Ash and Quill(65)

"He's right," Santi said. He was already pushing Wolfe toward the escape. "It's going to flash over soon. Move!"

"The books!" Dario shouted, and grabbed packs. They all grabbed for them, and the rest Jess shoved quickly through the hole and let Wolfe, on the other side now, drag away. Librarians to the end, Jess thought, and it should have been funny. Nothing was funny now.

Santi went next, then Morgan. Khalila pushed Askuwheteau and his refugees ahead of her when her turn came, and no one argued, though Jess kept a nervous watch on the gathering mist. It had begun as a reeking, pale thing, but now it had taken on a definite tinge of green. The flames burning at city hall and in the town hadn't died at all. They'd grown into twisting, green, violent furies. He could feel the heat from here. Anyone closer would be dead from it.

The last of the Philadelphians went through, and then Khalila. Dario. Glain.

It was just Thomas, and Jess.

"Go," Jess said, and Thomas gave him a strange little smile.

"No," he said. "You go first."

That was the moment when Jess, to his shock, realized that the hole just wasn't big enough. Thomas had dropped the weapon before he'd burned a hole big enough to accommodate his broad shoulders.

That smile meant that he knew he was about to die. That he'd worked it out and accepted it.

"No," Jess said. He meant it to the bottom of his soul.

He bent and picked up the still-hot gun, flipped the switch, and began to widen the hole.

It was hard to know how Thomas had managed to hold the weapon at all; Jess's hands began to sting and scream in the first few seconds of use, and he felt his whole body tense against the rising red pain. It won't take much. Thirty seconds. Maybe a little more. You can do this. He counted it off under his breath. Started strongly, then ran out of air. Couldn't even gasp against the agony. Hold on. Somehow, he did, even though the pain had built to an exquisite, vile pressure like nothing he'd ever felt. It felt like being boiled alive. He was dimly aware that Thomas was shouting at him to stop. But he couldn't. The hole wasn't big enough for Thomas yet.

And then he felt something shudder inside the weapon, and the Ray of Apollo went dead. He tried the switch. Nothing. His hands were clumsy, and the metal slick, and he dropped it into the mud as he tried to get it working again; it had to work, had to.


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But it would never work again. Pieces of it had melted. More of it glowed a dull red. The mirrors inside had shattered.

"You have to go," Thomas said to him.

Jess took a deep breath and said, "Not until you do."

Don't look at your hands, he told himself. He knew how badly they were burned, but he thrust his right into his pocket anyway. It felt like plunging it into molten glass, and he nearly screamed, but he managed not to, somehow, and when he pulled his hand out again, he was holding the small glass vial of the leftover Greek fire. He uncorked it and threw the liquid in a green, hissing arc to splash against the edge of the hole they'd burned.

It wasn't much, and it widened it by only an inch or so.

But it was enough.

Thomas picked Jess up and bodily threw him into the hole, and a pair of strong hands grabbed hold of him and pulled him to the other side. He hardly cared, but a glance up told him it was Dario Santiago who'd just saved his life.

Jess dragged in a sickly cool breath of air and bent over to retch out the poisonous stuff he'd been choking on. He didn't bother to see if they were under attack. He didn't care. He just crawled away to the side, gasping and shaking with pain.

And then he thought, Thomas.

His friend made it just in time. He only just squeezed through, even with the widening of the hole, and as he emerged, Jess saw his clothes were giving off wisps of smoke and flickers of Greek fire. Someone shouted, and a fire blanket was thrown on him to smother the flames.

Scholar Wolfe grabbed Thomas's reaching hand and pulled him-and the sack that Thomas wouldn't leave behind-well away from the hole.

Jess had only just begun to realize they'd made it, actually made it, when someone cried, "Watch out!" and the wall beside them boomed with a sudden pressure. It creaked and groaned, and an explosion of brilliant green light boiled upward within it. Curls of fire lashed the low black clouds. A tongue of green flame blasted through the hole in the wall, burned for long seconds, and then vanished in a reeking, rotten puff of smoke.

The aerosolized Greek fire mist had just burned off and cooked everything inside the walls. If they'd still been in there . . .