“No.” Mrs. K pointed at the shielding. “She wants in.”
Something new slammed against the partition. The entire dining hall filled with the low hum again.
Mrs. K twisted her head as if listening. Then she looked up at me.
The partition thumped.
“Do you smell that?” Marko said.
Nax, who had been watching me, sniffed the air. “Down! Everyone! Now!” he yelled.
I didn’t duck. I couldn’t. Because velocity came through a hole in the partition. A small, tiny, almost imperceptible dot of a hole, but a hole nonetheless. One made by the tip of a sword wielded by a demon-goddess.
Ismene used the sword to puncture the shielding, and her stink streamed through like a blasting hose.
Her stink, and her blood.
It oozed through the hole to our side, the stuff from her veins, and coated the edges like sticky, fluorescent death.
Nax and Marko had said Burners eat people. I’d yet to witness that particular horror. They’d also said Burners exploded. I’d seen sparks and fires.
A new whine rose from the partition. Not the low, deep hum caused by the hits, but a high-pitched spinning-up of something terrible, as if the blood coating the hole was about to erupt like a tiny atomic bomb.
Ismene the Burner was about to unleash her full, evil glory.
Roseanna screamed. Marko and the kitchen employee ducked. Nax twisted and, once again, wrapped his huge arm around me, as if protecting me from something he thought only he was tough enough to handle.
A pop echoed through the dining hall, followed by a bright flash of light. No dust billowed, only a fast-moving flash of heat. Crackles followed, and the sound of a plate-sized chunk of the shielding hitting the floor.
I looked back. The Burner’s blood had widened the hole enough to allow through an arm—or a sword.
Ismene’s scabs-on-fire eyes appeared on the other side.
“Say hello to my little friend!” she yelled, and thrust the sword through the hole.
Chapter Nine
Ismene’s burning-car-battery stink drifted through the hole.
Roseanna covered her nose and mouth. She looked at Mrs. K. She looked at me. She gripped the elbow of the kitchen employee, but he shook his head and nodded toward Mrs. K. “I think I should stay,” he said.
Then Roseanna Hernandez, the woman who I always thought could stand up to everything and everyone, ran toward the opposite side of the dining hall. She hit a button, and the shielding on the other end opened.
Roseanna disappeared into Building One.
The shielding hissed closed as she passed through. I was alone with magical people, and an explosive demon.
The kitchen employee walked toward us, and stopped at the edge of the tables. He crossed his arms and his attention moved smoothly from Nax, to Marko, to Ismene, then back again—the way a highly-trained cop would watch all possible threats.
He was actually bigger than Nax, but clean-shaven, and carrying a knife. He wore a bandana around his head, hiding his hair, but the impression I got between the shadows and the fabric was short and sandy brown.
He said nothing. Nax quickly sized him up as if he was a fellow silverback gorilla, then returned his attention to the Burner.
Ismene sliced at the hole, but the blade did not go into the partition as easily as it had the glass in the lobby. Grinding shrieks rolled off the partition, as if when she cut this time the two materials caught on each other.
The edges of the piece on the floor looked more like pencil graphite than anything the obsidian-midnight-blade-of-death shouldn’t be able to cut. Yet that graphite-like substance did not flake, nor did it crumble. And it had hit the floor like an anvil.
It was obviously heavier than it looked, and dense enough to stop an explosion.
“Gosh darn, will you look at that!” Ismene ran a finger around the craggy edge of the hole. “Hmmm…. On the other side, Special Metallurgy didn’t develop this material until after the end of the world.”
After the end of the world? What—when—was on the other side of the distortion bubble?
“Or these beauties!” She stuck the sword’s blade through the hole again. It shrieked again as it scraped off more bits and pieces.
Her scabs-on-fire eyes appeared again. “You are all wondering why I didn’t go have myself some well-aged Shifter snacks.”
Nax glanced in the direction Roseanna had run. Were the residents safe? We didn’t know. But I suspected that if we followed, so would Ismene, and no one would survive.
