Page 40 of The Fire Went Wild

“Go,” my babysitter snarls, gesturing toward me with his gun. “Find out what the fuck is going on.”

“No!” I shout it just as the screaming stops, so my answer is unimaginably loud.

My babysitter whispers a furious, “Fuck,” and then lunges at me, grabbing me around the waist and pressing the cold barrel of his gun against my temple. I choke out a sob and fight against him, but his grip is tight. Determined.

It occurs to me that I only won my fight with Jaxon because he let me.

“Come on,” the man whispers in my ear, his breath hot even through the balaclava. “Let’s see if you’re telling the truth.”

He kicks at the back of my legs, forcing me to stumble forward. I fight against him, digging my feet into the damp grass, but he’s stronger and shoves me forward. The gun never breaks contact with my skin.

“I will shoot you in the head,” he snarls.

He forces me around the side of the shed, and for a second, the light blinds me. All I can see is a blaze of white, like I’m staring at the sun.

Then a shape emerges. A silhouette. Tall. Strong shoulders. A sturdy build. Walking toward us in slow, lopsided steps.

“Let her go.”

I scream because it’s Jaxon’s voice. After the last forty-eight hours, I’d recognize it anywhere.

“She said she killed you!”

The cold steel of the gun disappears from my temple, and for a second I think my babysitter’s actually going to listen to him, that he’s going to let me go. Escape a trap, fall into another, then get thrown right back into the first.

But no. He’s pointing the gun at Jaxon now.

Jaxon keeps moving toward us. He’s dragging something. A sack. A?—

Body.

A headless body. He’s dragging it by the arm, and I can see the bloody, ruined stump where the head should be.

My babysitter fires his gun. It’s not pointed at my temple anymore, but the stupid thing is still right next to my head, and I feel the blast deep in my ear. Everything rings.

Jaxon says something and laughs, but it sounds like he’s underwater, and I can’t make out his words.

My babysitter fires again. Jaxon doesn’t even react.

How is he not hitting him?

I sob again, and then Jaxon flings the body toward us, an assault of blood and bone and degradation. Something hot and wet splatters across my face. My babysitter roars in terror, but he does let me go, shoving me aside and firing his gun in rapid blasts. Blood bursts up. I don’t think it’s Jaxon’s. I also don’t care. I dive sideways and run as fast as I can, looping around the shed until I come to the place where the two men cut a hole in the fence.

Behind me come more terrible, protracted screams, then a wet, rhythmic thumping.

I duck through the gap in the fence without thinking—the fucking power’s back on, what if it’s electrified again? But it’s not. It must be connected to some source separate from the house. I don’t dwell on it. I’m focused on one thing.

Getting the hell out of here.

I plunge into the thicket on the other side of the fence. Tree branches and vines and grasses and other unidentifiable plants—at least, I hope they’re plants—claw at me, like they’re trying to suck me deeper into the swamp. I splash into a shallow pool of stagnant water, the mud squelching into my shoes. But those screams keep echoing behind me, and that’s enough to drive me forward into the thick, muggy darkness.

The screams cut off suddenly, just like they did before, and a cold, sick emptiness fills up my stomach. The silence is worse somehow, because it seems to amplify my footsteps as I splash deeper into the swamp. Every splash, every rustle. I hear things moving in the dark, and I’m not sure if they’re me.

The road, I think.There has to be a road nearby. Get to it.

The fence gate, and therefore the driveway, had been to my right, so I veer in that direction, throwing my hands up to block the woody vines crisscrossing over my path. I can’t believe how dense this swamp is, so close to Jaxon’s property. His house feels a million miles away.

But it’s not.He’snot.

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