Chapter 11 The Iron Giant #3
Atticus’s brows shot up. “Oh, well, in that case… Most deaths in fires aren’t from being burned alive, they’re from what you breathe.
Carbon monoxide and other combustion products steal oxygen from the blood and brain within minutes, and cyanide from burning plastics can shut down cellular respiration just as fast. If the airway is hit by superheated air, the upper airway swells and can close in minutes to hours.
If none of that knocks her out right away, massive burns, fluid loss, and shock will kill over the next several hours. ”
“Hours…” Zane said faintly.
“She’s not in great shape,” August reminded. “If she’s lucky, she won’t last long.”
“Wait.” Bev’s voice cracked, raw, almost breaking on its own fear. “Zane, Zaney. I’ll go away. I’ll disappear. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I lied. I’ll give you—”
“You’ll give him nothing,” Thomas said, stepping aside so Zane could see the bull head-on.
The air between them shimmered faintly from the heat.
The brass hide of the bull gleamed like a living thing, its hollow belly promising retribution.
His hand touched Zane’s shoulder and squeezed once. “You’ve already taken enough from him.”
Felix’s hand found Zane’s and curled tight. Across Zane’s other side, the twins flanked him. Their presence felt gravitational, their silence speaking more than words could. Asa was the mountain in the middle, an immovable monolith of calm.
“Put her in,” Thomas said.
August stepped forward. He and Aiden each took an arm—gloves against skin—a choreography of efficiency learned from years of similar tasks.
They manhandled Bev to the hatch with clinical indifference.
She screamed, she shouted, she swore. The sound of it scraped the air raw, like broken glass.
She writhed as well as a woman with no fingers could.
For a second she craned around Noah’s shoulder and found Zane’s eyes. It was a last, sticky dart aimed for the softest place.
“Zaney,” she wailed, frantic now. “Don’t let them—”
“This isn’t his decision,” Asa snapped. “It’s ours.
Zane’s only here so he knows you’re actually dead and can’t hurt him anymore.
He can’t stop this. He can’t save you. You were dead the moment you stepped foot on this property.
All you can do now is hope you go into shock and die before you learn what it’s like to be cooked alive. ”
“You’re all monsters,” she screeched. “You’ll pay for this. You’ll pay. You’ll—”
Archer rushed forward, snagging Bev’s face in one hand. “Shut up before I take your tongue, too.”
Asa’s palm came up, blocking Zane’s view, tipping his head up.
“Look at me,” he repeated. Zane did. “This isn’t your fault.
I made the decision. We made the decision for you, as your family.
You’re not killing her. We are. She meets the code.
Thomas made the call. This is all by the book.
You don’t have to feel bad about this, Lois. ”
They wrestled Bev inside. Her screams warped, muffled, as her shoulders wedged through the opening. The interior was polished bronze, reflective enough to throw her terror back at her. Bronze rang dully where her shoulder struck. She sucked air like it could save her.
Aiden fastened the hatch with a heavy, satisfying clunk, the sound echoing through the room like a gavel’s final strike. He patted the bull’s side, smiling faintly, admiring the seal, not the suffering.
Silence. Then the smallest sound from within, muffled and horrid. “Help.”
The word crawled out, thin, animalistic, reflexive.
Aiden stepped back to the rig. He handled the valves like a pianist touching ivory, each turn deliberate, reverent. August moved to the head, fascinated. “Listen for the resonance shift,” he told no one in particular.
Bev thudded around in the space, but she was no longer able to form the words needed to make Zane feel worse than he already did. Her fists—what was left of them—thumped weakly against the bronze, the sound dull and hollow, like the heartbeat of something already dead.
Thomas tipped his chin, unreadable. Then: “Light it.”
Zane flinched. His mouth opened. He didn’t speak.
Asa did. “Light it,” he said.
Aiden cracked the feed.
The hiss of gas filled the space first, sharp and sterile, then came ignition.
Heat bloomed like the sun. The first flames licked under the belly, trembling blue-gold, then steadied, breathing in and out.
The smell of propane mingled with scorched dust, the tang of oxidized metal and something faintly sweet.
The temperature climbed; the bronze exhaled a low moan, or maybe that was the first brush of Bev’s scream caught in the chambers.
Nico squeezed his eyes shut. Levi kept his eyes open, both horrified and fascinated. Arsen whistled, Cree frowned. Noah winced. Jordan turned his body toward Cree, pressing his face to his shoulder. The light painted everyone the same color, the fire reflected in sweat and pupils.
Asa, Felix, and Avi were focused entirely on Zane, keeping him turned away from the metal beast.
Lucas hovered grimly beside Atticus and Jericho but said nothing. Jericho watched his brother and Zane.
Inside, Bev howled. The sound hit the pipes and came out wrong, a strangled baritone bellow that vibrated the air. It was mechanical and wet at once, something that didn’t belong to any species. A death hymn.
Zane wrenched himself away from Asa. At first, Thomas thought he might rush to his mother’s aid, but instead he bent and vomited on the floor. Noah and Felix rushed to him, rubbing his back as he continued to dry heave.
“Holy shit,” Mal whispered.
“This kind of takes some of the fun out of it,” Avi muttered, earning a slap from his twin.
The smell arrived slowly…a creeping, smoke that clung to the back of the throat.
August tilted his head, listening, as if the pitch could tell him everything. “Hear the shift?” he asked Mal, almost tender. “That’s the inner wall heating faster than the outer.”
“Thermal gradient,” Mal murmured reverently. “It’ll sing.”
