Embers (35 page)

The scene was an unmitigated clusterfuck.

Incredible heat radiated from the concrete like fire from a blast furnace. Ladder trucks were having difficulty getting ladders to the shatterproof windows and breaking them out. The metal slats in the frames meant cutting tools had to be used, wasting precious time to get the inmates and deputies out. Hands thrust into the openings, making it nearly impossible to work without cutting arms off. Firefighters kept shouting for the people at the windows to “get back,” but the warnings went unheeded in the crush of panic.

Deputies and SWAT teams led handcuffed groups of inmates in daisy-chain strings out on the ground floor, but controlling them was nearly impossible. The jail deputies weren’t armed, and many inmates took this opportunity to try and make a break for it. SWAT launched canisters of tear gas into the doorways of the vestibule and the gas ignited under the intense heat. Someone had commandeered a school bus, and the bright yellow cheesewagon was already ripe to bursting with orange-suited inmates.

Anya stared up at the jail. The jail was haunted before, and it was sure as hell going to be even more haunted after this. She sensed new ghosts flaring whitely inside, like matches, as the air grew too thick to breathe and the heat blistered through the walls.

Anya raced with other firefighters to try to open another hydrant. Half the hydrants on this block were broken and spurting weakly, left too long without inspections. She dragged the mouth of heavy hose to a nozzle, and fitted it, while another firefighter tried to wrench it open. The hose inflated with water, coursing back to the source of the fire.

She squinted in the doorway of the vestibule. Something was seething through the flames, rolling toward the door. The crews, thinking a gas main had blown a fireball, backed away.

But it was not a fireball. It was a man, burning, his silhouette as red as an eclipsed sun. He incandesced serenely in the chaos, bits of ash floating down around him like autumn leaves. He walked with an unmistakable limp.

“Drake,” she breathed.

The fireman at the nozzle of the hose Anya was holding aimed a blast of water at the burning man, out of pure instinct. The water hissed and steamed, evaporating before it touched his skin, curling around him in an arc of mist. The figure walked slowly through the wall of water, down the steps of the jail. Where he stepped, his feet melted into the concrete, leaving fiery footprints in his wake.

Over the wail of the sirens, Anya could hear shouting:

“What the hell is that?”

“Drop him!”

“No!” she yelled, running forward, but she was too late. She heard the sharp report of bullets fired, saw the burning man stumble. . . but he continued walking forward, a fiery juggernaut.

Above, the structure groaned. Both cops and firefighters focused their attention on the metal roof. The internal support structure had burned away, and it caved inward with a metallic groan. A ladder truck parked close to the building was forced to pull away, a firefighter still clinging to a swinging, extended ladder.

But Anya’s attention was transfixed by the burning man. He walked across the street. The heat he generated was so powerful that windshields cracked as he passed by and paint bubbled up from the hoods of the police cars. She chased him on foot down the street, shouting, “Drake!”

He turned, perhaps recognizing her. But in this inhuman form, she did not know what he felt.

“Stay away.” His voice was scraped raw, like rust. He reached out and punched the side of the school bus full of inmates.

Anya dove for cover behind a Dumpster as the gas tank ignited and the school bus exploded. The impact knocked over the Dumpster and threw her under a police car. The explosion rattled the cruiser on its tires, and she smelled scorching rubber. Through burning garbage and tearing eyes, she watched, horrified, as the flares of white ghosts howled through the flames and windows of the bus.

Aching, she crawled out from under the car on her elbows, torn between wanting to help the victims and catching Drake. She was the only one who had any hope of stopping Drake before he brought this fate down upon the entire city. She knew it, but she felt like a failure as she pulled herself to her feet and ran down the street, scanning the burning debris for a figure that shone brighter than the rest.

“Drake!” she yelled into the chaos.

But he was already gone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“DRAKE’S ESCAPED.”

Anya clomped into Ciro’s bar with her helmet under her arm, coat covered in ash and reeking of gasoline.

The members of DAGR were huddled around the bar, poring over Felicity’s maps.

