Sapphire Flames

I held out my arms. The grizzly leaned over and hugged me to him.

I caught a glimpse of Alessandro, halfway to us, a chain saw in his hands.

“This is Sergeant Teddy,” I told him, leaning my head against the soft fur. “He won’t hurt me. He’s a pacifist.”

“Che gabbia di matti!” Alessandro said.

We might be a bunch of lunatics, but it didn’t matter. I was finally home.

The street in front of the warehouse was strewn with bodies. The streetlamps, which we turned on in an emergency, flooded the scene with bright electric light, and every detail of the corpses was clearly visible. Some had simply fallen, their expressions blank, neat bullet holes in their skulls. Those had to belong to Leon and my mother. They were the lucky ones. They died fast. The others lay contorted, their faces twisted into hideous masks by fear and pain. It took them a while to die and they knew it was happening. They felt it.

Ex-soldiers in the dark uniforms of Rogan’s private army moved around them, quick and efficient, all wearing hoods, gas masks, and gloves up to their elbows.

Runa sat in front of the motor pool on a huge tire, watching as Heart’s people hooked the bodies and pulled them onto plastic, vacuum sealing them like pieces of meat to be stored in the freezer. There was an odd look on her face, not exactly blank but tired and sort of satisfied.

She saw me. “I told them to just burn the bodies, but they didn’t listen to me.”

I came and sat next to her on the tire. Across from us at the other end of the motor pool Ragnar sat at the wooden table, his head tilted up. He was looking at the moon.

“I told him to stay inside.” Runa shook her head at her brother. “He didn’t. Those three bodies over there”—she pointed at the far right, where three fallen bodies formed a clump of arms and legs—“they’re his. He asked me if that meant he was now a werewolf, and now he’s staring at the moon and won’t talk to me.”

Alessandro walked over to Ragnar and sat down by him.

Runa looked at me. “Nobody listens to me. What the hell happened to you?”

“Flying scorpion ticks.”

Runa raised her eyebrows.

“Never mind that,” I told her. “What happened here?”

Runa took a deep breath, puffed her cheeks out like a chipmunk and let the air out. “Let’s see . . . You left. Your security dude, the one with the A name . . .”

“Abarca?”

“Yes, him. He came in to talk to your mom. He wanted to hire somebody, she said no, he got all upset and started ranting about authority issues and how he was in charge of security, and your mom lost her patience and told him he was being replaced. He freaked out. He actually screamed at her. And she got this weird look on her face.”

Oh no, oh please no. “Is he alive?”

“He was when he stormed out. Leon got between the two of them and told Abarca to start walking. Abarca said, ‘If that’s the way you want it, I’m walking and taking my people with me.’ Leon told him that if he did that, he shouldn’t count on severance pay. That the job wasn’t over until they were relieved. And then your mom said that deserters didn’t get severance pay. Abarca spat on the floor and took off.”

“I left for two hours. Two hours.”

“I know, right? Then your security guards rolled out, quick too. Fifteen minutes and they were gone.”

He left us defenseless. They wouldn’t have been able to leave so quickly unless they’d prepared in advance. Abarca must have made up his mind that if he didn’t get what he wanted, he’d be gone. The entire team must have been packed and ready to go.

They knew we were in danger. They knew there were children in the warehouse, and they just left us to die. I wanted to punch something.

“Then Montgomery showed up.”

“Augustine? Why?”

“Apparently Matilda’s aunt asked him to pick her up. Your mom wouldn’t let her go until Matilda called her aunt and confirmed it.”

Well, MII did have a division specializing in private security. Matilda would be safe with Augustine.

“Half an hour after that, two teams attacked in four of those things.”

Runa pointed inside the motor pool, where Grandma Frida was elbow-deep in the engine of a dented Guardian and humming softly. Two others waited on the left, in addition to the two she and Arabella brought from Keystone. The entire side wall of the motor pool was black with soot.

