by Amy Braun
“Do you think we should cut it?” Dro asked softly.
I glanced at her. She was toying with the edges of her hair, brushing it with her fingers as if she wasn’t going to be able to do so again. For a second, I considered it. Dye wasn’t holding and I couldn’t spend money on a wig, but cutting Dro’s hair wouldn’t make her look less unique. She had a look that was all her own. Beautiful, marble pale, snowy hair, icy eyes. She was impossible not to notice, and even harder to forget.
“Nah,” I said, turning my face back to the water-spotted ceiling. “We’ll just have to find a way to put it up and hide it that way.”
I could feel Dro smiling at me. She always thought she looked like a freak, but like all fourteen year old girls, she loved her hair.
“So what are we going to do now?” she asked.
Pray for a fucking miracle. “I dunno. Look for jobs, I guess. We can do that tomorrow. Odessa is pretty big. I’m sure they’ll have something.”
Though my skills were pretty limited. I helped out around the house with chores, but I damn sure couldn’t be a maid. I wasn’t very good with people, so retail was out. I was wary around people with knives, so kitchens weren’t going to work. The only thing I knew how to do was fight, but that was sketchy, too.
I was a damn good fighter, but I was also a felon. I didn’t want to advertise myself by getting into professional boxing or something like that. Being a bodyguard was an option, until I remembered that they required a background check, so I couldn’t lie about who I’d worked for last.
That would be an interesting conversation. They’d call up the Blood Thorns and ask to speak to my employer, who they would find out I had killed.
The fallback was the criminal lifestyle. At least I could work underground, assuming another gang would accept me. I didn’t want to do that, but nothing else was open to me. And even that was dangerous, and not just for the obvious reasons. News traveled at the speed of sound in the gritty underworld, and the tattoo behind my ear would be a dead giveaway. Someone would know I’d worked for the Blood Thorns. Someone would know I’d killed my boss. Then that same someone would probably tell Mateo, who would put me in the ground faster than a bullet.
My heart ached again. I told myself I wasn’t missing him. I was just hurting because he’d chosen to give up Dro to a woman who wanted to use her for God knows what. He assumed I would stop loving him, and had been jealous of Dro. She’d never liked him, but I’d hoped that we would have found a way to live together. I’d loved him, and he’d burned me worse than any fire.
“It’ll get easier, Connie,” Dro’s whisper came from the other bed.
I turned my head. Dro watched me with anxious eyes. She could tell I was deeply wounded from what Mateo and his father had done to me. They’d left scars on me inside and out, tortured me, wanted to see me dead. I would second guess everyone, never let anyone but Dro get close to me. I would jump when someone was too close, have horrible nightmares, and never be able to take a bath again.
“Maybe,” I said. My entire being was suddenly exhausted: heart, body, and soul. “We should get some sleep. We have a lot to do tomorrow.”
I crawled up to my bed, placing my hatchet and throwing knives on the nightstand. I dragged the covers over my body, too tired to take off my clothes. I put my back to Dro and pretended to sleep, though I felt the weight of her gaze on me for a long time before she followed my lead. In a few minutes, I could hear her steady breathing. The heaviness of sleep eventually came over me, and thought that I might actually be able to rest peacefully for a whole night...
***
The first thing that woke me up was the smell. A thick, smoky smell pushed down my nose and swelled in my throat. Then it was the heat. My clothes and hair were plastered to my body, though the air so dry I was choking on it.
Then it was the screams. The ones that didn’t belong to me. I hastily opened my eyes and shot upward. I turned my head to see why Dro was screaming.
She was burning.
Blinding white flames were shifting around her body. I squinted like I was looking at the sun. The flames had turned the sheets to dust. They crawled up the cheap wallpaper and incinerated it.
Dro’s half of the hotel room was completely destroyed. The walls were curtains of white and orange flame. Smoke curled on the top of the groaning ceiling. The sprinklers were on, but the water was dissolving as soon as it hit the fire.
Dro barely stopped to breathe. It was like she’d turned into a siren that was signaling the end of the world.
I’d seen this once before, and knew I had to move. I tossed the sheets off the bed and went to grab my boots. I yanked them up, just as the carpet caught fire.
Shit shit shit!
I looked back at my sister, who was lying on a bed of white fire. How was I going to wake her up?!
I forced myself to focus. Calming down was impossible, but I pulled on my boots and grabbed my weapons from the nightstand. I glanced at my backpack, which was sitting on the table. Or it was, until the flames engulfed it, cracking the wood and disintegrating everything that had once covered it.
It was getting hard to breathe. I was trapped on the bed. Smoke and heat dried out my eyes and dehydrated my throat. I looked at the window across from me and then at the nightstand. It was still fairly intact, though the bottom was beginning to catch fire. I grabbed the cheap but fairly heavy nightstand and hurled it at the glass. Its half burned shape crashed through the window, flames licking curtains. Smoke flushed out and revealed an exit.
