Fire's Last Descendant

Chapter 15

                 ••• Chapter 15 •••

       We both hurl ourselves out of the car. "My sister! Sam!" Chase shouts. And he does the stupidest and scariest thing I've ever seen a boy do.

       He jumps into the fire.

       I know love makes people do crazy things. I don't necessarily love the girls and Chase, but they saved my life. Like, twice. So I jump in after him.

       Ya know hot hot it is on the hottest day of summer? Now multiply that by 5, then add ten, then add pinpricks of pain that come every single nano-second. That's what the fire feels like. I'm surrounded by a wall of fire, and try to follow Chase. Once I find him and the door, I am relieved to see the safe house only up in smoke, not flames. Yet.

       Chase runs to the training room, and I follow him. I see Callan collapsed on the floor, with Sam holding her friend up underneath her arms. Sam is coughing out smoke. I am dismayed to see that some of the training equipment is burning.

       Chase takes Callan from Sam without a word. He holds his sister like she's nothing but a rag doll. As soon as the unconscious girl is out of her grip, Sam is running around, grabbing all of the weapons that she can.

       "Sam? Sam what—" smoke fills my lungs and I am forced to cough after adding, "do you think we are doing?"

      "We need to defend ourselves," she insists.

       "Do we need to defend ourselves of get out of here alive?" I demand her. She stops collecting weapons and runs forward with the weapons threatening to fall out of the crook of her arm.

       A flaming piece of the safe house falls in front of her. She dodges it and runs out of the door. In the living room, fire surrounds us in a huge wall of bright orange. There isn't a way out.

       "We're trapped! Don't ya'll have a fire extinguisher somewhere?" I shout over the roaring and crackling of the fire.

       "Don't you think I've tried that? This fire was cast by a creature from myths. It's so strong, it's like every fire-breathing creature blew fire on it at once," she says, then coughs out more smoke. The smoke isn't as heavy in here, and I can see grey ashes coating everyone's hair.

       I search the room for the exit. I see the dark edge in the wall and run towards it. When Chase and I had run in a few seconds ago, only the floor was covered in small fires. The door is hot on the other side, but it isn't totally covered in fire. "Guys! Through here, now!" 

       I push the door open. Chase runs through first, and I can see Callan's bright red hair dangling over his shoulder. Sam jumps over the flames after her friends, and we run through the white room.

       Chase runs to the sedan and hastily lays his sister down in the back seat. Sam jumps through the driver's side, then Chase climbs in the seat next to Callan. I run around to the passenger-side door, only to see Sam getting back out.

       "What are you doing?" Chase demands from the back seat. 

       Sam answers, "The gorgon's blood! I've got to get it!"

       In two seconds flat, I can only gather two reasons as to why Sam would need it. The first one was the fact that the blood could melt off of the weapons Sam had collected and shoved into the trunk; we'd need refills. Second, if there were any pictures of Sam and Mike out there, it was likely they'd been burned. The gorgon's blood had been his idea, and now that he was gone, and the pictures were burning, that was all that she had left of him. It meant a lot to her.