Brothers

by Helena Newbury

Something came back to me, a fire safety video I’d seen during a commercial break when I was about six. It had always stuck with me because the little girl in it looked like Kayley—

  KAYLEY! My mind thrashed in panic for a moment. I started coughing again. I slumped forward over Sean, holding my chest, and nearly passed out.

  Think! What had they done in the commercial?

  Gotten down on the floor.

  I didn’t have the energy to stand: the fear had burned it all up. But I slithered out of bed, down onto my hands and knees, and then put my face right next to the floorboards. That took everything I had. The room dimmed. My lungs didn’t want to work, anymore: my chest burned and I didn’t want any more pain. Easier to just go to sleep.

  Kayley!

  I forced myself to breathe in...and my lungs filled with cool, sweet air straight out of an alpine meadow. I breathed out, coughing smoke, breathed in...the fog in my head lifted and I hauled myself up to kneeling.

  I couldn’t drag Sean’s heavy body out of bed so I rolled him instead, doing my best to catch his head as he fell so he didn’t hit it on the floorboards. Between the pain, the cleaner air and me screaming in his ear, he came partially awake. Then he realized what was going on and came the rest of the way, fast.

  We crawled over to the door. My brain still wasn’t working right but somehow, I was hoping that the fire was only in our room and the rest of the house was okay. It was only when we reached the hallway and saw the whole house lit up orange from below that it sank in. We were in a disaster movie, a horror movie. This doesn’t happen! Not here! Not our house! The smoke was even thicker, here, pushing up against every door.

  I screamed what they always scream in the movies. “FIRE!” But my lungs were scorched and raw and it came out as a pathetically weak wail. I crawled straight to Kayley’s room, Sean beside me. I threw open the door and scrambled across the floor. Grabbed her sleeping body. “Kayley! Wake up!”

  She didn’t wake. Not even when I pulled her from her bed and yelled.

  Oh God Jesus God please. I was too scared to cry, too scared to do anything. I started panic gulping air and the room started to fade out again—

  “Outside!” yelled Sean. “We have to get her outside!”

  He hooked an arm under her armpits and we started dragging her down the hallway. As we passed the other doors, he hammered and kicked on them. At first, it didn’t seem like anyone else would wake up. But then Kian stumbled out, and he managed to get into Carrick’s room and get him and Annabelle up, and together they got Sylvie and Aedan.

  Just in those few minutes, the fire had gotten worse. Orange embers were rising in clouds from downstairs and the smoke was so thick we couldn’t even see the floor. But we had to get out, had to get Kayley out. She was a dead weight in my arms: all the nightmares I’d had during her illness had come true. As we crawled down the stairs in a line, Sean and I carrying Kayley between us, I could feel the heat on my bare arms. My chest tightened as I realized what was burning: it was the tree, the flames rippling up its trunk and consuming its twigs and branches.

  By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, the heat was agony, scorching my lips and eyes, pushing down into my lungs. Even close to the ground, there was no air, here, and all of us were close to passing out. I fumbled for the handle, turned it—

  A flood of cold night air slammed into our faces. It gave us the energy to drag ourselves out. We immersed ourselves in it, panting the coolness down into our chests. Smoke billowed out behind us, chasing us like a monster.

  Sean and I rolled Kayley onto her back on the lawn. I pawed at her chest, still trying to get her to wake up, but then Kian pushed me out of the way. He put his mouth to hers and I watched her chest rise and fall. Then he was leaning over her, pressing her chest. Again. Again. The vomit rose in my throat as I watched her lifeless eyes—

  She blinked, coughed, and Kian turned her on her side just as she threw up. I clutched her back, hugging myself to her as she spasmed. “Thank you,” I muttered, eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you, thank you.”

  Carrick had somehow thought to grab his phone on the way out and dialed 911. The fire trucks were there within minutes and the sirens brought people out of their houses. But with the house standing on its own on the hill and the drapes closed, hiding the orange glow inside...God, no one would have known for hours. We all would have died in there!

