Rock Bottom (Dragon Within #4) (20 page)

    
The
nightmare abruptly ended as Serene and I cleared the trees and found ourselves
standing at the top of a hill overlooking a small town. I had to squint my eyes
against the sudden brightness. I hadn’t realized how dark it was in the woods
until that moment.

    
Serene
started forward and I could almost feel her about to break into a run. I caught
hold of her shoulder to stop her. I didn’t know why, but I had this little
warning bell going off in the back of my mind telling me something wasn’t
right.

    
She
looked up at me. “Can we go, please? I want my mommy.”

    
“Wait.” I
frowned, trying to get my sluggish brain to catch up with the feeling of wrongness
in my gut. I stared down at the silent, still, little town. Silent. Still.
Something clicked inside my head.

    
The woods
were on fire. Somebody in town had to have seen the smoke, not to mention heard
all the commotion. And yet, no alarm had been raised. Nobody was running around
down there or standing in the street gawking like people do in a crisis. As
Brandy would have said, it simply wasn’t logical.

    
“Where
are the people?” I muttered. “There should be people.”

    
Serene
clutched at my hand. “What’s wrong?”

    
“I don’t
know. Maybe nothing.” Or maybe
something
. Either way, I was not going to
take this little girl down into that ghost town. No way. But where else could
we go? I had myself set on the town as a safe haven, now it was no longer an
option I had no idea what to do. Panic was trying to sink its claws into me
again.

    
I told
myself to get a grip. So I was tired and scared and kind of freaked out. So
what? This wasn’t about me, this was about getting Serene somewhere safe. So
long as I concentrated on that, I didn’t have to think about anything else.
Which was fine with me.

    
“Come
on.” I led Serene along the top of the hill. I was painfully aware of how
exposed we were up there, but what else could I do? We couldn’t go back into
the woods, and I wasn’t willing to go down into the town. I only hoped nobody
who wanted to kill us would spot us before we could duck under cover.
 

    
From up
ahead, the sound of voices floated back to us on the wind. I stopped, listening.
But whoever it was they were too far away for me to make out what they were
saying. No way to tell whether they were friends or enemies.

    
I knelt
in front of Serene so we were eye to eye. “I need you to stay here while I go
and check things out.”

    
“No.” She
clutched my arm. “Don’t leave me.”

    
“I’m not
leaving you,” I said. “But whoever is up there ahead of us could be bad guys.”

    
“Like the
ones who hurt Bailey?”

    
“Exactly.” Would this never end? “So I need you stay here where you’ll
be safe. I’ll be right back.”

    
“Promise?”

    
I held up
my pinky finger. “Promise.”

    
Serene
hooked her pinky over mine and gave me a wan smile. “Okay.”

    
“Good
girl.”

    
I slipped
along the outer edge of the tree line, letting the voices guide me on. When
they fell silent, I paused. The trees were thicker here; the underbrush high. I
decided it would be smarter to continue on under cover, rather than out in the
open. In case I really was creeping up on the bad guys. The smoke was thin, so
rather than pushing it away, I actually drew it in closer to help hide my
progress.

    
Figures
moved around in a clearing up ahead, but I didn’t have a clear view of them
yet. I needed to get closer before I exposed myself. I crouched, inching my way
forward, wincing at every rustle and crunch my feet made. To me, I sounded like
a whole herd of elephants tromping through the woods, but nobody in the
clearing reacted, so I’m sure I wasn’t anywhere near as loud as I thought I
was.

    
When I
finally reached the point where I could see into the clearing, I stopped. No, I
froze
. I could not have moved in that moment even if I had wanted to. It
wasn’t the clumps of people, some of whom had guns, that had me feeling as if
all the air had been drawn out of my lungs. It was the bodies. The clearing was
littered with them. Mostly kids, but I saw a few adults as well.

    
I didn’t
want to see. I didn’t want to know. And yet somehow I found my gaze rolling
across the bodies anyway, looking for something I prayed I wouldn’t find.

    
I saw
Brandy first. All that jet black hair was impossible to miss. Only it didn’t
look like Brandy, all crumpled up on the ground like a discarded doll. Like she
wasn’t even real. N
one
of
this was real. Couldn’t be. Brandy was my best friend. My rock. She couldn’t
leave me like this. She couldn’t
die
. Not Brandy. No way.

    
Three
feet away, Curtis lay on his back with his head twisted at an impossible angle.
He was staring right at me. But only from one eye. The other one was lost in
the mess of charred flesh that used to be the left side of his face.

    
Everything started to spin around me. Oh, god, this was
real
. It
wasn’t a delusion or a nightmare. I wasn’t going to wake up to bright sunshine
and have everything be okay. Nothing was ever going to be okay again. They were
dead. And I had killed them.

    
My knees
hit the ground before I even knew I was falling. I think I screamed. I don’t
remember making the sound, but I’m pretty sure I did, because people turned toward
me. I saw the lips move on the one nearest me, but I couldn’t hear what he
said. A great rushing, roaring sound had filled up my head.

    
A bullet
hit the ground beside my right knee, kicking dirt into my face. And something
snapped inside of me. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before, but unless
you’ve felt it, you can’t understand what it means.

   
Without
even having to think about it, I dropped down into that place inside where my
power waited. And this time, I let myself hit the water.

   
This
incredibly huge feeling of pain and rage exploded inside of me as a red haze
fell across my vision. Heat blossomed in the middle of my chest. So much heat
it should have burned me up from the inside out. Instead, it sang through my
veins like nothing I could understand. I had found my fire.

