Wanton Fire

by Sherri L. King

A flash of fire illuminated the night.

  Steffy shrieked softly in surprise.

  A body streaked out of the darkness that followed, taking her to the ground with a jarring thud.

  “Who the fuck are you?” came the savage, female voice. Heat baked from the woman, nearly scalding Steffy’s skin.

  Steffy bucked, sending her attacker rolling. She gained her feet and pursued, but the darkness shrouded her enemy in secrecy. A click sounded at her ear—the cocking of a pistol—and she froze. The woman had managed to creep up behind her in the dark. Amazing considering her keen senses, even in this blackness.

  “Jesus! How’d you get here, DJ girl?”

  The sounds of battle were louder, more chaotic now about them. The music that always played in Steffy’s head rose to a crescendo in rhythm with it and she gritted her teeth, losing herself a little to the adrenaline that surged within her veins. “I followed Cinder, genius.”

  Laughter grated out from the fearsome voice. “I like you already. Here. Take this. And for God’s sake, stay out of sight.”

  A thick handgun was shoved inelegantly into her hands.

  “Do you know how to use that?” the voice asked impatiently.

  Another fireball lit the night, illuminating the woman’s features. Bright orange-yellow eyes burned at Steffy from a beautiful, proud face. The warrior woman looked more like a sex kitten in her ebony cat suit than a gang member. The moment took on a surrealism that almost made her laugh.

  “Yeah, sure, I know how to use it. You just point and shoot.” What self-respecting ex-streeter didn’t know how to use a gun?

  “Good.” The woman grinned. Her dangerous demeanor was lessened, making her look younger, prettier. “Now stay behind this wall.” Steffy looked around and only then noticed that she was behind one of the crumbling walls of the old petrol station. The woman continued, words clipped and matter of fact. “If anything icky comes out at you, you fire this gun until it’s empty and you call for help. Okay?”

  The woman had lapsed from flawless German into equally flawless English. Luckily, Steffy was fluent and understood her words. “Okay,” she answered in kind. “Sure.” The situation seemed more than a little absurdly overdramatic and she was at a loss for anything beyond her soft reply.

  In a flash the woman was gone.

  The ground thudded as the battle beyond the wall continued. There came a savage, inhuman scream, and then the roar of flame. The swift staccato of machine gun fire echoed…the music in Steffy’s head changed tempo, gaining in speed and urgency.

  What the hell was going on?

  Her skin crawled. The hairs on her arms and nape stood on end. She tightened her fingers on the grip of the gun in her hand. Something was close, something dangerous and threatening. Every instinct screamed at her not to do it…but curiosity got the better of her and she peeked out from behind her hiding place.

  “Scheiße!” She shrieked and pulled back behind the wall, gasping, heart racing.

  Her mind would not, could not, process the image she had just seen to anything that was understandable or believable. Heaven help her but she had to take a second look. If only to reassure herself that the…thing…was not there. That she had somehow imagined it.

  Trembling she peeked out again. Her eyes met and held with bloodshot, orange orbs. “Holy hell,” she moaned and fell back behind the wall once more.

  Had it seen her in the darkness? It was several feet away and she was cloaked in shadow…maybe it hadn’t seen her. She was suddenly, sickeningly sure that it had. Her stomach rolled and she gagged. The smell of brimstone and old death assailed her sensitive nostrils and she doubled over, emptying the contents of her stomach in a heated rush onto the ground.

  What hideous abomination had been let loose from its prison in hell tonight? That was no fairy tale monster she had glimpsed—no imagination under God could have spawned such a savage vision as that, surely. That was a devil or a demon or a monster. There was no adequate word in any language for what that thing was.

  A growl purred at her ear. She took a deep breath, steeling herself instinctively to face the mortal danger she knew she had to confront. Reality had checked itself out of her consciousness the moment she had met Cinder. Now was the time for action, not rationality. Another growl sounded…and the wall above her head exploded.

  “Scheiße!” she screamed again and leaped back, raising the gun before her as she retreated in horror.

