Heroes 'Til Curfew (Talent Chronicles #2) (41 page)

He’s already taken a few beatings tonight,
he’s exhausted, he’s out-numbered, and he’s probably out of his
mind over what happened to you and not knowing where you are. He’ll
never be able to think straight.

Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.

I focused on the doorway again. Trina was
gone. I was so wrapped up in angst over Dylan that I didn’t even
see her leave. Now I heard the door open downstairs. I imagined I
even heard the flick of the lighter and the thud of it on a carpet
in the entry, even though that was probably impossible. I tried to
see it in my mind, a door, a lighter, a carpet. I tried to grasp
the lighter, to move the carpet. But I’d never been in the house
before. My mind had no proper path to take. My Talent couldn’t work
like that.

Okay, okay. Calm down. Try something else.
Think back to the roof. What you did on the roof. If you can make
this floor ripple like that roof, it’s not gonna matter what’s
nailed down to it, right?

I tried to reach down inside me, tried to
recreate that kind of rage and let it flow outward. But I couldn’t
hold it. Couldn’t focus. I let it go, panting with exhaustion and a
pain that almost blinded me.

And smelled smoke.

Chapter 19

Dylan

Eric’s car bounced up onto the curb and I
was out of it before it stopped. When I called him, he picked me up
before I’d covered less than half the distance from Marco’s lair,
so I’d had a few minutes to catch my breath before we arrived at
the subdivision near the church, at the house from my nightmares.
Smoke was already rising into the sky.

“Dylan, slow down, man! You can’t just go
charging in there. Look at that door.” Flames were coming out
underneath the door, licking upward, leaving black streaks of
bubbled paint on the surface. We could see flames beyond the
windows. “We gotta try the back.”

We raced around the back of the house, but
it was the same story. I jumped up on the back porch and went for
one of the windows. The glass burned my hand when I touched it. I
was about to yank off my jacket to wrap around my hand when Eric
grabbed me from behind.

I struggled against him, but he was stronger
than I thought. We staggered back and went over porch rail, rolling
in the grass.

“Let me go, you son of a bitch! I have to
get in that house!”

“Dylan, calm down. You gotta think, okay?
You break out that window, it’s gonna be backdraft, right? The
fire’s gonna rush for the air, blow up right in your face. Come on,
stop acting like an idiot and think for a minute!”

“I don’t have a minute! Joss is
in
there!” He pressed my chest into the lawn, lying on my back with my
arms pinned between us. I looked back up at the house and saw the
porch as a possibility. “Okay, what if you boost me up onto the
porch roof? I’ll go in through one of the windows up there.”

He looked up. “Come back here a second.” He
let me up, but kept hold of me while we stepped back for a better
look at the house. “I don’t see anything through those windows, but
that doesn’t mean there’s no fire on the second floor. If I boost
you up there, how am I supposed to get up?”

“You’re not. You’re going to call for help.
Then I need you to get over to Joss’s house to check on her
family.”

“Fuck you, I’m not letting you go in there
by yourself. You’re in full-on idiot mode.”

I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Eric,
please, just do what I’m asking you.”

He groaned and made for the porch. I climbed
up on to the railing, then onto his shoulders, got a handhold as he
took my boot and helped lever me up over the edge.

“I’m up. Get going!” I yelled down, without
even looking to see if he complied. I didn’t really think he’d be
stupid enough to try to find a way into the house. He was a good
friend but not suicidal. And I wasn’t really worried about Joss’s
family either. They were never really the targets.

Below me, something sounded like an
explosion. “What was that?”

“That window just blew out. Maybe she left a
can of gas near it or something. The porch is going up, dude. Find
a way in or come back down, just get the hell off that roof!”

“You okay?” I called down. The windows were
locked, so I had to break one out to climb in.

“When I finish picking this glass out of my
hair. Worry about yourself.”

I was in a bedroom. It was barely furnished
and didn’t look lived in, hazy with the smoke that was coming in
from vent on the floor.

