Chasing Fire (Gilded Knights Series Book 2)

by Emilia Finn

  When no sound comes, I pull them away and meet his red eyes. “How long ago did they run out?”

  He shrugs and lets his eyes scour my face. My jaw, my lips, my nose, and hair that probably stands on end. My flashlight is the only light we have in here, the only illumination but for the dot of moonlight in the corner. “Do you have more?”

  “Batteries?” I clarify. “I—I don’t know.” I pat my bent legs, my pockets, and search through the copious amounts of shit I keep in these pants.

  Pens, pen lights, band-aids, and another flashlight. I have a wrench, and a pocketknife. A hat… fuck knows when I put that there, and in another pocket, a notepad and another pen.

  I search my pockets and toss things to the floor, and when the fire at the door climbs through the frame and grabs onto the timber staircase, I swallow and try not to panic.

  Max is pressed to my chest, inside my clothes and so close to my heart that it’s physically impossible for him to get closer. If I panic, he’ll know it. And if I lose my shit, he’ll lose his.

  If we’re going to die, then he deserves to do so asleep, calm, and floating on dizziness and lack of oxygen, instead of conscious so his last moments are spent in fear and pain.

  I try to even my breathing, slow it down, keep my eyes on him and not the door, and while I do that, I continue to search my pockets for something. Anything.

  “I don’t think I have any batteries.” My voice shakes with the knowledge we’re going to die. Me and this little boy. And the worst part is, Idalia has to sit outside and watch.

  It would have almost been less cruel to let her stay inside. To be here with us, to die right alongside her son. Because I know she’d rather that than be alone.

  “Nixon?” Idalia’s tear-filled voice beckons me over the radio. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, Mazzi. I’m here.”

  “Have you found a way out yet? The fire is getting bigger.”

  “I’m working on it.” No, I’m not. I’m sitting. And I don’t think I’m getting up again. “Max is still right here with me. The batteries ran out on his Walkman.”

  “I have more,” she sobs. “Come out right now, and I’ll swap them over.”

  “In a minute.”

  I cough and try to rid my lungs of the poison sliding through them. My body wracks in search of clean oxygen, but my consciousness is still able to see Max. To know he’s right here.

  Silently, I press his forehead back, push him into my coat, and bring the zipper up again.

  “How are they doing outside, Rizz? What’s happening?”

  “We’re pumping,” he answers solemnly. “Doing our best.”

  Spencer’s voice comes next. “Can we get some ‘dozers in to open up a hole in the ground? If we’re quick enough, we could—”

  “Can’t,” Rizz answers. “Open that wall, and the dragon will sprint through. No one can run that fast.”

  “So you’re just… you just leave them in there?” he asks. “That’s it?”

  Idalia’s cries echo down the line so every first responder in this town is witness to her anguish.

  “We fight the fire,” Rizz answers, “and we put her out before she eats up all the oxygen.”

  “Is that going to work?” Idalia pleads. “Will it work?”

  “We just have to be patient,” I tell her.

  When heat from the stairs licks at my back, I turn away, move around the column supporting the ceiling, and thank the universe that it’s made of steel and not wood.

  “Can you give the radio to one of the guys now, Idalia?”

  “No! I—”

  “You have to give them room to work, baby. Give them their tools back. We’ll talk again soon.”

  “Nixon!” she wails. “No! I’m not ready to—”

  “I love you.” I say it to her. And when Max’s eyes draw me down, I say it to him too. “I love you both very, very much. Give Mitch the radio, Idalia. Let them work.” My searching hands frantically toss things from my pockets, still looking for fuck knows what. “I’ll see you soon, okay?” I toss my notebook away. Then a pair of sunglasses. “Idalia?”

  “I love you too,” she sobs. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “I’ll be out soon.”

  My hand stops on a parcel in my leg pocket. Curiously, I run my fingers over the packaging, and when I can’t quite figure it out, I tear my hand from my pocket, then the gloves from my hands.

  Max watches me, poking his head out of my coat when he feels my heart race.

