Still, I was functional. And I knew what I needed to do. That surety of purpose was rare for me, and I feared losing it; I didn’t want to gain a night’s sleep and become mired in uncertainty. Holliday had, if nothing else, convinced me that hiding wasn’t an option.
I was parked in a narrow side street within sight of Verge Tower, whose shadow cut across the plaza below. Lusteer displayed a surprising amount of normality. Sure, the traffic of both pedestrians and cars was much less than usual for the middle of a workday, but it was a miracle that anyone was just going about their day, considering that a fire breathing dragon lived at the top of that skyscraper.
I’d been parked for over an hour, and for the first half of that time, I had been trying to monitor the comings and goings of the shades to see if I could figure out a pattern, perhaps learn where Duffy slept.
Shades came in two types—shifters, who transformed into an animal form, and sorcerers, who could directly manipulate fire or smoke. Shifters were much more common and were generally easy to pick out because they tended to wear shapeless robes which allowed them to transform into their animal form and back without destroying their clothing.
I’d been watching those wearing shapeless robes, shocked at the amount of them walking the streets until I’d come to the realization that they couldn’t all be shifters. Which could only mean that ordinary people had began to mimic the dress of shades.
I never pretended to understand the world, but this concept boggled my mind. A fire-breathing dragon ruled the city I grew up in, and not only did people go about their business as normal, they had begun to adopt the clothes of the dragon’s followers as a new fashion. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was—after all, the shop clerk had talked of worshiping the dragon, and he lived nowhere near Lusteer.
Just then, I spotted the flash of a familiar face, though she disappeared before I could be sure. I leaned forward to squint through the windshield, scanning the crowd. Then I spotted her again, moving purposefully across the plaza. This time there was no doubt. It was Ally, a troubled young orphan girl who had been possessed by an elemental, turning her into a powerful fire sorcerer.
Perhaps she could help me. Or perhaps she had joined Duffy and would turn me in. I hesitated, then I reached for the door handle. I wasn’t sure if this was right, but any action was better than doing nothing.
Are you freaking kidding me? No one can be that dumb, Jerome thought.
I paused, my hand on the door. Jerome had been quiet for a couple of days. You have something to contribute?
I’ve been in your head forever, and just when I think you can’t get any stupider, you go ahead and surprise me.
Insults. Is that all you have? Why was I not surprised. You could have stayed asleep.
Why would Ally be at Verge Tower unless she is with Duffy? Jerome thought.
I have no choice. I have to do something.
By no choice, you mean you were born stupid, so you are tragically cursed to forever do stupid things?
Maybe.
I’d laugh if you weren’t determined to throw my life away as well as your own, Jerome thought. Break the cycle. Use your damn brain for goddamn once.
What should I do? I asked, even though I didn’t expect an answer. Jerome liked to pop up to make fun, but rarely offered anything useful.
You won’t accomplish anything alone and half-assed like this. Find Jo.
The dragon was my mess. I don’t want to get others hurt cleaning up my mess. When we had tried to take the prison back from the Sentinel Order, Pete had come along to help. Useless, wonderful Pete. What chance did he have against those wielding the magic of Brimstone. If Pete had never known me, he’d still be alive.
You don’t know that for sure, Jerome thought.
Why are you helping me all of a sudden? If he truly was helping me. Ever since Jerome had tried to possess my body, I had learned to distrust his motives.
I don’t want to die for no good reason. Or worse, spend a lifetime in the middle of nowhere eating beans every day and watching the sun venture above the horizon with agonizing slowness.
Always with the complaints.
What was the point in spending eight months alone in the wilderness if you didn’t learn anything? Jerome thought. You can’t blame yourself for everything. Look forward, not back.
My fingers gripped the dash, and I lowered my forehead onto the top of the steering wheel. I had wanted to end Duffy without involving anyone else. Since my actions had created the dragon—albeit inadvertently—anything he did partly fell on my shoulders. If I got Jo, or anyone else, involved in a fight against Duffy, then anything that happened to them would be on me.
