Child of Fire (36 page)

I stared at the tower. It didn’t have the battlements that I saw in old movies. It was slightly crooked, but it was a tower. This was the “Scottish thing” Bill had mentioned.

“That’s where he is.”

Annalise nodded. “Let’s finish this job.”

“Boss,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to say what I wanted to say next, so I just blurted it out. “Do you think there’s a way to turn those worms back into kids? Do you think they can be cured?”

She did not like that question. “Anything is possible, Ray.”

I thought that, if I’d asked her if we could fly a candy-cane rocket to Jupiter, she would have given me the exact same answer in the exact same tone. “Boss, I had to ask.”

“I know you did.” That was all she had to say.

I drove to the waterfront and parked behind a seafood restaurant. The southward road turned east, away from the cliff and the ocean, leaving an unpaved driveway to go the last two blocks toward the edge of town. We walked toward it, seeing little more than a tumble of black volcanic rocks ahead. And the tower.

It stood alone, well away from the rest of town and a dozen yards from the edge of the cliff. At the base, I could make out a low, modern house, with huge windows along each wall. And there was a broad asphalt platform where a person could turn a car around. I couldn’t see a driveway connecting it to the town, and I couldn’t see the ruins of the rest of the castle.

“There,” Annalise said. She nodded toward a pair of Dumpsters a few doors down. The driveway to the tower was hidden behind them.

We walked quickly back to the van. I pulled out of
the parking lot and drove toward that driveway. We passed three identical burgundy Crown Victorias, but I chalked them up to someone’s desire to keep up with the Joneses.

The gravel road was barred by a long gate. I stopped, climbed out, and cut off the lock with my ghost knife. The gate swung wide open. I drove down the sloping driveway and parked the van at the end. No one was going to be driving out of here unless they tipped the van onto the rocks, which, frankly, was not all that unlikely.

I climbed out and opened Annalise’s door. We walked toward the house. It was much larger up close than it had seemed from the parking lot. The windows were all two stories tall. And none of the shades were drawn.

Something was wrong.

I slipped over to the garage and peeked into the window. Inside was the same elegant black S-class Mercedes I’d seen parked outside the toy factory door. It was a couple of years old. There were no other cars in sight.

“This isn’t right,” I said to Annalise.

She was too short to look in the window and didn’t bother to try. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“There’s a Mercedes in there. Charles Hammer drives a Prius.”

“He’s rich.” She moved toward the front door.

Not right. Not right. Not right. I took the ghost knife from my pocket and threw it, cutting the phone line.

I was about to cut through the locks on the front door when Annalise clumsily turned the knob and pushed. The door swung open. It was unlocked.

We entered. Golden sunlight filled the room. I could see storm clouds down at the edge of the horizon, but the sunlit waters were beautiful.

I shut the door and noticed something hanging beside the hinges. It was a long, double-edged knife. The blade appeared to be made of silver. I suspected it was there on
the off chance that the Dubois brothers turned on their masters. I took it off the hook and held it in my off hand.

I followed Annalise toward the far end of the room. There was a flat-screen TV hung on the wall and a very low couch facing it. The coffee table was littered with a dozen empty cans of beef stew, bread crumbs, and torn-open baguette wrappers. It looked as though someone had holed up here, but then why were the shades wide open?

“Through here,” Annalise said. She kicked open a door and entered another long room. I followed her.

This room had plush carpeting. All the shades were drawn, and the air was thick. At the far end, about twenty feet away, was a long wooden desk. Heavy drapes hung just behind it.

The high leather chair behind the desk was turned away from us. It moved slightly. I saw the sleeve of a dark suit jacket on the armrest.

“Charles Hammer the Third,” Annalise said, with the tone of a judge passing sentence. She pulled a ribbon from her vest. “You—”

“That’s not Charles Hammer,” I said. “That’s Able Katz.”

Able Katz swung the chair around. He looked quite smug.

The drapes fluttered, and four men stepped out. They were built like boxers, wore the brown uniforms of a private security force, and held Uzis in their hands.

