Damn. I was tempted to run out the front door after him, but a scream from the kitchen changed my mind. I vaulted over the counter.
The tile on the other side hadn’t been mopped recently. I landed on grease and nearly fell on my ass. I heard a clatter of shell on stone and a man’s cry of fear and disgust from the kitchen. I pushed through the door into the back.
It was a kitchen much like any restaurant kitchen. Everything was stainless steel, and the three Hispanic men at the stove were dressed in white with black hairnets. The tallest of them shrieked like a little girl and staggered back, away from the creature that was scuttling across the floor at him.
A short man snatched a huge pot of water off the stove and dropped it onto the creature. Boiling water splashed into the air, and the heavy pot clanged like a muffled bell.
Then it fell on its side. Steaming water rushed at me, and I jumped back too slowly. It sloshed through the fabric of my shoes, scalding my feet.
The little predator wasn’t affected. It charged at the man who’d dropped a pot on it and jumped onto his leg. Then it began to dig.
The man screamed and grabbed a ladle. He hit the predator with all his strength, trying to knock it away, but the ladle crumpled and the predator didn’t move an inch.
Blood splashed onto the floor and the predator burrowed deep into his flesh. The man fell, screaming full-throated now. His co-workers backed away in terror, screaming themselves.
I charged through the scalding water, grabbed the cook’s torn pants, and ripped them up to his thigh. The predator was visible as a bulge moving under his skin. I took my ghost knife and slashed through it.
My spell passed through the man’s flesh without damaging it, but the creature inside him was another matter. It exploded into a fireball as large as a basketball.
The cook, mercifully, fainted. I snatched a pot off a hook and filled it at the sink. Then I poured it over his burning clothes. The other cooks stared at me, dumbfounded. I said: “What do you think? Ambulance?” One of them blinked and lunged for a phone.
Wally’s waitress was standing at the edge of the kitchen, her body hunched in shock, her mouth hanging open. Behind her, also dressed in a waitress uniform, was Violet. “Vi, check your voice mail!”
I didn’t wait for a response. I ran out the back door into the parking lot, desperate to find Wally again.
I sprinted to the side of the building where Wally would have come through the wall, but there was no sign of him. I scanned the area, looking for a blob of a man in green. Nothing. The predator he’d thrown into the kitchen had distracted me, but not for more than a minute or so. I didn’t think he’d had enough time to get into a car and get away.
Unless he’d brought a driver. That would have been a smart play, but I didn’t believe for a moment that Wally had a friend in the whole world. Which would mean he was still on foot. Was he in one of the other stores, watching me? Was he walking through them, building after building, wall after wall, down the entire block in a place I couldn’t see him?
Did you know that some outsiders don’t use light to see? Now I’m sharing that gift, too, and it’s wild. Maybe he was watching me through a brick wall, waiting to see what I’d do. My skin tingled at the thought of it.
Violet came outside and edged toward me. She looked afraid of me. “Ray, what the hell is going on?”
“How well do you know the guy I was sitting with?”
Under other circumstances, she would have snapped at me for answering a question with another question. I wondered what my expression looked like. “Not at all,” she said. “He’s just a creep who’s been coming around lately.”
She was lying again, but I didn’t have time to press her on it. “All right. Listen: I think he’s still nearby, watching. I think he’s going to make sure he lost me before he goes back to wherever he’s staying. So I’m going to walk away, and you’re going to stand in the window of the café and watch for him. Understand? I’ll be back in five minutes or so.”
“What happened to my apartment, Ray?”
“I’ll explain what I know later, but I can’t let this guy get away.” She didn’t look convinced. “Vi, all you have to do is stand in the window and watch.”
I could see she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want anything to do with Wally King at all, and I didn’t blame her. But then she nodded and looked away from me. Thank God.
I ran to the sidewalk. If Wally had kept going in a straight line, he would have gone back toward Vi’s apartment and my car. After one quick look around, just in case I got lucky, I headed in the opposite direction.
I wasn’t sure how far I should go. I wanted Wally to have enough time to feel safe and hit the sidewalk again, but not so long that I couldn’t catch up to him. As long as he didn’t have a car stashed nearby … I didn’t want to think about that.