I started yelling for Joss, thought maybe I
heard an answer, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. The
closed door wasn’t hot, so I threw it open and was immediately
choking on thick, black smoke. I fell to my knees and gasped for
air. A hallway ran around the top of the stairs which opened out
directly across from me. That whole area was in flames. Probably a
good bet she was in one of those rooms.

“Joss?!”

“Dylan, get the hell out of this house!”
There was a fit of coughing. “Go back the way you came.”

I was grinning like an idiot, glad I was
already on my knees because I think I would have fallen over with
relief at that point. “Not the boss of me, Marshall! Anyway, no can
do. I think the back porch is about to collapse.” I called out,
coughing some as I crawled along the hallway toward the fire.

“Dylan, please, just get out.” Now that I
was closer I could hear tears in her voice, the break of a sob. I
wiped my sleeve across my face. I’d never felt such intense heat.
Every breath I took felt like it was burning me from the inside.
But I knew where she was now. If I just ran it, was there any
chance I’d get through all that without my clothes catching?
Without bringing more danger into the room where she was
trapped?

There was a door to my left. I opened it and
fell inside, closing it behind me and trying to catch my breath on
air that wasn’t so hot or full of smoke. I crawled over to a
bookcase, stood and pushed it over, dumping books and stuff,
adjustable shelves and all, onto the floor. It was made of that
particle board crap that weighs more than wood because it’s half
glue. I opened the door and dragged it out into the hallway,
shoving it facedown onto the floor, over the flames.

I used the bookcase like a bridge, raced
across it and jumped through the doorway, throwing myself onto the
floor and rolling, just in case. When I came up, I found Joss
sitting up, a chain wrapped around her upper body binding her to
the thick stiles of a mission style headboard. The random thought
chased through my head that I should not know that much about
furniture. I kicked away a fabric-covered brick doorstop and
slammed the door on the flames.

“Stop trying to talk,” I snapped as I made
for the bed and started examining the chain. “Do you really think
I’m just going to agree with you? Up and leave you here? Did you
hit your head or something?”

“Actually, yeah. I think I have a
concussion.” Her voice was way hoarse and she couldn’t go two words
without coughing. “I didn’t have enough Talent to move that brick
to shut the door.”

Awesome.
“I said no talking. There’s
not enough air.” I swiped up a piece of cloth from the bed. It was
already tied.
A blindfold, maybe.
“I’m going to tie this
around your mouth and nose, maybe it’ll help you breathe while we
figure out this chain problem.”

“’Kay.”

“There’s a padlock down here. That’s what’s
holding the chain tight. We just have to break it.” I grabbed up
the brick off the floor, brought it back to the bed and smashed at
the lock, wincing at the fact that I was hitting Joss through the
chain, even though she didn’t complain. But it wasn’t doing any
good.

“Maybe you’re not hitting it hard enough.
Don’t worry about hurting me.”

“I’m not. I mean, maybe I’m not getting a
good angle at it. Or maybe it’s just too good a lock. I think I
should turn the bed on its side, get us closer the floor while I
work on this.”

“It’s nailed down. Trina said everything in
the room is nailed down to make it harder for me to use my
Talent.”

I stroked her hair, just to touch her while
I tried to think what to do. Normally, nailing down the furniture
wouldn’t even matter. It was a stupid mistake on Trina’s part, or
would have been, if Joss hadn’t been injured. Did Trina do that to
her on purpose?

This is not what you need to be thinking
about.

“Is there a hammer?” Joss asked.

“Huh?”

“From when she nailed down the furniture, is
there a hammer in the room?”

I went to go look through the drawers. “I’m
not going to get bent out of shape that even with a head injury
you’re still smarter than I am.”

“You’re still better looking.”

“If I have to talk to you about talking
again, there’s gonna be trouble.” I couldn’t talk without a
coughing fit now.

“Oh, well, if there’s gonna be
trouble...
”

I abandoned the desk and went for the
dresser wondering if her sense of humor was from the head injury,
lack of oxygen, or stress. A big, old wooden hammer with a manly
heft to it lay in the top drawer next to a smelly lace pillow.

