Through the Fire (Daughter of Fire Book 1)

by Michelle Irwin

  I tried to pull myself up into a seated position, but I couldn’t. Every attempt to move caused the pins and needles to twist into daggers and syringes. How much damage had I done to myself? I’d never lost control so absolutely before—even in the back of the police car the sunbird had only broken through to the surface for a few seconds. The gasoline Louise had added to the situation could only have made the damage worse.

  Resigning myself to not being able to sit up, I dropped back to the bed and allowed the darkness to swallow me again.

  MY MIND swam in and out of consciousness all day.

  Each time I woke, the lingering burn on my skin amplified and spread over my body before seeping back into my bones. Each time, the agony intensified. Would it ever abate?

  At times, I heard voices, sometimes nearby, sometimes in the distance. The more I tried to focus on the words, the harder they became to hear. Eventually, the one voice I wanted most to hear seeped into my consciousness. His words reached me louder and clearer than any other. It was as if my mind craved the knowledge he was okay so badly, it focused only on his voice.

  “What did you do, Evie?” Clay asked.

  I tried to answer him. My fingers twitched in response, but I couldn’t rouse any other part of my body.

  The soft caress of his fingers on the side of my face gave me something to concentrate on. I focused on the sensation and tried to move my head toward his hand. The tiny attempt at movement was enough to exhaust me, and my mind closed over again until, minutes or hours later, Clay’s voice echoed in my mind again.

  “How did this happen? All I know is there was a fire. Did you start it?”

  The accusation in his words was clear. It stabbed at my heart and the wound was more painful than anything else I had experienced.

  “I’ve spoken with her doctors and they don’t know if she will make it. They said that it’s touch and go.”

  She.

  Louise.

  His sister.

  I tried again to find my voice or reach for Clay, but all I could manage was to flex the fingers of my right hand for a fraction of a second.

  His voice dropped to a whisper that seemed to echo in my ear, as if he was leaning over me and breathing words intended only for me.

  “I don’t care why you did it, or what you think you were trying to do. What you’ve done is reprehensible.”

  My heart broke that he wasn’t even interested in hearing my side of the story—not that I was in any fit state to tell it yet. My fingers twitched again as I fought against my unwilling body.

  “If she doesn’t pull through, I . . .” He trailed off and when he started again, his voice dripped with hatred. Disdain hung from every syllable. “I’ll never forgive you.”

  Silent whimpers and unshed tears filled my mind. I wanted to plead for forgiveness and tell him that I was sorry for whatever I’d done to Louise, but I couldn’t. My lips wouldn’t move; my body was frozen by the darkness that had encapsulated me. His anger and my guilt washed over me in a tidal wave of misery. It swept away every other thought, carrying away everything but the pain.

  The passage of time seemed to halt and stutter. A second would last for hours at a time but then hundreds would flit by unnoticed. Eventually, I was awake more than I was asleep. My fingers moved when I told them to and my breaths were unassisted.

  After discovering my eyes worked again, I squeezed my eyelids shut tight. What might I see if I looked down at my body? How many new scars and injuries did I bear?

  I tipped my head back against the pillow as questions competed for attention in my mind.

  What happened?

  Where’s Louise? Is she . . . alive?

  Where’s Clay? Has he left me for good?

  My actions had initially been self-defense, but if Louise had perished in the fire I’d set, I couldn’t blame Clay for his hatred. The fact he was suffering at all because of my actions was enough to break my heart. I closed my eyes and let my sorrows take me away from the room and into a place where Clay led me in slow circles as we danced together in a room filled with fire.

  VOICES SOUNDED nearby. I strained to listen to what they were saying. Opening one eye, I risked a glance around me. I was alone in the confines of my bed with the curtain drawn around it. Two silhouettes darkened a section of the screen.

  “She’s been out for three days, Officer. We think she’s fighting an infection that’s causing her temperature to spike out of control, but we haven’t been able to identify it yet. I really don’t think you’ll be able to question her any time soon.”

  “She’s the main suspect in three fires which have all resulted in fatalities. I need to speak to her as soon as she’s awake.”

  “I understand, and I’m willing to help out as much as we can, but for now my priority is her health. I’ll call you as soon as she’s able to talk.”

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “Have you heard anything more about the other young lady involved in the fire? I was informed she was transferred to a private facility.”

  “She was. She didn’t make it.”

  I fought back a sob that would have alerted the doctor and the officer that I was awake. Fatalities—the word seeped into my mind with the understanding that it included Louise. Clay’s words tore through my mind and rammed into my heart, “If she doesn’t pull through, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “I assume the guard will stay?”

  “Yes, we’ll keep her under twenty-four hour surveillance and allow no visitors. She’s already escaped custody twice before. I don’t want a third—not on my watch.”

  “I understand.”

  Allowing my eyes to drift closed again, I rested my head back on the pillow. The revelation that I was wanted in connection to two other fires startled me. Aside from the most recent fire, there was only one other fire I could think of: the fire that killed my father. My sudden disappearance had made that seem more suspicious than it otherwise might have been. Since then, I hadn’t been anywhere near any fires, except for Salem—the night of my reunion with Clay.