I’d planned to jog two blocks, but I’d only gone a block and a half before I felt too anxious and tense to continue. I hurried toward the Sugar Shaker, sweat prickling my back.
Violet met me at the door. “He was just here, not a minute ago,” she said. “The creep walked by the window and winked at me.” She shuddered a little and pointed down the street toward her apartment. “Then he took off that way and turned right at the corner. Ray—”
I ran off before she could finish that thought. Whatever she had to tell me, it would have to wait until after I’d found Wally. Found him and killed him.
“Ray!” Vi followed me onto the street. “Ray! You wait for me!”
“Vi, dammit, he’s going to hear you.”
“Don’t you tell me to shut up! You’re going to tell me what’s going on!” So much for being afraid of me.
“If Wally hears you, he’ll come back here and kill us both.”
“You don’t play that shit with me! You’re going to tell me who this asshole is, or you’re going to regret it.”
We couldn’t stand out on the sidewalk hashing this out while Wally walked away. “Come on, and keep your voice down.”
I led her down the sidewalk. In the distance, I could see a column of black smoke stretching into the sky. It gave me a weird, jangly feeling to see the destruction that was following me around.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
“Wally is from Seattle.”
“Duh.”
I remember this mood very well. She wanted me to talk to her, and she wanted to be nasty about it. If I let her turn it into a fight, I’d lose my shot at Wally. “Don’t, okay? Just let me finish. I knew Wally from school. We weren’t friends, but I made a couple of bullies leave him alone, so now he likes me. But we’re not friends,” I added quickly, because I could see she was about to talk.
“That’s not what he says.”
“Fuck him.” We reached the corner and I peeked around it. Wally was almost to the end of the block, walking with a strange, stiff-legged limp on the other side of the street. He wasn’t moving very fast, and I figured he’d be easy to catch on foot.
And I was ready. I was ready to kill him right there on the sidewalk, if I could. But not in front of Vi.
“He did something to a friend of mine,” I said. I didn’t want to explain further, but I knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that. “He hurt the oldest, best friend I had in this world. Understand? Nobody in my whole life ever meant as much to me as that friend did.”
She seemed taken aback, but I pressed on. “Wally …” Wally put a predator inside him. “Wally poisoned him. He gave him some kind of experimental drug that drove him crazy—”
“And he ate people. Right? That was all over the news.”
Of course. “I tried to save my friend …” From the Twenty Palace Society. “I tried to bring back the old him, the guy I knew. I protected him. But in the end, he wouldn’t stop, so …” I killed him.
No. I couldn’t say that. I didn’t believe in confession.
She didn’t need me to say it. Something in my voice had blunted her anger. “So Wally’s after you and you’re after him, and me and my daughter are caught in the middle.”
“At least you’re still alive,” I said. “So far.”
She turned her back on me and walked away. Finally. I peered back around the corner and saw Wally farther up the street, close to the intersection. Maybe I’d do something for Vi later, if I survived, but I couldn’t imagine what. I couldn’t think about her, not when Wally was right there.
I took out my ghost knife. Wally didn’t change his pace or turn around as I crossed the street and fell in behind him. Whatever X-ray vision he might have had, he still couldn’t see behind him. Good. If he was as full of predators as he said, I was going to need to ambush him.
And God, it felt so good to have that clarity. It was calming, almost, even as I felt my heartbeat quicken and my body grow warm. I was going to rush at this bastard, and I was finally going to kill him.
I walked faster. My spell would hit whatever I wanted it to hit, but I’d have to call it back between each attack, and the distance between us meant there would be a lot of time between hits. I had to get closer.
He crossed the street and slumped up the next block. Suddenly, all the doors of a 4Runner opened just as Wally came near it. Five guys piled out and stepped up to him, blocking the sidewalk. Wally didn’t seem startled by them at all.
I had been about to cross the street, but I ducked into the loading dock of an appliance store at the last moment. I peeked at them from behind a stack of pallets.
One of the men who’d stepped out of the 4Runner looked up and down the street warily. I recognized him immediately as the shortest and most muscular of Fidel’s cousins. Then I immediately recognized the others, including Fidel himself.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying at this distance, but I could see their body language. Fidel was smiling and making broad gestures with his hands—he was trying to look like a magnanimous gangster, the guy who asked for things in a friendly way while the gunmen around him made sure you knew what the correct answer was supposed to be.
