Hell Fire (21 page)

My head rang with the force of its dissent. It didn’t want to share; didn’t want to help. It wanted to take and devour, as the flames had done.

For an eternity, we struggled—fought.

I didn’t know if I could win.

Pain became a constant, and then—

The images I sought came pouring through me. The house gave me back my own uncertainty and terror; it gave me my mother’s anger and determination. She hadn’t been afraid. The now-broken windows of our house became my eyes. I watched as they came from the woods; twelve, in dark robes, hoods pulled forward to mask their faces.

They mounted the stairs and did not knock. A woman opened the door for them, then slammed it in their faces. They argued on the porch, brands raised. The tallest of them shook his head, and then they took the door down with their shoulders.

My mother was dead when they reached her. But I’d already known that. I’d lived her death, where she gave everything she was to me in a final working. It wasn’t her fault that I was broken.

I watched with the house’s peculiar detachment as they carried out a ritual around her body, a circle of twelve in dark robes, lighting candles. I could not hear their chants, but I felt the dark energy curling through the walls, twisting what had been good. I tried to moan, but walls had no mouths.

The twelve poured something from a red can—gas perhaps—and then set the place alight, after they completed their night’s work. Nobody stayed to watch the fire. They melted into the woods while my body curled and blackened, killing heat exploding my windows outward.
Agony.

Death. Vengeance. A house could crave such things until it achieved something like sentience. It had me, and it did not mean to let me go. Helpless, I twisted, immolated like one condemned to hell.

I’d assumed too much. This was more than I could manage, and I wasn’t coming out. Satisfied with my torment, the house showed me the scene again and again while I burnt. It craved suffering, and I served.

No escape
, it told me.
Mine.

No.
Weak defiance. I couldn’t feel myself anymore, only what the monster gave. But I could only take so much. Blackness threatened to flood my mind’s eye, giving me nothing in place of agony. At this point I welcomed oblivion.

There was something wet on my cheek, sloppy, small, and insistent. Though I wanted desperately to drop down the dark hole, the tiny thing wouldn’t let me. It yapped insistently and tugged on my hair. Such devotion touched me and it kept me tethered, despite the pain and nausea.

Then I heard voices from far away. It sounded like a quarrel, but I couldn’t make out the words. I sailed down the dark tunnel, expecting to find those I’d lost, and emerged on the other side. The sky was heavy, overcast. Did it rain in hell?

Jesse’s taut face flickered into sight. I tried to sit up, and the full anguish of my maimed hand hit me like a fist in the stomach. I vomited into the damp leaves where I lay, retching so hard that I felt as if I were turning inside out. Someone held my head and murmured. Wracked with dry heaves, I moaned. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; it was too much. Without lifting a hand to save myself, I sank.

 

I surfaced to an argument. Someone’s arms were around me. I recognized his scent before I opened my eyes.

“We should get her the fuck out of Kilmer,” Jesse was saying. “She’s been out for three hours, and that burn on her palm needs medical attention.”

I was lying on the mattress I’d surrendered to Shannon, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck. That was ameliorated slightly by feeling Chance beside me.

“If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” Chance said conversationally. “The doctors won’t know what to do with her. They’ll run tests, stick her with needles, pump her full of drugs, and then say she’s a medical mystery.” He took a breath, as if trying to rein back his protective instincts. “You don’t understand how much she hates hospitals. Just give her time, all right? Corine is strong. If I didn’t think she could do it, I’d have tried to talk her out of it. Trust her to know her own limits.”

Joy came streaming through me like sunlight.
Trust her.
Stupid as it might seem, that elated me. We were making progress. I wanted to hug him, but at first, my eyelids refused to lift. I could feel my body again, but that wasn’t a good thing. If I ever considered reading a whole house again, I hoped someone would shoot me.

“I’m okay,” I tried to mumble. It came out unintelligible, but the sign of life rendered both men speechless, I assumed with relief.

Eventually I got my eyes open. Everything looked strange and distant, as if I peered through a gauzy veil. My hand throbbed like a son of a bitch.