  My heart ached as I thought his name. The words and venom of his bedside monologue seeped into my body like poison, filling me with dread and fear. I was certain Clay, with all his tricks and techniques, would easily have been able to evade the guard in front of my room. That certainty brought the revelation that he wasn’t absent simply because the police weren’t allowing visitors; he was gone because I had killed Louise. Someone from his family was dead because of me, which was something he’d probably never anticipated. I could easily recall my anger toward him for his part in my father’s death, and he hadn’t actually been the killer. I’d taken his sister’s life.

  It was reprehensible.

  Unforgiveable.

  The desire to escape—to flee—became urgent. There was no reason for me to stay in town if Clay was no longer on my side. I definitely couldn’t allow the police to bring me in for questioning; it would be akin to signing my own death warrant. Too many of the Rain had connections in law enforcement, and I didn’t know the full extent of their reach. Even if I was lucky enough to evade them, there were simply too many questions the police would ask that I wouldn’t be able to provide adequate answers to.

  I had to get out of there.

  I just had to work out how.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DESPITE MY resolution to flee custody in the hospital, it wasn’t quite so easy to come up with a plan. My body ached from the exertion of releasing the sunbird and the burns that covered my shoulders made it difficult to move.

  In the end, I’d been lucky. The gasoline had flashed over most of my skin as the flames had left me, providing a layer of protection. I had first-degree burns across most of my body, which ached and itched but wouldn’t cause lasting damage. In a few places, mostly where I’d landed when I’d fallen, the burns were deeper but the doctors seemed to think there would be minimal scarring, and I was healing well—with the exception of the “inf
ection” causing my temperature to spike out of control. It hurt my head to concentrate for any length of time, and I was only barely able to breathe unassisted.

  By the end of the day, all I’d been able to do was catalog the difficulties I’d face. In order to leave, I had to get my body to respond quickly enough to flee. I’d need to remove not only the wires and tubes, which beeped and hissed in rhythm with my body, but also the handcuffs that shackled my right hand to the side of the hospital bed, and finally, evade at least two police officers that I’d learned were stationed outside my door. There was also every possibility that at least one of my guards was an associate of the Rain. It was an almost impossible task, but staying would be infinitely worse.

  Realizing that my best chance of leaving would be to take advantage of the darkness, I decided to run that night. Every time a nurse or doctor came on their rounds, I pretended to sleep but paid close attention to their actions. I tried to glean as much information about where I was in the hospital, and the hospital layout, as I could from the snippets of the conversations that I could hear.

  As soon as I deemed the time was right, I ripped a piece of material from the bottom of my hospital gown. Then I forced all of my remaining strength into my fingertips, desperate to get enough heat to bend the handcuffs so that I could break free. I concentrated hard, ignoring the pains in my head and the agony of the heat rushing across the still recovering skin of my shoulders.

  Breathing deeply, I pushed all of my energy into generating the heat and pressed my left hand over the handcuffs holding me to the bed. Instantly, the heat in the metal bit into my skin. My teeth sunk into my lower lip in an effort to stop myself from crying out. The heart monitor picked up its pace, the slow steady beep building to an almost constant screech. It wouldn’t be long before that set off alarms at some nurses’ station, if it hadn’t already.

  I had to work quickly.

  The metal twisted under the heat of my hand, but the intensity of my focus quickly drained all of my energy. Just when I thought the cuff was almost off, the heat in my hand dissipated. Redoubling my efforts, I twisted my fingers around the heated metal, doing the best I could to ignore the screaming agony of my wrist where the hot steel pressed against my flesh. With my teeth buried so deeply in my bottom lip that I was drawing blood, I yanked at the metal as I pulled at my right arm, slowly working the twisted mess over my hand.

  As soon as I’d managed to pull my hand free, I set about ripping the wires and medical paraphernalia off of my body. I pulled at the tube that the nurses had said was feeding me. As it shifted, an uncomfortable sensation built in the back of my throat. With each tug, I gagged and retched. My throat ached and my nose burned; the sickening smell of plastic and vomit twisted my stomach.

  My unsteady limbs were difficult to control. It left me unable to move as fast as I would’ve liked. My wrist throbbed harder as the burned skin protested the continued use of my hand. I grabbed the now shrieking heart monitor and, with shaky legs, walked to the window. On the other side of the glass, there was a small ledge that would have been just wide enough for me to climb onto in order to make my way around the building. The escape path seemed almost too easy, and my instincts insisted I avoid it.

  Time seemed to stand still for a moment as I took a step backward and hurled the heart monitor through the glass. The moment it was free of my hold, I dropped the scrap of material I’d ripped from my gown near the shattered window.

  The sound would no doubt draw the attention of the guards outside, if the heart monitor alarm hadn’t already alerted everyone nearby.

  I dove in the other direction, scrambling for the bathroom. Ignoring the protests from my aching wrist and still recovering body, I dropped to my knees when the door to my hospital room opened. I slid through the bathroom door and hid behind it.