  The firefighters plunged inside and brought hoses to bear on the downstairs rooms. Meanwhile, a paramedic gave Kayley oxygen, checked her over and declared her okay. “But it might be worth us taking her in,” he said. “We could keep an eye on her overnight….”

  “No!” said Kayley firmly. “I’ve been in hospital enough.”

  She clung to me and I wrapped my arms around her. The paramedic relented when I promised to bring her straight to the ER if her condition changed.

  It didn’t take long for the firefighters to kill the fire: the flames hadn’t reached upstairs. But it was some time before they declared everything safe and we were allowed in to check the damage.

  The living room was gutted. The dining area wasn’t much better but most of the kitchen was okay. The hallway was scorched and smoke-blackened but the stairs were sound.

  But the tree….

  The trunk was scorched and blackened. The branches had been stripped of many of their smaller twigs and the whole thing looked sick. I hugged my arms around myself. All the fear for Kayley, for everyone, that hadn’t had time to come out during the fire was coming out now, tears rolling down my cheeks. Sean came up behind me and hugged me and I pressed back against his warmth, but I still felt like I wanted to be sick. Our home! It wasn’t just the damage, it was that we’d come so close to death in the one place we’d thought was safe.

  A firefighter handed me something: a smoke detector. “Batteries are dead,” he told me. He managed to say it without too much anger or disgust. “They’re all like that. You were lucky.”

  I nodded meekly and took it from him.

  “How did it start?” asked Kian.

  The firefighter shrugged. “Looks like the living room. A cigarette, maybe.”

  None of us smoked. I looked at him blankly.

  “A candle? Maybe you left one burning?”

  I frowned. I occasionally lit candles when we were having a romantic dinner, but we hadn’t done that since everyone came to stay.

  The firefighter shrugged. “Well, something was burning in there.”

  The firefighters filed out and we watched them drive away. Then I stood there staring down at the smoke detector in my hands. Flat batteries? You idiot! I could tell it was what everyone was thinking. “I’m sure I replaced them,” I said in a small voice. “When we moved in.” Didn’t I? I started to second guess myself. Obviously not.

  Aedan clasped my shoulder. “It’s an easy thing to forget.”

  But I’m sure I—

  Kian patted my other shoulder. “The important thing is, everyone’s okay.”

  Everyone made noises of agreement, which made me feel even worse. Sean’s grip on me tightened and I knew he was feeling the guilt, too. But it had been my job to do, I remembered climbing the stepladder, inserting the new batteries….

  I frowned. I remembered them so clearly. I’d bought a whole pack from the store. Black ones, the same brand I always bought because they were the only ones my dad had trusted.

  I popped the back off the smoke detector. The battery inside was red and white.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  “What?” asked Sean.

  I ignored him, hurried into the next room and grabbed a chair. The others followed me in as I stood on the chair, pulled the smoke alarm off the ceiling and popped off the back. Another red and white battery.

  My whole body went cold, every hair standing on end. “It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “I didn’t forget. Someone’s been in here. Someone came in while we were sleeping and changed all the batteries. Someone started the fire
!”

  Everyone looked at me. They wanted to believe me but it sounded so crazy. I started to doubt myself again….

  No! I was sure I was right. And if I couldn’t convince them, we were all in even more danger.

  I jumped down from the chair and marched through to the ruined living room. It took me a while but I eventually saw the pool of hardened, melted wax on the table. “There!” I said. “Someone put a candle there. They lit a candle and that started the fire.”

  I saw the others shift uncomfortably. “It could have just melted in the fire,” said Annabelle timidly.

  I shook my head, certain, now. “No.” I recognized the color but I sniffed it to be sure. Even with all the soot, I could smell the cloying, sickly scent. “It’s that strawberry one.” I turned to Sean. “The one Stacey gave us. We lit it once and the smell was so bad we couldn’t face lighting it again.”