But much as I hated to admit it, Jerome was right. I couldn’t do this on my own. Charging into battle, alone and unprepared, and getting easily defeated and killed wouldn’t benefit anyone. Well, possibly the Sentinel Order would be happy about it.
You know Jo, Jerome thought. She’s involved in this fight in some manner or another. Isn’t it better to ally your power to her smarts and have a chance of victory rather than have both of you die separately?
Jerome was right; I had to seek out Jo. I reached for the key. I needed to head for Ten-two; I had no idea if Jo stayed there, but that was the place to begin the search.
“Hey!”
I started, my forehead bumping against the top of the steering wheel. I turned my head to the left. Dennis stood there, his face pushed close to the driver side window, his hands on the roof. The malevolent smile was out of place on his ten-year-old face. A child shouldn’t look like he did.
Dennis, the child fire sorcerer who had become possessed at the same time as Ally, but, unlike her, had embraced the change, embraced the power. He had been put in prison for horrific crimes which should have been beyond a child’s comprehension.
He tapped on the side window.
I hesitated, then lowered it a crack. “Why are you here?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“Those two questions have very different answers,” he said, leaning forward on his toes and tilting his head so his mouth pushed into the gap at the top of the window. “What I’m here for is to protect Duffy from you. What I want is for you to kill Duffy.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Thanks for freeing me from the prison, by the way,” Dennis said.
“You getting free was the last thing I wanted.”
“Why, thank you. I’m glad you appreciate what I am and what I’m capable of. Too many see just the child form that encases me. Of course, I can’t complain; that has its advantages too. And pleasures.”
I shuddered. “Go away. I was just about to leave.”
“You shouldn’t have come. Not now. When Duffy sleeps, he is at his strongest. His telepathic abilities keeps nearby fire shades under his almost complete thrall,” the boy said. “When he’s awake, his attention is less focused and he is less paranoid about possible enemies getting too close. He is too confident in his own abilities.”
I wiped sweat from my forehead. “That confidence is probably not misplaced given that he is the size of a bus, protected by armored scales, can fly and breathe fire, and he can apparently telepathically control fire shades.”
“Showy power is power ready to be brought low,” Dennis said. “At the receptions he hosts—like the one due tomorrow evening—he summons the elite of Lusteer to pay homage to him. That is where he feels most powerful, thus where is he most vulnerable.”
Was Dennis telling me how to defeat Duffy? Sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging them. And why had it gotten so hot all of a sudden? And it wasn’t just inside, I realized. Smoke rose from the hood. “You’re heating the chassis!”
“Why do you sound surprised?” Dennis grinned, his black eyes flashing. “I told you I was here to stop you from getting to Duffy. And you know how much I love burning people.”
I grabbed the door handle, then instantly released it with a shout, my fingers scalded.
Dennis laughed. “Ever hear about how to boil a frog alive. Raise the temperature slowly, right? Well, that’s an urban myth. The frog would jump out long before it was boiled. How does it feel to be dumber than a frog?”
I looked around frantically. Smoke began to waft through the interior and flames rose from the engine as Dennis turned the heat up still higher. I summoned a firesword and turned to slash at the back windshield. At the first touch from the firesword, the glass shattered into pieces with a deafening crack. I hunched low, covering my face with my hands as hot glass showered down upon me.
I glanced over at Dennis. He had his eyes closed, and determination furrowed into his skin as he focused on pouring his power into the pickup. The pickup shuddered several times as the tires exploded. Flames licked at the bodywork to either side, and the engine was fully ablaze.
I stood up on the seat. Even the upholstery was beginning to get hot; it could burst into flames at any moment. I let my firesword disappear, then grabbed the passenger side headrest with one hand, the driver side headrest with the other, positioning myself in the gap between the two seats. From the ceiling above, heat blasted down upon the crown of my head.
