Divine Fire

by Melanie Jackson

  One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four-one-thousand, five-one—

  Thunder roared again.

  Brice hadn’t waited to get a good look at the person who came out of the darkened shaft. He was huge and he wasn’t Damien. He also wasn’t wearing a uniform—and that was all bad news.

  On hands and knees, she scurried silently into the deserted hallway and then pushed upright once she was around the corner. She padded toward the kitchen on anxious feet. For some reason, she felt safer there. It was warm and beautiful and smelled of baking bread—like something in an architectural magazine. Surely no nightmare monsters could stalk among the marble countertops and the old stone sink and modern appliances. She’d be safe there until the lights were back on.

  Her footsteps sent up small, betraying echoes as she crossed the floor. Brice ducked down behind the island where she and Damien had made wassail and tried to stay still.

  Maybe she was safe, but where the hell was Damien? Surely nothing had happened to him. She had listened carefully and not heard any sounds of struggle or shooting. He had to be okay—just somewhere too distant to have heard the hulking thing climbing up toward her. If he had heard it, he surely would have come back to save her.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Of course he would.

  Brice shivered, and her legs began to cramp. She never had been good at deep knee bends.

  “Damn it,” she whispered. She couldn’t stay here, squatting by the counter. Couldn’t stay still and quiet while her nerves were firing, making her twitch hard enough to knock her off balance, and her teeth were chattering like a telegraph. She understood now what was meant by the phrase thrill of horror. It happened when you overdosed on adrenaline.

  Brice stood up slowly, peering at the dark doorway that led back to the foyer. Her stomach growled suddenly, and she realized that she was ravenous—as hungry as she had ever been in her life. How long had it been since she’d eaten?

  Her stomach growled again as loud as a lion’s roar in the quiet of the echoing kitchen. Appalled at the noise, she grabbed a small bunch of fragrant bananas out of the bowl on the island as she ran through to the carpeted dining room. She had to shut her stomach up before someone heard it. She also needed to be someplace where the acoustics didn’t amplify every sound.

  The incongruity of her possible last meal being one of overripe fruit didn’t escape her. It had a certain pathos that would appeal to a segment of the population, though it would never be used as a marketing tool. What would the advertisers say. Bananas—the healthy deathbed snack? Bananas—for the dying woman who really, really doesn’t have time for a meal?

  Brice crammed a chunk in her mouth and chewed hastily. She debated about throwing the smelly peel on the floor, wondering if it would really trip anyone.

  She also thought, with a shade of justifiable resentment, that her last supper should involve bread and wine, if not a choice sirloin grilled with herbed butter and mushrooms.

  Not that this would be her last meal. No way. She wouldn’t let it happen. She was in a tight spot, but it wasn’t hopeless. Damien had probably already rounded up the security guards and was coming back to rescue her. The power would come on any minute now. All she had to do was stay hidden and shoot at anyone who got too close.

  Still, she would rather not shoot anyone while waiting, if she had a choice. She could—of course she could. She knew how. But retreat was definitely the better part of valor in this case.

  But retreat to where? Where wouldn’t Damien’s horrible enemies go?

  The smoke detectors in the kitchen and dining room blinked unhappily as they announced in periodic chirps, which could be heard even through the doublepaned glass, that they were running on backup batteries. From the outside, the windows in the dining room showed as a set of flickering oblongs that stained the snow with sinister red light that looked all too much like fire.

  Damien, camouflaged under a dusting of snow he’d acquired while scrambling over the ornamental railing at the top of the building, couldn’t see any signs of movement inside the apartment. That was good.

  Still, he was careful to stay in the shadows as he moved toward the windows. No point in making the job easy for the bad guys. This wasn’t a night for taking chances. At least, not avoidable ones.

  Brice’s shadow fled ahead of her, stopping only when it reached a door of the library. There it reared up, an alarmed animal at bay. She listened closely to the sounds beyond the door—the weird bestial grunts and breathing she’d heard in the elevator shaft.

  There was definitely something there. Not exactly wheezing, but…

  Brice wanted to run away; she truly did. But just as she began to back up, the devil called to her again.

  Brice, don’t you want to know what’s in there?

  No, not really. Not this time.

  Yet, slowly, reluctantly, she knelt down and put her eye to the keyhole.

  Her gaze was immediately pinched and seemingly trapped by the narrow lock she peered through, but she saw enough in that gap to frighten her into stillness.

  He—it—had a flashlight, which it held awkwardly as it searched Damien’s desk, rifling through the precious antique papers with a carelessness that made Brice want to scream.

  The light was dim, but she could see that its skin was a sour shade of bile, and was badly pitted. It looked more like an insect’s carapace or a reptile’s skin than something that belonged on a human. Brice realized suddenly that she was looking at scars, not pores or scales—the same type of scars that Damien bore, but which had turned septic and were overlaid many, many times until almost no undamaged flesh showed through.

  Dippel? It had to be.

  She stared, repulsed. How many layers of scar tissue were there? A hundred? More? How many times had Dippel inflicted electrocution on himself as he searched for immortality?

