Arcadia Burns

IN FLAMES


ROSA STARED AT THE pistol, undecided. She crouched on Valerie’s back, gasping for breath, eyes wide open, hair tangled. This was her chance to take revenge for all she had gone through in the last eighteen months. The rape. The abortion. All those months of mourning and therapy.

She had Valerie to thank for all that.

And now Val lay there, stunned, on the floor beneath her.

Rosa took the pistol from Iole’s hand. The butt felt cool and heavy.

“She deserves it,” said Iole, matter-of-factly.

“I know,” Rosa whispered.

She set the muzzle against the hollow just above Valerie’s neck, in the small indentation between her spine and the back of her head. Her index finger lay on the trigger. The thin piece of metal seemed to throb impatiently against her fingertip, as if it wanted to make the decision for her.

Valerie groaned softly.

Rosa pressed the pistol harder against the nape of Val’s neck. It felt right to pull the trigger. It was appropriate to get her back for everything.

The howling of the Hundinga down in the house was wilder now, rage and pain in their voices. In between the howls, the big cats were hissing and spitting. If the idea hadn’t been so outlandish, you might have thought the two Panthera were fighting side by side against the Hungry Man’s creatures.

Rosa looked down at the back of Valerie’s head and the mouth of the pistol again. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Iole running through the archway and out into the long corridor. She was barefoot, and her legs looked pale and vulnerable under the hem of her nightgown.

“What are you waiting for?” Valerie asked, her voice faltering. If she really had broken any ribs, she must be in considerable pain. She had turned her head aside; her short, dark hair was matted with sweat. A graze on her cheekbone showed where she had hit the stone arch. Her lips were moving, but no more sounds came out.

Rosa concentrated on the gun in her hand, the roughened feel of the butt, its weight, the sense of power it gave her.

But she didn’t want power. And the longer she sat there, the less she wanted revenge. It was as if Valerie were already dead—certainly that seemed true of the old Valerie whom she had once liked and, yes, admired, because she was always a little braver, more quick-witted, more grown-up. Had Rosa been wrong about her back then? Had she built up a false image of her, a surface on which to project everything she wanted to be herself?

“Rosa!” Iole had come back out of one of the other rooms off the corridor. “Come and look at this.”

Rosa’s hand had merged with the pistol. She felt the bullet in the magazine like a part of herself. The Valerie of the old days no longer existed. It wasn’t necessary to kill this girl. Whoever it was lying on the floor—blinded by love, drug-addicted, injured—was another person. The Valerie whom she might have wished dead was long gone. Time and Rosa’s maturation to adulthood had eradicated her, and whatever the bullet in the pistol might do, it couldn’t change what had happened.

She gazed up at Iole through a veil of sweat and tears. For a moment it looked as if the girl were standing on a stage surrounded by dry ice.

Smoke was drifting along the corridor toward them, a thin, gray layer of it above the floor. Iole was stepping from foot to foot.

“They’re fighting down in the courtyard,” she said excitedly. “Alessandro and the leopard against the big dogs. They’ve killed a couple of them.”

Rosa slipped sideways off Valerie’s back and got to her feet. Her knees hurt. “Get up,” she told Val.

Valerie moved, still flat on her stomach, as if to crawl away. But the pain was too much and her limbs went slack. A groan came from her throat, turning to words. “Michele is coming for me.”

“You really think so?”

“He’s here because I asked him to come.”

“He’s here to get his revenge on Alessandro.”

Val laughed, hoarse laughter. “That’s what he thinks. But he couldn’t help it. He loves me.”

Disconcerted, Rosa saw the carpet of smoke moving toward them. With her free hand, she grabbed Val’s arm and tried to pull her up.

Valerie screamed.

Rosa hadn’t noticed that Iole had left again, but now she came running back from another of the rooms off the passage. “The first floor is on fire! In several wings, I think.”

Something dark moved at the end of the corridor, a hunched, black shape plowing its way through the smoke, coming toward them faster and faster. There was a growl as bared teeth snapped at the wisps of smoke.

Rosa swung the pistol around.

“No!” Iole ran in front of her and snatched her arm up into the air.

Sarcasmo took a huge leap as Iole spun around to him. Then he got up on his hind legs and licked her face in excitement. She was in danger of falling over backward, but she regained her balance and hugged him.

