Away from the door.
Kellen was already moving, scrambling madly for the parlor door, when she heard her name called again.
"Kellen!"
Not Ger's voice. Here, she tried to call out anyhow, but her voice refused to work.
She looked back.
Ger was slumped against the wall with a dazed look on his face, cradling his hands against his chest. Through the smoke and strange darkness woven by the flames, Kellen glimpsed blisters on his fingers and palms.
Kellen turned back and crawled across the hot floor until she reached him.
Ripley's body sizzled and popped. On the floor beside him, an oddly round stone shivered side to side, as though the flames around it had brought it to life. It glowed, suddenly, as intensely scarlet as the fire itself.
The gurgling, whispering voices suddenly screamed.
Ger flinched, lifted his hands as if to cover his ears, and then lowered them again and rocked forward, closing his eyes.
Kellen grabbed his arm and shook him.
"Please," she whispered.
Ger lifted his head. His eyes shifted, found hers. Focused.
She jerked at his arm again, harder this time.
"Kellen!" Boots sounded on the parlor floor, coming toward them.
Behind Ger, flames whipped from side to side, stretching nearly to the ceiling now. The stink of burning flesh and black smoke gagged Kellen.
The screaming Kellen should never have been able to hear at all suddenly stopped.
Ger got his feet under him. Holding each other up, he and Kellen hobbled into the parlor.
~
The alley was too narrow, so Vincent had left the horse and wagon on Fourth and gone the rest of the way on foot. It had been a strange feeling, walking that familiar alley in new boots that fit, wearing a uniform instead of ill-fitting, worn out, filthy dock man's clothes. He'd felt lighter. Taller.
He'd passed Widow Howland's shuttered window and the plain, neat front door and unlatched the gate hung between the Widow's house and the next one. He'd had to turn half-sideways to squeeze between the houses to the courtyard with well and gardens behind. He'd thought he'd climb down those narrow, earth-lined steps to the back door, set at cellar level, and throw it open, just like he'd long planned. He'd rescue Kellen out of that cellar, and tell Widow Howland just what she could do about her room and board.
The stink of smoke had wakened him out of that daydream.
He saw it a second later, just beginning to roll from the Widow's back windows. His mind fixated on the flames licking out from those same windows, noting how surreal they appeared for precious seconds before he understood what they were. What they meant.
Across the courtyard, voices piped in alarm.
Vincent stopped walking and ran, down the steps to the back door. He laid one palm against the wood and reached for the handle.
The wood burned, hot as coals. Vincent yanked his hands away again.
The voices across the courtyard behind Vincent piped higher and louder, mixed now with shouts of "Fire!"
Vincent stared down the door, like he thought he could see through it. Was Kellen in there?
The front. He hadn't seen smoke or flames when he passed the front of the house. Vincent scrambled up the steps and ran, around the corner of the house, cursing the narrow passage between houses as he raced for the front again.
"I saw them!" Mistress Kreuger's voice wailed. "I saw them go in! They'll have kilt her!"
The front door was still cool to the touch. Vincent yanked it open.
Smoke billowed out. Vincent threw one arm in front of his face and tried not to breathe it in, shoved through it into the Widow's parlor, squinted to see through it with eyes that burned and watered.
"—out!" a voice shouted. "Now!"
Figures moved in the smoky darkness, but only one stood out clearly. It was taller than most men and crowned with a fiery halo, face darkened and disappearing into the crackling flames. It shrieked with an unearthly, hellish wail as it stumbled in a horrible dance in the doorway between the parlor and the back room.
Then he saw Kellen. She was on the other side of that thing, on the floor of the back room, crawling toward Vincent. His hand reached for his gun even before his mind fully understood.
She was trapped.
Vincent leveled the .36 at the burning man—Ripley, some small voice in his mind informed him. That used to be Burke Ripley.
Steady. Aim.
Fire.
A sharp pop cracked the air. Ripley cut off mid-scream and staggered backward, away from the door.
"Kellen!" Vincent shouted, and managed to inhale a lungful of smoke.
