The Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  Her father had been an operative in Marine Intelligence when he served in Vietnam. That was where he'd met Brian Hamilton, a Marine general supervising 'Eye' Corps. After the war, her father had joined the State Department, belonging to its little-known Intelligence division. Later, after Brian Hamilton had retired from the military, he too had joined the State Department, in the diplomatic division, eventually convincing Tess's father to switch from Intelligence to diplomacy. But Tess's father had retained his nervous habits from Vietnam. Although he seldom went armed when on an assignment in a potentially dangerous foreign country, he'd made sure to keep a handgun in the house where he could easily get to it in case someone broke in at night.

  The weapon was made in Switzerland, a SIG-Sauer 9mm semiautomatic pistol. A compact short-barreled handgun, it held an unusually large number of rounds in the magazine, sixteen, and unlike most other pistols, it had a double action, which meant that it didn't need to be cocked to be fired. All you needed to do was pull the trigger.

  Tess knew all this because when she was twelve, she'd happened to see her father cleaning the gun and had shown such curiosity that her father had decided she'd better be taught about it so she'd respect it and, more important, stay away from it. After all, she'd been a tomboy. She hadn't been repelled by guns the way many girls her age might have been, and she took to target shooting as easily as she'd developed expertise in basketball, track- and-field, and gymnastics.

  Frequently, when her father went to a range to practise his marksmanship, he'd invited her to come along. He'd taught her how to take the weapon apart, clean it, and reassemble it. He'd instructed her in the proper way to aim – both hands on the pistol, both eyes open, both front and rear sights lined up. But the main trick, he'd said, was to focus your vision not on the sights but rather on the target. The sights would seem blurred as a consequence, but that was okay, you got used to it. After all, the target was your objective, and you had to see it clearly. Any time the sights were in focus but the target was blurred, you were aiming wrong.

  After an equally thorough explanation of how to load the magazine, insert it securely into the handle, and pull back the slide on top of the pistol so that a round was injected into the firing chamber, her father had finally allowed Tess to fire the weapon.

  Don't yank on the trigger. Squeeze it.

  She'd felt slightly apprehensive about the recoil, but to her delight, from the first, she'd discovered that the jerk when the gun went off had not been nearly as bad as she'd feared. Indeed she'd enjoyed the recoil, the release of power, and the noise of the gun going off had been muffled by the ear protectors that her father insisted she wear.

  Toward the end of her teenage years, she'd been able to place all sixteen rounds in a circle the size of a basketball at a distance of thirty yards, but then, as she'd started college, she'd lost all interest in shooting with the same abruptness that she'd initially been fascinated by it. Perhaps because her father had been away from home so much.

  She grabbed the pistol from the drawer and mentally thanked her father for having taught her. He might have saved her life.

  She pressed a button on the side and disengaged the magazine from the handle, nodding when she saw that the magazine was loaded. After reinserting the magazine, she pulled back the pistol's slide and let it snap forward, chambering a round. The hammer stayed back. She gently squeezed the trigger and with equal gentleness lowered the hammer so the gun wouldn't go off accidentally. So far, so good.

  But it worried her that the pistol hadn't been cleaned and oiled in six years. The slide had felt slightly hesitant when she pulled it back. If her worst fear was justified and she was forced to defend herself, would the gun jam when fired?

  Tess didn't dare think about it. 'Come on, mother! Let's go!'

  'But you still haven't told me! Why did you want the gun?'

  'Insurance.'

  'What do you mean?'

  Tess didn't answer but rushed with her mother through the cobwebs toward the open door and the hallway.

  Now the flicker of flames downstairs radiated upward and made the hallway seem lit by shimmering candles. Urging her mother, Tess raced to the left toward the top of the staircase, staring nervously downward, pistol ready. But instead of targets, what she saw was a blaze that crackled, growing to a roar in the vestibule. The bottom of the stairs was consumed by flames. Tess felt and stumbled back from the upward rush of heat. There wasn't any way that she and her mother could run through the swelling fire and cross the vestibule to reach the mansion's front door. For certain, her mother didn't have the dexterity to keep up with Tess, and equally for certain, Tess had no intention of getting ahead of her mother.

