Vengeance (The Captive #6)(81)
“Oh,” she breathed. The feeling of being torn in two sliced through her chest as she bit back an anguished scream.
“Tempest!” Pallas hissed from fifteen feet in front of her. “Tempest, come on.”
She glanced over her shoulder one more time. The wind whipped the fire higher into the air, fanning the flames until they’d become so intense they’d now traveled to the orphanage. Her head tipped back to take in the orange glow playing over the snow and the clouds choking the air.
Her hand slipped into her cloak and wrapped around the patch tucked securely into one of the pockets inside…
Promise me, he’d said to her with a fevered gleam in his blue eyes. I promise, she’d whispered. I’ll do everything I can to make sure word gets out and they know.
Now, with tears burning her eyes and her heart shattering within her chest, she shuffled through the entrance of the cave and fled toward Pallas. She had a promise to keep, and she was going to do everything she could to make sure word made it to the king and queen.
CHAPTER 27
William kept his eyes on the growing circle of fire over his head, and his hand focused on picking the lock. Steady, easy, he told himself as he worked the pin in the lock. If he’d still been human, his heart would be racing so fast he’d have a heart attack. As a vampire, his hand remained unwavering and his heart still, but enough adrenaline coursed through his body to power him at a dead run to the top of the surrounding mountains right now.
“Hurry,” the strawberry-haired woman said to him. As if she really had to tell him that, he was the one directly beneath the growing hole, and the massive, flaming timber.
He shot Strawberry a thunderous look before turning his attention back to the roof and the lock. He felt something click within the lock. Almost there, he thought at the same time the hole in the ceiling became large enough for the beam to fall through. A shout escaped him; he jerked his hand away and jumped back to avoid any falling debris.
The vibrations from the impact vibrated the entire building and caused the bars surrounding him to rattle. His back slammed up against the bars separating the two cells. He pressed himself as flat against the bars as he could in an attempt to avoid the splintered pieces of flaming wood raining down from the timber that had crashed onto the bars over his head. The heat of the fire blistered his face as it roared above him. Sparks from the beam above landed on his cheeks and clothes, leaving burn marks and singed skin in their wake.
More sparks shot out around the crumbling timber, falling over him. A flame shot out from the sleeve of his shirt and his right pant leg. His skin bubbled almost instantly beneath the fire eating at his clothes. Shoving himself away from the bars, he threw himself to the floor. He rolled over repeatedly until the flames on his clothes smothered beneath his weight.
The smell of burnt hair and flesh filled the room, but instead of feeling the pain of the blisters running up and down his arms and across his cheeks, he felt a growing sense of urgency to get out of here. More sparks and flames fell down from the sagging ceiling. Fire spread out around them, catching on the wooden floor and eating away at the boards beneath his feet.
“Is there a basement to this building?” he demanded, hoping for another way out.
The pale and strained faces of those surrounding him were his answer even before Strawberry spoke, “No.”
His head tilted back to the ceiling and bars again; the roof was receding fast as the fire ate at the wood. The noise of the inferno became increasingly louder, drowning out the screams of those outside and the cries of those around him as it snapped and cracked. The fire became a living breathing monster as it greedily ate away at the building. Sweat poured down his face and stuck his clothes to his body; smoke burned his eyes, causing them to water. Few things killed a vampire; the hungry flames surrounding him tied with all of those things at the top of the list.
“Stomp on the flames!” he barked at the others, hoping to buy them some more time as he scrambled back over to the door of the cell.
He stretched his arm through the bars once more and reached down toward the key hole. He found the hole almost instantly, but his heart sank when his hand fell against only an empty slot. Pallas’s pin was no longer there. His hand slapped against the empty space; some of his composure finally slipped as he angrily jerked at the bars, a bellow of frustration building inside of him.
The heat of the fire beat against his back as he searched for the pin knocked free by the impact of the beam on the bars. Finally, through the cloying haze of smoke, he spotted it about four feet away. Lying on his stomach, he stretched his arm through the bars in search of the pin. His hand slapped against the floor; his fingers fell inches shy of the pin. So far, the fire hadn’t spread outside of the cell, but it was only a matter of time, and once it did, they were all as good as dead.
A shout escaped him as he pushed his shoulder more forcefully against the bars. The metal bit into his skin and tore the flesh of his shoulder away from his neck and collarbone. Clamping his teeth against the discomfort, he pushed through the bars until his cheek pressed flush against them. His skin pushed back against his eye socket and cheekbone.
Something in his shoulder cracked; his joint bent in an unnatural way. A low groan escaped him; the sweat rolling down his face wasn’t entirely due to the fire anymore. He fought against the pain as he sought to dislocate his shoulder further in order to get his hand on the pin again.