“Mr. Smith.” Carson tried to sound authoritative, but the whine in his voice undercut the words. “G-get back to your cell at once.”
“I knew this place for hell.” Eustace spoke without affect, eyes never leaving the doctor’s. “Oh yes. Soon as I arrived, I knew it. The air, you see? It smelled of burning. Burning souls. Where dragons steam their foul breath upon the water and the fires, they burn all night to cast their greasy soot into the sky. Mountains of brick and stone and oh . . . I knew then I’d been cast down to the fiery lake.” He pointed the knife at Carson. “And I knew you, devil. I knew you.”
Tears rolled down the creature’s ravaged face, tracing two clear paths through the red. “But the lightning. Over and over and over, the lightning and the smell, it never leaves me and my own flesh, it burns away, bit by bit.”
The old man who’d once been Eustace Clarkson picked up the guard’s lantern by the handle. He held it out before him, then pressed the other palm against the scalding glass. In seconds the stench of burning meat drifted to us.
“All those years,” Eustace said as he advanced slowly toward the frozen Carson. “You and all your demons sticking me, sticking me with your devil thorns and I tried . . . I tried to beg God’s forgiveness for my sins.” His head shook violently back and forth. “No use. No use. Then the wires and the lightning and the burning, ohhh . . . the burning was the worst of all.”
From the other side of the table, we heard an odd crackling. Phoebe gagged and I realized the noise was the sizzle of Eustace’s hand as it cooked down to bone and sinew. Barely seeming to notice, he stopped only a yard from the terrified Dr. Carson. Emaciated cheeks pulled back from gory teeth in an eerie, almost child-like smile. “But I think this time, it is you who shall burn.”
With a motion so fast I could hardly follow it, Eustace Clarkson raised the oil lantern high and slammed it to the ground at the doctor’s feet. It shattered in an explosion of glass and kerosene and flame. Alexander Carson writhed, screaming as lines of fire began to race up his body. Nurse Hannah ducked beneath the table, her eyes squeezed shut as she shrieked the doctor’s name over and over.
She buried her face in her hands, and I caught the glint of a silver chain around her neck.
Nope.
Staying low, I crawled to her.
“What are you doing?” Phoebe hissed, though she stayed glued to my side.
“She has my lodestone,” I whispered. “I’m getting it back.”
Phoebe gave a sharp nod. “Damn straight. Let’s grab it and get the bloody hell out of here.”
While Nurse Hannah wailed, I reached over and grabbed the chain. She whirled on me, eyes and mouth black holes in a pale oval as I clutched the jewel in my fist and yanked.
The damn chain didn’t break, and like a demented feline, Nurse Hannah raked her nails down my arms. When I refused to let go, she grabbed a fistful of my hair and tried to rip it out. I slapped at her with my other hand.
Phoebe loosed an agitated huff. “Cheese ’n rice, we’ve no time for a bloody catfight. There’s a madman on the loose.”
She whirled and landed a kick on the side of Hannah’s head. The nurse went limp and I yanked the chain off her.
“Phee,” Collum called over his shoulder while bludgeoning someone I couldn’t see. “That mad bastard is coming your way!”
She nodded at her brother, then leaned up to peek over the tabletop. I followed, and wished I hadn’t.
Pinned between sporadic gunfire on one side and a knife-wielding lunatic on the other, we didn’t have a lot of options.
Phoebe slid her slim, steel throwing knives from her boot. Blowing out a breath, she leapt up and tossed all three in quick succession. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Eustace grunted loudly.
“Oh, sweet Moses.” Phoebe dropped down. “That’s not good. I’ve think I’ve but pissed him off.”
We peeked. Three knives protruded from Eustace’s torso. He did not seem to notice. Flames had begun to skim along trails of alcohol spilled across the floor, casting a golden light that shivered across walls and ceiling.
“Witch girl,” he called, taking one shambling step toward us. “Where are you? Thou shall not suffer a witch to—”
Flash and bang from Collum’s pistol and a precipitous black hole that appeared in the center of Eustace’s forehead. For a long and very strange moment he did not react. Orange flames glinted, demonic, in his eyes as his arm rose, index finger pointing at me.
Then, like a diseased tree succumbing to the rot inside, Eustace toppled over onto Dr. Carson’s flaming corpse. Sparks blasted up. In seconds, the flames consuming Carson had found a new fuel source to feed upon.
Collum was holding the pistol that had finally ended Eustace Clarkson for good.
Collum gestured with the gun. “This way.”
“They’re getting away,” someone shouted down the hall as we ran.
Phoebe grabbed my hand and pulled me behind her. A shot blasted. We ducked as plaster rained down on us from above.
“That was a warning, aye?” Mac’s authoritative voice carried over the shrieks and laughter of mental patients running through the halls. “Dark or no dark, anyone comes after us gets it in the chest.”
We moved through the shadows as a unit. Collum beside me. Phoebe and Mac guarding us front and rear. Midway down an inky corridor, I skidded to a halt.
“Come on,” Phoebe urged. “This way. We have to—”
“I can’t leave them here,” I told them. “We have to get them out.”
“Who, Hope?” Mac panted.
“My friends.”
With audible groans, they followed as I veered off toward Ladies’ Ward B. But when we arrived, the door was ajar, the rooms beyond, empty.
No time to wonder if they’d escaped or simply been evacuated as gunshots sounded from the vicinity of the front entrance. We turned back the way we’d come. The weak beam from the boxy flashlight flickered. One last, brilliant, white-hot beam, and the flashlight emitted an explosive pop-pop. Smoke began to leak from the hole cut into the wooden box.
“Uh, Collum?”
He cursed and let the box drop to the floor.
“Take a right here, lad,” Mac instructed as Collum, leading our little expedition now, paused and hooked a right. “Less than twenty paces. Here we are.”
We ran across gray stone, through scents of bleach and lye toward the open back door. Beyond it lay the diffuse light of a cloudy dawn.
Phoebe’s grin wrapped me like a toasty quilt on an icy afternoon. “Wait till you see the surprise.”
I faltered for an instant before I realized what she must mean. Or rather . . . who. And since I hadn’t seen him during the rescue mission, it had to mean he was waiting just beyond, acting as watchman, perhaps, or fighting off guards to clear our escape route.
I beamed at her, my feet propelling me faster toward the boy I knew was waiting for me outside.
Phoebe stopped me.