Chapter 38 – Bells #2
My skin crawls.
"I've called for extraction," Stephen continues. "Rooftop access from the catwalk. Five minutes. You can stand down there and bleed, or you can let the songbird come home. Backup is on the way, as I'm sure you've heard."
Raf aims the submachine gun upward. His finger hovers outside the trigger guard.
"Take the shot," Rex growls from across the auditorium.
"I can't." Raf's jaw is tight. "He's behind the rigging."
Stephen smiles.
"Your brother begged me for those pills, you know.
The connections, the studio time, the supplies—I gave Nash everything.
He stuck the needle in his own arm. I just made sure he always had access.
" He examines the knife. "A troubled genius halfway to the grave already.
All I had to do was leave the door open. "
Rex doesn't move.
Doesn't breathe.
His hand on the ladder rung goes white.
The bastard smiles.
And something in my brain goes very, very quiet. The quiet that comes right before a terrible idea crystallizes into the only idea.
My eyes sweep the stage.
The massive burgundy curtains hang in heavy folds on either side of the stage.
The dusty velvet is so old and dry, it's practically tinder.
Above them, a web of rigging ropes stretches from the fly system to the catwalks.
Hemp ropes, not modern synthetics, because this opera house is a preserved landmark that hasn't been fully modernized.
And there, stage left, knocked on its side during the earlier fight, a wooden crate with its lid splintered open. Flash pots. Theatrical pyrotechnic charges. A handful of them scattered across the stage floor, silver cylinders with fuses curling from their tops.
I look up at the catwalks.
At the ropes.
At the curtains.
At the crate of flash pots sitting directly beneath the stage left curtain.
You don't chase a rat out of the rafters.
You smoke him out.
I'm moving before the thought fully forms.
"Bells?" Phoenix calls. "What are you—BELLS!"
I vault onto the stage. My boots hit the wooden boards and I cross to the spilled crate in four strides, grabbing the nearest flash pot and wedging it into the base of the stage left curtain where the velvet pools on the floor.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" Rex roars from the auditorium floor.
I don't answer.
I step back five feet, raise the gun, and aim at the crate.
The remaining flash pots are clustered together. A dozen silver cylinders with their charges intact, packed tight enough that if one goes, they all go.
"Bells, don't!" Phoenix cries.
"FUCK YEAH! DO IT!" Raf yells.
I pull the trigger.
The flash pots ignite in a cascading chain reaction—whump whump whump whump—each one feeding the next, white light so intense it sears my retinas even though I screw my eyes shut.
The velvet catches instantly.
I stagger back, shielding my face with my arm, as a hundred years of dust and dry-rotted fabric and ancient hemp fibers combust all at once.
The stage left curtain erupts into a wall of flame that climbs upward with horrifying speed, licking the arch, racing along the gathered folds toward the rigging above.
Ropes snap and whip as the flames devour them, sending counterweights crashing to the stage floor in explosions of splintered wood.
The catwalk shudders. Stephen grabs the railing with both hands, my knife clattering against the metal because he's still clutching it out of desperation to have a piece of me, and for the first time he completely loses his shit.
"YOU CRAZY BITCH!" he screams.
Fair.
Boots pound the auditorium floor behind me.
More guards flooding through the main doors, through side corridors, through every entrance like ants.
I don't know where my alphas are. I can feel them through the bond threads—alive, fighting, somewhere in the chaos—but I can't see them through the smoke pouring off the stage in black columns.
We're all going to fucking die if I don't take Stephen down. If he escapes, the mark will continue to torment me. He will continue to torment me.
And it has to be me.
Because I don't think he'll kill me.
Not if I can put on the best damn act I have yet.
The ladder rungs are hot enough to make me hiss when I start climbing.
Not burning yet, but the heat radiates from the stage fire in waves that make the air shimmer and my lungs clench with every breath.
Smoke rolls past me in black currents, and I hold my breath on the worst of it and keep climbing.
My arms are shaking. The shit Stephen drugged me with is still gumming up my system and my muscles feel like they're wrapped in wet cotton, but I've been climbing shit I shouldn't since I was a kid and fear is a fantastic motivator.
I clear the top and haul myself onto the catwalk.
The metal grating vibrates under my hands and knees as I scramble to my feet.
The fire below has turned the opera house into a furnace, orange light churning upward through the catwalk lattice.
The painted ceiling above me—gods and dragons eating each other in a bloodbath that seems both appropriate and inappropriate for an opera house—is alive with reflected flame.
Stephen's trapped up ahead.
Trapped because I'm behind him.
He spins when he hears my boots on the grating.
His single remaining eye widens. Blood from the destroyed socket has dried in a dark crust down the right side of his face. My grandfather's knife glints in his grip.
I want my fucking knife back.
"You followed me up here," he says. "You actually followed me up here." A broken laugh rips out of him. "But you came up here. To me."
"Yeah." I take a step forward. The catwalk sways and I grab the railing. "I did."
His eye searches my face. Looking for the trick. Looking for the weapon.
I don't have one. The gun is shoved in the back of my pants because if he saw it, he actually might shoot me then.
I have to convince this fucker I want to be carried off in his stupid helicopter like a damsel in distress.
I've got nothing except the one thing that's always worked on Stephen Hughes.
