“That was a long time ago. Do you think it’s likely to get free?”
She looked back at Able Katz, who was scowling at us. He must have thought we should pay more attention to his boss’s speech. “It’s already free enough to kill.”
I thought of the way the children had fallen apart when they burned. They’d turned into little worms and crawled off to the southwest. To here, in fact, or somewhere close to here. I wondered if the predator was feeding on those worms.
Hammer started talking about median home prices, and I couldn’t take it anymore. “Shut up!” I snapped. “You want to avoid violence? I’ll make you an offer. Send your guards away. Turn over to us all copies of the book Eli Warren sold to your great-grandfather. Take us to your so-called consultant.”
“But,” the voice said, “the company can’t continue without my, um, consultant.”
“The company isn’t going to continue,” I said. “And neither are you. There’s too much blood on your hands.”
“I can find those kids again!”
I turned to the guards. “Hear that? I’m talking about missing children, and he’s worried about his company. Is that who you’re trying to protect?”
“Don’t bother,” Able said. “These men are not going to turn against us. They’re professionals. That’s why I hired them. They do their jobs.”
Annalise turned to me. “And you had better do your job.”
She dropped the fistful of green ribbons onto the carpet, then grabbed my arm. She winced while she did it.
The ribbons struck the carpet and flared into green fire. Flames engulfed my legs, but I didn’t feel any pain. Several of the guards gaped at us in shock, and one cried out. They thought we were burning ourselves alive.
The fire crawled up our bodies and billowed outward. As soon as the flames reached above her head, Annalise charged forward.
Able Katz’s expression went slack. He stood and inhaled deeply.
The tinny voice on the speakerphone shouted,
Annalise slapped the desk to the side. It smashed a window and tore the drape from the rod. The desk and drape fell outside and crashed to the rocks below.
The four guards who had been flanking Able opened fire on Annalise, drowning out Hammer’s voice.
Annalise slammed into Able, knocking him into the wall with a sickening thunk. Blood-red fire blasted from his mouth, igniting the wooden beams in the ceiling. He had been about to breathe dragon breath on us, just like the officer workers at Hammer Bay Toys.
I dropped low into Annalise’s green fire and rolled toward the far wall. The guns made an incredible racket in the enclosed room. I felt something zip past me. It must have been a ricochet off Annalise’s invulnerable body.
I lifted myself into a crouch. The green flames were spreading toward me, and the six guards along the wall bolted toward the door they had entered through. Good. Let them run. At least they’d live.
One of them turned and saw me. He raised his weapon.
Without thinking, I threw the ghost knife at him. One of his partners bumped him in the rush to get to the door, and another stepped briefly into his line of fire. Then the ghost knife struck him over the heart.
The guard collapsed onto the carpet. The man behind him tripped over him and fell into the doorway, blocking it. The green flames reached them, and they disappeared within the fire. I could hear their screams.
I summoned my ghost knife. It flew into my hand. Of course I had killed them. Damn.
The door behind me opened. I spun, catching a quick glimpse of the two men entering through the doorway we had just used. Both held their Uzis at the ready. I threw the ghost knife again and ducked into the flames, throwing myself flat on the floor.
The bullets zipped above me. Then I heard a bang, as if one of the Uzis had jammed and backfired, and the two men cried out. All gunfire in the room stopped. Just then, the green fire evaporated. I looked around the room. The two guards who had entered behind us were smoking skeletons. One of the submachine guns in their hands had burst open.
“You did good,” Annalise said, her back to me. The room seemed strangely quiet after all the gunfire, but there was a terrible stench of burned plastic and roasted flesh in the air.
“It doesn’t feel like good,” I said. I glanced over to where she had been fighting. The other four guards were also smoking bones. So was Able Katz.
I should have been sick, but I had already passed that point. Maybe if there had been one body, or two, I could have puked my guts out and cried like a little girl, but these were too much. It didn’t seem real.
“At least for them, it was quick.” Annalise turned toward me. Her right eye was gone. She had only an empty socket there. Just below that empty socket, in her cheekbone, was a second bullet hole.
“Holy…!” I shouted. I backed away from her. She had two bullets in her head, with no exit wounds, but she was walking around as if nothing had happened. What the hell was she? Was she even alive?
“I know,” she said. “It sucks when this happens.” She reached up and gingerly touched her face with her stiff, inflamed hand. One of her fingers slipped into her ruined eye socket.
That did it. I heaved a thin, acid stream onto the carpet.
“Oh, knock it off,” she snapped. “You’re not the one who got shot. Let’s go.”
She charged through the doorway, kicking the smoking bones out of her way.
