Fall From Grace(78)

“Are you okay?” he asked looking down into my eyes.

“I’m just tired.  I think I’m going to call it a night.”  I smiled up at him.  “Goodbye Shane.”  I felt his eyes follow me down the hallway, but his body never moved.




Chapter 12

That night, I dreamt of a prison of fires that bound the fallen angels deep beneath the heavens.  I could smell the burning toxic fumes as if they were real.  They weighed down heavy on my skin and grabbed hold of my lungs, squeezing the life from them.

Far away in the distance, I could hear a frantic voice calling my name, screaming for me, and pulling me to the surface.

The body of the voice slid onto my bed, pinning me down.  “Grace,” it whispered.  “Grace, please wake up!”  The voice shook me violently.

I wanted desperately to answer the beautiful voice, but the air was too thick and my throat burned with sweet noxious flames, crushing me from within.

My eyelids were heavy and stung with burning tears. It took all my strength to pry them open.

“Grace,” the voice whispered, as I was taken up and cradled into its arms.  A deep red burst of fire exploded across the ceiling, flames stretching toward me like fiery hands calling me home.

“Grace, baby, please, please wake up.  Grace, please don’t leave me, please.  I love you.”  The strong arms nestled me into its chest and it carried me into oblivion.

I heard glass shatter and felt its icy sharpness rain down over my body.  Ice-cold air exploded in my lungs and the blackness came.

I awoke, strapped to a gurney in the middle of the street with an oxygen mask covered my face.  I breathed in greedily and coughed up putrid black ooze into the street.

The emergency medical technicians unstrapped me from the gurney and helped me sit up.  The world spun around me in a torrid array of vibrant colors.  Lea was next to me with tear streaks running down the black soot caked on her face.  Conner was behind us talking to a firefighter as black smoke billowed out of our apartment windows.

Tucker, Ethan and Brayden ran down the street followed by others, but I didn’t know who they were.  Voices were running over each other and I couldn’t make out any of what had happened.  I still wasn’t sure if any of it was real.

Lea sat on the gurney with me and held me in her arms. Shane stood in the distance with his eyes fixed on mine.

“They are saying this is definitely arson,” Lea whispered.  “The fire started in your room.”

“What?” I croaked.

She grabbed me tighter.  “Oh God, Grace, this is the scariest thing ever.  Somebody wants to kill you.  Kill you!”

Ethan ran up to the gurney, grabbed me in his huge arms, and cuddled me close.  “What would we do without you?  Are you okay?”

I shook my head.  Shane was still watching me.

Tucker grabbed me in his arms next, but he sat down on the gurney and pulled me into his lap.  I was so tired that I had no energy to even stop him.  Shane turned his head.

They talked me into riding in the ambulance to get checked out for smoke inhalation at the hospital.  I just wanted to jump in my jeep and leave as I had planned, but Lea and Tucker practically threw me in the back of the ambulance, strapping me on the gurney on the way in.

Lea rode with me.  She just sat next to me holding my hand and crying.

“How did I get out of there?” my voice cracked.

She looked at me and tilted her head, weighing if she should tell me.  “Shane carried you out.  But, I don’t think he wants you to know.”