Page 2 of Firestorm
“Zeph, the…the coat, M-mom’s c-coat–” I gasped.
“Keep your eyes closed. Don’t look, Skye.” Zephyr’s voice was in my ear, his arms staying tight around me as he started to move us. My breathing increased again as my feet moved me along with him.
I whimpered as the people around us began to jeer at us.
“Fuck you,” Zephyr snarled at someone who shouted at us and I jolted. Zephyr cursed more than me, but I’d never heard him direct it at someone that way before.
The screams were overwhelming.
Why wasn’t I hurt? Why wasn’t I bleeding? Did I do this?
But they were wrong, Iwasbleeding. My ears were still ringing. How could I have done this? I was just a little girl.
“Ignore them,” Zephyr murmured.
My mind began to race, wondering too many things at once. I knew where Mom was, though I hadn’t see her. I hadn’t seen Ben, but he’d been with Mom, so he had to be with her now. But Levi?
Levi.
“Where’s–” I gasped. “–Levi?”
“I don’t know.” Zephyr said, his voice cracking slightly, like it had been recently. “We gotta go. I saw armed men on the next block.”
“Will M-mom and Ben be okay?” I asked, though my mind pulsed with a headache at the question. My keen intellect never allowed me to overlook anything. I already knew where Mom and Ben were – my consciousness just hadn’t accepted it.
Zephyr didn’t reply.
That was an answer within itself.
I kept my eyes squeezed shut for what felt like several blocks, the screams of the victims growing quiet behind us as we headed down the darkening streets.
“We forgot her coat,” I whispered.
“It’s okay, Skye. We don’t need it.”
“She’ll…she’ll b-be cold, Zephyr.”
Zephyr didn’t reply again, and I finally opened my eyes.
Shouting sounded from across the street, and Zephyr pulled me by my arm down an alley.
“Do you think Levi is okay?” I asked as we made our way deeper down the alley. I had been taught never to go into someone’s mind in public, but this was an emergency. Couldn’t I reach out to him?
Zephyr didn’t reply, his eyes bouncing back and forth across the alley, looking for an exit as the shouting behind us grew louder. Several boots pounded the pavement close by.
“You two, stop right there!” A deep voice called out.
Zephyr went rigid, then shoved me behind him.
“Where did you two come from?” The man asked.
He was dressed all in black military garb with a black gaiter covering his mouth and nose, though there was no way he was a member of the King’s military. A heavy tactical vest stretched across his chest, black combat boots on his feet.
The only color anywhere on him were two blood-red triangles, meeting in the middle to form an hourglass…the sign of a terrorist group I’d seen on TV.
The man held his black gun pointed straight at us. He had horrible trigger discipline, his finger flinching and trembling. I opened my mouth, maybe to tell him that, but Zephyr squeezed my hand in warning.
“We just got lost in the chaos,” Zephyr said. “We’re looking for our parents.”