  I shove my hand back into my pocket to take out the strange parcel once more. Bringing it closer for inspection, I run the flashlight over top and squint at the silver that reflects back in my eyes.

  “Nixon?” Idalia cries out, grunting, as though someone wrestles her for the radio. “Nixon? Are you there?”

  “I’ve gotta go. I love you.”

  “Nixon!”

  “I love you.”

  Bringing the parcel to my mouth, I tear the wrapping off with my teeth and feel the first rustling of excitement I’ve felt since being pushed down here.

  Before, we had no chance of survival; no chance of outrunning the fire, and no chance of out-breathing the dragon. Now… The truth of it is, we’re probably still going to die, but now, we have that once percent chance. That zero-point-zero-zero-zero-one percent chance.

  And it’s enough. For right now, it has to be enough.

  26

  Idalia

  “Nixon?” I scream at the radio. At the small, black, handheld device, knowing this inconsequential piece of metal and plastic is the only thing connecting me to my son.

  And to the man I want to marry and grow old with.

  “Nixon! Come back.”

  “Back away!” Another man’s voice booms through the parking lot filled with first responder vehicles. “Everyone, back away! It’s coming down.”

  “No!” I look up with desperate eyes and catch the fracturing of the new renovations.

  What was once a three-story building, built up to become six, now slides away to become three again. The floors collapse in on themselves, and with each failure comes a tidal wave of hot air that takes my breath away. Even sitting in the back of an ambulance, guarded by Mitchell and his partner, surrounded by Nadia, Arlo, and Abby, the heat pulses against my face and pushes me back.

  Tears flow over my cheeks, freely and unstoppable. But the heat from the fire instantly dries them so my skin turns itchy.

  “It’s so hot out here,” I cry out. “It’s so hot.”

  “Idalia.” Arlo wraps her hand around mine and pulls me close. “It’s okay.”

  “If it’s this hot all the way out here,” I shakily bring the radio to my mouth. “Then it must be so much worse in there. Nixon?” I call out. “Please speak. Come back.”

  “You … hang on … sec.” His voice breaks up so I only catch every second word. “Just wait… minute.”

  “Nixon! The roof is falling. The whole thing is falling down.”

  “Can’t talk… breathing… our best…”

  “Nixon!”

  “I lo… you.”

  “I love you too!” I scream as the hotel’s original walls groan under the weight of those above giving way. “Max? Can you hear me, bello?”

  “Can’t hear … sleeping … okay?”

  “Okay?” I demand on a panic. “Okay what? Nixon! He can’t be sleeping!”

  “… love you. See …”

  “Nixon!”

  “Take cover!” one of the other firefighters shouts at a crew who go too close to the hotel. Then he looks to my guests, those who remain too close out of morbid curiosity. “Back the fuck up and cover your faces!”

  “Oxygen,” Mitchell grits out. “It’s gonna suck a whole bunch in.”

  “What?” I frantically search from one set of eyes to the next. “What’s happening?”

  “She’s going down.” He shoves his partner into the back of the ambulance with us, then another friend or
two until we’re squashed close together. “Ya know in Titanic when the ship goes under, and Jack tells Rose she’s gotta kick because it will suck them underwater?”

  “What?” I scream over the cries of those all around us. “What does that have to do with—”

  “This is like that!” He throws himself inside the ambulance, then pulls the doors closed and locked with a deafening snick. “She’s gonna suck the air out of us all. No one will die from it, but I’d rather my sisters didn’t feel the pain.”

  Scrambling away from Arlo’s hold, Nadia’s hold, Abby’s, I dive to the back of the ambulance, over Mitchell, and around Abby’s giant husband. Then I plaster my face to the covered window and peek through the tiny gaps.

  There’s a reason I was shoved in here, I suppose. Apart from the oxygen levels outside, there’s a reason Mitchell tossed me into a space with a pitiful excuse for a window to see out of.

