But they were getting higher and higher. And hotter.
What was going on?
I put my hand to my face to shield myself, and that's when I heard a voice. Not a cockney one. A voice like the roar of a rocket lifting off. There's a biblical story about Moses in the desert, talking to the burning bush. It couldn't have sounded much different from this.
"So this is the fly in the ointment, is it? The infamous Alien Hunter, Daniel X."
The Cockney Fireman was gone. In front of me was a fiery blossom rising right out of the lava on the floor. Directly in the center, between its flaming petals, a dark maw yawned like one of the rock pits I had seen during the training session with my father. That was where the voice came from. .
"Phosphorius Beta, I presume."
Chapter 35
THE FLAMES all around him flickered green, then purple, and then a brighter red than I had ever seen. It might have been beautiful if I didn't know that he was the third deadliest alien on the planet.
"I would congratulate you on your perceptiveness, but you're not worthy to even speak my name. I have been doing business here a long, long time. This is my country. Was always meant to be. And you and your bloody friends went and messed with it."
I narrowed my eyes. "What happened to the Cockney? Your hotshot henchman?"
"My 'hotshot henchman'? Ha! You're funny, aren't you?" The fire flared up in what might have been a laugh. "He's gone, punk. All burned up. I've been in business far to o l ong to put up with failure like his. And I've been hunting you down for far too long not to get my revenge at last."
I had no idea what he was talking about but wouldn't let myself get distracted by his babble. The lava had cooled quickly, and as he spoke I began edging my way toward the balcony door, toeing slowly to find a solid path. The heat coming from Beta was intense, and it unnerved me more than I'd like to admit. Even with all of my father's training, fire took me back to the most traumatic event of my life.
"What do you need her for?" I indicated the bedroom door with my thumb. The distraction technique again. If he got close enough to touch me, no amount of carbon dioxide would save me from being charbroiled.
"Susan? That little cipher? She's just fuel for the fire. As impure as the humans are, I find their physical forms can be useful, from time to time."
"You're quite the sensitive chap, aren't you," I said sarcastically. "I just get such a good feeling about you, you know?"
"Sensitivity is for those who are accustomed to losing. Like you."
At last, I felt the concrete of the balcony beneath my feet. Beta seemed to notice I was moving, and his fire jumped halfway across the room. Its petals blasted heat in my direction, and his voice held an extra note of menace.
"Going somewhere? Or maybe you prefer death by falling over death by being burned alive?"
I backed up all the way to the railing and closed my hand around it. As I expected, it felt flimsy, much like the one on the fire escape.
Beta's fire whooshed across the floor and re-formed at the balcony door--a roaring pillar that singed the top of the doorframe. Something like a dark face was visible under its surface, but it was flickering so violently I couldn't be sure.
The column spun, unleashing a howl of air that formed speech. "End of the line, Daniel. Any last words? Reflections on our great times together?"
"Sure," I began. The memory of a fire at a Kansas farmhouse so many years ago sent a pang of terror through me for a millisecond before I pushed through it. "How 'bout 'You're not as hot as you think you are!'?"
As the flames rushed forward, I kicked backward with my foot, knocking the railing away. Then I let myself fall.
At the last possible second, I grabbed the edge of the balcony, my legs dangling high over the courtyard.
Beta rushed at the space where I had been a moment ago. He passed right over my head. As he swept over my fingers I felt a searing pain, but I held the concrete ledge with a death grip.
I turned to watch him fall off the balcony, toward a dirty swimming pool below.
Beta looked like a writhing, burning meteor as he descended. Tongues of flame licked upward, but he was falling too fast to burn me.
"I'll see you again soon, Alien Hunter. You have no hope of winning. There are too many of us! Too many..."
A splash and a hiss drowned out whatever Beta said next. The whole courtyard was suddenly full of steam.
My hands were raw and blistered, but I held on to the balcony and peered down into the courtyard. The pool was half-empty now--and there was no trace of fire, or Beta.
