CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-SIX

Blood and Fyre, Part 1

“Okay…” Sam stumbled to his knees. “I need a minute to—”

Thunder had the good sense to pull away from him before Sam sprayed his breakfast on the concrete.

“You know, if we’re going to continue being partners, you really should learn to get used to riding the lightning,” she mused. “Either that or you learn how to fly on your own.”

“I’m…” Sam was hit by another bout of vertigo, forcing him to gag some more. “…Working on it.”

He got up on shaky legs and wiped the spit from his mouth with the back of his hand before he could focus on their new surroundings.

“Is this the place?” Sam asked.

Thunder nodded. “Warehouse Thirteen on West 48th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. This is it.”

They were both staring up at the red brick façade of the large warehouse before them. It must have been at least five stories tall and wide enough to fill up most of the block.

“Think they know we’re coming?” he asked.

Sam hoped the heavy downpour of rain blocked out the boom that came when they arrived with the lightning, but he doubted it. Still, it was amazing how quickly the weather turned in their favor just when they needed it. This was a fact he pointed out to Thunder.

“I’m not Weather Witch. I can’t make it rain,” Thunder insisted. “Besides, the forecast was on our side from the beginning so it wasn’t hard to catch a ride.”

“Well, it is Hell’s Kitchen.” He brushed the raindrops away from his brow. “Nightly disturbances are kind of a thing here, aren’t they?”

As if to emphasize Sam’s point, they heard a loud bang coming from inside the warehouse, and they quickly found cover behind a nearby dumpster. Sam and Thunder waited for ten seconds, thirty seconds, and then let a full minute pass but the doors of the warehouse remained close.

“What do you think that was?” he whispered.

“I’m not sure, but as you said, we’re in Hell’s Kitchen so it could be anything,” she replied.

They waited another thirty seconds before they left their hiding spot and began inching their way toward the warehouse’s front doors.

“Your grandmother’s network is amazing if she found out where Chimera hung out even before Farsight could,” Thunder mused.

It didn’t feel like the time for banter, but Sam guessed Thunder was feeling the nerves like he was.

“She was showing off, I think.” Sam pulled at the collar of his new cuirass as its fur was tickling his neck. “Ugh, this is going to take some getting used to.”

“I’m happy with my new suit though,” Thunder said as she trailed after Sam. “Hope there’s enough fur left for the others.”

“Probably… that thing was huge when Apex was wearing it,” Sam recalled.

They made it to the warehouse doors without getting ambushed, although Sam noticed that the lone light hanging above the doors was flickering weirdly. As if warning the two heroes that something unnatural was lying in wait within.

“Costs me a fortune too, and I’m back to being broke.” As cautiously as he could, Sam began to turn the handle. “Six thousand drachma gone and I still owe Mr. Moonday another four for the set…”

The handle wouldn’t turn. The doors were locked shut.

Thunder tapped on Sam’s shoulder and drew his attention to the windows lining the top of the warehouse. One of which was open.

“At least he let you wear it in advance. Want me to spot you for the four?” she asked.

“No, I don’t want to owe you any more than I already do… And just how rich are you?” He wrapped one arm around Thunder’s waist while aiming his other hand up at the open window. Thunder wrapped an arm around Sam’s waist too—causing him to blush yet again—and then said, “Not richer than Crow-Man. That’s for sure.”

“Huh?” Sam’s eyebrow hitched upward. “What do you mean?”

“Not my secret to tell, lame-brain,” she smirked. “Let’s get up there already.”

Sam launched his new grappling hook up at the warehouse and hit the roof’s awning on the first try despite the rain and wind getting in his way. Then, with a whisper of, “Hold on tight,” he activated the mechanism in his new bracer, and they were both pulled upward with relative ease.

“Okay, this suit’s pretty awesome,” Sam whispered.

They cautiously climbed into the open window and then landed on the scaffolding that hung from the warehouse’s ceiling. Luckily, this scaffolding also worked as a walkway that traversed much of the warehouse’s interior.

“It’s like Moonday’s workshop in here. I can’t see the ground,” Thunder complained while she squeezed out the rain from her hair.

What little bit of light helped them see came from the flickering lamps hanging parallel to their scaffolding.

“Something’s causing the lights to flicker,” Sam whispered.

“It’s likely an aftereffect of someone’s gift at work,” Thunder whispered back.

A glaring red light flashed around the rear of the warehouse. This was accompanied by another loud bang, and then the screaming began.

Sam and Thunder glanced at each other, their eyes widening.

“No more time for stealth,” Thunder insisted.

“Let’s go,” he agreed.

They raced across the scaffolding without caring that their feet banged across its metal surface to reach the screams that were growing louder by the second at the other end of the warehouse.

“You stay high and I’ll go low,” Sam said.

He jumped off the scaffolding while launching a grappling hook at the ceiling so he could swing down to the floor. Meanwhile, Thunder had run out of scaffolding to race through so she jumped onto the ceiling instead.

