Thor's Serpents (16 page)

O
wen stayed outside the burning apartment building. Matt, Reyna, and Alan went in. So did the cat. Reyna muttered that if the feline had to hang around, at least it could make itself useful and lead the way and risk being first in line into a burning building. The cat fell in at the rear.

“Here,” Alan said, passing the goggles to Matt at the front.

When Matt shook his head, Reyna dangled the keys. “Trade?” Alan passed over the goggles.

Reyna slapped the goggles into Matt’s hand. “Wear them, Thorsen. Otherwise, you’re going to get blinded by
smoke and lead us into a burning room.” She turned to Alan. “That’s how you need to do it. Don’t tell him he’s in danger if he refuses—tell him someone
else
is.”

Alan grinned. “It must be a Thorsen thing. I was tempted to faint and pretend I’d collapsed from low blood sugar to get Pete back to the house to eat.”

He led them to the stairwell, explaining that when they’d heard about folks stuck in this building, it had seemed an easy job. The stairwells were clear, no sign of smoke, the problem apparently just a jammed stairwell door, which Pete could handle with his Thorsen strength.

The woman outside had said Pete had gotten the door open and a bunch of them had escaped, only to reach the bottom and realize the rest weren’t behind them. That was when the stairwell filled with billowing smoke.

Matt opened the stairwell door. Smoke swirled down, the stairs completely hidden under it. “Fifth floor, right?”

Alan nodded.

Matt hefted Mjölnir. “I can handle this.”

“Um,” Reyna said. “Did you hear the ‘right behind you’ part? That’s not an option, Matt. Unless you tie me to the railing, I’m watching your back.”

“Seconded,” Alan said. “Except the part about the railing.”

“And as Owen said, the longer we bicker about it…”

Matt nodded. “Come on, then.”

Alan gave them bottled water to soak cloths he’d brought to hold over their noses and mouths, but climbing stairs while breathing through that cloth left Matt feeling like he was running uphill. They made it as far as the fourth floor. That’s when the heat hit.

Matt glanced up to see the ceiling on fire. It looked like a roiling sea of flame. The cat raced past to the stairwell door and pawed at it.

“He says that way,” Alan said, his voice muffled by the cloth.

“
She’s
just trying to escape the flames,” Reyna said.

“So she’s not magical?”

“Huh?”

“Matt said you’re Freya’s descendant, and I know she has a cat.…”

“Freya has two.”

He smiled. “Maybe you get the second after Ragnarök. Like a graduation gift.”

Reyna laughed. “Maybe, but I don’t think that cat’s magical.”

“It’s just randomly following you into burning buildings?”

Matt was already at the door, feeling it for heat. When he opened it, the cat ran through.

“Magic or not, let’s presume she has good survival instincts and see where she leads us.”

They followed the cat down the hall, into an open apartment and out to the balcony door. Matt reached for the cat to move it aside while he opened the balcony. When he opened it, the cat raced out and jumped onto the railing.

“Whoa!” Matt said. “Hold on!”

The cat balanced there, peering up. A portable fire escape ladder dangled from the balcony above. Before Matt could say anything, Reyna was on the railing, one hand braced on the wall.

“Careful,” he said.

She nodded and gave the ladder an experimental tug. Then a harder one. When it held, she grabbed on and began to climb. Matt held his breath until she was up. Then he went. Alan followed. The cat did not.

At the top, Matt walked through the balcony door. Despite the smoke, he could see Reyna in the middle of the living room, staring at the hall door. Flames curled around the edges, like fiery fingers trying to pry it open.

“Wrong way,” she said. “We—”

A tremendous crack cut her off. It came from the room to their left. They followed the sound into a bedroom… with a hole in the wall. An ax hacked at the hole. Matt took a step back, one arm going out to stop Reyna and the other hefting Mjölnir. The ax continued to chop a hole through the wall.

“Who’s there?” Matt said.

The ax withdrew. A head ducked in—a man wearing
goggles, his red hair tied back, a Thor’s Hammer dangling from his neck. He saw Matt and rubbed his goggles to clear the soot.

“Matt?” he said.

“Hey,” Matt said.

Alan stepped forward. “He brought friends. Other—”

Uncle Pete cut him off with “Hang on” and pulled back, then kept chopping the wall. When the hole was big enough, he squeezed through. Matt could see people on the other side, looking on anxiously. His uncle motioned for them to wait.

“You okay?” Alan said.

“Sure. I need you to take the kids back down with these people. I got the ladder ready, as you saw. Then the fire engulfed the door. So…” He motioned at the hole. “Plan B.” He said this all calmly, as if rescuing people from burning buildings was a daily occurrence.

“And you?” Alan said.

“There’s a family trapped in an apartment.”

“Of course there is,” Alan said with a soft sigh, shooting a look at Reyna, who smiled and shook her head.

“I can help with that,” Matt said.

“No, you’ll—”

“I
will
help with that.” He met his uncle’s gaze and lifted Mjölnir. “This might come in handy. You can wield it, but I’m used to it.”

Uncle Pete blinked, then he stared at the hammer. “That’s… It’s really…”

“My shield also fights fire with ice. Now can we go?”

His uncle still hesitated. Matt walked to the hole and climbed through. He heard Uncle Pete say, “Wait. No. You help Alan.” He was turning to refuse when he saw Reyna coming through after him.

“Package deal,” she called back to his uncle.