  At the sight of the flames, her mother whimpered.

  The back stairs!' Tess said. 'Hurry!'

  She guided her mother along the smoke-filled hallway. Coughing, bent low because the air near the floor was less hazy, they came to the stairs that led down to the kitchen.

  Here, too, a flicker illuminated the bottom, but at least it was a reflection off a wall. The fire itself wasn't in view.

  We might have a chance, Tess thought.

  She led the way, descending, telling her mother, 'Stay close!'

  The smoke alarms kept wailing.

  At once a figure appeared at the bottom, charging toward them.

  Tess aimed the pistol.

  A man blurted, 'Mrs Drake?'

  'Jonathan!' Tess's mother said.

  Nervous, Tess lowered the pistol.

  The butler reached them. He wore pajamas. 'I was sleeping! The smoke nearly…! If the fire alarms hadn't wakened me…!' He had trouble breathing. 'I tried to come up the front staircase to warn you, but the vestibule's-!'

  'We know,' Tess said. 'Can we get out through the back?'

  'The fire's in the kitchen, but the servants' quarters haven't been touched.'

  'Yet.'

  The three of them rushed down the stairs.

  'Did you see anyone else inside?' Tess demanded.

  'Anyone else?'

  'Edna? What about Edna?' Tess's mother sounded hoarse.

  'I woke her and told her to leave before I came for you,' Jonathan said.

  'You didn't see anyone else?' Tess repeated urgently.

  The butler sounded confused. 'Why, no, Miss Drake. I don't understand what you mean. Who else would-?'

  Tess didn't have time to explain. At the bottom, she squinted to her left toward an open door and the harsh glare of flames in the kitchen.

  The heat was so intense that she had to raise an arm to shield her face.

  But the heat singed that arm. If the flames reach this hallway…!

  Before Tess realized what she was doing, she lunged, grabbed the side of the door, and slammed it shut. Her hand stung.

  Nonetheless the pain was worth the risk she'd taken. The door provided a buffer. She clutched her mother and stumbled forward, following Jonathan along a hallway toward the servants' quarters.

  Despite the closed kitchen door, this hallway, too, was filled with smoke, a hot wind making the haze swirl. But at least Tess didn't feel scorched. Although she barely saw the doors to the butler's room and the maid's, the closer she came to the exit at the mansion's rear, the more breathable the air became.

  She couldn't wait. Any second now, they'd be outside in the clear, cool night.

  But her second fear made Tess falter, trembling. They're probably hiding in the garden, aiming from the shrubs, ready to kill us when we try to leave.

  Tess, you're shaking so much!' her mother said. 'Don't worry! We're almost free!'

  Free? Tess thought. There's a good chance we're about to be shot!

  They reached the back door.

  It was open, smoke billowing out as cool air spewed in. Then the smoke dispersed, and as Jonathan hurried forward, Tess saw beyond him -

  – twenty feet ahead! -

  – in the glow of the flames from windows! -

  – a woman sprawled face-
down in the grass. Blood soaked the back of her nightgown.

  'Edna,' Jonathan gasped.

  Tess tried to stop him. 'No!'

  But Jonathan pried away and raced toward his fellow servant. 'Edna!'

  The last word he ever said. Halfway toward her, Jonathan straightened, seemingly jolted by a cattle prod. A lethal prod.

  Dark fluid erupted from his neck. More fluid spurted from his back. Jonathan appeared to be attempting a trick, to grasp his neck, his chest, and his forehead simultaneously.

  Not enough hands!

  Like a clumsy acrobat, he fell.

  Thrashed pathetically.

  Quivered.

  Lay still.

  Tess's mother screamed. Either she didn't understand what had happened, or else she did understand and panic seized her, or perhaps she felt desperate to try to help her servants. For whatever reason, she fought to squeeze beyond Tess and scramble out of the mansion.

