Chapter 26
Karson
The scent of smoke burned the back of Karson’s throat.
He looked up into the night sky. Smoke rose like black death from the crust of the earth.
Karson’s stomach plummeted. The thick plumes churned above Serenity Lake.
Amelia.
He slammed the gas pedal to the floor and the car lurched forward with a growl of power. It reached sixty miles per hour in around three seconds and still it wasn’t fast enough.
His hand drifted to the wing of the raven tattoo on his chest, beneath was the darkest part, his heart, and it yanked with an intensity he didn’t understand.
His mind whirled. The fire looked like it was blocking the only escape she had.
There was a lake in front of her cabin. She wasn’t stupid; she’d flee to it.
But even that didn’t mean she was safe. The smoke would be toxic, and the sheer heat from a fire could swell her airways and kill her, even if the flames never touched her skin.
He drew to a screeching to a stop on the side of the road directly west of where her cabin was. There was at least a mile of forestry-fueled wildfire between him and her home.
Orange clawed the sky, a thousand dragons engulfing the night. The sound of wailing lashed at his ears, as if the forest itself was screaming in despair.
He needed to leave her. She’d make it out. If he tried to rescue her, he could be badly burnt . . .
Smoke billowed from the roof of their home.
Orange clawed at the wood.
She fled from the house, her dress engulfed in fire, the flames eating at her body like a rabid mouth.
There was nothing he could do. He dropped to his knees, covered his ears and closed his eyes.
As his mother screamed and screamed and screamed.
Timber exploded through the forest, shattering his thoughts. The terrain was rocky in places, and fire wouldn’t burn there. He’d couldn’t save his mother . . . he’d been too young, too weak. A rare lurch of emotion choked his throat.
He tore his jacket off, and in less than a heartbeat, he was out of his car and running into the forest.
The heat hit him like an electric shock, sinking into his bones.
He surged forward, leaping over crackling branches and skirting around burning trees.
Red-hot embers danced through the air like thousands of fireflies.
He jammed an arm over his mouth as he ran, but the heat was blistering.
Every breath was scorching and windpipe felt as though a grater ripped shreds from it.
Lit branches slashed at his body, striking like scalding lashes as they burned through his shirt and singed the hairs on his arms. He could withstand it. But Amelia was so fragile . . .
Her emerald eyes gazing into his, the soft touch of her hands on his back. Her scent, so sweet he could almost taste it.
A flare of adrenaline flooded his veins, and he ran even faster. His soundless feet chewed up the distance.
Karson jerked to a halt directly behind a huge wall of impenetrable flames. The whole forest was reduced to flares of orange, red, and darkness. The monstrous mouth spat lava, reaching its executioner’s tongue out, devouring everything around it.
He couldn’t see a way through. He should turn around and leave. She wasn’t the first woman who’d caught his eye, and she’d not be the last.
He wiped sweat off his forehead. Leave her, she wasn’t his problem, she wasn’t his anything .
. . His heart twisted against the cage of his ribs, reaching for her, craving something he’d buried a long time ago.
But his mind was a far superior beast. He had tried to save her; it was more than anyone else would have risked.
There was no redemption for what he’d done, if that was the cause of his heart’s discontent.
As a towering tree slammed to the forest floor, Karson turned away.
A deer darted ahead, eyes wide, nostrils flaring as its coat blazed with fire. It was screaming. The deer was screaming.
Karson shuddered and swung back to the flames.
She’d laughed at the lines he had used a thousand times before. Lines that’d worked a thousand times before. And when she gazed up at him, there was something about the green of her eyes which captivated him. They made him want to reach in to see what lay beneath.
Made him want to exhume what he’d thought was dead inside.
He shook the thoughts away. Only a fool would try to get through a fire of that size. But something else fought back. A soundless whisper clutching his heart like a hand. Save her. The battle of what to do warred in his head.
Sweat trickled from his entire body. His lungs were a furnace, and every breath he sucked in hurt. The heat stung his eyes. He squeezed them shut, and her image appeared in the darkness of his mind. Her voice arose in his ears, the melodic tune washed over him. Washed through him.
Her voice, a siren’s song dragging him to her.
Her image, a beacon whispering against the dark.
The battle was lost before it ever really began.
His eyes tore open and he remembered who the fuck he was.
It was just fire; something as ordinary as heat would not kill him.
It would hurt, yes. Be excruciating, yes.
But he would not allow something as mundane as pain to determine his actions.