  Sean nodded, his face going pale. “She’s right. But we didn’t want to throw it out in case Stacey came round. So we keep it up on that shelf.” He turned and pointed across the room.

  The shelf was empty.

  Sean’s voice grew shaky. “Unless one of you took that candle down last night and put it on the table….” They all shook their heads. “Then Louise is right. Some bastard came in, in the night, and did this. Set it all up to look like an accident.”

  Everyone stared at me, horrified...and a little guilty, that they’d doubted me. I should have felt victorious but all I felt was scared. Aeternus knew where we lived. They’d sent someone to kill us. And I knew they’d try again.

  45

  Kian

  Dawn was already breaking but we were all still exhausted, having only slept a few hours. So I persuaded everyone to get some sleep while I kept watch in the hallway. I lied and said I’d wake Sean to relieve me in a few hours but I let them all sleep in till noon.

  It wasn’t like I would have slept anyway. Before the fire, I’d been having a nightmare about Iraq, mixed up with Emily and my brothers until it seemed like everyone I knew was out there with me in the desert. When I bent over the dead bodies of my squad, it was Sean and Emily and Annabelle’s faces that stared back up at me. All I knew was that I had to protect them all...and I’d failed.

  My normal solution would have been to tell Emily about it. That always made it fade into black and white: it lost its power. But Emily wasn’t there.

  I somehow got through the morning with coffee and willpower, keeping myself busy by tidying up the place but trying not to make too much noise. The paperwork we’d covered the walls with was gone, countless hours of work reduced to ash and shreds of burnt wool on the floor.

  When everyone else emerged from their beds, we started to strip the living room of all the blackened furniture. Sean wasn’t happy that I’d lied to him and kept watch by myself: didn’t he get that I was looking out for him? He should be resting and healing. It was thanks to me that he’d wound up with a blow to the head that could have killed him: my baby brother!

  By the end of the day, we’d gotten rid of all the damaged stuff and were starting to think about what needed to be done to fix the place up. “We can just paint over this,” I said, looking at the soot-covered walls.

  But Sean shook his head and pointed. “This bit, we can.” He poked at another section, identical to my eyes. “But that whole section’s going to have to come down.” I blinked at him, surprised, and he rolled his eyes. “I do work construction, you know,” he said.

  I nodded, a little chastened. I’d had no idea he knew all that stuff.

  We ate dinner—well, I pushed some food around a plate, too tired and worked up to eat. I was thinking about how I was going to stay awake for another night to keep watch when we saw blue and red lights through the window. Shit! I actually wobbled on my feet for a second before I caught myself: the exhaustion, the fire, the stress. My mind felt like it was shredding. I can’t take any more!

  Carrick and I looked at each other. “You think they got our license plate, at the printing works?” I asked.

  “Or the cult went to the cops,” said Carrick. “About the guy we beat up, or the guys we hit when we rescued Sylvie.” We stared at each other, thinking fast. “I’ll go,” he said. “Give them someone to arrest. Try to get them to pin it all on me.”

  There was a heavy knock at the door.

  “I’ll go,” I told him, glancing down at my suit. “I’m more likely to be able to talk my way out of it.” I headed for the door.

  “For fuck’s sake,” snapped Carrick, chasing after me. “Stop trying to be the hero! If you get arrested, it’s a scandal!”

  I ignored him. On some level, I knew he was right but I was running on adrenaline and coffee, too desperate to think straight. The nightmare was still going around and around in my head: all I could think about was protecting Carrick, protecting everyone.

  I took a deep breath and pulled open the door, looking down at my feet while I composed myself. “Can I help you?” I asked in a strained voice, and then lifted my eyes to look.

  “Sorry,” said Miller. “She insisted.”

  I had time to blink once. Then Emily wumfed into my chest.

  46

  Emily

  A bandage was covering what must have been a sizable wound on his head. He was gaunt and red-eyed and stressed out of his mind.

