Fathom (34 page)

But Sam’s lifetime of insurance work made him cringe at the prospect. “We can’t just break
in
! That’d be our second felony today.”

“Sure we can.”

But before she could force Sam to agree to take some action, an explosion crashed through the building behind them. Bricks split and fell as the nearest wall bulged, pressed from within by an incredible weight or force.

Nia smelled it again, the lava burn of fire filling the air in the alleys and along the streets nearby. She reached for Sam to pull
him back to a safe distance but he was already backing away—already wondering how to flee whatever was coming.

“Go on,” she told him. She didn’t want to keep him there, but she needed to see what was going on.

“But—”

“Go back down to . . . that restaurant we passed on the way, the one with the fountain. Go wait there.” She wasn’t sure why it was so important that she figure out what was going on. She didn’t know why she wanted to make Sam leave, either, but in the back of her mind—in the homing pigeon part, the part where Mossfeaster kept one rough finger hooked inside her—she
knew
that this was something awful, something that was part of the plan whether anyone else was aware of it or not.

Sam hesitated until a second blast fractured the wall of the next building over, and then he ran for it.

Hell and High Water

N
ia watched Sam retreat, walking halfway backwards as he tried to figure out what was going on. When he rounded the bend and scuttled onto Palm Street, she returned her attention to the store.

A mob was gathering. The fringe of the scene was collecting people who were too curious to flee and too nervous to investigate more closely. Nia hid herself within those ranks for a minute more, then returned to the front door and leaned on it until it collapsed inward.

She toppled into a dark, furnace-hot space that was filled with smoke and stank of brimstone. Instinctively, she covered her face with her arms and hands, breathed in the saltwater shine and the mold of the old jewelry that jingled there.

But there was no way to hide from the smoke or the awful reek, and she could hear—a few rooms away—the first crackling snaps of fire catching hold of a willing fuel.

She was about to call out to ask if anyone was inside, or in danger, but stopped herself short without knowing why. Under the swirling current of blue-gray smoke that hovered at the ceiling, she detected another scent, familiar but unplaceable. It was the faint and pernicious odor of something she’d smelled long before, but possibly never identified.

Nia closed her mouth and covered her face again, but she found the pose too much of a reminder of her years in stone, so she crouched instead to avoid the worst of the tainted air.

Down on the floor the air was a little clearer, though no less hot. Nia pulled herself over it on all fours, scuffing the knees of her stolen pants against the stone floor, which felt cool by comparison to the air.

There was a counter, and she felt her way around it. There was a curtain, billowing and blue, separating the front room from the back. The pressing heat was coming from that direction—it was emanating from one of the back rooms, from somewhere deeper in the heart of the block. From the outside of the building, it didn’t look like the store was very big, but she was surprised and alarmed by how far she could creep into its depths.

The second room was occupied by three startling figures. They were each individually so baffling that Nia didn’t know where to look first; each one commanded her full attention, but they had triangulated themselves in such a way that her eyes could only dart back and forth between them.

She crouched in the doorway with the blue curtain draping across her shoulders.

“I am neutral, by ancient and unbreakable agreement!”

The screaming man was small and misshapen, or perhaps he
was only lame. One of his feet was curled and clubbed, and his back was bent. His hair was wild and black, and where the light of the sparkling fire caught the tousled waves, it appeared to be streaked with orange. He was wearing a tattered apron that reached to his knees and carrying a knobbed metal cane.

He waved the cane like a wand, and when he struck it against the tables and floor it sparked wildly, illuminating the room in bursts.

“I serve because I choose, and I choose to serve without allegiance or preference!” He spit the last word and slammed his cane against the counter nearest the second man, who was doubled over.

When the other man spoke, there was pain in his voice that came from deep within, as if he were mortally wounded and acutely aware of it. “We did not know,” he insisted. “We had no warning that you were of our kind.”

“Liars, the both of you!” The apron-clad man swung the cane again. It would have clapped against the other man’s head except that it was caught by a blond woman.

She seized the cane and held it hard; the muscles in her forearm bulged and strained, and she shoved the cane away from the injured man, who moaned.

“Bernice,” Nia whispered, but the syllables drowned in the chaos.

Her cousin stood between the two men, defending one and looking like she wished to kill the other. Nia knew that look. She’d seen it before; it had been one of the very last things she saw in her last life, and she remembered it well.

Nia wasn’t sure if it was exquisite or terrible the way Bernice looked exactly the same, but perfectly different. Her hair was damp with sweat, and her face was streaked with soot and rage, but, as always, she was impeccably attired in a long, light-colored dress and yet another pair of impractical heels.

She never learns
, Nia thought. But as she watched Bernice move and parry, twist and growl, she realized that perhaps she was wrong. Dressed like a lady or no, Bernice had gathered a thing or two about the way a body moves. While the man in the apron mounted his assault, Bernice cast herself into the fray and held her own, though her adversary was clearly not the mortal sort.

The Greek used his cane to push them back; he stabbed with it and swung it, and everywhere the metal tip made contact, fire struck and sparkled. It was catching here and there, along the drying strings of paper that hung along the wall. It was digging in, charring and climbing up the curtains.

And it seemed to Nia, who watched in stunned uncertainty from the doorway floor, that everywhere the fire caught and burned, it seared away something false.

