‘Microwave?’ Shan Yuan pulled himself out of his despond and wandered over to inspect it. ‘Probably not very useful,’ he said, after a minute or two.

Kai construed that as wouldn’t cause significant damage if I rewired it to explode and nodded. But something else had crossed his mind. ‘Nice drinks cupboard,’ he said, keeping his tone casual. ‘At least we can get drunk while we’re waiting for our possible doom.’

Shan Yuan made a noise of disgust. ‘Is that your best idea? I thought you were keeping bad company, but now I know it for certain.’

‘I might surprise you with my mixing skills,’ Kai said. ‘Let’s see. I could make a dry martini, but that’s boring. They don’t have absinthe or blackberry liqueur, so an Aunt Roberta’s out of the question, and I don’t feel like a Death in the Afternoon or a Tropical Zombie . . . Do you? Or how about a Long Island Iced Tea?’

Shan Yuan glared at him and even here, in the depths of chaos, Kai could feel a brief surge of blazing heat from his brother’s body. ‘You embarrass yourself.’

Kai cursed silently. Apparently Shan Yuan didn’t know his cocktails and hadn’t grasped the salient factor here – all the drinks Kai had mentioned had an extremely high alcohol content. Since they were certainly being monitored, there was no way to be more direct. ‘Older brother,’ he said, ‘we’re both suffering due to the chaos level here. We won’t be given any drugs – or if we are offered any, I wouldn’t advise taking them. The most sensible option is to have a few drinks to dull the pain. Watch me and I’ll show you.’ He pulled a fork from the cutlery drawer and passed it to Shan Yuan, nodding meaningfully at the microwave.

Kai’s control over water wouldn’t extend to the liquids in this world – they were far too infested by chaos, too deeply infiltrated by its essence. And their captors would know this, assuming Kai would be just as helpless here as he’d been before, that time in Venice.

It was a rewarding experience to disprove one’s enemies’ expectations, and the more drastically the better.

Well, rewarding for him.

Shan Yuan took the fork and looked uncomprehendingly at it. Then he looked more closely at the spirits Kai was gathering. Gin, vodka, tequila, rum . . . ‘Maybe you have a point,’ he said, and pried off the microwave’s control panel.

Kai suspected they’d only have a few moments to act, once his brother started mangling the microwave’s electronic guts. He gave up on subtlety and started uncorking all the bottles.

From the lounge area, a gentle electronic voice intoned, ‘Stand away from the kitchen equipment. This is an order.’

Shan Yuan hissed between his teeth and did something to the wiring.

‘Stand away from the kitchen equipment, or we are authorized to use lethal force,’ the voice continued, in the pleasant female tones of an electronic alarm system which had been designed to sound comforting and reassuring.

Shan Yuan nodded to Kai and jammed the fork into the wiring. Blue sparks jumped. Kai tipped the vodka onto the wiring; the sparks belched upwards, flaring into sudden alcohol-fuelled flames.

Fire wasn’t like water. Fire existed only for a moment, remade with every passing second, constantly replaced by newly-created flames. While the burning materials might be of this world and contaminated by chaos, the actual tongues of fire were untouched. They were free from corruption as they winked in and out of existence. Which meant Shan Yuan could command the fire howsoever he wished.

The fire leapt up, wreathing the microwave and melting the plastic-topped counter it stood upon. Shan Yuan directed it downwards, so it could rush across the floor – then it flared across the room, charring the neutral beige carpeting and bland walls. It spread around Shan Yuan and Kai in a growing circle, blossoming outwards to shoot towards the apartment door.

Shan Yuan followed the flames, and Kai followed Shan Yuan, a bottle of vodka in his hand in case a top-up was required.

Guards had begun to assemble beyond the apartment door, but they weren’t prepared for the rolling wall of flame that smashed the door down and came roaring towards them. A few had enough sense to shoot at the two dragons, but most sprayed their bullets blindly into the flames.

Kai knocked Shan Yuan to the floor and out of the line of fire, biting back a curse as a bullet seared his upper arm. Shan Yuan said nothing, but the heat of his body beneath Kai redoubled, and the flames burst forth with new fury, reaching out for the guards like living things.

The guards weren’t being paid to face down an inferno. They broke and ran.

‘Take one alive,’ Kai murmured in Shan Yuan’s ear. ‘We need information.’

‘Good idea. You do have more experience in these situations,’ Shan Yuan admitted. He hooked his hand in a gesture and the flames leapt ahead of the rearmost guard, circling to cut him off.

The guard turned to face them. He was anonymous behind his helmet, face mask and body armour, but his posture spoke eloquently of how much he feared the fire. ‘Keep back!’ he ordered them.

‘Question this fool for me, Kai, before I incinerate him where he stands,’ Shan Yuan said dismissively. The strain in his expression was only visible to Kai, and only because he knew his brother well.

As Kai glared at the guard, he was every inch the son of Ao Guang, Dragon King of the Eastern Ocean. Blood trickled down his arm from the bullet wound, merely adding to his anger. ‘You,’ he snapped at the man, and saw him flinch. ‘We need information. You may assist us or you may die. The choice is yours.’

The guardroom nearby did have a computer terminal, and Shan Yuan bent over it with renewed energy. The flames had filled this floor of the building and were now rapidly spreading to other levels. This had apparently halted any attempts to find or recapture them, and the screaming mass of civilians being evacuated provided an additional distraction. Kai did feel guilty about their fright, and the damage. He reassured himself that once he and Shan Yuan were safely out of the building, the fire crews could put out the flames.

‘How long will this take?’ Kai asked, knotting a bandage of torn cloth over his wound. It would have seriously inconvenienced a human; as a dragon, he could endure it without too much difficulty.

Shan Yuan’s fingers flickered across the keyboard. The guard had provided the password and his fingerprint to enter the system, and had therefore been allowed to keep his hand. ‘I’m interfering with the building’s security network – telling it to focus on the fire and evacuating the building. But we’re bound to be discovered quickly . . . It’ll take too long to reach the ground floor, but the system says there are aircars docked on the roof. Can you fly an aircar?’

‘Yes.’ Well, yes in other worlds. That would just have to do.

‘But where shall we go?’

‘The Sagrada Familia,’ Kai replied, without hesitation. ‘You can see it from the windows. It’s guesswork, but Lord Guantes did talk about a cathedral, and there was the information on the laptop. It’s too much of a coincidence to avoid. I’m assuming Irene will be in the most dangerous place and under the highest security.’

‘Higher than us?’ Shan Yuan didn’t try to suppress the offended pride in his voice.

‘Our enemy’s folly is our good fortune. Can you sustain the flames until we reach the roof?’