Blood Echo (Burning Girl #2)(19)

The tannery’s got a padlock. As much as she wants to tear it off, that’ll look suspicious to the authorities, so she takes the time to find the right key, and when she does, she pushes the door open into shadows.

She’s reaching for the light switch when she hears a small, sharp click. It’s answered by a flashing red light somewhere deep within the darkness before her. There’s another sound, more distant.

Laughter, she realizes. From out there. Richard Davies is laughing at—

The deep, heavy thump she hears next reminds her of the time she was driving on the freeway in a rainstorm behind an eighteen-wheeler toting two decks of automobiles, and a strong wind blew into the plastic wrap enshrouding the cars with enough force to punch a giant hole through the other side.

Then, in the instant before fire comes roaring toward her, Charlotte feels something she’s never felt on Zypraxon before.

Terror.





16

It sounded like everyone inside the control center screamed at once, but only two of them are on their feet now: Cole and the med tech, whose name he’s already forgotten.

He should have known something was wrong the minute he saw Davies shaking with laughter on the ground team’s shoulder cams. But he figured the sick fuck was just losing his mind, and how could that be a bad thing given their cleanup plan?

Then came the explosion—fierce and white hot. Chemical, Cole realizes.

Rigged.

Now they’re watching the roof of the tannery tumble back down to earth in a fiery cascade.

Whatever happened, Davies sent Charley into a trap, and for some reason, she fell for it.

Where is she?

Even though he’s so far away that Charley was previously just a tiny figure inside his shoulder-mounted cam, the sniper who’s been watching over her is knocked backward a few feet by the explosion. He manages not to lose his balance. His shoulder cam holds a fairly consistent angle on the burning tannery and the pieces of wall that went flying out from the blast.

But there’s something that didn’t come flying out from the blast.

Charley.

A second later, it appears that the fire consuming the tannery’s remains has intensified. Then Cole realizes that’s not quite right.

Part of the fire is walking toward them.

Upright. Steady. Not flailing or weaving or running in panicked circles.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” the med tech whispers.

And that’s when Cole sees Charlotte’s vital signs. Her blood ox is 200 percent, normal for a trigger zone. Her heart rate is 250 beats per minute, also normal for a trigger zone.

Normal for the abnormal, Cole thinks.

And that’s what’s not normal.

Whatever explosives were rigged to blow inside the tannery, they were powerful. So powerful she should have at least lost consciousness, or been blown backward off her feet in the direction of her tail. But instead, she’s fully consumed by flame and walking a steady path out from the tannery’s perforated, burning shell.

If she’s regenerating on the spot, it’s impossible to make it out on the night vision tail cam. The flames have made it something akin to an old 1980s video camera angled at a nest of bright lights; it’s all a smear of white.

For a second, Cole thinks everything might be all right and that they’ve just completed a test of Zypraxon’s power they would have been far too frightened to try inside a lab.

Then Charlotte, still burning, collapses to all fours.





II





17

There are little indications along the way that it’s a dream.

The steps to the beach aren’t as steep or jagged as they are in real life. The crescent of mud-colored sand at the bottom looks deeper and wider than it did the last time she visited. But Bayard Rock’s still offshore like always, the same lumpy obelisk of stone that she’s gazed at meditatively on countless afternoons. Whitecaps are breaking across its western face, collapsing into something that resembles beer foam as it gurgles toward shore.

This is a dream or a memory or something in between.

It feels like she could wake herself up if she wanted.

But she doesn’t want to because Luanne is there.

Her grandmother walks several paces ahead of her, the ocean wind threatening to whip her mane of straw-colored hair free from its loose ponytail.

When Luanne glances back and smiles, Charlotte sees she’s the same age as when Charlotte moved in with her as a teenager. That was the moment in time when their faces looked most alike—softened by the same curves, the same baby fat–padded cheeks that offset that sometimes hard glint in their narrow eyes, the same small button nose Luanne passed to her daughter, who in turn passed it to Charlotte.

The next thing Charlotte knows, they’re sitting together on an expanse of coastal rock that has the quality of cooled magma. Glistening tide pools surround them. Luanne has a pail next to her for sand dollars and seashells.

Just over her grandmother’s shoulder, she can make out the promontory where the new resort is taking shape, a resort that wasn’t even an idea back when her grandmother was alive. A resort now being funded by Graydon Pharmaceuticals as a show of exactly what, she’s not sure. When they first bought the abandoned property, Charlotte thought they were trying to frighten her, raise a monument to their dizzying financial power and relentless surveillance right in her backyard. Now it seems more like compensation.