Flames And Blades

Chapter Nineteen: Set Fire To The Rain

I wake up with a realization: my grandmother's books could help right now: the same books I left back at her house before I wound up here I don't know how long ago. The same house whose owner is now dead.

Grumbling to myself about getting over there for my stuff, I lift myself off where I was sleeping; huddled up close on Warrison in a drape like position. I did a double take, take this factor and look around, my demonic meltdown left us with only one small tent. Enough, just barely for Luce and Trevor to be snuggled up together with Adam separating us with a goofy grin he only has in his sleep. I guess my shifting had awoken Warrison because he half lifts his eyes, a genuine smile in his half-asleep face.

"Hey, Firestarter, how's it goin'" He sleepily drawls out.

"I look that much like fetus Drew Barrymore to you? Huh. Nothing much, just have to head back into Nocty for a little to grab a few of my grandmas' things I think might help, can I steal your keys for the morning?" At this his eyes jet open completely, telling me he's not going to let me into town alone, knowing that I'm completely without a car since I returned my rental before I broke it. At least before he got to take a chance at parking it.

"Only if I'm driving."

"Okay, now come on, it's just for a few hours and I am more than capable of blowing people up, should the occasion arise." I nudge his still steadily breathing chest. He nudges back.

"Nice try, but you still got shot last night, miraculously healed or not, so you, miss inferno, need supervision." Ugh, he's difficult today, great.

"You know, I'll just hotwire the thing when you're not looking." Is my only fair argument, because I can actually do just that.

"Not on my watch. Now shhhh, 'still dark. More sleep." He mumbles, nuzzling closer to me. I follow suit with this, not at all complaining. Waiting until I know he's dead asleep- another gut instinct, only of a different kind than what the Destruction brought. Once he's out I pocket the keys from his front pocket, being as least handsy meets pervert as possible and leaving him a note via text, telling him I will be back, and double check to make sure the demon box is charged.

I leave the tent quite literally tiptoeing, and break for the soccer mom car he has, putting the keys in the ignition, saying 'sorry' over and over again until I weave out of the forest.

The drive stays silent of any thought and the low murmur of a new pop station Warrison must have programmed into the radio.

I just make it into the outskirts of town when the purple cloud reappears. This time thickened by the grey-black clouds that reminded me of the field past the Ab Antiquo camp. When it fake clears, pretending to do so, so I see what it left behind Not being able to completely hide from me, I am left with yet another horrifying surprise.

A gaping hole left on one of the only two roads leading into town. The sidewalks beside this whole untouched, the hole itself being a freight truck long and the entire major road wide. Only surrounded with scattered bodies that reminded me of corpses.

I gasp, kicking myself for sounding so dramatic, and reverse the car back a few clicks so as not to get it damaged. I get out, taking my phone and putting the ringer on, and walk the rest of the way back to the pit.

When I return, it seems more corpses have surfaced. And what I am unmistakenly recognizing as the smell of death.

I can't help but walk over one. She's from town, I know this, her gorgeous black hair and olive skin with sharp facial features keep her recognizable anywhere. Only she's cold to the touch, and if I look at her close enough, I can see the haze pulsating throughout her.

It's only her. I think. Maybe the rest are different. Anything else would be too morbid to be believable. But then again I am surrounded by corpses.

I check all the others piling around me. They are all the same; recognizable from the town, cold to the touch, and have the purple haze pulsating throughout them.

I go in denial. I go mad. Like full blown psycho mad. As in, instead of getting freaked out and running away, to safety, I run towards the increasing number of corpses and their origins. In this, I find that every metre or so, the body density increases noticeably. I look for a pattern. There is none within the bodies. None at all. All that comes to me is some common sense thing I learned in grade six.

Whatever increases, at some point, decreases. Meaning there is a center to this.

With this in mind, and I guess a mid psycho factor or two playing in, I don't stop moving forward.

And that's when I notice that for the first three hundred feet or so in a row; the body count stays the same,

I also notice that this is exactly in the middle of town. At this, I freak out, thoroughly so.

I storm up to the closest body beside me and slap his boyish face a few times, screaming 'wake up!' at the top of my lungs every time. Until some large, very unbecoming scream escapes me, and the haze disappears, taking the corpses with it.

The pedestrian sign beeps, setting me ablaze again. There's no one here to protect from cars. No one here to drive them. No one here to be here, in the first place. No. One. My town, the place that I grew up in, completely ditched and deserted. All these peoples stories just used as embers in a dying fire.

Who thought they had the right to do this? The right to banish these people into oblivion like this? Play my mind like a game of chess like this?

Why? Why to the whole bloody mess of this all.

Too filled with rage to sit and stare any longer, I jump up and march, with rage-filled purpose to my grandmothers' house on the end of town farthest from the car. The entire time only one thing burns in my mind,

I need answers, And I'm sick of stumbling upon them. I'm getting them; easily or not.

When I walk into her house, I can see the shadows of the people waiting there for me, Two men, the kind you run like hell from if in their sight at dark fall.

Only I am stronger than these men, is all I can think to keep myself planted to the ground and not falling or blacking out, again.

"You have three seconds to get out of my house." I bark out, sure of myself through tone- not heart. The two men are in conflict with each other but entertained by me. This, I use to fill my rage.

"One," I take a step closer to them, building up the structure for an anger let out of the century. They don't move and instead laugh.

"Two," I smirk back, this time drawing in every last bit of any anger I ever recall

feeling. They look at each other. Last chance.

"Three." I let out, smirking even more devilishly. I close my eyes and inhale, absorbing

the fear I can feel them now hiding, and let it fire out of every inch of my flesh.

That's when the explosion goes off. As if I'd set off bombs in every last corner of the house. Everything I can see is in flames and bits. Things like the French press and picture frames used as shrapnel in these two, apparently non-flammable men.

They look at me, then at each other, and fade out. Disappearing in thin air.

Leaving me back alone. With more questions than answers, and surrounded by flames. I guess that fits my karma, is the last thing I think before the oven explodes and its doors bashes into me.