Grandma saw me looking, gave me a big smile, and went back to singing lullabies to the personnel carrier.

“Bug warned us when he spotted them, so we had time to set up. Leon took that street, on the left, and I took this one. Your mom was up there, in the attic thingy. She had wanted your grandma to take the tank out, but your grandma said, ‘Penelope, once you hit them with a tank, there isn’t much left, is there?’”

I can’t even.

“And then your mom said that all those vehicles would make a lovely funeral procession when we bury the children. She said maybe your grandma could paint them black to match the coffins.”

God.

“Then your grandma went to get the tank. There isn’t much else to tell. She shot the first car. It exploded, which was kinda cool. Then she knocked it out of the way with her tank and started chasing the other three cars with it. They made a circle around the warehouse. Whoever was driving the cars was pretty good, because I’ve never seen anyone drive backward that fast before. She banged another one with the tank, and then the bad guys decided to get out of the armored SUV things, and we started killing them. They had a pyrokinetic mage with them. That’s his corpse over there. He fireballed the warehouse. It caught on fire, which was exciting. Then I killed him. And then the cavalry showed up. Some of the bad guys ran away.”

Judging by the carnage in the street, most of them didn’t.

“I don’t know if you know, but Leon is psycho. I heard him talking to himself when shooting people. He used funny voices, Catalina.”

“Your brother thinks he’s a werewolf.”

“Good point.” Runa looked at the moon. “You didn’t tell me your mom was a sniper.”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“Of course, it is important. We both have moms who kill people for a living. Well, had, in my case, but still important. We have a lot in common, actually. Our dads are gone. We’re both the Head of our Houses. We both have younger male brothers or cousins who are crazy. We’re both murderers.”

Okay then. “Are you all right?”

“I’m great,” Runa said. “I can’t decide if I should start screaming because I killed nine people or celebrate because I avenged my mom. It felt good to kill them, but now I feel really guilty about it. I’m probably going to have a nervous breakdown once I process all of this.” She paused. “Yes, that sounds really nice. I think I’ll do that.”

“Okay, let’s go inside.” I got up and pulled her off the tire to her feet.

“But the dead people . . .”

“I think you’ve had enough dead people for today. Come on, let’s go inside, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, you’ll cry and you’ll feel better.”

I was dragging her inside when my sister pulled up in her armored Mercedes.

“Where were you?” I growled as soon as Arabella jumped out.

“I drove to Austin to our insurance company HQ. They had no right to cancel our policy.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

“They called the cops and threw me out.”

“Did you get arrested?” If she had, I would deal with it.

Her expression turned bitter. “No. They didn’t have the balls.”

“Don’t leave my brother alone with Alessandro,” Runa said. She tried to turn around. “He’s a killer. Don’t leave them alone!”

“I’ve got this,” Arabella told me.

“I’ll go and get Ragnar,” I promised.

Arabella took Runa’s other arm and led her into the warehouse.

I turned around and walked over to where Ragnar and Alessandro sat at the table. Ragnar watched me approach.

“Your sister is worried about you,” I told him.

“He’ll be fine,” Alessandro said.

“He asked her if he was a werewolf.”

Ragnar sighed. “It’s a quote from a book. ‘When war knocks on your door, bringing suffering and death, good men turn into savage wolves.’ Am I a wolf now?”

“It depends on your definition of a wolf.” I sat on the bench. “Sometimes wolves go rabid. They slaughter everything they see just because they can. But most wolves kill only to eat or to defend their pack. You seem like more of the second type to me.”

“It’s my fault.” Ragnar turned to me, his eyes clear and lucid. “If I hadn’t tried to kill myself, none of this would’ve happened.”

His memories had come back. Hell of a timing.

“That’s ridiculous,” I told him. “None of this is your fault in any way.”

“If I didn’t collapse like some stupid baby, Runa wouldn’t have asked you for help. People wouldn’t have attacked your home. They wouldn’t have tried to kill your family because of us.”