Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [175]
Richard whispered, “What is happening to her?”
“Yvette’s happening,” I said.
“You’ll return to France with me. You’ll continue to serve me even though you’re a master now. If anyone would make such a sacrifice, it is you, Warrick.”
“No, no,” he said. “If I were truly strong and worthy of God’s grace, then perhaps I would return with you, but I am not that strong.”
She wrapped her rotting arms around his waist and smiled up at him. Her body was running to ruin, leaking dark fluids over her white dress. Her rich pale hair was drying out before our eyes, turning to crinkling straw. “Then kiss me, Warrick, one last time. I must find your replacement before dawn.”
He encircled her with his white robed arms, hugging her against his tall body. “No, Yvette, no.” He stared down at her and there was something almost like tenderness on his face. “Forgive me,” he said. He held his hands out in front of him.
Blue fire sprang from his hands, a strange pale color, paler even than gas flame.
Yvette turned her rotting face to look behind her at the fire. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said.
Warrick closed his arms around her. Her dress caught first. She screamed, “Don’t be stupid, Warrick! Let me go!”
He held on, and when the fire hit her flesh she went like she’d been doused in kerosene. She burned with a blue light. She screamed, and struggled, but he had her pinned to his chest. She couldn’t even beat at the flames with her hands.
The fire bathed Warrick in a nimbus of blue, but he didn’t burn. He stood there yellow and white surrounded in blue fire, and he did look like a saint. Something holy and wonderful and terrible to behold. He stood there shining and Yvette began to blacken and peel in his arms. He smiled at us. “God has not forsaken me. Only my fear kept me in thrall to her all these years.”
Yvette twisted in his arms, tried to get away, but he held her tight. He dropped to his knees, bowing his head while she fought him. She burned, skin peeling back from her bones, and still she screamed. The stench of burning hair and cooking flesh filled the room, but there was almost no smoke, just heat building. Making everyone in the room move back from them. Finally, mercifully, Yvette stopped moving, stopped screaming.
I think Warrick was praying while she shrieked and writhed and burned. The blue flames roared almost to the ceiling, then changed color. They became pure yellow-orange, the color of ordinary flame.
I remembered McKinnon’s story of how the firebug had burned once the fire changed color. “Warrick, Warrick, let her go. You’ll burn with her.”
Warrick’s voice came one last time. “I do not fear God’s embrace. He demands sacrifice, but he is merciful.” He never screamed. The fire began to eat at him, but he never made a sound. In that silence we heard a different voice. A high-pitched screaming, low and wordless, pitiless, hopeless. Yvette was still alive.
Someone finally asked if there was a fire extinguisher. Jason said, “No, there isn’t.” I looked at him across the room, and he met my gaze. We stared at each other and I knew that he knew exactly where the fire extinguisher was. Jean-Claude, whose hand I was still holding, knew where it was. Hell, I knew where it was. None of us went running. We let her burn. We let them both burn. Warrick I would have saved if I could have, but Yvette—Burn, baby, burn.
53
THE COUNCIL WENT home. We had the word of two members that we would not be bothered again. I wasn’t sure I trusted them, but it was the best we were going to get. Richard and I are meeting regularly with Jean-Claude, learning how to control the marks. I still can’t control the munin, but I’m working on it, and Richard is helping me. We’re trying to be less nasty to each other. He’s gone out of state for the rest