Never Fade by [email protected]

Author:[email protected]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2013-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

There are nightmares, and then there are

nightmares. The Red lowered his face, a thick curtain of long, dark bangs falling over his brows. But still, it didn’t hide his eyes. They watched us through the gaps between his tangled curls. His body gave a sharp jerk, like his muscles were seizing up, and he blinked to ride the spasm out. When his eyes opened again, they were wider, glassy—but another jerk tightened his body, and the hint of humanity was gone.

“Ladies, may I introduce you to Twitch.” Knox looked like he was enjoying our stunned expressions. “I picked him up in Nashville after he bolted from the PSF holding his leash. He was stumbling around, jerking like some tweaker. He’s come a long way since I started training him.” Knox waved a hand toward a kid who, with a look of undeniable terror on his face, walked up and began to cut through the Red’s ropes with a knife.

“I think you guys are gonna get along real damn nice,” Knox called. “Have fun.”

264

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two teenage boys run faster than they did once the last metal chain was in a puddle around Twitch’s feet. He took one step forward, walking through the wall of flames the trashcans provided. A ripple went through the glowing circle, dimming just for an instant, then flaring up to a blinding white.

“That ass-sucking mofo,” Vida muttered. She turned to look at me. “He actually sicced a firebomber on us.”

Twitch made good on his name. His head cocked to the right, then jerked to the left in a way that looked painful. In the moments—those precious half seconds—between movements, the only noticeable change was the flash of something like confusion in his eyes.

Knox put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Then there was no more thinking.

Vida and I dove away from each other as the first kick of fire jumped from the flaming garbage cans to the ground between us. I hit the ground and rolled, trying to put out the smoldering edges of my right pant leg. The burn on my palm felt like it was about to burst open with a blast of fire on its own.

The air above my head grew hot—hotter—then deadly, eating the oxygen and forcing me to roll again. The fire in the barrel I had crashed into flooded over the edge of the metal can and came pouring toward me. It raced along the cement toward us.

The Red lifted a hand in front of him and snapped his fingers. A burst of flame appeared between his curved fingers, and he lobbed it my way like a ball.

Get up, get up, get up, my mind screamed. The sweat on my palms slid against the loose rubble. I pushed myself up and looked for Vida.

She was running, her arms pumping at her sides, charging for the Red’s center.

“No!” I cried. The fires from the garbage cans rose up again, crossing the circle to connect in a series of bridges.

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