  Tess clawed to stop her, but the hand that clutched her father's pistol failed to snag on her mother's nightgown. The other hand clasped at lacy frills, which snapped from the strain.

  Her mother escaped her.

  'No!'

  Tess gaped as her mother's frail, diet-thinned body didn't heave back like a catapulted acrobat but rather pirouetted, then sank, arms fluttering, like an exhausted ballerina. With blood-spurting holes in her abdomen and chest.

  Tess wailed.

  In grief.

  In horror.

  In rage.

  Bees seemed to buzz around her, walloping the doorframe, slamming against the corridor's walls. Bullets. From silenced handguns in the backyard shrubs!

  The bullets overcame Tess's shock-induced paralysis. She stumbled backward, pivoted to run, and lurched to a halt at the sight of flames eating through the closed kitchen door.

  What am I doing?

  I can't run back inside!

  I'm trapped!

  Too many thoughts sped through her mind. Her mother's death. The gunmen outside. The fire.

  Paralysis again controlled her.

  I can't stay here!

  But I can't go outside!

  Think!

  The fire kept licking through the kitchen door, brightening the smoke-filled hallway.

  The basement! I can get to the basement! The door's in this hallway! I can hide downstairs in a corner! I can use the laundry tub to soak rags and wrap myself in-!

  No! That's crazy! I wouldn't have a chance! When the smoke filled the basement, no matter how many wet rags I tried to breathe through, I'd still be suffocated!

  And the heat would be unbearable!

  And the overhead floor would eventually collapse! I'd be buried by flaming-!

  Fear made her tremble so hard that her bladder muscles nearly failed.

  But I can't just stand here!

  The smoke made her bend over, retching.

  At once a new thought gave her frantic hope.

  It might not work!

  But God help me, it's my only chance!

  She held her breath and scurried forward, dodging past the fiery kitchen door. The heat struck her clothes. For a terrifying moment, she was certain that their cotton would burst into flames.

  Blinded by the smoke, she reached the stairs, tripped, banged painfully forward, and clambered on her hands and knees up the steps. The heat became mercifully less, although the smoke increased, and when she had to breathe, her lungs rebelled, her chest racked with spasms. Determined, she scrambled faster, harder, and suddenly the steps ended. Pawing at nothing, propelled by her thrusting knees, she arched through the air and sprawled, slamming her chin on the upstairs floor.

  Ahead, at the hallway's midpoint, even with the smoke, she had no trouble seeing the flames at the top of the vestibule's staircase. With a roar, they swelled toward the ceiling.

  Hurry! The smoke made her eyes weep. It seared her throat.

  She struggled to a crouch and darted forward, moaning as she neared the increasing heat, the spreading blaze. The crackling whoosh of the flames became deafening.

  She whimpered, seized with terror that she might not be able to reach her destination, that the surge of blistering heat would force her back.

  No choice now! She cursed, mustered her resolve, and veered to the left. Chased by a gushing arm of flame, she found her open bedroom door, lurched through it, and slammed the door shut behind her.

  By comparison with the furnace of the hallway, the air in her bedroom was wonderfully cool, although thick acrid smoke continued to sting her eyes. Her exertion forced her to breathe and made her cough so deeply that she spit out phlegm.

  She didn't care! She had a chance now!

  Move!

  The glow of the lamp on her bedside table was useless, so enveloped by haze that it was almost invisible.

  That didn't matter! In this familiar bedroom, she didn't need to see in order to do what she had to. She lunged past a chair and reached French doors. When she yanked them open, she couldn't believe how delicious the outside air smelled. Flames that shattered windows to her right illuminated the gardens and shrubs below her.

  But all Tess paid attention to was the giant oak tree beyond the small balcony outside her room.

  That oak tree had been the reason Tess had broken her arm when she was eleven. One Saturday afternoon, after having come home from her gymnastic class, she'd been so excited by her progress on the overhead bar that she'd studied the oak tree from the balcony and wondered how easy it would be to leap toward the nearest branch, then swing toward a farther branch until she reached the trunk and climbed down, hand over hand, to the ground.

