Chapter 39
Another warning blast of heat caused me to drop to the floor. This time, the flames that followed were so intense that despite my staying low, pain and a horrible stink let me know that I’d just lost my hair. I covered my head with my arms and felt the scorch of flames. The fire tore a path down my back, turned the metal clasps on my shoes into brands, and caused me to press against the floor as if trying to tunnel into it.
It was only a couple minutes, but agony made it feel like hours before the fire stopped. As soon as it did, I tried to get up and immediately cried out as the charred flesh all along the back of me split from the sudden movement. The pain was almost as awful as being burned, and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming as I waited for my body to heal.
What the fuck? an enraged voice suddenly howled in my mind.
Mircea. I hadn’t linked to him, but the boomerang response from my burns must have alarmed him into contacting me. I gritted my teeth again, trying to ignore him as I raced into the room beyond. I only had a few minutes before the next fire blasts. Barely enough time to find Vlad, let alone to break the spell on him.
Why are we on fire? Mircea continued to demand as I stumbled into the room, tripping over a body that I hadn’t seen due to the thick smoke. I ran into several more that the choking haze concealed as I rapidly made my way deeper into the room. The smoke was almost blinding, yet I thought I had glimpsed a flash of green between those heavy, noxious-smelling layers. Could that be the glow from Vlad’s eyes?
Answer me! Mircea roared loud enough to make my brain ache.
We’re on fire because of you! I snarled back, still doing that run-stumble-run-again thing as I made my way to what I hoped was Vlad and not some random remaining lights. We killed the necromancers you sent us after, but not before one of them slapped a memory spell on Vlad that’s NOT agreeing with him.
A memory spell? You meant the curse of endless regret? Mircea asked, sounding surprised.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner, I replied sarcastically.
I was now close enough to be positive that I’d found Vlad. I couldn’t see much of him except for his gaze, yet it cut through the smoke like tiny green lasers. When a shift in the air briefly cleared the smoke surrounding him, I saw there were piles of large, burnt objects in a circle around him, as if every piece of heavy equipment, furniture, nonstructural beams, and pieces of sheet metal had huddled close in a mute plea for him to make the fire stop.
I have a barricade around Vlad to protect him against the necromancers, Mencheres said. Looked like he’d telekinetically stripped this club bare to form it. It also explained the necromancers’ odd nakedness. Unable to get out, they must have turned their attention toward trying to kill the cursed object to stop the spell and its fiery consequences. They had to have attacked that barricade over and over to get all their clothes burned off in those fire-blast loops. Without Mencheres’s power holding these objects together as a makeshift fortress around Vlad, they would have succeeded in killing him, too.
Ah, cursed with an endless repeat of horrible memories, Mircea went on with vicious satisfaction. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.
A vicious satisfaction of my own coursed through me as a telltale blast of heat began to fill up the air. Before you continue to gloat, you might want to brace. We’re probably about to get fried again.
So saying, I dove to the floor, grabbing every large object I could get my hands on and piling them on top of me. From the stench, some were bodies, yet some were pieces of furniture and parts from Mencheres’s former barrier. Either way, they were all protection against the flames that now lit up the smoke with terrifying shades of orange right before another blast of fire roared out with the sound of an oncoming freight train.
My tactics covered most of my body, yet my feet were left exposed. Mircea’s scream echoed in my mind as those became engulfed by the flames that rushed over the room. I screamed, too, and fought against curling into the fetal position because I didn’t want it to shift more of my protective barrier off me.
Get out of there, get out, get out, get out, get out! Mircea howled, the words a frantic, mindless repeat.
I wanted to. Oh, so badly! Aside from the pain that shamed every previous torture I’d experienced, every survival instinct I had was howling as loud as Mircea now was, urging me to run for the nearest exit as soon as the flames stopped. Yet I wouldn’t. My need to reach Vlad was greater than even the awful pain and my fear of knowing that it would only get worse.
That need drove me to shove the now-charred bodies and debris off me as soon as the fire stopped. I hadn’t waited until after I healed, so every movement I made felt like it was splitting my feet open to the bone. But I didn’t stop. I had to save him. That’s why I ran toward Vlad instead of toward the greater safety of the other room, and ignored Mircea’s continued curses and screams as he felt all the same pain that I did.
Vlad had just straightened from his mime of putting the DVD into the player. He must have breathed in some of those glowing orbs since I last saw him because his glamour had vanished. The flames on his hands were now out, too, but that would only last a few minutes. I seized my chance, grabbing him by the shoulders and shooting electricity into him while I tried to make him see me instead of that awful memory on endless replay.
“Vlad, listen to me, none of this is real!” I said, shaking him as I continued to send more electricity into him.
Nothing. His ramrod-straight posture didn’t change and his emerald gaze seemed to stare straight through me. I increased the voltage, grateful that he was fireproof and the currents couldn’t harm him the way they did the necromancer that I had blasted apart earlier.