Child of Fire (17 page)

The elevator doors opened, and the volunteer led me down a quiet hall to a little waiting area. Shireen sat alone, reading a tattered copy of
Redbook
. She was wearing a WSU Cougar sweatshirt.

The volunteer spoke to her in a voice barely louder than a whisper. “This gentleman would like to visit Harlan. Would that be all right?”

“Yes,” Shireen said. She turned to me. “Maybe he’ll talk to you. I’m his only family in the entire world, and he treats me like an enemy.”

The volunteer had already started back toward the elevator. Shireen returned to her magazine. “Which room?” I asked.

She tossed her magazine onto the vinyl couch with an irritated sigh. “This way,” she said.

She opened the door and stepped into Harlan’s room. I heard a rasping voice before I saw him. He said, “Out,” in a raw, strained voice.

“Someone is here to visit you,” Shireen said. “Try to show him more courtesy than you’ve shown me.”

Harlan lay in the bed. He had tubes in his nose, his arms, and his chest. He looked smaller, than I remembered him, but everyone looked smaller lying in a hospital bed. Everyone looked smaller without a gun, too.

Shireen pushed by me and shut the door behind her. I pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed.

Harlan looked pale and exhausted. He might have been getting good care, but no one was going to make him live if he didn’t want to.

“Having a bad week?” I asked. Harlan made a wheezing sound that might have been laughter. He winced in pain. “Sorry, man,” I said. “No more jokes. I promise.”

He settled down. I went to the foot of his bed. There
was a chart hanging there, just like they show on TV, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“How you doing?” Harlan rasped.

“How am I doing with my …” I almost said
investigation
, but that’s a cop’s word. I didn’t want to say it. “I’m further along,” I said, “but this town is a mess. And it’s scary. But I’ve got nothing to lose.”

And that was true. Harlan and I were both pretty close to death. Despite his injuries, I figured it was even money to see which of us would live longer.

“How long ago did this start?” I asked. “The kids, I mean.”

Harlan held up his hand in a peace sign. Two.

“Two months?” I asked. He frowned. “Two years?!” He relaxed. I’d gotten it right.

Two years. Christ.

“Did something else happen around then? Something that seemed strange or …” Harlan’s eyes grew dim. He was exhausted, and I had pushed him far enough. “Relax, dude,” I said. “And hold on. I’m going to need to ask you more questions when you’re better. I need your help, okay?”

He nodded faintly. I didn’t really think he could help me much more, but I wanted to give him a reason to hold on. I stood and left him lying there, alone. I heard him struggling to breathe.

Shireen had company with her in the waiting room. Standing beside her was a short, fat man in a stained polo shirt and brown shorts that reached just below his hairy knees. He held a tape recorder in his hand. I disliked him on sight.

“Come on, Shireen,” he said, his voice an annoying whine. “I’m going to find out …” Shireen’s face was set in a scowl. She was not about to answer anyone’s questions.

He glanced over at me, and his face lit up. He turned to me. “Hey! I’ve been trying to catch up with you for two days. I’m Peter Lemly with
The Mallet
. What’s your connection with Harlan Semple? Is it true that you’ve come to town to outsource some of the Hammer Bay manufacturing jobs?”

I stared at him. He stared back, holding the tape recorder out. I leaned toward the microphone and said, very clearly, “You’re just about as wide as you are tall, aren’t you?”

He yanked back the recorder, but he didn’t turn it off. He looked flustered and aggravated. “I know who you are,” he said, trying to make it sound like a threat.

“So does she.” I jerked my thumb at Shireen. “Now why don’t you go away so I can express my sympathies in private.”

“Are you a friend of the family, then?”

“Nope. Never met any of them before two days ago.”

“What about the jobs at the toy factory?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The rumor would work for us while it was a rumor. As soon as it appeared somewhere official, Able Katz could refute it and it would lose some of its power.

“Actually, I think you do. I’m the only media this town has, and I’m not going to be pushed around. I’m going to get some answers myself.” He turned to Shireen. “Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m going to find out.”

