A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (35 page)

 At this Diana is pulled out of her blissful voyeurism as she turns
around to find Sam has already killed a substantial number of her coven
Sisters. Her jaw comes loose like before, and that high pitched squealing
pierces my ear drums again. I see Frank put his hands over his ears as he
speeds around the periphery of the room. A second passes and he’s behind me
already, ripping loose the ropes the witches tied around my wrists. Diana doesn’t
notice, she’s too preoccupied with her squealing as she glides toward Sam who’s
standing in the middle of the crowd. None of Diana’s so-called Sisters move to
fight him, clearly they aren’t half as brave as they’d like to imagine.

 “Where’s Ross?” Frank asks, as soon as he has me untied.

 I don’t know how to answer. How do you tell someone their brother has
been killed? I look into his eyes and shake my head, because I can’t find the
words. I don’t need to say anything though, because realisation flits across
his face, soon followed by hurt and then anger. He nods silently and grabs me
by the hand, pulling me down off the wooden stand and dragging me to the back
of the room where John and Alex are waiting.

 “Florence, how did you get here?” John asks me over Diana’s frantic
squealing.

 I step up close to him. “Diana put a spell on Layla that knocked her out
and then took me here, but I was unconscious so I don’t know how she did it.” I
leave out the part about Gran, I’m still too raw to explain.

 “And Ross?” John continues. “Have you seen where they’re keeping him?”

 I look up into his big, loving, fatherly eyes and tears threaten to leak
from me again. Frank steps in front of me and speaks to John in hushed tones,
but I can’t hear what he’s said. John stands back and out of his flames rises
the most terrifying, and at the same time magnificent, beast I have ever seen.
Frank has told him about Ross, I can feel it in the tension that rolls off of
the man as the wings of his dragon spread out and seem to become tangible.
Flames pour out of them and I think my eyes are playing tricks on me for a
moment when the fire takes on a realistic appearance. No longer is it the
incorporeal texture of his aura. Now it is real fire, and I can feel its heat.

 Frank grabs hold of John by the arm, but John pulls away from him and
dashes straight into the crowd of witches. He throws his flames this way and
that, causing those hateful grey robes to catch fire. At the same exact moment,
the other two balls of light that I had almost forgotten about flash into the
centre of the room where Sam and Diana face off. They land on the ground and
form into two male bodies. Both tall, one with brown hair and the other black.
They must be other Nephilim. Amazing.

 Several of the witches who had been set alight by John are now screaming
in agony and throwing off their burning robes to stamp them out into the
ground. The vile thing is, they were virtually naked under those things. I
shiver at the sight of their pale bodies lined in black veins under the dim
light of the basement. Now that the Nephilim have taken their human forms the
room has gone dank again.

 Finally Diana quits her slack jawed squealing, the bone cracks back into
place before she declares. “The boy is dead, you’re too late.”

 “Yes, we can see that,” replies the brown haired Nephilim, clearly
referring to the fact that Diana wouldn’t be crackling with electricity the way
she is right now if it weren’t for the fact that she’d drained the life out of
Ross. Also – all that blood.

 “So you can leave now, there’s nothing left for you to save and I have
better things to be doing than staving off acts of aggression from Heaven’s
rejects.” Diana finishes, folding her slim white arms across her silky black
chest.

 “Sorry, no can do,” says Sam. “Heaven’s rejects still have to carry out
Heaven’s orders. And tonight those orders are to rid the world of a parasite
that’s been evading its authority for a long time now.”

 “Oh well, I suppose a bit of old fashioned rough housing is always a fun
way to end a
highly
productive evening,” Diana hisses, aiming the last
part directly at John, before she takes the long black piece of thread she’d
been twining around her wrists earlier and flicks it across the room. It
slashes through the cloth of John’s jacket down to the skin underneath, drawing
blood. Then it flicks back to Diana, coiling itself back around her arm like a
snake.

 Her eyes soak up John’s hatred and anger just like she’d done when I’d
been crying over Gran. John looks like he might just burn her alive with the
flames that fan out from his body. Then Diana pauses, lowers her gaze before it
shoots back up and pins itself directly on me as I stand with Frank and Alex at
the back of the room.