She was already moving, scrambling through the opening Ripley's stagger had created. Vincent stepped into the smoke-filled parlor toward her.
Just through the doorway, she stopped and turned back.
"No," Vincent whispered. Was she out of her fucking mind?
There was someone else in the back room, in what threatened to become an inferno. That person slumped against the wall. Kellen reached for him.
"Kellen!" Vincent called again.
Kellen and that other figure rose to a crouch. The two of them hobbled through the parlor and toward Vincent.
Beyond them, what had once been Burke Ripley slowly vanished in a mound of flames and sickly black smoke. Vincent lowered his gun and grabbed Kellen's elbow as she half-fell into him.
Chapter 33
Smoke curled through the air outside the Widow's house, but it was still sweet in comparison to inside. Vincent sucked in the soothing cool like a thirsty man drinking water. His lungs threatened to turn inside out from the coughing fit that followed, but he propped Kellen onto her feet and urged her along with him, further down the alley and away from the burning house.
The alley was no longer empty. Shouts and bells filled the air as fire lines formed up to pitch leather buckets to and from the closest well.
Mixed in with the other sounds, Vincent heard Mistress Kreuger's voice, raised in a wavering cry of, "Those ones who lived there, them's who did it! I saw them!"
They'll have kilt her, Vincent thought.
He stopped and spun Kellen around to face him, crouched low to look into her eyes. Kellen stared, but she didn't seem to see.
"Widow Howland," he said.
Kellen flinched. "Dead," she mumbled.
Damn it. Vincent took hold of Kellen's elbow again and steered her down the alley toward Fourth. He was vaguely aware that the other person who'd come out of the house with her followed them—his coughs mingled with Kellen's and Vincent's.
They cleared the smoke and the crowd and stumbled out of the alley near the wagon Vincent had left on Fourth. Kellen transferred her weight away from him and put her back against the nearest wall. She'd started to shake—Vincent could see the trembling wrack her shoulders and legs—and she slid down the wall until she sat at its base. The kid who'd followed Kellen out of the house and down the alley collapsed in a heap beside her
Vincent crouched in front of Kellen, took hold of her shoulders and ducked his head to look into her face again.
"What the hell happened?" he asked.
She just stared, although he wasn't sure she saw him. Streaks and smudges of black darkened her face, and her shirt was stained.
With blood. Her shirt was stained with blood.
"Christ!" Vincent grabbed for her shirt front, found the slash in it, tore it open further to see how badly she was hurt.
She mumbled an objection to that, lifted her hands and shoved at his. Vincent blocked her.
The cut across her stomach wasn't deep, little more than a scratch. Only a few drops of blood welled, not enough to account for what soaked her shirt.
Vincent lowered Kellen's shirt again, folded it so that it covered her, and took her hands into his.
"The blood on your shirt," he said. "Kellen. Where did it come from?"
She blinked and looked down at the shirt
. At the blood. Stared.
"Kellen?" Vincent pressed her hands between his. They were strangely cold for having just escaped a fire.
"The Widow." Kellen's voice was slow and thick and raspy. "Ripley killed her."
The kid beside Kellen made an anguished sound. Kellen turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes cleared, and her face softened.
Vincent's gut knotted. Just who the fuck was this little bastard, anyhow?
"We could've stopped him." The kid was upright but slumped. He folded his hands up against his chest, palms up, and doubled forward over them like he might puke. Vincent glimpsed angry red patches and blisters on those hands, and even more soot streaked his face and hair than did Kellen's.
"He's stopped now," Kellen said, but her voice was flat and empty. She hesitated and then asked, "Are you all right?"
The kid tilted his face toward Kellen's, and Vincent got a better look at him, at the lines of his face and the scruff of growth along his jaw. Despite being all skin and bones, he wasn't really a kid at all.
The knot in Vincent's gut tightened.
"Not really," the other man said. "But yeah."
They couldn't have looked at each other for more than a second longer, Kellen and that other guy, but it felt plenty long to Vincent. He fought the urge to plant a booted toe in the guy's side.
