The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

The fire is on me and there isn’t a thing I can do about it. There has to be something I can say to stop all of this, to take all of this back, to make it as if it never happened, but it seems. . seems that isn’t going to happen.

The flames chew my jacket, rising hungrily upward, and I reach out to wave them further away from me. Jo is forgotten now, and Kathy and Luciana, and Landry. The fire has taken me to another world, and this world looks a hell of a lot like Hell. I know Hell is other people, but it’s not-it’s just two people, Cyris and me. I flap my arms and pat at the flames, burning my fingers. The handcuffs keep digging into my wrists.

I drop to the ground and start rolling. I tear at the jacket. I manage to pull it upward, sliding it and the fire over my head. It singes my hair and I force my eyes shut as the tears inside them seem to boil. Then the jacket’s off my head and on my arms where I’m able to push it only as far as the handcuffs. I start kicking at it, stomping it into the ground, the flames finding the lighter fluid on my jeans. I push my feet at the jacket. The fire has weakened it enough to tear apart. It leaves me with gloves that have huge tassels on the ends. Tassels of fire. I kick at them, smudging them into the dirt. The technique works and the flames disappear. Red embers flicker from the material.

I get to my feet. Cyris is laughing at me as if I’m the funniest thing in the world. Perhaps I am. But it’s hard to concentrate when you’re laughing, hard to stay focused. He fires the Glock. It’s loud. I don’t feel any pain, but I feel something tugging at my chest. I look down at my vest. My binoculars have been shot. I turn and run. There’s another gunshot, this time another tug, this one somewhere in my back. All that tugging and I lose balance and strength, and I make it a few yards into the darkness before falling over.

Cyris comes in after me. There’s pain in the side of my chest from the impact of my binoculars being shot, and the side of my back hurts from a bullet. Cyris grabs my ankles and starts dragging me.

“I prefer it like this,” he grumbles, but I don’t think he does. I think he preferred back when he hadn’t been stabbed in the stomach or set on fire.

He starts dragging me back the way we came, probably so he can kill me in front of Jo. I dig my fingers into the dirt, looking for something I can use to fight him with. Leaves, twigs, moss, grass-nothing helpful. No branches, no rocks, just a whole lot of nature and. .

My fingers wrap around a cold, solid item, something L-shaped, something heavy and metal with a socket at one end. As I tighten my grip on it, the Real World shimmers and darkens, then darkens some more, but doesn’t disappear.

I’m not going anywhere. Fuck that. Right now, I’m all out of failing.

At the edge of the clearing Cyris lets go and leans down over me.

“I’m going to enjoy this, partner,” he says.

I doubt that he will. I swing the tire iron as hard as I can.