Chapter 59

I sat up in bed when Doris Alex opened the door in the middle of the night.

"Brother," she said softly.

I turned to nod at her.

"There..." she started to say, but her voice caught.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You need to come with me, David," she said.

She had dressed before entering my room and stood by the door while I put clothing on. Melisa sat on the couch in the living room but did not meet my eyes when I passed. Doris Alex led me to her car and got into the driver's seat. It did not take long to recognize where we were headed, the woman's house.

"Oh My God!" Doris Alex gasped when the horizon turned orange, as we got closer to the house.

We were a block away when the cops stopped us. Melisa's dad stepped out of the shadows to whisper in the ear of the uniformed officer that was coming to our window. He pointed Doris Alex to a parking spot.

"This way," Melisa's dad said when we stepped out of the car.

He walked to a point with a clear view of the house and the activity surrounding it. I took my place beside Dr. Ryan, Samantha, Robert, and Stephanie.

"Did she do this?" I asked.

The house was engulfed in flames. The fire had an unnatural hunger that seemed to be reaching out to burn everything near it, as if what fed it was not enough.

"I was watching the house in case those two did something surprising," Melisa's dad replied. "Your compeer hasn't arrived yet so this wasn't one of us."

"Katherine," Doris Alex said with tears burning rivulets down her face.

Her hair and eyes reflected the fire, bringing it closer to us without the heat. Only the quiet anger at the waste was missing from the picture of a reluctant Valkyrie looking down on a battlefield waiting to take the souls of the worthy to their reward; she had never looked more beautiful.

"How do you know?" Robert asked coldly.

"She's inside," Doris Alex announced.

"She opened every window and door," Melisa's dad said. "She stood on the porch and stared right at me. A few minutes later, flashover! You would've sworn she commanded the air to burn; everything fucking burst into flames. I should've known what she was up to."

"How could you have known?" Stephanie asked him.

"Opening the windows and doors," I answered for him. "She was creating as much airflow as possible. Fire needs air to breathe as much as you do."

"Why would she do this?" Dr. Ryan asked. "She had to know that it wouldn't be long before those two assholes were out of the picture. They couldn't be left behind once we had what we needed."

"Would it have mattered?" Doris Alex asked.

"What do you mean, Sibling?" Robert asked.

"Brothers decided, didn't they?" Doris Alex asked turning to stare at him. "You said that she was irreparably damaged. Not to be trusted, as if the intent of indoctrination was NOT to emulate the Ekaterina."

"Someone told Katherine that she would never wear a white ring," Stephanie said looking at Doris Alex hard. "Someone told a member of that Bloodline, bred to a ring, that she would never wear one!"

Everyone except me crowded closer to Doris Alex in anger.

"Who the fuck would do that?!?" Robert yelled.

"Iane," I replied. "At Melisa's instruction, I'm sure."

Doris Alex took a step away from me.

"I will..." Robert began.

"Do nothing," I interrupted and turned on him. "You've done nothing but allow the council their head on this. You should continue to do nothing, Robert."

"You can't allow your Crests to run rampant, David," Samantha said in a deadly tone of voice.

"Is Doris Alex lying?" I asked. "It was the Brotherhood's decision that the woman would never wear a white ring. My Crests simply delivered the message."

"We did not intend for her to know yet," Jeremy insisted.

"David's right," Stephanie said. "What could be expected? We left this to an unindoctrinated Crest, and three Bloodline Siblings to handle. Be glad that they didn't burn the city down!"

"Two Bloodline Siblings," Robert corrected.

"LOOK AT THAT!" Doris Alex screamed at him pointing at the house. "You're still spitting on her loyalty! Katherine has been one of us since the day she was born!"

She turned around and ran back to the car.

"Did they tell you that they were going to inform Katherine about our lack of trust?" Samantha asked me when they recovered from Doris Alex's accusation.

"The father and brother are inside?" I asked Melisa's dad.

He nodded.

"She sets a good fire!" I said looking at the house.

"Did Melisa tell you?" Robert asked in disgust.

"Don't say my little girl's name like that," Melisa's dad said stepping towards him. "What's between a Crest Sibling and her Brother is between them!"

"Overkill though," I said critically.

"What?" Stephanie asked.

"You said it burst," I said turning towards Melisa's dad.

He nodded without taking his eyes off Robert.

"She probably used two accelerants," I told them. "Charcoal lighter and gasoline. If she opened every gas line in the house, there'd be no hope."

"Why would you use lighter fluid, gasoline, and gas?" Stephanie asked me.

"Charcoal lighter is easier to buy and store," I told her. "You can empty a few supermarkets and hardware stores of the stuff without someone noticing. You can also keep a lot of it the trunk of your car, in the basement, even under the bed. Gasoline is tougher, but if you don't know, you get this idea in your head that it's heavier. It will burn better! She probably soaked big pieces of furniture with gasoline and used the charcoal stuff on everything else."