Chance’s arms tightened around me, and I didn’t try to get away. “Shannon, get the salve I left in the living room.”

Motion flickered at the edges of my vision, but I still couldn’t focus right. She must have fetched it, though, because I felt him applying the ointment to my injured palm as he’d done so many times before. His mother’s remedy soothed the worst of the pain. More than once, I’d considered the cream magickal. Now I suspected it just might be. “What happened?” I asked. That time, the words came out more or less as I intended.

“You were . . . inside a long time. And the pain—” Jesse’s voice actually broke. “Christ Almighty, Corine.”

“So we pulled your hand off the wall,” Shannon continued. “But I wasn’t sure we did it fast enough, ’cause it didn’t seem to do much good. You puked and then passed out.”

“It’s an evil place,” I said, low. “Hungry. But it’s different than what lives in the wood.”

“The site needs to be cleansed,” Jesse agreed. “But that’s not our first priority.”

I acknowledged that with a tired nod. My stomach still felt queer and queasy. I was in no condition to argue with anybody about anything.

Shannon added, “You should have seen Chance. He was freakin’ out.”

Chance gave a wry half smile, but he didn’t deny it. “So we came back here to wait it out. Butch is relieved to see you awake, let me tell you.”

The dog jumped up onto the mattress and licked the back of my uninjured hand. He yapped once as if to corroborate. In response, still too shaky to get up, I stroked his head.

Shannon sat down at the end of the mattress. “Jesse wanted to take you to the hospital. I was starting to think maybe we should. You gonna tell us what happened out there?”

“Water, first, please.” My throat ached as if I had really survived a fire.

I drained two full glasses before I felt any better and pulled away from Chance.

Jesse settled near Shannon, ready to listen. I took that as my cue and set the empty glass on the floor beside me.

“Just tell me it was worth it.” Saldana stared at his hands. His voice sounded hoarse, raw. “Tell me you learned something. Tell me you didn’t go through that for nothing.”

What he really meant was,
Tell me you didn’t put
me
through that for nothing
. I had no doubt he’d suffered everything I had. I wished I could apologize, but that would imply regret, and I’d do the same thing again.

I related what I’d seen in bare-bones terms. There was no point in expressing how bad it had been; Jesse knew, and the other two had some idea, based on my reaction after.

“So,” I concluded, “they performed a ritual around my mother’s body.” It hurt so much to speak the truth. “She killed herself before they came in.”

No wonder I’d never felt even a whisper of her. According to nearly every religion’s lore, suicides went straight to the worst circle in hell—and they didn’t get day passes to come whisper reassurances to the living.

“Why would she?” Shannon asked.

I could only shrug. “To prevent them from getting whatever they wanted from her?”

“Power?” Jesse guessed. “If so, it could be a black coven.”

I remembered my mother warning me of those who drained magickal gifts and took them as their own. She’d called them ghouls, though they began as human beings. The process awoke an incessant hunger, so once they began to eat the magick of others, they could never be satiated.

The idea didn’t wholly explain things. As far as I knew, she had never revealed how much she could do. Between the orchard and the garden, we’d been close to self-sufficient, and she only made charms and potions on request: minor things, low magick. So why would a black coven decide she had enough to risk exposure in taking her? It didn’t add up.

“Why?” I asked, frustrated. “What did they hope to gain?”

“I bet it has to do with that monster in the woods,” Shannon muttered.

“Have you seen it?” With some effort, I hauled myself into a sitting position.

Shannon hesitated. “Yeah. Well, sort of. I felt it more than saw anything. We cut school and meant to get wasted out there. When it got all dark and still, Robert Walker pissed his pants. He was small and slow, kind of timid. We all ran back to where we’d parked the cars and they wouldn’t start.” She shivered, remembering. “I thought we’d never get out. It felt like the thing was playing with us, enjoying it more when we ran.”

“Did you all make it out?” Jesse asked.

She shook her head slowly. “Rob never came home.”

“When was this?” Chance sat forward, carrying me with him.

