I failed, I thought tiredly. Then, half unwilling, half relieved, I allowed my eyelids to drift shut.
Chapter 25
“I can’t carry you both.”
The male’s voice was angry, and even when I opened my eyes I couldn’t quite figure out who it was. The small amount of light that had filtered through the window earlier had faded, so all I saw was a silhouette with some sort of complicated headgear confusing the man’s profile.
Firefighter, my wolf whispered. I blinked twice and, sure enough, the dark shape above me came into sharper focus. Helmet, breathing apparatus, heavy coveralls with reflective stripes encircling the arms and legs. Chances were good the fabric would be neon yellow in daylight.
But beneath all of the paraphernalia, the human looked strangely familiar. “Officer Lambert?” I croaked.
I wasn’t sure if the reaction came from me or my wolf, but our shared body abruptly cringed away from the intruder’s outstretched hand. Because wasn’t it strange how Lambert kept turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time? First he’d been Johnny-on-the-spot at the bomb threat, then he’d taken me into custody outside the high school, and now he was decked out in firefighter gear despite supposedly being an officer of the law.
Add in Lambert’s intense interest in my mother, and I was abruptly certain the witch hunter and the man in front of me were one and the same.
No. The voice in my head, my mate’s voice, was rougher and more frantic than usual. Through our bond, I could feel his proximity to the flames, the way his lungs burned as he took the stairs two at a time, rushing toward my location.
Flashes of memory caught me up to speed on past events in milliseconds. A rogue wolf somehow shoving the kitchen door open and evading the uber-alpha’s grasp long enough to dart down the hallway and into the living room. Hunter following in the beast’s footsteps even as he used the pack bond to monitor my reality and that of the other wolves he’d recently loosed on the sleeping neighborhood.
Outside, the majority of the uber-alpha’s clan hadn’t scattered as I’d initially assumed. Instead, they sniffed and circled and finally caught the scent trail of the witch hunter. Gasoline, smoke, anger, madness. The half-feral werewolves put their noses to the soil and followed, baying out their intent to stop the enemy in his tracks.
One block over, the wolves cornered a one-body who lingered to watch the plume of smoke rise into the dark sky. I gasped as the witch hunter’s face was illuminated by a streetlight in Hunter’s borrowed memory.
Middle-aged, round, pleasant. Chuck.
I barely remembered the one-body’s name, but I did remember seeing the human in Arborville’s cemetery on the day of my father’s funeral. Yes, he’d been nearby when I’d fled Celia’s presence then heard my relatives bay their grief into the suburban air. Chuck had been out walking his dog and he must have caught the shifters’ transformation from a distance, drawn his own conclusions about Celia’s supposed powers, and acted accordingly.
So this disaster, this string of intensely unfortunate events, was the fault of werewolf-kind...in an oddly roundabout manner. But I hadn’t been the one to lead the danger onto Celia’s doorstep after all. And the cop-turned-firefighter in front of me wasn’t the enemy.
If I’d been standing, the relief would have been enough to make me weak at the knees. Instead, I pulled most of my mind out from behind Hunter’s eyes and grimly forced my body to unfold so Lambert would only have one person to drag down the stairs.
“I can walk,” I told the policeman-turned-firefighter just as Hunter burst in the door. “If you can get my mother to safety, then your job here will be done.”
***
“I felt you fall.”
Hunter was a man of few words, but I could almost taste the shock and grief as his memory traveled down our shared bond. Back when I’d initially drifted away from reality, he’d immediately abandoned the final rogue to its own devices and had allowed the rest of his pack to do what they would to Chuck. Then he’d taken off after me before my head even hit the floor.
Now, the uber-alpha pulled me close with one arm around my waist, half supporting and half guiding as we coughed our way down the upstairs hallway. The floorboards were so hot beneath our feet that I thought the house’s fever might burn through our shoes and blister my skin, and I couldn’t help but imagine the associated joists charring as the fire in the dining room ate up the closest fuel and went looking for more. I wasn’t a fireman, yet I had a bad feeling that we possessed minutes, not hours, if we hoped to assist the final trapped shifters before my mother’s once beautiful home fell down around our ears.
