38
Tean landed on the other side of the flames. If he’d been burned, he couldn’t feel it—he could only feel the rush of adrenaline, and the sense that everything else in his body had been dialed down.
I have walked through fire.
Beneath the thickening pall of smoke, the turret room was divided into two camps.
On one side, Kai stood with knife in hand.
On the other, Daniel and the girl with the shaved head made a thin line of defense in front of a cluster of teens.
They were dressed in everything from a tuxedo with a lace spill at the front to a full-length peacock-feather ball gown, and most of them were crying.
A few of them simply stood or sat, hugging themselves, eyes glassy and faces numb.
“—one step closer, and I’ll fucking murder you,” the girl with the shaved head was saying to Kai. “Let us go! We’re all going to burn to death.”
“What the fire touches, it purifies,” Kai said. “Dross is burned away. What remains is pure.”
“Help!” Daniel shouted, but his gaze was fixed on Kai; he still hadn’t noticed Tean. None of them had. “Tean! Jem! Somebody help!”
“I am helping,” Kai said. “You have been hurt. Badly hurt. By people who should have been protecting you. And now I’m helping you. What they’ve told you—”
The girl with the shaved head rushed him.
In one smooth movement, Kai clubbed her with the handle of the knife. She put out a hand like she was steadying herself, and it turned into a fall.
“Vyxyn!” Daniel shouted.
The boy started to move, but Kai spun around and warded him off with the knife.
Daniel’s eyes were wet, and his lips were parted as he tried to breathe.
Some of that was the smoke, Tean recognized.
He was only distantly aware of the heat at his back, but already his throat felt scraped raw by the smoke.
“It’s not going to happen,” Tean said.
Kai turned to face him. The knife burned with reflected fire.
“The transformation,” Tean said. “Whatever you think is going to change. You won’t become a skinwalker. You won’t be turned into a wolf. Whatever you think, it’s not going to happen.” Behind the mask, Kai stared at him. “You won’t be straight,” Tean said gently. “That’s not how it works.”
Air whistled as it was sucked into the growing blaze.
And then Kai laughed. “I already have changed. I have become more. Do you see what I am? Do you see what I’ve become?”
Tean took a sideways step.
Kai turned with him, following him with the knife.
“I see someone who had a horrible childhood,” Tean said. “I see someone who was abused and neglected. I see someone who is deeply divided about who he is. Ashamed of who he is, and yet unable to be free of it.”
“Ashamed? Ashamed?” The words rose in volume, their pitch twisting. “I have walked through fire! I am free!”
“I think you wish you were free,” Tean said.
“I think you’ve wanted to be free your whole life.
And instead, you’ve chosen to hide behind masks.
Because you were afraid of what it might mean, to be free.
To have to make a choice. And it was easier to be someone else, someone who didn’t have to choose. ”
Kai rasped a cough. His eyes cut back and forth as though he were trying to read something on Tean’s face.
“You felt free when you dressed up as Lupita Bonita.” When Kai didn’t say anything, Tean asked, “Didn’t you?”
Labored breathing answered him from under the mask.
“And you felt free when you put on the wolf’s mask. A different kind of freedom. Two very different disguises. Two very different versions of who you wanted to be.”
“I don’t want anything. I am as the right hand of God. I am the wolf separating the sick from the whole.”
“Tess knew. She had known you long enough. She knew you had tried drag. That’s why she had to die, isn’t it?
And you were afraid River would find them too, so then she had to die as well?
You told yourself that they were going to ruin everything.
You’d worked so hard to embed yourself at Rainbow House.
You were so close to Daniel now. You could take him whenever you wanted.
That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? You could have him.
And you didn’t know what you wanted to do with him. ”
“What?” Daniel said. He wiped his hands on his skirt. “Tean, we have to get out of here—”
“I know,” Tean said without looking at the boy. “I know, Daniel. Hold on.” Then, to Kai, he said, “You didn’t know what you wanted, did you?”
The mask hid everything. But Tean could sense the struggle before Kai growled, “I wanted to help him. I wanted to make him pure. Like me.”
“Tean!” Daniel was holding out a hand like he wanted to grab Tean’s sleeve. “We’ve got to go!”
The flames were higher now, and the heat scorched Tean’s back and side. He’d stopped sweating, or the fire was hot enough to lick it away now—neither possibility was good—and red-gold light danced along Kai’s blade.
The fire. Or the knife.
Keep Kai talking. Buy them all another minute.
Maybe two. If Kai’s hostages had been adults, Tean might have been tempted to rush the wolfman.
He had a knife, yes. But he would have been only one man against many.
With teenagers, though, it was out of the question.
And a part of Tean suspected that even with adults, the scenario wouldn’t have worked as he hoped.
People—ordinary people—wanted to play by the rules.
They wanted to survive. Jem had taught him that.
And so they went along, even if it was only one man with a knife.
“You weren’t made pure,” Tean said. “You weren’t changed. You’re still the same Kai Butler who hung a poster of a rodeo star over his bed.”
For a moment, Kai’s body slackened. And then every muscle drew tight, and the knife came up.
“You’re the same Kai Butler who fooled around with Scott Taylor.
You’re the same Kai Butler who knew what he wanted, and nothing his stepdad could do changed it.
So, high school drama. And makeup. And getting to dress up.
And when you were older, when you could sneak away, clubs and bars where no one would know you.