The space where the back windshield had been was ringed with fire, and beyond that, small fires danced up and down the bed of the pickup. Still, it was the only way out. I gripped the headrests tighter, then kicked upwards and outwards with my legs. Feet first, I went through the flames, landing in the back of the pickup. I shut my eyes and raised my arms to cover my face, protecting them from the worse of the fire. Heat and pain beat at me from all sides. I threw myself blindly forward and away from the jeep. Landing, I rolled several times, quenching the flames that hugged to my clothes.
Every nerve ending screamed at me, and I screamed hoarsely at the world.
I forced my eyes to open and immediately saw a fireball arcing through the sky. I rolled over, and rolled again, and again, with ragged shouts of protest every time my burned body thumped against the pavement. The fireball exploded against a car, further back, setting that ablaze. I stood, looking for Dennis. He was standing back from the burning pickup, smirking at me, and I realized it wasn’t he who had sent the fireball my way. After a quick scan, I spotted my attacker, standing atop some steps thirty paces away.
I recognized her. “Ally, it’s me!” I shouted. The note of pleading in my voice was neither consciously planned nor fake. It came from my pain and desperation.
Ally’s only answer was to throw a second fireball my way. I summoned my fireswords and held them in front of me, and the fireball exploded against them. My eyes squeezed shut against the flash of light, but even with my eyes shut, my vision turned white. The impact of the exploding power sent me staggering backward several paces; I just about managed to keep my balance.
When I opened my eyes, I turned and fled, not waiting for another attack. I half ran, half staggered down the street. My flesh was raw and hot. With every movement, it felt like sections of skin were sticking together and coming apart.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Ally and Dennis had been joined by reinforcements. Two lions—clearly shifters from the clothing around their torsos—had overtaken the children in giving me chase. And, soaring overhead, three giant phoenixes, their yellow and red feathers making them difficult to fully make out with the sun’s glare directly behind them.
The color indicated the type of shifter. Smoke shifters tended to be black or gray—bears, wolves, eagles; fire shifters came in brighter colors: reds, yellow, oranges. It appeared all those protecting Duffy were of the fire variety—backing up what Dennis had told me about Duffy being able to control fire shades.
A manhole cover exploded outward in front of me, and the head and neck of a giant snake shot out. I veered wide of it, my stagger turning into a full sprint. The snake’s mouth opened to show two long fangs—white daggers, dripping with poison. His neck sprung back, then the head shot forward, jaws snapping.
I surged ahead, just about managing to dodge the snake’s attack. A moment later, a gust of cold wind touching my neck gave warning, and I dived to the ground. A phoenix soared overhead, one claw swiping at my back. With no time to check on my wounds, or even feel pain, I leaped to my feet and resumed sprinting. I veered toward a side street, then decided to keep to the main road. Best to keep Verge Tower at my back, and put as much distance between me and it as possible.
On both sides of the street, the pedestrians had all stopped, some staring at me, but more of them looking behind me at my fantastical pursuers. A dark green saloon drove toward me, going too fast. Rather than dodging, I jumped straight over it. The car didn’t have need to swerve, but the driver panicked and crashed into a parked car on the opposite side of the road.
I risked a glance over my shoulder, then slowed. Dennis and Ally were no longer in view, nor the snake, and the two lions were no longer chasing me. One of the phoenixes still circled overhead, but the other two had come to rest on top of a nearby building.
Another car approached, and I moved off the road and onto the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered, some disappearing into nearby shops, others running into the road. One man put his back against the wall and turned his face to the side, as if not looking at me would make him unseen. I lurched onward, grimacing. With the panic-induced adrenaline subsiding, the pain began to return, stronger than ever. My body was a mess.
Going directly to Verge Tower had been a massive mistake. But why did all my lessons have to be so damn painful?
