Ashes (31 page)

42

 

THE ALARM EXPLODED THROUGHOUT Salvation Asylum. Saul Hoven dropped the phone back onto the receiver; it droned for the next several minutes while he fidgeted with the intercom switch.

“Krane! Manny, what is it? You've started a panic, for God's sake.”

“Sir, the situation has changed. Everything's changed.”

“Try again, Krane, and this time, let's not be vague. I haven't got the patience for it.”

“219,” the speaker buzzed. “The arson…he did it. His p-po-powers have fully returned to him. And greater.”

Hoven pressed the button and screamed into the device. “What do you mean, Manny!
”

“Sir, he burned every monitor without ev-even waking up. He's still in the coma, I believe. And then, in sec-sec-s-seconds, two of my men were…”

“Were what! Quit playing games, Krane!”

“Set on fire, sir. He s-s-set them on fire.”

Hoven massaged his temple, rubbing the sweat already beginning to blend in around the creases of age and fatigue. “It's finally happening. All things come to he who waits,” Hoven said with a twisted grin. A cackle bellowed into the intercom speaker.

“What are we to do?” Krane asked.

In the background static, Hoven heard Lamont's troubled voice blend through. “Get outta here before he goes nuclear.”

Panic erupted over the intercom, so loud Hoven pulled back to avoid shattering his eardrums. “What's happening now, Krane!
”

“He's killed another member of my team, sir. The f-f-fire is spreading. The floor is burning along with the ceiling. It's every-ev-everywhere! We can't make it stop.”

“I'll be down immediately. Sedate him. We must keep him controlled.”

The intercom speaker clicked, and Hoven stepped away from his desk, grabbing his gun first out of the top drawer. He holstered the weapon and rushed out of the office, down the stairs, into chaos and violence.

* * *

Arson peeled back his eyelids.

Gray faces surrounded him as he took his first breath.
Then his second.
Feeling his heartbeat again was like being reborn. At first, the faces were frozen in place, immovable and uncertain. He looked at them, and they stared back. While his eyes were off in one direction, a nurse tried to stick him with a needle. At the slightest pinch in his neck, he flinched, snapping the needle in half. With one breath, he caused her suit to catch fire. A terrible yet soothing shriek distorted the air.

“Where is he?” Arson asked quietly. “Where is Isaac?”

Krane flinched at the mention of Isaac's name. A shudder fled from his lungs.

In seconds, the nurse who sought to sedate him was nothing but charred dust. Her remains melted into the floor. Arson's gaze located his next targets. His vision had returned. Each breath had measure and control. The horror he once feared in himself he would never again forsake. He embraced it. He wanted to.

As he leaned up from the steel table, Morpheus began to disintegrate. The vibrating motor clicked until it broke, producing a relentless hum that crawled inside Arson's head. He felt a blast release from his wrists, and in seconds, the fury engulfed the machine.

Stepping off the bed, the sheet keeping his body covered slid off his torso, nearly exposing him, except for the torn boxer shorts soaked with sweat. The floor tiles were already melting when his feet hit them. A singeing, hot sound seemed like it could echo. As he moved, the fire moved with him and grew stronger. The flames spread wildly and fast, climbing up the walls and scaling the ceilings like tortured spiders. Webs of fire decorated the dark corners and filled the space with a fierce glow. The heat was brutal and relentless.

“Where…is Isaac? Where is my father!” he yelled, searching the faces stitched with flesh and bone he could rip off in an instant. His eyes bled drops of red fire. Each pupil dilated, each blink rolling out waves of humid suffering. Wherever he looked turned to fire, and soon ashes. Water showered down over them, their sweat,
his
carnage. Green lights flashed for a few seconds before dying.

“Tell me!” he ordered.

“I don't know,” a terrified nurse replied. Arson walked toward her as she trembled. His hand reached to grab her face. He clutched her cheeks, her eyes,
her
mouth all within his palm. And he watched her disintegrate, veins blistering.

His neck suddenly jerked. The doctor had driven a knife into the side of his throat.

“Isn't this what you wanted, Doctor? Unbridled, furious power?”

The doctor shuddered, tripping backward. He was too paralyzed with fear to even crawl. Instead he picked at the mucus on his neck. The hole near his spine widened, even now.

“You're changing too,” Arson said. “You want my power, don't you?”

The doctor formed no reply.

“Speak!” As Arson roared, fire slithered out from his feet, the red-black serpents moving toward Krane rapidly. His shoes ignited first; then his feet began to swell. A haunting cry fought its way out of him.

The few who remained spied and were horrified.

“Where is Isaac
Gable!
Answer me, or I'll burn off every limb. I'll burn this whole world down.”

Out of the dark came a scathing voice. One he had longed to hear all his life, until this very moment. “Son,” the voice said.

A sigh exited Krane's dry lips, a murmur of gratitude. Like he'd been saved by Isaac's arrival. But when Arson moved his hand above his ribs, a small spark began to bloom inside the doctor's bowels. Something terrible spread throughout his weak frame. A fire that chewed his organs from the inside, crawling from
vein
to bone and flesh to flesh, consuming all that lay there. No sound left the doctor's mouth then. The heat held him. Still he picked and scratched at the infection, until he was consumed.

“So is it Stephen or Arson?” Isaac said.

Arson gave no reply but let new flames creep closer toward Isaac. “You left. You abandoned me.”

“I loved you. I did not abandon you. I abandoned a monster. I abandoned the menace I thought you would become.” Isaac coughed. “But look at you now. You are so much more than that, son.”

“I am not your son! I'm your mistake.”