A mask was being stripped one licking flame at a time, and underneath the mask there was only more fire. In a matter of minutes, the entire room would be consumed from wall to wall, and there would be no escape for anyone. The mask would be removed, and whatever rank little hell the Greek’s store concealed would be visible to all. It would keep and broil them all, and only the Greek seemed not to care.

He had been pushed beyond a boundary that Nia couldn’t see, and that Bernice was swearing she hadn’t known about.

“We told you!” she hurled the cane aside, and away from the man she was protecting. “We didn’t
know
!”

“Arahab knows, and you came on her behalf!” He beat the cane again and again, punctuating his words with brilliant fireworks of violence. “Do you think I did not know why you wanted the call? Did you assume that I know nothing of her ambitions and plots?”

“Then why would you give it to us in the first place?” Bernice demanded, shrill and angry. She was holding her companion up
with one arm and using the other to shield them both from the Greek’s frenzied blows.

“It was my
oath
,” he said, and beat the cane again very close to her face. “Serve all, and none will quarrel!”

The man under Bernice’s arm groaned and vomited, and the contents of his stomach were bloody and white. “José,” she whimpered, not daring to take her eyes off the Greek. “José, stand
up
.”

“Can’t,” he said through strings of spittle.

“You did this to him!” she screamed at the Greek, and her accusation only enraged him more.

“I did this? Is that what the story will be? You would frame me for such an act, when I did nothing but complete the task I was assigned?” And then, despite his bubbling wrath, he stopped as if a new thought had occurred to him; and he knew that for its sake, he must restrain it. “Get out,” he commanded, and the words were fat and festering with anger.

Bernice didn’t trust the order. She glanced with darting, feral eyes from corner to corner, seeking escape.

And that’s when she saw Nia, still huddled and defensive in the gateway between the storefront and the back room.

Bernice’s gaze snagged on her cousin, but true recognition did not come immediately. Then her mouth dropped open and she let out a little gasp of astonishment.

The Greek picked up a heavy clay crucible and hurled it behind Bernice. The makeshift discus shot through the smoke-clouded room, collapsed itself into a flaming curtain, and shattered the window high up behind her. “Take him and get out. And gods help you both if I see either of you again.”

Nia watched Bernice decide whether or not to take the offer. She watched her cousin conclude that escape was more valuable than assuaging her curiosity. She watched the well-heeled girl in
the dress that was beginning to smolder take the man by the arms and haul him bodily out the tall window and into the street outside.

Satisfied that they were gone, the Greek turned his attention to Nia.

“Come in,” he told her. The fury had not drained from his voice yet, but even in the crackling commotion of the burning room she could tell that it was not directed at her.

“I can’t.” She shook her head.

“You can,” he assured her. “And you
must
.”

A blast of heat behind her pushed Nia forward. She toppled down in front of the Greek and continued to shake her head. “No, no. I can’t breathe.”

He bent his good knee and tucked the bad leg underneath himself, until he was low enough to look her in the eyes. He gave her a frank and openly interested perusal, and then offered her his hand as if to help her up. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You don’t
need
to breathe. You must be fresh, otherwise you’d have realized by now that you’re only doing it out of habit.”

But whether she needed to breathe it or not, the air choked her throat and the smoke stung her eyes. She refused the man’s hand, but looked over her shoulder to see that the front room was also in flames on the other side of the blue curtain. She looked up at the window where Bernice had escaped, dragging the man with her. It was not so far away that she couldn’t reach it in a couple of fast jumps.

The Greek stood up straight and stretched out his arms, opening them wide and holding the cane aloft. As he raised them, the individual tongues of fire swelled and soared together until they ate away all four walls, and behind the walls the world was white with heat.

Nia began to panic. The door was gone, the windows were
gone, and the room was nearly gone, too, having been eaten away or simply undone by the spreading, sprawling flames.

“I have to go after them,” she insisted through a welling stream of tears that streaked her sooty skin with wet lines.

“No, you don’t, and you
shouldn’t
. Please stand up. Let me explain.”

“Who
are
you?
What
are you?”

“I’m no one who means you any harm, young kindred. I know your kind. Like them in some way, chosen by the elements and offered strength.” His voice took on a pinging echo that gave each vowel a small, definite hum. “Stand up, little troll. This fire holds no harm for a child of stone.”

The searing, pulsing waves of heat pressed against her, holding her down even as she fought against them, trying to force her back to rise and her shoulders to follow.

Finally and slowly she stood, but her clothes were turning black and her nose was filled with the sickening stench of burning hair. She cowered even as she rose, her head held low between her shoulders and her arms clutching each other.

“There you go,” the Greek said almost kindly. “That’s all I wanted to see, and all you needed to know. It isn’t comfortable, but it is survivable, isn’t it?” He lowered his hands and tapped the end of his cane upon the floor. An invisible gust blasted forth in shock wave rings and pushed the worst of the fire back to the walls, where it climbed and smoldered and flared from corner to corner.

The room was still blistering, but he was right: Nia could stand it. A stray ember alighted on her leg, scorching a round hole and eating the fabric until she patted it away into nothing. It stung where the spark had touched her skin, but when she looked down, there was no mark.

Outside, she heard a clucking chorus of voices shouting for the
fire department or the police. One voice rose above the rest, high for a man’s, and desperate. Sam was calling her name, repeatedly, insistently.

He could’ve been a thousand miles away.

The Greek continued. “I think that you’ll find a great number of things merely unpleasant but survivable once you’ve gotten older and lost more of your mortal habits.”