The Angel Who Wasn't by Taylen Carver

Author:Taylen Carver [Carver, Taylen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stories Rule Press Inc.
Published: 2021-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

14: SHEPHERD’S HIGH

Harley could feel the heat of flames all around her. That stirred her. The crisp crackling of things burning was muffled, but her nose had not been dulled by the explosion. She could detect, faintly, the unmistakable odor of mercaptan, the sulfur compound that was added to natural gas to make it detectable to humans.

She had been inside a closed off room, too busy trying to figure out what the hell Noel had been into, to notice the warning whiff of leaking gas.

Harley pushed the burning fragments of plasterboard off herself and blinked, looking around. It was too smoky to see much, and the flames were building, feeding on the human structures and materials.

She pushed the flames back, away from her. They reluctantly complied, leaving the pile of scorched wallboard. But they were hungry and wouldn’t wait for long. She could feel their intense drive to consume.

Slowly, Harley got to her feet. She pulled out her phone and grimaced as the thing bent at a sharp angle in the middle. She put the destroyed phone back in her pocket and glanced at the computer. Where the computer had been was a pile of framing timbers, wallboard and ceiling paneling. Where smoke wasn’t wafting upwards, white construction plaster drifted down.

The chair she had been sitting in had been pushed across the room, too. It sat next to her, turning slowly, the green paint blistered and scored. The cushion smoldered.

The temperature was rising. Harley glanced at the window, then dismissed the idea. Adding fresh oxygen into the room would speed up the conflagration, and she wanted to preserve as much as possible.

There was only one way out of this. The way she had come in.

There was no door left. That corner of the room had completely collapsed, along with the short section of the room that had faced the furnace. That let her see that the top of the stairs, just beneath the door into the kitchen, were burning hard. Two of them were already charcoal. They had been directly next to the furnace, which was a mangled twist of metal beneath a spurting gas flame.

The fire was pushing at her, insisting on feeding. The blaze wouldn’t be denied much longer.

“Window, it is,” Harley breathed. She bent—slowly, her back twinging—and grabbed the arm of the chair and pulled it over to the window. She tossed the cushion back toward the masonry hiding the desk. Instantly, the fire leapt and claimed it. It burst into full flame with a soft whoofing sound.

Harley stepped onto the chair and studied the window’s dimension. It should let her pass through, if she tucked her wings in hard and took it carefully. Maybe. Possibly.

The fire roared and crackled behind her as she struggled to open the old aluminum frame. It slid aside with a squeal, pouring rich, smoke-free air onto her face.

Instantly the blaze leapt toward her, eager for the air. Harley beat it back once more, but she could feel in her gut that the fire would not let her deny it a third time.

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