  Tears blind me, they burn my eyes and dribble over my cheeks as the Oriane groans—just like the Titanic did right before splitting in half—and to the right of the hotel, one of the ladder trucks backs up and swings its firefighters away from the building. Three are on the ladder, holding on, two of them shielding the third from burns.

  Walls of the Oriane, brand-new, feature walls, fall away like dominoes in a game made for losing. Bricks shatter to the ground and tear up the grass I’ve been so proud of. The signage I had made special for this place, a hefty investment so I could show this town we’re here, now falls away from the brick façade and clatters to the street.

  Firehoses turn limp, water trickles to a stop, and despite how brave firefighters are supposed to be, dozens of them bundle up their belongings and race away from my home. My livelihood.

  My family.

  My head throbs from the pain of crying, from the heartache I feel, from the devastation that envelops me as the Oriane collapses in on itself and entombs my family. My baby, the baby who has already been saved once from fire.

  It’s as though the universe has this plan for him—perish in the heat, because the universe said so—and because Brandon McGarren messed with that, he was sent back inside and punished. Now the fiery inferno is back, taking its second swing, and in the course of things, in our defiance to burn, another firefighter will lose his life.

  What was the point? I wonder to myself. What did Max do to deserve such fate? What did I do, to deserve to lose everything I’ve ever loved to fire? Why? Why even put Max on this planet in the first place if the universe’s plan is to take him away again so callously?

  “I don’t understand.” I press my cheek to the ambulance’s window and sob. “Why—”

  “Idalia,” Arlo crawls across laps to reach me. She moves over Mitchell. Over Spencer. Over the other paramedic. And when she reaches my side, she grabs on and presses her forehead to my cheek. In my ear, she cries and turns my hearing tinny. “It’s going to work out.”

  “I don’t— I don’t—” Shaking my head, I push her hands off me and try to take my own space.

  “It’s not over till it’s over.” Mitchell joins us at the back of the ambulance and watches the same thing I do. The Oriane collapsing to the ground, nothing but a pile of rubble… rubble that burns. “That’s my brother in there,” he murmurs. “My baby brother. He’s gonna be okay.”

  A phone dings, and Spencer maneuvers to fetch the device from his pocket. I continue to study the hotel, the burning pile, and know somewhere in there, my son and my love are hurting… are scared… are sleeping.

  “They lost vitals.” Spencer’s voice turns hoarse when he realizes what he’s said out loud—when Abby lets out a pealing scream of agony. “The… Griffin’s tech…” he rasps out. “It lost signal.”

  “Oh god.” Bile rises in my throat once more. Sick races along my esophagus and burns on the way up.

  “No,” Mitchell declares angrily. “No. It’s not—”

  “Please stop speaking,” I choke out. “Please just—”

  “I’m not accepting it!” Mitchell roars. “The tech is wrong.” He turns on Spencer and growls. “You’re fucking wrong!”

  “Stop speaking,” I cry. But instead of waiting for the silence, I push the ambulance doors open and stumble into the heat and cold outside. Cold night air meets the fiery hot inferno of my home.

  Just like in Titanic, silence hangs. Guests no longer cry out, and firefighters stand with their heads bent in mourning. Hands on their chests, track marks along their cheeks from where tears wash a river over dirt and soot. Everyone watches the Oriane.

  She’s finished collapsing, done imploding. There’s not much left to burn, since bricks aren’t all that flammable. Now it’s just a red mass of heat, a vault that imprisons my family.

  And here I stand, all alone on the outside, with nothing left to live for. No reason, no purpose, and no hope.

  My legs quiver beneath my weight, my knees buckle, and then I’m down, collapsed in the dirt, crying for my loves and clueless on how I can continue on without them.

  But I hold onto my silence. Just like it brought me comfort two years ago, it again allows me a space to hold onto the numb. For as long as no one speaks to me, for as long as I speak to no one else, I can hide behind my numb and pretend this isn’t real.

  For as long as I don’t speak it, it doesn’t exist.

  Epilogue

  Caskets always look too small, even for full-grown adults. Even the expensive kind, when families aren’t looking to save a dollar. Perhaps it’s because of the flowers that sit on top, dwarfing the timber box; or maybe it’s the hole in the ground, six feet deep and comparably bigger than the pine coffin that will go inside it.

