Chains of Fire (22 page)

Aaron and Charisma stood in the mayor’s office, all right: a single large room, three desks, six chairs, one large metal file cabinet, and, through a narrow, open door, a tiny restroom.

Glass and shards of wood crunched under Charisma’s feet. Every window had been shot out. Chunks of the windowsills had been blasted away. The shades were peppered with holes, hanging crooked or fallen to the floor. Rifles and ammunition had been strategically placed throughout the room.

“It looks as if you’ve already been through a war,” Aaron said.

“Sorry I didn’t tidy up. I wasn’t sure I was having visitors,” Billy said in his slow West Virginia drawl. “Or at least—I wasn’t sure I was having
welcome
visitors. If we stay back here a ways, they can’t see us. But it’s a good idea to stay down, because they send in a shot every once in a while.”

“You’re hurt.” Charisma didn’t need to see the blood matted on the back of Billy’s shirt to know that. Her stones were vibrating.

“They got a few shots in,” Billy allowed. “Mind if I sit down?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He slithered down on a desk chair.

His thinning hair was still red, his faded eyes were blue, but what should have been a ruddy complexion was gray with exhaustion and drawn with pain.

Aaron pulled out his cell. “So I can bring in my people—where are the shooters?”

“I’ve got three in the house across the way. Two in the houses on either side.” Billy used four fingers to point. “One somewhere in the general store, although I think he isn’t doing as well as he thought he would when he went in. Might have got a good shot in myself.”

“None in the woods around us?” Aaron asked.

“No, they’re city folk. They don’t like all them trees and such.” Billy’s face crinkled in disdain.

“Anyone out there with powers?” Aaron was assuming the worst.

“The sweetest-faced little gal you’ve ever seen—she’s about eighteen, but I can’t quite figure out what her job is. She’s sitting in the house across the way, watching the whole operation and waiting for . . .” Billy sighed. “I don’t know what she’s waiting for, but she scares me. I think she’s here to make me talk, and I think she’s got some kind of pretty nasty gift that could do it. I’ve been thinking that today was a good time to die. My Ruby Lee is going to be glad you got here before I did.”

While Aaron dispensed the information to the group in the van, Charisma commanded, “Billy, take off your shirt.”

“If I had a dime for every time a pretty girl like you said that to me.” Billy pulled his shirt out from beneath his belt, unsnapped it, pulled it off.

“Wow!” She ogled the carefully etched marks across his belly. “Awesome tat!”

“Thank you, little lady, but as I’m sure you must know, it’s not exactly a tattoo.” He said the word as if he were correcting her grammar. “Had a dag-blasted Varinski shape-shifter attack me while my attention was elsewhere. Gave me my mark and taught me a lesson I never forgot.”

“What was that?”

“Don’t assume an enemy’s going to attack from the rear.” He turned the chair and straddled it so she could view the damage.

He’d been peppered with buckshot more than once, and from close range. Blood rose from wounds that looked like hamburger, and buckshot clustered so closely together he would need surgery to get it all out.

“Those bastards,” Charisma said softly. She didn’t really know what to do, how to fix him.

If only Isabelle were here.

But Isabelle was . . . missing. Not dead.
She was missing.

“One of the silly fools with a shotgun
did
attack from the rear. He sneaked up to the window while I was firing out the front. Brought me to my knees, he did.” Billy turned his head and smiled coldly. “But if you go look out in my garden, you’ll see he is now fertilizing my roses. The first-aid kit is right there on the desk. I was trying to fix myself up for another go-round.”

Aaron stepped to the door. “The rest of our group is coming in.”

“I wish I could help protect ’em”—Billy’s head sank onto his arms crossed on the back of the chair—“but I’m starting to feel sorta poorly.”

“I imagine you are.” Charisma ran her hand over his back, feeling the lead pieces, flicking the easiest ones out with her fingernail.

The shooting started, loud, abrasive, so many blasts it sounded like a machine gun.

“Unless you brought something to stop those bullets, your people are dead,” Billy said.

“John Powell will stop the bullets. He’s like Darth Vader without the breathing problems,” Charisma told him.

Aaron yanked the door open, and called out names as the Chosen entered, introducing them as they piled in. He slammed the door on another barrage of shots.

Caleb pointed Jacqueline, Aleksandr, and Aaron toward windows. They took their places in the shadows.

Caleb strode to the front door, cracked it, knelt, and shot.

Across the street, someone screamed.

Billy looked them over. “There aren’t enough of you. There aren’t seven.”

“Two of our team are gone,” Charisma told him. “In Switzerland.”

“Gone? Is that a euphemism for . . . ?”

“No! The rescuers are still looking for them.” Charisma didn’t say the search had officially changed from rescue to retrieval.

“John?” Jacqueline beckoned. “Can you come over here and push over that gardening shed next to the house on the left? If you can do that, I’ve got a clear shot.”

John went over, looked out. Gently he moved Jacqueline aside, lifted his hands, and from across the street, Charisma heard wood creak, then blow apart.

Someone yelled.

Jacqueline moved into place and shot.

The yelling stopped.

“I take back all the bad things I’ve said about the younger generation.” For the first time, the muscles in Billy’s broad back relaxed.

John strode forward and shook Billy’s hand. “Mr. Pemrick? John Powell. It was good to hear from you. Really good. We thought we were pretty much the only Chosen left alive.”