Too many of us? What the heck did that mean?
Chapter 36
MY CLOTHES WERE BURNED, my hands were badly blistered, and I smelled like I had been wrestling charred hogs in a barbecue pit. Susan didn't seem to mind, though. As soon as I opened up the bedroom door the little girl ran out and gave me a big hug. It was painful, but I didn't care. Saving someone always feels good.
"Is the bad man gone?" she whispered. "Is he?"
"Yes. He's gone, Susan. He'll never come back. You're safe."
"But are you safe?" the little girl said to me.
And then, a big oops. Major oops. I realized part of what my father had been trying to prepare me for.
Suddenly the little girl's shape before me was like a Venus flytrap with hundreds of legs and arms. And she was s hrieking at me: "YOU MURDERED HIM, MURDERED HIM, MURDERED MY FIREMAN!"
Flames shot out at me, and the heat was unbearable. Worse still, the little monster was blocking both the doorway and the room's only window.
Moth--it was the odd thought in my brain, the only small possibility that I might live through this new sneak attack.
So like a moth, I went right into the flames, and I grabbed the core with all my remaining strength.
"MURDERER! TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" it continued to scream. "MURDERER, LET GO!"
But I wouldn't let go and I wouldn't stop charging straight ahead either.
"Come with me, Susan!"
I crashed through the window with the blazing, squealing creature in my arms. Then I was falling, falling, falling.
And then... I was swimming in the remains of the pool down in the courtyard.
And my attacker was nothing but hot air.
Too many of us, Beta had said.
And Susan had been one of them.
Chapter 37
EVERYTHING AFTER THAT quickly went from bad to worse. When I got back to the town house, Willy hadn't returned, and there was no clue as to what had happened to him after he began to follow The Cockney Fireman.
I didn't need a clue. There was no question in my mind that Beta or one of his minions had been up to no good. This time when I stormed out to find answers, I refused to let any of my friends come along. I bear-hugged Joe and Dana, and I promised the tear-streaked Emma that I would not come back without Willy.
I could not, would not, ever lose one of my friends again.
The sign outside B. Faust and Company, Ltd., said the shop closed at seven. But now it was eight thirty and there w as still an eerily bright glow seeping through the cracks around the metal shutters that covered the entrance.
I climbed a fence and from there hoisted myself up a drainpipe to the roof. When Emma and I had last visited, I'd noticed skylights. Time to see if they might give me an easy way inside.
There. Three skylights, in a neat row. I could hear voices, so I crept up on hands and knees as silently as I could. All three skylights were opaque with soot and grime, but one was missing a pane in the corner. A dim golden light was flickering inside.
Cautiously, I put my face to the hole. From my vantage point I could see the whole room, and let me tell you, it wasn't a pretty sight.
The place hadn't shut down at all. About a dozen "people" were still scurrying around, wheeling tubs of molten metal or manipulating unfamiliar objects glowing with heat. What they were making, I had no idea. How they were making it... well, that was the reall
y freaky part.
One enormously muscular man was welding two curved metal plates together. He was being showered in sparks but wasn't wearing a mask. "Safety first" didn't really seem to be a major issue in this place, though, because he didn't even have a welder. He was just running his finger up and down the join between the plates, while a white-hot scalpel of flame extended above his fingernail like an extra knuckle, searing the pieces in place.
A few yards away from him, another man with a tumorous paunch held a thick metal bar in front of him like bicycle handlebars. As I watched, the metal began to turn red between his hands, until the whole center of the bar was glowing. Then, as gently as if he were stroking a cat, he massaged it into a smooth curve and tossed it onto a pile of similar pieces.
Everyone in the workshop had the same fire-scarred hands that I'd seen on The Cockney Fireman. And they all looked withered somehow, like the life had been sucked out of them... like the only thing keeping them alive was gasoline and spark plugs.