The fire wagon clattered up Fourth and rolled around the corner into Chester's Alley. The shouting had grown louder. Smoke clogged the sky over the Widow's house, darker than night.
"We should go now," Vincent said. "We need to be gone before they put that out and start looking for who started it."
"We didn't do anything wrong," Kellen said, but her attention was still divided. She spoke like a sleepwalker.
"Kellen," Vincent said. "Look at me."
Finally, she tore her gaze from that other man and peered up at Vincent, blinking as though only just now recognizing him.
"Mistress Krueger was shouting that she knew who'd started the fire. She said it was you."
Kellen shook her head, slowly. "Ripley," she mumbled.
"I know," Vincent said. "But they'll ask questions. With everything gone up in the fire, who knows if they'll get the truth straight."
And he didn't have time to stick around and sort it out.
"We have to go now," Vincent repeated, and he reached for Kellen.
Kellen shook her head, jerked her hands from Vincent's grasp, and leaned away. "Who the hell do you think you are?"
Vincent was too stunned to respond right off. He stood there with his hands still out and stared stupidly at her.
"You left," Kellen said. "You've been gone months. And I'm supposed to just run off with you, like you're somebody I should trust?"
Vincent's insides went cold.
"Ellis didn't give us leave," he said. "But the money I sent—"
"Money?" Kellen barked a disgusted laugh. "What fucking money?"
And then she froze, even before her question had died away. She turned her head and stared at the mouth of the alley.
"That bitch," Kellen said. "That damn bitch. She kept it."
When Kellen looked at Vincent again, it was like she was actually seeing him for the first time. Her face smoothed, and her eyes cleared. She even smiled, a hesitant quirk of her lips.
"You sent money," she said. "You came back for me?"
Some of the tension eased from Vincent's shoulders. He smiled back at her. This—this moment. This what he'd been living for. He reached out to recapture Kellen's hands in his, and this time she didn't fight him.
"Well, doesn't that just make everything all better?" the blonde man said.
The sweet, pure smile on Kellen's mouth and in her eyes faltered. Her head started to turn. She visibly caught herself and kept her eyes on Vincent instead.
That knot in Vincent's stomach re-tied itself.
Vincent tore his gaze from Kellen and scowled at the blonde man.
"Just who the fuck are you, anyhow?" Vincent asked.
"Vincent—" Kellen started.
"Ger Owen." Ger sat up straighter. His eyes were red-rimmed and barely open, but he met Vincent's gaze.
"I never got the money you sent," Kellen said. "I needed someone to take your—to take up half the room and board."
To take his place. Vincent recognized the soothing, apologetic softness in Kellen's voice. It was the voice she used when she'd done something she shouldn't have and was trying to get Vincent to forgive her.
Vincent stared at Ger a moment longer. Then he turned his head and looked into Kellen's eyes.
She only met his gaze for a second before looking away. The loudest silence Vincent had ever heard filled his ears. He tried not to think about what had been happening in his bed while he was gone, but the vision filled his head anyhow.
"I see," Vincent said.
Kellen's gaze snapped back to his, and she shook her head.
"No," she said. "You don't see. It's not that way."
Vincent didn't take his eyes off Kellen, but at the edge of his vision he saw Ger turn away and lean against the wall again. Kellen winced, but she didn't look toward Ger, either.
A hole opened up inside Vincent, and it seemed to swallow up everything he'd ever felt or thought—about Kellen, about Ellis, about anything. The urge to just turn around and walk and keep walking—north or south or west or hell, east straight into the river for that matter. It didn't matter. He just needed to walk away.
But he didn't. Something unfeeling and unwavering filled that empty space inside him. Whatever it was, it reminded him why he was there and why he had to see this through. He could feel sorry for himself later. Better, he could reclaim Kellen later. Right now, what needed to be done needed to be done. Ellis expected Vincent to return with a twelfth man. He expected Kellen.
"Why are you here?" Kellen asked.
