Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,58

saw her last, her skin was tanned from working our farm. In the pictures I saw, she is still so.” He halted in his description and anguish flowed across his features. “Please. You must help me. I have to tell her—” He choked on the words. “I have to make it right.”

“Hrm.” I thought of Kat Forrest, our new arrival from Arizona, and wondered about the likelihood that Old Man Winter would have had her brought up here, thinking that he was about to capture Gavrikov. “Did she have any powers? You know, like you?”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “She was kind, and gentle. When father would—” He looked away. “She would come to me, try to soothe my injuries.”

“Uh huh. So would you say she had a,” I swallowed, “healing touch?”

“I suppose you could say that.” He paced back to the window. “I owe her...an apology. I failed the Klementina that was my sister.” He whirled to face me and all I could see was the resolve on his face. “I owe her—this shade of her, at least—freedom. I must get her free.”

“I can appreciate that you have,” I scoured my mind, “unfinished business or a debt or whatever. But, um...when I said healing touch, I meant literally.” He looked at me in confusion. “Can her hands heal wounds, grow flowers, stuff like that?”

His brow was furrowed. “I—”

For the second time since I’d been here, the giant window that ran across the entire wall behind my bed exploded inward. I dropped, using the bed for cover as glass flew over my head and I felt a blast of heat from where Aleksandr had been standing. I poked my head back up and found Clary, skin turned into some dark rock, stepping through the window. Behind him I saw the outlines of Parks, Bastian and Kappler, lurking about a hundred feet away. Gavrikov was already covered in flame again, hovering about a foot off the ground. The influx of outside air had turned the room a frigid cold in seconds.

“We went all the way down to Fairmont tracking you,” Clary said as he dropped onto the floor, shaking the room. “Found your handiwork. Blowing up a propane truck, Gavrikov? Not cool.” Clary hesitated and his voice turned gleeful. “Actually, I bet it was cool to watch when it happened, but now it’s just a big damned smoking crater and a hell of a lot of lanes of I-90 that ain’t gonna be open again for a longass while. And that poor trucker’s family—”

Aleksandr didn’t let him finish his sentence. He heaved two enormous fireballs at Clary, one of which burned the big man’s clothing off, exposing a chest of blackened stone. “I liked that shirt,” he said, staring down. “You better not—” Gavrikov fired two more blasts at him, each worse than the last. I felt the air turn superheated around me and closed my eyes to protect them from the intensity of it. Every single bit of the flame that Aleksandr had thrown at him had bounced off, hitting the walls of my dormitory room. The drywall had begun to blaze in four places and the carpet was beginning to catch fire.

“You’re gonna burn the girl’s stuff up, Gavrikov!” Clary shouted at him.

I was coughing, but I managed to get out, “I don’t own much of anything.”

“Well you’re gonna burn the girl up, and she’s already hot enough without your help!”

I was crawling toward the exit to keep that from happening, although I did blanch at Clary’s comment. I heard a fire alarm klaxon start wailing and then the sprinklers activated, and suddenly I was no longer hot but now cold again as the chill water soaked me through my already damaged clothing. I stopped at the door and used the wall as an aide to pull myself up. There was smoke billowed at the ceiling, but Gavrikov and Clary were already outside. Kappler, Bastian and Parks were circling them, but keeping their distance.

I watched them out the window. Gavrikov was throwing fire at Clary ineffectually. Clary advanced on Aleksandr but every time he would get close, Gavrikov would fly away and hurl another burst at him, with an occasional shot toward the other three to keep them at bay.

“Aleksandr,” I called, staggering to the window. By now, the sprinkler system had almost extinguished the flames in my room and the carpet was sodden, squishing underfoot with every step. “He’s invulnerable to your attacks! Get