MORTAL COILS (64 page)

Fiona
ran, dragging the girl behind her. Eliot caught up, grabbed Amanda’s other
hand, and together they half pulled, half lifted her along.

On
either side mechanical rides on fire clattered along, and the concession stands
crackled and collapsed into smoldering heaps.

They
sprinted to the nearest exit: the front gate of Haley’s scrapyard. The gate was
a mock-up of a carnival entrance with turnstiles and two large plywood clowns
that flanked the ticket booth. Outlining the clowns were a hundred brilliant
bulbs—half of which were dead.

The
clowns stared at them with mocking smiles that gave Fiona the creeps. If she
had had the extra time, she would have cut their eyes out.

Where
had that thought come from? She hated fighting . . . now she was thinking about
cutting people’s eyes out?

She
had to stay focused. Get out of here. Save all their lives. Win.

Behind
them was a thunderous crack.

Fiona
turned.

The
flaming Ferris wheel tore loose from its support frame. Four stories of
circular steel teetered and tottered and then rolled—smashing game booths and
ticket stands, leaving a wake of fiery destruction.

She
stopped. So did Eliot. They stared, helpless before the wobbling mass.

It
came straight for them.

Amanda
screamed. Eliot dragged her along. Fiona was right behind them.

Closer
to the front gate, she saw it was chained and padlocked. She could cut through,
but that would take time. Just a few seconds—that’s all it would take for the
Ferris wheel, though, to catch up and crush them.

She
glanced back: the wheel bashed into one side of the lane, destroying a lemonade
stand, teetered to the opposite side, flattening the ring toss—back and forth,
blocking any escape.

She
grabbed Eliot’s shoulder and jerked him to a stop.

“Can’t
outrun it,” she panted. “We have to dodge it.”

He
turned and watched the flaming wheel bear down on them, transfixed, then he snapped
out of it and nodded, understanding.

Fiona
tried to judge the wheel’s momentum, but it wobbled crazily right and left,
then right over an ice cream truck, ricocheting back to the left.

“Go!”
she yelled. “Now—to the other side.”

They
ran across the lane.

Tons
of flaming metal screeched and sparked past them.

Fiona
smelled burning hair—hers. Eliot turned and shielded Amanda.

Then
the heat was gone. It had passed them . . . and while the flames had singed a
little, it had thankfully not burned any of them.

The
wheel hit the front gate, crashed through the turnstiles, barreled into the
barbed-wire-and-chain-link fence, slowed, stopped . . . stood there for a
heartbeat, then teetered and fell with an agonizing crash.

Flames
and sparks leapt into the sky. The grinning plywood clowns caught on fire.

And
Millhouse’s hissing laughter filled the air.

Fiona
spun around.

Millhouse
stood a dozen paces from them, blocking the way back. Half his body was somehow
still burning. It should have been reduced to ash long ago.

Fiona
wanted to move, but there was nowhere to run. Everything was on fire.

Millhouse
took a step closer. “Right where I wanted you,” he whispered. “In the middle of
my ring of fire.”

“You
planned this?” Fiona yelled.

She
should’ve been terrified. Why wasn’t she? Something felt wrong inside her . . .
broken or missing.

“They
said you would come. So I got it all ready.” As Millhouse spoke, he exhaled
wisps of smoke. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to set you free. Something I
wish they’d done to me a long time ago.”

“Shotgun,”
Eliot whispered to Fiona. “Tell me you’ve got it.”

She
shook her head.

Fiona,
Eliot, and Amanda took three steps back, but the heat from the fallen Ferris
wheel was too great. Any farther and they’d be roasted alive.

Millhouse
advanced on them. He brought his right hand to his left, and it ignited. He
screamed and laughed.

“Your
violin,” Fiona said to Eliot.

“Yes!”
Millhouse shook one leg in a parody of a dance. “Play me a jig, devil boy. I
like your music. So does the fire.”

Amanda
buried her face in Eliot’s shoulder and whimpered.

There
was no time for music. By the time Eliot got his violin out and started
playing, Millhouse would be on them.

Fiona
took a step in front of her brother, placing herself between him and the
burning monstrosity of a man.

“The
brave one,” Millhouse sputtered, now completely engulfed in flames. “They said
you might try to fight.”

“I’m
not going to try anything.”

“Are
you crazy?” Eliot whispered. “What you doing?”

Fiona’s
pounding heart slowed and the heat inside her cooled. No creep was going to
hurt her or her brother. A chill spread through her body, the same sensation
she’d felt when she had tried to brain Uncle Aaron with that yo-yo.

But
she wanted to do a lot more than that to Millhouse: she wanted to stop him.
Permanently.