Valerie was coughing pitifully. She tried to brace herself and raise her upper body, but her face was still in the smoke.

“Come on!” Rosa herded Iole and Sarcasmo in the direction of the corridor. “We have to get out of here.”

She got an arm under Valerie’s armpit and hauled her up, exerting all her strength. This time she was successful. Val howled, and for a moment it seemed as if she were going to pull Rosa down to the floor with her again. But then she got enough of a footing to drag herself through the archway beside her. Iole and Sarcasmo were hurrying on ahead.

“Use the servants’ staircase,” Rosa called to Iole, “and go out through the kitchen.” She hoped that the Hundinga were concentrating on fighting the Panthera in the inner courtyard.

“How about you two?” called Iole.

“We’ll follow you.”

“Why don’t you just leave her there?”

Valerie laughed. “Because Rosa still thinks she’s special. If she leaves me to die, she’ll be just like the rest. Someone who couldn’t care less about other people.”

Rosa let her drop.

Valerie fell to her knees, hitting the floor first with her shoulder, then with her side.

“Spare me the crap,” spat Rosa.

Iole whistled and then disappeared with Sarcasmo around the bend in the corridor. Rosa was on the verge of following her. Instead she ran into one of the nearby guest rooms, leaving Valerie behind, and looked down at the inner courtyard through the tall window.

A single lamp above the main steps lit up the scene. The other lights reacted to motion detectors, and the Hundinga had disabled those, like the lights on the outside of the walls.

All the same, her heart beat fast as she recognized a black outline racing through the swirling smoke just at that moment, to attack a gigantic mastiff. Alessandro! Other Hundinga circled around the two of them, but the next moment the ring was broken apart by a leopard, leaving a motionless adversary and charging among them.

Rosa wasn’t sure whether the smoke was a help or a hindrance to the two Panthera, and she certainly did not understand why Michele was fighting at Alessandro’s side. Probably he had no choice. If he wanted to survive, he had to keep the Hundinga away.

Her heart heavy, she turned and went back to the corridor.

Valerie was gone.

Rosa was still holding the pistol. She promised herself she would use it if Val crossed her path again. She couldn’t be far.

Half choked by the acrid smoke, Rosa ran down the corridor, around the corner, and over to the curtain where she had hidden a little while ago. It had been pushed aside, and the door behind it was open. She hoped that Iole and Sarcasmo had reached the first floor by now.

There was still something she had to do. Hastily, she ran down the stairs to the second floor, and was alarmed to find how thick the smoke drifting along the passages was here. She held the crook of her elbow in front of her nose and mouth, stumbled through the smoke to the west wing, and with a powerful kick moved aside the iron bar that had been securing the door of Signora Falchi’s room.

“Don’t shoot!” she shouted, before flinging the door open.

There was no one there. The window was wide open, as before, when the tutor had been firing at the Hundinga on the terrace. The bedclothes lay in a tangled heap on the floor.

“Signora Falchi?” She went into the room and over to the bathroom door. “It’s me. Rosa Alcantara.”

The bathroom, too, was empty. She ran to the window and looked down. It was over twelve feet to the stone paving of the terrace. The mattress from the bed was lying at the base of the facade.

Signora Falchi was treading water in the middle of the swimming pool, fending off the drifting body of a naked man with distaste, as if defending herself against his improper advances.

“Signora!” Rosa leaned out of the window. “I’m up here!”

The tutor looked up. “Signorina Alcantara! Where’s Iole? Is she safe?”

“Yes,” Rosa said, lying. “Tell me about those dogs.”

“They were here just now. I thought maybe they were afraid of water. I had a dachshund once that—”

“Did they all run off to the inner courtyard?”

“How would I know?”

“Toward the main entrance?”

“Yes…yes, I think so.”

How many of them might still be alive? Eight? Ten? Maybe more? Alessandro couldn’t last much longer. She had to reach him. She still had the pistol. Maybe—

“Get out of there!” the tutor called up to her. “The whole palazzo is going up in flames!”

Without another word, Rosa turned away from Signora Falchi and ran along the corridor to a guest room overlooking the inner courtyard. She swept the curtain aside, opened the window, and looked out.

She could tell, even through the smoke, that there was fighting down there, but from this vantage point she could make out only two heaps of tangled bodies. She heard the snapping, howling, spitting, and hissing of the opposing sides. And she saw more Hundinga approaching from the gateway, in loose formation.

