Black Widow (21 page)

My gaze fell to the floor and all those disgusting boxes of frozen peas. I'd tossed them out of the freezer, not caring where they'd landed, but some of them had stacked up together, almost like . . .

Bricks
.

Once again, I flashed back to that night with Fletcher and how we'd taken refuge in those metal barrels as the
warehouse had exploded around and then collapsed down on top of us. I didn't have a barrel, but in this case I had something better—frozen peas.

I knew what I had to do now.

Time was running out, so I yanked the neck of my bloody T-shirt up over my mouth and nose, blocking out the billowing clouds of smoke as best I could, as I went around to all three of the freezers, throwing the tops open, reaching inside, and grabbing all the bags of ice and the biggest, thickest boxes of frozen food I could find.

I worked as fast as I could, and then, when the freezers were empty, I dragged all the bags of ice and boxes of food to the very back corner of the restaurant and grabbed my duffel bag from where it had landed.

Then I started building my frozen-food fort.

I stacked the bags of ice around the corner, bringing them in as close and tight to my body as I could, then piled the boxes of frozen food all around me, until I had a makeshift wall that was about three feet high. I sank down behind the wall, sitting on my duffel bag, and pulled my knees up to my chest. Already, the flames had eaten through the double doors, and the eerie, orange-red glow had intensified, as had the heat.

My throat burned from the searing, smoky air, and I coughed and coughed, but there was one more thing I needed to do before I shut myself off from the flames. So I turned to the wall pressing against my back.

The bricks had already started to shriek, scream, and shudder from the fire racing through the restaurant, and I couldn't help but wonder if I'd be screaming in the same sort of agony before this was all over with. But I couldn't
let myself think about that, so I made my body as small and comfortable as possible, then reached out and put a hand on a single brick, right at the level of my nose and mouth. With a small trickle of power I loosened the brick from the gray mortar and wiggled it out of the wall. I doubted that anyone outside could hear the movements, but the steady
scrape-scrape-scrape
of the stone sliding free sounded as loud as a drum to me, beating out the fact that I was still alive.

I pried the brick loose, set it aside, and peered out the small, narrow opening. The back of a Dumpster stood in front of me, its dull, gray metal hull blocking my view of the alley and anyone who might be lurking in the corridor. I was so desperate for oxygen that I couldn't even force myself to wait a few seconds to see if someone was coming to investigate the noise. Instead, I shoved my nose up to the opening and sucked down gulp after gulp of air. It was foul stuff, reeking of the empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and bags of fast food that had long ago spoiled in the Dumpster, but some of the fog cleared from my mind.

So I breathed in all the fresh air I could and listened. Above the crackling flames, I could hear sharp, excited murmurs echoing back and forth through the alley, although the gunshots had stopped. The cops were still stationed out there, waiting for me to stumble outside and die. Even if they weren't in Madeline's pocket, they'd want revenge for my supposedly killing Dobson, and they'd be all too happy to empty their guns into me until I was dead.

BOOM!

Something exploded inside the storefront, the flames spewing all the way back here and cranking up the heat that much more. I sucked in another lungful of air, then turned back to face my makeshift fort.

There were so many bags of ice and boxes of food that they hadn't started to melt yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did. So I reached out with both hands and touched the closest one—another box of frozen peas—then focused on my Ice magic, on all that cold, cold power buried deep inside me. I concentrated, and silver lights flared in both my palms, centered in my spider rune scars. I drew in a shallow breath, not wanting to inhale too much more smoke, then unleashed my magic.

I sent my power racing through all the bags and boxes stacked around me, filling in all the cracks and crevices between them with my elemental Ice. Slowly, the cold crystals of my power began to spread, until I'd sealed all the bags and boxes into a solid, frozen mass around me. But that wasn't going to be enough to save me from the fire, so I pushed out another wave of Ice, making the crystals spread out from the top of my frozen-food fort and the brick walls all around me at the same time.

It was difficult, especially with the smoke washing over me and the flames creeping closer and closer, but I forced the Ice out in wave after frosty wave, until all the separate sheets met directly over my head, completely sealing me off from the fire, and creating the crudest sort of igloo.

But I didn't stop there. I might be walled off from the fire, but the flames still flickered outside my crystal cage, casting bright, twisting glows in all directions, as though I were staring into the center of a lit candle. Before long
the fire would wash over my igloo, cooking the food and me too if I wasn't careful, so I poured all my strength, all my energy, all my power, into making all those sheets and layers and wedges of Ice as thick and cold and hard and solid as I could.

I didn't know how long I did that. It seemed like hours, but it couldn't have been more than a minute, two tops. But all too soon, I exhausted what magic I had, and I slumped back against the wall. This was the choice I'd made, for better or worse, and now all I could do was hope that I'd been clever and strong enough to save myself.

Otherwise, I would soon burn to death, just as my mother and sister had before me, and die in the Pork Pit, just as Fletcher had before me.

So with my frozen-food fort complete, and my magic gone, I put my nose and mouth up against my breathing hole, closed my eyes, and waited for the flames to come.

*  *  *

There was nothing to do but keep breathing, hoping that every lungful of foul, disgusting, garbage-scented air I drew in wouldn't be my last. I didn't know if it was the smoke or my exhaustion, but I found myself thinking back to the fight at the warehouse all those years ago. I didn't think that I was dreaming, but I fell into the memories all the same. . . .

We'd gone from being in trouble to being buried alive.

I didn't know how long the explosions had ripped through the building. It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, but the concussive
boom-boom-boom
s seemed as though they would never end. Just like my joyride inside the barrel,
which rocked and rattled like a roller coaster as it was pushed every which way by the force of the explosions. All I could do was brace my arms and legs against the inside of the container and hope that it would soon be over.

