Sapphire Flames

The sword was next. I had a choice between a tactical saber, a machete, or a gladius. I went with the gladius. Solid black, with a sixteen-inch double-edged blade of 80CRV2 steel, it weighed a pound and a half and let me cut or thrust with equal efficiency.

A canister of mace was last, just in case.

I locked the box, locked the car, and ran to the front doors. Logic said that whatever security this place had, if it had any, would clear out the moment the two Guardians pulled into the parking lot. They would take pictures of the license plates, submit a report, and let the cops and insurance company sort it out.

The door was locked. I smashed the butt of the gladius’ hilt into the lower glass pane of the entrance door. The glass panel fractured. I cleared it with my blade and ducked through. The interior door took another couple of seconds and I ran into the gloomy old mall.

The inside of the Keystone Mall smelled of dust and decay. On my right, an entrance to an old movie multiplex gaped open, a black hole in the pale marble wall bordered by ornate plaster columns. The theater was a deathtrap. It was sectioned off from the rest of the mall, and the only way in or out lay through that entrance in front of me. The individual theaters had emergency exits to the outside, but I didn’t want to go outside. I wanted to stay in the mall and force them to fan out, searching for me.

I moved on.

A little farther, on my left, lay the food court, a large space with fast-food shops on one side. In the corner between the restaurants, a narrow tunnel led to the restrooms. The cheap plastic dining tables were still there, bolted to the floor, but all the chairs were gone. The air smelled of old corndogs.

Another dead end.

I passed the food court and paused at the top of the frozen escalator. The mall lay in front of me, a long narrow rectangle, two stories high and anchored by Macy’s on the left end and JC Penney on the right. Weak daylight sifted through the dirty panes of a slender skylight, illuminating the little shops lining the sides; the has-been shoe stores and fashion boutiques. Without merchandise, they were little more than bare rectangles with a single back room sectioned off from the main space. No place to hide there.

The two anchor stores were my best bet; they were large and confusing. Of the two, Macy’s would be more open, a vast expanse of waist-high counters with barely any interior walls. JC Penney offered more partitions and better places to hide. Plus it had Sephora. The name-brand cosmetics store had its own shop in the middle of JC Penney’s ground floor, a separate retail space defined by distinct black and white walls. Some Sephoras had three entrances, others had two, but in any case, it was a good place to set up an ambush.

I ran down the dead escalator and sprinted to the right.

The empty stores flew by. My steps sounded too loud in the cavernous mall, scattering echoes through the abandoned hallway. Traces of Fright Fest still lingered—a plastic curtain stained with fake blood hanging from Payless shoe store, a synthetic spiderweb in the broken window of a prom dress shop, a plastic prop knife on the floor . . . As if the place wasn’t creepy enough already.

Twenty people. At least two to watch from outside in case I came out, two each for the two escalators inside the mall to make sure I didn’t keep switching floors on them. Fourteen people to hunt me down. Way too many. I never tried to beguile more than three without going all out with my power.

The entrance to JC Penney loomed ahead, shrouded in shadow, like the mouth of a cave. The weak sunshine from the skylight barely reached it. Empty metal clothes racks crowded the floor, pushed all around at odd angles. Abandoned jewelry counters and wheeled displays added to the chaos, turning the inside of the store into an ominous labyrinth. The place was a mess and it was perfect.

I padded inside, running on my toes. Glass crunched under my feet. Someone must have taken a bat to the glass display cases. A cloying mélange of fruity scents hung in the air, the ghost of broken perfume bottles. To the right the boxy walls of Sephora waited, still painted black and white.

A thud echoed through the empty hallway. Glass shattered. The hunters were here.

I turned toward the Sephora. An empty counter blocked my way. I sidestepped it and saw the outline of a person in the gloom behind it.

I dropped to the floor, the gladius still in my hand. My heart hammered against my ribs. Crap.

That was too fast. They couldn’t have gotten here ahead of me. Was it some junkie or a squatter? Shooting him would sign my death warrant. The sound of the shot would carry. I might as well ring a bell and scream, “Here I am, come and get me.”

I strained, listening for any hint of a noise.