Something Fidel said made Wally throw back his head and laugh. He didn’t seem nervous or intimidated at all.
They were standing in front of a hotel, and Wally waved for them to follow him up the walkway. They did, glancing around warily as they went.
“Hey! What are you doing there?” a voice behind me said.
The man who’d challenged me had a belly like a wine barrel, a wiry beard, and tiny round glasses. He’d just come out of the back door onto the loading dock. “Duh,” I said. “I’m spying on someone.”
He opened his mouth to respond, then shrugged and went back inside.
Wally, Fidel, and all his people were gone. I crossed the street, approaching the building slowly. There was an arched opening in the middle of the building and a driveway for cars to pull through. On one side of the arch was the lobby and reception area, and on the other was a diner.
The building was stucco, with tall sliding glass doors, and even from the street I could see how dirty it was. The little diner was mostly deserted, with a few scattered people-watchers on plastic furniture eating out of red plastic baskets. None of them looked like Fidel’s crew.
A sliding glass door opened somewhere above me, and I glanced up. The stoned guy from the alley last night stepped onto a balcony. It was the lowest floor and nearly at the north end of the building. I quickly turned my back.
I walked away from him until I heard the door close again, then risked a glance back and saw that the balcony was empty. Thank God for a criminal’s paranoia. I’d never have found them otherwise.
The windows and balconies alternated along the length of the building—window, balcony, balcony, window, window, balcony, balcony, window. That meant there were four units on each floor in opposing pairs that let the architects set their bathrooms back-to-back.
How to get there was the problem. I wasn’t keen on the idea of kicking the door down, and no one had left a ladder conveniently leaning against the building. I went into the office.
The man behind the desk was small, dark, and narrow-shouldered; he had a thin mustache like a movie star from the thirties. “How may I help you?” He had a slight British accent.
“I need a room.”
“Of course, sir. Do you have luggage?”
“In my car,” I said. “I’m looking for something specific. I need the lowest room you have, and I need it to be in the northeast corner of the building.”
“Ah. Are you concerned about feng shui?”
“No, I’m interested in the flow of energy in my living space.” He couldn’t quite suppress a smile, and I was happy to let him laugh at me. Being underestimated has saved my life more than once.
“We do have such a room.” He brought out the paperwork.
“Can I check it out first? For a few minutes alone? I’d like to meditate on it.”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. I wasn’t that amusing. I paid for the room and promised to get my luggage after I checked out the flow. He gave me a plastic card to unlock the door.
I went up the stairs, gambling that if Fidel didn’t place a guy in the diner, he wouldn’t have one in the hall. And I was right. I paused at the door to Wally’s room and heard Fidel say that he couldn’t use that place anymore and they needed a new place. His voice was raised, as though he was arguing.
I didn’t listen for long. Getting caught with my ear at the door would be a bad thing. I walked quietly down the hall, feeling the sweat prickle on my back. The gold-painted walls and wine-colored carpet made me feel stifled, even if it was cooler inside than out.
I let myself into my room. It was two steps above utilitarian, with a floral print on the covers.
My hands started shaking. I clenched them into fists and pressed them against the dead flesh over my heart to control them. Wally was just on the other side of that wall, and my chance to kill him was coming soon. I had no idea what he was capable of, aside from walking through walls and puking a tiny monster onto me. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. It would have been nice to have a better plan than Move fast hit hard, but what the hell. I would give it a shot, and if I failed, so be it. I just hoped I wouldn’t see any more of his tricks, if he had them.
I went to the balcony and looked across at the adjacent one. I could jump it and be close enough to eavesdrop, but I knew someone would catch me.
The ground was about fifteen feet below. If I missed the jump, I’d land just outside the manager’s office. I think he’d find me much less amusing after that.
I hurried into the bathroom to splash water on my face, then grabbed a glass off the sink and returned to the main room.
By my standards, the room was comfortable, but the walls were not terribly thick. I laid the glass against the wall and pressed my ear to it.
I’d seen this work on TV, but it wasn’t doing me a bit of good here. The voices in the next room were too muffled to understand, although I could tell that the argument was over.
“Seriously, Ray? A glass against the wall?”
