Half-Off Ragnarok

Eighteen

A rundown apartment in Columbus, Ohio, sometime after midnight, waking up on a bed that could really use more lumbar support

SHELBY WAS NESTLED AGAINST my side when I woke up. Some subtle change in the atmosphere of the room had disturbed me, although I had no idea what it was. Grainy gray light filtered in through the half-closed blinds, providing enough illumination for me to find my glasses, fumble them open, and slide them onto my face. Shelby made a small protesting noise, her arm still draped across my chest. I moved it carefully out of the way. This time, the protesting noise was louder, and continued as she rolled over, taking the blankets with her. By the time I finished standing, she had formed a cocoon, with only the crown of her head proving that there was a woman inside the mass of bedclothes.

Clothes . . . our clothes were in the bathroom, along with all my weapons. Swearing softly but steadily under my breath, I crept out of the bedroom and started down the hall, listening for clues as to what had so abruptly awakened me. I’m not a heavy sleeper—no one in my family is a heavy sleeper; waking easy comes with the job—but I don’t wake up for no reason at all. Something in the apartment was wrong.

Whatever was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up didn’t put in an appearance as I made my way to the bathroom. A pair of pants, three knives, and a handgun later, I felt confident enough to slip back into the hall.

I took a glance into the bedroom. Shelby was still sleeping soundly in her blanket cocoon. Holding my gun in front of me, muzzle to the ground, I stepped into the living room. The blinds were open, letting the streetlights shine right into the room. That made it a little easier for me to assess my surroundings, looking for anything that was out of place. I found nothing.

I was starting to think I was being paranoid, and that Shelby had kicked me in her sleep or something, when I heard a sound from the hall. It was soft, and probably would have been inaudible if the carpet had been less than twenty years old: just a foot striking against the floor. Not that unusual—people walk—but most people don’t walk with the distinctive gait of someone trying not to be heard. This late at night, whoever was out there should either have been hurrying to their door, or drunkenly weaving without giving a damn who they woke up. This person was creeping.

Shifting my gun to my right hand, I crossed the living room, undid the deadbolt, and opened the door with my left hand—or tried to, anyway. The deadbolt turned easily, but when I tried to twist the knob, it refused to move. The whole mechanism had somehow been jammed from the outside.

“Shit,” I muttered, and put my gun on the knickknack table before dropping to the floor and trying to peer under the door. I couldn’t quite manage it, but my change in perspective did let me do one thing: it let me smell the gasoline soaking into the thin carpet of the hall.

“Shit,” I said again, with more fervency. Shoving myself back to my feet, I grabbed my gun and ran for the bedroom. “Shelby! You have to wake up now! Shelby!”

She didn’t respond.

Only the fact that she had rolled herself in blankets when I woke up kept me from panicking, deciding she was dead, and making things even worse. Instead, I clicked on the light, shoved my gun into the waistband of my pants, and crossed to shake her shoulder through the blankets. “Shelby. Wake up. We have to move, it’s not safe here anymore.”

“Fuck off,” she mumbled sleepily.

It says something about me that I found that endearing. This wasn’t the time or the place, however, and so I shook her again, harder this time. “Shelby. I’m not kidding. Your door is jammed, and someone’s getting ready to set the building on fire. Wake. Up.”

“What?” She finally stirred, pulling an arm free of the cocoon in order to push herself into a half sitting position. Her hair was a tangled mess, covering her eyes. “Alex? What are you yelling about?”

“Building. Fire. Get dressed, we’re leaving.”

She shoved her hair back as her eyes widened. “The building’s on fire?”

“No, but it’s about to be. Now move!” I ran back to the bathroom to grab the rest of my things, trusting her to at least find pants before I got back. This was not a situation that I wanted to go into without as many knives as I could carry, and possibly a few more, just in case.

Panic is a remarkable motivator. By the time I had my shirt on and my weapons tucked in the appropriate places, Shelby was running down the hall, fully clothed, with an old-fashioned travel suitcase in one hand. Before I could say anything, she snapped, “I’m not running around naked for the rest of the week if this place burns down.”

There was no point in arguing with her, and if my house were on fire, I’d have a lot more to worry about saving. “Do you have an ax?”