Now we just had to get to it.
“Dro!” I half screamed, half coughed. “Dro!”
Her screams were lessening, but she still wasn’t awake.
“Andromeda!”
She stopped howling. Her bright eyes snapped open, and she saw the disaster around her. Dro tried to scream again, but her voice was too hoarse. Her eyes met mine, wider and more terrified than I’d ever seen them.
“The window!” I managed to yell and point.
Dro nodded and leaped off the bed. I was about to warn her that the floor was burning, but she seemed to be walking around just fine. Dro moved around the beds and crawled out of smoking window, completely gone from my sight. The fire didn’t seem to have hurt her at all.
I didn’t think I would be as lucky. Before I could think too much about the consequences of what would happen if I failed, I made the jump. My bed was close to the window, so I nearly got out unscathed.
Part of the ceiling collapsed as I was soaring. It landed behind me and singed the back of my leg. I cried out and caught myself in a roll when I went through the window. Heat flared along my back and right side. I landed hard on the metal landing. Someone shrieked and started patting me down. A searing pain filled my body. I smelled something that reminded me of overcooked pork. Whoever was patting me down was probably getting rid of the flames, but they were also slapping raw blisters and burns. I gasped and coughed, tears from smoke and pain blurring my eyes.
I was faintly aware of what was going on around me. The fire must have spread, because other people were screaming.
My arm was grabbed and lifted. I bit my tongue and shifted to get to my feet. I buckled when I put pressure on my right shin. Whoever was carrying me kept me upright.
“Come on, Connie, we need to go.”
Hearing Dro’s voice calmed me down and got my head back on a swivel. I took my arm off Dro’s, though she was reluctant to let me go. I hobbled well enough on my own, taking a long second to make sure we could get away.
We were on the second floor and thankfully close to the stairs, which weren’t on fire yet. I could feel the heat on my back and moved down the creaky metal steps as fast as I could. Dro was beside me, moving at a good pace but never pulling too far ahead. The roaring fire and the terrified cries made her flinch repeatedly.
We finally got down the stairs when my body chose to remind me of the pain it was in. My leg, back, and right side throbbed violently, like someone
was continually smacking me with a yardstick. Sweat beaded down my temples and neck. I looked up as the ambulances and fire trucks arrived. Their sirens blared wildly as the firefighters jumped out. Their eyes widened when they saw the blaze. I knew we had to leave, but I wanted to look back and see what I had survived.
Half the motel was crumbling into flaming rubble, looking like an orange bonfire and nothing else. Another quarter of it had smoke and flames climbing out of every window and door. The last quarter was catching fire quickly. The heat was intense, the light from the torched building strong enough to signal an airplane. Smoke blanketed the night sky, blotting out the stars.
Maybe it would have been beautiful, in its own destructive way, if I’d been able to ignore the people.
Everyone who made it out of the motel was standing in the parking lot panicking. Paramedics and EMTs were running back and forth to help as many people as they could. Firefighters dragged water hoses into the parking lot and hurried to put them to use. The motel residents were huddling together and staring at the blaze with horrified awe. Their shouts were panicked and heartbreaking.
“What are we gonna do?!”
“What happened?!”
“Has anyone seen my son?! Where’s my son?!”
There were about seven people who couldn’t speak properly because they were in agony. Charred bodies were lifted onto stretchers and hauled away quickly. Others were being tended to on the ground, begging for something to take away the pain. There were a couple of bodies that weren’t moving at all. The paramedics walked to them with body bags.
I’d been around burning flesh before. I’d seen the damage fire could do. I was grateful not to be any closer.
Something brushed along my right arm. I jumped from the tingling pain. I looked over my shoulder and immediately regretted my reaction.
Dro was standing behind me, staring at the fire she’d created. She was shaking as she moved closer to me. I’d nearly forgotten she was there. Tears filled her eyes. Dro watched the fire again, breathing in shivers.
Red and blue lights flashed, and I knew the cops had arrived. My mind snapped out of shock, and I was able to concentrate again.
“Come on,” I said. My voice still sounded raspy from the smoke I breathed in.
I turned and limped toward the farthest end of the parking lot. I needed to sit down and do something about these fucking burns. I wandered behind a car at the end of the lot and was about to get in when the burning, throbbing pain made itself known again. I had to prop myself against the car to breathe through it.
I looked over the side of the car. The police were out of their vehicles. They were talking to the fire crews and gathering witnesses. I didn’t think anyone had seen us yet but it would just be a matter of time. News vans were probably on their way.
“Dro, I need you to heal me,” I said.
