He was about to breathe fire onto the baby wheel. He was about to ignite it.
The Uzi was in my hand before I realized what I was doing. It didn’t matter anymore that I was too far away. I had to try something. I couldn’t let a living wheel of fire get loose on the world, and I had no other way to stop him.
I fired a short burst that chipped the rocks twenty feet short of where Hammer was. I adjusted my aim and tried again. This time I hit the small wheel itself, to no apparent effect.
I felt the monstrous wheel turn its attention to me. Waves of power washed over me. My iron gate burned and throbbed. I didn’t dare look at the predator. I didn’t have the guts.
A jet of fire erupted from Charles Hammer’s mouth and sprayed over the baby wheel.
I unloaded on him. Bullets spattered against the slab he was standing on, and miraculously, one struck his ankle.
His foot flopped inward like a broken chicken neck, and he fell hard, sliding down among the rocks. The jet of fire from his mouth roared upward toward the ceiling, igniting nothing.
Fires sputtered along the baby wheel, but they quickly died out. Hammer was going to have to try again. I saw him clutching at his throat.
I threw the empty gun away and sprinted down the steps. I had taken out Carol the receptionist by venting the flames as she was breathing them. Maybe I could do the same to Hammer, or maybe I could stab him with the letter opener in my pocket. Either way, I needed to be closer to him to do it.
I leaped down the steps at breakneck speed, ghost knife in hand, my bloody calf aching. If I fell, if I didn’t stop him in time, I’d be dead, and so would a lot of other people. I tried to avoid a fall.
At the bottom of the stairs I leapt across a fissure onto the wooden walkway. It broke underneath me. My foot slid down the side of a rock and jammed painfully between two stones. The broken plank flew upward and wedged itself against the inside of my thigh. Nothing was broken or sprained, but by the time I freed myself from the mess, Hammer had regained the lip of the slab. His ankle and throat looked completely healed.
He was fifty feet away, too far for me to throw the ghost knife. I’d failed.
He took a deep breath.
An idea came to me. If I could call the ghost knife toward me, maybe I could control it in other ways, too.
I looked down at the spell in my hand and imagined it going through Charles Hammer’s throat.
A jet of flame shot from Hammer’s mouth.
I glared at the tattered spell in my hand and willed it to move.
It shot from my palm and zipped across the cavern for Charles Hammer’s back.
Hammer turned his head back and forth, playing the fire over the baby wheel. Spurts of flame began to shoot up from the wriggling worms. Hammer turned far enough so that part of his face was visible, and I saw his agony.
The ghost knife struck the back of his neck. A jet of flame burst out of the cut like steam escaping a ruptured pipe. Flames engulfed his head, and the jet of fire lost pressure, falling short of the baby wheel. It hadn’t ignited.
His whole head burning, Hammer fell backward. He did not scream, although I imagined he very much wanted to.
I sprinted along the causeway. The huge wheel stared down at me. As I ran past the silver wire, the pain in my iron gate grew. It was reaching out to me, trying to destroy me. Only Annalise’s spell held it at bay.
I leaped off the walkway and started bounding across the rocks. The pain eased as I put some distance between the silver wire and me. I reached the slab where Hammer had been standing.
He was lying on his back, wedged between two stones. As I watched, his skin turned from scorched and blackened to pink and healthy. I thought how much I wished Annalise could do the same, and I hated him all the more.
“Oh, God,” he gasped, as though he’d been holding his breath. “No more.”
“What a fantastic idea,” I said. I slid down the slab of stone and landed on his chest with both knees. I pulled the silver letter opener from my pocket.
“No!” Hammer screamed. He struggled, his arms flailing and batting at me, his legs scrabbling against the stones. I grabbed his arms and held them down.
His eyes rolled back in his head. He took a deep breath.
I jammed the silver blade under his chin into his brain.
He bucked twice. No jet of fire came out of him. He fell still and silent. He was dead.
I stood, leaving the letter opener in place. He didn’t heal and he didn’t wake up. I had guessed correctly. The wheel couldn’t exert its power over him while he had the silver inside him.
