Page 6 of Fire Bound

“Mom?” I croak, my hand reaching out to shake her shoulder. Her skin feels colder than it should. I shake harder, but she still doesn’t rouse. “Mommy, please wake up.”

My plea goes unanswered.

As much as I fight them, I can’t stop the tears from falling from my eyes. The sobs take over as I rest my head on her chest while I weep. She promised we would get out of here. We were supposed to go to the beach. She was supposed to take me home.

This isn’t home.

She used to call it hell. At first, I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I think I’m starting to understand.

“Jax,” he calls my name sternly, but I ignore him.

He killed my mom. He said she was useless. She wasn’t useless. She was my mother. My protector. How am I supposed to survive without her? I shouldn’t have to wonder this at the age of eight. I should have a lifetime with my mom.

My hands fist into the sheets while the grief feels like it might swallow me whole. I wish it would. Then the pain of losing her wouldn’t be so bad.

I want to give up. I want my mom.

How can he just kill her like she’s nothing? She was a person. She didn’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this.

An emotion begins to creep into my bones, eclipsing the monumental weight of her loss. It consumes me whole until all I can see is red. My hands no longer shake in fear but in pure rage.

I feel like burning the world down.

Whirling back around, I glower at the man responsible for this. “You killed her.”

“Yes,” he confirms apathetically. “She was brought here for a purpose. As she can no longer achieve such a purpose, she was eliminated. I’m sure you believe that she was important, but like I said, she wasn’t. I have ten other women on standby who can do what she did, but hopefully for them, they’re able to carry a baby to term. Or they’ll end up like your mother. Another useless piece of medical waste.”

Heat builds in my fingertips, the air around me begins to hum. My chest rattles and burns as something comes alive within me. A surge of power I’ve never felt rushes forward. “She wasn’t useless,” I whisper to myself.

“What was that,boy?” he presses.

“She wasn’t useless!” I yell at the top of my lungs.

Like an explosion going off, the power that was building inside of me detonates. It flows from my fingertips and palms as I lift my hands at the man who ruinedeverything. It comes out like flames. Yellow and orange, they fill the room.

The distant sound of people screaming in pain registers in my head, but I don’t stop. I let the anger and rage flow from my hands. This is what they’ve been waiting for, this is what they’ve wanted from me all along. I just don’t think they were expecting to have it used against them.

People run and scream, the flames licking at their skin. Many of them are balled up on the ground. The man I want to see dead no longer stands in front of me, he sits in a heap against the wall. The outline of where he stood singed on the pristine white wall.

Like a battery, I run out of power and drop to my knees in the middle of the chaos. My whole body aches. My bones feel tired, my muscles are weak. My eyelids are heavy. I feel like I’m going to pass out.

The hollers and cries continue all around me, but he sits silently watching me. Half of his body is badly burned. His skin is red and blistered. Where hair used to sit on the side of his head is nothing but marred skin. His eyelid is so swollen I’m not even sure his right eye is still there. He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t cry in pain.

Footsteps pound down the hallway. I blink rapidly, trying to stay awake as people rush in. A woman I recognize but don’t know her name, kneels in front of him. She assesses his wounds, a look of confusion marring her features.

“Who did this?” she asks.

He slowly, almost lazily, looks at her before returning to stare at me. “He did.”

The woman’s head turns in my direction. “What? How—”

“Hellfire,” he chokes.

Hellfire? I’ve never heard them say that word before.

“If he has the gift of hellfire, you know what this means.” She eyes me skeptically.

I’m so tired, I just want to go to sleep.

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