 “Oh no you don’t,” she says, the words leave her spiteful mouth through
gritted teeth, and she raises her hand again and whips that weird black thread
straight toward me. In a split second Sam jumps into the air and opens his palm
to flash a beam of light through the thread and it disintegrates mid-flight.

 The remaining witches stand glued to their spots, and it’s clear they’re
out of their depth. Diana may be able to call upon some heavy black magic, but
I doubt the rest of them can summon must past that knock back thing the witch
did to me outside the school. Most of them are new recruits by the looks of it.
Diana’s coven must have a high turnover rate. Perhaps she drains her Sisters
too, once she no longer has a use for them.

 That being said, I do notice the double act of Sheila and Blanche have turned
around to face me, whereas the rest of the witches watch as Diana advances on
Sam. Beams of power seam to pulse from her body, as though she’s summoning up
all her reserves to defeat him. Apparently, her beloved Lilith isn’t here to
help.

 Blanche’s head cracks to the side and then snaps back into place, and
aside from the cannibalism, it’s perhaps one of the most disturbing sights I
have ever laid my eyes on. I can tell she’s not as inexperienced as most of the
witches present, because her body pulses with strobes of power like Diana’s,
only on a less impressive scale.

 Sheila doesn’t seem to have a body cracking tell like Blanche and Diana,
but it’s still clear that she too is a threat, as she advances on me with those
hungry, rheumy eyes. The cracks on her wrinkled face seem to be filled in with
the black that runs through her veins, and it makes for a horrific sight.

 Once they are near, Alex mouths off at them. “Calm down now ladies,
there’s enough of me to go around for the both of you.”

 Blanche grabs at him, but he’s too fast and he’s gone before she can
make contact. Alex blows her a kiss.

 “You’ll have to work harder than that, gorgeous, I never let the ladies
feel me up on the first date,” Alex teases, though I can see he’s calculating
his next move very carefully.

 Frank draws me away before he sidles up behind Sheila, and, like some
kind of expert assassin, he grabs her head and snaps her spine. The resemblance
to Gran’s death makes me come over all clammy handed and nervous. Frank’s just
a teenager, he shouldn’t know how to do these kinds of things. I suddenly begin
to question if I really know him at all. But then I remind myself of his
unnatural strength, and the fact that he’s just found out his brother has been
murdered. I can’t blame him. If I were him I probably would have killed Sheila
in a much longer, more painful way.

 But as I look down at her crumpled body I notice her hand twitching, it
shoots up and grabs Frank by the ankle. Not having expected it, he falls flat
on his face and Sheila, whose head now lolls back and forth, since it is no
longer connected to her spinal column, drags him under her. The magic is
keeping her alive. Her shrivelled hands sink around his neck and begin to
squeeze. Frank chokes and struggles to push her off him. Which would be a lot
easier if she were an ordinary seventy year old woman, and not some reanimated
monstrosity.

 I run forward several steps, my instinct to help Frank as Sheila slowly
chokes him. I don’t have any weapon, so I kick her hard in the ribs. Her crazed
eyes snap up at me and she lets go of one of her hands on Frank for a second to
throw some kind of spell at me. Her lips move rapidly but I can’t hear any
words leave them. Immediately, the leg I’d kicked her with goes out from under
me, and streams of agonising pain run through it.

 Sheila letting go of Frank gave him just enough time to reach down and
grab the blade that’s strapped to his waist. When Sheila turns back to him he
forces it straight into her heart and a black substance oozes out of her as I
watch her die for real this time. The aura fades, just like it always does, and
then she is gone. Nothing left but a very,
very
unattractive corpse.
Thankfully, the pain in my leg goes away too.

 Frank picks me up and whispers soothing words in my ear, whilst rubbing
my calf for me. Alex now has a similar blade in his hand to the one Frank used
to kill Sheila. He struggles to slash at Blanche with it, but her arm is
outstretched and her lips move in that rapid way Sheila’s had only seconds ago.
It’s as though there is some invisible force pushing the blade away from
Blanche and closer to Alex, like he’s turning it in on himself.

