Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(72)

Her red eyes flickered to their beautiful honeyed color when they met his. A smile curved her full mouth. She took a step toward him just as he felt a flash of power beneath him. Julian’s hand tightened on the man when an invisible hand seemed to hit Quinn in the chest and shot her backward.

“No!” Julian roared when she was flung into the fire.

She’d been right there! Quinn! Right there!

His thoughts tumbled riotously over top of each other as sorrow tore at his heart. He kept expecting her to rise from the flames, to rush back out of them, but at fifty feet away, he could feel the blistering heat of the inferno against his skin. No matter how badly he wanted to deny it, he knew one truth: vampires didn’t survive fire.

The inferno surged further upward as her body fueled it. The flames rolled over each other to cover the place where Quinn had vanished into them. Fury and anguish tore through him, shaking his muscles and shredding his heart as a hollow pit of despair opened within him. His fingers dug into the man beneath him, tearing into his flesh.

The man howled and placed his hands against Julian’s chest, shoving with his mind and body in an attempt to dislodge Julian from him. Julian’s grip on the man’s flesh made it so he wasn’t thrown off him, but realization pierced through the rage turning everything before him a blood-red hue. This man had shoved Quinn into the fire with his ability; he’d been the one to push her in there.

Dead. Quinn is dead.

Julian didn’t look at the man again as he gripped the top of his head and his chin. The man’s neck cracked loudly when Julian yanked it to the side and tore it from his body. The man’s body fell limply beneath him as Julian rose to stare at the place where Quinn had vanished into the fire. The head fell from his limp fingers.

Dead.

It was all he could think as he ran toward the flames. The fire blasted against him, blistering his skin. He tried to grab the flames as if he could open them like curtains in order to reveal her. They closed over his arms, searing his flesh to the muscle, and blocking anything he may have been able to see beyond.

He’d plunge into the fire after her and pull her body free; maybe he could somehow figure out a way to funnel his life into her. He just had to find her first.

“Quinn!” he shouted through the smoke burning his throat. The lights and buzzing sound abruptly cut off. He didn’t know if someone had shut the alarms off or if the fire had destroyed them. “Quinn!”

A flash of movement on his right spun him in that direction as something fell from the flames. He blinked against the smoke as he tried to comprehend if what he saw was real, or if his mind had snapped and he’d started to hallucinate. When he looked again, he realized the vision wasn’t vanishing.

Rubble shifted beneath his feet as he covered the ten feet between him and Quinn in a single bound. Flames engulfed her body as she managed to lift herself up from the debris and fling herself forward. He had no idea what she was trying to get to until he heard a scream.

Tearing the remains of his pants off, Julian fell beside her. He didn’t acknowledge the man trapped by the rubble as he worked to smother the flames enveloping Quinn’s blackened flesh. His clothes went up in flames almost instantly. Nearly all the bones in his hands and all the way up to his forearm were visible as he beat at the flames with his bare hands. The man beneath the rubble shrank further, and his gray skin flaked away from him.

Quinn was working to replenish her body, but if Julian couldn’t get the flames out, it wouldn’t matter as she would rebuild flesh only to have it burn away again.

A blast of something white burst over them, burying them within its cool depths and pushing back the fire encroaching on them. Julian turned his head away from it as the white spray momentarily blinded him. Lifting his hands, he wiped the substance away from his lashes.

Whatever the white coating was, it had smothered most of the flames on Quinn. He rapidly smothered the rest of them. The man beneath the rubble took on the withered appearance of a mummified corpse before his body crumpled into ash.

“Quinn,” Julian grasped her shoulders.

The scream she released made it sound as if she’d been chewing on hot coals. He jerked his hands away from her, but he couldn’t leave her face down on the concrete. Ever so tenderly, he carefully rolled her over. He didn’t know if she saw him through the haze of pain in her honeyed eyes. Blisters and white foam covered the reddened areas of the skin she’d managed to heal, while other parts of her remained charred and muscle peeked through. Bits of her blackened flesh broke off in his hand to reveal the pink muscle beneath.

“Quinn,” he moaned, afraid to touch her again and bring her more pain. He rested his fingers against her forehead, one of the few places on her that had a patch of nearly pristine skin. “I’m here. You’re going to be okay. Stay with me.”

“Julian! Julian, we have to go!” He barely heard the shouts above the crackling of the flames encroaching on them again. “Julian!”

Movement beside him had him lashing out at whoever had dared to approach them. Julian snarled and snapped his fangs at the intruder as he swung a skeletal hand out. Chris yelped and stumbled away from him when Julian caught hold of something hard. A fire extinguisher flew from Chris’s hands to bounce off the wall.

Rage and anguish clouded Julian’s mind. Before he could launch at Chris and ease his need for death, another fire extinguisher swung out and cracked him in the shoulder, knocking him back. He bared his fangs as he turned to find Melissa standing there.