“Are the police going to chase him down? Or will a bounty hunter go find him, like on that show,
Dog the Bounty Hunter
?” Max asked. “That would be cool.”

Jules slapped him in the back of the head. “Haven’t you been watching what’s going on on the TV? There are fires all over town. It’s Devil’s Night. The cops have got bigger problems than looking for a rich white boy. And anybody else with any sense is home sleeping with a shotgun.”

“It’s gonna be up to us to find him,” said Brian. “No cops.”

Anya shook her head. “No, I don’t want any of you guys getting hurt. Drake is my problem.”

Jules shook his head. “Nope. Not gonna happen. We’re going with you.”

“Absolutely not.”

“This isn’t a discussion,” Jules said. He leaned against the bar and crossed his arms.

“Like it or not, we’re a family. A weird, fucked-up family, but family, nonetheless. And you aren’t going after that monster alone.”

Anya opened her mouth to protest. “But—”

Katie waved an envelope in the air. “Lest you forget, I have power of attorney over your ass. Unless you want to spend Devil’s Night in the psych ward with twelve guys who think they’re all Jesus, you’d better play ball with us.”

Anya looked at their resolute faces. She slumped in a chair. “Look. I don’t even know where Ferrer is exactly. If he’s going to the salt mine to pull Sirrush’s tail, that’s a whole lot of ground to cover.”

Brian lifted the map. “The oldest part of the mine is the deepest. . . hasn’t been touched since the 1920s.” He stabbed a vein at the back of the mine, outlined in black ink. “If I were a sleeping dragon, I’d want to be back there, where no one would bother me. And I bet that’s where Ferrer will go.”

“But what do we do when we get there?” Max asked.

Anya chewed her lower lip. “I think he’s wounded. He may be moving slowly. And, actually. . .” Her fingers traced the lines of the mineshaft on the map. “This terrain might give us an advantage. There’s nothing flammable down there for Drake to set fire to.”

Jules pulled a shotgun and a box of shells out from underneath the bar. “There’s not much that can outrun buckshot.”

“You got any more where that came from?” Max spun on his bar stool, fascinated.

Anya showed him her empty hands. “The Department took my gun.”

Ciro harrumphed. “I’ve got all of you covered. Don’t worry.” He gestured to Renee, who was floating by the stairs. “Renee, take Jules, Max, Brian, and Katie down to the basement. There’a a stash of old guns wrapped up in oilcloth under the floor in the wine cellar.”

“Gotcha, boss.” Renee led the team down the stairs to the basement.

Anya sat alone with Ciro. She looked down at her shoes.

“Anya, let me see your hands.”

She stripped off her thick Nomex gloves and presented her hands to Ciro. They had begun to blacken from the fingertips, stretching up her arms. His quavering fingers danced over them, and his face crumpled in a frown.

“I can’t feel my fingers, or much of my toes,” Anya said. “It feels like frostbite. Is this. . . is this from the demon?”

“Yes.” Ciro nodded. “I’m afraid that you have little time left until Mimiveh takes over.”

“I can’t let that happen, Ciro.”

The old man leaned forward in his wheelchair. “Katie told me about what happened at Serpent Mound. About Nina. . . that her sacrifice kept the Uktena underground, sleeping.”

“Yes.” Her eyes glistened. “Ciro, she was the most beautiful spirit I’ve ever met—pure of heart, pure of purpose. I envied her that. . . that sense of peace. That love.”

Ciro brushed a tear from her eye. “Dear child, if you and the others fail in stopping Drake Ferrer, are you willing to follow in her footsteps to keep Sirrush underground?”

Anya nodded. “Yes.” Her nose dripped and she wiped it with numb fingers. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel that there were things left undone. It seemed right to do this thing, even though no one would ever know.

Sparky put his paw in her lap and gazed up at her. The little guy had always been with her, and would never leave her. From somewhere down below, Anya heard Renee warbling “Somebody Loves Me.”

“Remember that you’re going into a salt mine,” Ciro told her. “Salt absorbs magick and binds it to its own structure. It’s like fire in its purifying properties. . . the oldest spells known to man involved making a wish on a handful of salt. Realize that any action you take in that place may have unintended results.”

