Changeling (8 page)

Captain Hooper strode toward us, his deep-wrinkled eyes red from the smoke. I felt a strange sense of nostalgia, remembering the first time I’d met my teammates face-to-face. Hooper had been managing a building collapse. I’d been there reporting on the story. So surreal now, to be part of the team offering assistance.

“Our hoses aren’t doing much except keeping the other buildings wet,” Hooper said, his voice a thunderhead over the roaring blaze. “Whatever they had stored in there, it’s burning like jet fuel. We’ve got a foam truck coming.”

“Are the neighboring buildings empty?” Trance asked.

Hooper coughed. “The other warehouse isn’t under contract to store anything right now. The factory there should be empty, but sometimes people set up house and don’t want to leave.”

“Risk burning to death rather than being arrested for squatting,” Cipher said.

“No doubt.” Trance turned to our assembled group. “Cipher and Onyx, sweep the factory and make sure no one is holed up inside. Tempest and Ember, you’re on the fire. Do what you can to settle it down.” She looked right at me and only me. “Flex and I are on crowd control with Captain Hooper. Coms on, everyone.”

Next to me, Onyx began to transform. His legs shortened, thinned out. Arms sprouted feathers. Nose sharpened, turned hard and yellow. Black feathers began to cover everything, head to torso, as his body shrank to less than one-fifth its former size. In moments, a green-eyed raven lit off to the sky and soared toward the factory. Cipher jogged after him, tossing a supportive wink to Trance as he left.

A hand touched my shoulder. Trance lowered her voice. “Only what you can handle, Ember.”

“I know,” I said. “I’ll be careful.”

“How come you never worry about me like that?” Tempest asked.

“Because you’re cautious enough for ten people.”

“How about we all be careful?” Flex said.

It was something everyone agreed on.

Tempest and I
approached the blaze from the west. Water from the fire hoses flowed around our feet in gray streams. The thick odor of damp pavement warred with the smell of smoke, making it difficult to breathe properly. I sucked in deep breaths through my mouth. We took position twenty feet from the leaping flames. Firetrucks surrounded us. Firemen
wrangled their hoses and ladders and kept the crowd at bay.

None of that mattered. We had to concentrate.

Side by side, we gazed up at the inferno. Tempest raised his hands above his head. Cooler air swirled around us, creating a bubble within which it became easier to breathe. The fresh air energized me and helped me focus.

“I’ll suck the oxygen out of the interior of the warehouse,” he shouted. “Take away the fire’s fuel and kill the source.”

I nodded. “Go for it. I’ll see what I can do about this heat.”

The fresh air disappeared as Tempest concentrated his powers elsewhere. I closed my eyes and opened up to the heat, welcoming it inside my body. To my very core. Hundreds of degrees, thousands of individual flames. Out of the wood and metal and chemicals, into me.

In, in, deeper in.

Superheated, but unburned. Surrounded, but not smothered. Constantly in motion, but unmoving. I descended into the bowels of hell, where fire and brimstone and ash thrived, heat blazed in all its glory, and cold had no chance of survival. The inferno glowed like embers, the innards of a piece of coal. Sharp and bright and red.

My heart pounded. Blood raced through my veins, hot like a lava flow. Energizing and exhausting all at once—the perfect adrenaline rush. I skated along the edge, terrified of going too far, of losing myself, of making a deadly mistake. Of hurting someone else.

So much fire, almost too much. Closer to the ember, deeper into the flames.

The edge of reason narrowed, and an abyss loomed. My chest hurt; my heart was pounding right through my ribs. I couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, couldn’t breathe.

And then I fell. Down, down, unable to stop.

No.

I pulled out of it, but didn’t quite make the jump. The hard pavement scraped my hands. All I saw was flame—bright and scorching, sweeping over and into me. My lungs seized; I couldn’t breathe. Someone touched me. Shouted. Pulled. Shouted again.

Skin burned. Sizzled. Too hot, too much. I screamed, soundless and never-ending. Still couldn’t breathe.

Air whipped, cool and fast. Wrapped me in its chilly embrace. Lifted me up and out. Flying. Descending.

The flames were gone, but the intense heat remained. My body radiated it, unable to absorb anything else.

Come on, girl, come out of it. You’ve got a breakfast date tomorrow, remember?

Frigid wetness enveloped me in its slick embrace. I latched onto that sensation and held on tight.

