Kathleen Peacock - Thornhill

She stood and stretched, then frowned thoughtfully. “Doesn’t it bother you that Ben and Kyle have the same disease?”

“No.” I didn’t even have to think about it. “Kyle’s not Ben and a disease doesn’t change who someone is.”

“Ben thought it did.” She walked to the window and drummed her fingers on the sill, fast and furious like the beat of a werewolf’s heart. “Can you really date one of them? I know I was with Trey, but he never told me what he was. And you do have options. Jason wants you so badly, it’s a miracle he doesn’t spontaneously combust.”

I flushed. “I’m not talking relationships with you.”

“Why not? They’re fascinating.” Amy turned to stare at me, her expression so earnest that I almost believed it was really her. “It always breaks down to relationships. My relationship with Jason. Ben’s relationship with his father. My family tree and the fact that my grandfather is a senator. Everything happens because of a connection. Cause and effect. Kyle knows it. That’s why he ran away from you. He’s scared he’ll be the cause of you getting hurt or infected or dead.”

She sighed. “He hasn’t figured out that no matter what you do, some people just end up broken.”

As she spoke, the shadows in the room thickened and lengthened. Smokelike tendrils stretched out from the darkness. One wrapped itself around my wrist and my skin blistered and peeled.

Amy gazed at me sadly. “You can’t outsmart fate.”

I started awake. Kyle’s arm tightened reflexively around me, but his breathing stayed deep and steady. Even in sleep, he tried to keep me safe. It took me a second to remember where we were, to remember falling asleep with Kyle on the futon mattress.

A few feet away, Jason and Serena were passed out on the cot. Jason slept sitting with his back against the wall and Serena—weirdly enough—had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder. They weren’t far away, but it was hard to see them clearly.

I blinked. A cough clawed at the back of my throat as my eyes teared.

Smoke.

The room was filling with it.

“KYLE!” I SHOOK HIS SHOULDER AND CHOKED OUT HIS name.

He jerked awake in a sputtering, coughing start as I staggered to my feet and stumbled to the door.

I touched the metal with my fingertips. It wasn’t hot—yet—but the smoke at this end of the room was growing thick.

Kyle roused Serena and Jason. The next second he was by my side, moving me out of the way so he could throw himself at the door.

It didn’t budge.

Serena joined him in the assault—both of them yelling for someone to let us out. Through the haze, I caught glimpses of dark smears on Kyle’s hands: blood. He and Serena were tearing themselves apart against the door, but it wasn’t doing any good.

I glanced back at Jason. He hauled off his jacket and grabbed Serena’s from the cot. He doused them in the sink, then, coughing, squeezed past Kyle and shoved the fabric along the bottom of the door. The flow of smoke slowed but didn’t abate.

Screams and crashes drifted up from somewhere below us.

Serena backed away from the door and pressed her hands to the sides of her head.

“Serena?” I coughed her name and reached for her shoulder. She knocked my hand away so hard that I winced and cradled my wrist against my chest.

“Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.” Her eyes were wild and the words were a repeated gasp.

The fire at her house , I realized, she’s remembering the fire .

The smoke tore at my lungs. I stumbled back toward the window. The air here was easier to breathe, but not by much. Light-headed, I slumped to the floor. That’s what you were supposed to do in a fire, wasn’t it? Crawl underneath the smoke?

A few feet away, Jason had the same idea. None of us would hold out against the smoke for long, but he and I had the added disadvantage of reg lungs.

The ceiling pressed down and the walls closed in, mirroring the constriction in my chest.

I don’t want to die here .

Jason groped for my hand and I wasn’t sure if I had thought the words or if I had managed to choke them out.

Kyle was suddenly there. He crouched next to me and pressed something cold and damp over my mouth and nose: his shirt. He had shredded it and soaked the rags in the sink. He waited until I held the cloth in place on my own before turning to Jason and pressing a second piece of fabric over his face.

I couldn’t see Serena through the smoke, but I could hear the thuds as she continued to throw herself at the door.

It was hopeless. It had to be if Kyle was here and not helping her.

The pounding stopped.

Serena had given up.

An image of Tess filled my head as I struggled to my feet.

We couldn’t give up. I wasn’t giving up.

I made it across the room and began running my fingers along the edge of the door. There had to be a hinge or a gap. Anything . Kyle and Serena had tried brute force, but there had to be some other way out. Tears streamed down my face. I could barely breathe, but after a minute, my fingers found part of a hinge and the notch in a screw.

“Screwdriver,” I choked out. “What could we use as a screwdriver?”

Before anyone could answer, there was a screech of metal and then smoke-filtered light poured into the room from the hall. A voice that was almost-familiar-but-not rasped, “Come on.”

I wiped a hand across my eyes and squinted into the haze. Eve. Her long red hair was a mass of knots and her jacket was ripped at the shoulder. Smudges of dirt and ash dotted her face.

“What’s going on? What happened?” My throat was raw and it took me two tries to get the words out as I stepped into the hall, the others behind me.

“A raid. Trackers.” Eve threw a glare back at Jason before heading down the corridor, trusting us to follow. “There are dozens of them downstairs.”

The smoke thinned and my lungs and head cleared. “Where’s Hank?”

Eve pulled open another door, revealing a barely lit stairwell. “He went to check on that wolf and hasn’t come back.” Her voice was thick and constricted.

Shouts echoed at the other end of the hall. Eve grabbed my arm and flung me at the stairs. I barely avoided dashing my brains out against the wall. “Go! Don’t stop until you reach the top floor!”

“Up?” I spun and stared at her. “The building’s on fire and you expect us to go up ?”

“There’s an escape route on the top floor. A ladder.” She grabbed my shoulder and half shoved, half turned me back to the stairs.

“I trust her,” said Kyle. “Go!”

Figuring we had no choice, I ran, taking the steps as fast as I could, glancing back once to make sure everyone was behind me.

My sneakers slapped the third-floor landing just as a door below flew open.

“We’ve got a group on the back stairs,” yelled a rough voice.

Trackers.

Now we really had no choice but to keep going up.

There was a noise like a tin can fired out of a cannon, and it was followed by a burst of light so bright that I instinctively looked over my shoulder.

Kyle pushed past Jason and Serena and grabbed my hand. “Tear gas.” His grip was slick in mine as he urged me to move faster. There was a second rattle and flash—so much closer—and then a caustic smell that stripped my throat and nose when I inhaled. I tried desperately to hold my breath as we ran the last few steps to the fourth floor.

We stumbled into a cavernous space that was filled with dozens of large, industrial machines. Moonlight streamed through a wall of broken windows, and when I glanced up, I saw gaping holes in the roof.