City of Heavenly Fire

“I don’t think so.” But white flakes were drifting past the windows of the truck, building up on the windshield. Jordan brought the truck to a stop and rolled one of the windows down, opening his hand to catch a flake. He drew it back, his expression darkening. “That’s not snow,” he said. “That’s ash.”


Maia’s heart lurched as he shoved the truck back into gear and they pitched forward, spinning around the corner of the drive. Up ahead of them, where the Praetor Lupus headquarters should have been rising, gold against the gray noon sky, was a gout of black smoke. Jordan swore and slewed the wheel to the left; the truck bumped into a ditch and sputtered out. He kicked his door open and jumped down; Maia followed a second later.

The Praetor Lupus headquarters had been built on a huge parcel of green land that sloped down to the Sound. The central building was built of golden stone, a Romanesque manor house surrounded by arched porticoes. Or it had been. It was a mass of smoking wood and stone now, charred like bones in a crematorium. White powder and ashes blew thickly across the gardens, and Maia choked on the stinging air, bringing up a hand to shield her face.

Jordan’s brown hair was thickly snowflaked with ash. He stared around him, his expression shocked and uncomprehending. “I don’t—”

Something caught Maia’s eye, a flicker of movement through the smoke. She grabbed Jordan’s sleeve. “Look—there’s someone there—”

He took off, skirting the smoking ruin of the Praetor building. Maia followed him, though she couldn’t help but hang back in horror, staring at the charred remnants of the structure that protruded from the earth—walls holding up a no-longer-existing roof, windows that had blown out or melted, glimpses here and there of white that could have been brick or bones . . .

Jordan stopped ahead of her. Maia moved up to stand beside him. Ash was clinging to her shoes, the grit of it in among the laces. She and Jordan were in the main body of the burned-out buildings. She could see the water in the near distance. The fire hadn’t spread, though there were charred dead leaves and blowing ash here, too—and in among the clipped hedgerows, there were bodies.

Werewolves—of all ages, though mostly young—lay sprawled along the manicured paths, their bodies being slowly covered by ash as if they were being swallowed by a blizzard.

Werewolves had an instinct to surround themselves with others of their kind, to live in packs, to draw strength from one another. This many dead lycanthropes felt like a tearing ache, a hole of loss in the world.She remembered the words from Kipling, written on the walls of the Praetor. For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.

Jordan was gazing around, his lips moving as he murmured the names of the dead—Andrea, Teal, Amon, Kurosh, Mara. At the edge of the water Maia suddenly saw something move—a body, half-submerged. She broke into a run, Jordan on her heels. She skidded through the ash, to where the grass gave way to sand, and dropped down beside the corpse.

It was Praetor Scott, corpse bobbing facedown, his gray-blond hair soaked, the water around him stained pinkish red. Maia bent down to turn him over, and nearly gagged. His eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the sky, his throat sliced wide open.

“Maia.” She felt a hand on her back—Jordan’s. “Don’t—”

His sentence was cut off by a gasp, and she whirled around, only to feel a sense of horror so intense that it nearly blacked out her vision. Jordan stood behind her, one hand outstretched, a look of utter shock on his face.

From the center of his chest protruded the blade of a sword, its metal stamped with black stars. It looked utterly bizarre, as if someone had taped it there, or as if it were some sort of theatrical prop.

Blood began to spread out in a circle around it, staining the front of his jacket. Jordan gave another bubbling gasp and slid to his knees, the sword retracting, slipping back out of his body as he collapsed to the ground and revealed what was behind him.

A boy carrying a massive black and silver sword stood looking at Maia over Jordan’s kneeling body. The hilt was slicked with blood—in fact, he was bloody all over, from his pale hair to his boots, spattered with it as if he had stood in front of a fan blowing scarlet paint. He was grinning all over his face.

“Maia Roberts and Jordan Kyle,” he said. “Have I heard a lot about you.”

Maia dropped to her knees, just as Jordan slumped sideways. She caught him, easing him down into her lap. She felt numb all over with horror, as if she were lying at the icy bottom of the Sound. Jordan was shuddering in her arms, and she put them around him as blood ran out of the corners of his mouth.

She looked up at the boy standing over her. For a dizzy moment she thought he had stepped out of one of her nightmares of her brother, Daniel. He was beautiful, like Daniel had been, though they could not have looked more different. Daniel’s skin had been the same brown as hers, while this boy looked like he had been carved out of ice. White skin, sharp pale cheekbones, salt-white hair that fell over his forehead. His eyes were black, shark’s eyes, flat and cold.