I pivoted in surprise, dropping the glass onto the carpet. Arne was standing just behind me. He sat on the edge of the bed. “If you want to spy on people, you ought to order the right tool for the job. On the Internet you can get a pretty good listening device for a hundred bucks.”
My heart was racing, but I did my best to act calm. “Sure, but can you drink iced tea out of it, too?”
“You got me there.”
“I guess you finished your job?”
He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “No. This is just a quiet moment while I wait for the stupid people to catch up, so I thought I’d check on other things. What happened with that big guy?”
“Wardell? We’re best buds. He invited me over for a Golden Girls marathon.”
“I’ll bet.” He sighed. “You’ve developed a knack for slipping out of trouble, haven’t you? Didn’t you get snapped up by Uncle Sam a few months ago? After Washaway?”
I became very still. “Yes.”
“And what? They let you go?”
Not really. “Yes.”
“I guess they had to, huh? How’d you manage that?”
I’m on the twisted path. “They caught the real assholes. Nothing to do with me.”
Arne seemed amused by that. “You know what turns people into monsters, Ray? Knowing they can get away with anything. Once they realize they aren’t going to be punished for anything they do, the masks come off, baby, and the devils run free.”
I didn’t need anyone to tell me this. This was my life. I said: “It’s time to help me with my thing, right?” Arne spread his hands to say Why not? “Tell me how this started. Tell me about Wally.”
“But it didn’t start with Wally. It started with Luther.”
“He’s the guy you brought in to replace me, right?”
“Nobody replaced you, Ray. Your spot was open and waiting for you. Luther was just extra help. He was big, strong, and friendly—not that bright, but how many bright people do the work we do? Mostly he was loyal, as long as you put a couple of bucks in his pocket.
“Luther was hanging at the Bigfoot Room all by himself when Wally walked in. Wally dropped your name, which Luther recognized. After I don’t know how long, Luther called all of us at once: me, Fidel, Summer, the whole crew. Everyone but Vi and Melly met up at the Bigfoot Room. Wally made his pitch—he offered us a super power—and Luther was the living proof that it was real. He vanished right in front of us. All we had to do in return was a single favor. Luther’s excitement was infectious.
“I had a bad feeling about it, though, and I put him off for twenty-four hours. You know why.”
“Wally looks like a walking tumor and you didn’t want to end up like him.”
“Hell yeah. I’m a good-looking man. I can’t throw away a face like this. But Luther said that the powers Wally had were different from the invisibility thing. Bigger. He said Wally couldn’t vanish himself, which was why he needed our help.”
My mouth suddenly felt dry. “What powers does Wally have?”
Arne shrugged. “I don’t have a lot to tell you. You’d have to ask Lenard.”
“Why?”
“Well, Lenard doesn’t like victims to feel too comfortable around him. He likes them wide-eyed and sweating, right? And he starts thinking that your buddy Wally is too cheerful, so out of the blue he rushes the guy and knocks him over, right into the dirt. Then he starts screaming at him like a nutcase, ‘Don’t you dare smile at me! Don’t you fucking smile!’ And the rest of us are rolling our eyes at him.
“But your buddy just got to his feet and smiled at Lenard again, like a big fuck you. And Lenard, now he has to step up or he’ll look like he wimped out. So he gives Wally another shove.
“Except this time, your boy was ready and it didn’t even move him. It was like Lenard was pushing against an office building—he couldn’t even make a dent in the guy’s flabby man-titties. Almost like …”
I remembered the way the cook had hit the little red predator with his ladle, and how the creature didn’t move an inch. I keep them fed, and they share their little tricks with me. “Almost like nothing could move him if he didn’t want it to.”
“Yeah, and then there was this wave that came out of him—I’m not sure what to call it. It was like one of those old kung fu movies, where one dude shoves another without touching him. Lenard had his ass lifted off the ground and dropped into the dirt ten feet away. He didn’t know what to do about that, but Ty and Fidel took the heat off by making a joke of it. You’d have to talk to Lenard to find out what it felt like. I was just standing there watching.”
“Right.”
“Not much, is it? It’s like he’s the patron saint of shoving. He acted like he could do more, but then, he would.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to thank Arne; he might have told me I was welcome and walked out. “What favor did Wally want?”