It did. The bellow thickened into a deeper resonance, the bull finding its voice, the chambers shaping a scream into something animalistic once again.
The sound hit Thomas in the chest like pressure, vibrating bone, reverberating through him like a tuning fork.
The room glowed with heat; shimmering air made faces stutter at the edges, like ghosts flickering in and out of focus.
Asa crossed the room to Zane, shooing the other two away from him. “He’s had enough,” he said. “I’m taking him to bed.”
He looked at Avi and Felix. “Are you coming?”
They looked around at the others like they were surprised that Asa was speaking about their plans in front of the whole family.
Thomas supposed that knowing they were all in a relationship was different from hearing it confirmed aloud, in plans that had them spending the night together, theoretically in one room… and one bed.
“Yeah,” Felix said. “She doesn’t deserve this level of vigilance.”
To Avi, he said, “Let’s go.” Then, with a faint, exhausted smile: “Carry me. My feet are killing me.”
Avi smiled, sweeping Felix up bridal style. “You got it, kitten.”
As they disappeared toward the door, the glow from the bull licked across their retreating silhouettes, haloing them.
“Come on, Lois. Let’s go to bed,” Asa said gently.
They all watched, looking as awestruck as Thomas felt by Asa’s softness with Zane. The way Asa spoke to him—low, coaxing, reverent—felt like witnessing a solar eclipse. The kind of thing you shouldn’t stare at directly, but couldn’t look away from.
It was only after the four had left that Adam jerked away from the wall. “We all saw that, right? That wasn’t some kind of mass hallucination, right?”
“It’s kind of weird, right? Seeing Asa act all…human?” Levi commented.
“Zane,” Bev gasped from inside, the sound a warped, animal wail. “Zane, please—please—”
They all looked on, unimpressed. Her voice was no longer recognizable, just a guttural plea scraping against metal. A last, pitiful echo of something that once thought it was power.
Thomas walked as close as he dared. “He left. He didn’t even care enough to watch you die. You’re nothing to him anymore.”
The bull’s belly glowed faintly in the dimming light. The air still shimmered, heat coiling upward.
“You can all go enjoy the rest of your night,” Thomas said, before looking at Atticus with a smile. “Or retire for the evening. The kids are likely already tucked in bed and asleep for the night. Aiden and I will take care of this.”
Once they were alone, Thomas crossed to Aiden, wrapping his arms around him. Aiden smelled faintly of smoke and cold metal. Beneath it was something grounding, spicy. Home. Another bizarre sound exited from the bronze monster in the center of the room, a wet hiss, almost a sigh.
“Should we let it keep going?” Aiden asked.
Thomas turned to glower at the metal coffin.
“She doesn’t deserve an easy death.” He paused, head tilted, listening.
Somewhere under the hiss, he thought he could still hear the faint echo of the bull’s bellow.
After a moment, he said, “But I’m sure she’s suffered enough.
If she’s even still alive. Douse the fire. ”
Aiden nodded, dampening the flames. The roaring softened to a cavernous growl, then a hiss. The air cooled by degrees, the heat bleeding away. The bronze ticked as it contracted. Inside, the sounds dwindled from animal to nothing at all.
Aiden donned a thick fireproof glove, moving toward the bull. Silence expanded, a pressure change you could feel in the sinuses. Neither spoke as Aiden carefully opened the hatch.
A limb flopped into view, the flesh seared to the point it appeared to have hardened, black and charred. Thomas only knew it was her arm by the lack of fingers. The smell that escaped was chemical and final.
Aiden pulled his knife and sank it into the side of her neck.
“She’s already dead,” Aiden muttered, pushing her arm back inside and locking the hatch. His tone was matter-of-fact, like checking a box on a list. “Let’s go to bed. We can deal with the leftovers in the morning.”
Thomas nodded, serene. “Agreed. We don’t need any more ghosts tonight. Let’s go shower, then check on Theo.”
“Shower together,” Aiden murmured, biting Thomas’s lower lip.
“Mm,” Thomas said, then groaned softly. “I forgot to remind the others that brunch starts at 11:30.”
“That’s what the family chat is for,” Aiden said. “How about we stop worrying about your children for a while?”
Thomas smiled, the first real one in hours. The tension in his shoulders finally uncoiled. Outside, the night was cool, alive with the distant hum of night creatures and the rustle of trees. They stepped into the darkness together, closing the door behind them.
“Do you think the party went all right?” Thomas asked as they turned off the lights to the workshop and secured the solid doors, before engaging the heavy lock.
“The party is just starting. We have a full house until Sunday.”
Thomas grimaced. “That’s not an answer.”
“Thomas Mulvaney has never thrown a bad party. And this one will go down in Mulvaney history.”
“So it was a good party?” Thomas said, not really looking for an answer.
“Well, as one of the lizard elite you do have a reputation to uphold,” Aiden teased.
Thomas laughed softly, the sound rolling into the dark. “You’re right, as always.”
Hand in hand, they crossed the yard toward the mansion.
Behind them, the bull cooled in silence, finally still.
He knew Zane’s grief wasn’t likely to cool as quickly as the tomb currently holding his mother’s body, but he hoped that knowing it was finally over would be enough to help him move on, to help him heal.
He deserved to live a life without that woman poisoning every good thing he ever had.
“He’s going to be fine,” Aiden said, squeezing his hand.
“I know. He’s tough. I just hope I did the right thing.”
“You did.”
They were almost back to the house, when Aiden pulled him into his arms and kissed him thoroughly. “What was that for?”
Aiden grinned. “Happy Halloween.”
Thomas shook his head with a laugh. “Yeah, Happy Halloween.”