Angelfire

TWENTY-FIVE

COLLEEN

One thing I’ll say for Goldman-he doesn’t do things by halves. He’d let loose the fireball to end all fireballs and then skeedaddled. In the flash of white light, I saw everyone around me frozen in the act of shielding their eyes. All except Primal. He was just frozen, staring into the blast as if it were no brighter than a candle.

In the speckled darkness after, I did a full 180 and headed for the doors. But there were people in the way, milling, shoving. I pinballed off of them, trying to stay upright and moving toward the doors. I shouted for Cal, for Goldie, even for Russo, but I was drowned out.

I was somewhere near the doors (I thought) when a pair of hands took hold of my shoulder and spun me around. “Cal?”

“Sorry,” said a voice in my ear. “But your friends seem to have left you behind.”

Clay. I turned my head, trying to see him through the purple and green blotches in front of my eyes. In the flare light, his whiteface gleamed moonlike. The eyes were black craters.

“They’ll come back for me,” I said.

Painted lips curved upward into an exaggerated smile.

“Of course they will. And when they do …” He cocked his head back toward the far corner of the room, toward Primal.

Primal was still sitting godlike in his throne, while his toadies milled around him and his flares floated above him on their neon tethers. His head was turning from side to side, the wolf-yellow eyes raking the walls of the place as if he could see through them.

God. Maybe he could.

Clay leaned in, bringing his face close to mine. He was sweating, little beads of perspiration standing out all over his face, making him look like he was wearing a veneer of gleaming bubble bath. “You want to save your friends, don’t you?”

“Duh.”

“I could help you persuade Primal to let them go-at least your lawyer friend and the little gnome. That Goldman fellow’s behavior was just plain insulting. Primal will have to deal with him. He can’t afford to appear soft or weak, after all.”

“What can I do? I’m not a deva or a tweaked musician. I don’t have anything Primal would want.”

“No, but Primal’s not the only one here with… wants.”

I glanced at him sharply. His eyes, still trained on me, had a glassy, intent look that suddenly and uncomfortably reminded me of the look Rory used to get when we …

I shit-canned the thought. “Oh, really? And exactly what would you get me? You’re just a bootlicker-and a fashion disaster, I might add.”

His hand bit into my upper arm, right through the leather. “I lick no one’s boots. There are other centers of power in this place. One of them is right down the hall… in my rooms.” He gestured with his head.

Following his eyes, I realized we were literally on top of the exit. If I could get out into the hall…

“Yeah, right. Look, you’re a grunt.” I flicked my gaze toward the far corner of the room. “Primal’s the power in this place. If I want to save anybody’s ass, I’ll kiss his, not yours.”

I brought my eyes back to his face and got the shock of my life. The whiteface was running. Little rivers meandered down his cheeks, leaving trails of naked flesh that were green-white and glowing.

He realized I was staring at him and raised a hand to his cheek. His white gloves came back smudged with paint. Beneath the translucent gleam of his cheek, I could see the fine tracery of blue-green veins.

Clay was a flare.

But he didn’t fly, I argued with myself, and his eyes were wrong. He seemed more like an attempted flare, as if the Change had lost interest before it was done with him.

“You glow in the dark,” I observed, and licked my lips. I wasn’t trying to be sexy. They were just suddenly parched.

Clay smiled, no smirked, and pulled off one of his gloves. The hand gleamed like moonlit snow. The next second, he shocked the hell out of me by putting the shining hand over my left breast.

Flesh crawling, I knocked it away.

Rage contorted the mime face before he slammed the door open and dragged me out into the hall. The guards were gone. I imagined they were in pursuit of Goldie and Cal. Clay didn’t seem to notice their absence. I coiled to run, but he yanked me off balance and shoved me against the wall, his face only inches from mine. The crossbow bit into my hip.

“Here’s the deal: Primal’s a little touchy about… the seventh floor. If he catches your boys-and he will- they’re toast. Literally. Unless I intercede for them. Now, why don’t you slip down to my rooms with me for a while? I’m sure we can negotiate something.”

I thought of Viktor and suddenly wanted out of this madhouse so badly I could taste it. At that moment I would’ve cut off a finger or an ear or gotten a tattoo to be back in the Preserve. Anything to send us all back.

“What’ll it be … Colleen?” he murmured, and my skin crept at the sound of my name.

Damn me, I considered it, but I knew better than to believe the creep had any real influence with Primal. He was a pet. “What’ll it be? Well, it won’t be you, glow-boy.”

Anger, sudden, dark, and real, twisted the whitewashed face. There was surprise under the rage, as if he hadn’t expected me to reject him. He grabbed at my breast again, but I twisted sideways and his fingers clawed the thick denim of my shirt, wringing it. His fingernails dug painfully into my skin.

“You stupid bitch.” His voice was soft, velvety, the whole outrage of rejection boiled down to a sticky syrup. “You just threw away your only bargaining chip, you know that? You want out of here, I’m the one you have to go through, not Primal. He doesn’t give a shit about your kind.” He gave me a fierce, feral grin and shook me so hard my head thumped the wall. “I do.”