Being controlled by pain was an attribute of the weak, and he was anything but that.
Karson snatched in one last deep breath, tensed, then shot forward. The heat was metal claws tearing at his body. His skin bubbled, blistered, and popped—he was being cooked alive. The pain was excruciating. So terrible, Karson whined. He whined!
The vile smell of his burning flesh clotted his nostrils. His vision was reduced to an orange glow, his hearing nothing but a thunderous, deafening roar.
Each second felt like a minute. Each step a marathon. Each heartbeat a scream.
His muscles seized and lost power. He staggered, running blindly.
I have to go back.
It was too late to turn around, but he couldn’t get through. He was going to drop and be burned to ashes. He gritted his teeth as his lips peeled away like red ribbons.
He stumbled, his hand shooting out to stop himself from falling, and the flames ripped at it, sinking through the flesh down to the muscles. There was no pain now, his nerves burned, his body fading.
“Run, son. You have to run,” his mother’s voice whispered inside his head.
They were the last trembling words she’d spoken to him. He was only seven years old. She’d pressed a kiss on his forehead, told him she loved him, and urged him to run.
Run.
Terrified, he’d fled. His mother turned to face the witches hunting them down. She’d burnt to death.
Hatred for witches ripped through him, sending a flare of adrenaline through his body, giving him the strength he needed.
Karson burst from the flames.
His arms, head, and ears raged with agony.
He glanced at his arms—the skin was gone.
His raw flesh was a molten mixture of weeping pus and charred decay.
His skin began to do what it had done so many times before, a thick layer weaving over the burned and weeping flesh like a spider’s web as it began to heal itself.
Wheezing air into his charred lungs, he staggered behind the massive trunk of a thousand-year-old tree, sheltering from the flames and the wind.
He held his breath, stood perfectly still, and listened.
He blocked out the freight-train roar of the wind, the sound of the flames snapping and exploding like grenades as trees met their demise, and the fluttering wings of birds trying to escape.
Thunder rumbled in the sky. Then from out of the mottled darkness, came her anguished cry.
He’d caused enough screams to know it was one of pain.
“Amelia,” he tried to shout but it came out weak and rasping. Karson broke into a sprint.
His stomach dropped in a sickening rush when he saw her.
She was lying on the ground, her painfully frail body motionless and covered in soot. Charred holes dotted her black silk pajamas, and she had a burn on the back of her leg. He sucked in a relieved breath when he saw she was breathing, though it was ragged and thin.
“Amelia,” he whispered, scooping her up into his arms, pressing her warmth to his chest. A bolt went through him like a charge of electricity so strong he gasped.
Dazed, he blinked. Her ring fell from her hand and landed with a clink on the ground, breaking his stupor.
He leaned over and collected it, stuffing it into his trouser pocket.
Rain began to tumble down in thick, fat drops. He hoped it continued, or they’d never stop the fire.
Karson ran as fast as he could through the shallow edge of the lake, the ground was charred, burning ruins.
Orange slithered through the crumbled remains of the Miller’s and Toronto’s cabins.
He hoped the children weren’t home, or they got out quickly, the fire appeared to have started somewhere close to the road leading out and once it took hold, a human would never make it through.
When he finally cleared the devastation, he headed in the direction of the main road.
A few minutes later, he placed her down gently.
Her hair clung to the sides of her cheeks, and her face was smudged black with soot.
Her lips were parted; her breathing was rasping but regular at least. Still, she looked so helpless and so delicate.
Something fierce and altogether overwhelming found a place in his heart: a ridiculous rush of desire to protect this girl.
Karson stared at her, confused. What was wrong with him? Feelings and emotions were for the weak. And he was anything but weak.
Karson assigned the feelings not to anything worth consideration, but to a brief moment of empathy. A crack in his armor. It was unusual for him. But normal, given the circumstances, he supposed.
He shoved the thoughts aside and looked around. He saw the flashing lights of an ambulance coming from ahead and flagged it down.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at him, bewildered and dazed.
“It’s alright, sweetheart. You’re safe now,” he murmured, brushing a lock of hair off her cheek.
He nestled his hands on either side of her head, then implanted visions of her running through the forest and making it to the side of the road on her own.
She moaned.
Her image, the beacon.
Her voice, the song.
The crack in his armor was larger than he realized, because his lips landed on her warm, damp forehead.
A shiver, not entirely unpleasant, traveled down his spine.
The ambulance officers came around the front of the van.
Like a ghost, he was gone.