Chapter 36 · Through the Smoke

Smoke and pulverized brick. That was all I could taste.

My ears screamed with one high, continuous whine. Underneath it, someone was calling my name.

"Mara. Look at me."

Dominic slammed his palm between my shoulder blades, shoving me flat behind the heavy oak wine racks. Bottles shattered overhead, raining green glass into our hair. My cheek hit the freezing concrete floor, grinding grit into my skin.

"I'm fine," I wheezed, but it hitched into a hacking cough.

"You're covered in blood."

"Not mine."

It was Danny's. My brother was slumped against the foundation wall, hands clamped around his upper thigh. Dark, slick red seeped between his knuckles. His face was the color of wet drywall under the soot. Alive, though. Eleven months I’d spent mourning a body in a lake, and here he was, cussing under his breath.

"Mar," Danny croaked. "I can't hear shit."

"Neither can I. Press harder on that hole."

Orange fire chewed through the stair landing above us. The heat rolled down into the basement in thick, suffocating waves. Across the floor, Gia crouched by the water heater with her nine-millimeter raised.