  And absolutely the best thing I’d ever seen. I pressed myself even closer, molding myself to him, and felt his body relax.

  “Sorry,” said Miller again. “As soon as she heard about the fire, she said that if I didn’t bring her, she was going to sneak out and get on a plane herself, alone. I think she was actually ready to do it.”

  “I was,” I said, my voice muffled by that wonderful, warm chest. My cheek was rubbing against his soft white shirt and I never wanted to feel anything else, just that hard, solid muscle and the throb of his heartbeat.

  Behind Kian, I heard footsteps on the upstairs landing. I lifted my face to see a teenage girl, dressed for bed, had come out to see what the commotion was. On seeing me, her eyes lit up like Christmas. She jumped over the handrail, swarmed athletically down the tree and jumped to the floor. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God!” she squealed. I gave her a shy smile. I kept forgetting I was a celebrity.

  Kian drew in a huge, heavy breath, as if he was going to protest. I quickly pressed myself to him again and tightened my arms around him. And I felt all the air just huff out of him again in a long, resigned, and very happy sigh. “How?” he asked. “I didn’t call you.”

  I separated face from chest just long enough to glare up at him. “No. You didn’t,” I said pointedly.

  “I did,” said a voice behind him.

  Kian turned in surprise, which dragged me around with him because hell no I wasn’t letting go of him anytime in the next few million years. A pretty red-haired woman was smiling timidly. Annabelle!

  “Annabelle called me,” I said. “First thing this morning.”

  For a second, I thought Kian was going to blow up at her. The look on his face was pure how dare you ignore my authority! A man in a leather biker’s cut—that had to be Carrick—stepped protectively in front of her. I grabbed Kian’s arm before a fight could start—

  But then Annabelle lifted her chin, unafraid. “It’s what you needed,” she said.

  Kian just gaped at her, then turned to look at me.

  I nodded at him.

  Kian looked around at his family...and then just sort of deflated, all the fight going out of him.

  “Could you maybe give us a minute?” I asked, looking around at everyone. They all nodded and retreated. I took Kian by the hand and led him firmly towards the stairs.

  “Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to keep watch—”

  “No you don’t,” said Carrick.

  “We got it,” said another brother, bandages around his head. A third one nodded in agreement.

  “And me and my men will be right outside,” said Miller. “No one�
�s getting in this house tonight.”

  I pulled on Kian’s hand again and, this time, he followed.

  When we got to the bedroom, I gawped at the four-poster bed. “This place is incredible,” I told him. “You’ve been sleeping on this?!”

  “Wasn’t much fun without you,” he muttered. His voice was different, the Irish stronger. I’d noticed it on the phone but I’d thought it was just my imagination. It was glorious, like a concentrated version of him...but it wasn’t the only thing that was different. We’d been through tough times during the coup but he’d never looked like this, haggard and worn. And he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

  I pushed the door closed with my ass and looked at him. “You’re a mess,” I told him.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it,” I said, moving closer and gently touching the bandage on his head. “What’s wrong?”

  He sighed. “I just...I’m just trying to do the right thing, keeping everybody safe.”

  I nodded. “Oh.”

  “I just feel like—Wait, what do you mean, ‘oh’?”

  I slid my hands under his suit jacket and cuddled up to his chest again, sighing contentedly. This is my happy place. “You’re trying to protect everyone. You feel it’s all your responsibility. You can’t understand why everyone can’t see that. Stop me if I’m close.”

  I could feel him staring down at me. Then he rested his chin on the top of my head. “You’re close,” he said tightly. Then, “how did you know?”

  “Because you try to do the same thing with me,” I said. “But I know how to deal with you.”

  “Deal with me?” his voice was softening with each passing second.

  I looked up and the sight of those blue eyes, so full of pain yet so full of love, sent a tingle right down to my toes. “With me, you know we’re a team.”

  He took a deep, slow breath, and somehow it felt like that was the first full breath he’d taken the whole time we’d been apart. “Yes.”