“What?” Zahi’s hand flew back to the steering wheel and he glanced at Serena suspiciously.
“I’ll miss my friends,” she said too loudly, trying hard to distract him and at the same time keep her mind empty.
“You will make new ones.” He dismissed her worry and looked in the back. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” she whispered and ventured a glimpse into the back. Vanessa was invisible again. She breathed deeply and tried to relax.
They drove to the corner of Wilshire and Curson and parked near the Page Museum, where the La Brea tar pits were.
“Here?” she asked.
“Here.” He got out of the car and then walked around the car, opened her door, and pulled her out.
He started to slam the door. She caught it.
He looked at her strangely.
“I felt dizzy for a moment,” she said and hoped he couldn’t see the lie in her words. He had almost slammed the door on Vanessa.
“It will be over soon.” His gleaming yellow eyes weren’t even trying to hide his bold scrutiny of her body. “And then you will be mine for eternity.”
Her heart beat more rapidly.
She felt a ruffle of air and knew Vanessa was out of the car. She slammed the car door. “Let’s go.”
They walked around the oozing tar pit, past the statues of the mammoths edging down to the water to drink.
As they continued around the Page Museum, blue and orange flames exploded into the night sky and sparkling red embers showered down on them like falling snow. An amber glow covered the park and the back of the L.A. County Art Museum.
She felt a light wind whisper through her hair and knew Vanessa was leaving to get Jimena and Catty.
They walked closer to the flames.
Zahi’s Followers turned and smiled at her in welcome, their eyes yellow and needy. She thought she saw Morgan in the crowd, but the girl ducked behind two guys.
The fire seemed hungrily aware of her presence. Its cold flames shot out and curled around her, making her shiver. Patches of frost remained on her skin where the flames had caressed her.
“Step in,” Zahi ordered.
She needed to wait until the other Daughters returned before she entered the fire. Otherwise her plan wouldn’t work.
“Don’t we party first?” She did her best to smile beguilingly at the other Followers, who seemed eager to do something more than look at flames.
Too late, she realized she had let her guard down. Zahi was in her mind, and now he understood her need to stall for time. Angrily, he tore the silver amulet from her neck, tossed it to the ground, and pushed her backward. She tripped and fell into the fire.
The flames shot up, and with a sudden roar, sucked her into the middle of the fire.
She tried to breathe, but the bitter air felt too cold. Dancing flames surrounded her, and every time she turned to flee, more flames shot up until she was lost in the freezing inferno. Her bones began to ache from the cold. Her fingers grew numb. Frost gathered on her skin in crystalline snowflake patterns that glittered gold, then red. Her body throbbed, but just as the pain became unbearable, something sweet and longed-for penetrated her being. She gasped. Then with delight, she smoothed her hands down her body, over breasts, waist, hips, and thighs. The desire filled her, a wicked longing.
“Lecta,” Zahi breathed, and the ceremony began.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SERENA STRUGGLED AGAINST the caressing flames, the fierce hunger working inside her. Then the crackle of the flames grew still and cello music played, filling her mind with sweet promise. She stopped fighting. The flames soothed her and gave her a sensation of power. Her worries burned away as her strength grew.
Through the veil of flames, Zahi smiled triumphantly.
Abruptly, she reached through the shroud of fire and grabbed his arm.
He hadn’t been able to read her intentions because the Atrox had filled her mind with music. A look of total surprise and soul-wrenching fear covered his face as she yanked him into the flames.
The fire howled in anger and exploded into a blinding flash. The center of the blaze became piercingly cold. Sparks cascaded onto the lawn and trees, setting new fires.
Serena held Zahi tightly against her. “Id quod factum est, infectum esse potest.”
“No!” Zahi screamed.
As she repeated the words, the fire became a swirling vortex, its shrieking colors circling with ever-increasing speed.
“What has been done can be undone!” Serena continued to repeat the words as the flames lashed at her with stinging cold.
In the distance the sirens of fire engines filled the night.
Serena looked through the violently rotating flames and saw Vanessa, Jimena, and Catty running toward her. They looked like goddesses; Vanessa dressed in shimmering blue, Jimena in lightning-strike silver, and Catty in wild strawberry pink, their hair bouncing in silky soft swirls with each step.
A police car with its light bar flashing electric blue drove into the park. The siren wound down and the officers jumped from the car. Some of the Followers ran. Morgan was one of them.
Serena grabbed Zahi’s left hand and looked at the palm. The glimmering tattoo from her moon amulet had vanished. Zahi was mortal again. Serena pushed him from the fire.
He stumbled out and Jimena grabbed him. His remaining Followers circled him with anxious looks. Then one by one they began to scatter and run.
The first fire engine arrived and parked, followed quickly by a second and a third.
Firemen in yellow soot-covered protective clothing with fluorescent strips and domed helmets jumped from the trucks and began pulling hoses toward the fire as others worked with wrenches to attach the hoses to the hydrants.
Serena started to step from the flames, but the fire held her with almost human hands, inviting her to stay. The show of color and sparks became spellbinding and Serena could feel her sense of herself slipping away, pulled down into an ice-cold abyss. She ceased to resist. She breathed the flames. Its cold reached into her lungs, curled inside her chest and lay there like ice-blue flowers.
