ladyfirestarter

She's been called and oh, but it's a welcome change from being forced to contain herself.

The door opens and Fire steps through, but...

But she's not alone.

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Bev wasn't called. At least, not by Charlie.

She stumbles through the door after the woman all the same, looking around with wide eyes as one hand goes to the slingshot in her back pocket.

"What--"

Wherever this is and whyever she's here, it's not pitch-black and cold, at least.

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Charlie's smiling when Fire steps through -- it's a grim smile, determined and focused, but a smile nonetheless.

It drops off her face like a glass knocked from a table when she sees the girl.

"--Bev? How did you --?"

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"--Charlie?"

A familiar face is incredibly welcome, and Bev moves toward her instantly.

"I don't--where are we?"

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"New York City. The hotel -- Bev, you shouldn't be here, it's dangerous --"

Charlie looks up at Fire. "Why did you bring her with you?"

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"It's not my fault."

Fire glances over at Bev, sighs, and spreads her hands. "I swear I didn't mean to."

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"The hotel?" Bev asks, and then remembers her last conversation with Charlie. "--Oh."

She looks at the other woman uncertainly, then back at Charlie. "I was walking past the front door in Milliways, and I just--it felt like something was pulling at me. I couldn't stop."

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Charlie puts a hand on Bev's shoulder.

"You should go back. Right away. We're about to hit this thing, and it's for damn sure going to hit back --"

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"--Wait." Beverly's tense and wide-eyed, and pale except for two spots of feverish color high on her cheeks, but her hands have stopped shaking, and she draws herself up a bit.

"If none of us planned on my being here, but I am anyway...well, maybe I should be."

She doesn't want to be here. But she didn't want to be in the quarry during the rock fight, or in the house on Neibolt Street, or in the sewers, either.

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"Whether you are or aren't meant to be here," Fire interjects, testily, "the fact is that you are and can we really, please get on with this?"

There's something that's just not right, near enough to start making her edgy.

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"Bev, I don't --"

Criminally irresponsible, a dogged voice in her head insists, as it has since the thought first came to mind.

Shut up, says another. We're doing this.

Charlie takes a deep breath. "Stay close to me, all right?"

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Bev darts a glance at the other women--redheads, part of her notes absently, all of us redheads--and there's a flash of temper under the high-strung nervousness, but it's there and gone like--well, like a spark.

"Okay," she says to Charlie, and then, to the other, "Um, sorry--who're you?"

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She tosses her hair, suppresses the flash of annoyance because why is this taking so long, and eyes Bev.

"You can call me Sera."

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"Bev was with me in the house," she tells Fire, and lets the words when you weren't hang there unspoken. "Bev, Sera's ... a friend."

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"Okay," Bev says, and then looks up and down the hallway. "And...we're in the hotel. What now? Is there a plan?"

A plan that I might have just messed up by being here, she doesn't add aloud.

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"Not a very detailed one. We go in, and we burn it."

Her fingers flex at her sides, unconsciously.

"We try to contain the fire to just the one room, if we can. And because of the way space bends in there, that might actually be possible."

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Fire glances sideways at her, at Bev, and half-raises a hand.

"I have some degree of control over where the fire burns, and how far it goes."

She just...doesn't like to use it.

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Charlie meets Bev's eyes directly. "You told me you've gone up against monsters before. Are you good with this?"

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If Charlie had been able to see Bev during the time they spent in the house, the mixture of fear and resolve in her eyes right now might be familiar.

"Burning it? Sure. But--is it gonna try and do anything to us?"

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"Pretty definitely, yeah. It'll mess with our minds, our perceptions -- try to keep a clear head."

Fire's not the only one feeling it: there's a wrongness in the air, a sense of pressure, an inimical will.

"And stay close to me."

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"It did that," Bev says quietly, and it's clear 'it' doesn't refer to the hotel room. "Messed with our minds. I might be able to--to tell, if this does the same kind of thing."

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Fire is confident. Maybe it's because she hasn't yet really met anything that can mess her up, maybe it's because she's never been able to consider the future.

But she smiles, arrogant, and shrugs.

"It can do as it likes. We can still burn it."

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"All right. Good."

She gathers them in by eye -- her troops, she's already thinking of them that way, and the voice trying to insist that she shouldn't bring Bev in on this has well and truly shut up.

"Follow me."

And she turns and leads them down the empty hall, up the numbers: 1402, 1404, 1406.

And the blank space on the wall where no door shows.

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room1408.livejournal.com

It's smooth, this empty

(yawning gaping maw)

space between two silent doors.

Smooth.

Seamless.

Perfectly blank.

The wallpaper doesn't even rustle.

But if you look carefully enough-- if you get right up close, as Al Marsh would say--

--the

faded

stripes might seem to shift. To s t r e tch.

Just a little.

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Bev (aims with her eye) is watching carefully, oh yes--and her eyes widen slightly.

"Is it just me, or--can you guys see that?"

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Fire can't really move her eyes from the wallpaper, head tilted very slightly to one side.

Most curiously then anything else, "Yeah..."

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"It's behind there."

Charlie doesn't say yes, I see it too. She doesn't have to.

"I'm going to try a very focused burn to take the door out. Sera -- stay with me. Don't let it spread."

And she lowers her head, concentrating.

There's a flashgun sizzle-and-pop!, and a rolling blowback of air like the breath of an oven, and a heap of ash lies on the carpet in front of what used to be a wall.

Behind it is a door, scorched but intact. The room numbers still glint faintly through the soot: 1 4 0 8.

From:

room1408.livejournal.com

For a moment--

--and just for a moment--

--the rush of wind isn't a dry baking heat. It passes over them, as feverishly moist as the breath of some unthinkably foul beast, and the heated susurrus whispers of secrets that are better left unknown--

(abandon all hope, ye who enter here)

--and then it's gone.

The number-plates on the solid, waiting door gleam golden.

(Except for the tiny
orange
glints of light that glimmer
murderously
knife-like at the edges. But you're probably just seeing things. Right?)

So does the doorknob.

It's locked, of course. Nobody comes in here.

(And nobody ever leaves.)

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It smells like the Werewolf's breath. Like the sewers. Bev's stomach gives a sickening lurch, and she swallows, her throat dry.

You can handle this, Bev. You can.

She wishes Bill were here.

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