Hell Has a Succession Problem

The Price

Marcel stopped walking.

"Please," the thing said, in Walt's voice. "Please. I have a granddaughter."

It could be a trick. It was probably a trick. Everything in Hell was a trick.

From the last cracked pane of glass, Kessa's voice slid out, thin and furious. "He is still in there, little heir. They all are. Burn him, or save him. You cannot do both."

"Watch me," Marcel rasped.

He had no idea how. He only knew that the fire ran on what he refused to lose, and he refused to lose Walt too.

So he pulled it in.

The black and gold tide shrank off the floor, up his arms, down to his fingertips. It narrowed to a single bright thread.

Not the man. Just the splinter.

He pointed, and the thread slid into Walt's chest like a needle.

Walt screamed.

Something screamed with him, a second voice, high and furious. A black shape tore loose from his shoulders like wet tar, writhed in the air, and burned to nothing.

The gray suit crumbled to ash. Underneath it, a gray haired man in a wrinkled security shirt dropped to his knees, gasping like a fish.

Every pane of glass in the hospital turned to dust.

Marcel heard it fall like snow. Then he heard the coughing, and the confused voices, and a small boy saying, "Dr. Blackfire? Why is it so loud?"

They were waking up.

Raven was already running. She slid to Theo's side first, checked his airway, and bent over him like a shield.

"You're okay," she said. "You're all okay."

The boy blinked up at her. "Am I in trouble?"

"Never," said Raven, and her voice broke.

"Good," Marcel whispered. "That's good."

Then his knees went out from under him.

She was across the room in three strides and caught him before he hit the floor. Her hands were shaking. Her voice was somewhere far away.

"Hey. Stay with me. Marcel, stay."

"Did it work?"

"Everyone's breathing."

"Great. Wake me for dinner."

The lights went out.

He woke up in a bunk bed.

The ceiling was low. The air smelled like bleach and burnt coffee. Someone had covered the mirror above the little sink with a hospital towel.

His whole body ached like it had been put through a car crusher, then politely returned.

"Don't sit up," said Raven.

She sat in a plastic chair beside the bunk, still in yesterday's hoodie, with blood on her cuffs and dark circles under both eyes.

She looked like she had not blinked in six hours.

"What time is it?"

"Nine forty."

"Why is the mirror covered?"

"Because I'm not letting any glass look at you until we know what Kessa can still see." She said it like a sentence she had practiced.

"Sunrise?"

"Passed. You didn't sign anything. Kessa's offer expired three hours ago." A tired, bitter smile. "I'd say she's taking it badly."

Marcel closed his eyes. "Cass?"

"Alive. Stable. In the ICU with a nurse who thinks she has a bad staph infection." Raven's voice softened. "The brand is gone. Burned right out of her. Whatever you did in that lobby, it took the leash with it."

"Walt?"

"Awake. Weak. Scared out of his mind." She paused. "He asked me why he had been standing in the parking lot for six hours."

"What did you tell him?"

"Gas leak." She looked at Marcel. "Old building. Very dramatic."

He started to laugh and it turned into a wet, painful cough.

"And the other thirty people?"

"Same story. The hospital is calling it carbon monoxide. Facilities found a cracked vent. Nobody remembers a thing."

"You lied to a whole ER."

"I lied to a whole ER." She rubbed her eyes. "Three years of residency, and that's the thing I'm best at. Who knew?"

He wanted to say thank you. He didn't know how.

"Sit up slowly," she said instead. "There is something I need to show you."

She handed him her phone.

The camera was flipped around, and it was not Marcel's face looking back.

It was close. The jaw was the same. The scar over his eyebrow, from the Great Absinthe Incident. The same tired, sardonic mouth.

But there was a streak in his hair.

A white stripe, thick as a finger, sweeping back from his left temple.

"Oh," Marcel said.

"Yeah."

"Is that..."

"Yes."

"It's very Rogue from the X-Men."

"Marcel."

"I look like I'm about to sell you a timeshare."

"Marcel." Raven's voice cracked down the middle. "Look at me."

He lowered the phone.

"I took scans while you were out."

"You scanned me without asking?"

"You were unconscious. It's called triage." She pressed on. "Hands, spine, retinas, the walls of your carotid arteries. I know your hands, because I x-rayed them after the absinthe thing." She swallowed. "I checked your birthday on your liquor license, Marcel. You turned thirty in March."

"Right."

"I don't have a clean way to measure this. But the best explanation I have for every finding is thirty-two."

The room went very quiet.

"Joint wear. Bone density. The vessels in your eyes. They all point the same way." Her voice was perfectly flat, the voice of a woman reading a death notice. "As far as I can tell, you aged two years in one night."

Marcel stared at the ceiling.

Two years.

Gone. Not a bruise that would heal or a rib that would knit. Two years of life, stolen from the back of the line.

He thought of Theo, and his stupid asthma mask. Walt's granddaughter. Marisol with her syringe. Thirty one people breathing in a hospital lobby.

Two years. For that.

If he were honest, it did not feel like a bad deal. That was the part that scared him.

"Is it permanent?"

"I don't know. I don't know what it is." Raven dragged both hands through her hair. "I've been up since yesterday, and I have no protocol for this."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay! You're not okay!" She was furious, and shaking, and crying again. "You walked into that fire like it was a cab. You didn't even look at what it cost."

"I looked."

"You didn't flinch."

"I was too busy not losing you."

The words fell out of him before he could stop them.

Raven went very still.

For half a second, neither of them breathed.

"That's four," she said, hoarsely. "Four sentences without a joke."

"I'm on a roll."

A small, cracked laugh broke out of her. She covered her mouth with one hand.

The door opened.

Trigon stepped in, carrying two paper cups of coffee and wearing yesterday's coat. He looked rested. That was infuriating.

He handed one to Raven, kept the other, and looked down at Marcel with an unreadable expression.

"Good morning. You are awake."

"You left me," Marcel said.

"I watched the car. Someone had to." Trigon glanced at the streak of white in his hair, and something flickered across his face, too fast to read. "So. It has started."

"What has?"

"The price."

Raven sat up straighter. "Explain."

"The First Flame does not burn for free. Every use costs the one who calls it." Trigon sipped his coffee. "Two years is cheap, for a hospital full of strangers. You were lucky it was only that, and it will not stay cheap."

"Cheap?" Raven's voice was ice. "He lost two years."

"He gained thirty one lives, a child, and a sovereign's pride." Trigon looked at her. "It is a very good trade, Doctor. The Flame is a very good merchant."

"Stop calling it a trade," Marcel said. "It's my life."

"Yes," said Trigon. "That is the currency."

"What do you mean, merchant?"

"It never takes by accident."

The cup in Marcel's hand went still.

"It took two years," Trigon said quietly, "because that is what it thought you valued them at. The child. The nurse. The old man in the corner."

"And the others?"

"The Flame prices what you refuse to lose." His dark eyes moved, slowly, to Raven. "Next time, Marcel, it will not be strangers."