She
pulled the rubber band on her wrist, stretching it the length of her arm.

“It’s
going to take more than that to slow me down, girl.” Millhouse shambled toward
her, fire dripping from his reaching arms.

“No!”
Amanda cried.

Fiona
darted forward. She ducked inside his reach.

All
Millhouse had to do was close his arms around her. She’d be cooked.

A
split second before that, however, the leading edge of her rubber band caught
him. It made a line from his left shoulder, across his body, to his right hip.

Fiona
pushed through—all the way.

Millhouse’s
skin, muscle, and bone offered no more resistance than a whisper of spider
silk.

49

SOMETHING
VERY WRONG

Fiona
slammed the door to her bedroom shut and caught her breath.

They
had dutifully reported the rescue of Amanda Lane from the scrapyard as
Grandmother drove them back home. Fiona and Eliot had unceremoniously been
dumped at the Oakwood Apartments, while Grandmother and Cee had taken Amanda
Lane to the hospital.

Grandmother
ordered the two to rest. She would take the news of their success directly to
the Council.

Fiona
ran all the way up the stairs to get away from them and be alone. Neither
Grandmother nor Cee had even asked how she had stopped Mill-house. Did they
already know? Or did they just not care?

She
surveyed her room: a globe, three thousand books lining her walls, and her desk
with neat rows of sharpened pencils and a blue Corona manual typewriter.

She
hated it all. Fiona had spent her entire life in here, reading and learning . .
. and what did any of it mean? What did passing the Council’s test mean?
According to Aunt Dallas’s threads she was supposed to die in less than a day.

Maybe
it was all meaningless. Everyone died in the end, right? Even the unstoppable
Mr. Perry Millhouse.

Especially
Millhouse.

She
couldn’t stand to think of him or what she’d done.

Fiona
knocked over her globe and it rolled to the far corner—Antarctica faceup. She
went to her desk and swept off the papers, reference books, and pencils with a
grand gesture. The typewriter tipped over, hit the floor, and pinged.

That
felt good. She didn’t have to think. Papers and pencils didn’t fight back . . .
or bleed.

She
moved to her bookshelves and pulled out armfuls of histories and biographies
and ancient never-before-published manuscripts—tossed them all into the center
of her room.

There
was a scratching at her door. Eliot, puppylike, was waiting for her out there.

She
opened her mouth to tell him to go away, but as she did this, she tasted
chocolate—and felt bile rise in her throat.

She
jumped across her room, fumbled with the lock, brushed past Eliot, and threw
herself into the bathroom.

She
got the door locked behind her and the toilet seat up just in time.

Her
stomach heaved, and a river of black fluid spilled from her open mouth and
spattered the porcelain.

She
shuddered and curled into a ball and the stuff poured from her—gallons and
gallons of it.

She
reached up and barely had the strength to flush.

“Fiona?”
Eliot asked from the other side of the door.

“Go
a—”

She
threw up again. There couldn’t possibly be room inside her for all this.

The
smell of it was unmistakable: vanilla cream, cherry cordial, peppermint glaze,
hazelnuts . . . but more than anything else, milky curds of chocolate.

It
was as if every truffle, toffee, and butter cream she’d eaten since she had
first opened the heart-shaped box had stayed inside her—and was now vacating
the premises.

Well,
good. She didn’t want that stuff inside her. The way they had made her feel had
been great for a few moments, but it was unnatural, unhealthy, and something
else was very wrong about them.

She
heaved again.

This
was the same fluid that had oozed out when she cut that arterylike fiber. Had
she damaged something inside herself? How could that be? The threads were just
in her imagination, weren’t they?

The
chocolates, though, had attached themselves to those imaginary threads . . .
linked themselves to her destiny. What choice had there been other than to cut
them away at the point of attachment?

Just
as there hadn’t been any choice when she turned and faced Mill-house.

Dizziness
washed over her. She didn’t want to remember this. She wished the memory of the
fire and the blood would just go away.

Fiona
had had to do it to protect Amanda and Eliot.

She
had stretched the rubber band out before her in a taut line—so taut that it had
become a nearly invisible edge as she focused on it.

There
had been one thought in her mind: cut.

Millhouse
moved toward her, his arms outstretched. He wanted to pull her close and let
his fire catch.

But
Fiona had been faster.

She
darted inside his reach, pressed her rubber band to his chest, her arms wide
enough so the line made an angle from his shoulder across his torso to his hip.

Cross
my heart and hope to die if I should ever tell a lie.

She
cut him.

The
rubber band penetrated the melted layers of his coverall, the outer charred
skin, muscle, popping organs, bones—all soft and without resistance—then passed
through his spine and out the other side.