Katie MacAlister - Playing with Fire

The faintest of vibrations warned of someone coming up the metal staircase. Even a standard lock would take me too long to open-I crouched down before the third chest, my heart sinking as I realized that no one in their right mind would leave something so valuable as an amulet or the dragon phylactery sitting around unprotected. There were various antique art objects in the chest, mostly gold, but a few bejeweled pieces that looked valuable. Tucked down beneath them all was a small box, which, when opened, revealed an ugly gold lump wrapped in a piece of blue silk. I almost sighed in relief. The gold was shaped roughly in the form of a dragon, although it had a very primitive feel to it.

‘‘One down, one to go… but no time left,’’ I murmured almost silently.

A sound at the door had me stuffing the gold lump into my bodice before hurriedly replacing everything in the chest.

I shadowed and was almost to the window when all hell broke out. Brilliant blue-white fluorescent lights- bane of doppelgangers since they eliminate all shadows- lit up the room like spotlights. I reached the window just as the window alarm suddenly came to life, a grid of lasers glowing red as they made a crisscross pattern across the glass. I had a horrible feeling they were there for more than just sensing movement.

‘‘You!’’ a man’s voice bellowed behind me. I didn’t need to look to tell it was Kostya. I just leaped for the window, slamming open the glass and ignoring the horrible searing sensation as the lasers burned through my clothing to my flesh. Kostya yelled something, but I wasn’t about to stay to find out how he dealt with intruders to his lair-I threw myself out the window, my arms and legs cartwheeling as I plummeted to the pavement below.

The shock of hitting the ground stunned me for a few seconds, but luckily, self-preservation had caused me to shadow as I fell, aiding the darkness to keep me hidden from Kostya as he leaped out after me. I managed to roll a few feet away until I was wrapped around a cement post that supported a heavy chain fence to keep pedestrians from tumbling the few feet into the river.

Dimly, I was aware of the fact that Kostya passed within a foot of me, where he was joined by another person. My brain was still muzzy from the fall, but it had enough sense to know I couldn’t lie there and wait for them to step on me. I half slid, half rolled down a shallow slope into the river. The cold water hit me with the force of a semi-truck, but it served the purpose of yanking me into full consciousness.

The Thames River isn’t my idea of an ideal swimming location, and especially not when it’s the part of the river that runs past industrial areas. I kept my face out of the water, oil, muck, and gods only knew what else had been pumped, dropped, or otherwise deposited into the river, swimming silently away from the warehouse. The laser burns on my chest and arms screamed in agony as the water hit them, but the sound of Kostya and his companion as they called to each other behind me kept me moving despite the almost overwhelming need to curl up into a ball and pass out.

Time passed. How much time I don’t really know; it all tended to blur into one long moment of pain and discomfort that stretched into an eon. At some point, however, I found myself clawing at a set of slimy stone steps that led out of the river to a small area that overlooked the river.

‘‘Need some help?’’ a man’s voice asked from the darkness.

I froze for a second when I realized I wasn’t shadowed any longer, eyeing the man who stood in the pool of light cast from a streetlamp.

He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place his face. I took a step closer, and I relaxed a smidgen as I saw he wasn’t a dragon.

‘‘Um… yeah. Thanks.’’ I took the hand he offered, grateful for his strength when he helped me up the narrow, slippery steps.

‘‘Take a tumble into the river?’’ he asked when I stood at the top, shivering with shock, cold, and pain, my hair dripping horrible slimy blobs onto the pavement, my clothes reeking of waste of so many forms, I couldn’t begin to separate them into individual elements. I was filthy, stinking to the skies, with bloodstains clearly visible on my clothing despite the swim.

‘‘Something like that, yes,’’ I muttered, uselessly trying to brush off the worst of the mucky residue left by the water. ‘‘Thank you for your help. I’ll be all right now.’’

‘‘My pleasure.’’ The man had a pleasant face with dark blond hair, blue-gray eyes, and one of those little clefts in his chin that seemed to drive women wild. ‘‘You are a mess, though, aren’t you? Here, let me help you. My car is right over here.’’

I shook my head as the man carefully took my arm, escorting me toward a small parking area next to a restaurant that sat on the river. ‘‘Thank you, but there’s nothing wrong with me that a gallon of disinfectant and a long shower won’t cure. Er… by any chance, have we met? I normally have a good memory for people, and something about you is very familiar, but I can’t seem to recall just where it is we’ve met.’’

‘‘We haven’t met. I’d have remembered if we had,’’ the man said with absolute conviction, but despite that, there was an oddly unplaceable note in his voice that had a little warning bell going off in my head. ‘‘Here; wrap yourself in this. I don’t mind being a Good Samaritan, but this is my employer’s car, and I don’t think he’d appreciate waterlogged leather seats.’’

Numbly, I accepted the blanket he took out of the trunk of a car and thrust into my arms. I knew I should just walk away, but the events of the evening had left me feeling more than a little bit out of it. I touched my head, wincing when I found a huge lump on the side. I must have hit my head on the ground when I’d gone out the window, knocking myself out for a few seconds. ‘‘Well… if you’re sure. I don’t want to be any trouble.’’

‘‘No trouble at all; it’s what I’m here for!’’ He held open the passenger-side door, carefully tucking the blanket around me (no doubt more to protect the upholstery of the car than to warm me), snapping me in with the seat belt before going around to the driver’s side.

‘‘I’m May,’’ I said as he started up the car.

‘‘Savian.’’ He shot me a quick look, which changed into a smile. ‘‘You look like hell, May. You need something hot to drink.’’

‘‘I’ll be fine, thanks. I’m staying in Marylebone, on Wimpole Street. It shouldn’t be too long a drive from here.’’

‘‘That’s a nice area,’’ he said agreeably.

I tried to think again why he seemed so familiar, but gave it up as being a lost cause with my wits so apparently scrambled from the fall. I closed my eyes for a moment, reliving the last hour of the evening, and wondering what it was I’d found in Kostya’s lair. I didn’t feel the least pang of guilt at stealing from him, not when he so basely attacked Gabriel. I had no doubt the phylactery was locked in the chest with the wards, which made Kostya’s attempt to shift blame to Gabriel all the more reprehensible.

A police siren passing by us jerked me out of the doze I’d fallen into. I sat up, looking around confusedly at the bright lights of the area in which we were driving. ‘‘Savian? This… er… this appears to be the airport.’’

‘‘That’s right,’’ he said, flashing a smile as he whipped us into an airport parking lot.

Suspicion took its own sweet time dawning, but at last the warning bells went off in my head.

‘‘You led me on quite a chase, let me tell you, Mei Ling. I can’t name the number of times you slipped away just as I was about to nab you, and I have to admit, you’d probably have gotten away from me again this time except you seemed to knock yourself silly jumping out of that window. Still, all’s well that ends well. If you would come this way, please?’’