The Keep of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

He saw others around him dab at glistening cheeks and pluck at shirts gone wet.
    “I’m afraid Jack passed away last fall,” Max said.
    “How?” The man’s voice was both whisper and shriek. “How did he go? Tell me!”
    “It was a fire. At the antique shop.”
    The man pressed his eyes shut, his expression at once rapt and afflicted. “Ah, yes. Fire. In the end, fire shall take us all.…”
    He opened his eyes and it was only then Travis saw that the man’s eyes had no whites. They were black—completely and utterly black, like two hard orbs of onyx.
    Someone bumped hard against Travis’s shoulder. People jostled against each other. Some were trying to leave the saloon.
    “Listen, mister,” Max said in a soothing voice, “I need you to turn around and—”
    “You!”
    The man’s cry was like a gunshot. People scattered, then started shoving for the door. A knot formed in front of Travis, and he was pushed back. Then the knot untangled itself, and he looked up. Theman pointed at him with an accusing finger, his impossible black eyes locked on Travis.
    “You are the one who drew me to this place. You are Jakabar’s heir!”
    Travis clenched his right hand, and it burned like he had grabbed a fistful of hot lead. The man lurched toward him, a marionette controlled by a drunken puppeteer.
    Max reached out to grab the man. “Hey, you stay away from—”
    There was a sizzling sound, and the stench of burnt meat. Max howled and yanked his hand back. He clutched his wrist, his face a mask of agony.
    A few last stragglers dashed past—the saloon was deserted now—and the man in black stood less than an arm’s length away. A gray wisp rose from his robe and curled into the air. It was smoke. The man’s robe was smoldering.
    “Travis,” a soft voice said behind him. “Travis, take a step back.”
    Deirdre. He could see her out of the corner of his eye. Travis wanted to listen to her, but the man’s black gaze stabbed him, fixing him to the spot.
    “The key,” the man said.
    Travis shook his head. His brain was roasting in his skull. “I don’t … I don’t understand.”
    Peace crept across the man’s cracked face. “Yes, it is you to whom I must give the key.”
    “Now, Travis,” Deirdre said. “Get back.”
    Max slumped against a wall, still holding his wrist, his expression hazed by pain.
    Movement was futile. The heat welded Travis, fused bone and muscle. Somehow he forced his jaw to work. “Who … who are you?”
    The man smiled, sharp as a knife wound, and reached out a hand. Travis watched smoke rise from the dark fabric of his sleeve.
    “Beware—it will consume you.”
    “Travis!”
    Deirdre’s shout broke through the fatal heat. He heaved himself back, clattered against a table, then looked up to see the man in black go rigid. He raised twisted arms, threw his head back, and shrieked.
    “Kelephon! Jakabar! Help me!”
    Then the man in the black robe burst into flame.

6.
    Sunlight crept into the valley as Castle County Sheriff’s Deputy Jacine Fidelia Windom drove the coroner’s van up the hill south of town to the Castle Heights Cemetery.
    The sun had just crested the eastern escarpment of Signal Ridge, but the sky had been blue for hours—a trick the mountains always played on the dawn. Jace rolled down the van’s window, and dry wind rushed into the vehicle. The morning was already hot. By noon it would be another scorcher. That concerned the deputy.
    Not that the heat bothered her. Despite the oppressive weather, Jace hadn’t traded her crisp khaki trousers, shirt, and tie for lighter attire. She wasn’t afraid of sweat. But there were others on whom the heat wasn’t so easy. Ranchers and their livestock. The frail and elderly. If this heat wave kept up, she would be making more trips up this hill.
    Jace checked the black box on the seat beside her to be sure it wasn’t wandering when she hit the curves. Taking a John Doe’s ashes to the cemetery for interment