She’d done so a thousand times in the past without me ever asking. Usually she never even hesitated. Now she wasn’t even in arm’s length.
“Dro?”
“I don’t know what happened,” she half whispered. “I don’t... I didn’t mean it!”
She started gasping instead of breathing. I took a step closer to her. Dro cringed and jumped back a foot.
“No! No, don’t come near me!”
I didn’t know if anyone could hear us, and I didn’t bother to check. Dro’s hands began filling with white light, which was quickly turning to flame. She looked at her hands like they were covered in blood.
“Oh no,” she whimpered. “No, no, no!”
I took another careful step forward. “Dro, you need to calm down.”
I sounded calm myself. Miracles can happen. Not that Dro would believe that right now.
“Don’t come any closer, please,” she begged.
Tears were streaking her face and sobs cracked her voice. I hadn’t seen Dro this upset since our parents were murdered. It broke my heart to see her like this, so I kept moving closer.
“Connie, please,” she wept.
I stopped. When she sounded that wretched, it was impossible for me not to listen. The flames curled up to her elbows. She was still hyperventilating.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You won’t hurt me.”
“Yes, I will,” she said.
I looked directly into her eyes. “No, little sister. You won’t.”
She tried to breathe normally. We needed to get out of here, but I couldn’t force Dro in this state.
“You can make it stop, just like you did at Owl Creek.”
Dro blanched when she heard the name of the camp where our parents had been killed. But the fire was starting to die down from her hands. She was a tiny bit calmer. The fire dwindled until it was gone. She shuddered once and gasped sharply. I walked toward her and put my arms around her. She tensed at first, then relaxed and hugged me tightly. The burns on my body were pulsing and tender, but Dro was more important.
“We’ll get through this, Dro,” I whispered. “I promise, we’ll figure it out.”
She stiffened before she pulled away from me. She wiped her eyes and quickly walked to the car. I watched her carefully, my eyes turning back toward the burning motel.
Dro didn’t believe me. After seeing what she had done, I could understand. I wouldn’t believe myself either. There are some things you just can’t forget...
The smell of smoke was strong when the dream ended. I didn’t know why, since in the dream we were leaving the motel...
Wait.
I shot upright from the floor, taking one deep breath.
Smoke.
That was enough to have me moving faster than lightning.
My sudden motion caused Warrick to stir. He was coming out of sleep, moving faster as he realized something was very wrong. I wasn’t waiting for him. I was yanking on my clothes, boots, and grabbing a backpack to throw over my shoulder.
It was reflex, but one I hadn’t needed to exercise in months. Dro’s nightmares had stopped a little while back. She’d had control.
I was stupid to think that luck would last.
I could hear more shouts, and Warrick was trying to tell me something. He was trying to keep up, but I wasn’t listening. The moment I had everything I could carry, I darted for the door. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. Warrick was behind me, looking confused yet ready for anything.
“Find Max and Sephiel. Make sure they get out.”
His lack of understanding was clear. “What about you and Dro?”
I held his eyes. “Dro’s the one causing this.”
Before he could reply, before I could even attempt to read his expression, I turned and yanked open the door.
A smothering wave of heat and light crashed into me. Dry smoke curled off the walls and ceiling, dancing away from the red and orange flames shivering on every surface. The fire was unforgiving, dredging sweat out of my pores and making my eyes water. I turned out of the room, coughing and choking as I tried to remember where the stairs were.
Over the crackling roar of angry flames and creaking wood, I caught the sound of screams.
Dro’s was only one of them.
Oh no.
I pushed myself harder, barely taking in how close the flames were getting to me. I could feel them peeling off the walls, teasing the edges of my hair and clothes. Through the haze of smoke and fire, I noticed Sephiel climbing the stairs. He held an arm over his mouth and he needed to squint, but I knew he saw us.
I was coming up to the spare bedroom when something tumbled out of it. A body, one arm covered in fire.
I skidded to a stop and fell beside it, automatically batting out the flames without seeing who I was hitting. Their voice was hoarse and filled with pain. They curled in on themselves, clearly never thinking they would be burned so severely. My eyes went to the person’s face, and my heart sank.
Max probably never expected Dro would burn him.
Warrick and Sephiel stood over me and the partially burned prophet, carefull
y lifting him to his feet. Max cried out again, unable to think past all the agony. I made sure Warrick and Sephiel were able to hold him. Between their sets of muscles, I didn’t think the men would have a problem carrying Max out.
“Run!” I shouted at them.
Sephiel slung Max’s unburned arm over his shoulder and turned for the stairs. It wouldn’t be long before the flames reached the bottom and trapped us inside.
Which made my temper flare when Warrick refused to move.
He looked at me desperately, thinking I would come with him.