But Celia herself was safe...or at least very close to the sought-after refuge offered by the great outdoors. Glancing backwards, I could barely make out the woman’s form draped across Officer Lambert’s shoulder as the volunteer firefighter trod at a snail’s pace down the stairs toward freedom.
I wanted to scream at him to go faster and I also wanted to be right there beside him, testing the safety of each board before he stepped. Instead of succumbing to either impulse, though, I reminded myself that my mother’s safety was now out of my hands. But maybe together Hunter and I can save the rest of my pack.
Twining my fingers around those of my mate, I thought my next words rather than speaking them. No reason to open my mouth and inhale yet another lungful of caustic smoke when my nose’s soot-filtration job was barely sufficient to make the air palatable.
Glen and Cinnamon are unconscious in the other bedroom, I told my mate. We have to try to get them out before we can leave.
Hunter’s wolf answered me instead of his human brain. There were no words in the reply, only a yearning to run shoulder to shoulder with me through sunlit meadows. An aching refusal to lose me to the flames. A tug at his feet and mine to trail down the stairs behind Officer Lambert right here, right now.
And, at the same time, Hunter broadcast a willingness to follow wherever I led. Yes, even into the heart of the flames that raged beneath our feet.
I accepted the wolf’s honesty with a wordless burst of mirrored emotion. Then I turned away from the beckoning freedom and pulled my mate into the room that Celia had created for the daughter she’d once wished me to become.
The domicile appeared dramatically different than it had during my previous visit. Then, the interior had been shrouded in near darkness. In contrast, flames now licked up the outside of the house and lit the room with an orange glow that would have been beautiful...if the increasing illumination hadn’t spelled death for me and three shifters who I loved.
The thought froze me in place like a scared rabbit, and I might never have moved again if an ominous cracking noise hadn’t filled the air. Abruptly, I was running toward the two still forms lying on the floor beside the bed, just where Ginger and I had dropped them. They didn’t appear to have moved in the minutes I’d been gone.
Frantic fingers felt for pulses. Found the heartbeats, thready but present. The pain in my throat, my eyes, my chest, vanished for a split second in the face of sheer relief.
We aren’t too late.
I gazed up into Hunter’s face from my position crouching on the floor. “I know they’re not your pack....” I said aloud, heat from the fire beginning to burn my cheeks.
Another, louder crack broke into my words, this one so deafening it made me twitch and lose my grasp on Cinnamon’s wrist. In my mind’s eye, I saw the floor fall away beneath us, all four living bodies tumbling down into the fire’s gaping maw. We’d burn alive....
I shook my head against the vision. Terror will get us nowhere.
Then Hunter was pulling me to my feet. I half expected him to throw my resisting body over one shoulder and drag me kicking and screaming away from the ever-increasing danger. But the uber-alpha didn’t even suggest we leave my friends in an effort to save our own hides. Instead, he sized up their forms before repeating Lambert’s earlier admission: “I can’t carry them both.”
Males. I
would have rolled my eyes if the house hadn’t been falling down around our ears. Still, I allowed my exhausted brain to indulge in a little snark. How typical of Hunter to be annoyed when he butts up against the limits of human endurance and finds himself lacking in superpowers.
“Of course you can’t,” I answered aloud. “But if you put Cinnamon on my back, I can carry him out.” Despite Ginger’s hysterical babbling about the male twin’s dining habits, her brother was the skinnier of the two comatose shifters. Cinnamon was all long legs and lanky arms and he probably didn’t weigh much more than I did.
I resisted the momentary worry that I might not be able to handle the other shifter’s weight after all. Because if Hunter and I were the only rescuers currently available, then I’d jolly well rescue.
“You’re strong enough.”
My companion’s husky voice itself was a balm, and my nerves calmed yet further as I took in his vision of me through the mate bond. Yes, I was smaller and physically weaker than Hunter. But through his eyes I looked like an avenging warrior, turned into Joan of Arc with sword raised high.
