Through the fire, p.10
Through the Fire, page 10
His footsteps slapped against the pavement as he ran back to his brother and his brother's goddamn roommate. "What the hell were you thinking, Tyler?"
"That it'd be cool to catch him! That I'd be helping!"
"Well, great goddamn job, you spooked him instead."
Tyler straightened up, still wheezing. "I'd have caught him if I'd remembered my asthma meds."
"Maybe, but you didn't, did you. God damn it. He's on the move. Nick, you coming with me or what? We gotta haul ass if we're gonna catch him."
Nick started to speak, but Tyler waved it off. "Forget it, man. No big deal. I screwed it up and I'm sorry, okay? I'll just pay you the bounty so you're not out any cash, and we can forget about it."
"What?" Disbelief tasted like blood in the word, tight and raw. Chris couldn't even swallow, his throat was so tight.
"So what if the guy got away, is what. I get you need the money, so I'll pay it, but he's gone now, and we gotta go back to Cali, so forget it, okay? No big deal."
"This is my job." Chris's voice cracked and Nick took a couple steps away from Tyler. Distancing himself from him, or maybe getting close enough to Chris to keep his brother from cleaning Ty's clock. Fifty-fifty odds. "I can't just let him go. For one thing, he's dangerous, and for another, I let him go, that's my reputation down the toilet. You can't just throw money at me and make your fuckup go away." The whole world had turned into a couple bright points surrounded by so much anger Chris couldn't keep his speech steady. "It must be nice living a life where you can buy off anything that goes wrong, but that's not how it works out here in the real world."
He turned and walked away before the hands that had turned into fists decided to do any damage. Reminded himself that Derek fricking Emerson was getting away, and that walking gave him more of a head start. That running might burn off some rage. That running would definitely cover the sounds of whether Nicky was following him or not, because finding out the answer was 'not' was more than Chris thought he could handle right then.
Didn't matter. He'd done the job on his own plenty. Nick had a life to go back to.
A life filled with pricks like Tyler, but then, Tyler reminded Nick of home.
It wasn't that far to the Dodge, but Chris wasn't entirely sure how he got there. The distance between the back road and the parking lot just disappeared into a wall of anger, and if all he could see was pinprick points in the midst of blind fury, at least that was enough to get the keys in the ignition.
"Scoot over," Nick said. "You've been drinking too much to drive."
Relief hit in a wall of white, so hard that Chris didn't even argue. He just moved over and Nick climbed into the driver's seat. "Which way?"
"He went south," Chris said hoarsely. "Was there anywhere on his haunts he might be heading?"
Nick slid his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Chris, rattling off the passcode.
Chris almost fumbled the phone. "Really?"
"Yeah. It needed six digits." Nick's tone warned him to not make anything of it, so Chris didn't as he punched his own birthdate into Nick's phone to unlock it. The numbers swam, though, and Chris told himself it was the whiskey.
"There's a place about ten miles out of town where his phone checks in from a lot," he said after a minute. "Map says there's nothing there, but it could be a cabin? I should've tried finding him this afternoon," he said in low voice. "Could've at least lowjacked his truck or something."
"Might be lowjacked already. Did you talk to his car insurance? They might be able to kill his engine for us."
"No, his truck's too old. Not this old, but old enough." Chris patted the Dodge's dashboard, then held on to it like it might somehow stabilise him.
Nick breathed, "Crap," then glanced at him. "You okay?"
"Oh, I'm peachy."
"You shouldn't have, you know. Looked for him this afternoon," Nick clarified when Chris side-eyed him. "Pretty sure you needed what you did a lot more than you needed to go chasing after this dude."
"Ah, c'mon, Nick, the last thing I want right now is my little brother commenting on my sex life."
"Just saying." Nick hesitated. "Thanks for letting me drive."
"I wouldn't have if you weren't fucking right."
"But you would've driven if I hadn't followed you."
"Yeah." Chris looked out the window. "Yeah, probably. But I'm not the smart one."
