Born of Fire

Incinerated

Panic gripped his chest when Kenna was knocked back by the force of the shot.

Please, God, I can’t lose any more family.

Darren stood there in shock and fear as the blood spread out beneath his daughter. He had only just met her, but he had lost so many, and finding another person to cherish filled him with hope. Now that hope was bleeding onto the laminate floor in front of him.

His eyes darted up as a deathly scream tore through his thoughts. The witch was bleeding too, the human girl in the wheelchair backed away with a bloody knife in her hands. He watched the witch fly through the window, shattering the glass, and his Alpha raced after in blood-thirsty pursuit.

He looked down at Kenna and realized he was the only one here who could help her and dropped to his knees by her side. He positioned her head and looked into her eyes, his medical training kicking in. He motioned to Rochelle to take the children outside; they shouldn’t have to witness this. Their memories would likely be wiped clean of their ordeal, but emotions were a little more difficult to alter.

“Look at me,” he commanded Kenna as he tore open her shirt to get a better look at her wound. It pierced her right breast at an odd angle and he swore, nearly losing his nerve when he rolled her over for a moment to check for an exit wound. The left side of her back was destroyed, and from the looks of it her chest cavity might as well have gone through a blender. He would bet anything both her lungs had been hit, as well as her heart and major arteries.

She looked up at him in confusion which turned into something else, hope maybe. Something he tried hard to hold onto.

Jacob knelt beside her and held one of her bloodied hands up to his cheek.

“Is she going to be okay?” The old guard had faith in him too, but it was unfounded. Darren knew the man had seen similar wounds before in battle and could guess the probable outcome.

“I believe the bullet struck both lungs and her vena cava, she’s hemorrhaging internally as well as drowning in her own blood. I need to slow the blood flow and help her breath long enough for her body to start healing itself,” he told Jacob. Talking aloud helped him maintain focus. He pulled his driver’s license from his wallet and grabbed some electrical tape from a bookshelf behind him and hoped her lungs weren’t as bad off as he thought. He affixed three sides to the hole in her chest. Although it wasn’t easy, he was sweating from exertion and effort and the hole was bigger than it should be.

She gurgled something at him and blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. He fought back a sob as her eyes fluttered shut and her heart stopped beating. She was bleeding too badly and chest compressions would only make it worse. There was nothing he could do, but he couldn’t keep himself from trying.

Jacob sat back and wept for his adopted daughter and held her hand to his cheek.

He knew the moment she was gone. He knew it wouldn’t help, but he sat on top of her, straddling her stomach, and began pumping her heart. He looked at her face for signs of life. She looked so much like him and Rochelle. How had he not recognized her as his own?

Her heart had stopped beating for a while now, but he kept up the chest compressions in the vain hope it would start again. He didn’t want to believe she was dead, she was still so warm. Her body should have gone cold by now, but instead it felt almost feverish. The house wasn’t level and the blood had pooled near her head, soaking her blonde hair and dyeing it a grizzly red.

Her body felt hot beneath his hands. The blood stopped flowing from her wound and it felt hot, too. Like

a faucet turned to the highest setting. He stopped and stared in confusion, his hand resting against her

uncomfortably warm chest. Soon he couldn’t stand the heat and had to back away, the realization dawning on him.

“Get out!” he yelled at Jacob and dragged the man from the house behind him. Rochelle was sitting in the

car with the girls, holding them while they cried. She looked up from him in the back seat and gave him

a questioning look. Her eyes grew wide in astonishment and he turned to see bright blue flames blazing

through the shattered window. They grew larger, fanning out of the window up and up until they licked

the roof. Then, as quickly as they started, they diminished, but the mobile home had already caught fire

and it was quickly spreading.

“Dad, I don’t have my phone with me! Call 9-1-1!” Rochelle yelled to him from the backseat.

Fires were dangerous in this part of the southwest. He had been so distraught over Kenna’s death that he

hadn’t considered the hazards a fire would cause. They spread so quickly in this area. He patted his

phone in his pocket, but a warm hand settled on his shoulder.

“I’ll take care of it,” Khal said.

The fire witch walked up to the blazing trailer, heedless of the smoke and heat, and took a deep breath,

pulling the flames into his mouth. The smoke and fire whirled round and round like a cyclone as he

sucked it in. It had already spread through most of the home, and fought the magic that attempted to tame it.

Khal raised both hands and motioned his arms as if he were gathering water to splash the flames.

gathered to the center of the blaze and continued gathering into the cyclone that swirled around the man.

Finally, he had sucked in the last of the fire. With a wave of his arms, the remaining black embers flew into

the air and fell like a waterfall into his mouth. He tilted his head back, eyes shut tight as he devoured the last of the ash and embers.

After the last of the fire disappeared into his mouth, he turned and Darren’s breath caught at the sight of his black eyes.

Darren pulled his attention away from the creepiness of the man’s eyes and ran to the trailer, heedless of debris and danger. They provided him with a spark of hope, for he had seen a similar fire when he killed the witch so many years ago.

