Chapter 30
A SCREAMING tornado of fire gouged the endless sky above Ceren’s home, our home, polluting the rich blue with cinders and ash. The air stank of burning plastic and insulation, added to the rancid, rotten blood soaking Suit’s abused blue pinstripe and Two Backs’ vinegar-with-spoiled-lunch-meat reek.
My temple throbbed where I’d cracked it against an exposed oak root. My whole body ached with fading adrenaline, anger burning the last of the temporary strength to sustain that battle mania for just a little longer. My calves and thighs and abs promised to cramp, soon. My sight kept catching on irrelevant details: scattered mismatched and weathered aluminum lawn furniture; a child’s plastic tricycle tangled in an abandoned garden hose; red embers drifting from the sprawling oak can