Nothing.

Maybe he hadn’t seen me. I inched to the right, trying to get around the counter in front of me. If I could get a better look . . .

The deep ink-black shadows under the counter shifted.

I froze.

An eerie rustling sound came from the darkness, the whispery noise of some sort of creature moving around. The stench hit me, a foul, sour reek of excrement and animal fur.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

Don’t see me. I’m not here. Just stay where you are.

The thing in the darkness crept forward.

It had to be a rat. Just a rat. Nothing special.

The thing shimmied closer.

Not a rat. Too big. An opossum? A raccoon? A small monster? I could stab it with my sword, but I didn’t want to kill it before figuring out what it was.

The dry staccato of claws on a concrete floor echoed softly. Click. Click. Click.

I lay perfectly still.

Click. Click.

Click.

A long black muzzle framed by matted hair emerged from under the counter. Two big round eyes stared into mine. The muzzle split open, showing sharp white teeth. A little pink tongue slid out and licked my nose.

A dog. A small, filthy, matted dog.

The dog licked my face again and whimpered.

Whoever was hiding behind the counter had to have heard it. I had to strike first.

I took a deep steadying breath, rolled to the right, came up on one knee, and lunged, thrusting my sword. The gladius sliced into fabric and fiberglass.

A zombie face, half rotten and stained with dry green pus, leered back at me with plastic eyes, its mouth twisted in a grin, showing off rotten yellow fangs.

Fuck!

I landed on my butt and let out a breath. The zombie mannequin laughed at me, a hideous sequined dress the color of blood hanging off its bony shoulders. Prom Queen Zombie. Fucking Fright Fest.

The little dog trotted over to me, curled up against my thigh, and licked my pant leg. Its black tail wagged, sweeping broken glass in all directions. You could barely make out its shape under the mass of matted fur.

I reached over and gently stroked its back. The tail wagged harder.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered. How had it survived here? What did it eat? On second thought, I didn’t want to know.

The dog stared up at me with big brown eyes full of endless canine devotion. It seemed to be saying, Please don’t leave me alone in the dark. I’m hungry and dirty and lonely with no one to take care of me.

The beam of a flashlight sliced through the gloom in the hallway behind me.

“Bad people are coming,” I whispered. “What am I going to do with you?”

The little dog scooted closer to me.

I scooped the dog off the floor. It was so light, it had to have been starving.

Another thud. They were getting closer.

If I left the doggie in the open, it would make noise and they would shoot it and me. No, that would not be happening.

I squinted at the store, taking in the width of the entrance, the distance to Sephora, and the piles of debris. I’d have to take off my shoes for this plan to work.

“Time to go.” I ran into Sephora. Here’s hoping I had time to prepare a nice surprise.

Ten minutes later, the hunter team entered JC Penney in a standard formation for clearing large rooms. There were three rules all SWAT and military teams lived by when searching a building: never enter alone, don’t move faster than you can think, and stay out of your partner’s line of fire. I had hoped for some wannabes who would wander around in groups of one or two doing the dynamic entry with dramatic jumping and running, but no. These people knew their business.

The first two hunters, dressed in black tactical gear and wearing ballistic vests, walked in at opposite sides of the wide entrance and halted, each of them covering their sector of the room, slow and methodical. They knew I was alone, and they had cleared the rest of the mall, so they had me cornered.

The two sentries stopped, just as I thought they would. The one on the right halted less than five feet from where I lay under dirty plastic stained with fake blood. I had arranged the debris into a pile of generic garbage identical to other such piles scattered around the mall and buried myself in it.

A five-man team moved forward between the sentries, passed them, and cautiously walked deeper into the store, heading for Sephora. There should have been more of them. They must have split up and left the second team upstairs to clear the upper floor.

The clearing team kept walking. Nobody spoke. No static came from their radios. Nobody wore low-light gear. The inside of the store wasn’t dark enough.

Five minds. I had hoped for smaller teams of two or three. I would have to beguile them with voice alone and do it fast. My magic took a little while to gain a hold. The moment the first word came out of my mouth, they would shoot at me. I needed to be heard but not seen. There was no margin for error.