“I can’t find them!” Callan screamed for them until his voice broke. He raced onto the front porch, immediately pushed back by the intense heat.
Firefighters dispersed, falling into action and hauling him back from the burning house as they readied their equipment. Not fast enough.
“My brother and sister are in there!”
“Stay on the street!”
He shoved them off, yanking his arms free and planting his feet on the ground. “I have te get te them!”
“You need te get back!”
Hoses snaked onto the yard and aimed at the house. The roof on the left collapsed, the frame melting into the flames. The fire moved so fast and the men so slow.
“They’re in there!” Unthinking, he lunged past the men and raced into the heat. Shielding his face, he squinted through the smoldering clouds, his eyes cooking out of his skull.
“Callan, no—”
Flames scorched his face. His crackling lungs heaved and coughed. Thick, black smoke choked the breath out of him.
“In—” He hacked through her name. “Ga—” His voice scraped past his vocal cords in a painful scratch. “Gavin!”
Dropping low, he tried to escape the clawing smoke, but there was no dodging it. It was everywhere, hot and dirty. Creeping death and blinding heat.
He grabbed a doorknob and jerked back, the metal white hot and blistering his palm. Water hissed like steam, raining into the flames as if angering them. The smoke liquefied into muddy tar. Pain grabbed him, eating through his clothes, searing into his flesh.
Delirium. So much pain. Scalding, agonizing, overbearing. The worst enemy he’d ever fought, and it was swallowing him whole.
“Innis! Gav—” Choking, he spewed out blackened phlegm. His eyes were on fire from the heat and his ears deafened by the screaming flames and whining structure melting around him.
Everything happened so fast. Water doused the inferno. He searched for any sign of them. Did the fire tip over the chairs? Why was the door to the basement broken? Scorched, in the middle of the charred floor, was the tin where they hid their money.
“Innis! Gavin!”
Hacking painfully, he collapsed. No choice but to cover his head and suck filthy breaths. The heat was inescapable, everywhere.
His entire universe shrank to a delicate fleck of burning dust. Eyes closed against the burn, he watched his world blow away like ash.
Tears burned his skin as he wept for them, calling in silence, unable to make a sound no matter how hard he screamed.
Angry flames climbed the walls, melting the wallpaper and lifting the charred curtains. The power and wind of the fire held him down. The stairs creaked and collapsed without warning. The whole house would fall, but he couldnae leave without them.
He rolled to his side, needing to move. The moldings bubbled. He mouthed their names. His last illusion of finding them crumbled to unchartered depths as the ceiling collapsed.
Flashes of his sister as just a wee girl racing down the hall stole through his mind. The ground burned his back, the fine fibers of his clothes melting into his skin.
Barren regrets ripped from his heart in a brutal harvest that promised nothing else would ever grow. They’d been so close. The bitter taste of loss choked him as much as the smoke and tears.
He surrendered to the merciless heat. He cupped the collar of his shirt over his mouth, sucking in a long draught of thick, hot, polluted air. He wanted to give in, but he couldnae. Not until he knew they were safe.
“Ga—vin!”
Hacking hard, he covered the back of his head. The flames were so hot. Too hot. His flesh would soon melt from the bone. How could anyone survive this pain? There was nowhere to hide.
The smoke overtook every crevice, creeping up from the floorboards, in from the walls, and pressing down from the crumbling ceilings.
“Innis!”
A crash and explosion of raging flames. Unbearable heat burst around him and something heavy crushed his legs.
Flames caught at the frayed cuff of his jeans, biting into his skin, on him, gnawing, but he couldnae roll away. He screamed in agony, his heart tearing in two.
Lost in the delirium of pain and grief, there came a humming stillness, a moment of isolated time when he realized this was how he would die.
Blackened flecks of cindered ruins feathered through the flames and he could no longer draw in enough breath to call for them or feed the need to cough. His throat collapsed, crumpling like a crushed can and the pain existed as only excruciating numbness. He gave in, embraced its vicious power, let it take him from this place.
His lungs filled. Black blood sputtered over his lips. Tarnished sweat colored his arms as he twitched and thrashed, but there was no escaping the pain. Blistering agony, inescapable torment. Scared and alone.
Trapped in a burning coffin of fire, he roared as the rubber soles of his boots burned into his feet. Even kicking frantically, there was no evading the agony. It was so intense, so overwhelming, he went mad.
Something grabbed hold of him, and he fought. Claws digging into flayed flesh, tender and blistered, skin falling away at the touch.
Blind. Deaf to all but the pain. Chaos ripped into his mind. A merry-go-round of images that made no sense.
His da smiling at him kindly. His mother’s praising grin. The first sight of Innis wrapped in a baby blanket. The scent of her hair. The feel of Gavin’s fingers locking around his thumb. The first time he saw his da hit his ma. The second time. The twentieth. The way his da looked at him like a stranger the day he left. The sight of his ma leavin’ their home in a black body bag. The inconsolable way Innis had cried when she understood there was no reversing death. The sound of his promise to always protect them. The crack of his heart breaking with that vow.
The agony of too much hurt flooding in...