“I’m not going to talk to you, Peter.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I’m never going to talk to you. Now, excuse me, I think my visit is over.”

She turned to leave. Peter started to follow her, but I stepped in his path.

“The lady wants to leave,” I said. “Leave her be.”

“So macho,” he sneered. “So chivalrous. You have no idea who you’re protecting.”

“What story are you following?” If he had said
missing
children
, I would have swallowed my bile and bought him a drink. With my last six bucks.

“Town corruption,” he said.

“You’re after …” I let the sentence trail off. Lemly was eager to finish it for me.

“The Dubois brothers. And the mayor, too, if he’s involved. And the town council. The whole town knows what’s going on, but no one will stand up to Emmett Dubois. Except me.”

“Good luck with that.” Shireen had already entered the elevator at the end of the hall. The doors closed over her unhappy face. I turned away from my companion.

“Wait!” He grabbed my elbow. “What are you doing in town? What have you come here to do?”

“Good luck with your story,” I said. “I hope you don’t get anyone killed.”

I turned my back on him and walked toward the elevator. He followed me, peppering me with questions. He wasn’t very good at it.

The elevator opened again. I stepped inside and shoved Peter away from me. He didn’t fall, but he did keep his distance while the doors closed.

I rode down the elevator, thinking about my own behavior in the last hour. I’d driven around in a stolen van, jumped into an SUV and menaced a woman, and shoved a guy in a hospital hallway.

I’d never been this reckless and aggressive, even back when I was part of Arne’s crew. I knew the cause of it, of course. I was a dead man. I had agreed to be cannon fodder for Annalise’s war. Despite her recent gestures of friendship, she had promised to see me dead, and it felt very, very close.

I laid my head against the cool stainless steel wall of the elevator. The best I could hope for was that I would be there when Annalise took down Charlie Three. I
wanted to see her put an end to that bastard and avenge those children.

I didn’t know when and how she would make her next move. Could she take out Charlie Three alone, injured as she was? What if she failed?

That pleasant thought was interrupted by the elevator doors opening. I walked into the lobby and asked the woman at the reception desk for directions to Hammer Street.

I got them. Of course Hammer Street wasn’t on my tourist map, but it was near the toy factory, on the inland side of the plant, about as far south as the light house.

I left Ethan’s van where it was. Then I headed out onto the sidewalk, oriented myself, and started walking.

What I should have done was call Annalise. My destination was an address on Hammer Street—it could very well have been Charles’s home. If I found him there, it would be best if she was with me. But she hadn’t given me her cell phone number and I didn’t want the motel manager to share my message with Emmett Dubois.

If Charles Hammer the Third really was at this address, was I going to kill him? Could I do it? It made me a little sick inside to think it, but I suspected the answer was yes.

Considering.

An even bigger question was whether Hammer would stay dead. That I didn’t want to think about too much. I would take my shot at him, if I got one. If it didn’t turn out well …

I
really
didn’t want to think about that.

Of course, I wasn’t exactly conducting myself like a sensible hitman. I’d just asked a hospital receptionist for directions to the victim’s street, for God’s sake.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill Charles Hammer. Maybe I could find a better way.

I heard the sound of children screaming.

There was a long stretch of green grass on the corner ahead of me. Before I realized what I was doing, I was running toward it, ghost knife in hand.

Kids scattered in every direction, running off a junior-sized basketball court. On the asphalt, I could see a four-foot-high plume of fire with a little figure inside.

I ran into the street and sprinted toward the park. A hugely fat woman rushed toward the child, screaming. Then the flames sputtered out and the figure inside fell to pieces onto the asphalt.

I felt the twinge against my iron gate.

The fat woman stopped running. The few remaining children that hadn’t disappeared also stopped. Parents began to call their kids back to the playground.

I reached the court. The fat woman turned and started walking back to the bench where the other parents were sitting. I was alone at the foul line.

As I’d seen with Justin Benton, this child had broken down into a mass of fat, silvery worms. They crawled across the asphalt court, shiny and revolting. Where they touched the ground, they left a trail of black soot.

