For an instant she wondered if his big secret was that he was a smoker. But she couldn’t work that out in her head. She’d never seen him smoke a cigarette, had never smelled cigarettes or pot or anything on him or his clothes and god knew they’d spent enough time together over the last few days.
But why would he be carrying around a lighter if he wasn’t a smoker?
He still hadn’t said anything.
The horse snorted, lifting his head to look at the barn, his ears pricked. He’d moved down the hill a ways, but not far enough for her to worry.
She looked back at Gabriel. “A lighter?” she said again, bewildered. Intuitively, she knew that the time for easy answers had come and gone. It’s my brother’s, or I found it in the woods.
Maybe something like, It’s dead, but it used to belong to my father.
Gabriel sighed and pushed the hair back from his face. “That,”
he said, “is part of my secret.”
The horse snorted again, pawing at the grass. He was probably ready to spook at nothing.
Layne sighed and rolled to her feet, zipping up her jacket as she moved. She caught the horse’s lead rope and kept her voice even, trying to figure out the mystery before Gabriel laid it on the line. But she had no idea. “Your secret has to do with a lighter?”
He reached out to take it from her hand. “No. My secret has to do with fire.”
And at that precise moment, the roof of the barn burst into flame.
CHAPTER 31
Gabriel stared at the flames shooting through the barn roof, blazing flares of orange and red. Smoke poured into the sky. There was plenty of fuel here hay and wood and probably dozens of things he couldn’t even imagine. This fire didn’t rage it celebrated. The entire building would be consumed in minutes.
Something was banging inside the barn. He heard screams, inhuman cries that made him want to clamp his hands over his ears.
Horses.
He could feel his heart in his throat. He’d been pulling power from the sunlight, his emotions riding high.
Had he done this?
This made his mistake in the woods look like a campfire.
Layne was all action, shoving at his chest. Her horse was dancing at the end of his rope, but Layne held fast. She was yelling, her voice hoarse.
He realized she’d been yelling at him for some time.
“Take him, damn it! Get him in the field!” She punched him in the chest again, shoving the rope at him.
Take him. The horse. Gabriel’s fingers closed on the rope automatically, just as the animal reared up, nearly jerking the rope free.
“Just get him through the gate!” Layne cried, pointing behind him.
Like he could do that without getting trampled. The horse had to weigh a thousand pounds, and he was dragging Gabriel in a circle, a snorting panicked mess of muscle and hooves.
He managed to get to the gate, somehow working the latch before the horse swung around, knocking Gabriel into the fence with his shoulder. Gabriel lost hold of the rope but before he could panic, the horse bolted through the opening, tearing along the fenceline with a thunder of hooves against turf.
But the animal was trapped in the field. Gabriel latched the gate.
When he turned around, Layne was gone.
He spun full circle. Gone.
Smoke poured from the barn doors now. Horses were still screaming, banging on the walls. Trapped. Layne couldn’t have . . . she wouldn’t But he was already running before those thoughts could complete themselves.
He made it to the barn doors just as Layne burst through the wall of smoke, coughing as she ran. She had a rope in each hand, two horses trailing behind her. Her face was streaked with soot already. One of the horses had bits of flaming debris on its back. Both were wide eyed, their steel shoes skidding on the concrete outside the barn.
“Layne!” he said. “Don’t ”
“Take them!”
Then she flung the ropes at him, and he was lost in a rush of surging horseflesh.
And she was back in the barn.
He couldn’t catch the ropes quickly enough. The horses bolted for the path behind the barn, the path where he’d first met Layne, the path that led to the woods and safety.
He had no idea whether she was right about the whole herd animal thing, but the woods were better than the barn. He let them go, then dove into the cloud of smoke after her.
After the sunlight, the darkness of the barn was almost absolute. Sparks dripped from the ceiling, catching at loose straw and wood shavings to create small fires in his path. But most of the fire was overhead, in the hayloft, a pulsing glow that called to him through the smoke.
You’re here! Come play.
“Layne!” he yelled. The roar of the fire was a living thing, muting his voice. Horses were still screaming in the darkness a sound that had started as panic and now carried mostly pain.
He shouted her name again, dropping to his knees where the smoke was less dense though it didn’t help. The fire had found something new to burn, and metal cans were bursting somewhere to his left. He could smell chemicals.
Settle, he pleaded.
He hadn’t realized how much Hunter’s presence helped, how much another Elemental let him focus his power.
This was too much for him to handle alone.
“Layne!”
Nothing.
How could he have done this? His control was no better than when he’d killed his parents. And it was going to happen again.
He swept the aisle, going from side to side, using his hands to learn if she’d collapsed in here somewhere. He found all kinds of items he couldn’t identify no Layne. He heard a crash, and before he could identify the source, something heavy ran into him, knocking him aside. Hooves hit his rib cage; his head hit the wall. Metal horseshoes scrabbled at the concrete flooring, and then the animal was gone, tearing into the sunlight.