“What?” She stared at me. “The building’s about to burn, and you want to know if I have an ax? Are you sure you’re not just having a really odd nightmare?”

“You got dressed,” I pointed at her. “The door is jammed. Someone broke the knob so that we can’t escape.” I sighed. “I’m going to need to kick the door down.”

“Oh, brilliant, that’s not dangerous at all,” said Shelby.

“Got a better idea?”

She looked away.

The smell of gasoline was stronger when we walked out into the living room; there was no way to pretend that I was just having a very vivid nightmare. I moved toward the door and fell into a position I’d learned during my long-ago karate classes, hoping I wasn’t about to splinter my ankle.

“Stop!”

“What?” I turned to see Shelby shaking her head frantically. “What’s wrong?”

“Just hold on, all right?” She stepped in front of me, shoving me aside as she leaned forward and pressed her hand against the door. She pulled it quickly away, looking grimly back at me. “It’s hot.”

“What?”

“I said, it’s hot.” She dropped to the floor, pressing her cheek to the carpet. “I smell smoke. Not much, not yet, but enough. We can’t go out this way. The building’s already on fire.” She rolled back to her feet, grabbing her discarded suitcase.

“Of course the building’s already on fire,” I muttered. “Call 911?”

“On it.”

While Shelby dialed, I ran to the living room window, looking outside. The lawn was clogged with people, some of them pointing up at the building like everyone else might have come outside for a nice midnight stroll, instead of fleeing from the fire. I tried to open the window, and groaned as it refused to budge. “Shelby?”

“Fire’s already been reported, firemen are on their way,” she replied, running to my side. She frowned. “You can’t open that, Alex, it’s been painted shut.”

“Shit.” Smoke was starting to come through the crack under the door, finally overwhelming the smell of the gasoline. “What about the bedroom windows? Do those open?”

“Yes!” Shelby realized what I was really asking before I could voice it. This time, she grabbed my hand, pulling me after her as she whirled and ran back to the bedroom.

There was no crowd of people outside the bedroom window. Instead, it looked out on the roof of the parking area—which was, naturally, on fire.

“Better outside on fire than inside on fire,” I muttered. “Wait here.”

“What? Alex!”

I ignored her as I grabbed our discarded towels off the floor, running with them back to the bathroom, where a few seconds under the showerhead soaked them—and me—all the way through. I ran back to where Shelby waited, flinging one of the towels at her. She squawked when it hit her, glaring at me.

“What—”

“Follow me!” Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped up onto the windowsill, wrapped the towel around my shoulders, took a deep breath, and jumped.

It was a ten-foot fall to the carport roof. The impact would have been enough to jar every bone in my body if I hadn’t been leaping into the middle of a blazing inferno. As it was, even my sister, Verity, who never met a building she didn’t want to jump off, would have been impressed. I began slapping the roof around me with my towel as soon as I landed, trying to clear something of a safe zone for Shelby. The smell of burning hair wasn’t as bad as the smell of smoke, but it was more immediate, since it meant that part of my body was on fire.

My shoes were waterlogged, but the fire was stronger than thirty seconds in the shower. It bit through the thin fabric, and I yelped, the last of my clean air escaping. Breathing in would mean getting a lungful of smoke, and then . . .

Well, there wouldn’t be much “and then.” I glanced up, still flailing around with the towel, and saw Shelby standing on the ledge, clearly trying to find the nerve to follow me. I beckoned with one arm, hoping that she would see the need to move. I could see the fire now, consuming the building all around her. Whoever had jammed our door had done us a favor: if we’d opened it, the fire would have come into the apartment, and we’d already be dead.

Shelby, please, I thought.

She jumped.

It was not a graceful fall; she pinwheeled her arms madly all the way down, and she landed hard, hitting her knees on the burning roof. But she bounced back quickly, swinging her towel hard as she fought to beat out the flames.

We were never going to defeat this fire on our own, but we didn’t need to; all we needed to do was get away. I grabbed her wrist, still struggling not to breathe, and pulled her with me as I jumped again, this time off the carport roof.

After a ten-foot fall into a blazing fire, an eight-foot fall into a puddle of rainwater was almost a blessing. My ankles didn’t agree, and they folded beneath me, pitching me to my knees on the pavement. I didn’t care. I was too busy scrambling to my hands and knees, turning to check on Shelby. Please be all right, I thought frantically. Please, please be all right . . .