“I will, Ciro.” She kissed the old man on the forehead.

The clomping of shoes on the stairs heralded DAGR’s well-armed return to the bar. The team looked as if it had been antique shopping in the Prohibition era: Katie held a tiny pearl-handled Derringer .22 caliber between two fingers, as if terrified it might spontaneously go off. Jules brandished a tommy gun, grinning. Max looked at the machine gun in lust, but made do with stuffing a six-shot .38 Colt revolver in his belt. Jules slapped him on the back of the head.

“Ow.”

“You aren’t cool enough to be a gangster. Never stuff a gun in your pants. It’s a great way to lose a nut.”

Brian held a pair of M1911 Browning semiautomatic .45 pistols. Anya held her hand out.

He shook his head. “These are mine. No way I’m trusting you with guns.”

“You’re not going,” she insisted. “You just got out of the hospital.”

“There’s no way I’d miss this.” He gave her a lopsided grin.

Anya spun to appeal to Jules. “Jules, don’t let him go. He’s not in any shape to fight Sirrush,” she pleaded. She didn’t want to be responsible for hurting him again. He needed to be kept away from the fight, away from Mimi, and away from Drake.

Jules’s gaze roved over Brian’s bald head, laced with stitches. “Humpty Dumpty can go.”

He picked the Lions helmet off the counter and extended it to Brian. “But he has to wear his helmet.”

“Fuck you, Jules.”

“I have more bullets than you do. Be a winner. Wear the damn helmet.”

Brian snatched the helmet. “If I was a winner, I’d be wearing a Steelers helmet.”

The lights in the bar winked out, and the television fizzled to black.

Renee summoned a weak ball of ghost light, a will-o’-the-wisp that allowed Jules to dig around the bar to find flashlights and a box of fuses.

Anya stood on tiptoe to peer out the narrow window at the top of the bar door. As far as she could see, blocks upon blocks, the streets were dark. “Guys, I don’t think it’s the fuse box. I think that the electricity’s gone.” In the distance, she could already hear the sirens beginning to wail and the breaking of glass.

Jules swore. “Every thug, ghoul, and demon in the city is going to be out on the prowl. It’s gonna be a helluva night.”

As the Dart growled down the darkened streets, chaos had grown thick and palpable. Traffic lights swung dark from their cables, their red, yellow, and green eyes shut against the packs of looters breaking shop windows and tripping car alarm systems. Power was hit or miss; some blocks were lit up bright as Christmas, while others were plunged into darkness. Sirens wailed from all directions, but too distant to deter a group of young men in the process of boosting an ATM. They’d wrapped a length of chain around the machine, tied the other end to a pickup truck axle, and were determinedly rending it from the side of a convenience store. Headlights and the yellow blaze of fire were the only illumination in this part of the city. Anya watched as a fast-food restaurant burned, the cartoon character mascot engulfed in flames. She thought she smelled french fries, but suspected it was only the last of the fryer oil burning.

Katie reached forward from the backseat and pushed down the manual door lock. Max and Jules chortled at her attempt to keep the big green tank of the Dart secure.

On the radio, the deejay warned that the governor had called in the National Guard, and martial law had been declared in Wayne County. A curfew had been imposed; any nonemergency personnel found out on the streets were subject to being detained. Anya wasn’t quite sure how that was going to be accomplished, but it made it sound as if
someone
was doing
something
. She glanced back in the rearview mirror. If they got pulled over, they’d have a lot of explaining to do. The Dart was bristling with guns, and Jules was passing out ammo in the backseat like it was Pez. Katie’s silver pentacle necklace gleamed in the light of Jules’s flashlight, and she was nervously organizing a backpack full of holy water. Max bounced up and down in the backseat like an excited poodle on meth. In the front seat, Brian, wearing his football helmet, was solemnly reading the map and fiddling with a video camera he’d duct taped to his facemask. Sparky sat on the front bench seat, alternately playing with the radio knobs and tweaking Brian’s wires, setting off a bout of colorful swearing.