And it was.

One second, I was listening to the roar of the warehouse shake, quake, fracture, and blow apart, with chunks of concrete, rebar, and more
bang-bang-bang
ing against my barrel like it was the centerpiece of a drum set. The next second, everything was quiet—eerily so—the barrel was still, and the only noise was the too-loud
thump-thump-thump
of my racing heart.

It was so dark that I couldn't even see the clouds of concrete dust that choked me as I sucked down breath after breath. Slowly, my heart fell back down into a slower, more natural rhythm, and my desperate pants for air eased as the dust dissipated. I huddled inside the barrel, straining with my ears, hoping to hear something, anything that would tell me that I was still alive and not just dreaming that I'd survived.

Silence—complete silence.

That hot, sweaty panic rose up in me again, but I ruthlessly squashed it. Breath by breath, the roar of the explosions leaked out of my ears, and small noises bubbled up to fill in the silence. The steady
hiss-hiss-hiss
of water from busted pipes. The
crackle-crackle
of a fire burning nearby. Other
moans
and
shrieks
and
creak-creak-creak
s, as if the warehouse were a wounded animal in the last dregs of its death throes.

When I felt steady enough, I stretched my hands out into the waiting blackness. Rocks, pipes, and slabs of concrete covered the opening of the barrel, but they were a loose, jumbled
heap, and it was easy enough for me to claw my way through them, grab hold of the edge of the container, and pull myself out of it. I slid forward, surfing down another pile of rubble, and lay there panting amid the crushed remains of the cinder-block walls, extremely grateful to have survived something I shouldn't have.

All of the lights were gone, destroyed by the explosions, but small fires burned here and there in the debris, along with the occasional blue-white spark of a live electrical wire, ripped free from its source. The full moon and sprinkling of stars in the sky added a pale silver glow to the ruins, softening the harsh edges and making it seem as though I were lying in the middle of an exotic lunar landscape and not the utter demolition of a building. Still, as I looked around, there was one thing I didn't see—the barrel the old man had taken refuge in.

“Fletcher!” I hissed. “Fletcher!”

He didn't respond. He might be experiencing the same ringing ears that I had and couldn't hear me. That was what I told myself. Not that he was dead. Not that his barrel had caved in and that he'd been crushed to death by the falling debris. I couldn't let myself think that way. I
wouldn't.

So I wrapped my hands around a length of rebar and pulled myself up into a seated position so I could take stock of my injuries. I was in pretty decent shape, all things considered, mostly just bruised, battered, and achingly sore from all the rolling around in the barrel—

A faint whisper of noise about fifteen feet to my left had me reaching for one of the knives still tucked up my sleeves.

“Gin!” The whisper took on a more distinctive, welcome sound. “Gin, where are you?”

I sighed with relief. Fletcher. I rose up into a crouch, ignored my screaming muscles, wobbly legs, and pounding head, and hurried in his direction.

Fletcher had also managed to dig himself out of the debris that had blocked his barrel opening, and he was leaning against the side of the dented container, his face, hair, and clothes streaked with dust, soot, and other grime.

I crouched down beside him, my eyes sweeping over his lean, wiry body. He seemed to be okay, although the way he clutched his arm over his chest told me that he probably had some bruised ribs. Nothing that Jo-Jo couldn't fix, though.

“I'm here,” I said, smoothing back his hair, which was almost white from all the concrete dust in it. “I'm all right. You?”

Fletcher smiled, his green eyes bright. “Still holding on—”

“Over here!” a voice called out. “I thought I saw something move!”

Fletcher and I both snapped our heads in that direction. A pair of headlights popped on and crept toward us along the gravel road that ringed the warehouse. Looked like our attackers wanted to make sure we were dead, instead of just assuming that we'd been killed.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Hide or fight?”

Fletcher held up his revolver. “Fight. I don't take too kindly to someone trying to bury me alive, do you?”

My grin was even wider and colder than his was.

I helped him to his feet. Then, keeping low, we made our way through the piles of debris until we found a wall that hadn't completely crumbled. We slid behind the cinder blocks, peered around the edges, and watched the headlights slowly approach.

The yellow beams glowed like two round, giant bug eyes as they pierced the darkness. Fletcher and I ducked down as the lights swept over our hiding spot.

A black SUV coasted to a stop about fifty feet away. The doors opened, and the two men and two women who'd shot up the poker game and blown up the warehouse got out. One of the men had a crossbow perched on his shoulder, while the other guy reached for his Fire magic, the flames of his power flickering in his palm. The two women both clutched guns. All four of them approached the warehouse debris, stopping at the edge of the destruction, not too far away from the barrels that Fletcher and I had crawled out of.

“I heard voices, and I swear that I saw somebody move over here,” a man's voice rumbled out into the night. “This is where they were when we blew up the warehouse.”

“You're being paranoid, Will,” one of the women answered him. “There's no way anyone could have survived that explosion. Is there, Tomas?”

“No way, Valerie,” Tomas, the second man, said.

“Yeah,” a fourth voice, the other woman, chimed in. “We made sure that all the cops were dead, and we buried the other two alive, whoever they were. So quit worrying, Will. I want to do something fun now. Like count our take.”

“Sonya's right,” Valerie chimed back in. “Let's look at our loot!”

The two women whooped with joy, skipping back over to their vehicle, and Will and Tomas joined in with their merriment. Tomas opened the back door of the SUV, grabbed a black duffel bag, and hauled it over to the hood to use the glow from the headlights to count their ill-gotten gains.

What they didn't realize was that the headlights made
it that much easier for Fletcher and me to see them as well. I looked at the old man. He gestured with his hand, indicating that I should go left while he went right. I nodded back.