Jake opened the old window by force, letting in a gust of cold wind. Initially, he leaned his upper body outside until the yellow blaze lit up his face and the bright flames reflected in his eyes, but he ducked back inside and hugged Vars tight. “I thought I lost you.”
Vars nodded, but the odd sense of otherworldliness was letting off and while he pulled Jake close with one hand, he dove the other into his jean pocket and pulled out his cell phone. From the floor, Damon’s charred body was still watching him, and the bloodied wound on his neck bore a clear imprint of human teeth. Vars shuddered, but when the emergency services operator spoke on the other end of the line, the stupor was completely gone.
Jake wouldn’t stop hugging him while Vars quickly gave the details he knew, but the commotion outside was becoming more frantic. In the warm glow of the fire, groups of people were running - some fully dressed, some naked or covered in blankets. It was like an apocalyptic painting, one of Hieronymus Bosch’s, where naked men and women mingled with demons of the strangest proportions and shapes. Licked by flames, chewed through, they had no hope left, because the divine judgment had already come for them.
A medieval image of hell.
“The police will surely come. We can’t have them find Damon,” Vars said as soon as he ended the call, his gaze swiping over Jake.
“Should I… burn him?” Jake uttered, still stunned and clutching at Vars’s arm. “What you did… Why? You’re not a vampire, right?”
“How the hell should I know? Magpie never told me I could go back again and again!” hissed Vars, nervously glancing out the open window. Sweat trailed down his temple. “Can you burn him and the blood, but not the actual corridor?”
Jake raised his arms, increasingly agitated. “I don’t know! I’m not the master of secret knowledge either. Fuck. Get out, and we’ll deal with this later. Who cares about the corridor if our brothers might be injured?”
Vars only hesitated for a moment, but they were on the first floor. He pushed the window open wider and slid out, jumping into the crisp snow. It was only when Vars walked away from the wall that he saw the extent of the damage at the front of the building. Long flames licked their way out the windows, but even now, minutes after the explosions, people were pouring out of the open doors in groups.
Jake dropped next to Vars with a thump, still panting, smelling of sulphur and with blotches of red on his cheeks as if he’d ran a mile. The fresh scent of fire so close had Vars’s thoughts returning to the evidence Jake had just disposed of, and his brain still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he’d chewed on Damon’s flesh as if it were tobacco.
A brief nod was all the communication needed before they ran off, speeding toward the inferno that turned the cold February night into a war zone. That was where the heart of the clubhouse was. All documents, safes with cash, most of the apartments and rooms belonging to members were right there. Damon had known where to hit. Instead of bothering with the long corridors hardly anyone used on a regular basis, he’d targeted the historical part of the structure, where Baal’s seal was, where Vars had been trying to start his new life with people who wanted him around.
“He never left,” gasped Vars as they ran, laboring through the snow that held down their feet each time. “He stayed here, unseen, waiting for us to come back.”
Someone tried to stop them, ask what was happening, but they didn’t have time for discussion and searched for the other Kings instead. The closer they came to the fire, the faster they tried to run, even though their natural instinct should have been to stay away.
The first familiar face was Knight, his eyes wild, face blackened by ash as he carried a coughing Elliot out of the building.
“What about the others?” Jake yelled at him over the rumble of something inside the building collapsing.
The party guests were like zombies, standing still or wandering aimlessly between nearby trees. Their figures cast long shadows in the snow that no longer looked pristine but turned into the sands of a battlefield—stained black and brown, stirred by many feet. Laurent approached from out of nowhere and pulled Elliot into a hug, patting his back as if the smoke were a chunk of food blocking his airways.
A loud barking turned Vars’s attention to Nao, who struggled to keep Hound still as his massive body lunged toward the burning clubhouse over and over.
It became clear what was up when the building spat out Beast’s towering figure. He dragged a small, limp body with one arm and pulled on another person’s hand so hard she almost fell into the snow from the impact. Even in the dark, his eyes were wide with fear, and the soft hue of the light originating in the fire transformed his scars into a sharp, twisted pattern. His legs seemed heavy as if he were wearing lead shoes, and when someone took the unconscious hangaround out of his arms, he seemed lost, like the only purpose of his life was now gone, leaving him in limbo.