Without thinking, she raised the pistol and fired. Over the last four months she had practiced using a gun, but she was far from sure of hitting her target.

Her second shot hit a black Doberman—possibly the leader—and flung him to the ground. The next went wide, but the fourth bullet wounded a Hunding in the side. She must have hit his heart, because he was returning to human form even as he fell. The others who had come up from the gate growled at her, but they turned and retreated into the tunnel. They only had to wait. Sooner or later the flames would drive the Panthera and the last humans out of the palazzo and into their arms.

The Panthera also looked up at her. Alessandro’s adversary tried to exploit that moment, but Alessandro turned just in time to avoid a savage bite and struck the Hunding a powerful blow with his paw. The Hunding howled, and blood spurted from his throat. Alessandro’s fur gleamed, wet with blood. Rosa couldn’t tell how much of it came from his own wounds.

She fired again. The Hundinga moved back from the leopard and followed their companions into the tunnel.

A moment later the two Panthera were standing alone in the smoke that was now billowing ever more densely out of all parts of the building and into the inner courtyard. Firelight blazed behind windowpanes, bathing the scene in a flickering red glow.

“Alessandro!” Rosa saw that the leopard was about to pounce on him from behind. “No!” Her voice broke and became a hoarse croak. There was nothing she could do from up here. The risk of hitting Alessandro if she fired the pistol was too great.

The panther was thrown to the ground, dragging the leopard down with him. Both were lost from sight in a thick cloud of smoke. One of the windows near them broke in a cascade of shattered glass.

Briefly, Rosa toyed with the idea of jumping down into the courtyard. The tutor had done it and survived, so why not try it herself? But even a sprained ankle would be a death sentence for her down there. If the Hundinga came back, or Michele attacked her, she would be helpless.

Coughing, with streaming eyes, she ran back into the corridor, then to the servants’ staircase, and down to the first floor. She felt the heat of the fire for the first time on the steps. Soon after that she entered the kitchen, to find that the door must have been bolted from the outside. Outside, she heard savage barking. Iole and Sarcasmo must have taken some other way. But which way had they gone?

There might be one possibility. But to try it she needed time, and the cell phone that the Hunding had been using—and that lay below the terrace among the olive trees, at the foot of the palms.

The smoke was taking her breath away and blurring her vision. She hastily wrung a dishcloth out in water under the faucet and tied it over her mouth and nose. Breathing was still difficult, but it was possible to take what little air did get through into her lungs. To be on the safe side, she wrung out two more dishcloths and took them with her as she ran into the corridor, crossed a storeroom, and unbolted a low door to the inner courtyard.

The smoke hung like thick mist between the walls. She heard panting and an occasional growl through its dense gray, probably from the tunnel, where the air would be clearer. The Hundinga kept their distance, lying in wait.

Alessandro and Michele were fighting each other about forty feet away from Rosa: panther and leopard, dark shapes in the middle of the acrid smoke. She heard flames crackling behind the smashed windowpanes of the east wing, and fire danced over the wooden frames. The two big cats were circling each other, coming closer and closer, striking out with their paws, snapping and biting.

Rosa could hardly breathe. Just staying on her feet required all her strength. Half blind, she checked the magazine of the pistol. Three bullets left.

Aiming the gun, she moved out into the open.

“Michele!”

The dishcloth muffled her voice, but the two of them heard it anyway. For a moment they stopped. The leopard hissed at her. His coat was sticky with blood, and terrible wounds gaped open in the middle of dark red patches. The panther, too, had bite marks and deep scratches.

“This is where it ends,” she said grimly to Alessandro. “And I will pull out this cat’s claws.”

The muzzle flash of her pistol cut through the smoke, and the pressure wave drove the swathes apart.

The force of the bullet’s impact shattered the leopard’s shoulder blade. Michele howled, staggered in the air as he leaped over Alessandro and made for Rosa.

She fired again.

Michele’s paws touched the ground once more as he tried to pounce for the last time.

Her third shot hit him in the throat.

He uttered a roar, lurched from side to side, but kept coming toward her, forelegs outstretched. Then he buried Rosa under him.

When they hit the ground, his open muzzle was right above her face.

Pitilessly, his jaws were snapping shut.