If I couldn’t break the lock, maybe I could
smash up the headboard with hammer. I held the brick between the
chains and the lock. and went at the lock with a vengeance.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Joss rasped when
the lock finally broke. “I’m surprised it didn’t give out of sheer
terror.”

“You are seriously worrying me,” I told her
as I pulled the lock free of the chains and then gave in to a fit
of coughing that took me to my knees next to the bed.

Joss was beside me a few moments later,
pulling the neck of my shirt up over my nose. “You need to hold
this up here, okay? If you pass out from the smoke we’re done for
’cause I can’t carry you out of here.”

“Yeah, okay.”

The lamp in the corner flickered and went
out.

“I’m surprised it stayed on that long,” Joss
said. We were totally in the dark. “Listen, I’m dizzy. Kind of
disoriented. Do you know where the exits are?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay, going into the house is probably a
last resort, right? Can you use the hammer to get at the
windows?”

“I’ll try. Wait here.” I felt my way along
the wall until I felt the curtains under my hand. They reeked of
gasoline.
That bitch.
But I didn’t have time to curse Trina
for being evil right now. I wedged the claw of the hammer between
the plywood and the wall and shoved, felt it start to give way.
This is gonna work!

Suddenly the handle plunged forward and I
fell against the wall as something heavy landed on my foot.

“Ow! Fuck!”

“What happened?”

“I just pried the head right off the piece
of shit hammer!” I yelled, hurling the handle across the room in
frustration. We were so close.

“It’s okay, we’ll figure something else out.
What’s outside the door?”

“Great balls of fire,” I said, crawling
across to the door and putting my hand against it. “It’s pretty
hot. When I came through before there were flames all around this
end of the hallway. I had to put down a bookcase to use as a bridge
to get across.”

“We’re gonna talk about that later. Maybe
there’s a pamphlet: Idiocy and You.”

“Joss…”

“When you broke
your
head it was all
‘tennis balls in the soup.’ Payback’s a bitch.”

Yeah, okay. Or you’re just kind of
hysterical because you don’t really think we’ll get out of here.
And that sucks.

I crawled back across the room to the
window. Having to pause to cough wasn’t helping and I was getting
disoriented in the dark. It took me a few moments to find the top
of hammer and make my way back to the door.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna use what’s left of the hammer to
pry the hinges out of this cheap-ass hollow door. Because if I try
to kick it free, it’s probably just going to break in half.”

“That would be hot.”

“Marshall, would you please stop
speaking?”

“Yeah, you’re right. This is so not
appropriate.”

The hinges came out of the door too easily.
Not good. The door being even lower quality than I thought meant
that it wasn’t going to give us much protection at all when tried
to use it to smother the flames outside the room. But I couldn’t
think of anything else. The other pieces of furniture weren’t that
big, and I didn’t know how hard it would be work them out of place
since Trina had nailed them down. I made my way back over to
Joss.

“The door’s free. I’m going to pull it out
and put it down over the bookcase which is probably burned through
by now. If we go quickly, we should be able to make it to the other
end of the hall, to one of the bedrooms that’s not burning yet.
We’ll find a way down from there. The rest of the windows aren’t
boarded up. If worse comes to worst, we’ll jump. Okay?”

“Yeah, sounds great.”

I didn’t know if that was real Joss or
slightly crazy, not at all herself Joss, and that didn’t give me a
lot of confidence in my plan. But we were both coughing like crazy
and it was all we had.

I wrapped my hands up in my jacket sleeves
and pulled the door in slowly, keeping Joss behind me. The new
source of air pulled a burst of flame through the opening, igniting
the outside of the door and my jacket. Panicked, I pressed forward
with the plan, angling the door through and throwing it blindly out
into the hall, along with my jacket.

I reached back and grabbed Joss who was
backing away from the flames. She protested, but I yanked her along
with me into the hall. It was so much worse than I had imagined.
The fire was burning along the skinny carpets that lined the
hallway. It had jumped from one to another so that most floor and
walls were now covered in flame. The heat was like nothing I had
ever imagined. There was only one spot it hadn’t reached, but there
was flame between our perch on the door and that spot of relative
safety.