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.
He’d killed someone again.
Did it matter that he’d brought her back?
Emotion gripped his throat and almost made it impossible to run.
He pushed through it. Maybe his ligaments would tear and offer some piercing agony. Maybe his heart would give out and he’d collapse in the middle of the trail.
He had no idea how long it took him to get home. The four miles simultaneously felt like they took all day and no time at all. He was just suddenly at the tree line behind his house, gasping for breath with his forehead braced against the bark of an old maple.
Now he could feel the sun, bleeding through the trees, feeding energy into his skin. It still had to be early: The woods around him were silent, as if even the morning wildlife wouldn’t bear witness to his sorrow.
As if he was worth it.
The Guides were right. He should have been killed long before he could cause this kind of damage.
The morning air felt all wrong. Too crisp, too clean, too pure. He could smell the soot on his clothes.
And then he was puking, or his body was trying to, dry heaves ransacking his empty stomach. He didn’t remember falling, but his knees were grinding into the leaves and underbrush, his forearms barely strong enough to support his upper body against the base of the tree.
He was crying, too—probably had been for some time. His eyes felt raw; his throat felt like someone had him in a headlock.
And he was alone.
He put his forehead against the tree and choked on another breath. He clenched his damaged fist and slammed it into the bark of the tree. And again.
Alone.
A hand closed on his arm. “Gabriel. Gabriel.”
Nick. Gabriel turned his head and stared at his twin, wide-eyed and kneeling in the leaves like he’d been there for a while. His mirror image in a clean sweatshirt and cutoff sweatpants. No tears. No soot. No blood. Perfect.