Jimena, Vanessa, and Catty watched in horror, their moon amulets glowing.
Serena stepped from the flames and stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the luxurious feel of her body. What would it be like to live forever? To see the next millennium, and the next? She opened her eyes and knew by the shock she saw in Jimena’s eyes that her own now glowed phosphorescent.
She remembered the promise the Atrox had made to her, but she had no interest in the cello now and wondered why she would ever waste her time on something so foolish.
The fleeing Followers hesitated as if they sensed her growing power. A few jumped over the fire hoses and ran back to her.
She picked up her amulet where Zahi had tossed it. It seared her flesh. She glanced down. The outline of the moon was burned into her skin. She dropped it and Catty picked it up.
She watched the confusion on the faces of her friends as the power of the Atrox continued to grow inside her. She cherished the anguish she saw.
“Goddesses,” she sneered, and then whooped exuberantly and prepared to fight her once best friends.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE GLOW OF THE FIRE flickered nervously over the faces of Catty, Vanessa, and Jimena. The fear in their eyes mirrored the change they now saw in hers. Even Zahi, sprawled on the grass, looked afraid of her.
Serena smiled contemptuously. She gave them a little mental shove to demonstrate her new power.
Vanessa took a step backward, shocked, but Catty didn’t flinch. “I’m not impressed,” she said.
Jimena had a different look, one she couldn’t quite read. “We’ve got to get Serena back into the fire, quick before the firemen drag their hoses over here and put it out.”
“Why?” Vanessa asked with growing worry.
Jimena kept her eyes on Serena while she spoke to Vanessa. “So we can burn the immortality o
ff her. You don’t get immortality without one big commitment to the Atrox.” She took a resolute step forward.
Serena laughed at the determination she saw on Jimena’s face.
“I don’t think she’s going to go.” Vanessa seemed apprehensive.
“We’ll make her,” Catty replied.
Serena taunted Jimena. “You still think you’re the tough goddess?”
Jimena didn’t answer.
Serena laughed and gave them another mental jab, but this time Jimena had prepared for it and it didn’t penetrate.
“So we’re battling now,” Serena said with glee.
Catty joined Jimena.
Vanessa stopped them. “Serena is a Lecta, a chosen one.”
“So what?” Jimena tossed her head impertinently.
“Serena was invited into the fire,” Vanessa explained. “Maggie said if you’re not invited into the fire, the flames cause a horrible death. If the fire touches either of you—any of us—”
There wasn’t the slightest hesitation on Jimena’s face. “I’m not afraid of her,” Jimena said. “She’s just a chump with an attitude and she’s going back in the fire.” With even more resolve, she strutted forward.
Serena hesitated for the slightest second, wondering what it was inside Jimena that made her willing to risk an excruciating death to save Serena. And then she let the power build inside her until the air rippled.
Jimena suddenly lunged through the thick air and grabbed Serena’s arm.
Serena let the force gather inside her mind, then she shoved it out at Jimena—one sharp invisible bolt of pure energy. Pain registered on Jimena’s face, but she didn’t drop her hold.
Then Catty broke through the waving air and took her other arm.
“No!” Serena yelled, and the scream scraped up her throat with wretched pain, the sound so deep and angry it frightened her. It wasn’t her voice.
Catty and Jimena pulled her toward the flames.
A fireman stopped them, his face in shadows cast from his helmet. “What the hell are you girls doing here?” he asked from behind his fire shield.
They ignored him and continued to pull Serena toward the flames.
“Get back,” he yelled and plunged ahead, dragging the hose. When he was only ten feet from the blaze, he lifted his fire shield, then stripped a glove from one hand and waved it in the air. A look of awe covered his face.
“Cold,” he said. “It’s cold!”
Before he could say more, two other firefighters ran up behind him and took their positions on the hose. Water charged through the hose with sudden force and shot into the flames.
The fire consumed the water, hissing violently, and grew into a billowing tower.
“We’ve got to act now.” Jimena reached for Serena again.
A policeman pushed them away from the shooting flames into the crowd that had gathered behind a barricade. Overhead a helicopter shot a column of light over the chaos. News vans set up their antennae and newscasters spoke rapidly into microphones.
“Firefighters have changed their approach,” the newscaster spoke into a microphone as kids behind her threw gang signs and waved at the camera’s eye. She continued, “At first fire officials thought the fire was set by an extreme group of punkers. Now they have determined it is a crude-oil fire, possibly caused by a methane gas explosion or seepage from the adjacent tar pits. They are now spraying a synthetic film-forming foam over the fire and do not anticipate any danger to the County Art Museum or the Page Museum.”
The camera turned to the firefighters covering the flames with foam. The flames dwindled. Smoke billowed gently into the air, gliding in and out of the bars of white-blue light cast from the police and television helicopters overhead.
Serena brushed her hands through her hair, then turned and looked at the Followers who had gathered around her. “You’re going to have to do better than you did tonight,” she scolded with a brazen smile. Then her eyes caught Zahi, standing next to Jimena. Was he trembling? She hissed at him. He backed away.