  Brice shuddered. There was something else wrong with him too. His limbs were unbalanced, like those of a fiddler crab. His left arm was enormous, more than twice the size of his right and about eight inches longer, and it clicked like a crunching snail shell whenever it made contact with a hard object.

  Brice had an impulse to spray him with insecticide, to see him crushed under a giant fly swatter or stuck to the world’s largest pest strip.

  As though sensing this sudden hostility, Dippel turned toward the heavy carved door where Brice knelt, and he seemed to look into her widened eye as he cocked his head, listening to her breathe. The flashlight went out, leaving them both in darkness, but in that last moment of illumination she saw into his eyes and was terrified.

  She froze as any prey animal did when the predator neared. Her heart beat harder, counting out her fears with every painful thump. Dread escaped with every breath. She was grateful her exhalations had no color. It was bad enough that she could feel it gathering around her in a clammy cloud; had it tint, she would have been stained yellow with cowardice.

  Chirp went the smoke detector, breaking the silence. The red light flashed on and off, assaulting her eyes with its brief flare and perhaps betraying her to Dippel.

  The monster didn’t move. Neither did Brice. She stayed perfectly still, not blinking or even breathing, and eventually he looked away. The flashlight was switched back on and Dippel continued his search.

  Brice slumped. She closed her twitching eyelids on the sudden outpouring of tears, trying to shut out the angry red light. But she couldn’t hide from it. The red flash beat against her thin lids and her aching brain, giving her no relief.

  Done being skeptical and logical and reasonable—perhaps done being sane—Brice gave in to the beginnings of panic. Reason said to stay calm and unemotional, and quiet, but damn it! This was her crisis. She’d speculate freely, marvel, thrill, and be terrified, if she wanted to.

  She’d also have to find another way downstairs to the security office. If she could get to the surveillance cameras, maybe they would still be working and she could find Damien
and the guards. Hadn’t he said there was a backup generator that ran the emergency lights on the stairs? They needed light, and they needed to know how many people—how many monsters—they faced.

  But where were the stairs? Surely Damien’s building had to have some exit besides the elevator in case of a fire. There were codes, damn it!

  Fire.

  She looked up at the flashing fire alarm. Stupid! They’d been so dumb! There was another way out. Fire escapes were usually located outside—probably starting on the roof. And Damien would have one, even in the penthouse. Yes, it would be cold and icy and not the safest thing to climb in a snowstorm. But it was better than staying in the building with Dippel.

  Brice took a deep breath and pushed the incipient hysteria away.

  She had to go back around to the other side of the library where the metal staircase was and get up to the door that opened onto the roof. It was a bit risky, but the door and stairs were screened by a thick stand of weeping figs. Dippel was busy searching the desk. Maybe he wouldn’t see her when she sneaked inside.

  Maybe he’d even be gone.

  Brice turned and ran away silently, grateful for the thick carpet in the hall that deadened her footsteps.

  This time her shadow pursued her in the eerie red light, but it looked no less frightened running in the opposite direction.

  Damien found himself thinking of strange things as he forced open the dining room window. Worry about Brice was a natural thought to be on his mind. But thinking about love—specifically and generally—was not.

  Yet that was what occupied his brain as he stood in the snow, breaking into his own apartment.

  Love, every time he’d felt it, had transformed him, and in ways he hadn’t expected and sometimes hadn’t liked. It was a brave person—or a foolish one—who submitted himself to such alteration when he couldn’t know the outcome of the encounter.

  He’d learned something else, too, over the course of the years: Egos couldn’t love. Vanity did not adore anything but itself. Pride did not cherish. Intellect could understand but did not feel. When love came, it was from the soul. It was the soul. And it could not be controlled, calibrated or manipulated.

  People spoke all the time of a fear of intimacy, but that wasn’t the problem at all. People feared change—change of their circumstances, change of their personality, change of the soul.

  He had feared, too, for a very long time. But not now. Faced with possibility of disaster, the only thing he dreaded in this moment was that he would lose Brice before he had a chance to know if he truly loved her. And if she loved—or could ever love—him in return.

  Frustrated with the frozen lock, Damien slid his shirt over his hand and put a fist through the pane of glass nearest the latch. The small tinkle of glass spilling onto the rug was barely noticeable. Or so he hoped.

  Damien reached inside, not being particularly careful of the glass’s rough edges. He would heal. Brice might not.

  “Which other cities do you favor with your noble presence?” Brice had asked Damien last night when they ran out of boring Victorians to discuss and had moved on to more personal material. “You know I’m from Charleston by way of Savannah—by way of San Francisco?”

  “I’m glad you’re adaptable,” he said, tucking her hair behind her ears and encouraging her to snuggle closer. “Frankly, outside of New York, I avoid the East Coast. Too many of the Puritans’ descendants about still trying to burn sinners. I like New Orleans and San Francisco primarily. It’s fun living in cities where instead of purging oddballs—the self-proclaimed vampires and witches—they give them cable-access television shows and treat them as tourist attractions.”

  “When were you last in San Francisco?” she asked.

  “I was there in the sixties.”

  “The nineteen sixties?” she clarified.

  “Yes, but I was there in the eighteen sixties, too, back when it was the Barbary Coast. Anyone with an ounce of dash put on a loud tapestry waistcoat and went west.”