At least, I hoped it couldn’t. The silver ring that enclosed the wheel of fire was not enough to keep its immense power in check. I didn’t know how long the knife would hold him.
I could have turned him over and destroyed his iron gate but decided against it. What would that have accomplished except to allow the wheel to erase his memory?
I looked up at it. I felt very small beside that terrible creature.
“Can you understand me?” I said. Don’t talk to the targets, Annalise had told me, but I couldn’t resist. “Can you understand? Can you see the future? Can you control it?”
Yes.
It was not a sound, it was a pressure against my iron gate and my mind at the same time. I felt sick and small, like an ant who sees a boot moving above him.
“Can you make me do what you want, the way you controlled all those parents and toy shoppers?”
There was no answer this time. I took that as a no.
I walked across the rocks toward the hoop Hammer had stood in. It was connected to the main ring by a second silver wire.
“What do I have to do to get you to control the future for me? Do I have to be inside the silver hoop?”
Yes.
“Well, then,” I said, “that’s some sad luck for you, you great big bitch.”
I held up my hand. My ghost knife flew into it like a bird returning to its nest. I bent down and cut the silver wire that connected the wheel’s binding circle to the hoop, then I cut the other wire that led through the tunnel to the tower. I didn’t see any more wires.
Immediately, the pressure against my iron gate eased. I had isolated the wheel, partially reducing the power it could bring to bear on the world outside its silver ring. Hopefully, with the wire cut and the silver blade wedged in Hammer’s body, the predator wouldn’t be able to heal him again.
I climbed back over the rocks to the baby wheel. Tiny worms wriggled sluggishly in a circle. It was not ready to be born. Maybe our attack on Charles Hammer had rushed the birth process, forcing the wheel to turn the spirit fire on it before it was ready. It didn’t matter now.
I held out the ghost knife, letting the crawling worms cut themselves on the edge of the spell. The worms broke apart, falling to the stones like windblown ash. I yanked my hand away from the tiny gouts of flame that erupted. Thankfully, the fire did not spread.
I felt a great, mournful wail wash through me. It was not something I could hear, but it seemed to fill me nonetheless. I was murdering the wheel’s unborn child, and it couldn’t do anything but watch.
It took a while to finish the job. There were thousands of worms, but I could kill four or five with a quick swipe of my arm. I could have struck more, but I didn’t want to throw my spell in case the wheel could catch it somehow, and I didn’t want to let the little worms touch my skin.
I felt the predator behind me trying to exert its will over me. It didn’t work. Cutting the wires had limited the amount of power it could use outside the ring. Still, the iron gate on my chest throbbed and ached.
The baby wheel shrank as I killed it. Eventually, it was reduced to the point that the inner hole vanished and it became a disk. When that happened, the remaining worms fell apart and died on the stones around me.
I was hungry. I was thirsty. I wanted to get the hell away from Hammer Bay. I didn’t know how far I would have to drive before the sigil on my che
st stopped throbbing, but I was willing to gas up and find out.
The wheel of fire looming above me really was out of my league. I didn’t even want to look at it. I’d collect Charles Hammer’s spell book, if I could find it, and let a peer in the society figure out what to do about the wheel. Someone needed to destroy it, but that someone wasn’t going to be me.
I climbed over the rocks toward the wooden walkway.
Charles Hammer was gone.
I cursed and turned toward the hoop. He wasn’t there, either. I’d already broken the connection between the hoop and the wheel of fire.
I scanned the entire cave. He wasn’t anywhere nearby.
I hopped to the walkway, trying to pretend the wheel of fire was not looming above me, watching my every move, and sprinted toward the outer cavern. I didn’t know how long ago Hammer had come to and fled, but I expected him to leave by the same long tunnel. I climbed up the stone stairs. I was going for the shortcut again.
The trip back seemed surprisingly quick. Maybe it was because I was so focused on chasing Hammer, or maybe it was because I knew what lay ahead, but in no time at all I was climbing back into daylight.
