Page 80 of The Devil's Scars
“Scars?” she said in a muffled voice, even though it hurt to breathe out. “Was that… was it an explosion?”
His eyes were intense and furious as he checked her for damage. Nothing, not even a scratch from flying glass, and thank God for that. He didn’t say one word, because his mind was whirring and spinning and racing, trying to figure out who had been where in the parlor when they’d walked out the door.
Jesus fuck.
He lifted himself off Zoe. “Baby? You OK?”
She was staring at him, white as parchment as it all hit her at once.
Keira. Keira. Keira.
“Scars…”
“I know.”
He leapt to his feet now, spun back to face Blue Dragon. He heard shouts behind him, recognized some voices coming from the direction of the garage and Satan’s: Wolf, Silver, Cole, Jinx, Cain, Ice, Dux and Drake. But he didn’t even look around – he was running, limping, fighting his way over the last forty feet to what had been a tattoo parlor not even two minutes earlier.
A parlor that was now completely obscured by billowing gray smoke.
Oh, fuck… fire. No, no, no. Please God, anything but that.
When Scars saw Viking and Arrow stumbling towards him through the nightmare haze, holding up the butterfly tattoo woman between them, and the two other customers following closely behind, he almost sagged in relief.
“Scars!” Arrow hacked out his name, coughing wildly. “Keira…”
“Where the fuck is she?” Scars grated, his throat already thick with smoke. “And where’s Saint?”
“He went to get her,” Arrow said harshly, his voice raw. “Last I saw, he was heading for the office. But Scars… that’s where the explosion happened. In the back, where Keira was sleeping.”
“Jesus Christ.” Scars was frozen for a second, then he snapped back to the moment. “Get clear. Now.”
“What are you –”
Scars didn’t hear the rest of Arrow’s question, certainly didn’t bother to answer the other man. He was running again, running through flame and smoke and heat.
Running back through time and memory.
“Mom! Dad!”
They were almost free of their seatbelts… so damn close… just a few more seconds.
Then the surge of flame. The one that that set his clothes and flesh on fire, even as he screamed in agony and kept trying to save his parents. The one that he still carried on his skin to that day.
Not this time. No fucking way.
Jus then, Saint lurched out into the parking lot, coughing, sweating, black with soot, his brawny arms covered in angry red burns.
He was alone.
“Keira?” Scars demanded. “Still in the office?”
Saint nodded, tears streaming down his grimy face. “I can’t get to her, man. The smoke is too thick, worse than the fire… no way to breathe at all…”
Without another word, Scars pushed past Saint, bolted straight into the burning building.
And disappeared from view behind the rolling, raging, gray wall of hell on earth.
**
