Marjorie Liu - Within the Flames

Alarms wailed, sounding tinny in his ears. His clothes were charred, his jeans on fire. Pavement, cracked and blackened. He smelled gasoline and burning metal, and felt terrible heat press against his back.

Cars had exploded, parked at the side of the street. The skeletons of each vehicle burned, pouring off a poisonous cloud of smoke that was thick and gruesome. Eddie didn’t see anyone inside, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.

He rolled over. Nothing but broken glass in the office building beside them. Windows had blown in. He heard screams and moans. How many? How many injured? Had anyone died?

Lyssa.

Eddie twisted and found her close, curled in a ball. Her green sweater had been reduced to rags that sparked and glimmered. She was on fire.

Choking, eyes stinging, he crawled to her and beat out the fire with his bare hands. Not once did she move. Grabbing her shoulder, checking her blackened face and arm, he was relieved to find the dark spots on her skin were nothing but soot. The fire had not touched her. Relief made him tremble.

She was like him. Immune.

“Miss,” he rasped. “Lyssa.”

Still no response. With a gentle push, he rolled her over — and stared.

Her scarf was in tatters, her sleeve mostly gone. Much of her glove had burned away, revealing her neck, right shoulder — her arm, her hand.

Gleaming red scales had replaced human flesh. Large scales, like a snake’s, edged in gold. It was like looking at armor made of rubies and precious metal, glinting in the smoke-shrouded light as though lit from within. Beneath that reptilian skin were contorted, sinewy muscles. Golden claws tipped her slender, triple-jointed fingers.

Eddie saw it all too quickly. No time to take it in.

He glimpsed movement on the other side of the dark cloud — people rushing down the sidewalk, pouring from the few office buildings that lined the street. Police would be coming soon, ambulances, fire trucks. Cameras.

Get out of here. Right now.

His ears still rang. Eddie fell the first time he tried to stand, and looked around, wildly, for a way out. Through the smoke, across the street, he glimpsed a parked car: an older model Camry.

Lyssa’s backpack was a wreck, but the strap was still intact. He slung her belongings over his shoulder, then scooped her into his arms. He held her carefully, her inhuman shoulder tucked against his chest. Hidden, as best he could. She did not make a sound.

Hunched over, hurting and breathless, he staggered between the burning wrecks. He felt movement from the corner of his eye, heard shouts and more screams as he carried Lyssa across the street. He set her on the sidewalk and pulled a multipurpose folding knife from his charred jacket. One of the tools was a window punch, which he set against the lower corner of the car window. He tapped, hard, and the glass crumpled with a crackling sound. Tapping again, he made a hole large enough for his arm. He reached in and unlocked the door.

Lyssa was so quiet and still. Gritting his teeth, trying to stay calm, Eddie pulled and pushed, and shoved her into the cluttered backseat. Newspapers fell to the floor, along with limp gym clothes and empty cans of soda. He tossed in the backpack after her.

Before he jumped into the driver’s seat, he looked around one more time — and found that they were not alone.

Two women stood close. The one on the left was tall, African-American, wearing a cropped red motorcycle jacket and a skintight black bodysuit with tall, heeled boots. Her striking face was dominated by eyes highlighted in purple shadow and black liner.

The other woman was shorter, but no less beautiful: long black hair, pale skin, crystalline blue eyes. Dressed in jeans and a white blouse partially obscured by a heavy necklace strung with chunks of onyx.

They stared at him. Him, and not the blast.

Might as well have been no fire, no screams, no billowing smoke and burning cars. . none of that touched them. They stood eerily still, still as stone, still as cats waiting to pounce — their eyes narrow and watchful, their mouths tilted into faint, sly smiles.

And Eddie realized, in one split second, that he was in deep trouble.

Few people scared him anymore. Most inspired caution, yes — but not fear. It wasn’t arrogance that made him feel that way. Just age and fire, and experience. Most of the time, he was more scared of himself.

Something about these women terrified him.

It was hard, immediate: a primal fear at the back of his primitive brain, like hearing a scream in a pitch-black forest, or the touch of bone fingers in the night.

When he looked at them, he thought death. Or something worse. And for those brief seconds that he stared into their eyes, the fear made him feel like a kid again, faced with all his worst nightmares: powerlessness, despair, guilt, desperation.

Eddie averted his eyes. He couldn’t help himself. It felt like a matter of survival, not looking at them.

“What a puppy,” said the black woman. “Such a handsome boy.”

“Adorable,” added the other woman. “I want to eat him up.”

Their soft laughter chilled him. Because he thought, yes , they really would eat him up. And then bury his bones in a ditch.

He shivered. “Who are you?”

“It speaks! How unusual,” said the black woman, swaying close. “I am Nikola. This is Betty. And you have something we want.”

“Besides your virtue,” said the other woman, showing her white teeth. “And here we thought we’d actually have to work to snare a dragon. It turns out we just have to follow her until she does something stupid. ”

The meaning of their words was almost lost to him. What mattered was the sound of their voices, which crushed him smaller and harder, like he was nothing but a walnut or little stone.

Each word, a fist. Each word, an iron collar tightening around his soul.

Nikola moved even closer. It was all he could do not to fall on his knees and whimper. Sweat trickled down his chest. His fear was so nauseating, he could barely think.

“Mmm,” she murmured, her breath hot against his cheek. “You smell. . different.”

“Like fire,” Betty added, with a note of surprise. “Like. . a dragon.”

I’m human, he wanted to tell them.

“It must be her scent,” said Nikola, suddenly sounding bored. “Open the car door, puppy. Pick up the little lizard and come with us.”

She spoke as though she expected him to obey, without question. Part of him wanted to. He was that scared of them.

But not scared enough to forget who he was or what he had come to do.

I’m going to protect you, he thought, toward Lyssa. I’m going to take care of you.

And just thinking that. . changed everything.

Another chill raced through him, but this felt like a splash of cold water: clean and bracing. Suddenly, he could breathe again, and his spine straightened, and the nausea faded away.

Eddie raised his head, and looked the two women dead in the eyes.

“No,” he said.

Betty’s right eye twitched. “Excuse me?”

Nikola frowned. “Get the bitch out of the car and come with us, you little fuck.”

“Ma’am,” he replied, and slipped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door and locking it. He locked Lyssa’s door, too, then pried off the panel beneath the steering wheel. In ten seconds he had the engine roaring. Just like old times.

The women stood outside the car, staring at him with stunned expressions.

Eddie accelerated into the road, catching the light just as it turned yellow. He crossed Lexington, rolling down his window so that people wouldn’t notice the broken glass. By the time he turned left on Third, the trembling had begun, deep quakes that made him clench his jaw so his teeth wouldn’t chatter. He felt so cold.