  She looked into the face of pure evil…and knew that her life would never again be the same.

  Hesitating no longer she fired, point blank, into the tusked mouth of the creature. Thick black ooze, like tar or glue, flew out in a spray, hot and gooey down her front as the monster’s face exploded. Steffy gasped and leapt further back. Her hand shook on the gun and her vision grayed. Thick, pounding music played on in her mind—her own personal soundtrack that never seemed to fall quiet—and her heartbeat matched its violently raging tempo.

  Then…her heart almost stopped beating. Adrenaline took over and she would have fallen if not for its bracing strength. The monster gasped, spraying black muck once more with the bellow of its breath…and advanced on her.

  “For fuck’s sake!” She fired the gun into its gaping maw once again.

  It faltered. It choked on a growl. It righted itself. And continued to advance.

  Steffy screamed in rage and fear and emptied the gun into the monster’s torn and oozing head. And still the creature came for her. The gun was empty, the clip devoid of any more bullets. The creature reached out for her and she beat its clawed hands back with the gun, clubbing it over and over again. And still it came.

  “Help!” she yelled, and turning, she fled from the creature as she had never fled from anything in her life. “Help me, damn it!”

  She had no idea in which direction to run. Her mind was a quandary of confusion, fear, and desperation. How could anything live after taking so many shots full on in the face? How would she ever be able to sleep comfortably again knowing that these things existed? Her world was chaos, her terror absolute.

  Fire lit the night, illuminating her way…as she fled directly into the path of yet another creature.

  She stopped so fast that she slid forward, then lost balance and fell back onto her tailbone. Her hands saved her from a terrible bruising but only just. The crumbling asphalt beneath her cut and scraped her palms bloody and the pain thankfully served to sharpen her senses to a knife’s honed edge. She scrambled backwards, crablike, and desperately tried to regain her feet.

  The creature before her roared and the sound of it echoed in her mind, mixing into the music. The monster was upon her. She had nowhere to go. She was unarmed.

  She was going to die.

  Gritting her teeth, she steeled herself. No way would she die with a scream on her lips. If this was to be her end, she would face it with as much courage as she could. She would not leave this world without injuring her killer first…somehow.

  A shadow passed before her. A wind, like the cool breath of a gentle death, played in her hair, streaking it across her eyes so that it blinded her. She shook the locks away, blinked her blurry eyes, and gasped at the scene that unfolded before her.

  A black-cloaked man moved calmly, gracefully to intercept her attacker, standing almost upon her, as if she wasn’t even there. He slowly extended his hand out before him, as if he were moving in the thick fog of a dream. His palm splayed, landing gently upon the chest of the beast as it charged them. The man disappeared. The monster faltered, then fell, and Steffy only just managed to move aside as it came crashing to the ground right where she had been but a moment before. The man appeared once more, behind the fallen creature, as calm and collected as he had been during the entire confrontation. Looking down upon her from his hooded visage, he stood still as a statue. As still as death.

  Steffy choked on a cry, whether of terror or awe she couldn’t have said.

  Long black cloth danced about his form on a wi
nd that wasn’t there. The man’s hand was still held out before him, only now it held a giant pulsating orb. The monster’s heart. Steffy knew instinctively that this was the monster’s heart. Somehow, without breaching the wall of the creature’s chest, the man had taken its heart and with it the life that beat within it.

  “Cinder.” The man’s voice was like the ringing of hell’s bells. Deadly, frightening…yet indescribably beautiful. Alluring, it could tempt any man or woman to sell their soul without a qualm. The man tossed the heart over her head and, in a daze, she looked back to see Cinder catch it in his hand. It burnt to ash within the next breath, though Steffy hadn’t seen him set a match or lighter to it.

  The cloaked man whirled then as yet another monster came up behind him, and within the blink of an eye he had taken that creature’s heart in a similar fashion as he had the first. How he performed such a trick she couldn’t have guessed. But the night was full of magic, evil and good or so it would seem, and it didn’t seem to matter that none of it made any logical sense.