“There are a few of us hanging around, out in the sticks mostly, the ones who didn’t much approve of the Gypsy Travel Agency and how they handled matters,” Billy said.

Charisma picked up the tweezers. “How did you find us?”

“It took me a while,” Billy said. “I tried to contact the Gypsy Travel Agency. But they’re gone.”

“For almost three years,” John told him.

“For a while I thought the Gypsy Travel Agency had managed to destroy themselves and the Chosen Ones completely. But then I figured, no, we’re isolated up here, and we’re hillbillies”—Billy’s West Virginia drawl grew more exaggerated—“but I would have heard if the country had collapsed completely. Would have seen it on my computer machine.”

Charisma laughed softly.

“What?” Billy turned around to look at her, and his faded blue eyes twinkled. “You don’t believe I’m a hillbilly? Born and raised right here in the heart of the Appalachians.”

“No, sir, I believe you are a hillbilly if you say you are. But I think you might have seen a little of the world in your day.” Charisma picked more buckshot out of the old man’s powerful back.

Aleksandr smoothly raised his rifle and shot.

Billy said, “I’m glad to know someone taught the Chosen Ones how to use firearms. It’s a useful skill.”

“Yes, sir,” Aleksandr said. “My grandfather was a stickler about useful skills.”

“Who’s your grandfather?” Billy asked.

“Konstantine Wilder,” Aleksandr said.

Billy twisted away from Charisma’s touch. “Really? You’re a Wilder?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Last I heard about the Wilders, they’d broken their deal with the devil and caused old Lucifer a whole lot of heartburn.”

“We do what we can,” Aleksandr said.

“So you can’t shape-shift?” With each piece of shot Charisma extracted, blood trickled down Billy’s back.

“Don’t know. Never have. Never tried.” The tone of Aleksandr’s voice was off.

But Charisma was too busy slapping first-aid tape on each bleeder—lousy nursing, but she had little practice—and she didn’t have time to delve into whatever was bothering him.

“You keep it that way,” Billy said. “A deal with the devil is a slippery road right to hell.”

“You and my grandfather would get along really well,” Aleksandr said.

“Since when do you
want
to change, young Aleksandr?” Caleb must have heard that tone in Aleksandr’s voice, too.

“I don’t,” Aleksandr said coolly. “I just want to get out of here alive.”

“That makes two of us,” Billy said. “I got my civilians out of town, but I couldn’t leave and at the same time keep the Others busy, so here I am with buckshot in my ass, a pretty girl working on me, and no way out.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Charisma finished off the roll of adhesive and handed Billy his shirt.

“What did you have in mind?” Jacqueline asked.

“I’m not a psychic, but I see a truck in our future.” In her mind, Charisma pictured the truck parked on the other side of the garage from their van. “A 1968 three-quarter-ton crew cab Ford pickup, formerly white, now sort of rust-colored. Because of the rust.”

“You’re talking about the vehicle I love,” Billy warned. “Ain’t she a beauty?”

“She is. Is she still in good shape? No shots to the carburetor?” Charisma asked.

“I believe she’s been spared,” Billy said.

“Sweet-talker.” Man, Charisma loved a good old pickup with a lot of power. “Where are the keys?”

“Under the driver’s-side floor mat.” Billy hoisted himself to his feet and stood, wavering. “Don’t have much crime here in Holyrood. Well, except for this bunch of evil hooligans trying to take over the town.”

John hurried over, took the shirt, helped Billy into it. “What are they here for?”

“They’re searching for something, and seem to think it’s in one of the caves in the area.” Billy added, “There are a lot of caves in the area.”

“Why would they think that?” John sounded casual. He was not.

“We’re close to an entrance for the sacred cave.” Aaron watched out the window, but his voice was grim and sure.

“Now, how did you know that?” Billy was clearly taken aback.

“Wherever I am, the sacred cave calls me.” Aaron watched Charisma tighten her bulletproof vest. “What’s your plan, Charisma?”

“I’m going to get the truck, bring it around to the entrance, get Billy and the rest of you inside, and drive us out of this valley.”

“It’s not a valley. It’s a holler,” Billy corrected. “Get this hillbilly terminology correct. Anyway, your plan won’t work. They’ll pick us off as we go out the door.”

“I’ll go with you, Charisma,” John said. “Protect you from the bullets.”

“Someone has to get Billy into the truck. He needs to get to a hospital, John. He needs to go soon.” The Chosen healed faster than most people, but Billy was older, he was exhausted, and he’d been badly hurt.

And Isabelle wasn’t here to heal him.

Charisma wasn’t going to think about that now.

“A couple of us will stay here and provide cover while you get in the truck and get out of town,” Caleb said.

“Suicide mission,” Billy said.

“Not at all.” Aaron smiled briefly. “Caleb and I are good shots, and when the time comes, I can provide camouflage for him.”

“You can make the two of you disappear?” Billy asked. At Aaron’s nod, he said, “I had forgotten how much fun it was to work with a whole danged group of Chosen.”

“I can stay, too,” Aleksandr said.

“I can’t cover you both,” Aaron said. “I can’t spread myself thin enough. Besides, you’re young; you need to get out.”

“I should drive then,” Aleksandr said. “I was raised in Washington in the Cascade Mountains; I know how to drive narrow, steep, winding roads—”