pocket. Closing her eyes tight, she pointed at the door, looked away, and squeezed three times, feeling the gun bark and jump.
Jax had already cleared the pots and turned up the flames. Antigone threw Phoenix’s coat across the flickering burners.
A yell as primal as pain itself rose up in the dining hall.
The door flew off its hinges, and the twins entered. Behind them, bellowing in agony, white-haired Edwin Harry Ashes leapt into the room. His right arm was on fire.
Ignoring Antigone, he grabbed the edge of the island and swung up and over it, knocked his coat to the floor, and stamped out its flames.
Jax raised a gun, but Ashes sent him sprawling with the back of his charred and smoking arm. He leapfrogged back over the island easily, crashing to the ground in front of Antigone, staring into her eyes with black rage.
Stammering, stunned, she tried to raise her gun. His left hand closed around Antigone’s throat. Bullets hit the floor.
Her breath was gone. She kicked and clawed and punched. She gasped, her ears ringing as she watched the twins throw Dennis back to the ground. Her vision blurred. The ceiling and walls disappeared.
And then there was nothing. Not whiteness, not blackness — nothing. And she became part of it. Almost. She slipped to an invisible floor.
Things were exploding. More guns. More fire. She didn’t like guns. And she wished Cyrus would stop yelling. She was trying to sleep.
Breathing hard, dripping, Cyrus and Diana ran back up the front steps.
“What now?” Cyrus whispered.
“Time for the plane.”
“Do we go all the way around?”
Diana shook her head. “Too long.”
A few of Phoenix’s men were visible down the hallway, peering through a door. Cecil Rhodes was still motionless, a huge knot over his temple. Cyrus hoped he hadn’t hit him too hard.
Gunfire.
“What’s going on?” Diana glanced down at Cyrus’s hand. He held up the Quick Water.
“Shooting at Nolan’s vent.”
Diana nodded. “We have to hurry.” She slid quickly inside and hung close to the wall, the enormous reptile skin above her.
Cyrus had ditched his club next to Greeves. Now he held the little shotgun in his right hand, the Quick Water in his left. He’d wanted the revolver. Diana didn’t care what he wanted. She could hit something with a revolver. Anyone could hit something with a shotgun.
The crowd suddenly flooded back into the hallway as Diana and Cyrus ducked around the corner. Diana jogged down the side hallway and around another corner. She forced a door open and slipped inside. The Africa collection. Cyrus hurried in behind her and shut the door.
“Di?” The room was a black hole.
“Over here,” Diana said. “Keep well to your left and come straight on.”
Something large and breathing bumped into the back of Cyrus’s legs. Yelling, he staggered forward and fell. Teeth clacked together.
Air rushed through the room. Teeth didn’t clack. They ground and snapped. In the darkness in front of Cyrus, the gold outlines around Sir Roger’s eyes began to glow. The skull was on its ear, rocking in place, trying to bite.
Cyrus kicked it hard, skidding it back into the darkness.
The lights flashed on. Frightened, confused, Diana stood at the switch, looking from Cyrus to the big skull.
“I have the Dragon’s Tooth,” Cyrus said. “Sterling wasn’t lying. I have the tooth that killed Roger.”
“What?” Diana blinked. “You’re serious?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me. We don’t have time. Get up and come on.”
They ran across the room to a small door set between shelves. Diana opened it, and they stepped into old brooms and mops and buckets.
“Shared closet,” she said, and kicked open another door, shattering a brittle jamb.
The next room was lit. Card catalog cabinets taller than houses lined the walls. Flights of spiral stairs on wheels dotted the room. Across from each other, two middle-aged women were facedown on the same desk, a plate of food and a scattered game of chess between them.
“Keepers’ Catalog Room,” Diana said. “Tough job. Every item and collective holding of the Order is listed in here.”
Cyrus set his shotgun and Quick Water on the desk, pinched cheeks and lifted tongues. After the drops, the women’s faces went back onto the chessboard.
Diana rushed off to another door.
They crossed a hall, went downstairs into a machinist’s shop, upstairs through an old coal-chute door, and out into the rain.
Turning his back to the wind, Cyrus checked his Quick Water again.
Diana was running down the hill.
“Trouble!” Cyrus yelled. “Di!”
She didn’t hear him, and he didn’t care. Antigone was running in his palm. Cyrus raced alongside the building, dodging window wells and columns. He could see the kitchen’s garbage stoop, and he passed beneath the lit wall of windows. He could hear the yelling.
Climbing the stairs on the garbage stoop, Cyrus pulled back the hammers on his shotgun and put his shoulder into the door, forcing his way into mayhem.
A woozy Gunner was on his feet. Jax was down. Dennis was down. Two tall green men stood above them, their eyes on Nolan, bleeding and blackened, as he emerged from a heat tunnel. The kitchen door was off its hinges, and on the other side, dozens of people were trying to lever themselves off the red dining hall carpet.
Cyrus ignored all of it.
A man with gorilla hands was strangling his sister.
“Drop her!” Cyrus yelled.
Snarling, the man threw Antigone to the floor and faced Cyrus. “Smith!” he said, stepping forward. “I drained your father’s blood. Your brother and mother. And this”—he kicked at Antigone’s crumpled body—“your wretched sister. And you. All of you will die.”
Cyrus’s gun had two triggers, side by side. He pointed at the man’s broad chest and pulled both of them.
Mr. Ashes rolled backward with the blast, and then rose to his feet.
“Right,” said Cyrus. “You’re one of those.”
He dropped the gun and reached for his neck. His fist closed around the keys. Pulling them free of Patricia, he clenched the tooth between his knuckles.
Ready, he raised his fist.
The angry ape of a man froze, and then smiled. His anger drained away, and while the mayhem in the kitchen rumbled on, he picked up his white coat. The right sleeve had burned away up to the elbow.
“Come on!” Cyrus said. “Come fight! Are you scared now?”
As the coat slipped over the man’s shoulders, Cyrus watched him change. The veins and creases in his face smoothed. His arctic hair blackened.
He thinned, his body stretching, lengthening.
Dr. Phoenix stepped forward. “Boy,” he said. “Your mind is as open to me as was your pitiful brother’s, as was your unfortunate mother’s. It is as open to me as the sky to the bird, as the sea to the shark. I’m afraid that I must be quite insistent. Give me the tooth and those keys.”
Smiling, he held out his unburnt hand.
Cyrus shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work.”
