In a World on Fire

“You want to bet cigarette butt? Or idiots leaving a bonfire unattended?” Luc uncaringly guesses when we surface in that lake and find ourselves in an acrid haze of smoke and burning trees.

I tuck Ben’s head tight against my chest to try and protect him from the fumes while screwing shut my own eyes, and Julian acidly reminds his fellow husband, “We may not need to breathe and inhale this, but Leah and Ben are going to suffocate—”

“Then run them out of here already. What are you waiting for?” He gestures at the wall of flames, and Julian’s eyes flare all the wider.

“You want us to run straight at the fire?!”

“I guess you are not really the athletic type. If you don’t think you can do it, then pass her on over.” He holds out his arms, and Julian reluctantly loosens his grip on my thighs and passes Ben and I over into Luc’s prepared bridal carry.

The long train of my dress is sopping wet at this point from dragging through the water, and Luc tosses it up onto my lap. “I’m going to bet the wind of our passage will extinguish the fire as we blow past it anyhow, but lets be glad we’re all so thoroughly soaked if that’s not the case.”

I can’t answer him with anything other than a hacking cough. I can’t even open my eyes without my vision blurring with tears, but soon we’re moving so fast that it would all be a blur of motion anyhow. I feel the nauseating jolt of momentum, hear the splash of water, then the rush of hot air streaming past us. Next thing I know I’m being set inside a car. “Of course no one dared to steal one of my marked vehicles,” Luc gloats, shutting the door. “but lets just hope the battery still works after two months being parked out in the elements.”

I wipe at my watering eyes and just shake my head, gulping in clean air and staring down at baby Ben. “He shouldn’t be this quiet.”

“I’m rather glad he’s passed out,” Luc disagrees. “Saves me from that upsetting state of puppetted adoration. That child is a fucking menace. I’ll have my warlock glamour him, the same way Gracen was, otherwise I never want to look at him ever a--”

"I do not need to hear you don’t want him around!" I cut him off, enraged. “A newborn infant cannot be exposed to massive amounts of smokey carbon monoxide. So I need you to help us and drive him to the hospital.”

“Fine. Though I don’t see why you’re lashing out at me. It is not my fault there’s a forest fire…” His eyes drift to a group of men sprinting out of the woods with empty gas cans in hand. “It is probably the fault of those arsonists.”

“They look pretty terrified of what they…” I trail off, because it’s not the spreading inferno in the trees that has these men stumbling at a dead run back toward their cars. A smoking, charred figure comes charging out of the treeline, moving just as fast as Luc, as he leaps onto the nearest arsonist’s back and sinks his teeth into his neck.

Then we hear the gunshots. One right after the other in careful succession.

“Julian,” Luc murmurs. “Where the fuck is--?”

He comes speeding out of the forest and rips the burnt vampire off of his victim. The vampire turns on him with savage strength, and he quickly winds up pinned to the ground for his troubles, with the nightmare’s rapidly healing hands clenching around his throat in a cutting vice.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Luc tells me, shoving open the driver-side door.

He’s on the feral vampire in an instant, tearing him off of Julian and holding him up by the scruff of his neck. “Emry. What in seven hells do you think you are doing?”

“Master Luc?” The vampire seems confused, eyes burning bright red. “Haven’t eaten in… days. Came out here to… stop them. But…” His eyes dart back to the human still clutching at the bite wound in his neck. His friends have all abandoned him it seems, sprinting back toward their trucks. Now Emry wants to finish what he started. He thrashes in Luc’s hands, straining to reach the man, until Luc orders, “Be still. Why the fuck were you starving yourself?”

“Not… on purpose. No blood. None left. We had the meat sellers… Then he killed the butchers too, so no more animal blood even. No one wants to hunt rats and birds, but he said the people were fair game, all people. I knew that was stupid. Urged them to at least try hunting deer, out here. Then those campers came...”

“There were six of us,” Julian tells Luc, shoving his way to his feet. “Those men must have tried to set them on fire, after ordinary bullets didn’t stop them. I saw their broken rifles, and the ones that dove into the lake… I guess you couldn’t smell them above all the smoke, but they went after Leah the second you ran past.”

“Members of* my* coven?” Luc presses Emry, and the enforcer gives a shaky nod. “And just who was it who told you to run lose in my city, expose us to the mortals and ignite chaos? I can’t see Resa being nearly that irresponsible.”

“It was Gracen-- or Roman. Whatever he is now.”

“He compelled my people to go attack the populace?” Luc snaps, incredulous, but Emry shakes his head.

“He doesn’t compel. He just condones. It’s all the newborns. They’re starving, greedy. They have no respect for why these rules exist--”

“What newborns?” Luc demands.

“Carmen, Luca, Daniel,” Julian answers in Emry’s stead. “I recognized the ones who weren’t too badly burnt.”

“He turned all of them,” the enforcer confirms, and Luc’s eyes flare.

“What do you mean all of them? He turned every prael? And who recruited the replacements? We can’t have that many new members in that short a--”

“There are no replacements. That’s why everyone’s starving,” Emry gasps. “It’s a free for all, and… God, she smells delicious.” His burning red eyes lock right over on me and Ben. I guess I shouldn’t have cracked open the window in order to eavesdrop on them. He caught Luc off guard by driving his fist into his stomach and breaking free of his hold. Luc’s soldiers are all natural, skilled fighters, and when they’re maddened by bloodlust, they have no reason to keep in line. They only need to obey his direct orders, if they’re lucid enough to process them.

Emry’s already clawing at the window when Luc snaps, “I order you to stop!” Emry doesn’t even hear him. His eyes are a burning, bloodshot sheet of solid red. He throws his shoulder into the window. It shatters inward in a spray of glass.

Baby Ben wakes up finally and lets out a hoarse croak of a cry at that commotion, and Emry instantly stills, salivating. “Look at him. So scrumptious. I hate that I have to eat you, but you will taste so delicious…”

Luc and Julian tackle him to the ground, breaking his limbs. They hop in the car, and Luc guns the gas, backing right over his enforcer and asking me dazedly. “Is Ben alright? I bet he’s scared--”

“Look at where you’re driving, or we are going to crash, and that will scare him even worse!” I snap, and Luc instantly fixes his eyes back on the road, as I do my best to comfort Ben while I myself am sopping wet and shivering.

We head inside city limits, but we see more fires and hear the screams long before we reach downtown. I can see the hospital in the distance: giving off a pillar of smoke behind a gridlock of flashing lights. I guess Ben’s checkup will have to wait.

Another pack of feral bloodsuckers run right in front of our car in pursuit of a fleeing cyclist. The last two wind up wrapped around our fender, and hardly seem to notice, rolling off the damage and racing on after their prey.

“I’m going to need more bullets,” Julian murmurs, checking his empty revolver.

“Back to the coven it is then,” Luc agrees. “I will make that bastard, Gracen, come out here and corral this mess.”

That proved impossible. Only the rising sun put an end to this massacre, hours later, after so many dead… But I hardly even care about those strangers. How I found Gracen… that commanded all my grief.