“He hasn’t asked for one. Not from me. By the time Luther came to us, his debt was paid in full. I asked him what he’d done, and he took me to the—”
A gunshot popped in the next room. Arne’s expression became weary, and he vanished.
Damn. My questions would have to wait. I ran into the hall and cut the lock on Wally’s door with my ghost knife.
The door swung inward. A bearded man pivoted toward me, raising his arm. I threw myself to the floor, but there was no gunfire. Fidel laid a hand on the gunman’s shoulder, and he lowered his weapon. Fidel had his SIG Sauer in his other hand.
“Ray?”
They all had the same gun. I left the ghost knife on the floor and raised my hands to show that they were empty. Then I got to my knees, letting my hand fall on my spell and picking it up. Wally lay on the bed, his arms wide, his feet on the floor. There was a single bullet hole in his chest. He looked like a lumpy bundle of old clothes.
Was he dead? I’d assumed he’d be as hard to kill as a sorcerer, especially with normal weapons. Ansel Zahn had been reduced to a bloody mess by an amateur firing squad, and he’d laughed about it. And Wally had said he was full of predators.
But now he had a hole in his chest, and he wasn’t moving at all. Had they done my job for me?
I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.
“That’s not cool, man,” Stoned said. He pointed at me. “This guy’s a witness.”
“You saved me the trouble,” I said. My hand brushed against something on the table. It was a wallet, bulging with paper receipts and cash. One of those scraps of paper might lead me to his spell books, and damn if I didn’t want to steal his money.
“He laughed at me,” Fidel said, staring down at Wally’s body. The hammer of his pistol was cocked. I looked at the other guns, but their hammers were all uncocked. Stoned rolled his eyes and shared a glance with the others. The three of them looked disappointed.
In the moment they looked away, I pocketed the wallet.
Fidel chewed his lip as though he was trying to work out a tough math problem. “First, he refused me. Then he laughed at me.”
“What now, Fidel?” The short, muscular man with the heavy beard stepped close. “You promised us something. How you gonna deliver now that this guy is dead?”
Wally’s shirt moved.
“You guys should get out of here,” I said.
Muscular pointed his gun at me again. “You ain’t calling the shots here.”
“It’s not about who’s the shot caller,” I said. I pointed to Wally. “This guy isn’t as dead as you think.”
Wally’s shirt twitched and shifted. One of the guys cursed in surprise, and they were behind me all of a sudden, because I’d moved toward Wally’s body without even realizing I was doing it. The clean, cold certainty I’d felt while I was stalking him had evaporated. More predators were about to get loose, and there was nothing between them and the world except me. I raised my ghost knife.
A gleaming red ball pushed its way out of the hole in Wally’s shirt. Then another, then four, five, six more were coming out as if they were being pushed through the opening. They tumbled down the sides of Wally’s body like golf balls and stopped in the folds of the blankets or in the nest of his crotch. A couple struck the floor with a heavy thunk.
Spiny metallic needles extended from their bodies, and they began to scramble toward us. I gripped my ghost knife tightly and moved forward to meet them.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop came from behind me, as Fidel’s family cut loose with their SIGs. Bullets zinged around me, some punching through the floor, others ricocheting in unpredictable ways. I turned to shout at them to stop, but as I did I saw Muscular lean down to fire at the closest predator.
The sound of the shot, the spark on the creature’s shell, and the bloody wound on his leg all seemed to appear in the same instant.
He fell back against the wall as the predator advanced on him. The bullet’s impact had as much effect as it would against a bank vault.
There were a dozen predators fanning across the room toward us and more coming every moment. Three were a second or two away from my own ankle, and I swept my ghost knife through the lead.
It burst into flames as I leapt back. The fire touched the two behind it, and they burst apart as well.
The sudden flares stopped the gunfire, at least. Fidel and his cousins backed toward the door, leaving Muscular cut off against the wall. Stoned drew back his leg and kicked at one of the scuttling little balls, but it was like kicking a metal post anchored into the ground.
I had to move away from the burning spot on the carpet. Stoned fell backward toward the doorway, cursing. Fidel and one of his cousins grabbed at him, but they were so spooked and frantic that they worked against each other. I could hear Muscular behind me, shouting in Spanish, his voice going high with fear.