"I came for you," Vincent said. "And we have to go. Now."
Kellen hesitated and then nodded. Before she could say anything, though, Ger coughed, a long, wracking sound.
Kellen turned her head to look at Ger. He was upright, but his back was still against the wall. His chest rose and fell steadily, as though that last cough had expelled the last of the smoke he'd inhaled. He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, hiding his face.
Kellen's brow furrowed. She frowned and then sighed. The lines of her face set, and she turned her eyes toward Vincent again.
"Ger's going with us," she said.
Fury flashed in a hot, red streak across Vincent's vision.
"No." Vincent snapped out the single word.
Kellen's jaw clenched.
Ger looked up and into Kellen's eyes.
"It's all right, Kellen," Ger said. "You should go."
"No one asked you," she shot back. "If they think I killed the Widow, then they'll think you did. You can't stay."
She turned her head toward Vincent again. Her jaw worked.
"He saved my life," she said. "I won't leave him."
He was going to lose her, Vincent realized. Everything he'd done for her sake, and she was going to make him leave her behind. Vincent turned his gaze on Ger.
This bastard. What had he done, to get himself in so good with Kellen in such a short time? No, never mind. Vincent didn't want to know. But if the guy thought he actually cared about Kellen...
"You know what'll happen if she stays here with you?" Vincent asked. "Assuming she doesn't get arrested and hanged for murder and arson? The place she lived, it's gone. Whatever money she had—including what I sent to her—it'll be buried in whatever's left of that house, and good luck convincing anyone that it actually belongs to her. She'll be stuck working the wharves for the rest of her life, and she'll miss out on the chance for something better that I have worked my ass off to make for her."
Vincent paused and studied Ger's face. It took less than a second for Ger to look away. Vincent fought back a triumphant smile—he'd been right about this sucker.
"That
's what her life will be if she stays here," Vincent said. "You gonna let her do that?"
Ger spoke without looking up. "He's right. I told you a long time ago—you should go."
Kellen looked back and forth between the two of them. Her eyes glittered, but her jaw stayed set.
"I am not going anywhere just because one of you says so." She levered herself against the wall and got to her feet. Standing, she looked down at Vincent, who was still dropped in a crouch. "You don't want me to miss out? Then you take me out of this God-forsaken city. But you take Ger, too."
"Kellen," Ger said.
"Shut up," she said. "You—if you want me to go, you're going with me. I'm done talking about it."
Vincent stood slowly. Down the alley, shouts rose and fell.
Kellen pressed her lips together and clenched her jaw.
"Fine," Vincent said, finally. "But I can't promise Ellis will take him."
Chapter 34
"What is this?" Mrs. Epler peered over her stubby nose, first at Kellen and Ger and then at Vincent.
Vincent smiled his thinnest, most Ellis-like smile at the Dutchwoman. She was near as tall as he was, so he stood straight and looked down at her. After being forced to cut a deal with Kellen, it felt good to be perfectly in charge again.
The wagon ride home had been silent. Kellen had settled into a dazed near-sleep on the bench beside him, staring blankly at the road ahead—except for every few minutes, when she twisted around to look into the back of the wagon, where Ger rode.
Vincent had seethed all the way. Damn Kellen for not just doing exactly what Vincent had asked of her. She'd always just done whatever he said, before. Who'd known it would only take a couple of months for her to forget all about him? He supposed at least part of that was Widow Howland's doing.
Vincent knew just who to blame for the rest of it. He only had to figure out how to break whatever hold Ger Owen had on Kellen—on Vincent's woman.
In the meantime, he was more than a little pissed off at Kellen herself.
"New recruits," Vincent said to Mrs. Epler, and he left it at that.
The lodging room behind the mansion's best parlor had been converted into a makeshift medical ward. A pair of cots were set up in the middle of the room, and William Jennett reclined on one of them. Mrs. Lockton was dabbing something pungent onto the black lines and curves etched across his bare chest. His Crow sat on the floor nearby.
A Stillness of the Sun (Crowmakers: Book 1): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Page 23