The uber-alpha didn’t doubt for a moment that I’d somehow manage to drag Cinnamon’s unconscious body from the room, down the stairs, and out the door to safety. In fact, I appeared to be doing so in his dreamworld in high heels and with a perky sway to my hips that made his mouth water.
“We’re gonna have to talk about your lack of a grasp on reality at some point,” I bantered. But I also smiled—Hunter’s belief in my abilities made the impossible appear possible.
“Later,” Hunter agreed. Despite his curt words, his eyes sparkled even as they reflected the flames leaping for joy outside the window. And his simple touch when he brushed past me was exquisitely profound.
Chapter 26
I’m not sure where the intervening minutes went. One second I was bracing myself for Hunter to slide a massive shifter onto my back. The next moment I was putting one last foot in front of the other as I preceded my mate into the entranceway just inside the front door.
The foyer, I thought and was barely alert enough to realize that I sounded just as hysterical as Ginger had when I’d last seen her. Mom won’t be fond of the new decorating scheme.
No, the real-estate agent would be pissed as hell at the ruined carcass of a building that loomed around us now. It would be the real test of our relationship—whether Celia was still proud of me once she was back on her feet and could see the sagging bones of the home she’d left behind. Once she could fully comprehend the loss of her nest egg, of her irreplaceable photos and memorabilia, and of the refuge she’d built for herself far from werewolf-kind.
Not thinking about the future now, I reproached myself. Instead, it was all I could do to remain upright when my entire torso screamed beneath Cinnamon’s weight and when my lungs were scraped raw from exertion and smoke. My previous separation from the current moment had been a blessing, I now realized. Reality was a bitch.
Ten more steps, Hunter broadcast, easing into my mind as if he’d never been gone. And perhaps he hadn’t. My mate could have dropped Glen off in the yard and been halfway back to rescue Cinnamon by this point in time. But, instead, he’d paced along in my wake, buoying me up mentally even as my body threatened to collapse right there onto the smoldering floor.
The first story of the house was an inferno. On the other side of the living room, a massive crash marked the descent of a fire-loosened something and sparks flickered across my vision, lighting the foyer like fireflies. If I’d thought Hunter and I were operating on borrowed time earlier, now we were wading waist deep in temporal debt.
My adrenaline spiked and my feet tried to pick up the pace as another booming thud filled the air. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough agility left to handle the accelerated speed, so I instead stumbled and nearly fell against the closed front door.
The closed, locked front door.
I’d somehow forgotten in the midst of my self-imposed suffering that the witch hunter had padlocked both entrances closed from the outside after lighting the house on fire. That the only way to escape was through the kitchen window Hunter had busted loose...which lay beside raging flames on the far opposite corner of the residence from where we now stood. I was 99% certain I couldn’t carry Cinnamon that far.
But no, that didn’t make sense. Officer Lambert hadn’t turned right down the hallway after descending the stairs. I was certain he’d gone straight out the front door.
I was almost certain. I was halfway certain.
Doubting myself, my sluggish movements slowed yet further. And then I was abruptly tapping into the larger pack bond, my vision morphing into Ginger’s surroundings rather than my own.
From outside, the house looked even worse than I’d imagined. Billowing gouts of flame erupted from the right side of the dwelling and the upper level tilted subtly yet ominously toward the ground. A few of the house’s ceramic tiles were already sliding off the roof to shatter against the neighbor’s fence. As I watched—as Ginger watched—a stud crept away from the wall and joined the pileup.
So those crashes I heard were falling beams after all. Really, I would have much preferred my hypothesis to have been proven incorrect.
Dreamily, I felt Ginger’s lips move as she screamed at the one-bodies around her. “My brother’s still in there!” she emoted, jerking against the heavy hand that kept her rooted to the earth. “If you won’t go get him, then I will.”
I tried to reach out and soothe my pack mate’s angst, to reassure her that not only Cinnamon but also Hunter, Glen, and I had nearly achieved safety. At the same time, I tried to urge the fingers of my right hand to loosen their cramped grip around her brother’s leg so I could open the door and make good on our escape.