Everything was loud and bright and hot. The carpet was burning, streaming thin black smoke that smelled like burned plastic. It was all too much. I couldn’t think clearly.
I moved toward Stoned, Fidel, and the others and cut through one of the predators pursuing them, then drew back. The creature burst into flames, then the others began to go up in a chain reaction, spreading the fire from the wall to the dresser and cutting off my path to the door. I turned my back on the popping sounds and the growing firelight.
Muscular had scrambled into a corner. He’d tucked his injured leg behind him and hammered at the closest of the predators with the butt of his pistol, but there was no effect at all. His teeth were bared in raw terror, and I rushed toward him, ghost knife in hand.
The nearest of the predators began to tear through his leather shoe with its needle-sharp forelegs. I saw blood, but Muscular didn’t do anything more than grunt. I swept my spell through the creature, and this time I saw that the predator didn’t split apart—its shell and limbs seemed to vanish, revealing the expanding fire from inside it.
Now Muscular screamed as the flames engulfed his leg. A second predator burst into flames nearby, and I fell away from the heat. There were no other creatures close enough to go up with it.
Christ, the things were still coming through the hole in Wally’s chest, as though he had an inexhaustible supply of them. The flames blocking the way toward the door had spread with startling speed; the front half of the dresser was wrapped in fire. Black smoke flowed along the ceiling and out into the hall through the door that Fidel had left open. The smoke alarm shrieked out in the hall, but I could still hear predators popping like caps in the fire.
The way out of the room was blocked by burning carpet, so the predators were trapped on the far side of the bed, piling up against the wall, testing it with their sharp legs. Apparently, they didn’t like digging through something that wasn’t flesh.
Another stream of predators came toward us from the balcony side of the room. Muscular tried to pull farther back into the corner. He slammed his elbow against the wall, trying to break through to safety, but he had no leverage and no time.
I stepped over him and crouched low, swiping my ghost knife through the lead predator. It burst, igniting the other creatures beside and behind it. The fire spread backward along the sliding glass door and ignited the polyester blankets hanging off the bed.
The flames had already reached the other side of the bed. I dropped to my knees, beneath the thickening cloud of black smoke. The fire on the carpet was only as high as my calves, but the doorway was already wreathed in flames. The covers, still just starting to burn, dripped liquid fire onto the carpet.
And damn, it was so loud.
I lifted Muscular to his feet, but we both stayed well below the billows of smoke. The fire moved toward us, and the carpet at the edge of it was giving off white smoke. God, it had gotten so hot in the room so quickly. I felt like I’d been thrown into an oven.
But predators were still pouring out of the hole in Wally’s chest. They were tumbling away from the flames, swarming in thick piles along the headboard and wall. I could see some of the predators digging at the drywall, trying to escape into the next room.
The only real weapon I had was my ghost knife, and it was just a piece of paper—covered by laminate and mailing tape—but still just paper. I’d been hitting the predators as quickly as I could—like flicking a finger through a candle flame—to keep the fire from damaging it, but I couldn’t hold back anymore. My spell was precious, but stopping these predators was more important.
I threw my ghost knife toward the opening in Wally’s chest. At the same time, I willed it to move as fast as it could, putting my fear and adrenaline behind it. It zipped away from me like a rocket.
I lunged across Muscular’s body toward the curtain.
The ghost knife passed through the bulge in Wally’s stomach. Fire blasted out of his body like water from a fire hose. I tore the curtain from the rod, letting it fall over us. Predators went off like little firebombs. I slapped my hand across Muscular’s mouth and nose as the flames roared around us.
God, the heat! Muscular’s face was inches from mine, and his eyes were bulging with terror. I’m sure I looked the same.
The roar of flames subsided. The curtain scorched my back, so I threw it away, letting it fall on the carpet between the sliding glass door and us. I’d hoped it would smother the flames a little, but actually it added fuel.
At the other end of the room, fire climbed the wall and rolled against the ceiling. The bed was completely aflame, and I couldn’t see anything of Wally except his feet.
I hefted Muscular onto my shoulder. He was heavy, but my adrenaline was flowing. Time seemed sluggish, my chest felt tight, and my skin was steaming as sweat poured out of me. There was no way I could get to the door, but the balcony was only three feet away. I just had to walk through the fire.