I woke up
in the back of an ambulance, soaking wet and covered with blankets. The gurney beneath me was drenched. Nauseating odors of smoke and burned plastic lingered, and set my stomach roiling. I coughed, lurched to the side, and tried to vomit onto the floor. Nothing but dry heaves, as my angry lungs forced old air from my body. I retched until my throat burned and my stomach threatened
to turn inside out, then I collapsed onto my back, rattling the gurney.

The roof of the ambulance tilted and swirled. Sirens still wailed outside, mingling with dozens of voices. One sound was gone: the roar had ceased.

It worked. Yay, me.

The gurney wobbled. Concerned violet eyes gazed down at me, framed by soot-streaked hair and more purple. A heavy frown creased her face. “What did I say, young lady?” she asked.

“Be more specific?” I slurred, knowing full well what she meant. My throat was dry, voice hoarse. Water. Definitely needed water.

“Only what you can manage.”

“Caught me by surprise.” I licked my parched lips and tasted ash. Gross. “Must have been the chemicals, whatever was burning. It’s never gotten away from me like that before.”

“It was a damned big fire, Ember. I should have known better.”

“Not your fault.”

A smile ghosted across her face. “I’m in charge. Everything is my fault.”

“I’m alive.”

“And probably poisoned.”

“Nah.” I tried to sit up and the ambulance tilted. “Okay, maybe. Everyone else all right?”

“Everyone else is fine.” She sat down on the ledge next to the gurney. Ash smudged her cheeks, giving them a hollow, carved-out look. “The blaze is almost out, thanks to you and
Tempest. Captain Hooper is laying down foam, though, just in case. Cipher and Onyx chased a few squatters out of the building next door, but I’m sure they’ll be back inside tonight. It didn’t spread.”

Good news. I loved good news.

“Any idea what started it?”

She shook her head. “The arson investigator hasn’t been able to go inside yet. Onyx flew a few rounds overhead once the smoke cleared, but couldn’t get a good look at anything. It’s an old building. Bad wiring and barrels of flammable material do not go well together.”

“No kidding.”

The nausea had subsided, along with most of the dizziness. Now all I needed was to get out of those wet blankets.

“So you’re quite taken with the electrician,” she said.

I blinked. How in the world did she—?

“Your body temperature spiked to one hundred four for a few minutes. His name came up.” She grinned and seemed more like a girlfriend than a concerned boss. “In relation to eyes and lips, if I recall correctly.”

My cheeks burned. Good God, what had my delirious brain let loose for her to hear?

“Relationships are tricky things,” she continued. “I won’t tell you to not see him, just to be careful. Not everyone really gets what we are, or how that affects our lives. There’s more to it than physical attraction. Hill House is our sanctuary.”

Good advice, but not something I wanted to hear at the moment. It was easy for her to lecture about our love lives;
her boyfriend was one of us, and therefore understood things by default.

Trance smiled. “Don’t worry, no lectures. At least not until you look a little less like a drowned rat.”

“Or feel less like one. Do we have fresh clothes?”

She reached out of my line of sight and produced jeans and a navy-blue sweatshirt. “Found these in the car. I think they’re Flex’s.”

With a lot of patience, time, and careful maneuvering in a tight space, I sat up and peeled out of the wet uniform. Some of the odor left with the clothes, and I used a dry blanket to towel off. Modesty didn’t even occur to me. The rear of the ambulance faced the side of a firetruck and no one passed by.

The navy sweatshirt—“Princess” emblazoned on the front in fuchsia stitching—fit, no problem. I rolled the cuffs of the jeans several times. Flex wore tall; I went back and forth between petite and regular. I felt strange bouncing around without a bra or panties, but it was either discomfort or a big wet spot on my butt.

I ran the blanket through my damp hair. “Should get Tempest over here for a quick blow-dry,” I mused.

Trance scooted to the end of the ambulance and twisted my clothes, wringing out the excess water. Each motion was an exercise in deliberation. Twist, squeeze, drip. Repeat. Motherly and kind, taking care of her people. She was the heart of our team, the blood in its veins. We were hers, and she was ours; in that moment, I knew it more fiercely than ever.

I finger-combed my hair. The orange lock flipped down in front of my face, and I batted it away with a huff of irritation.

“You’ll get used to it,” she said.

