CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Ella burst through the doors. Glock first, questions later. The scene welded her to the spot.

She glanced between the perp and Luca in rapid succession. The killer, Vincent Marrow, in all his hideous glory. Tall, skinny, face like a man made for the funerary trade. He had a Glock .17 – the same pistol as Ella – pointed at her and Redmond.

And Luca. The smartest detective she knew, tied to a chair like some hapless victim.

But alive. Sweet Jesus, he was alive. By seconds, judging from the pools of gasoline surrounding him.

‘Well, this is interesting,' the perp said.

‘Drop it, Marrow. Your game's over.'

Ella's trigger finger begged for release, but she resisted. The scent in here was overwhelming, and Ella was no expert in petrochemical fumes. Would a bullet send this place sky-high? She had no idea, but the risk wasn't worth taking. One bullet, and they might all be trading ghost stories in the great beyond.

‘Game? This isn't a game, detective.'

Ella's mind whirred, calculating angles, odds. Marrow had the look of a man with nothing to lose. The kind who'd happily take them all with him if it meant leaving his mark. The odds of them getting out of this room without Marrow firing at least one bullet was less than zero.

So what the hell could she do?

‘No? Then what is this?'

Ella caught Luca's eye. Marrow had clearly done a number on him, given the bruises and cuts to the side of his face, but something burned behind them.

Luca flexed his right hand – the one closest to Marrow. His fingers twitched once, twice. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

He's got a hand free, Ella realized. But what good was that with a gun in play?

‘This is my magnum opus,' Marrow said with a grin. ‘And you've just made it all the sweeter.'

‘Oh yeah? How's that?'

Keep him talking until you figure a way out of this mess.

Luca's gaze darted upward, then back to her. He subtly pointed skyward. Ella glanced up there and saw nothing but rafters and a few dangling horror props.

Then it hit her.

One gesture, a hundred words.

Marrow was firing that gun whatever happened. If Marrow fired up, there was a chance – slim, but a chance – that the bullet might not ignite the gasoline.

‘Four bodies in one blazing fire. Four bodies to join the ghosts, in a place no one believed was haunted. It's poetry.'

Ella coughed. ‘Well, how about this, Marrow? I'll count to three, we'll put our weapons down, then we'll have a nice long chat about ghosts. Sound good?'

'Oh, please. Don't try and fool me. No one is getting out of here alive. You should have figured that out by now.'

She had to think. Give him a reason to believe. Something that might throw him off-kilter enough for her to intervene without sending this place to hell.

To believe.

‘Cassius, Vincent – whatever your name is. Do you know how we found this place?'

A slight twitch in his posture. ‘The voices told you. Those bastards have hounded me for years.'

‘That's right. The ghosts told me.'

His gun lowered a fraction, then shot back up. ‘I know. There's no other way. I was so careful.'

Ella let the moment stretch, let Marrow marinate in his uncertainty. ‘Not those ghosts. Not specters or spirits or that crap. The ghosts that live inside you. Inside everyone.'

Vincent waved the pistol between Ella, Redmond and the pools of gasoline. Ella tried to calm her breathing and focus on the slightest ticks, the briefest windows of opportunity.

‘Don't give me that rubbish. I'm not insane. I know I've been haunted for years.'

‘Sure you have. Ghosts are just the things we can't let go. Mistakes, failures. If you kill us all now, there's no afterlife for us. Just ashes to the wind and four wasted lives.'

For a heartbeat, it seemed her words had found their mark. Marrow's arm dipped and aimed the gun at the floor. Ella held her breath.

'The only way to get rid of these ghosts is to face them head-on, so…'

Vincent stared at Ella but looked beyond her. Luca held up three fingers, then two.

Ella readied herself. Her plans usually had fifty-fifty odds, but this one was barely twenty-eighty. The fulcrum point between salvation and damnation.

Showtime.

One finger.

‘Ella, now!' Luca screamed.

He lunged; wrapped his free hand around Marrow's wrist and wrenched it skyward. The pistol barked once, twice. Bullets shrieked off the rafters in a hail of splinters as Ella stormed shoulder-first into Marrow's mid-section. The main was frail, bony, easy to take down, but as they pounded against the floor in a tangle of limbs, Vincent was still clutching his weapon.

And in the chaos, she missed his final desperate gambit.

The bark of a gunshot, far too close. Then, with a whoosh like the devil's own breath, the world ignited. Flames roared to life and greedily devoured the gasoline racing across the floor with terrifying speed.

But Ella couldn't stop. Wouldn't. Not with Marrow squirming beneath her like a snake. She reared back and smashed her knuckles into his nose. Cartilage crunched; blood sprayed. A vicious elbow to the temple and the gun skittered from Marrow's spasming fingers. Ella's eyes frantically searched for Luca, and her heart seized when she saw him.

Flames engulfed his lower half. He violently writhed in the seat as Redmond hauled the entire chair up and threw it away from the flames, Luca's body still attached. Redmond dove on top of him and began wrestling with the restraints. Ella couldn't process the damage because the heat and the roar of flames ravaged her sight and hearing. The world was a blur of reds and oranges as fire picked its way up the walls and spread across props dangling from ceilings. Black smoke choked the air.

‘Get out of here!' she vaguely heard someone scream. Luca or Redmond, she wasn't sure. It meant at least one of them was alive.

‘Luca! Sheriff!' Ella screamed.

Redmond's voice carried on the flames. ‘Hawkins is free! Get out! Quick!'