She was sitting on her butt in the middle of the puddle, her suitcase lying off to one side. The latches had popped, but the lid had fallen back into the closed position after only half a bra had managed to make good its escape. She looked stunned, and the bottom few inches of her hair had been badly singed, probably during the first fall, when she dipped too low to bleed off the force of her impact.

“Shelby? Are you okay?”

“I . . . we just jumped out of a burning building in the middle of the night. That’s a thing which occurred in the actual world.” She tilted her head back, looking toward her apartment window. Flames were finally visible inside, going industriously about the business of consuming everything she hadn’t been able to shove into her emergency bag. “My apartment is on fire.”

“Yes,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say. My hands hurt. So did my feet, and my knees. I was going to have some incredible blisters; I was lucky if that was the worst thing I was going to have. I needed to get home and get some medical attention. I needed to help Shelby first.

“The door was jammed.” She looked back down, focusing on me as a new emotion overwrote her confusion: anger. Shelby Tanner looked like she was about to start a second fire through nothing but the power of her rage. “Somebody just tried to kill us.”

“Yeah, they did.” I staggered to my feet, offering her my hand. “Want to go find out who it was, and maybe kick their ass?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Leaving wasn’t quite that easy, of course: if we were seen driving away from the fire, which was most definitely going to be ruled arson, we’d make ourselves suspects. So Shelby and I gathered her things, patted one another’s hair until we were sure it wasn’t going to spontaneously combust, and went to meet with the emergency responders—after a brief stop at the car to drop off our weapons, of course. I was pleased to see that Shelby had managed to grab two guns and a hand-sized sickle in the process of getting her clothes on. Yes, every second had been important while we were still inside, but sometimes you need to be prepared in order to be safe.

Walking hurt, and was probably going to hurt for the next several days, but it was nothing time and some analgesics wouldn’t take care of. Shelby had a nasty burn on one arm that was probably going to scar, and both of us needed haircuts and showers, unless we wanted to walk around smelling like bonfire for the next few weeks.

Shelby’s neighbors had mostly gathered on the sidewalk and the grass closest to it, putting a safe distance between themselves and the building. Shelby looked anxiously around the crowd.

“Is that everyone?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She turned to look at me, eyes wide and sad. “I’ve only been here a little while, and I barely know any of my neighbors. There could be a dozen people burning in there, and I’d have no way of knowing.”

She’d have no way of saving them, either, but bringing that up wouldn’t do either of us any good. I put my arms around her, careful of her burns, and sighed. “We can’t save everything, Shelby,” I said quietly. “But we each saved one person tonight. You should be proud of that.”

“Who’d I save, then?”

“Me. I would have opened that door.”

“. . . and I wouldn’t have woken up until it was too late.” We were surrounded by strangers, but the way she looked at me made me feel like we were totally alone. “You saved me.”

“And you saved me. So see? You did everything you could have done.” I looked at the burning building, and added, “You did everything anyone could have done.”

The arrival of the fire trucks cut off any further conversation. Men in uniform shouted for the crowd to fall back, and the crowd did as it was told, clearly relieved to have someone taking control of the situation. Shelby sagged against me, exhausted. I held her up, scanning the crowd for anyone who didn’t look appropriately upset. There were a few tall, curvy blonde women who looked more annoyed than traumatized, but I dismissed them as dragon princesses and moved on, looking for a better target. Someone who didn’t fit, someone who hadn’t just watched what little they had in this world burn away to ashes . . .

Someone moved at the edge of the crowd, ducking their head and quickly stepping backward into the shadows, where I wouldn’t be able to see their face. I started to release my grip on Shelby, preparing to go after him, and stopped as a familiar face in a blue police uniform stepped between me and my mystery figure.

“So, Dr. Preston, it seems we’re fated to meet again,” said the officer who’d taken my statement after we found Andrew’s body. His gaze flicked to Shelby and then back to me, assessing. “And Dr. Tanner. The two of you sure do show up at a lot of emergencies these days.”

“Dr. Tanner lives here,” I said. “Or lived here, I guess. How bad is the damage?”