But the combination of mental and physical effort was beyond me. Wires crossed within my brain and I failed at both attempts.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry but we got here too late. Paul went in against the chief’s orders and I’m glad to say he was able to save one victim. But I’ve seen this kind of fire before. I can promise you that if anyone goes inside now, the building will fall down around their ears.”
The speaker was a firefighter I didn’t recognize, one who had clearly given up on anyone maintaining their vitality within Celia’s home. And I could see his point. Rushing into the current inferno would be akin to committing suicide, so of course it was smarter to keep the present escapees alive rather than allowing them to hunt for more survivors.
Survivors that included Ginger’s brother...as long as I could figure out how to open this door and carry him to safety. Move, I told my fingers. Unfortunately, only my thumb managed to unfurl. The other digits remained firmly frozen in place.
A cloud of smoke engulfed me...then Hunter was elbowing me aside, shifting Glen higher onto his shoulder with the same ease that a one-body might use to twitch a messenger bag into place while rooting around in his pocket for the keys. “We’re almost there,” the uber-alpha promised, although how he could speak without falling into a coughing fit like the one that currently squeezed my chest was beyond me.
Flash—Hunter’s shirt smoldered as a spark landed on the fabric and caught hold. Flash—Ginger’s arm ached as the firefighter’s grip tightened around her bicep. Flash—I tried to squelch the incipient flame with the force of my elbow since no other part of my body was currently available for the task. Flash—Ginger swayed from side to side in an attempt to elude the firefighter’s restraining hold.
It was a good thing my mate had taken the lead in the real world since, when the flickers of shared reality finally settled down, I ended up firmly stuck within the trouble twin’s head. I—she—struggled unsuccessfully for several seconds before I felt rather than heard her frantic decision.
Who cares about shifter secrecy if Cinnamon isn’t around to take advantage of our stealth?
Ginger, don’t! I called out in reply. So far, I’d merely been consuming her experiences passively, using them as an e
scape from the smoke that clogged my lungs and from the waves of heat that rolled against my back. Now, though, I pushed with all my might in an attempt to broadcast directly into my pack mate’s mind.
But whether or not the redhead heard me, it was too late. She’d chosen to ignore the camera crew, the crowd, the dozens of one-bodies working to aid the injured and keep the whole neighborhood from going up in flames.
Between one blink of an eye and the next, Ginger had slipped out of the firefighter’s grasp in the easiest way possible. She’d gone full-on wolf.
***
The succeeding events flowed one after another so quickly that I had no time to dwell on Ginger’s highly illegal act. First a fireball of flames licked against my skin. Then I was being pulled through the open doorway by Hunter’s iron grip, outside air brushing my cheeks as I half-fell, half-ran down the steps and off the porch.
The world exploded. Brilliant light seared my eyeballs while blisters popped up on my exposed skin. I ached—quite literally—to lapse back into unconsciousness and escape the agony. But Hunter pushed from inside my brain, yanking at my reins and moving my feet away from the house that had become an inferno.
Then one-body hands were all around us. Cinnamon was lifted off my back and Glen must have been similarly snatched because I was abruptly lying atop a shoulder I knew as well as my own. The scent of sassafras was so intense it overwhelmed the aroma of charred flesh and hair, and I relaxed into the unconventional embrace.
My chin thudded against hard back muscles as Hunter sprinted for the mass of humans and shifters currently backlit by the strobing lights of fire trucks and ambulances. Looking through both my mate’s eyes and my own at the same time, I could see Hunter’s gaze tunneling down onto the approaching safety even as my own gaze locked onto the structure we’d so recently left behind.
My mother’s hard-won house fell in slow motion. The south wall—the one that Celia had lined with glass-fronted shelves to showcase fancy china, silver tureens, and polished wooden bowls—collapsed in on itself as gently as a flower might close its petals for the night. The sirens and flames covered the tinkle of breaking glass as my mother’s perfect world imploded.
Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) Page 17
