The remaining flash pots are clustered together. A dozen silver cylinders with their charges intact, packed tight enough that if one goes, they all go.
"Bells,don't!" Phoenix cries.
"FUCK YEAH! DO IT!" Raf yells.
I pull the trigger.
The flash pots ignite in a cascading chain reaction—whump whump whump whump—each one feeding the next, white light so intense it sears my retinas even though I screw my eyes shut.
The velvet catches instantly.
I stagger back, shielding my face with my arm, as a hundred years of dust and dry-rotted fabric and ancient hemp fibers combust all at once.
The stage left curtain erupts into a wall of flame that climbs upward with horrifying speed, licking the arch, racing along the gathered folds toward the rigging above. Ropes snap and whip as the flames devour them, sending counterweights crashing to the stage floor in explosions of splintered wood.
The catwalk shudders. Stephen grabs the railing with both hands, my knife clattering against the metal because he's still clutching it out of desperation to have a piece of me, and for the first time hecompletelyloses his shit.
"YOU CRAZY BITCH!" he screams.
Fair.
Boots pound the auditorium floor behind me. More guards flooding through the main doors, through side corridors, through every entrance like ants. I don't know where my alphas are. I can feel them through the bond threads—alive, fighting, somewhere in the chaos—but I can't see them through the smoke pouring off the stage in black columns.
We're all going to fucking die if I don't take Stephen down. If he escapes, the mark will continue to torment me.Hewill continue to torment me.
And it has to be me.
Because I don't think he'll kill me.
Not if I can put on the best damn act I have yet.
The ladder rungs are hot enough to make me hiss when I start climbing. Not burning yet, but the heat radiates from the stage fire in waves that make the air shimmer and my lungs clench with every breath. Smoke rolls past me in black currents, and I hold my breath on the worst of it and keep climbing.
My arms are shaking. The shit Stephen drugged me with is still gumming up my system and my muscles feel like they're wrapped in wet cotton, but I've been climbing shit I shouldn't since I was a kid and fear is a fantastic motivator.
I clear the top and haul myself onto the catwalk.
The metal grating vibrates under my hands and knees as I scramble to my feet. The fire below has turned the opera house into a furnace, orange light churning upward through the catwalk lattice. The painted ceiling above me—gods and dragons eating each other in a bloodbath that seems both appropriateandinappropriate for an opera house—is alive with reflected flame.
Stephen's trapped up ahead.
Trapped because I'm behind him.
He spins when he hears my boots on the grating.
His single remaining eye widens. Blood from the destroyed socket has dried in a dark crust down the right side of his face. My grandfather's knife glints in his grip.
I want my fucking knife back.
"You followed me up here," he says. "You actuallyfollowedme up here." A broken laugh rips out of him. "But you came up here. To me."
"Yeah." I take a step forward. The catwalk sways and I grab the railing. "I did."
His eye searches my face. Looking for the trick. Looking for the weapon.
I don't have one. The gun is shoved in the back of my pants because if he saw it, he actually might shoot me then. I have to convince this fucker I want to be carried off in his stupid helicopter like a damsel in distress. I've got nothing except the one thing that's always worked on Stephen Hughes.
Performance.