Nax turned his back to Building One as if he’d had the same exact thought.
“Why am I bothering with you?” Ismene wagged her finger through the hole. “Because you all are a bother.”
Marko opened his mouth to shout something but Nax slapped the side of his head, then put his finger to his mouth. He held up his hand, signaling us to be quiet.
Ismene moved and rainbow colors streamed through the hole. A growl followed, then both the noise and the colors vanished.
“You are wondering Why us? Why is an impossible Burner holding siege to my meatloaf?” She moved again, and a shadow fell through the hole. “It’s the end of the world, chickadees. Nothing makes sense anymore.”
A new thump hit the shielding.
“So, to help you understand your new normal, I’ll offer a deal,” she said. “You give me Philadelphia. The rest of you stay in there and fret about your frailty and your deteriorating bodies. I take the kiddo. I leave your anti-Burner wall in place and you get to live until worse things than me show up. And the young lady and I go about our business.”
All the spinning what-ifs and how-tos in my head stopped cold. All the thoughts trying to map this invasion and its magic onto the world ceased.
She wanted me?
“What?” The word popped out of my mouth as if it had exploded along with the sparks and fires effervescing off the skin of the demon-goddess on the other side of the barrier. “Why?”
Ismene leaned her head against the side of the hole. “We were—will be—great friends, you and I, Del Parrish. Yin and yang. Order and chaos.” She grinned. “Milk and cookies. I’m the crunchy one.”
“I don’t believe you.” How else could I answer? I’d never be a demon-goddess’s friend.
“We are the witches that kept the Empire at bay.” Sweetness coated her syrupy-yet-popping voice. “We could be the same this time.”
This time? “Whoever you’re talking about wasn’t me.”
“Deny all you want!” Ismene slapped the wall. “Someone has to stand up to the Emperors.” She hissed out Emperors as if she was having problems enunciating it around a forked tongue. “We do this. We’re good at it, you and I, my dear Philadelphia. We’re what this world needs.”
Nax looked as confused as I felt. Confused and a bit miffed that I’d just stolen the center of Burner attention.
Mrs. K pointed at one of the closed-off windows. “We have a more pressing issue. Hellhounds will continue to come through until we close the hole in reality.” She listened for a moment. “Current crossing rate is one beast every ten seconds.”
Every minute meant six more of those monsters. Every hour mean three hundred and sixty. Three hours would unleash more than a thousand.
“If I go with her, will it close the portal?” I asked. I was grasping at straws. Could I convince Ismene that she’d allowed in enough of her pets?
Mrs. K nodded. “Maria says she does not know.”
“Del, darling! Hellhounds come in seventeen distinct species,” Ismene said. “Plus a handful of subspecies. They’re such fun pups! You can have your own if you come out here.”
“Ismene, past-seer of the Jani Prime,” Nax said. “You do not have the power to predict.”
She laughed. “Past-seer. Future-seer. Does it matter, Lesser Emperor? Give me Del Parrish,” Ismene said. “If you do, I’ll show you how to close that little rip in reality.”
“She’s l
ying,” Marko said.
Ismene pushed her hand through the hole. “You accuse me of lying? I will suck the marrow from your bones.” She snapped her teeth at Marko and sparks flew through the opening.
Marko flung himself out of the chair and farther from the partition.
He’s lost it, I thought. The guy who was supposed to keep his cool, who the others claimed was part of some paramilitary group, was panicking in a room full of vulnerable people who needed his protection.
Ismene tapped a finger on the hole’s rim. “Come now, Del. Fire and ice, we are. Come out before the so-called good guys show up and fill your head with their glorious lies.”
Deep down in the soon-to-be-sucked-out marrow of my bones, I knew the “good guys” were either a falsehood, or that when they did show up, it’d be too late.
We were on our own.
That rip in reality was still open. It continued to pour hellhounds onto the world. Still shimmering and full of velocity that wasn’t moving a damned thing.
