Angel Fire (23 page)

“I wasn’t sure you felt anything like that for me,” I admitted, putting my hand on his chest.

Gently, he put his hand on top of mine. “What gave you that idea?”

“Well, at the lake the other day, when I kissed you…”

With a sheepish grin, he cast his eyes down. “Oh, that. I have a confession to make, I guess.”

I pulled back. “What?”

“Well, it’s been a long time.” He looked away, as if he didn’t want to meet my eyes. “A really long time, if you know what I mean, and I didn’t want to … you know, rush into anything.”

When he looked back up at me, he had a hopeful look on his face, as if wanting me to understand him. I did.

He said, “I just got a little self-conscious about everything. I didn’t want you to think I was
that
kind of guy.” He squeezed my hand, as if I would run away from him if he didn’t hold on tight enough.

After a moment, he said, “I like you, Darcy.”

My heart fluttered. “You do?”

It was more than I had hoped for. I almost couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth.

“Of course I do. A lot. I’d be crazy not to. You’re beautiful, smart, kind—”

I was so overjoyed to hear him say it, that I didn’t wait for him to finish. I grabbed the side of his face with my hand and pulled him closer.

We kissed, and I felt an electric thrill run up my spine. The desire I’d felt for him over the past few days was nearly overpowering, and I could sense him reacting to that.

“Why don’t we just skip dinner and stay in tonight,” I suggested to him as I ran my hand down his muscular back through his shirt. It had also been a very long time for me, and I felt dizzy with need.

“Yeah,” he said, tugging my shirt up out of my jeans.

Like two love-struck teenagers, we fumbled at each other’s clothes and fell to the bed together.

I had always been faithful to Barry, even through the periods where we had broken up. Never having anything to compare with, I never understood until that night what lovemaking really was.

I gasped at first contact, and bit my lip against the brief discomfort. Soon though, as we moved in tandem, I could feel the tide of passion rising within me.

I held out as long as I could, but when I felt his urgency and his movements become quicker and more intense, I rocked against him harder and harder. My eyes rolled back in my head and my fingers dug into the skin of his back when the sudden wave of release hit me. I cried out and sucked in my breath as Neil’s rhythm also reached its peak.

He shuddered and then collapsed on top of me, and we lay there together for an unimaginable length of time, both of us completely spent and drunk on the afterglow.

* * *

At first, I thought it was simply an effect of the physical intensity between me and Neil, but the growing heat in the room was not the result of our intimacy.

I opened one eye and cried out when I saw the window of the room behind the curtain brighten, as if the sun had risen and was beating down.

“What?” Neil asked sleepily when I shook him by the shoulder.

“Look!”

Neil turned his head toward the window, and immediately sprung out of bed, grabbing his jeans.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I was still disoriented and my mind just wouldn’t make the connection.

“Get dressed,” Neil ordered. “Fire.”

“Fire?” For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Fire?
A thought hit me: was it me? The power in me emerged whenever I experienced extreme anger or fear, or when my life was in danger. What if the opposite emotion had sparked the curse and, when I had come, I had released some of the power and inadvertently set the motel on fire? I would never be able to forgive myself.

Neil’s training kicked in and he didn’t hesitate for a moment. He raced to the door and checked it with his hand. I could tell from the grimace on his face that the fire was right there, too hot to risk opening it. He darted to the window and drew back the curtains. Our entire view was filled with flames and smoke.

Something snapped me out of my paralysis and I yanked my clothes on. I went to the phone on the dresser and held the receiver to my ear. No dial tone. Frantically, I smacked the cradle a few times, but the line was dead.

The light in the room grew brighter and the glass on the window cracked as the wooden awning running along the walkway outside the rooms caught fire.

“Can you put it out?” I yelled, even though he was only a few steps away. “Maybe run the water from the bathroom and direct it out there?”

Neil measured the distance. “I don’t think there would be enough pressure even from both the tub and the sink. We need to get outside. There’s a hydrant on the other side of the parking lot. If I can get to that, maybe I can do something.”