There was a tiny drop of blood on the top step. I didn’t need to look for a second. I didn’t need a blood trail to track him. He would be at the house or at the cars. Either he was collecting his things or he’d had gotten them already and was running.
I leaped over the rocks toward the house, angling for the asphalt parking lot and garage on the eastern side. I didn’t see any lights or movement through the house windows. That was bad. If he was already gone, I was never going to catch him. I didn’t know anyone willing to hand me leads on him, I didn’t have any idea what other properties he owned, and I didn’t have any damn money. Once the tank of gas in the van ran out, I was stranded.
If Hammer managed to get to an airport, I was never going to catch him later. Maybe someone in the society could, but I had no way of contacting them. It was on me or no one.
I finally reached the asphalt parking lot and climbed up onto the flat ground.
There was a tiny drop of blood on the ground beside the garage. The van was still parked in the mouth of the driveway. Hammer hadn’t driven out. I went past the garage and raced to the house.
The smell of burned flesh hit me hard. I held the ghost knife close to my chest as I crept through the house. Nothing seemed to be changed as far as I could tell. I moved through the rooms, past the piles of bones, up the stairs, and across the causeway.
I heard nothing. I didn’t see any movement.
I stepped onto the landing. The wooden stairs spiraled above me. There was another drop of blood on the first step.
He’d come this way, obviously. Unless the blood was mine. Was he still up there with Annalise’s corpse?
I heard soft fabric rustling. It was my only warning. I threw myself sideways.
Bullets streamed through the doorway. Hammer had come up behind me and fired a good long volley at me. I crouched on the stairs, hearing the shots ricochet inside the cylindrical tower. I covered my face with my tattooed forearms and waited. A ricochet tugged at the sleeve of my shirt, but that was as close as he got.
Finally, the shots finished. I knew he had more guns out there if he had the stomach to rummage through the bodies for them. If he had the nerve, he could charge in here and put a nasty end to me.
“You bastard!” he shouted, his voice high and desperate. “You can’t kill me, and if I see you again, I’m going to burn you alive. I can still feel the power of the Great Wheel inside me. It’s still inside me and you can’t take it away!”
I moaned. “Call an ambulance,” I said, trying to sound wounded and helpless. I held the ghost knife ready. “Please.” Maybe, if I could lure him closer…
“Hah! Fuck you!”
I heard his footsteps as he ran away. I heard bones clacking. Then he was gone.
I peeked into the causeway. Nothing. I ran into the house. Bones had been scattered around the hall. The front door was standing open. I ran toward it.
Hammer was sprinting across the asphalt, holding a book in his left hand and a set of keys in his right. An Uzi hung on his back, bouncing around near his kidneys. In a just world, the gun would have gone off, blowing out his midsection and the family jewels, ending the line. It didn’t happen. He ran around the van, leaping onto the rocks to go around it.
Keys. Dammit, that’s why the bones were spread around the hall. He must have taken a set of keys from one of the guards.
That’s when I remembered the three Crown Victorias parked on the street.
I ran back into the house, kicked the bones aside, and grabbed two of the Uzis. What ever Hammer had, I wanted double. I looped both of their straps around my neck. Offering a silent apology to the unburied dead, I ran out of the house, climbed into the van, and started it up.
It took a moment to turn the van around in the parking lot, then I raced up the driveway and fishtailed across the gravel road, wishing I had more acceleration. A vehicle that didn’t handle like a refrigerator box would have been nice, too.
I swerved out onto the street just as one of the Crown Vics screeched out of its parking space and took off down the main road. I stomped on the accelerator, hoping to T-bone it and trap Hammer inside, but it had already passed me. I caught a quick glimpse of him behind the wheel, his eyes wild and his neck covered with gleaming red blood.
My heart sank as I watched the vehicle accelerate down the block. There was no way I could keep up with him. Still, I pulled the shoulder harness over me and clicked it into place. I was going to ram him, if I got the chance.