"She had a good plan," Melisa's dad interrupted. "She stored some of the gasoline in the basement. Believe me, it gave her a nice little pop that worried the firemen."

"The gas probably delayed them too," I said. "It's unnecessary but in her state of mind the more fuel for the fire, the better. You want everything to burn so you open anything that will spit out gas in the house, let it go for a few minutes... that's the kind of shit that will make the fire department worry about stopping the spread first."

"Is that why they're paying more attention to soaking the surrounding houses and area?" Stephanie asked.

There was one truck with its ladder leaning over the house with a fireman trying to smother the inferno. The attention he gave the other parts of the operation said he knew it was hopeless, for now. Every other hose was pointed at something other than the house.

"Surround and drown it," Melisa's dad said.

"Huh?" Stephanie grunted.

"The firemen can't beat the fire head on, not yet anyway," he replied. "They cut it off from the surrounding houses, and then drown it from all sides."

"But by then, there's nothing left of the house," I said. "Exactly like she intended. I've seen a house burn like this before. I did it with this much enthusiasm my first time. I wanted to make sure the monsters couldn't get out, and that no one would even think of going in to save them."

"Nobody was going into that house," Melisa's dad said shaking his head. "She made damn sure of that!"

"The Ekaterina were known for being thorough," Robert sighed putting a hand over his eyes.

"There's no way she could have set this up since you visited the first time, David," Stephanie told me.

"No," I agreed. "Doing something like this takes planning, not much, but some."

"Her daughter," Melisa's dad said. "Katherine must have thought this would be the only way to get the girl clear of the father and brother."

"She was going to do it anyway?" Robert asked.

"Undoubtedly," Melisa's dad replied. "She might have tried to survive it, but with her daughter safe in David's house..."

"She cleared the board," Robert finished.

"A very good fire," I said putting my hands behind my back and stepping towards the heat.

From that distance, I was the only one who could feel the fire's warm embrace.

"She chained them to the bed," Anna said as Roderigo guided her wheelchair beside me.

I stood in front of what remained of the porch. Nothing had been left standing by the blaze; there was only a large pile of blackened matter that used to be a house.

"She had to have drugged them to accomplish that," Stephanie said moving to stand next to me.

"The investigators said Katherine stayed in the room without restraints while it burned," Anna told me. "It takes strength to sit in hell."

"It takes will," I said. "But there would have been the satisfaction of hearing them scream and watching them burn."

"That would be pleasant," Stephanie agreed.

"I doubt she was like that," Roderigo told me.

"The woman sat in the same room and burned with them," I replied. "She was exactly like that."

"She made it easy for them," Anna said.

"Who?" Stephanie asked.

"There's barely going to be an investigation," Anna told her. "I'm surprised she didn't give the investigators a call first to ensure they wouldn't go down any path other than murder-suicide."

"Or paint them a sign," Stephanie said shaking her head.

"Oh, Katherine painted them a sign!" Anna said smirking. "Sometimes I wonder if the Bloodlines were a mistake."

The last came out in a voice that made her sound her age.

"We shouldn't be standing out here, David," Stephanie said looking around. "We're getting a lot of attention, and some of them have to be cops."

"They're going to want to talk to me... and others," I said. "I entered the woman's life, and two days later she sets her husband and stepson on fire. Not to mention herself. They're going to come with questions. There's no point in not asking some of our own, or showing what would be a natural curiosity given the situation."

"This shouldn't have been necessary," Anna said staring at the burnt remains.

"What was the fucking point?" Roderigo asked angrily. "She was out! She could have tried to gain our trust later."

"Katherine had nothing to prove," Stephanie said. "She wouldn't question our decision. That's the way that we made her, isn't it? She didn't question it when Iane told her, and she never would have. She did what she had to do to make everything right."

"What a fucking waste!" Roderigo said shaking his head.

"No, it's not," I said looking down the road that the coroner's van had gone a few hours earlier.

"She solved our problems," Roderigo said. "So what? We could have done the same without losing her."

"We gave her away," Stephanie corrected.

"This was about more than those two assholes or a white ring," I told Roderigo.

"What, David?" Stephanie asked.

"Redemption," I said.

"She did what she had to do with you," Roderigo argued. "You might not care, but she was too young. There was nothing she needed to redeem herself for."

"You can redeem someone else's life with your death," I said.

"Who did Katherine want to redeem?" Anna asked softly.

"My younger sister," I whispered.

"At least we can still trust an Ekaterina to do things right," Anna said with a nod, settling back in her chair.

"Your mother just killed herself!" Roderigo said looking at me in frustration. "Don't you feel anything?"