Was she dead?
Surely there couldn’t be so much pain after death?
Was she dying, spiraling into an abyss of indescribable pain toward the end of the tunnel where not a light but the fires of hell awaited the one who so proudly thought she was in charge of fire?
She wasn’t a bad person compared to the criminals and lunatics who stalked the world with their sinister presences and saw life as a game of win and lose. She didn’t deserve burning in hell.
But she was burning indeed. She, the one who had set buildings on fire and walked through—no, danced with—flames without so much as having a hair singed.
The pain that came with blackness and unbearable heat climbed up a notch and another until incoherent thoughts were impossible and she would have resorted to prayers if she had been able to. When she was sure she’d die any instant, because no human could be allowed to go through such immense suffering without being offered some kind of salvation, she felt another explosion.
With it came the sensation of flying, of being weightless and bodiless and floating free like a bird.
Through eyes she didn’t know she had, she looked down.
On the ground, in the middle of the road, was a blazing tangle of fire, the flames leaping so high that they surpassed the two- and three-storied buildings rising to the right and left. Through the fire and smoke, she saw a huddled form encapsulated inside the raging flames. A person, judging from the wild, long, red curls, a woman. Curled into a human ball within the fire ball, mouth open grotesquely wide in a dirt-and-tear-streaked face with luminous orbs for eyes. Obviously, the woman was screaming in agony, consumed alive by the blaze around her which kept the world out. She would die.
Come.
With difficulty, she—Who was she? Who was the dying woman down there?—tore her gaze from the horror below to where she thought she had heard a silent but powerful call.
Before her was the impressive form of a fire dragon, majestic in its lethal beauty, with a glimmer of kindness in its snake-like eyes that contrasted shockingly with its huge wingspan and the gleaming, streamlined body with a thousand flickering flames mirrored in the polished scales.
There was a sense of recognizing, of belonging.
Yes, she would go wherever this dragon meant to lead her.
Without a conscious decision, she was moving, only a wingspan behind the dragon sailing effortlessly on and on over rooftops and roads, gardens and vehicles. She followed, silently, unthinkingly.
Was she flying? Did she have wings? She was not to know.
More than once, she felt a strong tug inside her, as though she were connected to something she was leaving behind which tried to pull her back with brutal force. The memory of pain fit for hell kept her going without looking back, the essence of her striving at its hardest to keep up with the fire dragon and escape.
For the moment, gliding through the air like this, not tied to anything or anyone, a spirit on the move, some purpose or other waiting, was pure bliss.
She never wanted it to end.
Playing with Fire (Book 1 of the FIRE Trilogy) Page 33
