Child Of Fire Part 33

I ran around the back of the truck. s.h.i.+reen followed me, growling and snarling. I held my ghost knife close to my chest and crossed my left forearm across my throat. The tattoos on my arm didn't cover enough flesh to truly protect me, but I had nothing else. I didn't know if her bite would carry the same curse as the Dubois brothers', and I didn't want to find out.

She lunged at me again. I leaped to my left. She tried to change direction and follow, but stumbled. Her flailing right arm tore through my sleeve. I backed away and circled her, and she turned to follow me.

I glanced up at the police station. No one was watching us. So far, I wasn't much of a distraction for Annalise's attack. I wondered if Luke and Emmett were trying to save Sugar's life in there.

s.h.i.+reen snapped at me, then faked a little lunge. I jumped straight back, just to keep her honest. I looked over her shoulder and saw Arlene charging silently at s.h.i.+reen's back, her silver letter opener high over her head. She wasn't moving quickly, but she was putting everything she had into the charge.

Arlene's foot sc.r.a.ped against the asphalt. s.h.i.+reen hopped away and turned toward the sound. Arlene, still ten yards away, didn't slow her charge.

s.h.i.+reen bent low, letting her hands touch the ground, then leaped forward, snapping her jaws on Arlene's wrist. The old woman screamed. The opener fell from her hand and bounced down s.h.i.+reen's back. s.h.i.+reen flinched when it touched her, then wrenched her whole body to the side. Blood spurted from Arlene's arm. She lost her footing and went down. s.h.i.+reen caught hold of Arlene's hair with one spindly claw and released her wrist, then turned her fangs to the old woman's throat.

I heard screams from somewhere nearby. Someone was watching.

I forced myself to look away from Arlene's b.l.o.o.d.y murder and searched for the silver blade. It couldn't have fallen far, but I didn't see it anywhere. I dropped to my hands and knees and spotted it under Luke's truck. I scrambled between the back wheels. The truck was tricked out to have a high clearance, but I still had to sc.r.a.pe my belly through oil and antifreeze to reach the opener. I crawled to it, trying to be as quiet as I could. Arlene was dead already, I knew. Wooden man or not, I didn't want to be next.

I closed my hand on it, feeling the slipperiness of the antifreeze and oil on the wooden handle. At the same moment, s.h.i.+reen stuck her head under the carriage of the truck and snarled at me.

I felt something grab at my jacket and begin to pull me out from under the car. s.h.i.+reen had caught the gun in my pocket, which I had forgotten about again.

I slashed and felt the opener strike bone. s.h.i.+reen yelped and let go of me. I slid away from her, not that it would do me much good. She could be on the far side of the truck before I could. She could even grab hold of my feet and drag me into the daylight. Then the best I could do would be to kill her just as she was killing me.

But she didn't do that. She came right back at me the same way, and this time she led with her face. Her mouth was open, and I could see blood smeared into her fur.

She was moving slowly. I held the letter opener tightly but didn't attack. She was presenting such an easy target, I figured there had to be some sort of trick.

But she didn't lash out at me. She kept creeping forward, getting closer and closer. It was almost as if she was daring me to strike-or she wanted me to. I couldn't let the opportunity pa.s.s. I stabbed her, plunging the silver blade deep into her eye.

She shuddered. I pushed the blade in as far as it would go. She collapsed and fell still.

I slid away from her. I wanted that letter opener, but I didn't want to take it out of her just yet. She became indistinct and s.h.i.+reen's human face returned.

I rolled out from under the truck as slapping footsteps grew louder. Three townspeople had rushed over to us and stood around the bodies of the two women, gaping. I ran around the back of the truck and shouldered a man out of the way. It took me a moment to realize that he was the cook from the diner.

"Everyone get out of here," I said. I tried to sound commanding, but fear and adrenaline make my voice squeak.

"She changed," the cook said. s.h.i.+reen still lay half under the truck, her torn clothes partly covering her wrinkled flesh. She looked very human and frail. I tried not to think about that. "Did I really see that? Did I really see her change?"

"Nope," I said. The two young women standing beside the cook stared aghast at the ruined bodies at their feet. "Now get away."

I pulled s.h.i.+reen out from under the car. Her head bobbled as it dragged across the ground. The handle of the letter opener sc.r.a.ped the asphalt. I felt a powerful urge to retch.

"You shouldn't do that," the cook said. I took the letter opener from the body and forced myself to stare into the b.l.o.o.d.y ruin that used to be her eye. It didn't seem to be healing the way her broken limbs had. She was dead.

I moved away and knelt beside Arlene. She lay still and cooling on the asphalt, but the ragged tears in her throat and arm were slowly joining together. She was dead but healing.

It seemed unfair that she had wanted to go out fighting but now wouldn't be able to. In just a minute more, she would be awake, and talking about how she wanted to die rather than become a second s.h.i.+reen.