Or Ismene was lying about all that. But why lie? Why not take the simple route of attacking the unprotected? There was an entire city full of people just waiting for her, too.
“I’ll go,” I said. “But only if you close the distortion.”
I don’t know why I said it. I hadn’t thought through my response. I hadn’t thought through anything. Yet those words fell out of my mouth and I knew I’d spoken a truth. The whatever extra what-not I supposedly had—my dumbass need to run into fires, or my lack of understanding as to how the world actually worked, or perhaps my tender thigh muscles—whatever I carried that Ismene wanted meant nothing if we didn’t stop the flood of hellhounds.
And even less so if I didn’t lead Ismene the impossible Burner away from the residents of Paradise Homes.
I’d walk out of the dining hall and into the arms of a wicked witch simply to give Roseanna and Nax time to get everyone left alive to safety. How, I did not know. The world was in the process of breaking and no one would ever be safe again. But I could try.
I had to try.
Besides, somewhere out there, dragons walked the Earth. And in a world with dragons, anything was possible.
“No,” Nax said.
“It’s not your decision,” I said. Why was he so controlling? “She’ll get in sooner or later. She’s got that sword that can gouge holes in walls and blood that blows things up. It’s only a matter of time before she cuts herself a door.”
“No one leaves!” Nax bellowed.
Why did he have to yell? Leaving was my choice, not his.
Mrs. K and I both cringed.
Nax’s eyes rounded and he opened his mouth as if to apologize.
He did not. His mouth shut and his lips thinned. He looked away.
Mrs. K did not. “Manners,” she said.
His nostrils flared, and he opened his mouth again as if to speak, but something moved behind the hole. A ray of rainbow light cut through the shadows and swept over the table closest to the partition.
A grinding followed, as if one of the hellhounds ripped its talons down the matte blue carpet on the other side of the wall.
The ramming started once more, first against the partition, then against the windows. The dining hall hummed once more, but this time, the discordant note set my teeth on edge.
The hole was messing with the resonance of the wall. Nax groaned and covered his ears.
“I will go with you, dear.” Mrs. K said nothing of Maria Romanova, or if her words were instructions from her ghost. But the look on her badass little-old-Russian-lady face said Do not fuck with me, monsters.
A thump echoed from the roof, then another. Then another. The thumps turned to metallic shredding that rattled my eardrums and my bones.
We had to get out. The vibrations would disable us all if we did not.
“They’re on the roof.” Marko stared at the ceiling and held his hand out to Nax. “Give me my gun.”
“No,” Nax said. Then to me: “This is suicide, Del.”
Was I running into the arms of my own death? Probably. Would it make any difference? Maybe. And right now, maybe was all we had.
“Are they ripping out the vents and cooling units?” Marko yelled.
The kitchen employee gave him a shove. “Calm down!”
Nax slapped a table. “No one is going out there,” he said. “We wait them out! Blasting through the shielding is a lot of work. So is digging through beams and sheathing. Do you really think they’ll come through the roof?”
I looked at the hole in the partition. No shadows moved behind it. No flashing monster-lights, either.
Ismene was gone. She’d left while we argued. “If she goes up there, yes, I do think they will come through the roof. She cut a hole in the shielding with her sword. The support beams will be nothing compared to that.”
Above us, the tone and pull of the metal shrieks changed, as if interrupting Nax’s guaranteed disbelieving response. Dust and debris fell from the shadows fifteen feet above our heads.
I knelt in front of Mrs. K’s chair. “Does your ghost have any insight on how to get out of here?”
The kitchen worker walked toward us. Nax immediately moved to intercept. “Stay back—”
The man expertly rolled the knife around his wrist and pointed it at Nax, but he looked to Mrs. K and me. “Our friend Mr. Nax doesn’t seem to believe that anyone living here in Paradise Homes is worth protecting.”
Nax stepped closer as if trying to intimidate the other man.
It didn’t work. “My name is Erik Erikson. I am a Shifter. I’m also old enough to have a great-granddaughter living in Building Two.” He glanced at Nax. “Mrs. Summers. That is why I am here.”
