Fire Sacrifice Read online

  Luckily, the van door was unlocked, and I was able to get it open and swing myself inside. The door crashed shut behind me. To my surprise—I had expected something similar to the lab in the police station basement—most of the space in the back of the van was taken up by a bed with an old man resting in it.

  A flash of recognition hit me. But it couldn’t be; he was still young.

  I reacted to movement from my left, but before I could fully turn, something solid smacked against the back of my head. I fell, my vision shattering as everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  Monday 07:20

  My eyes blinked open to a blurry world of shadow and stars with my head feeling like it was about to cleave in two.

  “I’m happy to see you again.” It was Alex’s voice.

  “Have I been out long?” I asked.

  “A few minutes only. That healing ability of yours is mighty handy.”

  Shapes came into focus, and Alex reappeared before me. A hospital trolley had been strapped in place so it couldn’t move, and he lay on it, two pillows propping up his head, a thin blanket covering his body. Alex had always been thin, but now he looked skeletal. “When did you turn into an old man?”

  Alex chuckled. “I’ve aged at the normal rate. Physically, at least.”

  “What sickness do you have?” His hair was buzzed short; he had the look of a cancer patient.

  Alex shook his head. “Not a sickness.”

  “Magic then?”

  Alex nodded. “The fire summoning crystal is still inside me.”

  As I leaned forward, I realized my wrists were caught over my head. I looked upward. Manacles around my wrist had been chained to a ring. I gave a strong tug, but there was little give.

  I tried and failed to summon my fireswords.

  I looked around. Panels of slick silvery metal were bolted to the walls, ceiling and floor. Clearly the inside of the van was titanium shielding, robbing me of my power. “Was this van designed to be a prison for me?”

  Alex shook his head. “No, it’s designed to protect me from you.”

  “From me?”

  “From you or whoever would come to take me.”

  “I wasn’t seeking you,” I said.

  “You found me using the tracker, didn’t you?”

  “You? You’re what can power the Dawnsday Device?”

  Alex nodded. “More accurately, the summoning crystal. But the summoning crystal and I have been inseparable for a long while now.”

  I thought back to that day at the prison, the last time I’d seen Alex. The Sentinel Order had been using the fire summoning crystal along with some recently designed technology to connect with Brimstone. They had been turning soldiers into shadiers by giving them power of fire magic. Alex, desiring that power, had led Persia and her husband, Noah, and me into a trap in return for a promise that he’d become a shadier. One betrayal led to another, and Alex had been refused his prize. In the ensuing fight, Noah had so badly injured that he fell into a coma from which he never recovered, and the fire summoning crystal had penetrated Alex’s torso. Earlier, before the betrayal had become evident, my good friend Pete, an innocent, had been killed.

  “I can’t forgive you for what you did,” I told Alex.

  “Who asked you to forgive me?” Alex said.

  “Well, no one, but—”

  “But what? I’m sick and you feel sorry for me, and you think that I’m in need of redemption?”

  “You…” I stopped an angry retort, calming myself before responding. I wasn’t going to be put on the defensive. I wasn’t the one in the wrong. “No. You don’t get to turn this around and attack me. Pete died because of what you did.”

  “I knew Pete too,” Alex said. “I liked him and considered him a friend. Pete’s death isn’t your personal betrayal.”

  “Pete’s death was the worst of the consequences, but you betrayed all of us who fought on your side.”

  Alex adjusted his pillow so he could sit up straighter. “And are your decisions something to be proud of? When you saved Jo from that fire sorcerer, you unleashed Duffy the dragon. You helped bring about the Searing, which stripped fire sentinels of their power, leading to the death of many of them. You killed the dragon but now support Beacon, who will probably end up being worse.”

  “I always did what I thought best. I never craved power.”

  “Not to mention killing my parents.”

  “That was an accident,” I said.

  “Do you ever feel regret for any of your actions?”

  “Every day,” I said. So much for not going on the defensive.

