Free The Devil's Beat (The Devil's Mark) by R. Scott VanKirk

sprouted from the wall at the base of the stairway behind him where one of the floor lamps had been placed.
    Max panicked, hit the light switch again, and plunged the hall in darkness once more except for the weak but growing light coming from the wall fire. He frantically tried to remember where he kept the fire extinguishers the electricians had forced on to him. He kept glancing anxiously back at the flames which would have provided some illumination if looking at them hadn't kept ruining his night vision.
    In his personal darkness, he stumbled around and tried to find an extinguisher. His foot finally and painfully found the one by the stairs. He had to grope for it on the ground, but he finally managed to grab it with his good hand.
    Max limped towards the spreading flames. When he was close enough, he discovered that one handed fire extinguishing required a bit more thought than the two handed variety. The first problem was pulling out the pin. He couldn't pull on it without pulling the canister over. Meanwhile, the fire grew, licking up the wall toward the high ceiling. Cursing and freaking out, he finally managed it by sitting with his legs around the canister to brace it while pulling on the pin.
    When the pin came out, he stood back up triumphantly, raised the heavy extinguisher, and discovered, painfully, that he couldn't aim it at the fire. The handle itself was not designed to allow easy pointing and his broken hand couldn't grab the dangling hose.
    The heat of his cursing didn't actually add to the growing flames, but it should have.
    He was just trying to get his arm under the hose, when the temperature around him plummeted. The extinguisher was ripped violently from Max's hand. In shock he saw it fly into the air, point its hose at the fire and let loose. The cloud of extinguishing stuff immediately started to choke the flames. The spray back splattered and seemed to surround the extinguisher in a white cloud.
    Before he could even wrap his head around what he was seeing, he heard a wailing scream coming from somewhere below the floor. Max jumped back as smoke started pouring from the cracks. Instead of spreading out like smoke was supposed to, this smoke stayed together and rocketed towards the extinguisher. The extinguisher turned to point at the on-rushing cloud and let loose. It blew through the cloud and right onto Max.
    Max screamed and ran towards the front door. The extinguisher smashed into the wall next to the door, sending pieces of plaster flying before it fell to the floor with a clang. Max brought his automatically upraised arms down and looked stupidly at the extinguisher now laying innocently on the floor and not showing any inclination to fly at his head again. His attention was drawn back to new screams behind him. The first screamer had been joined by another. This one was higher pitched.
    It took a moment for Max to make sense of what he was seeing; two formless clouds of white vapor were whirling around each other next to the burning wall. They would occasionally rush together and then apart. From time to time one of them would fly across the room only to stop, reverse its course and rejoin the fray.
    In the midst of the screams, Max could occasionally hear words.
    “Adventuress!”...”Ass!”...”Cheap strumpet!”...”Piss-proud nancy-boy!”... “Clap infested quim!”
    Max found he couldn't obey his instinct to run. He was over-ruled by the sheer strangeness of the scene in front of him.
    The fight seemed to spread out through the room. Suddenly hammers, lamps and anything else not nailed down were flying through the air between the two. Each object would fly through one or the other of the clouds to no evident effect. Some of them
    whizzed perilously close to Max and smashed into the wall or the door behind him.
    He was so engrossed in the fight that he didn't even flinch.
    As the battle raged, the temperature in the room continued to plummet. Max's ragged breath came out in