Chapter Four
The Royal Infirmary
Glasgow—Scotland
Four Weeks Later
Searing pain, more excruciating than any injury he’d suffered before, reigned over him. He welcomed it. Favored it to the stabbing grief gouging through his heart. A heart that no longer existed, punctured into nothing, shredded, hollow tears worn into his empty chest where hope once lived. He prayed for death.
His ravaged throat seemed nothing more than a dry, narrow tube, too small to squeeze a breath through. The entire trunk of his body ached from the inside out, each brutal inhalation pushing his lungs against splintered ribs.
No escaping the sting beaten into his flesh. No escaping the hurt.
He’d lost them. Lost everything.
Investigators were still working to identify the cause of the fire, still searching for his siblings’ remains, but with the close of each passing day, the useless catalog of every week, the truth became inescapable.
His home lay in a puddle of mud and ash. Rhys had searched long after the flames had cooled leaving rotted cinders of soot and decay. No traces of Innis or Gavin. Nothing left to live for.
Everything he was and all he’d ever known had vanished. Nothing but pain. Nothing but hurt. Not even a merciful end to the gnawing grief.
No family. No relics from his childhood. No photos. Nothing. Just the aching, inescapable hurt of being turned inside out and left broken in the ruins.
He’d lain in this wretched bed for a month, a prisoner to his weakened body, counting down the days until he regained his strength. But then what?
Every conscious minute his mind tortured him with things that could have been, things that would never be.
He should have been home with them, watching over them. Everything gone. And for what?
Rage boiled inside of him, singeing the last of his humanity with agonizing regret. It should have been him to go. They were innocent. He’d have burned for a thousand years if it saved them, died a thousand deaths. But he’d failed.
He failed. And nothing he did would ever bring them back.
It should have been him. He was
already dead inside.
No warmth. No happiness. No love. Just misery. All the good died with them. And he couldnae afford a proper burial, couldnae find their ashes or the strength or...
He had nothing.
The door creaked, and Rhys crept in, his face a mask of misery, but his pain only a fraction of what Callan felt. He wasted hours here every day. There was no point. Callan dinnae want company. He dinnae deserve visitors.
“Yer lookin’ good today.”
He turned his gaze to the opposite side of the room. He just wanted to be left the fuck alone.
In the days after the fire, he’d been trapped in some sort of nightmare, too medicated to make sense of things and too delirious on morphine to recall what had happened.
The polis found bones in the ruins, mixed within the rubble. Small, like that of an animal or young boy. Since then, Callan hardly spoke, and dinnae want any more reports. They were gone. He dinnae need the gory details driving the point home.
All other reports fell on deaf ears. He simply couldnae bear the emotional pain. And he internally raged at the physical pain that kept him grounded to this earth when he desperately longed for death.
Third degree burns on his legs and hands. They had to graft skin from his arse and thighs to fix the damage, but he’d never be fully right again. If only they knew the damage inside.
There would always be significant scarring. The rubber soles of his boots had to be cut away from his blistered skin.
His ravaged throat twisted as unshed tears seemed to crush his windpipe another degree. The grief was simply too much.
Poor, wee Gavin. Who knew what sort of man he would have grown up to be? He was young enough that Callan might have been able to replace the shite memories with good ones.
And Innis, she’d never know love or what it would have been like to have a family of her own. Such beauty and brains lost to a chanceless existence, stolen by miserable conditions and disadvantage.
He longed to join them. Planned to, as soon as he regained his strength. He dinnae have to be in perfect condition to toss himself off the Squinty Bridge down the River Clyde.
If he had a gun handy, he’d end it now. But Rhys fell apart when he asked him where his gun was. Sooner or later his friend would look away, and Callan would do what needed to be done.
“I’ve gone through most of the rubbish by now,” Rhys said, filling the silence with unnecessary chatter. “I’ve found a few things that might be of interest to ye.”
Rubbish? Was that what they were calling it? His siblings’ ashes tossed to the wind. Rubbish.
The tick of a zipper coming undone told Callan he’d brought the items with him. He dinnae want to see singed memorabilia. He wanted his fucking family back.
“This looks like a ring. Maybe your ma’s. Maybe Inn—” Rhys’s voice cracked. “I know she wasnae much for jewelry, but maybe she planned te wear it one day.”
Callan’s chest caved in a little more. Moments like this, the pressure was too much. Keeping his gaze on the far wall, he ignored the tear that rolled from his eye, let the pain pierce him through. Maybe if it stabbed hard enough, it would finish him off.
A long silence unfolded. Rhys eventually pulled out another item. “This looks like a toy plane. I think it was probably Gavin’s.”
Not even morbid curiosity could draw his gaze. His face locked, every muscle refusing to look.
“This might have been a hairbrush of—”
“Go home, Rhys.”
He couldnae stomach it. Nothing in him wanted to see proof that they were gone or a reminder of how they were taken from him. He could smell the singed items he’d brought. His clothes wore the charred scent of death and destruction.
“Do ye not want these things? These pieces of them?”
“No.” He wanted to die.
