than using my fingers. She watched me the whole time, her gaze wary and measuring. Obviously, she expected me to betray her again.

  “Will this be enough?” I asked after she had eaten the first ten pounds I’d bought. I couldn’t believe she’d eaten so much. Her stomach should have been swollen, but it wasn’t. I assumed her body was using the meat to heal her injuries. I glanced down at her hands. It was a slow process.

  “It should be,” she said. “It had better be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve never… this should have been enough already. My hands should have been back to normal by now. Hell, a couple of years ago I only needed eight pounds to regrow an entirely new left foot. But we’re past that now and I can still barely use them. Something’s wrong.”