Page 118 of Of Flame and Fate

The one shoe I managed to hang onto flies off and I land in Gemini’s arms. Apparently, he “went long.”

“Put me down,” I insist.

“Not now,” he bites out.

I look behind us. The panther has left the fight and is gunning for us.

Gemini swears, grounding to a halt as a wall of skull warriors appear, blocking our path. He plants me down and from one leap to the nextchangesinto his massive wolf form.

I don’t quite have my bearings when his fangs clamp down on a warrior’s head. He breaks through the skull, flinging the body toward the encroaching panther.

My feet are swept from under me when a warrior snatches me up by the waist. I scream, with rage and all the power boiling its way through me, forcing him to drop me when he bursts into flames.

I land on my knees, my fingers digging into the soil as the ancient magic that makes up my arm takes over and encases my body in an armor of flames.

The panther reaches me, her large paw slapping me aside when her fangs fail to bite through my fire. I roll, the pain her strike causes combined with my accelerating magic scorching the earth and singeing a path across the field.

My body and the earth beneath me tremble. The same thing that happened in Egypt. My arm knows we’re in trouble and is reacting to the threat, feeding my flame with mystical kindling and an extra-large dose of otherworldly gasoline.

“Power,” I whisper, getting a high from the wickedly addicting heat coursing through me. “Give me,power.”

“Oh,shit,” Bren says behind me.

“Everyone run!” Gemini yells.

The absurd mix of mayhem and mysticism fusing within me peaks, and in one colossal moment it erupts, colliding against everything in the vicinity.

My head jerks up as a mushroom cloud of blue and white spreads along the sky, cloaking the atmosphere as far as I can see. The release should feel good and leave me begging for more. Yet as I find what looks like an ocean of fire eating away at the field, all I feel is out of control.

I stand and walk forward, the heat rising from my core creating ripples in the air as flaming skulls rain from the sky. I kick them out of my way when they land in front of me, my bare feet searing them and leaving marks. Their bodies are gone. Now they’re left to burn along with the barren wasteland the area has become.

I expected them to burst into color like all of Johnny’s tattoos. But these were different than the rest, maybe because he’s become so much more than he was.

My hands ball into fists as I think about everything he did. I know I’m moving toward him. I feel him. He’s no longer far away.

It’s only when I reach the skull of the panther that I stop, bending to lift it, just as I had lifted the other feline skull in my vision.

This isn’t my sister. It’s the shifter. My fire killed her as she shrank in size to return to her original human shell.

This time when I cry, it’s from relief. My sister doesn’t die. She’ll have her chance to have her babies. I drop the skull. Provided Johnny meets his own damn fate.

The knowledge gives me strength and propels me ahead, my quick steps turning into a sprint when I feel Johnny’s magic build.

I find him in the parking lot by a large Dodge Ram, clutching his belly as he shoves his way inside the cabin. Maybe I couldn’t destroy the skulls, but I did succeed in causing him a lot of pain.

Johnny yells to the fan trailing him to start the vehicle. The man, he doesn’t look good. His skin is horribly blistered and his face is smeared with soot. He teeters back and forth, struggling to reach the truck. He must have been trapped in the arena when it caught fire, along with everyone else trying to protect Johnny.

If the others look anything like this man, they didn’t make it. They died for Johnny, not that he’ll ever care.

His eyes widen when he sees me. He shuts the door and scrambles into the driver’s seat.

I launch a fireball from my arm, nailing the truck and sending it rolling across the lot. It crashes into the side of Johnny’s tour bus, igniting the image of his face on fire.

Legs kick at the splintered windshield, banging frantically against the glass. Something clasps my shoulder, brutally clamping down. I don’t turn around. I ignite, my body a conduit of flames that expand out.

I turn enough to see the last of Johnny’s skull warriors disintegrate to ash. But at the sound of breaking glass, my attention is all on Johnny.

He crawls out from the busted windshield, bleeding from the multitude of cuts raking his skin and holding tight to his stomach from the damage I did to his skulls.

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