It would take time, of course. Marcus looked for another dead grenadier, and spotted one lying against the Silver Eagle building, back the way he’d come. He reversed direction, narrowly avoiding a tendril whipping down to swat him like an insect, and scrambled back away from Andy’s team with a spray of bloody dirt from his boots. Sothe threw another knife—to think I wondered if she was bringing too many—and the old woman blocked it with another teakettle screech. She slammed one tentacle down to the left of Sothe, missing her by yards, but the assassin had to skid to a stop as the flame blazed upward, elongating into a wall of white-hot fury. Sothe turned to run the other way, but a second tendril cut her off, trapping her against one wall of a building between two blazing infernos. Two more tendrils rose above the bonfires, ready to come down and smash this elusive opponent once and for all.

Marcus hurled his grenade in a low arc, as though he were bowling on a lawn. It bounced across the dirt and directly into one of the walls of flames, where it exploded with a roar and a blossom of smoke. As before, the blast of the bomb seemed to scatter the supernatural fire of the Penitent Damned like water. Sothe reacted fast, flipping sideways through the smoke of the grenade and across the remnants of the wall of flame. She came out the other side, smoke clinging to her, her black silks smoldering. But she was still on her feet, twisting to throw yet another blade at the old woman in the center of the bonfire.

A trickle had begun to leak from the end of the hose, expanding rapidly into a steady stream of river water. One of the boys tightened the valve, squeezing the stream into a high-pressure spray, while the other struggled to direct it upward. It hit the base of the bonfire with a hiss like hot metal quenching, throwing up a vast cloud of steam.

The old woman screamed, or the fire screamed—at this point, it was hard to tell the difference. All her flames contracted again and lashed out at the firefighting engine. The lance of fire hit the boy manning the hose and punched through him, leaving him pinioned for a moment on a spear of white-hot energy. It twisted up from there to slash across the women operating the pump, who dove for cover. One wasn’t fast enough, and the fire hit her with a physical impact, tossing her into the air like a blazing, shrieking meteor.