He stepped toward the front door again, but it cracked and flames licked through the gap.

“The bathroom window,” I said, and we both raced out of the main room.

I was the first one to the small window above the toilet. I threw my weight against it but it wouldn’t budge.

“What?” I cried in exasperation, but then Neil spotted the problem immediately. He set his jaw and pointed.

There was a screwdriver wedged between the window and the sill.

Two realizations struck me in quick succession: first, I hadn’t been the one to start the fire; second, someone else had. It wasn’t an accident. Someone had intentionally set fire to the motel and tried to trap us so we would burn to death in the blaze.

“Can we break the glass?” I suggested. “Maybe I can wiggle through.”

Neil wrapped a towel around his hand and, after making sure I was back far enough, smashed the window.

Once he had knocked as many glass shards out of the sill as he could, he helped me stand on the toilet seat. I stuck my head out of the window, but my shoulders scraped against a splinter of glass and I yelped.

“You won’t fit,” Neil said needlessly.

I tried a different tactic, and extended one arm out first, to make myself smaller, but I couldn’t get my torso through the opening.

“Argh!” I yelled in frustration, and pulled back. Before I got all the way inside, I saw movement across the field, no more than fifty feet away. Car lights on the highway flashed over the silhouetted figure and for a moment, I saw his face.

It was Frank! He threw an arm up in a feeble attempt to hide his identity, and scrambled off into the night. I knew if Frank was involved, that if he had been the one to jam the window, then Barry and Troy had to be near. Was Barry truly that crazed that he wanted to see me dead? Was this his warped sense of justice, to burn me to death as he imagined I had tried to do to him years ago?

I was so enraged when I extracted myself from the window, I didn’t even notice that I was bleeding from half a dozen cuts on my shoulders and chest until Neil asked me if I was all right.

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

As if sensing that my anger had nothing to do with my physical wounds, he glanced around, searching for ideas. “Listen,” he said. “I think I hear sirens. They should be on site within minutes. We just need to hold out until then—”

The front window exploded and the roar of the fire intensified as it found new territory to explore. Flames danced up the wall and blackened the ceiling.

“We won’t last a few minutes,” I said. “We need to get outside.”

An idea came to me, and I stood as close to the inferno as I could without my clothes setting on fire. The heat was suffocating. I held my breath, centered myself, and tried to relax.

“What are you doing?” Neil demanded.

“Fighting fire with fire.”

“We’ll be burned alive!” he argued.

“No. I can’t be burned.” But then I realized that even if I sent a wave of fire outwards, there was a good chance Neil would be caught in the blast.

I took a step back and coiled myself like a spring.

“Darcy?” he asked in a strained voice.

“If I can’t blast the fire out, then I’m going through the door. It’s half incinerated already; I’ll run through first and then you follow.”

“All right. Wait,” Neil said, and ripped the blankets off the bed. He raced back into the bathroom and ran the shower. After throwing the blankets in to get them soaked, he pulled one of them out, heavy and sopping, and thrust it at me.

He said. “Wrap this around you.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’ll just trip me up. You use them.”

He didn’t argue, and threw the blanket around his shoulders and over his head.

We stepped back into the main room. “Are you ready?” I asked, and he nodded.

“Right behind you.”

Facing the flames, I prepared myself. I might have been immune to the burning of fire, but I was pretty sure I could break an arm if I hit the remains of the door the wrong way.

I took a deep breath.
You can do this,
I told myself, and charged.

Before I hit it, my instinct kicked in, and without having to get myself in the mindset, I summoned the power and used it to blast a small wave of fire at the door, which completely disintegrated in a shower of splinters and sparks.

I overbalanced as I ran through and fell to the pavement in the parking lot. A sopping wet mass hit me and completely smothered me—Neil. My shirt had caught fire and he was trying to put out the flames.

“You all right?” he asked when the fire was out, and helped me to my feet. He looked unharmed.

“Yeah.” I glanced down at myself. There were holes in my shirt and jeans, and I was a sooty mess. Otherwise, I was unharmed.

