Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,85

puffy and inflamed, across his neck and shoulders, exposed where his shirt was pulled askew. Then his eyes cut to me.

“They’re not—” My words came in short bursts; it was hard to breathe. “Why aren’t they. Doing anything?”

“Fire kills them,” Elien said. “Isn’t that what you told me? They can’t die this way, but their brains are broken. Short circuited. Something like that.”

Nodding, I circled around the two thrashing monsters and grabbed another knife from the block. The only sound were their limbs slapping the wet tiles, the rustle of Richard’s clothing, the weak grunts they released. Then I picked out the sirens in the distance.

“Come on,” I said.

“What are the police going to do?”

“I don’t know. We have to get out of here.” I took a step, and then dizziness rolled over me, and I had to grab the counter. I still couldn’t seem to get a full breath; when I opened my eyes, I could see that my fingertips were blue.

“We’re ending this,” Elien said. “Today. I’m not letting them hurt anyone else.”

I nodded. After a moment, I opened my eyes and said, “What’s in the garage?”

It only took him a moment. “I’ll check.”

I leaned against the counter, listening to the monsters mewl and scrabble, while the sirens came closer. After a minute, Elien jogged back with a five-gallon can of gasoline in one hand and a can of paint thinner in the other.

“Gasoline on the stairs,” I said, “and then all over the place upstairs. Curtains, bedding, that kind of stuff. Give me the paint thinner.”

Picking a path around the hashoks, Elien handed me the can.

“Dag, are you—”

“Gotta be fast.”

He nodded and sprinted to the stairs; the gasoline fumes wafted back to me. I opened the can of paint thinner and began dumping it on Muriel and Richard. It was easy with Muriel. It was less easy with Richard. He still looked human, kind of. The thought of him pinning Elien to the floor made it easier.

When they were both drenched, I staggered to the windows, soaking the curtains and blinds, and then I started on the furniture. I saved a little to make a trail from Muriel and Richard to the front door, which I opened, and then I sagged against the jamb, panting. The night air came in sweet with the smell of grass and trees and the wet clay banks of the Okhlili.

Elien took the stairs down two at a time, and he shook the empty gas can in demonstration.

“Rags,” I said. “And matches.”

He took off again.

“Toss the can over here.”

He shot it back at me without looking.

“And the stove, Elien.”

That made him stop.

“See if you can get one of the burners to leak gas without the starter igniting.”

“Oh. Shit.”

Then he was running again. When he came back, he had a kitchen towel and a box of matches. I listened for the hiss of gas but didn’t hear anything.

“I tried,” Elien said. “But the sirens are getting close.”

“Wipe the paint thinner down,” I said.

“How do I hold it so I won’t get more prints on it?”

“Your prints don’t matter. You live here.”

“I lived here,” he corrected as he scrubbed the towel across the paint thinner.

“Throw them back inside. Anywhere, doesn’t matter.”

He did.

“Now do me a favor,” I said, “since I’m having hard time breathing. If I bend over, I’m not sure I’ll get back up.” I offered him the box of matches. “Burn this fucker down.”

Elien’s smile was hard and huge as he struck the first match, and then he hooked an arm around me, and we stumbled backward down the drive. Through the window, we watched the fire. The flames caught quickly, racing along the trail of paint thinner, dancing up the curtains, following an invisible path of accelerant into the kitchen. Then there was a flash of flame as the concentrated paint thinner that I’d dumped on Richard and Muriel caught. Until now, the hashoks had been silent. Now, they screamed. It was high, almost at the edge of hearing, and it was like a needle passing through my ears and into my brain.

“There were two men,” I said to Elien. The sirens sang out; I could see the lights through the black oak and sugar maple that screened us from the road.

He nodded.

“They killed Richard and hurt us. They didn’t tell us what they wanted or why they picked us.”

He nodded.

“They were setting the fire, getting ready to destroy the evidence. I managed to get a knife into one of them,