“Last April.” She considered for a moment. “April nineteenth. With all the weirdness and disappearances, it’s just not safe here anymore.”

But Dale Graham was right about one thing. Events were definitely escalating.

“In my experience,” Jesse murmured, “you just don’t get an evil monster running amok without somebody raising it.”

I sensed Chance’s agreement even before he spoke. “So the question is, who summoned it, and why?”

I intended to ask Miss Minnie that very question tonight.

 

 

 

 

To my amazement, Shannon brought me a present before I ever stumbled out of bed. The silver chain glimmered in my hand like a sliver of starlight. Somehow, she’d managed to remove all the years of tarnish and filth. My mother’s necklace looked like new—even the delicate curves of the flower pentacle.

“Thank you so much. But how did you—”

“Jesse gave it to me while you were out. He thought you might like to wear it.”

A sensitive, yet practical gift.
Yeah, that was Jesse all the way down to the ground. He’d known I’d love to have the necklace restored, but giving it to Shannon to deal with made her feel useful and distracted her from worrying about me.

“It looks beautiful. I can’t believe how good you made it look.”

“Basic science,” she said with a shrug. “All you need is baking soda, salt, boiling water, and aluminum foil in a pan.” I could tell she was pleased with my reaction, though, despite her ostensible indifference.

“Would you mind helping me put it on?”

In answer, she leaned in and deftly fastened it around my neck. A little spark ran through me at her touch, reminding me that I needed to talk to her about her gift. “Did you notice that when we touched?”

“The static?”

I shook my head. “Wrong. That’s how Gifted people identify one another. If you touch Jesse, you’d get the same reaction.”

She seemed skeptical. “Yeah? It looked like static to me.”

Reminding myself to be patient, I explained, “Growing up in Kilmer, you wouldn’t know this any more than I did, but there’s a subsection of the populace who can do weird and amazing things, just like we can. If you let me, I can put you in touch with them.”

“You’re for real about this.” Despite her amazement, it wasn’t a question.

“Absolutely. You saw what I can do. Jesse feels what other people feel.”

“Duh. Empathy.” She spoke with a scorn that emphasized her youth.

Ah, bravado. I remembered it well. “Right. And there are more folks like us out there. If you accept me, I’ll be your mentor, teaching you as Jesse teaches me. We’re both fresh out of the woods, so to speak.”

“What does that even mean? Mentor?”

Not too long ago, I’d been asking the same thing. “I’ll help you when you need it. Answer questions. Basically it means I’ve got your back.”

A rare smile creased her thin cheeks. “I’m down with that.”

That taken care of, I hauled myself off the mattress. I shuffled toward the bathroom. I needed a shower to wash away the stench of the ruin that had nearly claimed me. As I came out of the bedroom, I heard the low murmur of voices that told me the guys were in the parlor.

It took every ounce of my strength to step into the tub. For a moment, I clung to the tiled wall, feeling shaky and nauseated. If I had any sense, I wouldn’t push myself; I’d been tested as never before. But then, if I had any sense, we probably would’ve left Kilmer as soon as the mauled dog ran into the road.

I washed up in stages, sometimes pausing to rest in between. Cursing my long hair, I managed to lather and rinse it. Good thing I had some leave-in conditioner with me. I didn’t think I was up to rinsing a second time.

My knees nearly buckled as I came out of the shower. Blindly I felt for the towel Chance had brought me a few days before. I’d hung it on a hook to dry, and happily, it was still there. Shivering, I wrapped myself in it. Brushing my teeth helped steady me too. There was nothing like waking up with the taste of revisited breakfast in your mouth. Once I finished in the bathroom, I traveled back down the hall toward my room, holding on to the wall.

The bedroom was empty when I got back. I guessed Shannon had gone to hang with the guys. I layered in getting dressed: panties, black peasant skirt, red camisole with built-in bra, and black sweater. I’d never be a fashion plate, but I liked being able to strip down if I got too warm. Dizzy from the movement, I sat down on the edge of the mattress and touched my mother’s necklace.