Marc Zicree - Angelfire

I will probably never shake the feeling that I caused what happened next. I know I could have prevented it.

Four feet from where Doc and Goldie shielded Magritte, Clay stopped and extended a hand toward the nearest wall. The fey arteries blazed, their pulse quickening. I could almost hear the drumming of a great mechanical heart. A second later a green streamer of light leapt from the wall to Clay’s outstretched hand. It enveloped him, fed him.

I lunged, hoping to land a blow while he was distracted, but before I could touch him, he turned and pointed at Maggie. A bolt of energy shot from his fingertip straight to her heart. She spasmed, aqua radiance backwashing along the connection. There was a flash of light, a sizzle of sound, and the emerald trail sucked itself back up, wreathing Clay in a rainbow. He broke his connection with the Tower.

Magritte went limp in Goldie’s arms, light extinguished.

He screamed-one long, piercing note of anguish that I will hear until the day I die. Longer, if there’s any life after this one. Doc bent to revive her, but I knew she was gone. Because Goldie knew.

The building shook as if the ground beneath it shivered. The walls pulsed with lurid Light.

In the moment of vertigo, Howard flung himself at Clay, snapping with animal fury, claw-hands reaching, ready to rend and tear. But Clay, exultant, danced out of the way. He was suddenly able to leave the ground and, if not to fly, at least to levitate. He grinned at me, vibrating with new power, ablaze with it, his hair tossing in the breeze from the blown out window.

“Christ, what a rush! I had no idea … Here I’d been keeping those creatures alive, taking only what I needed-what I thought I needed. I had no idea it could be this … powerful an experience.” He smiled beatifically and rubbed a hand over his heart as if petting the new power that infused it. “Do you know how many devas are in this place? Dozens. Scores.” He giggled. “So much for saving something for a rainy day.”

Dear God, I’d taken a garden-variety monster and driven it to become a flare killer. Somehow, we had to bring him down before he could reach any of the other flares. But how? He was no longer a man. He wasn’t even a flare. He was an unknown, connected to this damn Tower in ways I didn’t understand. I shook myself. Understanding was irrelevant. We had to stop him.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Colleen raise her head from the floor. She fumbled her necklace off over her head, made a beckoning gesture with her fingers, then dropped her head and lay still. Clay didn’t seem to notice her, though she was only about five feet from him.

I took a long, gliding step to my left.

“Maybe,” Clay mused, “my diet doesn’t need to be limited to devas. You can read changed texts, can’t you? Maybe I’ll sample you next. Lord knows what I could do with your little talent.”

I stepped left again, raising the sword.

He glided right, laughing at me. “You don’t actually think you’re going to get near me with that thing, do you?”

In answer I raised it over my head and came right at him.

At that exact moment Colleen wrapped a hand around his ankle, then sliced through the leg of his coverall with her knife. His skin gleamed through the tear for an instant before she reached in and grasped his leg.

He shrieked, convulsing as if caught in a powerful electrical current. A swarm of shimmering sparks raced up his leg to engulf him, devouring his bright new aura.

No hesitation. Not now. I knew what this thing was- what I had to do. I redoubled my grip on the sword, took two strides and ran Clay through. I felt the power in him kicking back through the blade, still battling me. The sword bucked in my grasp as if alive, but I held on- willed myself to hold on.

In a spray of light and blood he pitched backward, sliding off the blade toward the shattered window, dragging Colleen with him.

I flung the sword aside and threw myself down practically on top of her in the debris, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could. She let go of his ankle as he went over, stopping our slide just short of the jagged border. We watched as the spot of orange receded into the twilight.

A sigh seemed to issue from every corner of the room, from the building itself. Then the entire place shuddered. There was a loud, long wrenching sound and bits of ceiling tile rained down into the room.

“Shit, the whole place is coming apart,” said Colleen.

I rolled to my feet, drawing her up after me. “Let’s go!”

The Tower shook again, then settled into a rhythmic quaking. Ceiling tiles continued to fall, exploding dully against the floor.

We scrambled from the room, half dragging Goldie, who still clutched Magritte’s frail body to himself. The building no longer toyed with us. It was dying, groaning, pelting us with debris as it disintegrated around us. We escaped through its death throes to the escalator core and descended, sometimes conveyed by tides of other refugees.

Out in the street we put as much distance between us and the Tower as possible. We’d barely gotten across Dearborn when it seemed to sag, settling toward the parking garage at the rear. We took cover in doorways and under ledges, and while we watched, every window in the place blew out, showering debris everywhere. Then flares poured from the building into the sky, which even now was clearing, losing its ruddy gleam. There were dozens of them.

Primal’s ruby dome was evaporating.

For the space of several minutes the sky was amber-washed cerulean. A cold wind whipped the streets and flayed the clouds overhead. But then, in the west, a swift unnatural darkness gathered, blotting out the sunset. The sky went yellow-gray, the way it does before a tornado.

From where I hunkered inside the blasted foyer of the building across Dearborn from the Tower, I saw Enid move out of cover into the middle of the street, his knot of rescued flares hovering close behind him. They were enclosed with him within a shimmering nebula. The light was pure, blue-a weave of flare magic and music.

Enid raised his eyes to the twisted, static-filled clouds, to the fingers of lightning. He’d seen this before. We all had. He put his harmonica to his lips again and played, the sharp, sad wail of sound reaching up into the sky to grasp at the escaping flares, to do battle for them with the Source.

In the end fifteen more flares made it into the safety of Enid’s protective pocket of sound; the others were lost- sucked up into the whorl of unnatural wind. When it had taken them, the Storm raged above us, opening and closing its maw, roaring, spewing bright rage, while Enid led the rescued away toward the Near South Side. I had to pray they’d be safe there.

The Storm lingered for a time, reaching after the lost flares, then retreated into the sunset, taking its lightning and thunder with it.

The broken skeleton of the Chicago Media Building pointed up into a clear, dusky sky. Wind scraped walls and windows, whistling around corners. Normal sounds. Natural sounds.

I sagged back against the facade of the building, weakness flooding my limbs. Nearly at my feet, Goldie sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, Magritte’s body limp across his lap. Howard hunkered next to him, sucked into himself.

“I’m fine,” said Colleen in answer to a murmured question I only half heard.

“Let me look at you.” Doc’s voice was gentle, as always, but had an undercurrent of alarm.

I turned, fearing what I’d see. Doc had Colleen’s head between his hands; Colleen was trying to push them away.

“Ni smyesta!” said Doc sharply. “Don’t move .”

“Viktor, stop!”

“You’re bleeding-”

Colleen grimaced. “It’s not my blood. It’s his .” She glanced across the street to where the puppet master and his puppet lay in a mound of debris. “Look. See? Just little cuts. Nothing major. Stop fussing.” She imprisoned his hands with hers and looked up into his face. “Stop, Viktor. Parestanya .”