Deathtrap (Crossbreed #3)(47)

I winced when he touched a sore spot near my nose. “Yep. Dynamite. Do you think the Vampire’s dead?”

“Unless someone pulled him out, a fire that intense would kill him, to be sure.”

“I didn’t think fire hurt Vampires.”

He stopped cleaning my face, his eyes downcast. “Aye. We burn like everyone else. It takes more to kill us than a Mage since we regenerate, but a burning building is the last place I want to be. It’s an incinerator. You’re a crossbreed, so there’s no way to know your limitations without testing them. Best you remember that.”

“Have you ever been burned?”

Christian set the cloth in my lap and leaned back against the cabinets across from me, his knees bent.

“What happened?”

He reclined his head and looked up at the wall above me. “There was an apartment fire, and I was foolish enough to think I could play fireman. Singed the skin right off my arms.”

I grimaced.

“It healed up… eventually.”

“What was worth risking your life?”

He shook his head as if ashamed. “The sound of children screaming. Humans standing around doing nothing. I saw a wee lass, and it made me think about my sister. Do you see why mortal ties are dangerous? They make you do foolish things.”

I pulled his coat up to my waist. “And did you save anyone?”

“An old woman. She couldn’t walk, so I lifted her out of her bed and carried her to the hall. Humans were rushing down the stairs and trampling each other. I kept climbing up, looking at closed doors and listening. I heard a child’s cry and saw the flames. The fire started on the lower level, eating its way up and spreading fast. Smoke poured through the closed door, so I kicked it open. Half the floor was gone.”

His story gave me chills as it hit close to home. “Did the children die?”

“There was only one child. A little girl crying for her mum. There was no way to get to her room without setting myself on fire. I’d turned away to leave, when I heard her cry, ‘Please come get me.’ Fecking hell, I couldn’t just walk away. So I kicked down the door and gave her my coat to protect her from the flames. I had to walk through fire to get us out of there, and after I handed her over to someone in the hall, I headed up to the next level to knock on doors and warn everyone that the fire was spreading. When I reached the roof, I climbed down the escape and spent the next two days in hell. Burns like that don’t heal quickly—not without Vampire blood.”

As he told the story, shock overwhelmed me, and tears streamed down my cheeks.

“Jaysus wept. If I’d known you were that hormonal, I wouldn’t have told the story.”

“How old was the girl?”

“I don’t know. Five? Six?”

Christian didn’t realize.

He couldn’t possibly.

That wasn’t just any little girl he was talking about; that child was me.

All this time, it was Christian. He was the one who’d broken down my door and collected me in his arms after shielding me with his coat. Now, looking back, all the pieces fell into place. His dark hair, the glimpse of a beard as I saw him turn the corner at the top of the stairs. I still remembered the stench of his burning flesh.

Before I knew it, Christian was beside me with his arm around my shoulders. “You shouldn’t have flashed as much as you did. Now you’re nothing but a drained battery with leaky faucets.”

“You don’t understand,” I choked out. “It can’t be true.”

“What are you going on about?”

I looked up at him, barely able to comprehend the truth of it all. “That was me, Christian. When I was five, my building caught fire. My mother died, and I almost did too until a man rescued me from my bedroom. He threw his coat over me and carried me through fire.”

Christian recoiled, his face aghast. “You’re fibbing.”

All those memories of my mother came flooding back. The funeral. My life changing in an instant. A father unable to console a little girl who cried herself to sleep every night.

“It can’t be,” he whispered. “She had hair like yours, but I don’t remember her eyes.”

“You didn’t see them when I looked at you through the glass?”

He covered his mouth. “Jaysus. That was you.”

“My mother. What happened to my mother? Why didn’t you save her?”

He looked down as if searching his memories. “There was smoke and flames. The only door I saw was to the right. It was half-open, but there was a giant hole in front of it with fire climbing in.”

I covered my face. Oh my God. My mother had died a horrific death trying to save me when I woke up crying for her. I’d somehow convinced myself that the smoke had overcome her, because it was the easiest way to think about her death.

Christian took me in his arms, his embrace so familiar that it was as if we’d always known each other. “She didn’t suffer,” he assured me. “The fall would have been quick, to be sure. You were the only living soul in the apartment.”

What I began to internalize in that moment wasn’t my mother’s death, which I’d learned to live with for most of my life. It was the realization that Christian had saved my life. If it hadn’t been for him, I would have perished in that fire. I owed my life to him—my human life.