I had no rational reason for what I did next. All I knew was that I had to destroy as many of those creatures as I could.

I swung the ghost knife at the trailing worms. Ordinarily, the mark would not hurt living things, but I suspected these were predators—creatures from the Empty Spaces, partly physical and partly magical. And the ghost knife cuts magic.

My spell slashed through the hindmost worm. There was a second’s delay, then the worm split open and burst into flame.

I watched as the tiny creature was consumed by fire. Good. They could be destroyed.

I swung my ghost knife at another. Just before I made contact, a tiny cut appeared on its back and a tongue of
flame erupted from it. I changed the direction of my attack just in time to avoid the fire, and my altered swing touched the worm in just the right spot to create the tiny cut I’d already seen.

I drew back from the fire. Damn. That time the wound had appeared before the ghost knife had connected. That meant something, I knew, but with my blood pounding in my ears, I couldn’t work it out.

Both worms were still burning. I moved toward the side of the wriggling mass, striking at the tiny creatures at the edges. They flared and burned as I nicked them, but the flames never grew strong enough to combust the others. Maybe this spirit fire, as Annalise called it, didn’t burn that way. It didn’t matter. I crouched beside the mass, striking here and there, moving along its bulk away from the flames.

When the entire side was ablaze, I moved across the front, careful to avoid the tiny creatures as they crept forward. I imagined one of them leaping at me, burning me the way Annalise had been burned, but I kept up my attack.

Within seconds, the entire front of the mass was blazing. I began to work my way down the other side. The worms I had cut burned in the black streak behind the rest, and the creatures at the front crawled through the pyre of the others without apparent harm.

I crouched low and kept close, inflicting tiny nicks on the worms, watching for times when the little creatures flared up from my attacks before the attacks had actually landed.

We had gone ten feet. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Eventually, I stopped circling the mass. The spirit fire burned so fiercely at the edges and tail end that I couldn’t get a clear shot there. I hopped to the front of the mass, dropping to my hands and knees directly in its path.

I struck at the worms as they tumbled through the wall
of flames at the front. I backed away. I was destroying the creatures, but the mass was still advancing. I couldn’t stop it.

My feet touched grass. There were many fewer worms than there had been, maybe only 10 percent of the original mass, but I wasn’t going to get them all. I cursed at them, swore at them as I killed them. Eventually, I had backed all the way onto the grass, and the first of the worms tumbled off the asphalt. Fewer than a dozen hit the soil and started tunneling, but that was still too many.

I jumped to my feet and rushed back onto the court. The worms had vanished beneath the earth, and I didn’t like the idea that they might tunnel up from beneath me.

I looked at my ghost knife. There was no residue on it, no blood, no black soot, nothing. It was as clean as the day I’d made it. I slipped it into my pocket.

A long skipping rope lay on the basketball court with a discarded baseball cap beside it. The cap was lavender. It had been a little girl this time.

I looked at the streak. The northern edge of the court was not ten feet from the spot where the fire had started, but the worms had turned toward the southwest. They’d gone a long way, exposed to danger, to head in that direction.

I turned and looked along the path of the black streak. It pointed in the general direction of the Hammer Bay Toys plant. It headed toward Charles Hammer the Third.

At that moment, killing Charles Hammer seemed like the most important and most natural thing in the world.

I walked the rest of the way to Hammer Street in a daze. I kept trying to picture the face of the little girl that had just burned away, but all I saw was a rotating series of faces, all absurdly angelic. At that moment, I would have knifed Charles Hammer in a police station, in front of forty cops and a dozen TV-news cameras.

This was my mind-set when I finally reached Hammer Street. It was a single block long, curving westward with no sidewalks. I walked up the middle of the street. There were stone walls on either side of me, and thick blackberry vines growing over the top. The road sloped upward, and as I reached a cul-de-sac, I saw three houses.

The smallest sat on the north lot. It was made of brick and had pretty white balconies. The second house, on the southern lot, was made of mortared stone. It was low and wide, and was probably very modern forty years ago. Both were shuttered and dark.