Head Full of Ghosts

Chapter 28 - The Fire and the Flame

There was a ringing - loud, persistent, high-pitched, and shrill. Eli felt like he had heard it before, but he couldn't be sure. The ringing was painful, drowning out all other thoughts until all that remained was pain and the shrill sound of the tone sustaining inside his head.

Then it was gone, dropping down suddenly and without warning to more tolerable levels, and suddenly there were other sounds. And movement. Lots of movement. Sounds that we're rumbling and crackling and thundering. Movement that was dancing, and frantic, and waving.

Fire, he realized. There was fire.

Now he was even more confused. His last memory had been of the slaughter happening in the vampire nest. That nest had been inside a building made of stone and metal, and stone and metal didn't burn. For there to be fire there needed to be...

"Wood," Eli said out loud.

Suddenly there were hands grabbing him, pulling on him, lifting him to his feet. Eli was still too stunned to really resist, and let himself be pulled. When he was once again upright the man pulling him slapped him on the shoulder a couple times and said, "You okay, buddy?"

Eli looked at the man and realized he was the same man Eli had been about help up a minute earlier. Being on the floor most have left him more removed from the explosion, allowing him to recover faster.

"Wood," Eli said again.

The man narrowed his eyes in concern. "What?"

Eli motioned at the fires burning around them. "The room is made of wood."

The man nodded his head, still not really following. "Yeah, right, and most of it's burning now. Your friends on the outside finally joining the fight on the inside, I'm guessing."

More explosions rocked the room, and a giant, burning pillar of wood fell down nearby, crashing into the ground with a loud roar that made both men wince and shrink back. Eli was close enough that he could feel the heat from the flames on his exposed skin.

"We need to get out of here," Eli said, numbly.

"No kidding," said the other man, who turned and hurried away.

Eli started to follow, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the burning pillar. It just made no sense in his head. Why was this room made of wood, when the creatures had avoided it literally everywhere else in the compound?

"Eli!"

Eli turned at the sound of his name, but his eyes had adjusted to the brightness of the flames and when he turned away from that he found himself staring into only murky blackness. He blinked a few times and his vision cleared just enough for him to see a figure moving towards him in the dark. He shrank back a step, weary for a fight, but when the figure drew close enough to enter the pool of light from the fire he saw that it was Aaliyah.

"Eli!" she cried again as she reached him. She grabbed him by the shoulder, hard, as if to steady him. "We need to go. The vampires retreated when the explosions started, but they're likely to regroup and attack again. We need to take the chance and get outside."

"Yeah," Eli agreed, giving a slow nod of his head, "yeah."

"So let's go!" Aaliyah prompted, and that seemed to finally wake Eli up.

"Right," Eli agreed, giving a quicker, more certain nod of his head this time. "Let's go."

He took a couple steps forward and collapsed to his hands and knees.

His entire body was shaking. He felt that even holding himself up this much was too difficult and he wanted to simply collapse on the ground and give up. He felt like throwing up. He hoped he didn't throw up first and then collapse.