Carol O’Connell - Stone Angel

“Charles, take Riker’s weight for a second and don’t stop moving.” She swung out the speedloader from her belt and jammed the bullets into the free chambers of her gun. Then she picked up her share of Riker’s weight again.

Charles felt the heat at his back, and his head was turning when she said, “Don’t look. The buildings are burning. There’s nothing else to see.”

Ah, but there was, and only Charles could see it. He looked over the heads of the crowd to follow the quick lean figure with flowing white hair moving away from the most recent fire and on to another building. Augusta was carrying a gas can and a bottle with a rag stuffed in its mouth.

Another rock flew to Mallory, hitting her in the leg. Cheers came up from the crowd, hurrays for a strike. She raised her gun and fired into the clot of men on the sidewalk. One of them screamed and the rest moved away from this victim, as if bullets might be contagious. Mallory was still looking that way when Charles saw another arm rise to hurl a rock in their direction. But now this man was himself hit in the head with a rock. A light laughter was heard in the dark. The tone was young, sweet and high, but Charles knew it was Augusta.

Two rats crossed the porch of a near building, running in advance of the black smoke hugging the boards as it crawled forward. But then, the smoke sipped back under the doorsill, as though the wood structure had inhaled it. In the next second, two front windows blasted outward in a hot spray of fire and glass shards. Rolling waves of flame quickly covered the outer wall.

The fire might have been Augusta’s pet when it started, but now it went where it wanted to, spreading to the roof. A tongue of flame licked straight up in the air. He could feel the heat on his face, and his eyes stung. The wind washed over him and carried the smoke back toward the lower bayou. The acrid stench remained. The fire roared.

It was feeding.

“Don’t be afraid.” Mallory spoke in an easy conversational tone. “There’s no point in it anymore.”

He understood. He had given himself up for dead the moment he had lain down to cover Riker’s body. Mallory had given him all these remaining minutes of life – a gift she bought at great cost. And he had bought nothing for her. But while he understood that fear was pointless and almost ungrateful, his heart was racing. His body was still afraid and pounding out adrenaline.

Two young men stood close to the burning building, passing a whiskey bottle between them and laughing at the fire. They didn’t realize it was alive and hungry.

Charles knew; he could hear it eating things.

A flame stabbed straight out and ran its tongue around one man’s head, searing his flesh and setting his hair afire. They ran away together, one man madly slapping the head of the other, batting out the flames. The burning man screamed, yet he would not let go of the whiskey bottle in his hand.

For the rest, they hardly noticed the fire. They were drunk on liquor and drunk on the moment, reeling and cursing alongside Charles and Mallory, all moving inexorably along the road.

Mallory’s gun banged off a shot and cast a wider protective circle around Charles and Riker. The crowd hovered at the edge of this unseen line and came no closer, menacing only with raised fists and their mouths twisting in ugly shapes. The mob screamed, the fire roared. Mallory’s gun shattered the night and scattered them again.

But they came back, the mob and fresh fire. Another building bloomed with yellow flames as they passed it. Charles looked back over his shoulder. The blaze was beautiful, dazzling. A bottle hit the side of his head, but he hardly felt the blow. He was exhilarated; he was scared out of his mind.

A man’s shirt caught fire and he rolled in the dirt alone, left behind by the wall of people who moved with them up the Owltown road. The liquor bottles in all the bars were bursting glass bombs. But Mallory made the biggest noise of all, her gun exploding with authority.

Charles watched two large boys, nearly man size, perched on the rail of a porch, keeping to the shadows, dark as crows and watching, waiting, moving their lips in unison. And now Charles realized they were counting off her shots.

The next rock fell short of the mark. Mallory fired an empty gun. They were almost at the end of the road when the bird boys flew from the porch rail and ran forward with rocks in their hands.

“On your right,” said Charles.

She watched them for a moment and then threw the gun at the boy in the lead, clipping his head and drawing blood. The other boy stopped for a moment to look at his friend, who was sinking to the ground, blood dripping on his shirt from the head wound.

“Take Riker,” she snapped, “and keep going.” Mallory went after the boy who was still standing and holding a rock in his hand. She grabbed one of his arms and broke it over her raised leg. Charles heard the bone snap. She walked away from the boy, and left him screaming as they continued to walk, shouldering Riker between them, facing forward, both tall and taking long strides, matched horses in tandem. Charles had never felt so perfectly in tune with Mallory.

The flames were all around them now. The older men were gone, faded away in the heat. And now the younger men and a scattering of women drifted back to the edge of the road. And last, the boys, with their violent eyes and hairless bodies, took flight and entered one of the buildings.

A gunshot rang out from the upper window. Mallory talked to him across Riker’s body. “Most people can’t shoot worth a damn. These bastards couldn’t hit a moving target to save their lives.”

“I thought these people were all issued hunting rifles at birth.” Charles looked up to see the long metal barrel protruding from the window on the second floor.

Another shot kicked up the dust in front of them. “Well, that’s an improvement,” said Mallory, in a cool critique of the shooter.

Charles caught the flight of a bottle with a fiery rag in its neck sailing through the window next to the shooter’s. The interior was lit up with a burst of flames. And there were no more shots from the upper floor. He looked around for Augusta, but she was nowhere in sight.

They walked steadily, never slowing the pace. People were walking along with them but keeping their distance. He wondered why. Mallory had no weapon now.

“They don’t know what to do,” said Mallory. “They’re pure reaction. Don’t look at them.”

Finally, they were at the top of the paved road, within steps of the dirt path that led through the windbreak of trees and into Dayborn, where electric lights were burning instead of torches and buildings. The energy of the mob had petered out to nothing, to wandering figures without direction.

Charles looked to Mallory and Riker. They might survive this after all.

Ah, but now a man stepped into the street, flanked by two teenage boys. Malcolm’s suit of lights sparked with a million independent fires. He was holding a rifle in his arms. Two more men joined them. One carried a baseball bat, and the other man held a rock in each hand.

The sheriff kept his eyes to the road ahead. The headlights of the car picked out the details of trees and shrubs along the way, but the moon had gone into the clouds, and everything beyond the scope of the beams was utter darkness. At the turn for the road to Owltown, he saw the flames and stopped the car, yelling, “Get out!” Lilith opened her mouth to speak.

He was faster, saying, “This is my personal business, Lilith. It may not be all that legal. Now you don’t want to spend your vacation days in court, do you? Witnessing against me?”

And though he did not believe he would live to face Guy Beaudare with the tragic news of Lilith’s death, he could imagine the man’s pain at losing his only child. All too well, he remembered the agony of losing young Kathy Shelley.