Child of Fire

friendship, she had promised to see me dead, and it felt very, very close.

I laid my head against the cool stainless steel wall of the elevator. The best I could hope for was that I would be there when Annalise took down Charlie Three. I wanted to see her put an end to that bastard and avenge those children.

I didn’t know when and how she would make her next move. Could she take out Charlie Three alone, injured as she was? What if she failed?

That pleasant thought was interrupted by the elevator doors opening. I walked into the lobby and asked the woman at the reception desk for directions to Hammer Street.

I got them. Of course Hammer Street wasn’t on my tourist map, but it was near the toy factory, on the inland side of the plant, about as far south as the light house.

I left Ethan’s van where it was. Then I headed out onto the sidewalk, oriented myself, and started walking.

What I should have done was call Annalise. My destination was an address on Hammer Street-it could very well have been Charles’s home. If I found him there, it would be best if she was with me. But she hadn’t given me her cell phone number and I didn’t want the motel manager to share my message with Emmett Dubois.

If Charles Hammer the Third really was at this address, was I going to kill him? Could I do it? It made me a little sick inside to think it, but I suspected the answer was yes.

Considering.

An even bigger question was whether Hammer would stay dead. That I didn’t want to think about too much. I would take my shot at him, if I got one. If it didn’t turn out well…

I really didn’t want to think about that.

Of course, I wasn’t exactly conducting myself like a sensible hitman. I’d just asked a hospital receptionist for directions to the victim’s street, for God’s sake.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill Charles Hammer. Maybe I could find a better way.

I heard the sound of children screaming.

There was a long stretch of green grass on the corner ahead of me. Before I realized what I was doing, I was running toward it, ghost knife in hand.

Kids scattered in every direction, running off a junior-sized basketball court. On the asphalt, I could see a four- foot-high plume of fire with a little figure inside.

I ran into the street and sprinted toward the park. A hugely fat woman rushed toward the child, screaming. Then the flames sputtered out and the figure inside fell to pieces onto the asphalt.

I felt the twinge against my iron gate.

The fat woman stopped running. The few remaining children that hadn’t disappeared also stopped. Parents began to call their kids back to the playground.

I reached the court. The fat woman turned and started walking back to the bench where the other parents were sitting. I was alone at the foul line.

As I’d seen with Justin Benton, this child had broken down into a mass of fat, silvery worms. They crawled across the asphalt court, shiny and revolting. Where they touched the ground, they left a trail of black soot.

I had no rational reason for what I did next. All I knew was that I had to destroy as many of those creatures as I could.

I swung the ghost knife at the trailing worms. Ordinarily, the mark would not hurt living things, but I suspected these were predators-creatures from the Empty Spaces, partly physical and partly magical. And the ghost knife cuts magic.

My spell slashed through the hindmost worm. There was a second’s delay, then the worm split open and burst into flame.

I watched as the tiny creature was consumed by fire. Good. They could be destroyed.

I swung my ghost knife at another. Just before I made contact, a tiny cut appeared on its back and a tongue of flame erupted from it. I changed the direction of my attack just in time to avoid the fire, and my altered swing touched the worm in just the right spot to create the tiny cut I’d already seen.

I drew back from the fire. Damn. That time the wound had appeared before the ghost knife had connected. That meant something, I knew, but with my blood pounding in my ears, I couldn’t work it out.

Both worms were still burning. I moved toward the side of the wriggling mass, striking at the tiny creatures at the edges. They flared and burned as I nicked them, but the flames never grew strong enough to combust the others. Maybe this spirit fire, as Annalise called it, didn’t burn that way. It didn’t matter. I crouched beside the mass, striking here and there, moving along its bulk away from the flames.

When the entire side was ablaze, I moved across the front, careful to avoid the tiny creatures as they crept forward. I imagined one of them leaping at me, burning me the way Annalise had been burned, but I kept up my attack.

Within seconds, the entire front of the mass was blazing. I began to work my way down the other side. The worms I had cut burned in the black streak behind the rest, and the creatures at the front crawled through the pyre of the others without apparent harm.

I crouched low and kept close, inflicting tiny nicks on the worms, watching for times when the little creatures flared up from my attacks before the attacks had actually landed.

We had gone ten feet. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Eventually, I stopped circling the mass. The spirit fire burned so fiercely at the edges and tail end that I couldn’t get a clear shot there. I hopped to the front of the mass, dropping to my hands and knees directly in its path.

I struck at the worms as they tumbled through the wall of flames at the front. I backed away. I was destroying