“Callan, I know you’re hurting—”
“Ye know nothing about my pain!” His chest constricted, drawing a sharp hiss of air through his bared teeth. The burned skin on his face tightened. He welcomed the ache. Locking his jaw, he growled, “Ye want to bring me something? Bring me yer fucking gun so I can join them.”
“Callan...” His name was a plea, a whispered breath so full of pain it carried the intensity of a scream.
There was nothing more to say. His life had been a series of sacrifices with very few choices. In death, he should have a choice.
“Leave me alone,” he rasped.
The sound of clothing shifting and a zipper closing was the last he heard of Rhys for some time. After that day, Rhys dinnae visit for a while.
Chapter Five
The Royal Infirmary
Glasgow—Scotland
Four Months Later
It had been months of grueling physiotherapy and endless waiting. So much effort put into healing when Callan’s goal never wavered. The second he got out of this hospital he was going to find his siblings the only way he knew how.
Every day he had the nurses help him down to the infirmary chapel. His skin, especially around his calves and ankles, lacked the elasticity it once had, making it painful to stand for longer than a few minutes. Painful to sit, too. Painful to live.
Since having the bandages removed from his feet, he had little sensation where the grafts had been transplanted. The doctors said sensation would come back with time, but never feel exactly the same.
Movement of any kind was difficult. A numb man walking was like a deaf man talking. A lot of times he got it wrong. And every time he fell, the world got a glimpse of the rage he kept bottled inside.
He spoke to the visiting priest, confessed his sins, and begged for penance. He wasnae sure if God had a place in heaven for a man like him, but he was certain that was where his brother and sister were.
Taking one’s own life was a mortal sin. Callan had to believe God would take mercy on his tortured soul. Christ’s blood should cover all matters of sin, but his greatest fear said it might not save him.
Rhys knew his intentions. “You’ll wind up in purgatory.”
“Anything is better than staying here.” No point in denying the inevitable.
“You would trade a moment of suffering for an eternity without them? You’re thinkin’ like a Godless man. A mad man. You’re stronger than this, Callan.”
His grief had eviscerated the last of his sanity months ago. And while killing himself might violate one of the commandments, it was his only option of escape. This excruciating healing process, always knowing he’ll never be fully well, that was the penance for his sins.
“I’m already in hell. Purgatory would be a welcome reprieve.”
“I’ll not let ye do it.”
“You’re selfish to try and stop me.”
“Bullshite! Yer my best friend and all I got left in this world! I know they were yer family, but I lost them too! Do you think it doesn’t kill me te know I’ll never see her face again? Never hear her laugh...” His voice broke under the weight of palpable sorrow. “Yer the selfish bastard thinking all this grief belongs te you and you alone. And now you plan on killin’ yourself as well?” He snatched his coat off the chair and jerked open the door.
“Rhys, wait.”
“Fuck you, MacGregor!” The door slammed, and cold silence enveloped him.
He didn’t return for a week, but when he did, Callan immediately knew something was wrong.
“What is it?”
Rhys paced, wringing his hands and avoiding eye contact. “How strong are you right now? Honestly.”
Callan frowned. “I think I can tolerate more than a kitten lick, but if someone hit me I’d probably shite myself. Why?” His fighting days were over, so he didn’t understand the point of the question.
“The polis have been tryin’ to reach you.”
Everything inside of him tightened to an agonizing point of awareness. All the reports were done weeks ago. “About?”
“There’s new information. They know the cause of the fire.”
&nb
sp; Of course. The fire.
He swallowed, unsure if he was ready to hear this. There had been so many rigged outlets in the house, and he told Innis not to use the iron anymore because the cord had frayed.
What if it was something he could have prevented? More guilt. More heartache.
Impatience filled him with the urge to vomit. “Out with it.”
Rhys pivoted, his eyes boring holes into him. “It was arson.”
Callan sat up, ignoring the pull of his tight leg muscles and the ache in his back. “What? How did they determine tha’?”
“I heard whispers and finally got the polis to question the neighbors. Apparently, some people on your street heard a ... commotion. Glass breaking and furniture being thrown around. Someone broke into your house, Callan.”
His skin tingled, waking forgotten nerves. He shivered at the strange chill. His brain cleared in an instant, his mind more alert than it had been in months.
His words escaped in a low growl. “Who was in my fucking house?”
He hadnae been able to picture his home since the fire, but now he was taking a mental stroll up the front steps. He could hear the creak in the porch, see the fine cobwebs fossilized around the moldings. He was always on her about locking the door.
“Jesus. She probably let them walk right in.”
The color in Rhys’s face drained. “The reports...” His gaze dropped to the floor. “They could hear screaming.”
“And no one called the fucking polis?” But as the words spat from his mouth, he recalled all the times they’d ignored nearby shouting, and how angry his da would get when a neighbor would report him after one of his battles with their mother.
“They called when the fire started. Callan, they said it started with a Molotov cocktail thrown from a car. And they have the plate number.”
He couldnae catch his breath. The need to spring out of bed mocked his broken body.
Too many questions bombarded him at once. Who would do this? Why? Had Innis and Gavin suffered? They must have attacked the wrong house.
Hurt (The Hurt Series, #1) Page 5