and your open mouth landed upon his neck. Such a shame! Nobody will press charges, especially after they see what a paradise we’ve turned this place into with our captor dead.”
“Got it,” said Milton, removing the paper clip. He quietly pushed the door open. Inside, Steamspell lay sleeping on his back under silken sheets on his luxurious four-poster bed. A silver platter with an assortment of grapes, strawberries, and cheeses rested on the bedside table. He snored softly.
Nathan’s stomach grumbled. He loved cheese of all sorts.
Milton sadly handed Reggie a coin, having placed a wager on whether there would be a teddy bear. (There was not.) Reggie handed the coin back to him, since there wasn’t any thumb sucking.
Reggie nudged Nathan forward. “Do it.”
Nathan stepped into the room. This was a horrible thing he was about to do. Even if people were bad, you weren’t supposed to bite out their neck. This was wrong. He’d be taken to jail or an even worse orphanage, perhaps one where they made you drink paint.
Or he’d be a hero, having saved his fellow orphans from a most terrible man.
Murderer or hero?
Murderer, hero, or spineless coward who did exactly as he was told?
He’d go with “hero.” That felt best.
Nathan knew that if he kept thinking about it he wouldn’t be able to create the upcoming violence, so he walked right up to the comfortable-looking bed, avoided the temptation to swipe a piece of cheese, and leaned his face down toward Steamspell’s sleeping body.
Steamspell opened one eye.
Nathan gasped.
Steamspell opened the other eye.
Nathan had learned to control his bodily functions at a remarkably young age, yet it was only with the most intense concentration that these skills did not fail him now.
“You wretched cur!” shouted Steamspell as he sat upright. “What’s going on here? Why are you in my bedroom? Why is your mouth open in a biting position?”
Nathan looked back at Reggie for help, or at least at where he thought Reggie would have been if the need for help arose. Reggie had fled. It was an act of cowardice that Reggie assumed would haunt him for the rest of his years, but he actually got over it within a matter of hours, deciding that it wasn’t his fault that Nathan had fallen for his natural charisma and listened to him.
“Were you…were you…” Steamspell spoke as if he couldn’t believe the words that were about to come out of his mouth. “…were you planning to kill me?”
The line between the virtue of honesty and the usefulness of lying was sometimes a thin one, but not in this case. “Absolutely not.”
“Fibber!” Steamspell shouted. “Homicidal fibber! If that’s the kind of environment you want, I’ll show you how to murder somebody!”
Both of Steamspell’s hands shot out, grabbing for Nathan’s throat. Nathan ducked and ran out of the room as fast as his legs would carry him. The other boys who’d been watching stepped out of his way, all of them thankful that they hadn’t been the ones born with the sharp teeth that had caused Reggie to hatch this particular scheme.
Steamspell followed right behind him. “I’ll kill you! Don’t think I won’t!”
Nathan ran through the orphanage, having no doubt whatsoever that Steamspell did indeed mean to kill him. He could never have imagined that somebody would actually want him dead! (He remained unaware that anybody had wanted him dead when he was a baby.)
Nathan ran down the stairs, almost tripping over a three-year-old who slept there because it was more comfortable than his mattress. “Help!” Nathan screamed. “Help me, somebody! Anybody will do!”
Not all of the orphans were intelligent, but none of them were stupid enough to get in the way of an enraged Bernard Steamspell, and there were no immediate offers of assistance. As Nathan reached the bottom of the stairs, he felt that he was increasing the distance between himself and his pursuer, but yelped in terror as he felt
Silver Flame (Braddock Black)