“What?”

“The color change. One day you’ll look in the mirror and won’t be able to remember what you looked like without it. The change becomes part of you.”

“Your experience, right?”

“Of course. It would be disingenuous to try to relate someone else’s.”

“Does Flex like being blue?”

“You’d have to ask her.”

Her diplomatic response hinted at “sometimes” as an answer. Flex was always confident and on top of things, as secure in her blue skin as anyone I’d ever known. She had the body of a model and personality of a game show host. The idea of uncertainty, of Flex disliking anything about herself, was unsettling.

“Maybe I will,” I said.

“Good.” Trance rolled my clothes into a bundle and tossed them at me. “You okay to walk?”

“Yeah, the dizzy spells are gone. Now I’m just thirsty and hungry.”

“We’ll get you fixed up at home.”

She slid out of the ambulance. I followed and was immediately confronted by an irritated paramedic. After a brief argument about going to the hospital for treatment that ended with my signing a form that said I refused, we went to join the others. Trance didn’t look happy with my medical decision, but she didn’t try to override me.

My jeans and sweatshirt were too warm for the late-afternoon
humidity. I pushed up the sleeves as we walked around the fire engine, toward the scene of organized chaos.

The basic frame of the warehouse still stood, with its blackened walls stretching dark fingers toward the sky. Water ran in small rivers across the uneven pavement, trickling past us toward the river basin. Firemen poked at the debris with axes, testing its doneness. A flock of reporters had taken up residence near a police car, reined in by a trio of uniforms. The reporters started shouting questions when we appeared. Trance was a favorite of journalists. She knew how to give repeatable quotes and good copy.

I knew that from experience.

She ignored them and navigated her way to an emergency rescue truck. Captain Hooper was holding court with Cipher, Tempest, and Flex. A shadow darted across the ground in front of us; Onyx swooped through the sky, still scouting from above. I always envied him his bird form and the freedom to fly unfettered through the air.

Tempest noticed me first. “Hey, Golden Girl, how do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been through the spin cycle,” I replied. “How’d you do?”

“One of my best performances yet, I think.”

“Yeah,” Cipher drawled, “no one blows hot air quite like you, Tempest.”

Tempest rolled his eyes and clutched his heart, pretending to be wounded. “Hey, Trance, your captive audience awaits. They need their sound bites for the evening news.”

Trance gazed over her shoulder at the flock. “Is it wrong to feel like a circus ringleader when I talk to them?”

I started to giggle. It caught in a cough and turned into an abbreviated snort.

“Good answer,” Flex said.

“I think Ember just volunteered to do reporter duty with me,” Trance said. “If you feel up to it?”

The other side of the microphone and minirecorder. This should be interesting. “Sure, but do you think my sweatshirt will give the wrong impression?” I asked.

Flex giggled successfully. “I think it’ll give you an image. Former journalist becomes superhero diva, film at eleven.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Flex, if I ever become a diva, you have my permission to tie me up, put me in a barrel, and dump me into the Pacific Ocean.”

“Sweets, if you ever become a diva, I’ll eat my tongue.”

I decided to take that as a compliment and just leave it alone. Trance whispered something to Cipher—it made him grin like a loon and tweaked my curiosity—and then strode toward the gaggle of reporters. I double-timed it to catch up and fell into step next to her. Questions flew at us the moment we were within shouting distance. I lost track of who asked what.

Good Lord, did I ever sound like that?

Trance stopped a few feet away, hands clasped loosely behind her back. I took a similar position slightly behind her on her right. The questions ceased almost immediately; they knew how this would play out. Trance’s violet gaze danced
over the crowd for almost a full minute before she selected someone.

“Go ahead, Shannon,” she said.

A middle-aged woman with a mop of unruly brown curls thrust her microphone forward. “Shannon Milton, Channel Four. The Rangers have kept a pretty low profile this past week. What brought you out today?”

Something flashed across Trance’s face, there and gone so quickly I couldn’t identify it, and I doubted anyone else noticed. “First of all, there hasn’t officially been a Ranger Corps in fifteen years. Six months ago, we separated from the former MetaHuman Control Group arm of the ATF, and we are now an independent organization. As you well know, but thanks for asking.” Shannon seemed unaffected by the barb. “As for why today, because we were called and our help was requested. We do what we can, when we can, and if someone asks, we respond.