There was a movement just below me, and I looked down. Separated from the rest of the workers by a partition was a little break room, complete with microwave, sink, and a small stovetop encrusted with old food.
The grizzled, unpleasant woman who had yelled at Emma and me two days before was sitting at a rickety table with a cup of tea in front of her, tapping one foot against the other nervously, like she was waiting for someone.
Or something.
A sound made her jump a little, and her head turned toward the stove. All four of the burners on the range had lit on their own and were burning with orange flames that extended at least six inches in the air.
In a matter of seconds, the flames grew even higher, and came together, until they formed a giant ball of fire that hung over the stove like a miniature sun.
Then, almost daintily, the flames stepped down onto the cement floor, burning in a flaming blossom that was all too familiar to me.
This was the same flaming monster that I'd drowned in a dirty apartment swimming pool. Beta was back in all his glory!
Chapter 38
AT BETAS APPEARANCE, the woman jumped up so fast she knocked over her chair, and she turned her head away. The monster was so bright that it was hard to look at directly.
"It's you!" she cried out in a gasp. "They told me you would come for me."
"Yessssssssss," came the hiss. "Are you prepared for me, dearheart? Are you prepared to receive my power?"
Her voice rasped eagerly. "Yes, yes. Make me one of your flame weavers. I want to know what it feels like to have fire at my fingertips. To have fire within me. To be..."
"To be something more than what you are?" The tongues of flame were waggling with suppressed laughter. "Very well, ask and ye shall receive."
All of a sudden, Beta flared till he towered over the grim-faced woman. Her docile smile faded and she took a step back. An instant later, she was enveloped in flame as Beta poured over her like a deluge.
I couldn't even see her anymore. But I could hear her. Her voice had lost its eagerness. "It... it burns. Is it supposed to -- no, no!... I want it to stop! I--"
She gave a shriek that made my skin prickle, but no one in the rest of the workshop even looked up. And then it was over.
All that was left of Beta was a wisp of flame flickering from the woman's mouth, which she quickly sucked inside like a long strand of spaghetti.
Her fear was gone, replaced by a bland, satisfied smile. Her eyes glistened, but they were strangely hollow. It was like the lights were on, but nobody was home. She smiled mechanically, but believe me when I say that her face was the type that should never smile.
"More drones for the hive," she said in a voice that was raspier and scarier than ever. Then she strode off to join the rest of the staff on the workshop floor. "Woman's work is never done," she muttered.
Chapter 39
AN HOUR LATER, I'd gotten no more answers or any glimpses of Willy. And what Beta had said at the apartment building was still bothering me. Too many of us. There might be a handful of surly-looking goons here -- sorry, flame weavers--but he'd made it sound like he had a dangerous personal army.
The answer was clear to me: B. Faust might be Beta's factory, but it wasn't his official headquarters. Not even close.
Finally I saw two of the workers leaving the factory floor, the grizzled woman and a tall, balding man who looked like he could be Homer Simpson's brother. Between them was a wheelbarrow hauling a huge bin full of parts. They took it out through a back door.
I crawled across the roof to watch as they emerged behind the building and began lifting the pieces into an unmarked, coal-black delivery truck backed up to a loading dock.
When they took the wheelbarrow back inside, I let myself down onto the roof of the truck, then onto its cargo bay. I didn't know where they were taking this stuff, but I wanted to find out as much as I could about it.
It wouldn't be long before they came back with another load, and there wasn't anywhere to hide unless I felt like being crushed under two tons of steel.
Well, wait a minute. Maybe that wasn't such a terrible idea.
I sat on top of the pile, pulled my legs up to my chest, and closed my eyes, feeling the cold, hard metal beneath me, the way the iron molecules stacked and nested in one another like oranges jammed into a crate. It was a particularly difficult morph, but I was stoked and motivated with real anger at Beta now, and a few seconds later, I clattered to the floor of the cargo bay. I'd changed myself. I was now a curved steel bar on the top of a pile of similar pieces.