He didn’t look much older than me. And Mrs. Summers was in her eighties.
“Some of us age more slowly than others.” He nodded toward Marko. “He could be a lot older than he appears.” He nodded to Nax. “I know for a fact that he is.”
Nax glared at Erik, but didn’t answer.
Erik fell silent. His face twitched as if he was talking himself out of saying more. Then he nodded toward the kitchen door. “This way.”
Nax stepped between us.
“Back off, Nax,” I said.
He looked down at me, and for a second, I thought his face softened.
He stepped to the side. Erik nodded toward the kitchen again.
I looked up at Nax, then back to Mrs. K. I couldn’t carry her, and pushing her chair would slow me down. But she wanted to come, and so did her ghost.
“Do you want to help?” I asked. “Or are you going to stay here?” Someone needed to protect the residents left behind. It might as well be Nax.
I could not read his expression. The shadows and candlelight didn’t help, but mostly his cheeks cinched and uncinched, and his lips thinned, then not, then thinned again, but in a different way.
Deep down inside, Nax was arguing with himself, and the physical signs of the argument were the facial versions of his random yelling.
He walked over, stood behind Mrs. K’s chair, and placed his hands on the handles.
She looked up at him, but did not say a word.
Marko walked toward the hole in the wall and knelt next to the fallen, platter-sized bit of partition. He ran his hand over the carpeted side and the piece’s three-inch-thick, graphite-like edges.
He picked it up. His arms strained, and his neck muscles bulged, and he gripped it as if it was a rock. “I think you should take this,” he said.
“I can’t carry that,” I said. “Not out there.” I pointed at the closed-off windows.
He carried it toward Mrs. K’s chair. “Help her up,” he said.
I moved her foot rests and helped her stand.
“Lift the seat cushions,” Marko said.
Nax obliged and Marko positioned the chunk of wall on the seat. They quickly rearranged the cushion, Nax adding a second from one of the dining room chairs, and we helped Mrs. K back into her chai
r.
She shifted around, and did her best to be comfortable while sitting on a rock. “No worse than a bath chair, darling,” she said.
Marko stepped back. He looked at the hole, then over his shoulder. “We’ll follow Roseanna, right, Erik Erikson? We’ll make sure the residents are safe.”
Erik looked as if he was about to punch Marko, but nodded yes instead.
Nax stood perfectly still. He raised his chin. Then he saluted both men.
“Give me my gun,” Marko said.
Nax sighed. He looked between Erik and Marko, and handed the gun to Erik instead. Erik checked the weapon and tucked it into his waistband.
I handed over Marko’s ammo-carrying backpack.
Marko frowned, but returned Nax’s salute. Then he walked away, toward the partition on the other end of the dining hall, presumably to scout the exit Roseanna used.
Nax returned to gripping the handles of Mrs. K’s chair. “Ready, Irena?”
“You weren’t hiding as well as you thought, my dearest Nax,” Mrs. K said.
Nax ignored her comment. “Please tell me you’re not also Seraphim,” he said to Erik.
The other man looked genuinely insulted. “No,” he answered. He nodded toward Marko. “I’ll keep an eye on him, but I suspect he’s telling the truth. I don’t think he wants anyone here to die because of a Burner.”
Nax watched Marko disappear into the shadows. “I think you are correct.”
Erik led us toward the kitchen. A red emergency light flooded the ovens and worktables with enough glow that we could make our way along the industrial sinks at the back. Tonight’s dinner still steamed, and the scent of the huge trays of meatloaf still filled the air.
The funky, unbreakable partition wasn’t anything more than a dream. This, back here, was the real, interrupted Paradise Homes.
We moved by the big chrome-and-steel dishwasher toward the back of the kitchen, the freezers, pantry, and the curtained-off loading dock area.
Nax grabbed a coat off the hooks next to the door. I still had mine on—I’d never taken off the one Marko had brought out for me—and I zipped it up.
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