Shadows Rising (Darkness Falls Book 2)

Chapter Forty-Two

Apparently I was out of it long enough for the fire crew to put out the blaze, for the next time I opened my eyes, the grumbling roar of flames had subsided.

I blinked, focusing on a white roof above me, and realised I was in the back of an ambulance. A plastic oxygen mask sat on my face and I pulled it off, wanting to breathe clean air on my own. My throat was dry and raspy, and my eyes still stung, but it didn't feel like anything major. Both my forearms were bandaged, and surgical dressing protected the blisters on my hands: vaguely I remembered drifting in and out of consciousness while they patched me up. I also remembered refusing to let anyone take me to hospital.

The ambulance doors hung open and when I sat up, I could see the clan's house and the people still milling about on the front lawn. I squinted at the crowd, and noticed a couple of our neighbours, standing outside their own houses and gawping at what they thought was just our misfortune.

The house itself didn't look as bad as I feared. The brickwork was soot-stained and all the lower windows were shattered, the window-frames scorched down to bare wood, but the second storey didn't look as if it had sustained much fire damage. Then again, I was no expert. The whole building could be about to collapse for all I knew.

I started to climb out of the ambulance and a young paramedic hurried towards me. Her mouth was moving, presumably telling me to stay put, but I couldn't hear the actual words. A high-pitched keening filled my ears, the desperate need to make sure everyone else was okay.

My legs wobbled when my feet hit the ground, and I grabbed the ambulance door for support. The paramedic was right in my face now, her mouth still noiselessly moving. She put a hand on my shoulder, trying to guide me back into the ambulance, but I shrugged her off.

My eyes latched onto the boy standing a foot or so away, staring up at the house. As if he could sense the weight of my eyes on his back, Luke turned. Relief too great to describe flashed across his face, then I was his arms again, and he was holding me and kissing me, his tears dripping onto my chest, soothing where the heat of the fire had left me feeling desert-dry.

The next couple of hours seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. When Luke finally let me go, he assured me that everyone had come out of the scrape with only minor injuries. Once the Emergency Services turned up, the surviving rogues seemed to realise the battle was over and fled into the night.

I didn't think we'd seen the last of them, and as soon as I was well enough, I was going after them.

During the hubbub of people trying to put out the fire, Ethan and Leon – who Luke told me had fought as bravely as any of us – had dragged the bodies of the dead rogues around to the back garden where they'd hidden them among the overgrown vegetation. They'd burn up as soon as the sun hit them, and the ones who'd died inside the house would fry since most of the black-out curtains had burned away.

The police turned up to question us, but we claimed total ignorance, blaming random arson for what happened. The neighbours reported having witnessed the fight on the front lawn, though thankfully it had been too dark for them to definitively say that they'd seen anyone actually killed. I'd worried about our weapons, but as soon as Clara heard police sirens on the way, she had everyone throw their weapons into the overgrown bushes. All my knives were still in the house. We claimed ignorance over anything relating to the fight too, insisting that a strange gang had turned up on our lawn and started throwing petrol bombs at us. We'd done our best to try and stop them, and the fight had escalated from there.

I had a suspicion the police thought we knew more than we were saying, but there was no evidence to contradict what we said, and the so-called 'gang' had all fled the scene. Except the bodies hidden in the garden.