“You're my second chance, Arson. Listen to me. I have made mistakes in my life. But I came back for you. I saw the light, and I had to get you out. I had to get you out of that nothing town. You would've died there, like they will.”

“What?”

“You can't stop it. You can't. Your grandmother was a crutch, Arson. You have to believe me. Kay was nothing more than a waste of a human soul. She didn't love you.”

“Liar!”

“You know I speak the truth. Kay Parker was your reason to believe you were normal. She was the lie, son. She was your connection to the human race. Like I said, a sick crutch.”

“No!” Arson shouted. His eyes twitched, and suddenly Isaac grabbed his heart.

“You can burn me up, kill me. Hell, slice me into a thousand pieces if it makes you happy.” He grinded his teeth, sweat dripping from his jaw. “I saved you for a purpose, son.”

“You killed my grandmother! You took her away!”

“And you took my love away. Guess that makes us square.” Isaac collapsed, tearing open his shirt. A deep color bloomed at the center of his chest.
A fire, black and red and white.
The colors stretched inside the loose skin. Arson knew what he was doing. He controlled every move. Tilting his head, he increased the flame's grip on Isaac's heart.

“If you kill me,” Isaac gasped, coughing up blood, “you will never truly understand your role in all of this. Don't you see? You were made, son. You were an experiment. They tested your mother, tried to save her, but they couldn't. It is inevitable. They will control you. You cannot save this world.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I came, I came back for you. To see what you were capable of.
To see that I was wrong.
I was trying to help you.”

“You brought me here to die. You brought me here so they could stick me with needles and manipulate me. You lied to me! And you let them take Emery!”

“It was all done to protect you.”

“I don't need your protection!” Arson gritted his teeth, tasting blood.
“Your mind does. You were safer here, with me. I was watching over you, really. Your mind could be harnessed and protected. Out there, you're prey. Out there, someone else would've found you. You would've died with the rest of the world. Believe me.”

“Maybe I am already dead.”

A thousand images flashed inside Arson's mind.
His memories of Grandma.
A life without a father, without hope.
A life blinded by guilt and torn by a merciless world in desperate need of salvation.

“I am lost, just like you,” Isaac pleaded. “I too am alone.”

The sound of a gunshot silenced everything. As the fire trailed above them and showers sprayed their faces, Arson's vision blurred slightly. A second shot came at him. But where was the shooter? A third bit right through his neck. A fourth punctured his ribcage. Several more tore into his limbs. Arson dropped to his knees. The bullets came at him from nowhere.

“You are mine,” came a voice. “I control you. This is my Sanctuary. I call the shots. I say who dies!”

It was Saul Hoven. Fearless. Brave. And stupid. From behind him, he fired one last shot, aimed at the back of Arson's head, as Isaac screamed.

Jittery and uncertain, Hoven dropped the clip from the gun and reloaded. Cocked it again, ready for Arson to move.

“That's not enough to stop me,” Arson said, not bothering to even turn around. He dropped to his knees, stared down at the bullet holes and the blood seeping out from each wound. Water and fire danced around him. It was quiet, enveloping heat. Darkness pushed his eyelids together.

He channeled every ounce of power from his body. Deep breaths flooded his lungs. Arson blinked, his eyes shifting color every time. Changing shape. Every move was on purpose. Every time the flames exploded from his shell like a merciless tornado, he controlled it. His head swung from side to side, all in a matter of seconds, and he saw the work of his hands.

It was so easy to war.
To hate.
To destroy.
The flames stretched around him and the two other men left behind by the apathy of others. Left here to die with him.

He watched each flicker transform into fire. He studied the architecture of smoke as it built and built upon itself, rising into the vents, where more could be created. The fire spread. Arson looked around at the machines that were no more. The wires and monitors he had destroyed. His mind soaked it all in.

He listened for the sound of Hoven's anxious heartbeat. What a weak, pitiful man. It was like there was no time. No clock. No record to keep track of.
Nothing but this moment.
He stared at Isaac too, straight through him. What a ghost. Even if he were telling the truth, about any of it, could Arson ever truly trust him? Would it matter after tonight?

As more water hit his face, he was back in this hospital. Seventeen years ago. Experiencing it from the fixed stare of Frances Parker. He watched his mother freak out and then scream as fire consumed her from within.

“Be fearful of the thoughts of men,” Arson said. “Be wary of the traps of the end. I see it now. I see destruction. I see the end.” Was that all there was left?

He reached down into the grit of the filthy floor and picked up a handful of the black dust.

“Arson…” Isaac whimpered. Something told him what came next would be terrible. “Arson, wait.”

“Ashes to ashes,” Arson whispered. And suddenly, without warning, a fire engulfed Arson and exploded from him. Needles shot out from his skin. A wave of heat so thick that it melted human flesh expanded around him. The tiles at his feet shattered. All that was near was first brought into the air by the violent, furious wind pushed out from his body. There it levitated, weightless before him, and fire fed upon it like a starving beast. Arson lay huddled, his spine and flesh smoking.

Isaac's corpse blended into the floor where his soul would perhaps rot. Behind him Saul Hoven still suffered. A stiff life he never would've believed could end like this. Scream after scream. His face bubbled and oozed last, his eyes intact to watch the fire devour his humanity the way he had once devoured.
 

And then…
a stillness
. It was always quiet after the flames went away. Nothing but smoke enveloped the room now. Arson shuddered as the bullets fell out of him and disintegrated on the dirt. There was no floor left. The asylum was destroyed. In the back of his mind, he could hear them. The victims. The patients. The dead. There was no peace whispering in the trees.
 

Arson tried to breathe, but what came were stuttering gasps for air and shaking. The smoke filled his lungs, and he felt safe, protected by it. It knew him.