A door to the side opened, and six more guards rushed into the room. They fanned out along the wall to our left.

“There are two more waiting for you by the front door,” Able said. “So don’t try to run that way.”

I noticed a webcam on the desk, beside the computer. Charlie Three was watching us, but from where? I dropped the silver knife into my pocket.

“Oh, no,” Able said. “Not your pocket, young man. That’s not good enough. You’ll have to toss that weapon away from you, onto the floor. In fact, please dispose of all your weapons that way.” He smirked at us.

Annalise reached up and tugged a fistful of ribbons off her vest.

“Wait,” I whispered to her. “They’re just guys doing a job.”

“Their job is to let a child killer go free.”

“That’s nonsense!” Able barked. “Charles has done nothing of the sort. You two are the ones who have been tearing this town apart.”

I kept my focus on Annalise. “Emmett was a killer, but these guys were hired to protect someone. They aren’t evil.”

She turned to me. “Of course they’re not evil,” she said. “I’m the one who’s evil.”

The phone on the desk rang.

Everyone seemed startled except for Able. He answered it. “Yes, Charles?” He listened. “I will.” He pressed the button on the handset and turned the phone to us.

“Can you hear me?”

It was Charles Hammer, talking over the speaker-phone.

“Yes,” I said. Annalise looked impatient, but I wanted to hear him out.

“Let me explain myself,” the voice said, “and I hope we can avoid any unpleasantness. I really, really would like to avoid violence, if that’s possible. More than anything.”

I watched the guards. Hammer could have been delaying us until the state police arrived, or even more guards, but I doubted it. He had ten armed men in the room with us, and two more, if Able was to be believed, by the exit. “I’m listening.”

“Able,” the voice said. “Do you trust me? Some of
what we’re going to say will sound bad, and these people may make accusations against me that I don’t deserve. I want you to understand—”

“There’s no need for that, Charles,” Able said. “I trust you.”

“Great.” Charles took a deep breath as though he was about to cliff dive for the first time. “First I want to explain—”

“Want want want,” I snapped. “Don’t tell me what you want. What about the kids you killed?”

“I never killed any kids! The missing children are still alive, and I can get them back. I’ve been searching for a way to get them back.”

“Looking through your book, huh? The one Eli Warren sold to your great-grandfather?”

“How did you—It doesn’t matter. Yes, I’m looking for a way to get them back. It’s the number-one priority for me. The children are the next generation of Hammer Bay.”

I laughed at him. “You’re not running for office, are you?”

“Sneer if you want,” the voice said, “but everything I’ve done is to help the people of this town. I’ve worked hard to bring jobs and dignity back to Hammer Bay.”

“And you had help,” Annalise said.

“Yes.” There was a pause. “I did have help. A consultant, of a sort. A fortune-teller.”

“The same one your father had, and your grandfather.”

“My great-grandfather, too. ‘Use it sparingly,’ my father told me, but there were so many things I didn’t know. And the people …”

He kept talking. He sounded very much like the weary activist, so burdened with the tasks ahead of him and so impressed with his own motives and ideals.

But something had struck me.
Fortune-teller
, he’d said.

What if he was not just looking into the future? What if the magic he was using was actually controlling the future?

It made sense if he was using magic that let him step outside of time in some way. Annalise’s burned hands kept coming back, no matter what she did to treat them. The Dubois brothers could heal anything, even brutal, mangling death. Maybe they were simply backing up in time, to a point before they were injured. Maybe that’s why the new sigil on Sugar Dubois couldn’t heal his injuries the way his brothers had been healed. It could not restore him to a time before it was in place.

As for the Hammer family, I had assumed that the seizures they suffered during hard times, and the smart moves they had made to turn things around, had come from visions of the future. But what if they were more than visions? What if he was
making
good things happen?

How else to explain a successful line of toys about Marie Antoinette, for God’s sake?

I tried to picture the power of a spell that could control whole populations of people. I couldn’t. How could he be so strong that he forced people to love his products? How could he force people to forget the people they loved most?

Then it dawned on me. He wasn’t doing it. His “consultant” was.

