Hot little secrets

"Hey kid!....KID! Get back bef...." The fireman's arms flailed and he yelled with all his body's might but his words drowned in the cacophony of the roaring blaze and the exploding bricks. He turned his head then moved aside and back, twisting and leaping for the kid but she was gone. He stared into the dark alley and charged forward but as he began to gain speed his boot crunched on something and he stopped, looking down.

The tiny picture frame was shattered, of course. However, the images within were faded but visible. The fireman squinted; where were his bifocals when he needed them? And then his eyes opened wide with surprise and he forgot the kid who wasn't in any more danger and he jogged back to the ladder truck.

"Hey Stan, look at this!" He cried out to the rescue squad leader as he waved the tiny piece of paper.

Stan right side jerked at his name and he craned to see what was so important. As he focused, his eyes too showed surprise.

"That's the man they took to the emergency room!" Stan tapped his forehead for a few seconds. "Jason something. Danning. That's it. Jason Danning." Stan smiled, right pleased with his acumen. "Though obviously this was taken some 20 years ago or more."

Stan handed back the picture as the fireman with him, nodded.

"Oh yeah, I read about him some years ago. Came into some family money from the great uncle or something. Heard the Danning's were trying to buy up the city back during the depression. Must be nice. So is the boy in the picture his son?"

Stan shook his head.

"Nah, that's the foundling he adopted. Named Brick. No, Buck or something odd like that. Strange kid. There were whispers about....things. Not natural stuff."

The fireman with Stan listened and frowned. He was hot and the fire had taken its toll and now it appeared the fire was deliberate. Arson was such an intimate thing. People didn't realize it wasn't a cold crime. Cold crime. The irony forced a smirk and then got serious again as Stan continued.

"Teachers said he was a whack job. Used to make up stories about being burned. Said the birthmark on his arm was a brand." Stan snorted and shook his head then suddenly he slapped the truck. "Brock! That was his name. Probably ended up in juvie or something."

The fireman studied the picture again and his eyes naturally wandered to the black alley. What had the little girl been doing with the picture from the building? Had she taken it or had it been hers? Well, he hoped she was alright as he tucked the picture into his suit. On his way home he would drop it off at the emergency room and leave it for that Danning fellow. It might be important to him.

******

"Crap! Crap!" The girl hissed as she had climbed the fire escape ladder. Now she would have to crawl over the rooftops because they'd seen her and the road was blocked. Didn't she see the men put him on a table and load him into the red and white truck? She surveyed the skyline from the edge of the building. Which way to where he was? They would be coming now. The fire would draw them out and she had to hurry.

As if expecting something, she jerked around but the roof was empty. Wouldn't be the first time she was wrong but now was not the time to think about that.

*****

People hurry in an emergency room. Organized chaos, some say. Others will tell you that the wounded are trapped in a kind of slow motion agony, where blood drips like a metronome for heartbeats and machines are the last voice of the dead. The nurse standing at the foot of Mr. Jason Danning's bed glanced at the battery of machines beeping and flashing and she jotted notes. Poor man was so badly burned but he was alive. People buzzed around him like white blood cells to an infection. She annotated his medications as things were called out to her. Dr Griggs expected readable charts and complete information. Intern yes, but she was as much of a perfectionist as any of the surgeons.

When the chart was done, she took the bag of personal effects (just odds and ends, like most men) and hurried out of the cubicle. She could see Dr. Griggs coming toward her and the nurse immediately looked away; there were thunderstorms in the doctor's eyes. This would go badly for anyone not on their game and she, for once, was glad to be outta there.

Paging Solome Griggs

The doctor brushed anxiously past the countless other hospital personnel crowding the main corridor to the ER. She had just come from a twenty-two minute power nap in a small maintenance closet and was now careening into the eighteenth hour of her shift. She was used to napping in closets on busy nights like this one, or worse, not getting any sleep at all until morning. No wonder the internship at the university hospital last year had been so raw.

Relatively new to the profession though she was, she understood the two reasons for the current uptick in emergencies: one, it was the weekend, and two, the night of the full moon. Everything always went to hell on full moon nights.

A cool, well-bodied voice sounded over the public address system.

"Dr. Griggs, telephone please. Dr. Griggs."

Damn, she thought. She unholstered her pager and jabbed the recent recall button a few times rapidly with her thumb. No one had paged her, so what--?
Just as she was about to finish that thought, she slammed into the hard left half of a tall, masculine person in a dark gray suit. Her pager went skittering across the floor.

"Hey--" she began hotly, before noticing who this hard masculine person was.

"Well hello to you, too." he replied with a very playful half smile and a daring flash in his eyes. He momentarily let those eyes travel from hers down to the place where their bodies pressed together in the congested corridor. She smiled back, shaking her head in exasperation before looking past him.

"Is that my pager over there?"

It was almost sweet, the way he blinked and seemed to physically return to the real world. He quickly turned and reached down to recover the gadget, flashing that grin one more time as he tossed it back to her.

"Paging Solome Griggs." he said. "Really. It's an emergency."

"Later." Dr. Solome Griggs brushed past him. "And it's Doctor Griggs."

"Hey--" he began.

"Much later."

He followed her.

"Listen," he said, all traces of playfulness gone. "I know what you're about to walk into down there."

"Tell me." she sang, still cruising at top speed.

"That fire down at Port Street that took down the E. J. Danning building? You kidding me?"

"Danning..." she repeated. "Where do I know that from?"

"Board of Trustees has a Danning. Related, but distantly."

"Okay."

"The place wasn't just gutted; it was destroyed. Got the call down at headquarters and they immediately dispatched all of the nearby cars to the scene. It was like a bomb had gone off."

"So, what were you doing there?" Dr. Griggs asked, pausing for the first time.

"Investigating. I am a district attorney, after all. Some crime scenes warrant a personal visit."

"What are you saying, Brock?" She had stopped walking now. She was about to say more, when the cool and well-bodied voice sounded in the hall.

"Dr. Griggs to Room 217, ER."

"Get going, Solome." Brock said gravely. "They're gonna need you in there. They pulled a guy out of the burning building. He's bleeding like crazy, has some burns."

"If we can stabilize him," she said, "we'll probably still have to transfer him to the state burn unit in Manatowak."

"Maybe so." Brock was about to let her go, but he put out his hand and touched her shoulder. "Listen, if there's any chance at all, I need to speak to him. Tonight. Please."

"Brock, you know I can't."

"Please, Solome."

The doctor sighed and folded her arms over her chest, looking off to one side. She owed Brock Stanwick a favor, and now it seemed he was calling it in.

"Alright." She said. "I'll go and see what I can do."

A Fresh Start; A New Nightmare

It was three years ago when the red-headed vampire had told her to run. And so she had, from city to city, driven by fear and an unshakable sense of foreboding. Would the vampire come after her? Had she been saved only to become the prey? It seemed unlikely but there were nightmares that whispered otherwise. It was one thing to hide in small crevices when you were eight. It was altogether more trouble at eleven because you started becoming something other than a child.

They noticed.

Perhaps that was why the fire arrested her attention. She stared from across the street as the remnants of a building disappeared in billowing, black, smoke and acrid orange, crimson, and white fire. What could burn, had; what should have burned, wouldn't. Her mouth quirked oddly with the irony of how that worked.

Too bad the fire-swell couldn't mask the stench of the gutter-gawkies or the whispering, snake-oil peddlers with coats made out of pills promising sweet candy like ecstasy and desire.

The only thing she desired she couldn't find and she worried she might be out of time. What pill could she take then?