Broken

by A. E. Rought

  “We can’t risk this happening to anyone else,” he says.

  This hell shouldn’t have happened to us—we can’t leave any possibility of his father doing it again. I nod, and watch him kick over a big industrial-sized bottle marked FLAMMABLE.

  A stair case climbs in front of us. Red light suffuses the main floor in pulses, synced with a screeching alarm.

  Behind us, the flammable liquid slicks across the floor, washing away the blood, the formula and when it hits the shower of sparks and catches fire, possibly Doctor Franks’ sins.

  Flames spread in every direction, turning the lab into a cauldron of fire. One good kick slams the door shut, then Alex drags me halfway up the stairs before the first explosion. Stairs heave beneath us, shaking loose a vial from the pocket I shoved them in. Alex clutches the handrail and me, riding the bucking stairs till they settle. I curse the clumsiness of my cast, trying to juggle the laptop and run for my life.

  The second blast hits as we launch from the stairs and into a study full of glass panes and leather furniture. Windows shatter, shards slicing vicious arcs in the air. The door to the lab shoots up the stairs like a missile.

  Sick realization strikes—we are not alone.

  And the redhead standing between us and escape holds a gun, barrel leveled at me.

  “Fitting you torched this house, seeing as I torched yours.”

  Josh pulls the trigger. The gunshot cracks into the roar of the flames rushing up the stairwell behind us. Then the world tilts off axis and drowns in the hell punching into my arm. Pain radiates in a savage pulse into my shoulder and down to my fingertips. Hot blood wells, streaks down my arm and steams in the heat as I stagger and slump against Alex.

  “Damn. Missed your heart,” Josh says, the swings the barrel to point at Alex. “Next bullet’s got your name on it.”

  The next explosion has other ideas. Heaving floor boards send Alex and I on a tumble. Alex loosens his hold on me, and directs his roll to crash into Josh. The murderer slams to the floor, and the two fight for the gun. They’re a wild tangle of arms and legs, driving fists and knees—this is not a high school scuffle, this is life or death. Alex drives his fist into Josh’s jaw, then slams an open-handed chop on the redhead’s forearm. The weapon clatters to the floor and skids into the fire lapping at my feet.

  Crying from pain, from fear, I scrabble for the computer. Red smears follow my hand, and I’m only vaguely aware that the color painting the flooring is my blood. When I finally get my hand on it, Alex shouts, “Emma, watch out!”

  Cradling the laptop to my chest, I fling myself to the floor, narrowly avoiding Josh’s kick to my head.

  Alex yells, a sound of pure rage, and slams into Josh. Flames erupt over the desk and chair beside us, red-yellow tongues licking close to my cast. The pink surface bubbles in the heat. The two push and shove on the edge of the blaze, feet from the staircase. Then Alex uses the same move he used on his dad and sweeps the redhead’s feet out. Josh makes a mad grab for Alex’s arms. Shaking his head, Alex drops him into the heart of the fire.

  Shrieking bursts from Josh. He flails and rolls, a wild shadow in the flames. Then the blaze takes him and I can’t tell the difference between his movements and the fire’s advance.

  “Come on!” Alex runs barefoot over broken glass to grab my hand. His grip slides over the blood, then he wraps his fingers around my wrist and jerks me toward the outside wall of the house. Jostling loosens my grip on the computer, only the tips of my fingers keep it from shattering on the floor.

  Another blast hurls flames into the rest of the room, and the shockwave flings us out the windows.

  Snow rises up in a white rush to cradle me. The cold shoves a fist of frigid hurt into my arm, but I’m beyond caring. The computer clatters to the ground, case steaming but still intact, and hopefully with the codes and formulas Alex needs. Our future—because I don’t want to live without him—is in this machine. I drag it to me and lay for a second in the snow, drawing huge breaths of fresh air. Tingles spill over my skin when Alex crawls to my side and drapes an arm over me.

  “You okay?” he asks, voice unsteady.

  “Am I okay?” I look at him, incredulous. “Are you okay?”

  The image of his body arced from the table is seared into the back of my mind. How can someone go through that and survive?

  “I’m fine.” His body says otherwise when he works into a sitting position. Gashes and cuts litter his torso in a mad spatter of red. The wound where his father stabbed him leaks blood. But when he stands, he’s steady and pulls me up with him. “We need to move back, Em. The whole house is gonna come down.”

  “Your house…” Irrational, maybe, but my mind’s had a bit of a scramble.

  “It was never mine,” he soothes. “That was his house.”

  Maybe it’s blood loss. Maybe it’s stress. My legs refuse to hold me up. I start to sink toward the snow, gone sloppy and translucent in the heat radiating from the huge blaze.

  “I’ve gotcha,” Alex says, and scoops me into his arms.

  Then an inhuman wail sounds from the bowels of the fire. Josh, entirely coated in living, writhing flame, staggers toward the snow and freedom. The outer wall cuts his escape short. He dangles, half in, half out, and all on fire with one arm reaching toward us. A scream breaks from the wreckage of his mouth, the sound scraping against my ears. Then the wall collapses, crushing what’s left of Josh Mason with it.

  Exhausted, hurting everywhere, I curl my face into Alex’s shoulder and sob.

