Playing with Fire: A Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count)(35)

The deep tone blared for a few seconds. The napalm gushing from the broken pipes died away to a trickle. In thirty seconds, the siren would blare again, marking the start of the final thirty seconds of 120 Wall Street’s life.

Then my world would burn.





The moment the charge went off thirteen stories above, 120 Wall Street trembled, but it didn’t burn. I waited for the whoosh of igniting napalm, but the seconds ticked by in silence. Fury over having to wait so long to see what would happen surged through me.

No more.

I surged out of my napalm bath onto my hooves, breathed in deep, and charged out of the bathroom. I slipped and slid trying to cut the corner and slammed into the wall. I unsheathed my claws for purchase and lurched into a canter, the fastest I dared to go in the confined space. I blew by the elevators on the way to the stairwell, bounced through the doorway, and scrambled up the steps, tripping several times in my effort to reach the roof as fast as possible.

120 Wall Street needed to burn, and if the bomb techs couldn’t pull it off, I would. “Burn, burn, burn!”

I exhaled flame. Droplets of sparkling napalm dripped onto me from above. The gold and silver sparks within flashed, but it didn’t ignite.

No. No, no, no. The building would burn. It had to burn. The police and CDC magicians couldn’t hold the shield forever. If the napalm drained to the ground floor, it’d eventually evaporate and help the dust spread into the air. It would leak out and rain down onto the city. It would spread.

Perky waited outside. He’d only be among the first to petrify. If the napalm leaked out of the building, he wouldn’t live long enough to turn to stone. He would burn, too. If it took too long, if the shield was at risk of failing, others from the station would come to supervise—or try to help.

Quinn would come.

No matter what, I couldn’t allow Quinn to get anywhere near the dust. They’d stuff him in a glass coffin. I couldn’t bear the thought of Quinn being lowered into unforgiving ground, too much of a risk to be awakened if he breathed in the dust. They’d kill him.

He had magic, strong magic—magic the government would never allow into the hands of a newly whelped gorgon. They’d kill him.

It’d be my fault.

Quinn.

I climbed the stairs, plowing through the goop covering the steps. Placing each hoof with care, I worked my way upward, and the higher I went, the less dense the napalm was. The draining had already begun.

It wouldn’t be long until too much napalm filled the ground levels of the building, making the temperature of the twenty-first floor too cool to eradicate the gorgon dust.

A doorway blocked my way. I backed to the end of the landing and slammed my shoulder into the door. It held. I snorted flame, but the napalm didn’t light. I retreated and charged again. The door shuddered on its hinges.

My third blow knocked it open, and I staggered into blinding daylight. A rainbow barrier marked the presence of the shield where it curved overhead, encasing the entire structure. Through it, I spotted several helicopters circling, observing, waiting for the moment the napalm lit.

Without me, it wouldn’t.

Tossing my head, I trumpeted a challenge and charged across the roof to raise my body temperature. If my regular fire wasn’t hot enough to ignite the napalm, I would run until I burst into living flame. I would run until I couldn’t take another step as long as it meant the fuel combusted.

I would give my last breath to repay Quinn for his kindness, for welcoming me into his home when he had every reason to cast me aside. I wouldn’t fail.

I couldn’t fail.

Gouts of red and orange blew from my nostrils with every breath and the napalm coating my fur heated. It lit with a hiss, bathing me in a blanket of flame. The bridle fell away in pieces, the leather incinerating before it could reach the ground. My hooves glowed blue-white, and the fuel they touched caught, leaving flaming hoof prints in my wake. The fire pursued me across the roof.

I could light the napalm. I would win. I slowed to turn so I could cover the entire roof in flame. I trumpeted another call, a promise to the hovering helicopters that victory would be mine. Curtaining heat and flame, a blue, white, and yellow inferno sparking with silver and gold, licked my heels. If the napalm refused to burn the old-fashioned way, I’d help it along floor by floor, top to bottom.

120 Wall Street would burn, no matter what.





If I slowed to a canter for too long, my body lost the ability to ignite the stubborn napalm, so I ran as hard and fast as I could through the building. While the sections I galloped through burned, I didn’t trust the fires to reach every floor unaided. Even if 120 Wall Street collapsed around me, I wouldn’t stop until I reached the ground.

Columns of flame swirled up the stairwells, and I dove down through the billowing fires. I tumbled down several flights of stairs, squealing my disgust over my difficulty navigating the steps. The structure groaned as more and more of the fuel ignited and the flames spread. The unlit napalm glowed gold and silver, illuminating my path.

When I reached the twenty-first floor, the upper stories shuddered. Chunks of molten steel and broken concrete plummeted through the ceiling around me. I dodged the burning debris, charged the contaminated office, and plowed through the glass without slowing.

My gusting breath ignited the gasoline in the ceiling and the napalm on the floor. A cloud of billowing blue flame engulfed the reception and sucked air in from the adjacent room. The crack-bang of windows shattering cut over the roar of flames. Cool air rushed over me and fanned the fires.