Eight thick midnight-blue tendrils suddenly rose up out of the flames where Wally’s body lay. They arced and pressed down against the floor, lifting Wally’s corpse toward the ceiling. He was still on his back, his arms flopping loose, his nasty green sweat suit burning against his skin. A thick sludge bubbled out of the hole in his chest and flowed over his body, extinguishing the flames. He—it—something turned so its face was toward me.
Wally’s eyes were open. “Damn, Ray. That actually hurt.”
Moving like spiders’ legs, the tendrils walked him through the wall as though he were a phantom.
My blood was rushing in my ears, and Muscular was clutching at me, digging his fingers into my shoulder blade. I ran through the flames, staying as low as I could. The heat against the bottom of my shoes and up my legs was intense, but it was just pain. Just pain. I slammed my elbow against the door handle, and thank God it opened. Then I was through the doorway and onto the concrete balcony.
I swung Muscular off my shoulder, setting him on the far side of the iron rail. We both gasped for fresh air, and he suddenly began slapping at me. For a moment I was furious and drew back my fist, but then I realized he was beating out the flames on my clothes.
I stood still, listening to the roaring fire behind me and the sirens in the distance. My legs and feet didn’t hurt anymore, which was a huge surprise.
Muscular stopped swatting the flames out and looked me directly in the eye. “Mi hermano,” he said.
Adrenaline buzzed in my head and made it hard to focus on what he’d said. We gripped each other’s wrists as though we were actors in a sword-fighting movie, then I lowered him to the grass below. I bent over the rail as far as I could, but just as I thought it was still too high, he let go.
He struck the ground with a cry of pain, rolling on the grass and clutching at his burned and bloody legs. Then he struggled upright and began hopping toward the sidewalk.
The wind changed, blowing the choking black smoke toward me. The temptation to follow Muscular down to the grass was strong, but I couldn’t flee the scene yet. My head still buzzed; it was hard to think, but I knew I needed to look for predators. I had no idea what I’d do once I found them, but that had never stopped me before.
I swung my leg over the railing. I felt stiff, but it didn’t register why. The other balcony was only about six feet away, but when I jumped for it, my legs had no strength in them. I barely managed to catch the top of the rail opposite and pull myself up onto the ledge.
Something was wrong with my legs. No, not something. I was burned, and worse than I realized. Maybe I was in shock, too. I staggered into my room. The wall between mine and Wally’s was dark at the top and giving off wisps of smoke. I felt the door; it was cool. I pulled it open and staggered into the hall.
Just a few feet to my left, the doorway to Wally’s room was open. Black smoke flowed out and the flames ran all the way up to the ceiling. The smoke alarm blared an awful noise. Where were the other guests? Long gone, I hoped.
There was a staircase on the other side of the flames, but I knew it led down to the front office. Instead, I turned to the stair at the other end of the hall. The door was propped open. As I stumbled toward it, choking and coughing, I saw that it was blocked by a pair of legs.
I pushed the door open. Stoned lay on his back on the stairs, his head hanging down and his mouth open. His face was bloody, as though he’d puked blood on himself, and there was a ragged hole where his windpipe was supposed to be. His shirt rippled—something moved under there.
Damn. I had screwed up again. At least one of Wally’s predators had escaped, and Stoned had died. I dragged him by the belt into the hall and let the metal door close. Fidel and his other two cousins were nowhere to be seen.
I stood over Stoned’s body, feeling dizzy and weak. I couldn’t breathe deeply without gagging. The sirens were getting closer, but they didn’t sound close enough. Stoned’s pant leg rippled then, and his shirt in two places. Did he have three of those nasty little bastards in him? I reached for my ghost knife, but it wasn’t there and I couldn’t remember where I’d left it.
To hell with it. I pulled him down the hall by the pant cuff. The dragging on the carpet caused his green plaid shirt to slide up, and I saw lumps under his skin moving down his body toward my hand, as though they could smell living flesh where it brushed his. I moved faster.
By the time the nearest predator was at Stoned’s knee, I was close enough to the fire to feel it scorching my back. I let go of his ankle and shuffled around to the other side of him. The bulges under his skin stopped moving toward his foot as though they’d lost the scent.
