Pyro (Sequel to 'Burning in Water')

Chapter One: Death Be Not Proud

It had been two years. Two years since Darcy had died and been reborn in a small village two hours out of Cardiff. It had taken most of those two years for the onslaught of arrests in the wake of her evidence to slow, eventually petering out to a standstill. All of Britain seemed to have a blanket of stillness over it, but it was heavy and stifling. Something had to change.

Luckily, Darcy had not been idle for those two years. She had promised to give him hell. And she had. Somewhat, at least. The letters had started only four months after her death.

1 year and 8 months ago: 4 months after Darcy's death

The small house she was living in was at the end of a long winding road, out in the country where no one asked if they heard strange noises at night or if they noticed that your hair changed colour every month or so, and maybe every four months so would your eye colour. Darcy had already changed so much that she could hardly recognise herself in the mirror. Just as she was putting in her green contacts, there was a knock at her door.

'Strange,' she thought. It was early on a Thursday, and she wasn't expecting anyone. The knock was heavy, so a man. She definitely wasn't expecting a man. Not when she couldn't stop thinking about him, his voice like honey, the way his dark eyes glinted with something more...No. Not now.

She finished putting her second contact in and went to her front door. Through the frosted glass she could see the silhouette of a broad-shouldered man, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't found her. Yet.

— "But it wouldn't take me long to after that, dear", he reminded her in an innocent, sing-song manner during the present.

"You had help though. My help, which I would say was the only way you could have found me," she quipped back. "But I digress. It was Oliver..."

The local mechanic, who has dropped in to check her car after he had fixed its engine last month. Although she never used it, because she never left her house. She liked it, this lifestyle, she consoled herself on days when she felt cooped up and just plain bored. It was quaint. But she wasn't made for quaint. So when, after his visit, she found a small piece of paper slipped under the edge of the bonnet, she felt a small thrill.

'I miss you.

JM'

It was him. Of course it was him. She knew he didn't know where she was, but he knew people who did. That damned man. This note had passed through hundreds of hands to reach her, her location getting more and more distorted from him the further outside of London it travelled.

And she couldn't deny it. She missed him too. She missed the excitement, the thrill of the hunt, his melodic voice dripping and oozing out from whatever corner he was hiding in.

And then she resolved to fix her predicament.