  His father, gone. Josh, gone. They were monsters at the end, but at one time, Alex’s father hadn’t been. Josh had at one time been a close friend. Did the sins they were guilty of warrant their fiery ends?

  I let go of the thoughts and cling to Alex. Regardless of what happened, we are together. His love radiates from him, woven into the energy coursing in his body. With my ear pressed to his chest, I hear his heart beating and know with every cell in my soul, that his heart beats for me.

  And mine for him.

  Motion jiggles all my hurts as he searches in his pocket. Then he pulls a set of keys from his pocket and presses a code into the fob. In the distance, the gates squeal open. Sirens bear down on us, colored lights strobe and pulse, dancing on the snowflake air. Heaving a sigh, he turns to face the emergency responders flooding the Franks estate. Face at his shoulder, I catch sight of the old windmill behind the house, its metal blades reflecting the house’s flames. Fitting, somehow. The whump-whump turns in perfect rhythm with his heartbeat.

  Questions will have to be answered. Policemen pour from their cars carrying notebooks and pens. Ambulances turn the snow to mud as they back around to help us. This time, we won’t refuse the help.

  Snow crunches beneath his bare feet, sizzles as it falls on the house. But it can’t hide the deer watching from the trees.

  Epilogue

  Aches still riddle my body days later, making the move to settle Alex into the Sunshine House anything but sunny. I dismally regret leaving my pain pills in my bedroom. The gunshot is especially sore, the chipped bone throbs when we move the last of Alex’s salvaged things into his room at his grandparents’ house. Well, as he moves the boxes, and I sit on the bed and pet Renfield. I’m under doctor’s orders to do no lifting until my arm heals.

  Happy, busy energy radiates through the house, multiple parental-type voices drift up the stairs.

  “It’s very nice of your grandparents to come back,” I say.

  “It’s very nice of your parents to come and meet them.”

  I work up a smile for him, but it doesn’t touch my eyes. We survived his mad father’s attempts at killing me, Josh’s attempt at killing us both, and still my heart is heavy. My beautiful boyfriend is dying. The shadows are returning under his eyes. Friday looms on the calendar, a black day for me, knowing he doesn’t have his formula and no possibility to charge it the way he needs. I glare at the battered remains of the dead laptop I dragged from the lab, thr
ough the disaster, the hospital, to here only to find it was fried and useless.

  “What’s the matter, Emma?”

  “It’s almost Friday,” I say, fighting tears all too ready to fall. “The laptop, your dad’s lab and files are gone.”

  Sunlight washes his arms where they poke from his short-sleeved shirt, slides down the line of his scars when he comes to the bed. The mattress sinks with his weight when he drops his 6’ plus frame beside me, then wraps his arms around me. God, I love the feeling of Alex holding me. But there’s no electricity. And there won’t be anymore.

  I bite my lip and snuggle into him.

  “If I told you I’ll be fine, would you believe me?”

  “How? How can you be okay?”

  Tingles dance over my scalp when he pulls the braid from my hair, then pushes the fall of blond hair over my shoulder. He places a warm, soft kiss on my neck, then gently takes my shoulders and turns me. I slide one leg over his, and straddle his hips. He growls a little and crushes me to him. This kiss is like none of the others. It’s intense, urgent, like he knows there are only a few kisses left. Then Alex pulls away suddenly, cheeks flushed, eyes wide.

  “Look behind the bed. Under the loose floorboard.”

  “What?” Why is he playing games? We have days, maybe weeks left together.

  “Please just do it, Emergizer.”

  “Fine.” He’s learned already, that’s the name to use to get his way.

  Alex has to help me off his lap, of course, with a cast and a gun shot wound. Then I kneel at the foot of the bed, testing the boards until I find one that wiggles.

  “Here,” Alex says, and hands me a utility knife, blade open.

  The boards come up easily, in the dark between the floor joists sits the leather bag he brought here the first night. I lift it out, the plastic vials clinking like music against each other.

  “What about the electrical pulse?” Do I dare to hope?

  “My father owned Ascension Labs.” He says. “He willed everything to me. They have the same facility that we had at the estate.”

  “You’re going to be okay!”

  “I am.”

  I leave the bag on the floor, launch into his arms and unsettle Renfield from his spot on Alex’s pillows. When we kiss this time, it’s a completely different kind of urgency. His hand tangles in my hair, the other slides down my side, and then sneaks up the buttons of my shirt.

  I let him undo the first two buttons, because I love the way his lips feel on my skin. As he reaches for the third, an engine rumbles into the driveway.

  Alex releases me, a playful pout tugging his full lips down.

  “Hey,” I say and nip the tip of his nose. “Bree’s my best friend. You’re going to have to get used to sharing me.”

  “Every other weekend,” he says and winks with his left eye.

  “Custody is still up for negotiation.”

  “Emma!” My mother yells up the stairs. “That door better be open, young lady! Bree and her friend are here.”

  With all the crazy upheaval, loss and pain in our lives, we know my mother will never change.

  “You’ll have to get used to that, too,” I tell him.

  “At least until you go to college.” He hooks a finger in my waistband and reels me back into his arms. “Then you’re all mine.”

  “I already am.”

  THE END