Performance.
"You know why?" I let my voice crack just a hair. Just enough. My fingers loosen on the railing and I let my shoulders drop, let the exhaustion I've been fighting show in every line of my body. "Because you're right."
Stephen goes still.
"I've been lying to myself. Lying to all of them. Pretending I chose this when the truth is—"
My voice breaks. And that part's real, not acting, because of the fucking heat and the smoke.
"—the truth is I'm scared, Stephen. I'm so fucking scared."
Stephen's face warms up and softens, which is the grossest thing I've ever seen. "You don't have to be scared," he murmurs, taking a step toward me. "Not anymore. I'll take care of you. I've always taken care of you."
I take another step forward.
Ten feet between us.
The catwalk groans and lists to the left. We both grab the railing.
"Remember the roses?" he asks, and his voice has gone dreamy and reverent. "Every show. Every single show, I sent them. Because you deserved beauty, songbird. You deserved someone who saw you."
"You saw me," I whisper.
Eight feet.
"I've always seen you. The real you. Not the disguise. Not the boy you pretend to be." His chin lifts. "I knew the moment I heard you sing. You were meant to be mine."
Six feet.
Close enough to see the ruined socket weeping fluid. Close enough to see my grandfather's knife trembling in his grip, the B shining in the firelight.
"Come with me," Stephen urges. "The helicopter's almost here. We'll start over. Somewhere no one knows you. Somewhere you don't have to hide. You can be my girl, and nothing more."
He extends his free hand, palm up, fingers open.
It’s an invitation.
A command dressed up as tenderness.
"My songbird."
Above us, the rooftop access hatch rattles in the wind. Through the warped grating beneath my feet, flames lick upward, the heat so intense my feet are getting hot through my boots.
I take one more step.
"There's just… one problem, Stephen," I say, hesitating.
My hesitation draws him closer.
His fingers twitch toward me.
I grab his wrist and wrench the knife from his hand in one twisting motion that tears the bone handle free of his sweat-slick grip.
I flip the blade in my hand and his eye goes wide.
"Girls bite too."
I drive my knife into the side of his neck.
Right where he marked me all those years ago.
The blade sinks in with a wet, grinding resistance that I feel all the way up my arm and into my shoulder. His blood is hot, disgustingly hot. It spills over my fingers and down the bone handle in a rush.
Stephen's mouth opens.
No sound comes out.
His single eye is still wide with surprise. Like he genuinely didn't think I had it in me to fight back.
I rip the knife free.
Blood arcs from the wound and Stephen staggers backward. His hip hits the railing. The weakened metal buckles outward with a screech and for one suspended moment he hangs there, one hand clutching his throat.
His body tips backward over the railing and drops.
I watch him go.
He falls in silence, or maybe I've just lost my hearing from the roar of the fire and the blood pounding in my ears. He drops through the smoke and the churning orange light, his hair catching flame before he hits the stage. The burning curtain folds over him like a shroud.
The crescent scar on my neck screams.
It hurts so fucking bad, for a second, I think he shot me in the throat somehow. I double over on the catwalk, puking my guts up, both hands gripping the railing and the bloody knife clattering against the grating. My knees buckle.
The incomplete mark is dying.
The bond severing, the biological tether between my body and his snapping like a rope pulled past its breaking point.
It hurts so much I can't see.
Can't breathe.
The smoke is in my lungs. In my eyes. The catwalk is swaying and the metal is groaning and the fire is climbing and I'm going to pass out on a catwalk in a burning opera house and…
Arms.
Strong arms wrapping around my ribs, hauling me upright, pulling me against a massive chest.
"I've got you." Phoenix's voice, thick with smoke. "Bells, I've got you. Hold on to me."
I can't. My fingers are slick with blood and my arms won't cooperate and my vision is pulsing in and out like a strobe light.
He doesn't need me to hold on.
He lifts me against his body and moves.
I'm barely aware of anything but the sound of metal being pried apart, Raf shouting over the roar, and then cold air hitting my face hard enough to make me shiver in spite of the heat.
I suck it in, my lungs convulsing as they try to expel the smoke and take in oxygen simultaneously. I'm coughing so hard my ribs cramp.
"Raf!" Phoenix shouts. "Here!"
Hands take me. Different hands. Calloused in different places, grip tighter, more urgent. Raf pulls me against his body and I feel his heartbeat jackrabbiting against my cheek.
"Bells." His voice breaks. "Fucking hell—"
He's saying other things. In English, in Spanish. I can't parse any of it. The world is tilting like crazy and the rooftop gravel bites my knees because my legs aren't working.
Then Rex is there, his arms closing around me from behind. He's panting and bleeding, and when I look up at him, he looks fucking terrified as he snarls my name, the feral light in his one working eye burning brighter than the flames.
My head falls back.
The full moon hangs above us, impossibly bright against the dark sky stained orange by the smoky fire consuming the opera house below. Behind and below us, the building roars and crackles and the sirens are getting closer and the whole fucking world is burning.
But I can see the sky.
Open sky.
No cage.
No bars.
Rex's arms tighten.
Phoenix's hand cradles the back of my skull.
Raf's forehead presses against mine, his breath warm on my lips.
My eyelids are suddenly impossibly heavy.
The moon blurs and everything goes dark.