I slid the blade of the letter opener between her ribs. Her wounds stopped knitting closed, but she didn't groan or sigh.

Behind me, I heard a door open. I turned to see Wiley Dubois step out of the police station, a shotgun in his hand.

No time for squeamishness. I ripped the letter opener out of Arlene, then threw my shoulder into the nearest of the two women. They both stumbled away from me. I ducked toward the back of the truck. "RUN!" I shouted.

The shotgun boomed as I hit the ground. The cook called out to Jesus, then beat a quick retreat. The two young women were already way ahead of him.

I scrambled to my feet and raced toward the other side of the truck. I heard the terrible clicks of the shotgun being pumped and dove behind the truck bed. Then came another boom, and I felt fire sc.r.a.pe along the back of my left calf.

I hit the ground and rolled. For a moment I was sure that the bottom half of my leg was gone, but that was just my imagination running wild. I had caught a couple of pieces of buckshot in my calf muscle.

I immediately peeked over the back of the truck and saw Wiley huffing down the front steps, heading for the narrow s.p.a.ce between Luke's wrecked truck and the damaged station wall. He pumped the shotgun again.

I held the ghost knife in one hand and the letter opener in the other. The gun in my pocket was useless. d.a.m.n. I didn't have many choices left. I could run away and be shot in my unprotected back. I could backpedal and get shot in the legs or the face. I certainly couldn't hide.

All I could do was charge him. Charge at a man with a shotgun, and hope I could get close enough to stab him before he killed or crippled me.

I took a deep breath. This is what a wooden man does. He plays decoy and he dies.

I stood. Wiley lifted the shotgun to his shoulder.

From inside the station came the sound of gunshots and a scream. Wiley turned toward the sound, and so did I. It was a man's voice, high-pitched with panic. The scream was cut off with a strangled sound, and Emmett shouted Luke's name. The gunshots continued, a dozen over the course of a few seconds.

The window shattered, and something the size of a soccer ball flew through it. It smashed into the winds.h.i.+eld of Luke's car. Wiley gaped at it for a second, then hustled up the stairs toward the front door. He had bigger problems than me.

There was another flurry of gunfire from inside the station.

I rushed to the front of the truck, but I already knew what had broken the winds.h.i.+eld. It was Luke's head.

Annalise had started her attack.

I couldn't resist one more look at Luke. Thankfully, his face was not much in view, but it suddenly became indistinct. It was vanis.h.i.+ng right before my eyes. d.a.m.n. I should have stabbed it with the letter opener.

There were more gunshots from inside the station. Ducking below the windows, I ran toward the stairs. I saw a flare of green light, and Emmett began screaming "No no no!" at the top of his lungs. I burst through the door.

The desks we had walked past on our first visit had been smashed and knocked aside. Just beside the door, a pile of scorched black bones lay on the tile floor.

Annalise stood in the center of the room, her fireman's jacket wide open, ribbons hanging from her vest. Luke Dubois's headless corpse lay at her feet.

But his head was starting to appear on his shoulders. His head was coming back.

"This is amazing," Annalise said to me. "I've never seen anything like it. Look at the fat one."

I looked down at Wiley again. Raw meat was growing on his bones. It was repulsive. "Jesus," I said. "Everything about these guys makes me sick."

"No more," Emmett said. He stepped out of his office, a pistol at his side. The slide was back; he'd already emptied it. "Please, no more. We'll leave town and never come back. We have money we can pay. Anything. Just let me take my brothers away from here."

"The spell," Annalise said. "I want it."

"Wha... what do you mean?" Emmett said.

"Ray, do that one." She nodded at Wiley's corpse.

There was nothing much of him to stab with the letter opener, so I swept the ghost knife through the same place on his shoulder where Sugar had been marked with a sigil. The s.p.a.ce where the spell would have been suddenly erupted with a jet of black steam.

Wiley's body stopped regenerating. The gory mess inside his rib cage sagged and began to spread out across the floor. I hopped away from him.

"Oh my G.o.d, Wiley." Emmett's voice was small. I felt a twinge of sympathy. Then I remembered the dead woman in the morgue, and all the bodies at the hospital, and my sympathy shriveled into cold hatred. He didn't have the right to grieve.

"You're right, Ray," Annalise said. "These guys are repulsive. Do the rest."

"No!" Luke yelled. "Don't do it!" He was alive again.

Annalise put her foot on Luke's back, holding him down. "I already did it," she said to him, "and I may do it again if you don't shut up."

I crossed the room and slipped the ghost knife through Luke's shoulder. There was another jet of steam and Luke screamed.

Emmett let his empty pistol fall to the floor. "We did some good here, too." His voice was feeble and small. "We protected the town, too."

I didn't care, and neither did Annalise. I walked toward him, being careful not to get between them. I cut his spell with the ghost knife, and he collapsed to the floor in agony. I didn't watch this time. I walked over to Sugar.