He rushed through the door and threw the burned toppled furniture aside haphazardly. Blackened plaster and insulation hung in chunks from the ceiling and littered the floor. Nothing was left untouched by the fire in the main part of the home and the walls were singed from the flames. A large gaping hole occupied the space where Kenna’s body had been, its edges darkened with grime. His eyes watered as he peered through the remaining smoke down to the concrete foundation below the home. He saw only the charred remnants of flooring and half of a chair.

She wasn’t there.

Despair threatened to replace the hope he clung to so desperately as he got up and began to move things around in search of her body.

He growled at the fire witch as Khal tried to pull him from the home where the ceiling was dangerously close to collapsing.

“Help me find her!” he yelled.

“She’s dead, man. I’m sorry,” Khal said.

“You don’t understand, she did the flame up thing. She’s coming back.”

“All fire witches incinerate upon death,” he said sadly. Darren was aware of this, he’d treated several of them.

“When I killed her mother she burst into flames. She…” he choked on smoke and tears and allowed Khal to lead him from the house.

“I can’t give up yet,” he said.

He looked at the tear-filled eyes of his other daughter, the one he had to raise, and his heart ached. She was sitting halfway in the car with a sobbing Sadie on her lap and held Charlotte’s hand. The poor girl looked pale and frightened and her bald head gleamed with sweat.

The scent of fear mingled with the smoke and burnt metal and wood. There was too much fear for him to pinpoint where it all came from, but he bet a fair amount came from the two little girls in the car.

He squared his shoulders, narrowly avoided drying his eyes and getting soot in them and walked to the car.

“Come here sweetheart,” he told little Sadie. “Let me get a look at you and make sure you’re not hurt.”

Rochelle pulled the girl's arms from around her neck and handed her over. Darren patted and rubbed her back for a moment and examined her arms and legs.

She didn’t appear to have any outward injuries but was in shock. He handed her back to his daughter and walked around the car to scoot in through the other door.

Charlotte was also trembling in fear and shock, but outwardly she seemed to be holding herself together pretty well. He supposed facing death most of her life contributed to her steel-like nerves.

Her bones and muscles were frail from the disease that racked her body and she would need a cat scan, or maybe an MRI just to be safe. They had a machine at Ben’s house that he used to treat pack members. He didn’t want to risk exposing things to humans if they didn’t have to.

He looked back toward the small trailer in grief. He didn’t want to leave if Kenna were to come back like that monster did. If she did, and the thing came looking for her…

“I’ll stay here and wait for you to return,” Khal told him.

He gave a relieved nod and looked at Jacob.

“I would like to stay, too. I could use some time,” Kenna’s adopted father said, his face pulled down in grief. He looked like he was about to break down into tears. Darren wanted to join him.

He had time for that later, though admittedly there was still that small shred of hope that he wouldn’t need to. Regardless, these children needed him.

“I’ll drive,” he told Rochelle, who reached over to pull the car door shut. She stayed behind, cuddling the girls.

He didn’t see Ben on the drive to the house. He was worried about his Alpha. He didn’t know if he wanted him to find the witch and kill it, or if he feared for his Alpha’s life. Or perhaps he wanted to find a way to kill the thing himself.

Yes, the beast within him growled. He definitely wanted to kill her himself.

Rochelle carried Sadie inside as Darren lifted Charlotte. He worried that the girl was far lighter than she should be and wished he had a true Healing gift like a couple of European witches. They were forbidden from Healing humans that weren’t related to someone of the Slekt, but everyone has a price.

“Call Brooke,” he told her. Even if the local witch ensured she didn’t remember the events from today, the stress would still take a toll on her already fragile health. Maybe Ben could work something out.

Sadie’s whimpers were more sporadic now, but each one tugged at his heart. Rochelle sat the little girl on the couch in the family room while Darren prepped Charlotte for her x-ray in his medical room in the back near the garage.

It was supposed to be a storage room but Ben had it outfitted with fluorescent lights and several pieces of medical machinery. Various instruments filled the drawers in the cabinets on one end of the room, a hospital bed and a surgeons table took up the space in the middle.

“Do you feel any pain, sweetie?”

He always called little girls “sweetie” or “sweetheart.” He started that with Rochelle, when she was a toddler. She would always look up at him with big beautiful eyes and a sweet little smile. He had learned to fear that smile; it meant she had done something and wanted to distract him from whatever brand of mayhem she was trying to cover up.

Before she was mobile, he would call her “little angel”. Little girls might be sweet and pretty, but his daughter had taught him they were not angels.

“Just the cut,” she told him and held her hand out for him to look at.

“Do you remember how this happened?”

“I think it was when she knocked my hands away, I was shaking so I had to use both,” she told him, her lip trembling and eyes leaking tears.

“You’re being brave,” he said as he tapped her chin lightly with his index finger. “I’ll get that bandaged for you.”

He wanted to do more to comfort her, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring a smile to his face.

“Kenna was your daughter?” She looked at him sadly as he retrieved supplies from the cabinet closest to them.

“She was my biological daughter, yes.” He was vaguely surprised. His voice sounded so steady.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” her voice broke a little and she reached out to touch his arm briefly with her free hand.

The cut wasn’t deep and took little time to bandage.