Gabriel coughed and rolled back to his knees, ignoring the new pain in his chest, the starbursts flaring in his eyes. He deserved a broken rib or two. A concussion.
He deserved to be trampled. To death.
“Layne!”
Fire rained down more steadily now. Bits of wood struck his back, his cheeks, his hands.
There was only one horse banging now, from what he could tell. Had they all escaped? Or had some died from the smoke, the heat?
Would he find Layne, or just a body?
Stop it.
Larger parts of the ceiling fell behind him, flaming planks of wood crashing into the aisle. Fire leapt onto the walls, into the open stall doors, catching the sawdust bedding and turning it into a carpet of flame.
What if Layne wasn’t in the aisle at all, but inside one of the stalls?
Help me, he begged the fire. Where is she?
But this fire didn’t care about people. It cared about the burn, the destruction, the pure energy.
Metal struck concrete again, and Gabriel scrabbled out of the way. Smoke swelled around the running animal, revealing a white head, soot-covered flanks, and then a tail swallowed up by the smoke.No more banging.
Someone had let that horse out.
“Layne!” Gabriel dove forward. The horse had come down the center of the aisle, so he didn’t know which side to check first.
This new silence was terrifying.
He started left.
Closed door. Closed door. Open door but no Layne. Maybe it had been pushed open by one of the earlier horses.
The heat was scorching his lungs. He refused to think of what it must be doing to Layne’s.
He scurried across the aisle. Closed door. Closed door. Closed where the hell was she?
And then his hand came down on something solid.
A body.
She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. When he put his hands on her face, he felt something wet blood, running from her hairline. Gabriel was choking on smoke, on tears, on saying her name. He had her in his arms, but it was like clutching a doll.
Power breathed in the air around him. A fierce contradiction to the lifeless girl in his arms.
He wanted to lie down and die beside her.
But the sheer irony was that he could lie here forever, and the fire would never hurt him.
So much energy, right here for his taking. He could level the woods around them, could destroy the entire city.
But he couldn’t save one person.
He slid his hand against her throat, checking for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. His fingers slid through blood, and he choked on another sob.
Blood.
He remembered the night Becca’s father had tried to kill them all, when they’d been standing in three feet of water, and Chris had been so sure Becca was dead. They’d pulled her broken body from a mangled car. Blood had been everywhere. Chris had cut his hand on glass, and he’d put his blood to hers.
He’d fed his power into her.
She’d been healed.
She’d lived.
But Becca was an Elemental a Fifth, like Hunter. Had that been part of it? Had her body known to draw from Chris’s energy, to heal itself?
Gabriel didn’t know. But he was already pounding his knuckles into the rough concrete of the aisle, feeling the skin break.
He was already inciting the flames higher, pulling power from the fire, drawing strength from the inferno around him.
Energy coiled inside him, waiting for release. He felt strong, like he could tear this building down. Like he could destroy towns. Cities. Like energy could pour from his fingertips with the power of a hundred suns.
Gabriel coiled his hand into a fist and pressed his knuckles to her forehead, blood to blood.
And then he drove all that energy into her.
Layne’s body jerked so hard he almost dropped her. But then she didn’t move.
“Layne!” He caught her up against his chest. Her head fell against his shoulder. “Layne?”
Nothing.
He choked on another sob.
And then her body jerked again, not quite as violently.
She started coughing.
“Holy shit,” he said.
And then he was running, scrambling out of the barn before the raging fire he’d drawn could bring the whole thing down around them.
He got her into the grass, in the bright sunlight, where fifteen minutes ago they’d been lying together. Horses were clustered together along the fenceline, some inside the field, some out. He could see blood on some, could smell burned hair.
But he was more worried about Layne. Her clothes were blackened with soot, her face streaked with blood.
But he didn’t see a cut at her hairline. And she wasn’t coughing now, just drawing in big gasps of air.
He could hear sirens.
“Talk to me,” he said. It sounded like he was crying. “Layne please. Talk to me.”
She coughed then. “Are they . . . are they out?”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her some hadn’t gotten out.
He took a breath, ready to lie.
But she grabbed his arm, her nails digging into his skin.
“Truth,” she coughed.
He stared down at her. And shook his head.
She started crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said, choking on the words. “I’m so sorry.”
The sirens were getting closer. Flashing lights strobed through the trees at the end of the property.
He couldn’t be here.
“Layne,” he said. “I have to go.”
She stared back at him. Her eyes were piercing, alert through the tears.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I knew you’d run,” she said.
The words hit him like a fist. He fell back.
But she was right: he ran like hell.
CHAPTER 32
Gabriel didn’t see the trees, didn’t feel the air on his face. He didn’t feel the pain in his legs, the way the cool air burned his lungs. He just ran. It took every ounce of focus to keep moving forward, to run away from Layne.
He wanted to bolt back to her, to erase that look from her eyes. To hold her hand while the firefighters turned his flames into smoke and bits of cinder.
He kept feeling the way her body had hung in his arms, lifeless.