  Taking a moment to catch my breath, I waited.

  The smashed window and scrap of material would only fool the guards for a moment. There was no way I could have escaped through the window and disappeared from sight so quickly.

  While I waited, I scanned the area for anything I could use as a weapon.

  “She’s not out there,” a voice called. “Search the room.”

  Barely a minute had passed since I’d smashed the window and although I still wasn’t steady on my feet, there was only one way I could possibly escape. Waiting until I could see the shadow of a guard stretching across on the bathroom floor, I fisted my hands in the shower curtain.

  I kicked open the door in front of me. When it swing wildly at the guard, I charged. My fingers held tight to the shower curtain, ripping it off its rail as I went. I wrapped the two ends of the plastic around his head and torso before forcing heat into my hands to fuse the plastic.

  Without waiting for him to fight back, I dropped my shoulder low and charged into the guard. My shoulder protested and I had to bite down to avoid screaming in agony. Thankfully, my move worked—forcing him backward and into the man behind him.

  The sounds of people clamoring all around me rang in my ears and drowned out my ability to form a single thought. Keeping my head down, I ran for the door to the hallway.

  The moment I hit the corridor, sturdy arms wrapped around my shoulders and held me in place. The pressure against the blisters on my shoulders made me cry out in agony.

  The fire in me burned brighter until the man yelped and let go. I didn’t turn around or look back as I forced my dissenting body to move as fast as it could along the slippery floors of the hospital corridor. Reaching to the stairs, I said a silent thank you before forcing myself to rush down one flight.

  The noise of people running up the stairs echoed from below. Not wanting to get caught without protection in the concrete and steel stairwell, I escaped into the second floor corridor.

  An unsuspecting nurse, came out of a patient’s room and into my path. By the time I saw her, it was too late to avoid a collision. I smashed into her, sending us both sprawling on the floor.

  Forcing myself to stand up first, I did something unspeakable.

  Hating myself for even considering it an option, I grabbed her around the waist and clamped my hand over her mouth. The ravaged skin of my wrist rubbed against her cheek. Red stars burst to life behind my eyes, but I bit down on the scream that rose to my lips.

  I led the nurse back into the room she’d just left before using my hip to close the door behind us. With a glance around the room, I ensured my actions hadn’t roused any suspicions. The last thing I needed was someone slamming their call button. Thankfully, it was a private room with only one sleeping patient.

  Safe for the moment, I glanced at the hospital ID pinned to the nurse’s scrubs.

  Nancy.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Nancy,” I whispered into her ear as she whimpered in my hold. “But I will if you make any sound. Understand?” The heat in my hands had to be enough to force her to take my words seriously. “I need another outfit.”

  She let out another whimper. As a warning, I allowed a little more heat to seep into my fingers. If she cried out or refused to help me, I would have issues.

  I hated using the sunbird’s power for my own benefit, but I couldn’t stay in the hospital. It was this or death. It would be the end of me, either by a Rain operative or Clay’s own hands. I squeezed my eyes shut as his name ran through my body, dragging with it a dreadful ache.

  “I promise I won’t hurt you if you do as I ask. I just need to get out of here.”

  She twisted her head to the side, forcing my wrist to rub against her cheek again.

  For a moment the pain was so intense that a haze of red overtook all of my senses. The nurse used my momentary lapse to attempt an escape. I readjusted my position and pinned her against the wall with my left arm.

  Clamping my hand back down over her mouth, I plead with her. “I know you won’t believe me, but I’m not a bad person. I just need to get out of here. My life depends on it. Will you help me?”

  She sh
ook her head.

  I forced more warmth into my hands hoping I could straddle the fine line of heat; enough to make her listen without causing her any real or permanent harm.

  She motioned that she wanted to say something.

  “If you scream, I won’t hold back the heat any longer. You will burn. Do you understand?”

  Wide-eyed and terrified, she nodded.

  I slid my hand away from her mouth, pressing it against her throat instead. “Now what is it?”

  “There’s a break-room down the hall,” she sobbed. “There are always spare scrubs in there.”

  I shook my head. “Not good enough. I don’t have time to try to find it.” Her help had given me an idea though. “Give me yours.”

  “W-what?” she stammered.

  “Give me your scrubs. Now, Nancy!”

  She peeled off her scrubs. I allowed her only enough freedom to step out of them. My legs shook as I waited for her to finish. I paid close attention to her every move. I would be ready if she screamed or tried to run.

  Using my teeth, I tore a strip from my hospital gown and, after apologizing to Nancy, crumpled up the scrap of material and pressed it into her mouth as a gag. Then I tore another couple of strips off to tie around her hands and feet, apologizing again and again as I bound her.

  After she was secure, I slipped her scrubs on over my body, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulders, before pulling her hair out of its bun. Using her hair tie, I pulled my hair into a ponytail, securing my locks up off my face. My aching wrist protested in earnest, so I took a moment while I could to run my hand under the cold water in the bathroom. I hissed as the stream rushed over the damaged skin, causing it to burn all over again.