  “Our paths couldn’t have been less similar, but perhaps we’re now more of a pair than when we lived together in Fenster Street.”

  “No!” The denial came out as a shout, but I wasn’t going to let him draw parallels between his cold-blooded betrayal and the harsh consequences of the tough decisions that had been forced upon me. “Our journeys have not been remotely alike. For one thing, yours is currently being made on a hospital trolley.”

  “Not everyone can be a warrior,” Alex said. “Most would prefer your journey, given the chance.”

  I shook my head. “Not if they knew what it involved.”

  Alex pushed himself forward into a sitting position. “Does it involve being able to walk more than a few steps without puking? Does it involve getting to sleep all night without a catheter to stop you from pissing yourself? Does it involve…” He trailed off. A sheen of sweat coated his face, and the taut whiteness of the lines of where his skin met bone gave him a skeletal look. “I was jealous of your powers. I wanted them to fight. I wanted to become a hero. It was stupid.” Alex allowed his head to fall back on the pillow. His voice became calmer. “I was stupid. At the time, though, my desire to have power like yours burned inside me so fiercely I was unable to see straight. I made a terrible mistake for which I deserve punishment, maybe death,”—he raised one hand to indicate his trolley and his prone body—“but I’m not sure I deserved this.”

  I took a breath. “The van’s not moving, is it?” I said, wanting to change the subject. “What do you plan to do with me?”

  “We stopped to fill up and to come up with a new plan.” Alex leaned his head back into his pillow, and the tendons on his arms relaxed. “Your arrival complicates things for us. At a minimum, it tells us that the titanium doesn’t shield against detection as much as we had hoped.”

  The door opened, and a girl dressed in black stepped into the back of the van. “Jo…” I began, then I realized who it is. “Oh, it’s you.” I said. It was Persia.

  “That’s a nice greeting,” Persia said. “Is that how you greet all your friends? Oh, it’s you.”

  Jo and Alex where entwined in my mind, and having just found Alex, I had expected to see Jo. “Are we friends?” I asked.

  “We did scale a tower together with a plan to defeat a dragon,” Persia said. “And we even succeeded. Kind of.

  “Friends, then,” I said. “It’s good to see you. You look…” She looked pretty, beautiful even. “Black suits you,” I said.

  “Combat gear is what suits me,” Persia said. “Not black.”

  “I dunno.” She was a short slim woman, and she moved with the effortless grace of a warrior. Or a dancer. “Put you in a black cocktail dress, and…” I trailed off. Was I trying to flirt? While chained up in the back of a van?

  Persia raised her eyebrows, a bemused expression on her face, then she moved past me to stand by Alex.

  “How are you feeling?” Persia put a hand on his forehead. “You don’t look so good.”

  Alex smiled weakly. “I’m just tired.”

  Watching Persia, the wind was sucked out of me, as if I’d received a mule-kick in the stomach. Strangely, I immediately knew that could only mean one thing: I had fallen in love with her.

  Chapter 7

  Monday 07:45

  Goddamn, I thought.

  Surely, no poet had never c
ompared love to a mule-kick in the stomach—that wasn’t how it worked. And who understood love if not moonstruck poets? I couldn’t be in love with her. We had barely spent any time together, and what little we had all involved fighting of some sort—when we weren’t fighting others, we were bickering with each other.

  Persia removed Alex’s second pillow, helping him to lie flat.

  “I can’t allow myself to get angry anymore, Rune,” Alex said. “Can you imagine that? I used to feed on anger, and now I have to repress any strong emotions simply because my body is too weak to express them.”

  “You’re still pretty angry,” I said.

  “You bring it out in me,” Alex said. “These days I’m usually the epitome of zen.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t just use the phrase ‘epitome of zen’ unironically.”

  Alex chuckled.

  “Rest,” Persia said, touching her fingers to Alex’s face and gently lowering his eyelids. “You will need your energy later.” Once Alex had stilled, she turned toward me and gave a sigh. “What are we to do with you?”

