Heat - 22. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

The air around us tastes charged and I smell ozone. My skin tingles with it, the hair on my arms standing on end. It’s a threat as plain as a gun to the back of our heads, but Ryan doesn’t know that. “Buddy, I don’t know who the fuck you are but we’re having a conversation right now so if you don’t mi-” he’s cut off by a crack of thunder, hard and loud and far too close for comfort.

Moses, because it can be no one else, turns sharply to my friend and speaks in a voice that sounds ever so slightly too wet “I don’t believe I was speaking to you.”

I don’t like the look in his eyes and I especially don’t like it pointed at Ryan, who can’t possibly know how much danger we are both in right now. “Right!” I squeak bravely, stepping in front of Ryan “you aren’t talking to him, correct. You are talking to… um… to me. Yeah. So, wha- what do you want? Can I help you with something… sir?” Yep. Brave.

He chuckles and when he does lightning rolls across the sky above us in time with his laugh. “You sure can, friend.” He starts walking across the nearly empty parking lot, each footstep leaving wet, bare footprints behind him. The closer he gets the more of his face I can make out. It’s… melting. When Asher is in the middle of changing he flickers in and out, skin shifting into flame and back again quickly. This is different. He is liquifying and solidifying in real time. It makes his skin look like it’s sloughing off his body sickeningly in patches and then reforming only to slide away again when he moves. Sometimes the sloughing flesh goes clear like water and I can catch glimpses of the bare skull underneath. Behind me Ryan goes pale.

“What… what the fuck is that?” he whispers, not really to me but still I answer.

“That is Moses. Stay back and shut up.” I push him back further, under the perceived safety of the awning. At minimum the cheap metal would redirect the worst of any direct strikes.

“Ahh, so you know my name. Brother has been talking out of school, has he? Unsurprising. He never was good at keeping secrets.” The last word is soaked in liquid venom and the sky rumbles to underline it.

“He also told me how much he loves you. Moses you saved him, when no one else would.”

He smiles thinly. “Yes. I did. So noble, right? The oldest brother must make sacrifices to protect his siblings after all… why don’t I show you what nobility got me, hmm?” He reaches up to his throat and the way his fingers sink into his soft, barely there flesh like it’s putty makes my stomach roll. For a moment I fear he is going to tear away his skin like wrapping paper but instead he just rips at the collar of his plain white button down, unsnapping the buttons all at once. His shirt slips off his shoulders, landing with a splat on the pavement.

I can’t keep myself from letting out a horrified gasp at what is underneath. The symbol, burned into him so deep I can see bone. Blisters spread from the raw, open wound across the entire front of his body. His skin peels away in strips, some of it even came away with the shirt he was wearing and the now torn-open patch is weeping blood. It is obvious that a burn like that should have killed him long ago. I can’t even believe he is standing. Behind me I can hear Ryan vomit into the boxwood bushes next to the alley’s front door.

“Do you see now where sacrifice, where love got me?” He steps closer again and the static in the air only intensifies. “He did this to me. Not his father, not the elders. These flames that burn me, that sustain me even when I've tried time and again to just end it, end the pain and the suffering and all of it, they are his flames. I can smell him in my own burning flesh.” He’s nearly within arms reach now. I back up, pulling Ryan to his feet and pushing him back and back towards the doors. “And now, now I'm done with sacrifice. How about Asher sacrifice for a change, huh? How about that!”

I shove the dazed and terrified Ryan through the doors just as he reaches us. “Run! Find Ash, tell him Moses is -” His hand lands on my shoulder and it is so cold. Suddenly it’s like I can’t move my body at all. A single touch and I am completely in his control. My legs turn me to face him entirely against my will.

He leans in, so close that I can feel his freezing, wet lips brush against my ear as he whispers “Ahh ahh. Not so fast. Brother got to run off and have his fun with you, I think it’s only fair if I get a turn with his new toy, don’t you think?” His breath is humid and smells of old, still water. “Come with me.”