I didn’t want to give them the chance to find it again. I grabbed Stoned under the armpits and hoisted him up and through the doorway. I had to get so close that it felt like being on fire again, but I managed to drop him well into the flames.
I staggered back against the wall, coughing and choking. I crouched there, staying low where the air was still breathable, and watched to see if any of the little iron creatures came scuttling out of the flames. There was nothing I could do about it if they did, but I had to know.
My back and legs began to hurt in earnest now, and my wooziness grew stronger. I wanted to puke and take a nap but forced myself to wait and watch.
The flames spread, the sirens of fire trucks roared outside, and the smoke grew thick. No creatures came out of the fire toward me, but did that mean they’d been destroyed? I couldn’t think about it. My head was too muzzy.
Time to go. I crawled along the wall toward the metal door at the end of the hall. Saturday-morning public-service announcements had told me that I would find clean air at knee level, but I coughed and hacked on the stink of burning polyester. Just as I reached the edge of the door, it swung open.
Two firefighters rushed by me. They wore helmets and bulky masks, and I suspect they didn’t even see me there on the floor. I slipped into the stairwell and let the door close behind me.
The stairs were difficult. What smoke had gotten through rose up to the top of the stairwell, making the air breathable, but my legs did not want to move. I didn’t know how I was going to get to my car, or what I would do after that. A sudden wave of nausea almost made me slide down the final six steps.
On the ground floor, I fell against the door and went out into the sunlight. The heat of the day was raw against my burns. I didn’t look down at them, though. I didn’t want to see how bad they were, because then the pain would hit me like a tidal wave.
Not that it wasn’t already coming on. I tried to breathe slowly to control the pain, but every breath caught in my throat. I circled around the back of the building, leaning on parked cars while I passed between them. A firefighter yelled at me to get out of there, and a slender black woman in gray pinstripes rushed by me with car keys in her hand.
Suddenly, Bud was beside me. “Hey there, Ray.”
I staggered away from him and fell against the hood of a Lumina. “Damn,” I said, my voice slurred. “Scared me. Give me a hand, Bud.”
He laughed. Summer was standing beside him. She never laughed. Neither moved to help me. “You said you were going to save us, Ray.” There was a touch of contempt in her voice. “How you gonna manage that?”
I didn’t have the energy to spar with them. I was helpless, and that made me furious. “Vanish!” I shouted. The word made me choke. “VANISH!”
Summer sneered at me. Bud smirked. Both of them turned their backs and walked away.
I didn’t care, because my anger had given me focus and I’d suddenly remembered what I’d done with my spell.
I’d thrown my ghost knife but hadn’t called it back, not through those flames. It should have passed through the wall, but I didn’t know how far it could go. I staggered toward the far end of the building—the south? I was all turned around—determined that I would not leave a magic spell lying around for anyone to find. I had to get it back.
At the far side of the building was a narrow alley with a high fence. The chain-link fence had plastic slats threaded through it, so I couldn’t see what was on the other side. The pain grew stronger, stealing my life force away.
There was not very much trash in the passageway, but I didn’t see my ghost knife anywhere. The only places left to go were back into the building and out to the front, where the fire trucks had gathered.
I didn’t need to do that. I closed my eyes and reached for my ghost knife. It was nearby—still inside the building and above me, and as I focused on it, I felt myself wavering. My body wanted to shut down, and I was barely able to feel my spell and call it to me. The world seemed to be growing dark, but I did see the ghost knife slice through the wall to land in my open palm.
I slapped it against my chest and fell against the side of the building. Whatever it was and whatever it wanted, it was part of me, and I was glad to have it close. I slid it into the back pocket of my pants, miraculously hitting the target on my first try.
I was about to fall when I felt a pair of hands grab me roughly. Damn, I had been caught by one of the firefighters, which meant an ambulance, then cops, then jail. I tried to convince myself it was better than dying, but I couldn’t make those thoughts come together in my head. The hands were strong; they lifted me and propped me against the fence.
I looked up but didn’t see a firefighter’s jacket and helmet. It was the guy in the red T-shirt and the camo pants.
He seemed happy to see me. “Hey!” he said. “Here you are!”
I punched him in the mouth with all my strength, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. The whole world turned dark, and I went down into it, knowing that I might never see daylight again.