He hitched the wand of the tanker up and aimed accelerant in a wild arc up the side of the house. It splashed over the windowsill and flicked droplets onto Took’s jacket. The fire scuttled up the side of the house after the spray of fuel. A spark caught on Took’s cuff, singed, and died.
“Fucker,” the other man yelled as he backed away. He swiped at his mask with a gloved hand. “Keep it low, you moron.”
The moron didn’t listen.
Took aimed again, took a breath, and held it. He probably didn’t need to anymore, he supposed, but being a good shot was muscle memory—habit, training, anger. His finger tightened and the bullet hit the slim metal tanker strapped to the man’s thigh, exposed by the tight line of the strained hose. Accelerant spilled out in a wet gush down the man’s leg, like he’d pissed himself with gas.
“Son of a bitch,” the man spluttered as he landed on his ass in the grass again. The spray of fuel trickled down the wand onto him. “Stupid undead thing. Don’t even know when to lie down and burn.”
His friend stepped away from him in disgust. He kept his stream of gas aimed into the hot, wild heart of the fire. “Would you just—”
Took stripped his jacket off and tied it roughly around his gun.
“What are you doing?” Madoc snapped as he came back into the room.
“Improvising.” Took stuck his jacket into the flames that flickered along the windowsill. The fabric lit quickly as the drops of gasoline flared and wicked the fire through the tightly woven fabric. One more suit down, Took thought dryly, as he turned the bundle to light the other side.
“Bennett, don’t,” Madoc snapped.
The words pushed at the inside of Took’s head, a pressure against his eardrums that needed equalizing. He shook his head as much to dislodge that ache as to disagree with Madoc.
“Hunters know about backsplash,” he told Madoc and pitched the flaming ball of metal and silk-woven linen out the window. It hit the man in the chest as he struggled to his knees and he went up like a firework. Took’s tongue flicked against the edges of his adrenaline-extended fangs and he tasted the thick, treacle-sweet of ichor. “And this vampire knows Kevlar is no good against fire.”
The man screamed and rolled on the grass as he batted frantically at his arms and crotch. It only spread the fire around like a halo. His companion took a step toward him, and a damp spot of fluid on his boot sparked and spluttered over the sole. He jumped back and stamped his foot on the grass. The black rubber melted in long, tangled strings.
“You could have waited for backup,” Madoc said as he dragged Took away from the window. “Now we just have more fire to deal with, no water, and you just threw your gun into the garden.”
Took crouched down and unclipped his holdout from the ankle holster. Paranoia could have its uses. After Heather Waring turned up on his doorstep, he needed the extra security. There was a narrow stake holstered in his other boot, but he couldn’t tell Madoc about that… just in case.
He shoved the sick tangle of suspicion and guilt out of his way as he stood back up, flashed the gun at Madoc, and tried to ignore the raw, blistered meat of his fingers. They would heal like everything else, eventually. “One problem solved,” he said. “Your turn.”
Something exploded outside with a hollow bang that rattled the windows. Took stepped back and looked out. The man still lay in the burned starburst, his leg and side a charred mess. He was still alive, but barely.
Took’s brain caught on that. It was important. There was no time to work out how yet, so Took tucked it away in the back of his head.Later.The other man was at the back of the garden as he yanked and hammered his fist on the gate. He kicked it with a heavy, half-melted boot as he looked back over his shoulder at the house.
“Madoc,” Took said. “They locked their men in. Why—”
“Life for the living,” Madoc muttered. Beneath their feet the fire glowed through the floor, the heat hot enough to crack the plaster. “How much influence do the Hunters have in Charleston?”
“There’s no Hunter cells in Charleston,” Took said. He ignored Madoc’s snort of disagreement. The move to Charleston had been done when he was still… off his game… but he’d done his due diligence on the city. He knew how to sniff out Hunters and their haunts, nearly as well as he could vampires. In the end they weren’t that different, although both sides would slit his throat for saying so. “Hunter money, sure, but people like Waring are the face of the anti-Accord movement in Charleston. They don’t like you—”
“Us.”
Took swallowed the reminder with a mouthful of hot air and acrid smoke. The seasoning might have made it more palatable than usual.
“They don’t likeus,” he corrected himself as they skirted the fire-weakened spots on the floor and got out into the hall. The staircase was gone, and the banister poked out into the smoke like a stained, broken bone. Heat soaked into his skin, but it didn’t feel like living warmth, more like a fever that would cook him from inside. He suddenly missed sweat. “But the focus is on politics and policies, not stakes and garlic. There’s some violence, but mostly they stick to rhetoric, not Molotov cocktails.”
Madoc absorbed that as he opened a door with his shoulder. A wall of heat and smoke shoved out with almost physical force. It had been a child’s room. The furniture was gone, but it was still painted sky blue and interrupted with multicolored balloons stickered over the walls. Smoke had grimed the blue down to a cloudy day, and the balloons peeled off the sweaty paint as though they were about to deflate.
Sometimes the tragedy of a case caught Took by surprise. He licked his lips and looked away from the ruin of someone’s dream bedroom.
“Can we get out?” he asked.
“We have armed men out the front,” Madoc said. “You sure they aren’t Hunters?”
Took peered down into the street. He could feel the heat off the glass like an oven, and his skin was tight and painful as he reddened. The butt of the gun was tucked into the man’s armpit, and he held the weight of it with casual confidence. Other than the bandana pulled up over his mouth and nose, his gear could pass for streetwear at first glance. Under the tight leather jacket, Took would bet he had on a nondescript cotton shirt or a worn T-shirt with a funny slogan. That was popular too. People rarely suspected a man in a funny shirt of being dangerous.
“Him, maybe,” he admitted.