Matt was already moving down the hall, past the knot of people watching in confusion. Reyna followed. His uncle did, too, after telling the others that Alan would help them down. As they filed through the hole, Uncle Pete caught up and said, “Freya, I take it?”

When Matt glanced over, Reyna looked startled as she pushed back a rogue strand of black-dyed hair.

“Um, yeah,” she said, and while she didn’t add it, he could hear
How’d you know?
in her voice as she glanced down at herself—her faded jeans and Union Jack T-shirt and chipped black nail polish.

“Then I’m guessing that’s yours,” his uncle said, pointing.

They followed his finger to the calico.

“Where’d she—?” she began. Then sighed. “Yes, apparently, that’s—Matt!”

Reyna wrenched him back as a tongue of flame shot through an open doorway. Farther down, they could hear a child crying. His uncle tried to move into the lead, but
Matt put out his arm. Then he inched forward, shield out, as the flames withdrew into the open apartment. As soon as he drew up alongside the door, another tongue shot out and his shield flew up and iced over just in time to meet it.

The flame pulled back again, almost like a living thing, but it wasn’t alive, wasn’t supernatural. Just fire doing what fire does, seeking new material to burn. He could see it inside the apartment, engulfing the ceiling in a sea of rolling flame. He carefully grabbed the knob to shut the door to keep the fire contained. Then he heard the crying… coming from within the apartment.

“They’re in here, aren’t they?” he said to his uncle, who nodded.

“Of course they are,” Reyna muttered. When Matt went to step in, though, she stopped him and called, “Identify yourselves!”

“What?” Matt said.

“Random crying child in fiery room? Hello, trap?”

She called again, and the people within responded, but Matt couldn’t make out what they were saying over the hiss and spit and crackle and whoosh of the flames. He thought he caught a boy’s voice, yelling about fire and a bird.

“Did he say—?” Matt began.

Grim-faced, Reyna pointed across the room, and he could make out the shape of a bird cage on a pedestal. There
was no bird perched inside. Given the smoke, it’d be on the bottom of the cage, which he thankfully couldn’t see.

“Okay,” he said. “But that identifies them as actual people, right?”

Reyna nodded, agreeing that a monster or Raider wasn’t going to ask them to rescue the pet bird.

Matt stepped into the apartment, and it was like walking into a sauna as the heat from the flaming ceiling poured down. Through the smoke, he saw more fires ahead—a chair, a couch, a discarded sweater, burning piles dotting his path.

“Turn left,” his uncle said. “They’re in the bedroom.”

They crept along, one eye on the ceiling, waiting for that fire to shoot down. It stayed where it was, crackling and spitting. Matt made it to the bedroom door. He handed Reyna his shield. Then he took the wet cloth from his nose and mouth and wrapped it around the scorching hot metal. The cloth hissed and spit. He turned the knob quickly, pushed the door open, and—

Flame leaped out. Reyna grabbed him by one arm, his uncle lunging to catch the other. As Matt yanked the door closed, his grip on the cloth slipped, his fingertips touching down on white-hot metal. He yelped. His uncle fumbled for the fallen cloth and got the door closed.

“There’s no other way in, is there?” Matt said.

Uncle Pete hefted his ax. Matt nodded. “Okay, so we need to find the right place to—”

The cat let out a yowl. They looked down to see it staring at the wall, its fur on end, wire brush tail extended.

“I think she’s saying that isn’t a good spot,” Reyna said.

His uncle chuckled. “Okay, Trjegul. Or Bygul, whichever you might be. Where should we break through?”

The calico just kept hissing and yowling at the wall.

“Apparently, cats are cats,” Reyna said. “Magical or not, they don’t take orders from humans.”

The cat paced from the door to the corner twice, then stopped at a spot, sniffed it, then looked at his uncle as if to say
Well, get to it.

“All right,” Uncle Pete said. Then he yelled, “Stand back! We’re coming through!”

He chopped a hole in the wall. When he went to look inside, Matt motioned him back and pushed the shield through, his head following. He saw a mother and two kids, maybe six and two, huddled on the other side of a flaming bed. The younger kid—a boy—pointed emphatically across the room. Matt could make out something burning on top of a dresser.

“Got it,” he said. “We’ll be careful. We’re coming through as soon as we can.”

His uncle kept chopping at the hole, while Matt helped
with Mjölnir. When it was big enough, Matt went through first. He started walking around the bed, then realized there was a very good reason the family was huddled there. A tipped basket of laundry had caught fire and blocked their escape.

“Bird!” the little boy said. “Bird!” He pointed, jabbing his finger.

“Don’t worry about that,” his mother said quickly. “He’s concerned about his pet, but just… just get us out of here. Quickly. Please.”

Reyna had stuffed water bottles in her pocket and was using them to put out the laundry fire as Matt beat it down with his shield. As soon as it was clear enough, the mother hustled her kids past. His uncle went back through the hole to watch the fire on that side as the family came through. Matt and Reyna guarded from the bedroom.

When the family was almost through, the little boy darted back into the room, his mother letting out a cry. The child scrambled and pointed one chubby finger at the dresser.

“Bird!” he said. “Bird!”

Matt looked. All he saw was the dresser, with something burning on top of it, something big, maybe three feet tall, reaching almost to the fiery ceiling. He was about to turn away, when he noticed something in the flames.

An eye? No—
two
eyes and then a beak and then, as he stared, the bird took form. A giant flaming bird.