From The Ashes (The Ministry of Curiosities #6)(77)

"Charlie!" Seth shouted. "Charlie! Where are you?"

"Here!" I managed to call back before a fist slammed into my mouth. My head hit the floor, dazing me.

Noise. So much noise filled my head. Screaming. Shouted orders. The pounding of my blood.

Then a knife pressed into my side, it's cold, sharp point pricking my skin through the layers of clothing.

I struggled, kicking out, but a heavy body weighed me down. My pathetic efforts achieved nothing. It was definitely a man, and not Gillingham either. He wasn't big enough.

The knife cut me.

I screamed but it was drowned out by an explosion. The floor trembled beneath me. Glasses and plates rattled. The shouts suddenly stopped and an eerie silence followed.

"No," gasped the man on top of me. "Not yet." The pressure eased enough for me to flip over and punch upward, in one single movement. My fist connected with a satisfying but bruising crunch.

"Charlie!" Seth cried.

"Down here!" I shouted, lashing out again.

I must have stunned my attacker because he fell back but did not get off me altogether. I wriggled and shoved at him, managing to free myself. Doyle relit a candle, and in the wan light, I realized I'd only wriggled free because Seth had pulled the attacker off me.

"You!" both Seth and I snapped at General Eastbrooke.

He breathed heavily and sweat dampened his brow, but he did not look at us. He stared at the door. "Lincoln," he muttered, eyes wide. "It wasn't supposed to go off yet. Lincoln…my son."

I scrambled to my feet, picked up my skirts, and sprinted out the door. "Lincoln!"





Chapter 19





A wall of heat and smoke slammed into me when I reached the kitchen. It was impossible to see how much of the room was on fire through the dark, billowing smoke. "Lincoln!" I screamed.

No answer. Only shouts behind me and the crackle of flames in front. Tears burned my eyes, blurred my vision. I buried my mouth and nose in my arm and pressed on. I had to find him. He must be safe, somewhere, alive. He had to be.

Otherwise…

I choked, as much from the suffocating fear and tears as from the smoke itself. I squinted into the gray pall, tried to make out human shapes, but could only identify the table and stove, no people.

Someone coughed and spluttered. Lincoln! Or Gus or Cook, perhaps. I had to get in there, but the air squeezed out of my lungs and smoke rushed in. I coughed into my arm and inched forward.

The amber in my necklace pulsed. The imp! It wouldn't save the others, but it would save me.

Voices sounded behind me, a jumble of incomprehensible shouts. Then the general suddenly emerged from the dark. With a snarl, he lunged at me.

I plunged into the smoky haze filling the kitchen. Searing heat smacked into my face and stole the remaining breath from my lungs. Smoke clogged my throat. I couldn't breathe. Dizziness swamped me. I fell to my knees, but managed to wrap my hand around the rapidly beating orb.

"I release you," I choked out.

Light flashed, and the imp rose large and real before me. It's hairless body reared up and its slanted green eyes pinned on a point behind me, as if daring the general to attack.

"Devil!" Gillingham cried in a high-pitched voice. "She's a witch!"

"Get back!" the general ordered. "All of you, stay back!"

My chest hurt. My throat ached. Heat swirled around me, more intense near the pantry door, engulfed in flames. I put my hands out like a blind person and shuffled forward. Trust the imp.

The imp suddenly changed shape. The cat-like creature whirled around and around until it became a blur. Smoke swirled around it, caught in the force like dust in a whirlwind. The imp spun out of the kitchen, scattering the panicked onlookers, drawing the smoke along in its wake.

I breathed in two deep breaths of semi-clear air, before more smoke billowed from the flames. Through the sting of my tears, I could just make out three bodies and a dismembered leg on the floor amid broken pieces of furniture, crockery and splattered food. I recognized Cook, Gus and Lincoln. Only Cook coughed. The other two didn't move.

Oh God, oh God.

"Water!" Seth shouted. "Put out the fire before it spreads."

"Stay there," the general growled, pointing a small handgun at Seth. "No one move."

"Enough, General," Marchbank snapped. "Put the weapon away, and let us save them."

"Get Lincoln out," the general said. "No one else."

"Are you mad?"

"He's my son!"

"No," I rasped. "He's not."

The general pointed the gun at me. "You corrupted him. You changed him. He was loyal and content to do his duty for the ministry until you appeared."

I couldn't protest. A coughing fit assaulted me and snot streamed from my nose and tears from my eyes. My imp was gone and I couldn't attack the general from my weakened position, hunched on all fours.

"Damn you, Witch. You're going to hell where your kind belongs." He pulled the trigger and a shot rang out.

Yet I didn't die. I opened my eyes—I hadn't realized I'd shut them—to see the imp on its hind legs, a bullet in one paw, a pail in the other. It splashed water from the pail over the flames licking the pantry doorframe, as if it did that sort of thing every day and had not just saved my life.