  “Are we enemies?” I rattled the chains above my head. Already, my arms felt heavy and tired.

  “I’ve no intention of releasing you, if that’s what you are asking.”

  “It’s just that you described us as friends earlier. Yet you knocked me over the head and chained me up.”

  “You are under a spell of a sort,” Persia said.

  “A spell?” I raised my eyebrows.

  Persia nodded. “You aren’t the first to fall under Uro’s influence, and you won’t be the last.”

  I smiled. “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like? You work for Beacon Sulle, who openly acts as Uro’s representative on Earth, right?”

  “And we work against Walker and the Sentinel Order, who are openly acting like the evil bastards they are. Have you heard of the Dawnsday Device?”

  Persia nodded.

  “You have?”

  Persia nodded again. “A device to break the link between Earth and Brimstone.”

  “That’s possible?”

  “Apparently. Though it’ll likely lead to the death of all of those with a connection with Brimstone.”

  “That’s thousands, no tens of thousands of people who’ll die,” I said. “That’s genocide”

  “It so.” Persia glanced across to where Alex lay. “They need the fire summoning crystal to make it work. So we have to keep Alex out of Walker’s hands.”

  “We’re on the same side then,” I said. “I sought out the power source with the aim of keeping it from the Order. That was before I even knew what the Dawnsday Device did. How come you know all about it already?”

  “The important thing is what to do now,” Persia said.

  “We’re clearly on the same side,” I said. “Release me, and we can figure it out together. I won’t even include Beacon Sulle in our plans.”

  “You won’t even— That you would even suggest such a thing means we can’t work together.” Persia moved to the other side of me and sat down on the bench. We weren’t touching, but her close presence made my skin feel hot. Goddamn it! I thought. There couldn’t be a worse time to fall in love. Not to mention that Persia was married, and her husband was in a permanent coma.

  “You no longer blame me for what happened to Noah?” I asked.

  “I decided to move forward.”

  “Can you just decide something like that?”

  Persia looked up and held my gaze. “You can try. And if, every day, you try hard, eventually, it gets easier.”

  “And Noah, he’s—”

  The back of the van opened. “Noah is doing surprisingly well. His body is, at least.”

  I jerked back, and the chains bit into my wrists as Noah stepped into the van and closed the door behind him. I threw a questioning look at Persia. “Why didn’t you tell me he recovered?”

  She shook her head. “Noah is no more.”

  “Then?”

  “I’ll give you a clue,” the man wearing Noahs’s body said. “You treated me like an accessory for all the time we knew each other.”

  “What are you talking ab—” An accessory—like a necklace? My eyes widened. “Jerome.”

  “I go by Jeroah now,” he said. “Jerome plus Noah equals Jeroah.”

  “How?”

  “Is your head sore? I tried to soften the bl—” Jeroah grinned. “Hey! Who am I kidding? I hit as hard as I could. Making up for those times you deserved a good whack, and me stuck with no body.” He stepped forward and pulled back his arm, readying it for a strike.”

  I jerked to the side to avoid his blow. Jeroah brought his hand forward, but, instead of striking, he ran his fingers through his hair. “Made you move.”

  “Stop messing, Jeroah,” Persia said.

  “Hey! It wasn’t you who got discarded like so much rubbish,” Jeroah said.

  “I had to cut you off,” I said. “Uro gave me no choice.”

  Jeroah put his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it. “The bad man made me do it,” he said, putting on a baby voice.

  “I had no choice.”

  “For years I was trapped on that strip of barbed wire wrapped around your neck. Many times I helped you, and in return, you promised me you’d free me. Instead, you threw me away, and I had to rely on the kindness of strangers.”

  I looked at Persia. “I wouldn’t have thought you wanted this.”

  “Noah wouldn’t have wanted his body to gradually rot away. He would have wanted to continue to be a part of the fight any way he could.”