Ella staggered upright with a wheezing Marrow at her feet. There was no time for cuffs, no time for threats. The child's bed ten feet away was now pumping out a tornado of black smoke that had Ella's eyes flooding.

She reached out to grab Marrow, but the scumbag twisted out of her grip. With a snarl that was more animal than human, he crawled deeper into the flames.

‘Marrow!' Ella screamed.

For a single, surreal instant, she saw his silhouette flailing against the wall of fire. Then the flames swallowed him whole.

A solid hand clutched her shoulder. The Sheriff's. ‘Ella, come on! This whole place is coming down!'

Marrow was suddenly no longer her concern. No time to think. No time to process the screams, the smell of roasting human meat. She needed to check on Luca to make sure he was still breathing. Everything else could go to hell.

So she ran then, stumbling and half-blind, sucking in great lungfuls of scorching air. The fire chased her and Redmond, licking at their heels, but somehow they made it to the door, bursting out into the cool night like divers surfacing from the depths. They landed on a dirt patch outside. Ella crawled over to her body's body, reached out, grabbed Luca's wrist and squeezed.

‘Luca! Are you okay?'

Movement. He rolled, grabbed her wrist with a seared hand.

Alive. Maybe with a few second-degree burns, but alive.

‘Sheriff, get medics here now!'

Flames pierced the barn and rose into the night sky, and somewhere in that inferno, Vince Marrow met his demise.

Ella's stomach lurched. Bile rose to the surface. She'd left him. Monster as he was, she'd left him to burn to death.

Vincent Marrow. Cassius Auctor. The ghost-man with a multiple names but only one face. He'd got his finale after all, but not the one he'd wanted. No legacy, no legend. Just another monster turned to smoke

Ella sagged against her partner. Let her forehead drop to his shoulder as the adrenaline drained away. It was over. Done. The yawning chasm of Vincent Marrow's madness – it could rest now. Sink back into the shadows where it belonged.

‘He's gone,' Redmond wheezed. ‘Nothing we can do about it now.'

But the words didn't compute. Didn't make a lick of sense. Because all Ella could see was Marrow. That skeletal frame silhouetted against the flames. Dancing his last goddamn dance. Never seeing punishment for the grief he'd caused.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be.

Ella's mind flashed back to that moment in the courtroom when she'd locked eyes with Austin Creed after he'd been given his death sentence. That smug bastard, so sure he'd won, that he'd gotten the last laugh.

No. She wouldn't let another monster slip through her fingers, wouldn't let them dictate the terms of their own demise. Creed might have hopped his way to the needle, but Marrow wouldn't get that chance.

‘Not tonight,' Ella said.

And so she jumped to her feet and bolted. Ignored Redmond, ignored Luca, ignored logic and reason and every ounce of self-preservation hardwired into her DNA. She hit the barn doors at thirty miles an hour and dove headfirst into hell.

Heat slammed into her. A solid wall of pure, unadulterated agony. It seared her lungs, blistered her skin. But Ella didn't feel a damn thing. Couldn't afford to. Thick, choking smoke turned the air into a noxious poison, and melted plastic dripped down from above. The barn – or what remained of it – was painted in shades of black and red. Visibility dropped to ten percent, but it didn't matter. Because Ella was a hunter, and hunters didn't need sight or smell or touch to find a body.

As she stumbled through the inferno, she was vaguely aware of beams crashing from above. Of props melting into twisted approximations of humanity. The stench of burning flesh and synthetic materials assaulted her nostrils, but amongst the man-made wreckage was something real.

And there, sprawled in the center of this discount hell, lay the charred husk of Vincent Marrow.

He looked more like a burnt offering than a man, skin blackened and peeling, clothes seared into the flesh. But somehow, impossibly, Ella could still see the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

Somewhere in the distance, she could hear Luca's voice screaming for her. But she didn't hesitate. Didn't let herself think about the insanity of what she was doing. She lunged towards Marrow's burning form, flames still licking at his clothes and skin. Ella tore off her jacket and threw it over his torso, smothering some of the fire.

The heat seared her hands as she wrapped her arms around his blistered body, but she gritted her teeth against the pain and heaved with everything she had. He was lighter than she expected, hollowed out by the flames, but the scorching heat and devouring smoke turned every step into a marathon.

The fire assaulted her from every angle, but pain was an old friend; the drug that pushed her past mortal boundaries. She dragged Marrow inch by inch towards the door where Luca was waiting. He rushed in with the assist and helped drag Marrow over the threshold and into the blessed relief of the night.

Ella gulped down clean air and collapsed beside the killer's twitching body.

‘Medics are coming,' Redmond called out. He closed in, knelt down to Marrow and felt for a pulse. ‘Son of a bitch is alive.'

‘Cuff him. Make sure,' Luca shouted. While she'd been in the inferno, he'd found the strength to rise to his feet. He grabbed Ella by the shoulder. ‘Ell, what the hell did you go back in there for? You could have burned to death.'

Ella propped herself up on her elbows then waved him off. Yes, she most certainly was burned, but burns healed. Guilt didn't.

They watched as Marrow Farm gave a final, shuddering groan and collapsed in on itself. The whoosh of displaced air stirred the hairs on Ella's arms as a gout of flame and embers spiraled into the night sky. A Viking's funeral for a house of a thousand ghosts.

She knew there would be no saving this place. No scrubbing away the taint of Vincent Marrow's poisoned mind.

‘I already got one person killed this week,' she said. ‘I'll be damned if I'm making it two.'

But maybe that was okay. Maybe some things were meant to burn, meant to be purged in the crucible of fire. The ghosts would linger, as they always did, but they'd be quieter now.