His face was too close, his eyes too hot. I brought my hand up in a defensive chop, twisting sideways. He released me for a split second, then grabbed again, catching skin, fabric, and a fistful of lucky charms. Blue and green static shot up in front of my eyes, nearly blinding me. Clay was suddenly crawling with eerie blue-green static-a fishnet made of Northern Lights. He shrieked and flung himself away from me.

Something quick and low to the ground slipped behind him and he toppled over the sudden obstacle, dragging me after him. Dad’s old chain broke. The charms scattered, dog tags and weird guitar pick thing flying away into the gloom of the hall. Clay ended up in an awkward heap on the floor.

Howard straightened from a crouch and grinned at me. “Thud,” he said.

I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Clay. Strange static still crept over him. And in the whiteface, leotard, and tights he looked like a marionette with its strings cut. If we couldn’t find Cal and Goldie and get out of here, Primal might just have a whole troop of marionette mimes. A dream come true.

I put a hand to my throat. Viktor’s cross on its silver chain was still there. I thanked God for that and looked around for the other stuff. In the dim light of the hallway it wasn’t going to be easy to find, but I wasn’t about to leave it behind. I’d worn Dad’s tags since the day he was buried, and I suspected Papa Sky’s lucky chip had just saved my bacon.

Something tugged at my jacket. I spun, going for my knife.

It was only Howard. He held out my missing charms. “Yours.”

Dad’s Air Force-issue links were totaled. I slid the tags and the leather chip onto the chain with the cross. Then I tugged my shirt back into place and glanced down at myself. I had lost a couple of buttons and some skin; beads of blood stood up in a row of angry-looking welts across my chest. This wasn’t going to play well in Kiev. Ripping my knife out of its belt sheath, I headed for the fire exit.

Howard shadowed me so close I almost tripped over him. “What’d you do to him?” he asked.

“Just a little something I picked up.” I kicked the fire door open.

“But you’re a normal!”

I threw myself out onto the fire escape and came face-to-face with Viktor. I stared at him stupidly for a moment. “What’re you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.” I grabbed him and tried to force him down the stairs; he swung me around and headed up instead. I had no choice but to follow.

“The contract is broken,” he told me over his shoulder. “We came in through the garage as Papa Sky’s friend suggested. But then… something happened. Magritte flew off up there and Enid went after her.” He nodded at the layers of building above us.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Goldie and Cal are up there, too. There’s something about the seventh floor.” I snatched at him again, trying to slow him down. “Look, I’ll go. You take Howard and get-”

He shrugged me off, taking the stairs two at a time. I leapt after him, using every foul word I could think of.

Climbing four floors takes time. In this case, it took enough time for me to do the math. We were no surprise to Primal. How could we have been after weeks of wretched dreams, hours spent burrowing our way into the Loop, minutes ticking by under his hot eyes? I suspected he’d connected with us through Enid, found out what made us tick, and used it to pull us here like moths to a flame. If that was true, could Goldie’s taking off to the mysterious seventh floor be unexpected? For all we knew, Papa Sky might’ve been a mole.

And there was this: Why would a building that was all castle keep, with a moat at the front door and a dragon guarding the treasure, have unlocked doorways that let little old us waltz in and out? The answer was obvious: we’d been shuffled, cut, and dealt like a pack of playing cards. And the only question worth asking at this point-the $64,000 question, as Goldman would say-was: Why? What did Primal want? Really.

At the seventh-floor landing, we paused to survey the fire exit. The open fire exit.

Oh, this was just too damn convenient.

Doc caught my arm and turned me around to face him. He raised a hand to the torn front of my shirt, fingering the stained denim. “Is this blood?”

“It’s nothing, really.”

He pushed the fabric aside to bare the welts Clay had left. “These are claw marks. What in the name of God is in that place?”

“Nothing a can of mace wouldn’t cure. It’s fine, really. I just had a disagreement with somebody over my … charms.” Yeah, and I said it with a straight face, too.

Behind me Howard made a snuffling noise that sounded an awful lot like laughter.

I turned on him. “You got a problem?”

He shook his head.

“Good. Weapons?”

He just grinned at me, baring a mouthful of incredibly sharp teeth. Would’ve done a T-Rex proud.

“How about you?” I asked Doc.

In answer, he reached up under his jacket and pulled out his knife. It was about six inches long-a very effective weapon in the right hands.

“That’ll do,” I told him. “But only if you’re prepared to use it.”

The look he gave me was grim. “I am prepared.”

Yeah, but for what? I could’ve shared my certainty that we were stepping into a trap, that there were too many open doors in this place. I didn’t. What good would it have done? Instead I said, “Back at the Preserve … I wish I’d realized … I just wish there were more time.”

He smiled. “There is always time,” he said, then turned and walked into the darkness of the seventh floor.

God, let him be right, I thought, and stepped through after him.