 Blanche’s spell works for several beats before Alex breaks through it,
the invisible force no longer holds him back as he lunges for her. My heart
lifts as I think, yes, he’s going to kill her. But as his arm swings upward and
then descends back down on Blanche with the blade glinting in the dim light,
Blanche grabs his hand and the blade falls to the ground. Then she twists his
arm to an unnatural angle and Alex’s face contorts in agony as she snaps the
bone, breaking his arm just like that.

 As she throws him hard onto the ground, Frank swoops in, and all I can
see is his back as he stops just behind her, and lifts the blade he used to
kill Sheila. His arm makes one clean and precise movement across the front of
her neck. I can’t see it from where I’m standing, but I know for sure that he’s
slit her throat. Clearly not going to take any chances this time, Frank plunges
the blade into Blanche’s heart, killing her for good. He’s covered in the black
sludge that runs in the bodies of the witches. Despite this, I still can’t help
but to see him as beautiful. In my book, there’s nothing nobler than to avenge
the wrongful death of an innocent.

 Turning back to the rest of the room I discover a frightful sight. Most
of the witches have been turned to that odd mush of skin and blood that results
when the Nephilim use their light. The floor looks like a swamp. Several bodies
are burning amid the mess. John’s handiwork I presume. Only three witches
remain. Diana, one nurse, and the mother of the little boy. They’re currently
outnumbered four to three, and then six to three as Frank and Alex join them.
Although I can’t see Alex being of much use, considering the agony he’s
suffering from his broken arm. His aura is completely shattered with pain.

 Diana whispers in the ear of the mother before casting a spell that
appears to create a see-through shield around her. It wavers in the air and
transports her out of the room before anyone can stop her from leaving. Diana
then strikes out at the black haired Nephilim with a pulse of energy that flies
through the room and hits him hard in the chest. I expect it to knock him to
the ground, but it only shakes him slightly before he regains his composure. By
Diana’s face I’d say she’d anticipated a better outcome than that, and she
throws out another two bolts, one at the same guy and the other at Sam.

 The attack yet again does little damage, and I sputter a laugh at the
confusion on Diana’s face. I wonder if she’s used up all the energy she drained
from Ross already. It couldn’t be that though, if she’d drained him the way she
said she did, it should have given her at least enough mojo to last a couple of
months. One fight can’t have taken it all out of her.

 As this thought comes and goes an unusual sensation touches me. I sense
the pain and weakness of somebody’s aura but it isn’t Alex’s. It’s coming from
somewhere close by but not in this room. My head is pulled in the direction of
the back door the witch just exited, in the shield Diana created. Is it her
pain I’m sensing? I can’t help but to answer the call, it’s deep rooted in me
to follow it.

It can’t be the witch. I’ve read that woman’s aura before, and the one
I’m feeling now is just way too human to be hers. Too honest and sincere.
Slowly I stand away from the group and sneak to the back of the room, slipping
through the door without anybody noticing I’m gone. There’s a short hallway
just outside. It smells funny out here. I try not to think about that too much,
but it’s no use. Blood, sweat and damp fills my nostrils.

 I let my instincts lead me to the second door on the right, it’s
slightly ajar so I only have to push it open another bit to see inside. The
witch is sitting on a chair, a look of satisfaction on her face to find me
there. I’ve walked straight into her hands.

 Then my gaze travels to a heap of bloody rags covering something lumpy
and human shaped on the floor. A weak little flame licks over the stained
material. Is that – is Ross still alive? That was definitely his signature aura
I saw just now, even if it was barely there at all. The rags move and I catch
sight of a white blond tuft of hair sticking out. This would explain Diana’s
loss of power, she hasn’t yet drained Ross completely. She must have been
trying to break my spirit by telling me he was dead.

 “Don’t even think about it,” says the witch the second I move to step
inside.

 “Diana said Ross was dead, he’s not though is he?” I say, my voice
barely audible.

 “Not yet,” she replies.

 “Let him go, you don’t need to kill him.” I tell her, but there’s no use
trying to persuade a woman like this one to do what’s right. She gets off on
hurting people, it’s as clear as day in her colours.