Shelby lifted her head, wobbling as she looked at him, like even the air weighed too much for her. I would have applauded her performance, if the situation hadn’t been quite so dire. “Unit 2-L,” she said, voice unsteady. “Officer, what happened? I thought there were fire doors on the stairways to prevent this type of thing.”

“We’ll have a full report in the next few days. Is either of you hurt?”

“A little,” said Shelby, and sniffled, eyes suddenly full of tears. “It’s not so bad I need to bother the EMTs. Can Alex take me to the hospital? Please?”

The officer looked torn. I couldn’t exactly blame him: first we find a body, and then we show up at a suspicious fire. At the same time, we weren’t suspects in anything—at least not yet. Finally, his training won out over his suspicions, and he nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “Just don’t leave town for the next few days, all right?”

“We weren’t planning to,” I said. “Come on, sweetie.”

Shelby sniffled again and allowed me to lead her away from the crowd and the police, back to the dubious safety of my car.

We had no way of knowing whether the arson had been intended to kill me, Shelby, or both. I searched the exterior of the car thoroughly for bombs or signs that someone had tried to break in and, when I found nothing but a little goose shit from the zoo, I unlocked the doors. Shelby got into the passenger seat, and we drove away.

As soon as we had turned the corner and the apartment building was no longer in view, Shelby straightened, all signs of vulnerability gone. “Where are we going?” she asked, wiping away her crocodile tears. The motion smeared the ash on her face, making her look like a chimney sweep from a modern remake of Mary Poppins—one where Mary was armed to the teeth and out for blood. “Hospital?”

“Not unless we really need to. I don’t know anyone in the local ERs, so we wouldn’t be able to dodge the paper trail, and I’d rather we didn’t wind up as a human interest story on tonight’s news.” I kept an eye on the rearview mirror as I turned down another street, watching the road behind us for a tail. “We’re heading back to my grandparents’ place, as soon as I can be sure that we’re not being followed.”

“I hope you have a truly monumental first aid kit,” she said, wiping uselessly at her face again. Then she winced, as the motion apparently pulled on her burns. “I actually mean that.”

“The first aid kit was enough to stop me being turned to stone,” I said.

“So it’s pretty good is what you’re saying.”

“We do okay.” I drove to the end of the block, pulled off to the side, and turned off the engine.

Shelby blinked at me. “What are you—”

“Just give it a second.”

Frowning, she subsided, and we sat in the dark car for several minutes, waiting to see if anyone drove past. When the road remained empty, I turned the engine back on and pulled away from the curb.

“Do you think we’re being followed?” Shelby asked.

“Honestly, I think someone dropped a cockatrice in my backyard and tried to burn down your apartment building with us inside, so right now, a little healthy paranoia is the way to go.”

“I wish I could argue with that,” sighed Shelby.

We didn’t talk the rest of the way back to the house.

All the lights were on when I pulled into my customary spot, and both cars were there; if nothing else, we would be well-defended from any additional arson attempts. I got my things and helped Shelby out of her seat. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she was having trouble standing. I was doing somewhat better, if only because I was still running in crisis mode. Once we were inside, with people to defend us if things turned sour, then I could fall apart.

“It’s a really, really good first aid kit, right?” asked Shelby, through gritted teeth.

“The best,” I assured her, and together we half-walked, half-limped up the front walkway.

Grandma opened the door before I could reach for my key. Her eyes were glowing a lambent white, all but obscuring her irises and pupils. “Alex!” she gasped. “What happened?”

“Someone burned down Shelby’s apartment building,” I said, stepping inside. Grandma was right there to help support Shelby’s weight, and suddenly walking seemed, if not easier, at least a lot less hard. “We had to jump out the window to get away. How did you know we were coming?”

“I told her,” said Sarah. I looked past Grandma to the stairs, where Sarah was standing, pale in her blue nightgown, eyes glowing even more brightly than my grandmother’s. “I heard the screaming from all the way down the block.”

Sarah shouldn’t have been able to hear anything from that far away; we’d both grabbed our anti-telepathy charms along with our weapons. That Sarah had heard me anyway said something, both about how attuned we were as family, and how badly hurt I really was.

“We’re here now,” I said, trying to project reassurance and calm. “Go back up to your room. Grandma will get us patched up, and then we can have breakfast in the morning, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Listen to your cousin, Sarah,” said Grandma, and began pushing us toward the kitchen. “Look at you two. Martin!”