Minutes later, the flame weavers returned and dumped another cartload of parts into the truck--right on top of me.
"Let's get going," said the male in a low growl. "He's expecting these for tonight. We do not want to disappoint Phosphorius Beta."
Chapter 40
THE CLANKING OF METAL was deafening. Going to an AC/DC concert would have been more relaxing than riding in the back of this truck. I'm no librarian, but after a while the enforced, cocoonlike silence of a reading room was starting to seem attractive.
The truck made three stops, and at each one I felt more parts being dumped on top of me. If I hadn't been made of manganese steel, the same thing they make bulldozer blades out of, I would have been as flat as a pancake by now.
I don't know how far we went. Maybe fifty miles or more. It was quiet and dark for a long while in the back of the truck, and then suddenly we were surrounded by clanking, bustling, crackling sounds that got louder and louder and louder : It sounded like we were riding a n e levator into a mineshaft that was traveling deep into the bowels of the earth.
We stopped about halfway to China, it seemed, and the cargo bay's rolling door opened with a clatter. Voices and stomping feet filled the truck, and I was picked up and flung through the air.
"'Bout time you got here," I heard a deep voice say. "Tonight's the big night."
Chapter 41
WHEN I WAS AWAY from the main source of the light, I changed back to my regular form, and--bang! --promptly smacked my head on something.
It turned out I was crammed into an industrial-sized washing machine that was big enough to hold me and all the metal keeping me company, but not by much. The walls of the washtub were discolored and spotted with rust.
There was an overpoweringly rancid smell in the air and, breathing through my mouth, I shrank back as best I could and took a peek out through the machine's door. I wasn't underground, as I'd thought.
And I didn't like what I saw. For miles, it seemed, the landscape was made up entirely of piles and piles of trash, with hundreds of human silhouettes moving among them. On the piles burned thousands of fires, all swaying wit h t he same terrible rhythm, as if under the control of a single beating heart. Suddenly I knew what I was up against, something I could never hope to beat.
Now I knew what Beta had meant by "too many of us." The evil spawning here seemed infinite. There could be a million of him at this dump alone.
&nbs
p; If things keep going this way, I'm gonna be toast before long, I thought. Burnt black and to a crisp, smoking like a chimney.
With perfect timing, the universe--or maybe it was my father, or maybe it was Beta--decided to play a cruel joke on me. Regardless, I knew that when I got around to telling this story someday, Joe would say it was a really good one.
Because right at that minute, the washing machine turned on.
And I was about to be smashed to pieces.
Chapter 42
WELL, if this adventure didn't get me an alien, I would at least come out of it brand-spankin'-clean, I thought, silently slumping down in the barrel of the washing machine.
As it turns out, my potential bloodbath was more like a nuclear-powered water massage than a spin in a clothing washer full of metal bars. A regular human probably wouldn't have survived the pressure, but Alparians have a pretty tough hide.
I heard voices approaching and didn't waste a second before I focused entirely on returning to bar form. It wasn't long before three flame weavers in overalls opened the machine door and began loading the metal pieces into what looked like a mine cart that ran on rails.
They had barely started, though, when I heard a massive, roaring boom sweep through the dump, shaking the g round so much that some of the workers actually fell over like tenpins after a strike in bowling. I could see human figures running through thousands of fires toward the highest piles of garbage.
Now was my chance! I rolled out of the machine and across the shadowy aisle between two rows of stacked tires. The ground was still trembling, so no one would find it odd that something was skittering across the ground toward the site of the explosion.
At least I thought no one would notice. I was wrong.
One worker (I couldn't make out if it was male or female as I rolled faster and faster in the dim light) was far more interested in an errant piece of metal than in the freaking earthquake that seemed to be going on.
Maintaining bar form was hard enough, but rolling at top speed on top of that? Dizzyingly exhausting. After the world's weirdest mini chase scene, I felt the worker's hand swipe me from the ground just as I heard the voice.