A soccer ball bounced out from between two cars, and Hammer slammed on the brakes. He slowly drove around it, then sped up toward the corner. I roared after him and chased him through Hammer Bay. He crept through stop signs and red lights, blaring his horn, screeching to a halt when he came too close to another car. This was his town. He was not going to break anything in it-at least, not where anyone would see.
I managed to clip his taillight when he braked for a woman on a bicycle, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He raced past the supermarket, past the hospital, past the last biker bar at the edge of town, then he crested a hill and vanished onto the highway.
If I couldn’t keep up with him in town, I was never going to be able to follow him on the winding highway.
I rumbled up the crest in the hill. Hammer was pulling away. I picked up the Uzi with my left hand and leaned it out the window. I didn’t have any other choice now, and there were no innocent bystanders to worry about.
I fired on him, trying to keep my shots low, near the tires. My aim was crap and the gun bucked like crazy. His back windshield shattered, and he swerved as he ducked below the dash. I punched holes in the trunk, for what ever good that did.
The magazine ran dry. I was reaching for the second one when Hammer, still ducking below the dashboard, swerved across the center line. A pickup truck loaded with gardening equipment rounded the curve ahead, heading straight for him. The driver blared his horn.
The vehicles swerved away from each other. The pickup slid onto the shoulder of the road and rumbled through the gravel. Hammer overcorrected, angling across the road and over the shoulder. He hit the brakes too late and smashed into a tree.
The pickup driver slowed to a stop, and so did I. I saw Hammer’s air bag deflate back against the steering wheel. Hammer was hurt, but I knew he wasn’t out of commission. I tossed away the empty gun and climbed from the driver’s seat.
“Did you see what happened?” the pickup driver said, not really looking at me. “He swerved right into my lane!”
He rushed toward Hammer’s car, intent on helping him. Hammer shoved open his door and stumbled out of the car. He was holding the Uzi. The pickup driver stopped suddenly about ten feet away and said something like “Whoa, friend…”
Hammer pointed the weapon at me. I fired.
He blossomed with bullet ho
les and fell back against the car. He lay still. The driver fled back to his truck like a perfectly sensible person.
I rushed over to Hammer and took his gun away. The bullet wounds were already healing, but slowly. Without the silver wire, the connection between the man and the predator must have been faint.
Using the ghost knife, I sliced off his clothes. I found an iron gate on his shoulder, just where it had been on Cynthia and Cabot. I cut through it, letting the black steam and gray sparks arc into the air.
There was another sigil on his stomach. It was a circle with flames at the four cardinal points and a single eye at the center. This one didn’t look like a tattoo, though. It looked, and felt, like a tumor that had grown under his skin. I slashed the ghost knife through this one, too. There were no jets of steam or sparks, but Hammer’s bullet wounds stopped sealing over.
As an experiment, I slid the corner of the ghost knife through his wrist. His skin split apart as if I was using a scalpel. He was dead.
The pickup truck raced away. I climbed into the Crown Vic and found an old leather-bound journal. It fell open to a page that read “To Call and Bind a Great Wheel, Which Will Grant You Favorable Outcomes.”
On impulse, I pulled out Charlie Three’s wallet. I found five hundred-dollar bills and ten twenties. I took them all. This had been a valuable lesson for him.
I tucked the book under my arm and went back to the van.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I drove back into town. I should have dumped the van, stolen a car, and made a run for it, but I doubted I would get far. Half the town had seen me at the casino, the hospital, the police station, and during the car chase through town. The FBI or the state police were probably already looking for me.
Besides, I had no choice. Charles Hammer might have left another copy of his spell book in his tower. I had to finish Annalise’s work and burn it down.
I drove through town without incident. Traffic still seemed lighter than it had. Most of the people must have been on the north side of town, where two columns of black smoke rose toward the sky. I pulled into Hammer’s driveway without attracting any apparent attention. There were no police cars waiting for me, and no one seemed to have come to the house. The front door was still wide open.
Child of Fire Page 31