"Chris…" Nick sounded tired, but didn't take it any farther. A minute later, Chris said, "Turn here," and they drove up in to the hills on a road that got less-traveled by the mile. "Should we park and walk the rest of the way in so he doesn't hear us coming?"
"There's ten inches of new snow out there and I'm wearing tennies, Chris."
"Man, you've gotten soft."
A quick smile darted cross Nick's face. "Steph says I'm squishy."
"Squishy is not a word I would want my girlfriend to use about me. Hard. Virile. Manly. Vigor—"
"Dude, shut up!"
Chris cackled, then twisted, looking behind them. "Back up. There was a trail back there, just about wide enough for a truck, and the road up ahead doesn't have any tracks. I bet that's where he's gone." A minute later Nick drove them cautiously down a road barely two feet wider than the Dodge, following a single set of tire marks cut into the snow. Nick killed the headlights and hunched over the steering wheel, following tracks barely lit by the running lights. The moon had come out, sending fingers of brightness to slide between bare branches and evergreen needles, but not much of the blue light reached the snow.
Not until it found a clearing ahead of them, anyway, one just barely bigger than the cabin that stood in it. The night shadows were just different enough that Nick killed the engine instinctively a hundred feet or so from the cabin. The silence was so loud Chris knew Emerson couldn't have missed their approach, but they got out and pressed the truck doors closed gently anyway, and walked through the fresh snow so their shoes wouldn't squeak on the stuff packed down by the tires.
Moonlight made a block of Emerson's Jeep, and if there were lights on inside the cabin, there were also well-blacked-out windows that didn't let a hint of that light leak through. Nick, his voice no louder than the hiss of wind over snow, said, "He could've gone out the back on skis."
"We can track him, if he has." They went up the two cabin stairs and put themselves on either side of the door, listening. Thumps inside suggested there was somebody in there, after all. Chris caught Nick's eye and gestured.
Nick stared at him, pointed first at his own sneakers, then at Chris's sturdy boots, then stared at him again. Chris bugged his eyes, mouthing, It's my bounty!
Nick pointed at his own feet repeatedly. My feet are freezing!
Chris rolled his eyes and held up two fingers. Fine. Two minutes.
Nick, satisfied, stuck his jaw out, and Chris slunk down the steps and around the back of the cabin through thigh-deep snow, silently muttering, God damn it Nick, at least you're so frickin' tall your balls wouldn't be freezing off doing this shit, and what's more important, your frickin' feet or my goddamn nuts, although by the end of that he wasn't even mouthing it any more, just thinking furiously as he waded through the snow.
At least the cabin had a back door. It would've really pissed him off if he'd gotten literal blue balls for no goddamn reason. He counted down the last thirty seconds of their two minutes in his head, trying not to shiver.
Just before he reached zero, Derek Emerson bolted through the back door and slammed into him. Chris yelled, more surprised than hurt, and heard Nick's voice shoot up in panic. "Chris?"
For a second, Chris saw everything with unnatural clarity. Emerson, silhouetted against the light from the cabin. Nicky, bursting into the cabin through the front door, looking too big for the small interior space. He looked scared, like little-kid scared, and then angry, the kind of angry that came from being scared and helpless. He bellowed, "Chris!" again, and before Chris could catch his breath to tell him everything was okay, the cabin exploded.
CHAPTER 8
Time went funny after that. Chris knew what they did: they did the job. They collected Emerson, who was too stunned to be combative. They put him in the truck. They drove him all the way down to Denver to deliver him the bail agents. They got their check. They drove away again, back up toward Steamboat Springs at two in the morning. They did the things they were supposed to do.
Through it all, Chris could see almost nothing except the image of Nick hanging there in the air, the epicenter of an explosion of light and chaos. Arm-length splinters of wood radiating out from him as the cabin erupted around him. Furniture shattering into pieces. Glass and metal and ceramic, deadly shards that shone with light and raced out against the darkness, making cuts against the night.
Every direction except where Chris was.
That was what stood out in the memory. The mess went everywhere. Down, up, sideways, into trees, into the earth, into the Jeep, into the sky to come raining back down again. But none of it went toward Chris.