  Tempted beyond her ability to resist, she'd leapt, grabbed the branch, clung by one hand while she'd stretched her other hand toward the next branch… and screamed when she felt her fingers slip…then screamed again, even more fiercely, when she'd hit the lawn, her left arm twisted under her. The arm had projected in a wrong – a horribly wrong – direction. Until that moment, she'd never known a greater agony.

  Her father had burst from the house and rushed to pick her up, then raced to the garage and driven her, speeding through red lights, to the nearest hospital.

  Her father.

  Dead.

  How much she missed him.

  And now her mother was dead as well! Tess still couldn't adjust to the sight of the blood from the bullets that had struck her mother's abdomen and chest.

  She couldn't believe it had happened.

  Dead?

  Her mother couldn't be dead.

  You bastards!

  As flames squeezed through the top, bottom, and sides of her bedroom door, Tess crammed the handgun into her burlap purse, tugged its top closed, and wrapped the purse's strap repeatedly around her wrist until there wasn't any slack.

  The flames no longer squeezed but erupted through the sides, top, and bottom of her door.

  No time!

  Tess retreated into the smoke of her bedroom. Responding to her years of training, she crouched, braced one foot behind the other, and bent her knees in a sprinter's pose.

  She blurted a prayer.

  And propelled herself forward.

  THIRTEEN

  She jumped, felt her sneakers touch the balcony's ornate metal railing, and vaulted outward, hurtling through the air. In the dark, she feared that the past would reoccur, that she'd lose her grasp on the tree limb and plummet toward the lawn.

  But she was twenty-eight now. Her tall lithe body reached the tree much sooner than she expected, her long arms stretching, her firm hands clutching.

  The jolt of grabbing the branch swung her down, then up toward another branch. She took advantage of that motion, and as the branch she held began to droop, she hooked her legs around the farther branch and dangled, her hips bent toward the ground, balancing her weight between one branch and the other. The moment the branches stopped bobbing, she groped, hand-overhand, shifting her legs, toward where the two branches converged.

  With a
n expert twist, she upended herself, facing downward now, and inched along the two branches, finally clutching the trunk where she huddled, supported by stout limbs, concealed by leaves.

  Her heart pounded so fiercely that she feared she might become sick.

  Had the gunmen seen her leap from the balcony?

  Despite the flames that burst from windows near the front of the mansion, she strained to convince herself that this area remained in shadow.

  The branches had bobbed. True. Yes. She couldn't pretend that they hadn't. But if the gunmen were concentrating on the doors from the mansion, they might not have thought to look toward this side of the house where there weren't any doors.

  And in particular, they might not have thought to glance toward the least likely exit, a balcony on the upper floor.

  Well, Tess trembled, I'll soon find out.

  She yanked open her purse and tugged out her pistol. It gave her great satisfaction to think that the men who'd killed her mother might be killed by the gun her father had trained her to use. Even though it hadn't been cleaned in six years. Even though the spring in its magazine might have been weakened from so many years of having been loaded.

  Tess couldn't think about that risk. All she could think about was…!

  Descending the tree.

  Doing her best to escape through a barrier of thick evergreen shrubs toward the darkness of a neighboring mansion.

  She climbed down the tree, huddled at the base of its murky trunk, aimed toward the shadowy back of the mansion, saw no one, and bolted toward the shrubs on her right.

  A bee seemed to buzz. A bullet splintered the oak.

  In midstride, Tess whirled, crouched, and raised her father's pistol.

  A lunging target appeared, silhouetted by flames that suddenly gushed at the back of the mansion. A target with a gun! A target who stooped and aimed toward Tess.

  The lessons at the shooting range came back to her.

  She squeezed the trigger. The pistol roared, its recoil jolting the barrel upward.

  Ignore the recoil. Never take your eyes from the target.

  She stared at the gunman and realized, heart lurching, that she'd missed!