He was lying on the floor in the middle of a spell circle. Compared with the other circles I'd seen, this one was surprisingly simple. It was not drawn or painted on the floor, it was just a hoop of silver wire. There were no other marks or designs that I could see.

Sugar was in bad shape. His arms and legs were broken, and I could see where his skull had cracked and swollen. He looked like he was in terrible pain. His s.h.i.+rt had been cut open, and there was a new sigil on his chest. He wasn't healing, though. He didn't seem to be changing at all.

That seemed important, although I wasn't sure why.

I cut the silver hoop with the ghost knife. There was no rush of power or bolt of black steam. I moved toward Sugar and bent to cut the sigil.

"Don't!" Emmett pleaded. "Please. He'll die without it."

Annalise snorted in irritation and moved her foot to Luke's skull. Luke let out a little shriek.

"Boss, wait!" She did. I turned to Emmett. "Give me the spell, and tell me everything you know about it. Where it came from and who gave it to you. All of it."

Emmett looked nervously toward Annalise. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out an index card inside a plastic sleeve. He held it out to me. His hand trembled.

"Toss it." He did. I glanced at it. There was a complicated design on one side of it, and a four-line rhyming poem on the other.

"My father gave it to me." Emmett said. "He got it from the original Cabot Hammer, the man who founded this town, a long time ago. I don't know much more than that, except that I'm supposed to say the words while the person getting the spell sits in the hoop and looks at the other side of the card. That's the only copy, too. My father told me to never try to copy it.

"We didn't kill people every full moon or anything. It didn't work like that. We-"

Annalise stamped down on Luke's skull. At the same moment, I slid the ghost knife through the sigil on Sugar's chest. The magic rushed out of it, and his tortured breathing stopped.

Emmett's shoulders sagged. All the fight was gone from him. "Do it. Just go ahead."

Annalise looked me in the eyes. "Ray."

My turn at bat. I took Cabot's gun out of my pocket and pointed it at the back of Emmett's head.

In the movies, you often hear actors say it's hard to kill someone. They'll say it's the hardest thing in the world. Well, that's bulls.h.i.+t. Prison is full of people who thought murder was some kind of achievement-I lived with some of them.

And most of those guys wish they could take it back, because the truth is, the only thing a person needs to commit murder is a moment when they don't care about the consequences, when they don't think about what they're doing and what it means.

Most people spend their whole lives without thinking what it means.

I couldn't do that. I had done too much time and had too much conscience. I'd shot my best friend when I was just a boy, and I'd hated guns ever since. I knew exactly what would happen. I knew exactly what it would mean.

I squeezed the trigger anyway.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Emmett's corpse looked just the way I expected it to look. So did the room around me. So did Annalise.

I saw a flannel s.h.i.+rt hanging on a coatrack and used it to wipe down Cabot's gun. I tossed the gun onto the floor. It thunked as it landed. I wasn't worried about Cabot, though.

Everyone in town had seen me. There was no way I was going to avoid prison this time. I was a cop killer. He was a corrupt cop and a killer himself, but that wouldn't matter once the manhunt began.

But what choice did I have? I couldn't let him walk free. What if he had another copy of the spell somewhere? What if he went looking for more magic? He would just move somewhere else and start killing again.

With some difficulty, Annalise pulled a red ribbon off her vest and dropped it onto a stuffed chair. It burst into flame. She kicked over a desk, scattering a stack of papers onto the flames. The fire was already licking at the painted walls. Soon the station would be lit by orange firelight, just like the Dubois home.

I returned Annalise's debit card. I didn't want anything of hers, especially not her money.

"Stop moping," she said. "You did something useful here, even if the work makes you feel dirty."

"Let's just go."

I followed her toward the door. A small, framed photo hung on the wall, and while I didn't want to look at it, I couldn't turn away. It showed Emmett with his arm around Charles the Third. The youngest Hammer was about thirteen and tall for his age, but he was carrying an extra hundred pounds of flab. An older man with Charles's narrow face and unruly black hair flipped burgers on a gleaming barbecue. That must have been Charles the Second, Charles Junior.

While the fire grew behind me, I leaned close to the picture. The elder Hammer was the only one not smiling-his face was worn and sagging, his eyes rimmed with dark circles. He was a man with regrets. In the background, I could see the huge windows of an expensive modern house and a smooth, curved gray stone wall like the base of a castle.

The firelight cast flickering shadows over the photo. The flames had reached the ceiling. Annalise stood by the front door, waiting for me silently. Time to go.

We walked outside. The storm clouds had blown away, and I could see blue sky and suns.h.i.+ne for the first time in days.

A crowd of people stood across the street. The van was parked around the corner. We walked toward them.

"Next time, I'll park closer."

"Good idea. You look like a mess."

I pulled at my s.h.i.+rt. It was torn, sopping wet, and it stank of gunpowder and antifreeze. "I needed more than four changes of clothes, I think."