She looked at the inferno that engulfed the front entrance and every window in the building. There was no way to get inside to search for survivors. Turning away, she saw the man was on his knees, beating on the flames devouring one of the boys.
The man’s face was coated. His clothes and hair were gray with ash.
Keren charged in, snagged one of the boys by the back of his sweatshirt, and jerked him to his feet. Something solid slammed the man to his knees beside her. A stream of blood cut through the grit on his face.
He staggered to his feet when Keren would have expected him to be down for good. “The whole building’s coming down.”
He tore at the boy’s burning jacket. The panicked boy fought him, but the man ripped the coat off.
Keren shoved the other boy forward then turned to help the bleeding man. Turning to her, his eyes blazed with life in the midst of death. His spirit hit her almost as hard as the bricks. His square shoulders, and the honor and compassion in his eyes, didn’t match with this soul-destroying neighborhood. What was he doing here? Besides bleeding. She reached to help him get away.
The old building howled like an angry monster. Flames reached for the heavens. The buildings on both sides were engulfed in flames and near collapse, too. The man glanced back. Keren’s gaze followed his. Through the choking grit, she saw someone lying unconscious at the corner of the building, near the alleyway.
“Chico,” the man said. “Please, God, not him.”
She heard the true prayer in his voice.
The whole building, now engulfed in flames, shifted forward.
She turned to order the man to get away before she went back for the boy. But he was gone, running toward the boy, right into the teeth of the fire, toward certain death.
Another boy burst through the solid wall of raging flames that blocked the front door of the condemned brownstone. He screamed and beat at fire that had turned him into a human torch. He ran down the stoop of the tenement and plowed into Keren, shrieking and writhing in pain, and she staggered back as he fell at her feet. He rolled and flailed at the merciless flames.
Ignoring the white-hot raining ash, Keren tore off her blazer and smothered the fire. She slid her arm under the boy’s shoulders. The stench of burned flesh was overwhelming.
The boy screamed, but he was conscious enough to get to his feet with her support. As she moved away from the raging fire, she looked back at the building. Her heart clutched. The man scooped up the fallen boy and turned to run, but he was out of time. Bricks rained down on his shoulders and he vanished as he was buried alive.
Then, through the smothering clouds of smoke, she saw the man rise up, with what seemed like superhuman strength, and shed the bricks on his back. He had the child’s limp body cradled in his arms.
The boy beside Keren fell. She couldn’t abandon this teenager to go help the man. Her heart wrenched as she turned away from the man and virtually carried the wickedly burned boy toward safety.
She glanced back and saw the man run sideways down the street, trying to get past the collapsing building. Falling bricks and tortured metal clawed at him. Rocks and cinders pelted him with every step.
“God, help me. Help us save these boys. Help that man.” She looked back. Something slammed into the man. He staggered then fell against the side of a stripped car. Keren knew that last blow was one too many. The man had no strength left.
As Keren hauled the semiconscious boy around a corner to shelter him, she risked one more look back into the blizzard of shrapnel. Hundreds of bricks hurtled straight at the man. Then he was swallowed up by the choking dust of the explosion. Buried under tons of stone. Keren cried out at the heroic man’s failure. When he vanished, the evil she’d sensed earlier swept back, and Keren could swear she heard Satan laugh in the face of the horror that surrounded her.
Trying desperately to keep functioning, she fumbled for her phone and called 911.
CHAPTER TWO
A doorless wreck of a car materialized in front of Paul Morris.
He slammed into it, realized what it was, shoved Chico in, and jumped in after him just as bricks battered the roof with brutal fury, caving it in.
Paul threw himself over the child.
The noise was deafening. Smothering dirt blinded Paul. He felt the roof press against his back. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. When he flipped it open, the display light pushed back the terror enough that he could dial 911 in the choking dust. “There’s been an explosion.” He gave the operator the address. “There’s a fire. We need ambulances. Dozens of people hurt and killed!”
“Please stay on the line, sir.” The woman’s calm voice gave the whole thing a nightmarish quality, but Paul knew he was wide awake.
The car’s roof vibrated with the thudding bricks, rapping out an ugly song on Paul’s spine. He dropped the phone on the floor, leaving it open so he could see, and slid onto his knees beside the little boy, ready to drag Chico onto the floor, too, though there was next to no space. Blood coursed through the silt coating Chico’s face. The car held what was left of its shape as the bricks buried them alive. Paul felt for a heartbeat and found one, weak but steady. With only inches to move, he struggled out of his zippered jacket and covered the boy’s mouth and nose to protect him from breathing grit.
The first siren was audible through the bricks. He picked up his phone and said to the 911 operator, “I hear them coming. Thank you.”
“Sir, wait until—”
Paul hung up but left the phone open for the light as he turned back to Chico. He could make out a black streak on Chico’s face that had to be blood. He pressed on the fast-bleeding cut with the jacket.
Paul’s phone rang. He remembered the 911 operator had told him to wait. “Hello, I’m sorry, operator, I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll try to get the evil out of her before she dies, but there is so much. She’s so filthy.”
The voice that had started all this.
Paul fought back the brutal, ugly, satanic words he wanted to say.
“I gave you the car.”
Paul shook his head. A voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It surrounded him and comforted him. It sheltered him, just like the car he’d fallen into.
He bowed his head and saw blood dripping down the front of his torn, dirt-coated T-shirt. “You gave me the car?”
A crooning voice spoke in his ear, “I saw you trying to save those evil men.”
“Boys, not men. They’re just boys.” Paul gripped the phone, coating the keypad with bloody fingerprints.
“They’re old enough to be evil. When you saved them, you missed your chance. Now Juanita will suffer the first plague. The plague of blood.”
The connection broke off.
He had to get to Juanita. Now.
Paul shoved at the space where the car’s door should be and found bricks. Chico stirred beside him, but Paul thought of Juanita and kept digging, shoving. He knocked a hole in the stack of bricks, and they clattered to the pavement as he squirmed outside into blinding grit and ear-piercing squalling sirens. He stumbled over debris covering the street and fell to his knees. His hands landed on shards of glass and jagged brick. He was only distantly aware of the pain.
He stared, curious about the spreading stain of red on the ground around him. An echo deep in his head told him it was blood, and the blood was his. A plague of blood.
Juanita. Those pictures.
A man emerged like a phantom from the cloud of smoke and grit and crouched beside Paul. “Sir, let me help you.”
The letters EMT on the man’s chest blurred. “I’m not the one who needs help. In… in the car. A boy.” The letters faded completely. “And Juanita. I have to save her.”