  “Persia brought me to Flavini, who helped transfer my consciousness from the necklace into Noah,” Jeroah said. “Did you go back and look for me after the battle?”

  “I—” In truth, I hadn’t thought much of Jerome’s fate once I’d cut off the necklace.

  “Nice.” Jeroah moved past me and opened the small slot that looked into the cabin of the van. “Danny?”

  “I’m here,” Danny said.

  “Drive on.”

  “You know it’s not Rune’s fault,” Persia said as Jeroah turned back toward us. “He’s under Uro’s spell.”

  “He’s not fighting it too hard,” Jeroah said as the van jerked into motion. “Have you decided what to do with him? Could we kick him out into fast moving traffic?”

  “We’re not doing that,” Persia said.

  “You’re right.” Jeroah slapped a metal panel attached to the side of the van. “Once outside the shielding, he’ll regain his powers and return and kill us all.”

  “I’m not a killer.”

  “No? Weren’t you on the news last night single-handedly destroying a police station like a bad-ass terminator.”

  “That was just for TV. Everything was exaggerated.”

  “What’s the world coming to? We can’t believe what we see with our own eyes. On the news of all places.” Jeroah looked at Persia. “We haven’t heard from… you know.”

  Persia shook her head.

  “Well, then.” Jeroah sat down on the small bench on the opposite side of Persia and me. “The petrol tanks are full, and we have to keep moving in case there are more trackers about. I told Danny to avoid larger roads in case our enemies match Rune’s strategy of waiting on overpasses. I guess we wait.” He looked from Persia to me. “Who brought the board games?”

  Chapter 8

  Monday 13:25

  “You’re going to have to free me eventually, you know,” I said.

  “You want to talk about freeing someone? Sure, let’s talk about that.” Jeroah grinned. “How about I promise I free you? I string you along for several years, then, instead of freeing you, I just dump your body in a garbage heap? How’s that work for you?”

  I turned toward Persia. “We mightn’t be perfect allies, but we have to work together. If you prioritize the threats—keeping Alex safe and stopping the Dawnsday Device from being activated is what needs to be focused on. What’s the plan? Just d
rive around until you get caught?”

  “No,” Jeroah said. “That’s not the plan.”

  “Oh.” Jeroah had mentioned that they hadn’t head from someone. “Who’s helping you? Who’s in charge? Flavini? Harriet Ashley? Let me talk to them.”

  “How’s Alex doing?” Jeroah asked Persia, glancing across at the hospital trolley in the corner.

  “He’s good; he’s just resting. He doesn’t have much energy, and talking to Rune got him riled up.”

  “Of course it did,” Jeroah said. “Rune’s good at that. It’s good to be able to tune him out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that luxury for too many years.”

  “Focus on stopping the Dawnsday Device, Jeroah. Persia said it’ll kill all those with a connection to Brimstone. You’re a shade, I’m a sentinel, Persia…” Persia used to be a sentinel; I didn’t know whether it would affect her. “It’ll kill two of us for sure. And Alex will be inside the machine, so who knows what’ll happen to him? We have to figure out a plan. Driving around and hoping not to be caught is not a plan.”

  “It’s a plan,” Jeroah said. “Mightn’t be a good plan.” He shrugged. “You’re hardly a master tactician, though, are you? Do you know who is? Uro, the master manipulator himself. And I know he’s talking inside your head. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He’s not.”

  Jeroah raised his eyebrows.

  “He hasn’t in a while.” Not in the past several weeks at least.

  “And your dreams?”

  I shook my head.

  “Cute. You’re so much his lapdog, he doesn’t have to keep you on a lead anymore.” Jeroah looked at Persia. “Did you try to explain the obvious truth that he’s joined the evil empire?”

  “Not yet.”

  “There’s no point just explaining the facts,” Jeroah said. “Human beings are wired in such a way that logic can’t beat belief and emotion.”