If any of it had hit him, or even aimed at him, he could have almost pretended it had been a regular explosion, that Emerson had rigged the place to blow. But he couldn't shake the picture of Nicky at the center of it all, making sure, somehow, that Chris didn't get hurt in the outburst of power.
Nick hadn't said a word since then.
When they were far enough out of Denver that it seemed safe, Chris pulled over at a rest stop and killed the engine. "Nicky."
His brother was balled up as small as he could go and still be buckled in. He'd hit the ground that way after the—afterward. He'd gotten up because Chris made him, and he'd gotten in the truck for the same reason. Emerson hadn't fought about it either. He'd just stumbled to the Dodge and crawled in, staring vacant-eyed at the burned hole in the ground that used to be his cabin.
Except it wasn't burned. Not like fire, anyway. Nothing else had caught. The forest wasn't in danger. It was like—like a sound bomb, Chris guessed. Scarred earth, broken trees, everything in shards and pieces, but no scorching. Just raw and mangled.
Emerson hadn't asked. Hadn't complained.
Hadn't dared look at Nick, not even once, on the whole drive to Denver. Nick sat sideways on the truck's bench seat, arms folded around his knees and head down for the four-plus hours it took to drive out, and Emerson had kept his eyes averted the whole time. Chris knew for damn sure, because he was watching Nick more than the road, and Emerson, behind him in the truck's narrow extended cab, almost as much.
Time was still going funny, like he was only realizing now what he'd been doing then. Like it was all still happening, and he was disjointed, out of place in his own life. He said, "Nick," again, and his voice cracked. "Nicky."
"Are you okay?"
A knot of fear untwisted itself from Chris's gut. "Yeah. Yeah, Nicky, I'm okay. Are you?"
His brother's head shook, hardly more than a shift in his stupid long hair as it fell over his arms. Chris breathed a curse and unbuckled so he could scoot across the bench and try to put an awkward arm around his gigantic little brother. "You're okay," he said quietly. "Nobody's hurt. Are you hurt?"
Nick shook his head again, this time more something Chris felt than saw. "Arright. You're not hurt, I'm not hurt, we got paid. Everything's okay."
"I blew up a house. I'm a freak."
Chris dared a tiny smile, even if Nick couldn't see it. "Thought we were calling 'em grendels now."
Nick lifted his head, gaze bleak as he met Chris's. He looked like the five-year-old Chris had treated him as earlier, when he'd told him to stay behind. Five and scared, like he'd been after riding his bike off a jump that led into a hollow where a bunch of their dad's rusted out cars had been dumped. Chris had caught hell for that, like it was his fault their old man kept his own personal junkyard, or that older kids had built a jump over it. Chris had been the one who found Nicky, screaming in a hole on top of one of the cars. Nick's bike had fallen below him, and he'd landed on it. He'd broken his arm, but the bike had stopped him from being run through by a jagged piece of metal a few inches lower down.
Chris had been the one who had called Jake's mom to drive them to the doctor, too, and Nicky's eyes had been like they were now the whole time while his arm got set and they gave him a tetanus shot. When their dad got back the next day he'd made it clear that none of it would have happened if Chris had kept a better eye on his little brother.
None of this would have happened if he'd sent Nicky back to California where he belonged, or kept him safer on the hunt.
"It's going to be okay." Chris reached for his best big brother voice, the one that usually calmed Nick down when they were kids. To his surprise, Nick's eyes closed like he really was calming down a little. "Nicky, can you tell me what happened?"
Nick shook his head, most a shift of his hair against his sleeves. "I heard you yell," he said, muffled. "I thought you were in trouble. I thought I couldn't get to you in time and I freaked. I freaked."
The second time he said it, he obviously didn't mean panicked, the way people usually did when they said they freaked. He meant he used power in a way that normal humans couldn't. And there was no point in denying that, so Chris just said, "Yeah," quietly. "But that's new, right, Nicky? It's never happened before?"
"No." Nick shook his head again, too, but spoke like he needed to convince himself of the fact.