    
I was
there. I knew exactly what was happening. I’m not going to duck my
responsibility by saying it was like I was outside my body, watching someone
else jump to her feet and run for the clearing. It wasn’t like that. Not
exactly. I was still me, I was just a me I never could have been under normal
circumstances. A me I didn’t even know existed.

    
Hell had
not been in those woods when I was trying so hard to get Serene to safety.
This
was Hell. And I was the one who unleashed it as I washed the clearing in
cleansing fire.

    
I won’t
say I couldn’t have stopped myself. I can’t say it, because I don’t know. I
didn’t try. I didn’t
want
to stop. I was a blazing fury bent on
destroying everything in sight. Even myself.

    
Something
cold hit me in the middle of the back with enough force to drop me. A chill
wrapped around me like a smothering blanket, dousing my fire. I let out a
breath that fogged the air. My teeth chattered. Cold as deep and dark as death
stole over me and right before I lost consciousness, I heard a voice whisper in
my ear, “Don’t be afraid. I’ve got you.”

                                    
CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    
I woke in
a strange bed staring up at a strange ceiling. Where was I? My brain felt heavy
and foggy. Something had happened. Something bad. But I couldn’t seem to grasp
what it was. My memories felt hazy.

    
I sat up
and the room spun. Sharp pain stabbed the back of my head, making my stomach
jitter. A moan crawled out of the back of my dry throat.

    
“Take it
easy. You’re still recovering.” Derek came over and sat beside me on the bed.

    
A rush of
relief went through me. “You’re alive!” I threw my arms around his neck,
needing to feel that he was really real without knowing why.

    
He hugged
me tightly. “Okay, I love you too.” He gently pried me loose of his neck and
lowered me back down on the bed. “But you need to rest. You’ve been through a
lot.”
      

    
“I don’t
understand. What...” I took a closer look at him. He looked ragged around the
edges, is the best way I can think to describe it, and he had a dark bruise
along his jaw. “What happened?”

    
His
expression grew troubled. “Don’t you remember?”

    
“I’m not
sure. I...” I rubbed the spot between my eyes. “I remember the alarms going off
in the bunker, and going out with Megara and some other dragons, but then
everything is really hazy. Where are we?”
 

    
“Do you
remember the dragon Megara told us about, the one who was helping her?”

    
“Malcolm... Something.”

    
He
nodded. “Malcolm Bryce. This is his hotel. We’re sort of hiding out here.
What’s left of us.”

    
Fire. Why
was I thinking about fire? And why did thinking of it make me feel like
screaming. “So there was a fight and you... But no, you went out the secret
entrance. So you were fine. Right?” Something in his eyes brought on a flutter
of panic. Fire again. “Where are the others? I want to see them.”

    
“Abby.”
He looked away from me. “I don’t... You really can’t remember anything? Not
about Hannah or Serene, or... or anything?”

    
“Hannah?
I...” I pressed a hand to the side of my head. “Did... Oh, god, I... I killed
Hannah. I killed her.” Things were coming back to me in patches. Slow. Things I
wished would stay forgotten.

    
“You had
no choice.” Derek met my gaze. “Serene told us what happened. It’s not your
fault.”

 
   
How easy for him to say when he wasn’t the
one with her screams echoing inside his head. “Serene is okay?”
 

    
“Thanks
to you,” he said. “It was a good thing you didn’t let her go down into that
town. It was full of Alastair’s people.”

    
“Right. Okay.
Yeah. I remember. But after that I left Serene, right? Because I heard voices.”

    
“Yes.”
Derek took hold of my hand. His expression was horribly gentle. “And then?”

    
“Then....” Brandy. Curtis. Fire. I groaned, doubling over even though
the pain was in my heart and not my stomach. “Oh, god, no, please, no.”

    
Derek
wrapped his arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Abby. It... everything was...” His
voice thickened. “I’m sorry I didn’t keep them safe for you.”

    
My eyes
burned though there were no tears. It was all there fresh in my mind. Raw as an
open wound. I twisted to the side and dry heaved. My stomach was empty, so I
had nothing to throw up, but my body wracked with spasms anyway. Like I was
trying to purge myself of the memories. And Derek held on to me, keeping me
from coming completely apart at the seams.

    
I sank
against his shoulder when the moment had passed. Sobs built up inside my chest
and stuck there, a heavy weight making it hard to breath.
 
I closed my eyes against the throbbing in my
head. My body wanted to cry, but I was all dried up inside.

    
“How many
people did I kill?” I asked.

    
Derek
sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

    
“Doesn’t
matter?” I laughed, though it sounded more like a harsh cough. “Right.”

    
“You lost
control. It’s understandable after all you’d been through. You didn’t hurt
anyone who didn’t deserve it.”

    
Oh, but
even feeling the way I felt, I knew that was a dangerous thought. “Nobody
deserves what...” I swallowed. “Do you understand what I did? I’m a monster.”
And not only for the people I killed with my fire. Those people weren’t
responsible for all the dead bodies in that clearing. I was. If I’d only told
Megara that Zack knew about the secret entrance, none of this would have
happened. Brandy and Curtis and all those others, would still be alive.

    
“Don’t say
that.” Derek took hold of my arms and held me out from him. “You are not a
monster. I know what you did. It doesn’t change how I look at you.”

    
And he
meant that. He really did, which only made me feel worse. Because maybe he
didn’t look at me any differently, but I certainly did. “At the end, there was
someone. It was cold. Who stopped me?”

    
Derek
pursed his lips. “It was Zack. He tried to kill you.”