  It sounded like a joke, but Brice was now sure that he’d meant it.

  She was also sure that she felt like bursting into tears as she inched her way up the library’s cold iron staircase, feeling her way in the dark. She was being dead silent, though the room now seemed empty.

  Was this really happening? Couldn’t I still be asleep, caught in a nightmare?

  She didn’t like small spaces, but a part of her wanted to hide in the dark, to just stay in some deep, safe shadow until it was day, because surely normal people would come soon. Even with the power out. Even with unplowed streets. Even on Christmas Day.

  But there was Damien. Or rather, there wasn’t Damien. She didn’t know where he was, or if he was in trouble. And she couldn’t run away without him, couldn’t hide when he might be in danger or hurt.

  It couldn’t be the way it had been with her husband, she wouldn’t lose anyone else while she sat by and watched. Particularly not because she imagined herself to be helpless. This wasn’t like the last time. She was whole and mobile. There were things she could do, if she didn’t give in to terror.

  Brice scolded herself fiercely for even thinking about taking the coward’s way out and finding Damien’s vault. Fear was the worst enemy a person could have. She knew that firsthand. Her husband’s death had felt like the end of her. But it hadn’t been. She had survived to live day to day, moment to moment. When one painful breath ran out, she drew another. And then another. Grief and fear had tried to crush her then, but they hadn’t succeeded. She hadn’t been destroyed by crippling emotion then. She wouldn’t be destroyed by it now. Neither would Damien.

  But she was at her last retreat, unless there was some obvious way down from the rooftop. If Dippel followed her now, if she was cornered, she would have no choice except to shoot him.

  Assuming that would do anything useful. It might not, if what the journal said was true—and she now more than half believed it was.

  Brice shook her head in denial on this thought, unwilling to believe this last horrible thing could be real. Dippel had to be killable.

  Muttering prayers to unspecified deities, she crept toward the French doors where she had seen Damien perching on that first night. She prayed they were unlocked, because she didn’t think she had the nerve to climb back down the steep stairs and search the desk for the key.

  Chapter Twelve

  I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula; I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, have I beheld such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return to the heart of this Christian country.

  —Letter from Byron to Lord Holland before addressing Parliament

  I have no doubt that my son is a great man. I simply pray that he may be a happy and prudent one as well.

  —Letter from Byron’s mother to her attorney

  I am like a tiger. If I miss my first spring, I go growling back to my jungle.

  —From Byron’s letters, November 18, 1820

  Brice paused on the stairs, hands clenching the iron rail. Dippel had come back while she was halfway to the upper tier of the library. And now there was a second creature in the apartment below.

  It was hard not to sweat and wheeze when she could actually feel her pulse in her throat trying to gag her with fear.

  Don’t look up! Don’t look up! There’s nobody here but us books and shadows.

  Lightning flared, lighting up her aerie, and thunder crashed right behind it. The iron staircase seemed to shiver beneath her. Was it afraid of Dippel too? Could metal be scared?

  More likely it was the storm. Lightning could well be hitting the roof now, sending its hot fingers into the building’s iron bones.

  And into her, while she perched on the stairs, or a fire escape? The thought just added terror to terror. Brice had to fight hard not to close her eyes and whimper.

  The monstrous soldier who had appeared and was seemingly taking
orders from Dippel wasn’t wearing jackboots, but Brice felt he should have been. Perhaps it was his gait. He walked stiffly, almost as if his knees were fused. His long, misshapen face also twitched erratically above his lip, as though some living thing were heaving under the skin, some parasite that wanted out. It was also apparent from her vantage point that Dippel’s therapy hadn’t cured the creature’s baldness.

  Dippel was growing agitated. He said something loud in German and waved his larger arm about. The limb looked hideous on his body. Had he stolen it off some champion arm-wrestler? Or a gorilla?

  The second creature belched a reply. Spittle and some things that Brice imagined were maggots spewed from its mouth and onto Dippel. The doctor didn’t seem to notice, or else he didn’t care.

  That was a sort of plus, Brice thought hysterically. If she vomited on the doctor, maybe he wouldn’t be angry.

  As useful as it would have been to hear their conversation, Brice could no longer bear being close to the monsters and that unpleasant odor of rot and chemicals that surrounded them. This wasn’t her venue, not the place where she could shine. She was not a person given to gladiatorial risk—acts of physical and insane courage, even in the single-minded pursuit of escape. All she wanted was to get away without confrontation.

  And to find Damien.

  And to not be seen. That most of all. But she had to get away from the monsters—right now. Before she threw up.

  Brice took a slow breath, then continued her slow upward retreat to the roof, being more careful than ever to make no sound. Her eyes never left the two creatures on the floor as she backed up the twisting stairs.

  There came a crack and then a loud whine followed by a second sharp crack that alarmed the ears. Splinters of shattered stone splattered Damien in a sharp, short hail.

  He dove behind Karen’s desk, cursing himself for not being more cautious. The upper tiers of the library were the perfect place for an ambush, and he should have thought of this. Now the silence was broken and the slim hope of remaining unnoticed gone.