Chapter 6
Wednesday 13:15
As I reached Fenster Street, I slowed to check behind me once more. No one had followed. Once far enough away that I no longer threatened Duffy, the shades completely lost interest in me. I had walked all the way, giving the blisters and other wounds a chance to heal—extraordinary healing being one of advantages of being a sentinel. Of course, if I hadn’t been a sentinel, I wouldn’t have been injured in the first place.
I turned down the path toward Ten-two. The place hadn’t changed much—when I had first seen it, it had looked on the verge of falling down, and it still did. Year after year, the old girl endured, despite all the mayhem happening in Lusteer. Perhaps I could see hope in that. No matter how much damage piled up, layer after layer of it, until it felt impossible to endure, nothing was ever truly hopeless. I was getting real desperate if I was drawing pop psychology lessons from a tumble-down old building.
As I turned down the path, I felt an easing in the tightness of my chest. I stalled, seeking to analyze the feeling. Jo, I realized. Arriving back at Ten-two meant I was close to meeting her again, finding out how she was doing. Breaking off contact with Jo had been part of my decision to exile myself, one of the hardest parts. Returning to Lusteer had already proved painful, but at least I’d get to see her again. I pushed on the front door, and, to my surprise, it didn’t open.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise—when Pete and Tyler had lived there, the door had always been open but Tyler was gone and Pete was dead. It might look the same, but it couldn’t be—not without those two. I thought about knocking, but it seemed weird. No one knocked at Ten-two. Instead, I moved to the side and looked through the window. Inside, the living room was clean and tidy.
In all my years of living at Ten-two, that room had always been a maelstrom of messy chaos—in a good way, though, for it was a place of charm and warmth where I could always expect a welcoming smile. When Tyler left, it had felt like an abandonment, almost a betrayal, but he had been the smart one. Unfortunately for me, disappearing had proved impossible. With my face pressed against the glass, remembrances of incidents and snippets of time flashed through my mind: incidents. The memories were of happy times, but the knowledge of what had come since made them painful. Tyler gone, Pete dead. At least Jo was hopefully fine, but Alex…
Alex. My heart gave a tug. I had tried to avoid thinking about him whenever possible. More than Pete and Tyler, Jo and Alex had been my family. After years of
caring for them, I had come to see them as my little brother and sister, the family that I—as an orphan—never had. Alex and I had always had our differences, but I still could barely comprehend how he had done what he had. His betrayal had directly lead to Pete’s death.
I stepped back from the window and moved around the side of the building, pushing through the unlocked side gate. When I had last been at Ten-two, some of the tangle of the back garden had been cleared to allow Harriet Ashley’s band of shades to train. Pete had briefly practiced with a bow and titanium arrows, for all the good it had done him. From the look of the present state of the garden, someone had continued to use it for training purposes—targets were positioned throughout, and well worn tracks crisscrossed the grass. The back door was unlocked, and I stepped into the kitchen. It had a clean well-used look about it.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have just walked in. This was no longer my home. “Hello,” I called out. “Anyone here? Jo?” I continued into the hall, then seeing an open door, walked through. “Hello.” The curtains were drawn, and the room was dim. When my eyes adjusted enough to see clearly, I started to back out, for someone lay on a single bed in the corner. “Sorry,” I whispered, unsure if I’d woken him or her up.
A series of beeping coming from close to the bed caused me to stop retreating. Then I noticed a tube emerging from the person’s mouth, and various pieces of the medical equipment were piled around the bed. I approached, a sick feeling in my mouth. Though he looked much different from the last time I’d seen him—much thinner, his flesh wasted away—I recognized him. It was Noah.
Noah Hastings and his wife, Persia, had been fire sentinels who had joined me in the attack on the JC prison. All three of us survived the initial ambush, though we had been captured while entering the restricted area. Colonel Lowndes had put me into a chamber designed by Doctor Kressan to bring about the Searing, an event whereby all fire sentinels lost their power. I had decided to help Kressan and Lowndes, drawing on the power of the fire summoning crystal as they demanded.
Fire Serpent Page 4