From the corner of his eye, Sam watched sparks of electricity spread out of Thunder’s feet which he guessed helped to magnetize her boots and allowed her to run upside down on the ceiling’s metal surface. He didn’t have time to praise her though as the screams stopped just as his feet touched the ground, and the only sound he could hear now was the hard thumping of his chest.

“Styx,” Sam cursed. “Am I too late?”

A row of thirty-foot steel shelves blocked his line of sight, but he could see through the spaces between the metal containers on the shelves that several bodies were lying unmoving on the concrete floor beyond. In a hurry, Sam kicked at the largest container on the bottom shelf. He sent it toppling over onto the other side so he could jump through the space it had vacated. Once his feet landed on the concrete floor, Sam’s gaze drifted forward. He took in the gruesome scene before him and then realized it was a good thing that he’d already hurled his breakfast outside.

Three mangled bodies were lying on the ground. Their arms and legs were twisted in odd angles while their faces were stuck in expressions of shock and pain.

“What in Hades…”

Sam thought it was weird how thin the corpses looked too. As if they’d been drained of bodily fluids. Strangely, there was no blood pooling on the ground even though he could smell its metallic scent in the air easily enough.

“Oh, gods…” Thunder had just dropped to Sam’s side and she was visibly turning green from the sight of the three mangled corpses. “…what happened here?”

Sam knelt to inspect the face of one of the corpses. Despite its ghastly appearance, the dead man’s features were recognizable enough that Sam realized he knew who this person was.

“Oh, no…” He recalled a conversation he had with Bethany about the Crucible’s big security problem. Master, isn’t this guy—

Coldfinger, Chiron cut in. Yeah, kid, he’s one of the villains that escaped the Crucible.

Sam’s gaze drifted to the other two corpses’ faces. He recognized them too as their mugshots had also been on Bethany’s screen back at the chief’s office.

“These are Harem-Monger and Kill Buzz,” Thunder was kneeling over them. “They’re part of the ‘Dirty Dozens’, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, which I still think that name’s dumb,” Sam insisted. Then he frowned. “What brought these convicts here though?”

I think I know the answer to this one, Chiron said. Coldfinger’s on a list of villains I’ve been tracking. Same with Harem-Monger and Kill Buzz.

Why?

I thought they might be working for Chimera or at least connected to it in some way based on their activities before they were caught, Chiron explained. And if your grandmother’s right and this is a Chimera safehouse, which it probably is because that container you knocked over is filled with stuff no self-respecting business should have then it would be natural for these psychos to come here for help.

At Chiron’s words, Sam’s gaze drifted over to the fallen container and its contents which had spilled out onto the concrete floor. One of these items had rolled close enough to Sam that he was able to reach out and pick it up.

It was a glowing piece of stone not unlike a horror’s core, but it didn’t have the same reddish glow. A ghostly blue light emanated from this palm-sized trinket.

“This is… a soul stone!” Sam exclaimed.

“Blessed Athena, a soul stone… here?” Thunder’s eyes narrowed when she saw the stone in Sam’s hand. “Wicked thing… how could they?”

Theirs was an appropriate response for an item on the Wardens’ list of extremely dangerous and banned artifacts.

Soul stones were these blackened shards of rock one could only harvest on the banks of the River Styx that contained a sliver of the Styx’s power in them. Meaning any vile sorcerer who knew how they worked could trap mortal souls within these stones for later use as fuel for empowering spells or enchanting devilish tools.

“Chiron thinks this is a Chimera safehouse.” Sam’s gaze drifted to the other containers that filled the steel shelves around them. “Who knows what else they’ve got in here… What would they want with a soul stone though?”

“I don’t know… but whatever they’ve got planned will be wicked for sure.” Thunder just finished placing a drachma over each of Kill Buzz’s eyes.

It was a mark of her character, Sam thought, that she would care that these dead villains found peace in the afterlife even after all their crimes.

His gaze snapped back to Coldfinger’s frightened face. The eyes bulging out of its sockets were lifeless, but they seemed to be staring at him too. As if the villain were begging Sam for the drachma he would need to pay the ferryman in the Underworld. “But why’d Chimera kill off its own people?”

“Because loose lips sink ships,” whispered a softly spoken sultry voice.

A pair of gleaming red eyes appeared in the dark space between the two rows of steel racks in front of Sam. A second later and she stepped into the flickering light of the ceiling lamp; a shapely, pale-skinned woman in a loose red robe with a hemline that trailed along the floor.

“And these three had very loose lips. “She spoke in a genial tone that belied the hostility in her gaze. “If they didn’t then you wouldn’t have found this place, would you?”

“Holy Zeus…” Sam gulped. “You’re Bloodfyre!”

“And you’re New York’s newest alpha.” She smiled and revealed the two sharp fangs protruding from her upper lip. “I’ve been dying to meet you, Herculean.”