The smoke detectors kept screeching, pounding into his head. The blackness in the basement was absolute.
Now he had no idea which way to go.
He crawled.
It felt like he spent hours looking. He actually found the back door again, glass and splinters rough under his palms. Somewhere near the wall his hands found something he couldn’t identify—something small. Something soft and pliable. Fur?
Holy crap. A dead cat.
He gritted his teeth and kept crawling, trying not to think what it’d be like to put his hand down on a dead body.
The thought almost made him turn back, but he didn’t.
Finally his hands found a raised surface, then another.
Up he went.
Fire everywhere. It welcomed him onto the main level with a streak of flame across the ceiling.
You’ve come. Come to play.
No one could be alive in here. He could barely recognize the normal shapes of furniture. Everything was ablaze. Another staircase across the room was so fully consumed that he could no longer see steps. The heat seared his lungs with every breath. Gabriel tried to rein in the fire, to force it to his will, but it fought him.
The fire was effectively giving him the finger.
The house was still standing. There was still more to burn. If he pushed hard, the fire would push back.
Like in the woods, the fire wouldn’t hurt him, but if the whole place came crashing down—well, it would hurt like a bitch. If he stayed alive to hurt at all.
“Easy,” he said. Maybe he could try this another way. He held his hands out, placating, feeding it a little of his own energy. “Look. We can play.”
He felt a pause, like the fire was considering it.
Gabriel fed it a little more, sharing a bit more. “I’ll play, too.”
At first, he thought it was going to backfire. Flames curled closer, spiraling around his feet.
But then he realized the fire along the walls had died down. The flames had calmed, except those near his feet.
He reached down and scooped up a palm full of fire, feeding it energy until it burned like a torch without a base. The fire liked this, tasting his energy, rolling like a cat in the sunshine.
The thought of the dead cat turned his stomach, and he forced the image out of his mind.
“Someone else is here,” he said. “Show me where.”
You. You play.
Gabriel closed his fist, killing the flame in his palm. “If I play your game, you play mine.”
The fire hesitated, and Gabriel worried he’d lose what little control he’d gained.
But then a streak of flame started off across what must have been carpeting, reminding him of those old Looney Tunes cartoons when he was a kid. The kind where there’d be a stick of dynamite with a really long wick, so the flame could race along until boom.
He probably shouldn’t think about explosions.
The fire led him toward that destroyed staircase, and he swallowed. If there were people upstairs, he had no idea how he’d get to them.
But the fire veered left, into a room that had been a kitchen.
A little kitchen, too. The walls weren’t as badly burned, but the linoleum was warped and cracked from the heat.
Play.
“I’m not playing,” he snapped, feeding his anger to the fire. “Where are they?”
Here. Here. Here. Play!
Jesus, he was having an argument with fire. Maybe he should have kept the oxygen tanks.
The line of flame ran straight up the center of the kitchen. No one was here. The sink, the oven, the dishwasher—yeah, that was a hell of a lot of help. A pantry door hung open; smoke billowed out. Unidentifiable boxes of food were on fire.
Here.
The fire sounded desperate and excited, like it wanted to please him—it just wasn’t sure how.
God, he couldn’t think with these wailing smoke detectors.
Here!
He gave an aggravated sigh and started throwing open cabinets.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
The fire started another imaginary wick and ran to the back wall of the kitchen again.
The refrigerator? The door was hanging half off—the seal would have melted in this kind of heat. Gabriel yanked it anyway.
Nothing.
The cabinets under the sink.
Nothing.
The dishwasher, maybe?
Nothing.
The oven. Would someone climb in an oven?
He checked. No. Not in this house, anyway.
Another imaginary wick. Fire caught at the pantry door.
The open pantry. Why would the door be open? From the flames, it looked like the shelves started three feet above the ground. The pantry wasn’t that deep; even with the smoke, he’d be able to see someone under the shelving.
And they wouldn’t be alive anyway.
But when he stepped closer, the fire blazed around him, dancing excitedly.
Gabriel stuck out a hand. He felt the frame of the pantry, the inner walls, spongy and fragile from the damage.
And on the back wall, his hand found a handle.
Without thinking, he pulled. The wall seemed to swing forward on a hinge. He couldn’t figure it out. A hidden trash can?
He stuck a hand into the opening. Metal sides, some kind of vertical tunnel.
You idiot. A laundry chute.
The upstairs was completely consumed by fire. This level wasn’t much better. Would someone go down a laundry chute? He could never fit. It would have to be someone tiny.
He thought of that anguished scream from the front lawn.
A child.
Holy shit. He needed to get back to the basement.
The stairs were on fire now, almost giving way beneath his weight. The basement was still a pit of blackness; he had no idea how he’d find a small kid. Based on the location of the kitchen, he slid away from the stairs, on hands and knees again.
He found the dead cat again.
Thank god he hadn’t eaten dinner.
But here was a door, the knob cool. He threw it wide.
More darkness. He’d kill for a light.
And just like that, fire swept down the stairs, slithering around his feet and into the opening, gorging on the fresh oxygen. A laundry room. Fire raced up the bare insulation that lined the walls, tearing into a rack of shirts hanging by the ironing board.
Raging toward a pile of sheets and towels.
He almost couldn’t make out the crumpled figure on top of them.
He dashed through the flames and grabbed hold of what felt like an arm, yanking the body into his arms. Someone small, fragile, all slim legs and knobby joints. Long hair—a girl. He felt satin, like a nightgown. She weighed nothing and hung limply against his chest.
Was she breathing? He couldn’t tell. It was too hot to tell.
Fire grabbed the nightgown. He crushed it in his fist. More leapt from the wall to make another attempt.
He had to get her out.
But he had to get low, under the smoke. He clutched her to his chest with one arm and crawled with the other. Once he got out of the laundry room, the fire followed him. Flaming ash began to fall from the ceiling, sparking in his hair and on her face.
If the ceiling fell in, they were done for.
The smoke detectors fell silent.
Gabriel hesitated. He could hear himself breathing. He couldn’t hear her.
Then a crash shook the house and sent beams slamming into the floor.
The second level had fallen into the first.
And now it was going to fall into the basement.
He ran. Shoulder first, sliding his feet along the floor as fast as he could. He hit walls. Beams. Something cracked against his helmet, but he kept going.