I was aware of a fire truck pulling up. A half a dozen men in yellow suits jumped out and burst into a flurry of activity.

The entire central section of the motel was on fire, from the front awning right up to the roof. Guests had poured out of their rooms, most of them disheveled and panicked.

I heard one guest ask if everyone had gotten out, and another answer that they thought so, but my immediate concern was for Aunt Martha who had been manning the office—as far as I knew. I looked around the crowd of people gathered in the parking lot and didn’t see her.

Neil saw the look on my face and narrowed his eyebrows in question.

“Aunt Martha!” I called out, and sprinted in the direction of the office, but Neil stopped me by grabbing my arm.

“Darcy.”

“What?” I said.

He pointed a few doors down from the office, halfway to where the blaze was the worst. Someone was huddled against the wall, and I changed direction. Together, Neil and I raced over, and as I got closer, I realized there were actually two people there, not one.

Uncle Edward was sitting with his back against the wall. Aunt Martha was laying flat, her head in his lap.

I had never seen Uncle Edward cry, but now he was sobbing.

When I got to them, I dropped to my knees. He looked up at me, his eyes tearing up.

“Aunt Martha?” I asked. And then I looked more carefully. Her face was smeared with ash and soot, and her mouth was pulled back in a fixed grin; she wasn’t breathing, and she wasn’t moving.

I put my hands to my mouth. “Oh, my God, no.”

I felt a warm hand gently touching my face and was surprised to see Uncle Edward looking intently into my eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m fine.” I couldn’t find the words. “Uncle Edward!” Tears welled up in my eyes. “What happened?”

My uncle stroked his wife’s hair. “Martha,” he said to her lifeless form, “why won’t you wake up?”

I saw a spent fire extinguisher a few feet away. Aunt Martha must have tried to put out the flames and got too close. The heat and smoke must have overcome her.

She had died trying to save my life.

Through my tears, I could barely see the medics who arrived to carry her off on a stretcher. One of them tried to check over Uncle Edward, but he pushed them away.

I reached out for him, but he stood up before I could put my hands on his shoulders.

“I have to be with her,” he said, and followed his wife into the ambulance.

* * *

The night had become a miserable blur, and I can remember sobbing into Neil’s shirt. At one point, Sheriff Burke arrived and circled like a wolf coming in for the kill.

“She was with me all night,” Neil growled at him before he could begin his barrage of accusations.

“It was Barry,” I said, though my face was still buried in Neil’s shoulder.

The sheriff didn’t back down. “Bullshit it was Barry. Did you see him?”

Neil, as surprised at the accusation as Sheriff Burke, looked at me for confirmation.

“No,” I admitted, my teeth clenched.

With a look of distaste, the sheriff said, “More lies, then. You blame him for everything. I have half a mind to arrest you here on the spot and let the courts figure it out.”

Neil pulled me away. “You’ll do no such thing.”

The sheriff glared at us, but then headed off to assist the remaining guests and take statements.

When we were alone, Neil asked, “Was it him? Barry?”

“I can’t prove it, but I know it was.” I held his gaze, and he nodded that he believed me.

Someone shouted over at us. It was Chief Hrzinski; they needed Neil’s help.

“Go,” I said. “I’ll see if I can help the medics.”

Neil looked intently into my eyes, and then with a nod he raced off to fight the blaze.

Numbly, I headed toward one of the ambulances, to see if there was anything I could do, but all I kept thinking was, my aunt was dead. I kept losing everyone I cared about.

It was at that point the tears began to flow.

* * *

Despite the efforts of Neil and the Middleton Fire Department, the Lazy Z Motel was nothing more than ashes and rubble when dawn broke the next day.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next day
I stood at the kitchen window in Beth’s house looking out into her backyard. John had put John Jr. in a swing and was gently pushing him back and forth. The baby giggled with delight with every change of direction.

Behind me, Beth was chattering away about how difficult it was to find time to clean the house properly. Mostly, I think she was talking just to fill the silence. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation, but politely listened.