Page 80 of The Blood we Crave: Part Two

We refuse to lose another friend, a brother in every sense of the word besides blood.

“Then we kill him,” I say explicitly.

He thinks I’m above killing the man who beat the shit out of me for years? Who birthed this desire to hurt? Skewed my vision until I genuinely believed the scars I wore were payment for all my sins?

“I’m doing everything I can to end this. We had to take the risk, Alistair. For Silas, for Rosie. I want Sage safe, and she won’t ever be until this is over.”

As long as Stephen and Easton Sinclair are alive and free, Sage will struggle. Sleepless nights, bad dreams, no eating. I watch her day in and day out, the way she slips on a strong, pretty mask for the world.

But I see her when we’re alone and how the fire burning within her is shivering to embers, withering away by the second, and it’s fucking killing me. Her eyes are sad, and they don’t burn as bright. At night? She clings to me like it’s the last time she’ll ever touch me, every single night.

Sage is so skeptical of the future it’s eating her present alive.

There isn’t a thing in the world I wouldn’t risk for her, including myself. I would blaze through hell to get back to her if they tried to take her. I want to get her out of this toxic place, push her to chase her dreams and breathe all the lives they stole back into her.

I want everything for Sage Donahue because she deserves it. I’d grab the world with my bare hands, burnt and bloody, for her.

“We have twenty minutes to torch this place,” I remind him. “I need you to place the gas cans around the room, but don’t fucking open them until I come back.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to work my way from the back, burning as I go. So be prepared to run.”

I move towards the hallway, the smell of gasoline making my blood heat. My fingers twitch at my sides, knowing in a few short minutes, this entire building will be up in flames. There won’t be a single resident in town that wouldn’t see this blaze. This is my arena. Fire is my weapon, and I am more than ready to wield it.

Alistair grabs my shoulder, keeping me in place.

“Don’t catch yourself on fire.” His face is stone, but the voice is all stern and dad-like. Always looking out for me, even when I hate it.

A wicked smile grows on my face, the matches in my pocket practically singing.

“Lighten up, Caldwell. This is the fun part.”

Alistair

I’d made Briar a promise months ago. One that I’m regretting as the smell of fire builds and I finish placing all the closed cans of lighter fluid and gasoline around the lobby.

I swore to little thief that I’d make it out of this.

In the moment, listening to her talk about our future and what she thinks it will look like when we leave this place, it had been easy to promise I’d live to see it. So fucking easy, just like everything else is when I’m with her.

I want to be the man who keeps his word, but I knew what I’d do if worse came to worse.

I wouldn’t flinch to sacrifice myself if it meant she made it out unscathed, alive. Briar, she’s strong, she’d survive my death, she’d move on eventually and find the happiness she’s earned.

If anything happened to her though? I would not say the same for me.

I’d always been comfortable in the darkness; I’d been born in it. But now? I don’t know how to live in a world without the light she gives.

My fingers flex. Not being in control of my fate irritates the shit out of me.

I glance at my phone, checking our time, watching it dwindle by. I’m pissed that this was our only option, seeking help from Rook’s piece-of-shit father. The only good thing that could come from Theo Van Doren opening his mouth would be that I finally get to crack his neck beneath my shoe.

Looking down the hallway, I see gray smoke billowing beneath the closed doors. It climbs the walls, blazing vines that work their way to the ceiling.Sweat gleams across my forehead as the temperature of the building rises. My lungs are burning for fresh air.

I’m two seconds from going to find the pyro when he kicks through the doors of the town council meeting room, a puff of smoke following him through, a roaring fire just behind him.

With his hoodie up and the black fabric mask covering his face from the nose down, he blends in with the smoke as if they’re the same thing.

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