Then the floor slapped my back and I looked up into a blaze of light, streaming and boiling around a black void. The guardian breathed out an odor of tombs and poised above me, confused. I pointed at Sergeyev.

The beast reared back, spinning and shrieking, and its tail of pure pain lashed across me. I gasped and sank toward the dark as screams erupted nearby.

The creature plunged toward Carlos and Sergeyev, forms of fire and shadow, engaged to death. It whipped a circle around the two figures. For an instant, the awesome horror reflected in Sergeyev's shifting mirror, spinning, its terrible jaws agape. Then the beast reared and the ghost shrieked as the black creature swallowed him and dove down, through the buckling floor, vanishing under a boil of black smoke and the reek of inferno. The scream swelled and roared, consuming, powered upward and outward by the flick of the flaming tail.

Crackling and groaning pierced the vacuum of sound left by the monster's rushing exit. I rolled to my knees and looked around. Alice lay still nearby, skewered to the floor between Edward and Cameron. The house was still shuddering, the flames of the circle now gobbling at the floor and walls, gouting noxious smoke. Behind the ring of fire, Carlos struggled, making weak, broken movements, pulling himself up against the organ, which shivered and collapsed against itself, sending him to the burning boards. Cameron leapt up, but Edward grabbed him before he could cross the fiery line. I curled into an anguished crouch.

Edward touched my shoulder and I shuddered. "Out," he ordered. "Before the house collapses."

Mara dragged me to my feet and toward the door. The house seemed ramshackle and doomed, staggering beneath us as we stumbled and crawled for the stairs. I glanced back, blinded by smoke, tears, and pain, ears ringing, seeing the parlor in flames, three dark shapes moving within it, tearing the organ to pieces.

Halfway down the tilting staircase, Mara and I met Quinton coming up. He grabbed me by the shoulders and I winced, yelping, the pain so sharp I gagged on it. Ignoring that, he hustled both of us out through the kitchen at a furious pace, yanking something out of the electrical panel with gloved hands as we passed.

I gasped. "Cameron, Carlos—"

Quinton snapped at me, "They can take care of themselves. They're vampires. We're not!"

I whimpered and folded myself around the memory of pain at my core. Quinton and Mara dragged me down the rain-washed driveway and out the gate. I was all heels and slippery ankles. Between the two of them, they shoved me into the backseat of the Rover. Mara climbed in beside me, shaking. Quinton pickpocketed my keys and drove through the grim, ash-darkened rain. Finally, he parked on a side street and turned to look back at me.

"I think this is a safer place, but you can see it from here."

My head clearing in fresher air, I raised my head. "See what?"

"The museum. It's burning."

Chapter 31

Car alarms shouted in the distance as frightened people tottered into the street and toward the hellish glow. No one seemed to find it strange that we were sitting in our vehicle, looking dazed and injured. They were all as confused and frightened as we were.

As we three battered humans sat in the Rover, we could see the Madison Forrest Historical House Museum consumed in a conflagration even the rain couldn't slow. A column of fire crowned the night-darkened hillside, the shape of the house becoming obscure in the black smoke, white steam, and flickering yellow light. For a while, only the sounds of the car alarms made any impact on the night. In a few minutes, fire crews arrived in their hopeless cacophony, attacked the fire, but fell back, bewildered by its fury. They turned their hoses on the grounds to keep the fire from spreading and then gave up and watched the mansion burn. We stared at it and at each other and felt as helpless as the firemen and the wandering neighbors.

The shape of the building remained bright as noon to me even as the walls began to crumble, Grey memory holding the energy in place as the grid reabsorbed and distributed the overflow in its own time. How long would the ghost of the house linger? I wondered.

Someone tapped on Mara's window. We all looked and saw a white face streaked with black under a tangle of gold and black straw. Mara opened her door.

"Cameron! You're all right!"

He pulled a face. "I'm kind of crispy around the edges." His long hair was gone below the shoulders, singed off by the heat of the fire. The rest was ragged, smoke-shot and heat-fried, his mustache just blackened stubble. "Carlos isn't doing so great, though."

"Where is he?" Mara demanded, stepping out of the truck into the running gutter.

"Over there," Cameron said, pointing into a darkness of bushes.

She looked into the truck at Quinton. "Come on," she ordered.

He looked at me. "You OK?"

I suppressed a cough and answered, "Yeah."

He nodded, then got out of the truck and followed Cameron and Mara into the dark. In a minute or two they returned, supporting a blackened, shambling figure between them. His head hung and he seemed much smaller, as if the fire had consumed part of him. His three guides helped Carlos into the rear compartment. He collapsed on his back and lay still in a settling funk of wet ash. I peered at him over the seat back, my guts twisting. The others scrambled in.

Mara frowned. "He doesn't look good."

"He got pretty burned up," Cameron explained. "I dont think he can see, either. I–I hope he'll be all right. Edward said he would…"

A thin whisper floated up. "Eventually." Carlos sighed and lapsed back into stillness.

I shivered. "Can we get out of here?" I begged.

Quinton started the Rover and crept through the throngs of stopped cars and wandering humans.

"What about Edward?" Mara asked.

Cam fumbled with his seat belt in blackened fingers. "He got Carlos and me out to you guys, then he left."

"Ungrateful bastard," Quinton muttered.

"No," said Cameron. "He had a lot of other stuff to take care of, what with Alice and everything else. He didn't have a choice."

"Alice was that harpy who attacked us? Is she dead, then?" asked Mara. She shot me an odd look.

Cameron gave a hollow laugh. "Well, yeah, but I don't know what happened to her. She was still pinned to the floor and we had to finish breaking up the organ, so we left her there. The circle kept most of the fire back for a little while, but by the time we were done, the whole room was blazing like hell. We had to bail out a window and I couldn't spot her. I guess she burned up with the house, but Edward wasn't sure. He thought she'd crawled away somehow. I didn't think anything scared vampires, until tonight. That fire… like some nightmare that's going to come for you and eat your heart." He shivered. "It would have eaten us if it could have."

Mara faked a reassuring smile. "You finished your job, in spite of it. That's courage."

"Or stupidity," Cameron added.

"Hey, where are we going?" Quinton interrupted.

"My house. Ben will be having kittens by now."

Quinton remembered the way and pointed the Rover toward Queen Anne Hill. The rest of the trip was silent except for the grumbling of the engine and the hiss of the wet road beneath the tires.

Albert glowered as Mara and Cameron helped Carlos down to the basement. He glared at me and made a face I interpreted as frustration before vanishing after them.

I huddled on the porch step. Quinton handed me my truck keys. I took them in shaking hands. "Are you all right?" I asked. "I was worried—"

He shrugged. "I'm fine. But I've got to go. I've got a few things to take care of myself. I didn't expect something like this to happen, so I need to take care of that little oversight. Don't worry. It'll be all right. I'll be in touch."