The kitchen door opened, revealing my grandfather. “I’m almost ready for them.”

“Good.” She half-led, half-shoved us through the kitchen door and to the table, where the first aid kit was already assembled and waiting. There was a straight razor next to the stack of bandages. “Who’s hurt worse?”

“Shelby,” I said, grabbing a piece of clean gauze and using it to wipe the soot off my glasses. The world suddenly became a lot easier to see. The realization that I’d driven through downtown Columbus while half-blinded followed, and I fought back the urge to be sick. There would be time for that later. “Her arm’s worse than any of my injuries.”

“Let me see,” said Grandma.

Thankfully, Shelby didn’t argue. She turned, showing Grandma the red, raw skin of her right bicep.

“We can deal with that,” said Grandma, and picked up the straight razor. She flipped it open before neatly slicing open the back of her own hand.

Shelby shrieked, too startled for composure, only to calm and stare as she realized Grandma wasn’t really bleeding. A thick, viscous fluid was leaking from the cut, virtually clear, with only a hint of blue. “What in the . . . ?”

“Cuckoos don’t have hemoglobin, dear,” said Grandma.

“Do they feel pain?”

Grandma laughed. “Yes, but sometimes we have to work past that,” she admitted, and put down the straight razor before dipping her fingers into the “blood” and beginning to lather it onto Shelby’s wound. Shelby squawked again, only to subside, looking puzzled, when there was no pain. Grandma smiled. “As I was saying, we don’t have hemoglobin. What we do have is a natural antibiotic, with preservative and painkilling properties.”

“They’re very popular with the kind of men who like building men like me,” said Grandpa. “Alex, let me see your feet.”

I stuck them obediently out, managing not to wince when he pulled off my shoes and started examining my blisters. “It’s all right, Shelby, honest. Cuckoo blood won’t heal you, but it’ll make the pain a lot less immediate, and we have drugs to help with the rest.”

“It should reduce scarring, though, and that’s a good thing, as Martin tells me you’re a very pretty girl,” said Grandma, finishing her finger-painting and reaching for the gauze. “You should both have showers, but I want you to leave this on for at least an hour before you wash it off, and I’ll make up a kit for you to use after you get dry.”

“She means she’s going to bleed into a jar,” said Grandpa. “Don’t sugarcoat it for the kids, Angie.”

“I got that, thanks,” said Shelby, closing her eyes. “Alex? You all right?”

My feet looked mostly intact. “I’m fine,” I said. Judging by the tightness in my back and shoulders, I might not stay fine, but right here and now, I could give the reassurance. “Grandma . . .”

“Yes, she can stay here.” Grandma began to wrap gauze around Shelby’s arm. “I don’t want either of you sleeping somewhere undefended until this is taken care of. Do you have any idea who may have attacked you?”

“No,” I said grimly, “but we’re going to find out.”

Grandpa’s hand landed on my shoulder, heavy enough to keep me in my seat, even if my feet hadn’t already been giving me good reason to keep still. “In the morning,” he said. “You need sleep, both of you.”

I thought of my room, where the mice were probably preparing a grand celebration to commemorate my getting set on fire. “About that . . .”

“I already bribed them to relocate to the attic for tonight, and leave you alone,” said Grandpa. “It was the second thing I did after Sarah woke us.”

Curiosity demanded to be satisfied. “What was the first thing you did?”

“Arm the exterior traps. Nothing’s getting through any of these windows tonight.”

It was the exact right thing to say. I smiled. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

“Any time, kiddo,” he said, and patted my shoulder one more time before he took his hand away. “Any time.”

We didn’t shower before we went to bed; we didn’t do anything but peel off our smoky, ruined clothing and collapse onto the mattress, with Shelby on the inside, and me closer to the door, so that anything that tried to attack would have a slightly harder time of it. She was already half-gone, thanks to the Vicodin my grandmother had left out for her. I had refused to take anything but a few aspirin. One of us needed to be aware of our surroundings.

That was a foolish fantasy. My eyes were closed before my head hit the pillow, and the last thing I remembered was the warm, familiar weight of Crow settling on my chest. He cawed once, tone inquisitive, and then there was nothing but the dark and my own exhaustion pulling me under.