Page 50 of Transfiguration
Sam changed, not bothered by the remaining dredges of heat as he took his human form, as his element was fire. He went to the window and smashed it open; the glass shattering and all the smoke finally seeping from the space. Con shifted too, not caring about his feet and the way the heat latched onto them. He coughed and wheezed for a minute, trying to suck in air, but everything burned. Why was it still so hot? With the fire out and wind blowing through, the fire should have cooled fast, but he felt like he stood inside an oven.
“Bella?” Con choked. The space looked empty, blanketed with soot, walls near the inside of the building charred and crumbling, but the exterior was intact. The night sky beyond filled with smoke and the distant sound of emergency responders. No one coming up to their floor. The elevator would be out, and the fire stairs were toward the back where they had entered the hole in the wall. Had everyone escaped?
The smell hit him first. Fire and burned debris like a bonfire gone wild, but also the scent of burnt flesh. It was that sort of smell that lingered in nightmares. Like cooking meat, only Con knew in the back of his brain that it had to be a person, because actual fire incinerated everything. A hot dog or a piece of steak on the stove would have been long gone, not lingering in the air like this.
Was it Bella? His heart flipped over as he raced around the edge of the living space where they’d entered to the area beside the kitchen, past Bella’s space. The door to her room was open, dark within, but it was the back of the apartment door that stole his breath.
Not Bella. Too big to be Bella.
“Luca!” Sam cried, his voice filled with horror and pain as Con’s gut lurched. It had to be Luca, but it didn’t look like Luca. The pretty man was gone, pinned to the door with a slew of knives, skin blackened and peeling, parts of his body looking like the flesh had burned away, leaving behind bone, in the shape of a person. He didn’t move, or breathe, and looked like a bug pinned there to be tortured, or some badly done spell. But the surrounding symbol said everything. Pulsing with that strange life sucking energy—the Kresnik symbol. It wasn’t linked to the hundreds of runes like the other one had been, but it echoed the same strange dark energy.
Con felt his world evaporate as if all sense of reason left. These bastards had killed Luca? Sam was at the door, trying to pull out the daggers, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip on them. They looked more like ceremonial daggers than knives. Con’s vision blurred, and he stood frozen in fear and horror. His lungs ached with the smoke and heat, his feet burning, he felt stuck. Lost.
“Help me,” Sam begged.
“He’s dead,” Con whispered, the words feeling like a nightmare come to life. An hour ago, he had Luca in his arms, memorizing his lover’s sleepy warmth and satisfied smile.
“He’s dhampir…” Sam said. “He can heal.”
He could heal having a dagger through his heart and being burned for a spell? Con took a stuttering step forward, reaching for the nearest dagger. There was a dozen of them, piercing major organs, he realized as he tried to yank one out. It didn’t feel like a normal dagger, aching and burning his palm, not with heat, but tingling magic. A warning to back away. Part of the spell?
He growled as he reached for the dagger again, and it zapped a roll of power at him as if to stop him. He raised his hand and activated a rune that was his normal break spell, used for picking locks and undoing booby traps. A shatter spell, meant to break all enchantment, and could sometimes end in a gigantic explosion. He didn’t care if it blew them sky high. He slammed the last of his stored energy into it. It snapped the edges of power with an audible crack; the symbol going from aching in the back of Con’s jaw to silence. The heat that had been smoldering the bottom of his feet evaporated, and the daggers no longer sang with energy.
Sam gasped, then ripped the daggers out. He caught Luca’s lifeless body, lowering him to the floor, sobbing. Pieces of skin flaked away. It was a brutal and horrific sight. Could a dhampir survive that? This was the sort of damage that could kill a vampire, and Luca hadn’t even transitioned.
“Sam?” Con whispered with a shaky breath.
It was overwhelming, but also a void of everything. Like the pain completely tore him apart from the inside out. How would they survive without Luca? How could he handle this memory replaying inside his head every day? The image, a horror etched into his mind, would haunt him. A man he loved more than life itself, reduced to part ash and skeleton? Kat’s death had nearly killed him. How would he survive this?
He turned away, looking for Bella, wondering if another horror awaited him in her room. But the space was empty. The backpack he’d made for her was gone. The runes inside would have protected it from the fire.
Her tablet sat on the nightstand, black and half melted into the table. Her pink cat bag was a pool of plastic, with a distorted cat face on it. The bed a darkened spread of crumbling fabrics, but no sign of Bella. He picked up the strap of the melted bag, parts of it peeling away from the floor, feeling like it was the last shred of his sanity barely holding together. It didn’t feel real in his grasp, but he held it tight, his heart beating too fast to be comfortable.
Everything hurt, his body, his lungs. He felt like his skin melted, though he knew the heat had vanished with the destruction of the spell. The worst of the damage was inside, his heart shredded, his soul in pieces.
He stood there a minute, mind blank with pain, unable to process. What did he do? He hadn’t been able to protect Kat, and now he’d failed Bella and Luca. He turned back toward the room, finding Sam curled around Luca, smearing blood over his jaw like some horrific ritual of zombie magic. Part of Luca’s jaw bone shone through with a scorched etch up the side of his face.
“Please, baby,” Sam begged, coated in blood himself as he layered it over Luca, as if to heal the massive amount of damage.
Con dropped to his knees, everything spinning around him, air hard to find as he wheezed with a massive panic attack hitting him. The damage to his lungs making him have to fight for air, the world darkened around the edges of his sight. He didn’t call for Sam. Sam had to help Luca, if there was any Luca left to save. If Con laid down and died right there, he thought it might be okay. Sam was strong. He’d heal. He was Superman, after all. Though without Luca, was there a reason to?
Con blacked out as his face hit the floor, the memory of Sam covering Luca in blood like a nightmare he’d never wanted to remember.
TWENTY-ONE
Sam heard Con hit the floor. With Luca cradled in his arms, blackened and skeletal, not moving at all, while covered in Sam’s blood, there was nothing Sam could do. His heart flipped over in fear and horror. Con covered in burns, wheezing even as he lay prone and Sam helpless. He was supposed to be the strongest of them, take care of them, and now he was as useless as a baby.
“Sam!” Seiran’s voice rang through the building, an echo in a strange vacuum of noise as the sounds of sirens still wailed far below.
He swallowed hard, his lungs singed and aching, and filled with smoke he struggled to release. He coughed up blood, trying to suck in air.
Con had shoved a lot of the smoke from the building when Sam shattered the window, but neither of them should have entered before the spell had been broken. Sam might be mostly fireproof, but the heat and smoke could still affect his physical body. He would have to go to ground to heal. What would that mean for Luca?
“Here…” Sam stuttered, coughing hard and gasping for breath. He kept his bloody wrist pressed to Luca’s unmoving jaw. His vision was dimming. He’d overdone it a little flying to keep up with Con. But Sam had never realized how fucking fast Con could be. First the change, and then the flight. That final wallop of power to douse the fire had been all Sam had left in his stored reserves. Maybe he could get Con to teach him some of those runes to help him store extra energy.
Something hit the wall, breaking through a section of it a few yards away and raining dust and ash down on him. A few more hits and the wall cracked. It was Gabe who came through, both him and Seiran wearing masks, though Seiran swirled with earthen power.
“Help Con, please…” Sam begged. Gabe crossed the space to Sam’s side, while Seiran knelt beside Con. Sam flinched when Gabe cut his own wrist to add to the blood Sam was pouring into Luca. Sam didn’t want Gabe to have any part of Luca.