Goose bumps ran down my back. Annalise was right. This was completely out of my league.

I looked at Annalise. She was scowling at me. “Have you been paying attention to this crap?” Charlie Three was talking about siting a plastics factory.

“His great-grandfather summoned a predator out of the Empty Spaces, right?” I said. “And this dick has been communing with it somehow, using it to draw in
customers for his fucking
toys
. And
it’s
been taking the children for some reason, probably to eat them.”

“That’s what I figure, too,” she said. “And I’ll bet it was this predator that controlled those women in his office”—she held up her hands—“burning them all to protect him.
He
doesn’t have the power or the guts for a move like that.”

I turned to Able Katz. “Do you remember what happened after our meeting at your office?”

“What meeting?” he said, sounding irritated. “I’ve never seen either of you before in my life.” Charles was droning on, but I was focused on Able. It was true. Just as I’d suspected, he couldn’t remember meeting us any more than Doug and Meg Benton could remember their dead kids. The predator was controlling people.

“Why hasn’t the predator run amuck? Why hasn’t it tried to kill everyone on the planet?”

“It’s probably bound somehow. Eli must have helped them summon and bind it.”

“That was a long time ago. Do you think it’s likely to get free?”

She looked back at Able Katz, who was scowling at us. He must have thought we should pay more attention to his boss’s speech. “It’s already free enough to kill.”

I thought of the way the children had fallen apart when they burned. They’d turned into little worms and crawled off to the southwest. To here, in fact, or somewhere close to here. I wondered if the predator was feeding on those worms.

Hammer started talking about median home prices, and I couldn’t take it anymore. “Shut up!” I snapped. “You want to avoid violence? I’ll make you an offer. Send your guards away. Turn over to us all copies of the book Eli Warren sold to your great-grandfather. Take us to your so-called consultant.”

“But,” the voice said, “the company can’t continue without my, um, consultant.”

“The company isn’t going to continue,” I said. “And neither are you. There’s too much blood on your hands.”

“I can find those kids again!”

I turned to the guards. “Hear that? I’m talking about missing children, and he’s worried about his company. Is that who you’re trying to protect?”

“Don’t bother,” Able said. “These men are not going to turn against us. They’re professionals. That’s why I hired them. They do their jobs.”

Annalise turned to me. “And you had better do your job.”

She dropped the fistful of green ribbons onto the carpet, then grabbed my arm. She winced while she did it.

The ribbons struck the carpet and flared into green fire. Flames engulfed my legs, but I didn’t feel any pain. Several of the guards gaped at us in shock, and one cried out. They thought we were burning ourselves alive.

The fire crawled up our bodies and billowed outward. As soon as the flames reached above her head, Annalise charged forward.

Able Katz’s expression went slack. He stood and inhaled deeply.

The tinny voice on the speakerphone shouted,
“No! No! No!”

Annalise slapped the desk to the side. It smashed a window and tore the drape from the rod. The desk and drape fell outside and crashed to the rocks below.

The four guards who had been flanking Able opened fire on Annalise, drowning out Hammer’s voice.

Annalise slammed into Able, knocking him into the wall with a sickening thunk. Blood-red fire blasted from his mouth, igniting the wooden beams in the ceiling. He
had been about to breathe dragon breath on us, just like the officer workers at Hammer Bay Toys.

I dropped low into Annalise’s green fire and rolled toward the far wall. The guns made an incredible racket in the enclosed room. I felt something zip past me. It must have been a ricochet off Annalise’s invulnerable body.

I lifted myself into a crouch. The green flames were spreading toward me, and the six guards along the wall bolted toward the door they had entered through. Good. Let them run. At least they’d live.

One of them turned and saw me. He raised his weapon.

Without thinking, I threw the ghost knife at him. One of his partners bumped him in the rush to get to the door, and another stepped briefly into his line of fire. Then the ghost knife struck him over the heart.

The guard collapsed onto the carpet. The man behind him tripped over him and fell into the doorway, blocking it. The green flames reached them, and they disappeared within the fire. I could hear their screams.