Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(60)

“Quinn!” he shouted.

She turned and took a step toward him when she heard something click beneath the foot of one of the vampires in front of her. The vampire’s mouth dropped, and the color drained from his face. Quinn barely had time to register the noise before the world exploded around her. Searing heat and pain lanced through her body as she was flung backward.





CHAPTER 22


A wave of fire washed over Julian as screams reverberated through the air. He didn’t recall hitting the ground, but he realized he was lying on it when he felt a rock digging into his back. Turning over, he saw it wasn’t a rock after all; it was someone’s foot.

“Shit,” he snarled and threw the bloody appendage away from him.

He shoved himself upright to search for Quinn. He’d thought she’d been right beside him when he’d stopped. She should have been right beside him, but he’d let go of her when he’d realized Melissa was having a vision. Quinn had moved beyond him before the blast had exploded his eardrums and set the world on fire.

Now, he all he could see was the scorched earth around him and the flames consuming the Jeep. The vehicle had been launched into the air and rested on its roof only ten feet away from him. Through the snapping flames and curling smoke, he saw the woman inside was little more than bones as the fire had already consumed most of her flesh.

Hadie pulled herself out of the passenger window of the van and perched on the door. The vehicle was thirty feet away from him and resting on its driver’s side. The sole of a shoe faced him as someone’s leg poked out from under the van. Julian’s deadened heart leapt into his throat at the possibility that it was Quinn trapped beneath the vehicle. It took him a second to realize the sole belonged to a sneaker instead of the black boots Quinn was wearing.

Hadie dropped down from the van and flattened herself against its undercarriage. Unlike the Jeep, he saw no hint of fire or smoke from the van. Hadie used the back of her arm to wipe away the blood trickling from a jagged gash on her forehead.

“I’m going to kill these *s!” she shouted over the crackling flames and the screams of the mutilated and dying.

Julian ignored the twisted bone of his ankle as he rose to his feet and searched through the crackling flames and debris around him. “Quinn!” he bellowed.

Smoke seared his nostrils and clogged his throat, but already the fires were fading away as the grass did little to fuel the flames. Broken bodies littered the ground, many were still alive, unwilling to move as they lay on what he now realized was a mine field. Others remained on their feet, uninjured but reluctant to take another step. Prue and Carla were five feet away from the van, unable to see around the obstacle in their way.

Turning back toward the fence, he saw Luther and Lou remained standing a good thirty feet behind him with Melissa a few feet beyond them. Chris shoved himself up from the ground two feet to his left while Dani had already regained her feet on Julian’s other side. They’d all been thrown almost back to the fence line by the force of the explosion, or explosions. Judging by the amount of damage, there had been more than one.

Chris was untouched, but the right side of Dani’s shirt had been seared away. Soot covered her face, and the blackened ends of her hair were curled up around her ears. Vern stood beyond Julian’s shoulder, paler than normal, but his eyes burned red fire as he gazed at the carnage surrounding them.

“Do you see Quinn?” Julian demanded of them.

“I…I don’t know what happened,” Dani stammered.

“Can you see Quinn?” he shouted.

“No,” she muttered.

Julian went to take a step forward, but Chris seized his arm. “What are you doing?”

“I have to find her.”

Chris’s gaze ran over the ground surrounding them as if it were the enemy. In many ways, it was. “You’ll blow yourself up.”

“I have to find her.”

“There!” Lou shouted and pointed toward the building. “I think that’s her with some of the others!”

“How did they end up so close to the building?” Dani asked.

“They were ahead of whoever stepped on the mine,” Julian muttered.

Rage filled him when he finally spotted Quinn’s broken body lying near the door of the building. Blood covered her, and the jagged edge of her thigh bone pierced through her skin. He yanked his arm from Chris’s grasp. He didn’t care if he stepped on every mine between her and him, he would get to her.

“The door of the building is opening,” Vern said, halting Julian in midstep.

Julian watched as three men slipped out the door and walked toward the nearby vampires scattered across the ground. Each of them held a stake.

Adrenaline had him plunging forward before he could stop to think about what he was doing. If those men got to her…

No! He wouldn’t allow it to happen.

He flew across the earth toward Quinn with a speed he hadn’t known he possessed as the world around him became nothing but a blur.

“Julian!” Chris shouted as something boomed behind him. Heat licked against his back from the mine he’d set off, but he was moving too fast for the fire and concussion of the blast to hit him.

Quinn remained unmoving, her body limp when one of the men arrived at her side. “No!” Julian bellowed, causing the man’s head to jerk toward him.