“I was worried about kissing you.” She laughed in disgust.
Her Followers laughed and the sound filled the night air with a chill.
“Goddesses,” she said. “Not tonight but soon—I’ll have the pleasure of destroying you.”
She started walking saucily away, and enjoyed the looks she saw in the faces of the men, old and young.
Then she turned back. “Be sure to tell Maggie thanks for all the extra time she spent training me to use my gift. I’m sure it will come in handy.”
Serena smiled maliciously and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SERENA HADN’T GONE FAR when something made her skin prickle. She turned as Vanessa ran in front of the TV camera and dissolved into a ghostly shimmer.
What was she doing? Vanessa’s greatest fear had always been that someone might see her become invisible, and now she was flaunting it. Why? Vanessa danced away from the TV camera, billowed on a breeze to the firefighters, and then like a circus performer, she fluttered in and out of focus.
The firefighters stopped spraying foam. The first one took an involuntary step backward and knocked into the one behind him.
Newscasters and camera operators ignored the police officers. They pushed through the barricade and ran to the fire to capture the impossible on tape. Pandemonium broke loose. Vanessa led the crowd farther and farther away from the dwindling flames.
During the confusion, someone tackled Serena to the ground. Jimena!
Before she could push her away, Catty slipped the moon amulet around Serena’s neck. Serena tried to yank it off, but Catty held her hands. The silver moon burned into Serena’s skin and the searing pain distracted her. She couldn’t concentrate enough to use her power. Jimena and Catty pulled her into the few smoldering flames while the crowd watched Vanessa do her invisibility dance.
The flames seethed and hissed and tried to push Serena from the fire. But Jimena stepped into the blaze, clasped Serena tightly, and made her stay.
“Id quod factum est, infectum esse potest,” Jimena repeated, her voice becoming weaker and weaker.
The fire shrieked its protest. Cold spasms shuddered through Serena as the blaze began to burn away her immortality. Slowly, she returned from the wintry abyss into which she had been pushed. She saw a future again, not an endless string of days. Time seemed suddenly more precious, the night more beautiful. As the fire continued to consume her immortality, her allegiance to the Atrox retreated and her moon amulet no longer blistered her skin. Then she looked down and became aware of Jimena in the fire with her, writhing in excruciating pain.
“No!” she screamed.
She tried to step from the cold fire, but the blaze raged and refused to release her. The flames, like icy tendrils, twined tighter and tighter around her arms and legs. She concentrated, and when she did, her forces gathered and focused into a violent whirlwind that extinguished the blaze.
Serena pulled Jimena from the embers and smoke and knelt beside her.
Jimena was dying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CATTY LEANED OVER HER. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.” A hollow ache spread through Serena.
“Maybe if I take her back in time,” Catty offered, her eyes wide as her pupils began to dilate.
“No,” Serena whispered, but already the air had started to change as Catty readied for a trip back in time. Then Serena remembered the key. “Wait.” She took it from her skirt pocket and placed it around Jimena’s neck.
Catty knelt beside her. “What are you doing? I’ll take her back to before she stepped into the fire and keep her from going in.”
Serena shook her head. “It’s too late for that.”
Catty nodded. The air became still again. A tear rolled off her cheek and fell on Jimena’s arm. “What will the key do?”
Serena held Jimena tightly. “I hope it will unlock the right door and bring her back.?
??
A chorus of ahhs made them look up. Vanessa became completely invisible now. The show ended. Police officers pushed the crowd back behind the barricades. It was only minutes before paramedics would see Jimena and come running with their red metal cases. Serena knew intuitively that she couldn’t let them take Jimena from her, not until Jimena found the door in the dark and used the key to unlock it and come back to the light.
“Look,” Catty whispered.
Bluish arcs sparked around the key and then it vanished.
A moment passed, and then Jimena’s eyes opened with a strange shudder.
“Hey.” Jimena smiled weakly. “So I guess I showed you I’m still the tough goddess.”
“You’re bad, all right.” Serena breathed out in relief. She squeezed Jimena. “I’m glad you made it back.”
“Here they come,” Catty warned.
Paramedics were running toward them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Serena said. “Can you stand?”
“If I made it through that, I guess I can stand,” Jimena answered, but her legs were shaky and Serena had to help her up.
“Where’s Vanessa?” Serena asked.
“She said she’d meet us back at the car.” Catty grabbed Jimena’s other arm.
Jimena, Catty, and Serena ran through the firefighters and news reporters to Jimena’s car. Vanessa was waiting there, gasping for breath, her face red.
“You were great!” Catty said.
They scrambled into Jimena’s car and she started the engine. The tailpipes thundered as they pulled away from the curb.
“You sure were one bitch with an attitude,” Jimena told Serena.
“I’m sorry.” Serena felt that those words couldn’t begin to make up for what her friends had done for her.
“I’m going to remember this forever,” Catty announced. “You owe us big-time.”
“I can’t believe you took such a risk,” Serena said to Jimena. “Going into the fire!”
“How ’bout Vanessa?” Catty added.
“Yeah.” Serena turned and looked at Vanessa. “You were always afraid of having people see you go invisible.”