He ran straight at Caine, ignoring the massacre behind him, blocking the screams and the ravening growls and the staccato of machine guns.
He aimed and fired.
The beam hit the front of Caine’s car. The sheet metal blistered, and Caine climbed awkwardly out through the sunroof while others Sam didn’t care enough to identify bolted through the doors.
Sam fired and Caine dodged.
A blast hit Sam, stopped him as dead as if he’d run into a wall. He searched wildly for Caine. Where? Where?
Muffled screams from inside the church joined the background roar, a noise out of a child’s hell, high-pitched cries for mother, agonized cries, desperate, pleading.
A flash of movement and Sam fired.
Caine fired back and the statue on the fountain was blown off its pedestal and fell with a splash in the fetid water.
Sam was up and running. He had to find Caine, had to find him, kill him, kill him.
More machine guns firing and Edilio’s voice yelling, “No, no, no, stop firing, you’re hitting kids!”
Sam rounded the burning Audi. Caine running ahead, leaping a fire hydrant.
Sam fired and the ground under Caine’s feet burst into flame and oily black smoke. The pavement itself was burning. Caine went sprawling onto the street, rolled quickly, got to one knee, and Sam took a massive blow that laid him flat on his back, stunned, blood coming from his mouth and ears, limbs all askew, unable to…unable…
Caine, a wild, bloody, screaming face.
Sam felt hatred burn through him and erupt from his hands.
Caine jumped aside, too slow, and the scourging light seared his side. Shirt burning, Caine screamed and beat at the flame.
Sam tried to stand, but his head was swimming.
Caine bolted into the burned-out apartment building, through the same door Sam had entered to try and save the little firestarter.
Sam wobbled but ran after him.
Up the stairs and to the scorched hallway, still stinking of smoke. The top floor was a wreckage of burned timbers and asphalt-tiled slopes of roof like children’s slides, and fragments of walls and incongruous jutting pipes.
A blast and Sam could actually see the half-wall beside him ripple from the impact.
“Caine. Let’s finish this,” Sam rasped.
“Come get me, brother,” Caine cried in a pain-squeezed voice. “I’ll bring this place down on us both.”
Sam located the sound of his voice and ran down the hallway, ran beneath the stars, firing the deadly light from his hands.
No Caine.
A creaking door, still hanging from hinges though the wall around it was gone, swung slowly.
Sam kicked it, spun, and fired into the room.
&n
bsp; A charred wooden beam flew through the air. Sam ducked under it. The next one hit his left arm, shattering the elbow. More debris, a torrent of it, drove Sam back.
Suddenly, there was Caine, not ten feet from him.
Caine’s hands were raised over his head, fingers splayed, palms out. Sam clutched his shattered left elbow with his right hand.