  Or maybe it’s the realization of why we’re here. Mourning a life hammers down upon us the knowledge that our existence is fleeting. It’s rubbery, in that we’re flung into living, and just as violently, we’re flung out again. It could be a car wreck, or a vicious illness. It could be pure accident, or it could be someone else’s doing.

  Or it could be a fire, and a death on the job.

  My hands shake as two familiar firefighters fold our nation’s flag. Triangles, sharp corners, white-gloved hands. These men come together in full dress uniform, medals on their chests, and hats on their heads to hide the tears shimmering in their eyes.

  These men, strong, young, fit men, firm their quivering jaws, and when they meet in the middle with a perfectly folded flag, the man I know as Rizz holds the parcel, while the second takes his colleague’s melted helmet and places it on top.

  It’s an honor, they say, to have this kind of funeral. To be respected even in death, to be celebrated in commemoration. If a firefighter must die on the job, then the best they can hope for is one of these kinds of funerals, a procession, a farewell of the highest esteem.

  So why does my heart sink when these men turn in my direction? Why does my stomach swirl with sickness I want to get out, and my brain throbs with the remnants of a headache that hasn’t left me in over a week?

  Why does it all hurt so much?

  They say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. And though I know how it is to have loved, I know how it is to have lost, I can’t say that tired old cliché truly makes anyone feel better. Least of all the one who lost the most.

  I glance to my right, to a handsome man in a midnight-black suit, and when his jaw shakes from the tears he works desperately to hold in, my own grief wins the battle I’ve been waging, and a sob tears its way up my throat.

  Old grief, new grief, it all coalesces and manifests in an inability to truly catch my breath. But it gets worse when they hand the bundle—the folded flag and the melted helmet—to Lieutenant Ruiz, Cootes’ hotshot boyfriend.

  A firefighter lost too soon, a heart that will never again get to love, a woman who died for my family. She died in the line of duty, and she did it to save those I love.

  The second firefighter, the one who folded the flag with Rizz, turns to me after he salutes Cootes
’ man. Nixon then takes me in his arms, crushes my face to his chest, and absorbs the wracking cry that tears along my throat.

  Nine days ago, my hotel went up in a blaze because of faulty electrical wiring, a fire that began in the walls. It was no one’s fault—not really. My electricians did their job correctly, but the Oriane was simply too large for them to be able to comb through every last line of electrical wire to make sure it was all up to code.

  The renovations were beautiful, but the new load being placed upon old wires was simply too much for the old building to absorb.

  Nine days ago, the fancy technology Nixon boasted about, the machines that show a firefighter’s whereabouts, his breathing, his pulse… his mortality… stopped working amongst a firestorm that destroyed all but two very important things inside that building.

  Nine days ago, Nixon found a silver blanket in the pocket of his turnouts, a blanket he called the shake ‘n’ bake, a blanket, coincidentally, that the man who stands beside me, grieving his deceased girlfriend, gave to him. And because the basement’s floors were still dirt, because I hadn’t yet ordered the pouring of a concrete floor, Nixon was able to dig a hole for himself and my baby to burrow into. They pulled the blanket over themselves, tucked it in at the sides, and hid under a strong metal column.

  It turned out to be the safest place inside that hotel, because although rubble and bricks and concrete were falling down around them, that column kept them unharmed, and the blanket allowed them a space to hide while the fire burned itself out.

  Eight days ago, when the inferno had officially died down enough to allow EMTs to approach—a full four hours after Nixon’s technology stopped working—the two loves of my life emerged, sore, scared, tired, and hungry.

  But alive.

  They were alive.

  “Mommy?”

  Max’s sweet voice breaks through the roaring in my ears, the fear I haven’t quite escaped since watching Nixon disappear inside my apartment while I was dragged outside.

  Max tugs on my hand, so I pull away from Nixon’s warm, strong chest, and kneel in front of my baby.