” He hesitated. “Was that how drag felt? You could be the person you wanted to be?”
“Stop talking,” Kai said.
“You want everyone to think that you’re different now.
Just like you tried to convince Zeb that he was different.
Just like you tried to blame Rydel. But you’re not different, are you?
If all you wanted was Daniel, you could have taken him months ago.
You like being here. You like dressing up.
You like getting to be someone else, someone you wish you could be. You want it.”
“Stop talking!”
“And you’re scared of what you want, so then you find someone you can hurt. You kill the things you want. But you still want them, don’t you? Is that who you were hurting when you tortured those people? Yourself? The part you can’t kill? The part you can’t get away from?”
“I said shut up!” Kai gave an abortive slash with the knife. “I’m helping them! I’m making them better!”
“No, you’re not. You hurt them. And then you killed them.
And you enjoy it. In part, because you’re a sadist. And in part, because you want to hurt that part of yourself.
But do you know why I think you really do it?
” Tean wet his lips, but the superheated air stole the moisture away again an instant later.
“You’re still a little boy looking at dirty photos and playing with yourself. ”
Kai’s howl wasn’t a wolf’s howl—it was a man’s cry, unhinged. He lunged at Tean.
Daniel darted into his path. His hand streaked up the way Tean had seen him do dozens of times with Jem, their silly slap game.
The blow connected, and Kai staggered and shook his head.
Daniel was panting, his cheeks pink, his face shiny with firelight.
He stepped forward, fist cocked for a punch this time.
And Kai backhanded him hard enough to send the boy stumbling across the room. He hit one of the sofas, and his legs went out from under him, and he lay on the floor. Someone screamed—Justin, Tean thought—and then he caught a whiff of urine as one of the children voided themselves.
Smoke made Tean cough, and the crackle of the fire was louder now—so loud that it seemed like it was coming from inside him, like the flames had taken up residence inside his head. The heat was a living thing, pulsing, pressing, withdrawing: hot, heavy nails on the side of his face.
“Let them go,” Tean said. “They’re children. If you want to purify someone, you can purify me.”
Kai swung his head, and the gesture was uncannily canine. From within the mask, those little broken mirrors stared back at Tean. He turned the knife in his hand.
“Let them go,” Tean said again. “Let them—”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” Kai screamed. “I’m not your son!”
He lunged at Tean again, and this time, there was no Daniel.
Kai came across the turret room in a pair of quick steps, the hand with the knife drawing back.
For Tean, everything seemed to slow. The snapping heat of the fire drew back.
The hollowness in his head beat like a drum.
Every eddy of air seemed visible in the thickening haze.
Kai’s hand shot forward. The blade turned yellow as it caught the light of the inferno.
And Tean did what he’d seen Jem and Daniel do a hundred times in their backyard: he pivoted, trapped Kai’s arm under his own, and stuck out one foot.
Kai’s momentum did the rest of the work.
Unable to change course, unable to catch himself, he tripped and fell.
He crashed face-first into the floor and slid into an old armchair tucked up against the window.
“Go!” Tean shouted to the stunned children. He shoved the armchair, and it toppled over on top of Kai. “Go!”
He scrambled for the knife, but the children huddled together, not moving. Then Daniel was there, shoving Justin toward one of the windows, grabbing a girl by the hand. “There’s a way out onto the roof,” he yelled over his shoulder.
It took a moment of struggle, and then one of the windows slid open.
Fresh air rushed into the room, cold and sweet.
Daniel helped Justin through first, and then, from the other side, Justin steadied the others as they came out onto the worn asphalt shingles.
Kai was starting to stir, his groaning barely audible over the growing sound of the flames. Tean adjusted his grip on the knife.
“Come on!” Daniel shouted.
The other children were already gone, and Daniel waited alone by the window. Tean circled the room, keeping his eyes on Kai. The wolfman pushed himself upright. He’d lost his mask, and the lower half of his face was covered in blood. A broken nose, maybe. A split lip. He stared back at Tean.
“Go,” Tean said when he reached Daniel.
“But he’s—”
“Now!”
Daniel shimmied through the window.
Tean watched Kai. Waited for the rush. The attack.
The flames, fed by the draft of fresh air, howled. Somewhere in the house, glass exploded. Light and shadow danced across Kai.
And Tean saw the boy. Only for a moment, but he was there. Before he had become the man.
Then he groped backward for the window. Daniel’s hand caught his, and the boy guided him so that Tean could keep an eye on Kai. But the wolfman stayed where he was.
Cold wrapped itself around Tean, and his heels settled on roofing that was soft, almost spongy. He coughed out the acrid smoke, drew in lungfuls of a winter night, and let Daniel steady him.
Sirens whooped. And someone was shouting—it took a moment for Tean to find Jem pointing at them, hollering, waving one arm overhead.
Tean waved back. A fire truck was already parked on the lawn, and a ladder was being moved into place against the roof.
A fireman crawled up the ladder, calling instructions to Justin and Vyxyn, and a moment later, the children began to make their way down the ladder.
Daniel’s hand tightened around Tean’s, and Tean let himself be led away from the turret.
He looked back only once, when he set his foot on the ladder.
The fire was brighter now, yellow and white, and although the smoke had thickened, Tean thought it was like looking into the heart of a star.
Kai stared back at him from within the turret, his dead eyes bright, awash in the restless glare of the flames.