  Steffy tried twice before she found a voice with which to speak. “Thank you,” she said to the cloaked man. She rose, turned about, and extended the thanks to Cinder then and was shocked when he came forward and pushed her roughly into the arms of the other.

  “Get her out of here, Traveler,” he growled.

  “And where shall I take her?” came the sardonic question above her as the cloaked man steadied her against him with strong, firm hands.

  “The fuck out of here,” came the voice of the woman as she rushed past them at a dead run. “We’ve got more coming!”

  Cinder sent her a burning look then nodded to the man who held her. “Get her to safety. We’ll deal with what she’s seen later.”

  He followed in the wake of the woman, leaving Steffy alone with the quiet, hooded one.

  “What the hell is going on here? What are these things?” She tried to pull away from the steely hard body that dwarfed her.

  Her vision grew dim, the world dissolved around her, and when it righted itself again it no longer seemed any world with which she was familiar. The petrol station was gone. She was standing in a dimly lit chamber of iron and stone.

  “Wait here,” said the beautiful voice from the shadowy cowl. And the man disappeared, leaving her there.

  “Scheiße,” she breathed and fell to her knees on the stone floor, shaking.

  No doubt about it. Boredom was indeed the most dangerous force that drove her life.

  Chapter Three

  Steffy had looked the odd apartment over twice and it seemed the only way out was through a massive iron door, which was locked tight, trapping her within. She had studied the door, thinking and pondering her predicament, and there was really only one choice open to her. The lock was an old, antique design. The kind one might expect to see in an old church or dilapidated homestead.

  It would be child’s play for her to pick it.

  Steffy bent down and pulled off her shiny black boot. Strapped to her ankle beneath it was a small lock picking kit, her constant companion ever since her days as a petty thief. Not that she’d had much use for it in recent years. Except for the time she and her friend Raine had stolen into one of the dormitories and rigged the PA system to play a Ministry CD at ear-splitting volume. Steffy pushed the memory away before it had time to bloom…she missed her friend too much to remember her without pain. And she had no time for weakness now. She removed the kit from her ankle and laid it out on the floor before the door.

  She took a deep breath. And let her instincts take over.

  Less than sixty seconds later the door was unlocked and she was putting her boot back on over the lock picks, strapped once more to her ankle.

  “Still got the moves, heaven help me,” she muttered to herself.

  The door was cold against her hands as she cautiously eased it open a crack, just enough for her to see if the coast was clear. Thankfully it was. She opened the door wider and quickly ducked her head out into the passageway beyond it for a better look around. The light was dim in the corridor, but bright enough for her to see her way around with relative ease.

  It seemed then that the room behind her was a safer haven than whatever lay beyond the door. She hadn’t a clue where she was, except for an innate sense that she just might be deep underground, and it made her nervous. Unsure of herself now, she had to force that first step away from the stone and iron room. Luckily, each subsequent step was easier until she was silently gliding with swift ease down the shadowy corridors leading away from her prison.

  Her eyes darted about warily, searching for any dangers or threats that might otherwise lay hidden. There were none. The passageway was empty before her, stretching on until blackness swallowed its progress far beyond.

  What kind of place was this, that the ceilings were so high the dim light could barely reach to illuminate them? That every surrounding surface was carved of solid rock, at times plain and unadorned and at others so ornately decorated that it dwarfed even the oldest and grandest cathedrals in beauty? Steffy had to swallow her instinctive fear of such an alien place as she wandered through it on stealthy feet.

  She felt dwarfed. Overwhelmed.

  There came the sound of footsteps as the corridor intersected with another. Steffy ducked down behind a convenient outcropping in the wall and was just in time to conceal herself from the group that passed by her. Three tall men, beautiful, strong and purposeful, marched by, silent as the grave, their faces solemn and grim. She wondered who they were and what their purpose was. They seemed overly serious and an air of danger permeated the space about them.