Chills drained through Chris so fast he almost felt hot. "Then Saboac did something to you. Because freaks—grendels—don't just randomly start displaying powers when they're just about legal to drink. They—"
"Can manifest when they're under stress, Chris, you know that." Nick's voice cracked, but Chris laughed. It was a hard, broken kind of laugh, not a good one, but at least he laughed.
"Nicky, if you were gonna manifest because of stress you'd have popped off when you were studying for your finals." Or in one of a million fights with their dad, but even Chris knew saying that wouldn't be helpful right then.
Nick lifted his gaze just enough to stare at Chris. "You don't have to say 'manifest' like that. Normal people say manifest."
"Uh-huh. Sure they do. Point is, Nicky, you've been under a lot of stress lots of times. This only happened after Saboac." Chris took a deep breath. "So what we're gonna do is find that son of a bitch and take him out."
"What if it doesn't help?"
"Then we'll figure out what does." Chris reached over and grabbed the back of Nicky's neck, like he'd drag him closer. "It's gonna be okay, Nick. Okay? You hear me?"
"I blew a cabin up," Nick whispered. "I don't think that ends with 'okay.'"
"You didn't hurt anybody," Chris said. "You made sure not to. It'll be okay."
"Did I? Or was I just trying not to hurt you, and Emerson got lucky?"
"I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. Either way, you were trying not to hurt somebody, and that matters." Chris leaned over until he could put his forehead against Nick's momentarily, then let go and backed off. "Think you can rest?"
"No."
Chris breathed a smile. "Try anyway. It's another three hours back to the 'Boat and you look like hell."
"You should let me drive if I'm not sleeping anyway. You had all that whiskey."
"That was a long time ago now." Chris sighed, looking toward the dark highway. "I can probably find a motel to pull off at if you want. I'll text your girl and let her know what's going on."
"At two thirty in the morning?" Nick's phone buzzed, like it had been doing every twenty minutes for the past five hours, and Chris spread a hand like 'see?' Nick took it out of his pocket this time, glanced at the messages, then called Stephanie with the phone to his ear and his eyes closed. He didn't say much for the first few minutes, then offered, "We got Emerson," after Stephanie either wound down or drew breath for another rant. "We just dropped him in Denver. We're gonna—"
He went quiet, his expression crumpled as Stephanie spoke to him. Chris scowled out the window, trying not to watch or listen, but his gaze kept going to the mirror, where he could see a glimpse of his brother's miserable expression as he said, "Yeah, I know yo—" and "We didn't really thi—" and "Look, Steph, I'm sorry, but—" to whatever she had to say. After another long few minutes, he said, "I'll text you when we've got a place," and hung up looking exhausted. "She and Ty will drive down to meet us, since they're going to have to fly out of Denver to get back for mid-terms anyway."
"Please tell me they're smart enough to at least stay where they are for the night."
Nick shrugged. Chris sighed and pulled back out onto the highway, taking the first exit that promised motels. They were in a room less than half an hour later, and Nick was too tired to complain that it still had the faint smell of a decades-old former smoking room. He sent a text, then dropped onto one of the beds without taking his shoes off or pulling the covers up. He was by all appearances asleep before Chris got done using the bathroom.
Chris got an extra blanket from the closet, draped it over him, and went to bed himself. A few minutes later he heard the thump of Nicky's shoes hitting the floor, and then he could sleep.
Slashes of light lanced Nick's dreams, sharp and piercing and cutting hazy nightmare narratives into shards. He woke up bleary to see Chris, fully dressed, including his boots, still lay sprawled across the other bed, although Nick would lay money on him waking up as Nick got up and made a cup of genuinely awful coffee from the motel's instant fare. He poured it out after two sips.
Chris said, "That bad?" into his pillow. Nick nodded, not caring that his brother couldn't see it. Chris obviously didn't care either. "When they gonna be here?"
"I don't know. Soon."
"Go back to sleep."
"Can't."
"Arright." Chris sat up, rubbing his face. He looked five years older, hollows under his eyes and his skin visibly dehydrated. Nick shuffled to the bathroom, got a cup of water, and walked it back to Chris, who drank it without any more comment than a look that said he didn't need taking care of. "Bad dreams?"
