The fires weren’t stopping here. Flames leapt from shrubs to trees along the street, to trees at the next house. It was only a matter of moments before the houses would ignite. I was glad Hardin had brought along the fire department.
I turned and ran to the front door of the house. Then I stumbled, falling to my hands and knees when my heart clenched. Like something reached in and squeezed, and it was hot, burning, like a fever. Sweat broke out over my skin. I felt heat from the fire around me, from the burning within. I groaned—it was Wolf squealing through a human throat.
Tina and Ben were at the front door, yelling at me. Five steps. I could do this.
I hauled myself to my feet and stumbled up the house’s porch. The flames behind me seemed to growl, but I didn’t have time to stop and growl back. I ran, over the threshold and across the line of potion we’d drawn on the floor. Ben’s and Tina’s hands were on me, helping me.
A flare, like an explosion of fireworks, burst in through the front door with me, singeing my hair and clothing. Instinctively, we screamed, raising our arms to shield our heads, falling back, scrambling out of the way—
I felt no heat. The searing flames around me, the fire gripping my heart, all of it was gone now. I was safe, behind the stripe of blackish goo painted on the floor. On the other side of that barrier, hand-sized tongues of flame danced on century-old floorboards.
Ben leapt forward. I grabbed him, calling, “No, stay back!” But he didn’t cross that magical line. He fired the spray from the fire extinguisher over it. The flames vanished, leaving behind blackened streaks and the smell of scorched hardwood.
Something made a growling sound. It might have been a natural creaking in the house, or a distant rumble of thunder. Except the sky outside was clear. This sounded like a voice, very close by, muttering low, too soft to make out the words, assuming it even spoke in a language I could understand.
Outside, people were shouting, water was spraying from fire hoses into front yards and against houses, and the sirens were still wailing. Inside Flint House, though, was oddly still.
We braced, waiting for the flames to overtake us. My heart hurt, it raced so hard, bruising my ribs from the inside. My skin prickled, my shoulders bunched, fur and hackles. Wolf snarled from my hindbrain. Adrenaline kicked the need to Change into overdrive.
Ben gripped my shoulder, his fingers like claws. I touched his hand.
“What’s happening?” Jules said, low and urgent, from the next room.
“It’s here,” Tina said. “It’s looking right at us.” We stared at the doorway, where the fire had followed me, but saw nothing.
I squared my shoulders, took a breath, and wondered if this was what bungee jumping felt like. You couldn’t think of all the things that could go wrong as you stood on the edge of the precipice and looked over; you just had to take that step and trust.
“Kitty,” Ben said, his voice low, almost a growl. His hand twitched on my shoulder.
Squeezing it, I pushed it away. “Just be ready with that fire extinguisher.”
I stepped over the dark line on the floor.
All remained still. I could look through the front door and see fires still burning outside, but the fire department had those under control. By all appearances, the thing had fled, but Tina said it was still here, and I believed her.
“Hey!” I called out, venting my anger at the flames for lack of a better target. “You son of a bitch, where the hell do you get off setting fire to my city? Not to mention killing people. I’d have thought some ancient fire demon like you would have better things to do than harass me. Don’t you have a lamp somewhere that needs redecorating?”
A voice spoke words I didn’t understand, and a furnace engulfed me. Like leaving an air-conditioned house and entering a summer desert. It was supposed to be autumn, but I’d never felt so hot. The heat rumbled like a furnace pumping full-force. I heard words in the noise, but I couldn’t understand them.
This was what was supposed to happen. This was what I wanted. I ran.
My clothes might have been on fire, but I couldn’t stop. Ben and the others might have been shouting at me, but I couldn’t concentrate to hear what they might have said. Any moment, I expected to fall, to be engulfed by the thing that chased me, to be smothered in foam from the fire extinguisher, or any other of a thousand things that could happen. But none of that did. I trusted that the thing followed me, keeping to the path we’d put in place. It had to be following me, because the air was so hot I couldn’t breathe. Or maybe I was burning up, like Mick had.
Ahead of me, Jules shouted, his eyes wide with panic, urging me on like I was running a race. I sprinted into the next room, crossed the dark line drawn on the floor, and slammed shoulder first into the opposite wall, because I didn’t bother slowing down. My clothes were smoking, my skin was red.
Jules leapt forward with a jar of the blood potion, splashing it across the floor in a messy arc that managed to close off the circle painted in the room.
Inside the circle drawn in blood, the floor caught fire, exploding up in a column of flame that reached the ceiling. No little flickering ca
mpfire, this. This was the inferno of a forest fire, right in front of us.
Jules and I fell back, curling up for protection while the fire merrily burned on the hardwood. Tina and Ben appeared at the doorway. Ben had his fire extinguisher in hand and sprayed the conflagration. The foam streamed, then sputtered, then died. Empty. He went to grab for another one.
Tina stared at the fire with an expression of awe. Shielding my eyes, I looked into the light.
A figure stood in the midst of the fire, wavering, like a distant shape lost in a heat mirage. Far from harming it, the flames seemed to give it form: indistinct limbs, definite torso, and a strange face that kept changing. Its body hunched over, arms bent and fists clenched, ready to launch into a fight. It hovered, snarling. This was the figure we’d seen in the video footage from the New Moon séance. The ifrit, manifesting to confront us properly.
The room filled with the scent of flaming disaster, we were surrounded with searing heat, but the floor, though scorched black, was no longer burning. We all just stood there looking at each other.