  Taking a deep breath, Steffy rushed on down the corridor. In the back of her mind she realized how hopeless her flight through this strange underground world would be. She didn’t know the way out. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Perhaps the cloaked man’s magic was the only way to and from this world. It didn’t bear thinking on that she could very well be trapped here until the strange people at the petrol station decided her fate.

  Less than three hours before, if someone had told her of monsters and teleportation and men who could make flames appear from their hands as if by magic she would have quietly signaled to security to have the wacko escorted from the club. But now her world seemed vastly different than it had such a short time ago. Now she knew there were monsters in the darkness of the night and that magic did indeed exist. Not that any of it mattered. All that mattered to her now was escape. Let this new world of dark wonders rest forever in her memory—she wanted no part of it beyond that.

  She wanted out of this place. Now.

  Out of breath, due to nervousness or exertion she couldn’t have said, she paused and took stock of her surroundings. The endless hallway was dimly lit. She had noticed the light before, but she had not noticed from where the light source originated. Now she did and was shocked by what she saw. Beautiful, ornate metal sconces jutted out from the rock walls and upon them floated balls of flame. There was no torch, no candle, no match. Only a perfect, hovering ball of flame over each sconce that served to illuminate the passageway with magical fire.

  The only way not to give in to an overwhelming sense of panic was to ignore the phenomena of the ‘torches.’ Steffy peeled her gaze away from them and gritted her teeth against the urge to sob in helpless fear and confusion. Concentrating on the familiarity of the music that played in her mind she fled further down the corridor, now pointedly ignoring her surroundings as she went.

  The sound of numerous marching feet echoed up ahead. There was no convenient hidey-hole for her to duck into this time. Steffy looked about in growing agitation for an escape route as the sound grew louder, closer. Luck, it seemed, was with her still. There was a large door not ten steps behind her. She sprinted to it, threw it open, and ducked inside. Her breath rasped out of her lungs now, but thankfully there was no way she could be heard beyond the door. The wood was thick and strong. She was safe.

  A throat cleared delicatel
y behind her.

  Steffy whirled around, a gasp exploding from her lips.

  Four pairs of yellow female eyes regarded her in silence.

  “Uh.” What could she possibly say to get herself out of this predicament? “I was looking for the, uh…the bathroom and I got lost.” She tried not to wince. That had sounded like an obvious lie, even to her ears.

  One of the women laughed before she politely disguised it with a dramatic cough.

  “You’re a human.” The words were German, as Steffy’s had been, perfectly accented but still oddly alien from the feminine mouth that spoke them.

  “You’re not,” Steffy said defensively, mind racing for some plan of escape.

  The woman smiled. “I am Desondra. This is Agate, Fauna, and Levine.”

  The four women seemed non-threatening. In fact, their presence was oddly soothing now that Steffy was given more time to study them. “I’m Steffy,” she responded, careful to appear as polite as Desondra—of the long platinum blonde hair and beautiful cat-shaped eyes—had seemed.

  “I’ve never seen a human so closely before.” This from Agate, a woman with wide eyes, a wide mouth, and wide hips. She sounded nice enough, but Steffy wasn’t ready to let her guard down, even for a second.

  “Shh. You’re not even supposed to have seen a human from far away, Agate,” cautioned the blonde-haired Levine.

  “Well we don’t have to be secretive in front of her, do we?” questioned Agate in a stage whisper.

  “When have we ever told anyone outside of the Council, dunce?” said Fauna, who was much smaller and obviously younger than the others.

  “Excuse their rudeness, Steffy.” Desondra’s voice was gentle, apologetic. “You see…” She paused for a long moment, then seemed to come to some decision as she continued, “We are the Council’s eyes and ears on the surface world, the Territories. We are Watchers. It is our duty to keep an eye on things from time to time, to record noteworthy events that take place up above and report back to our leaders. Not even our own people know this—even my husband is oblivious—only the Council, our ruling body of lawgivers knows about our activities. You can’t tell anyone.”