I’d seen a fire before, but I’d forgotten how loud it was. Loud and hazy and chemical. The smoke was blinding and seared my throat with each breath, but that was irrelevant now. I was a vampire; he was not. I’d heal. I couldn’t guarantee he would.
But that I was a vampire didn’t mean the burns hurt less; they’d just heal faster. I covered my face with a crooked arm, but sparks flew like horizontal rain, peppering me with stinging ash.
I ignored it.
“Grandpa!” I yelled over the roaring of the fire. I stumbled through the living room, which was empty, and into the kitchen, hands outstretched, feeling my way through the house with clumsy fingers. Thinking he might have been in his bedroom, I searched for the wall that led to the hallway. “Grandpa! Where are you?”
I pretended I was a child, sleeping over for a visit with my grandparents, moving through the house in the dark for a drink of water. I’d done it a thousand times, knew my way around the house even in utter darkness. I closed my eyes and willed my mind to remember to search for the clues that would get me where I needed to go.
I remembered, as a child, fumbling for the light switch on the left-hand wall. I reached out, groping blindly until I found smooth plastic, and then empty space. That was the hallway.
As the fire grew behind me, and the smoke thickened, I advanced. “Grandpa!”
I stumbled over an obstacle and fell down, then reached back to figure out what it had been. My fingers found a sharp corner—it was a bureau, a piece of furniture that had once stood in the hallway, holding my grandmother’s tablecloths and napkins. Sentimentality hitting me, I grabbed the only fragment of fabric I could feel—probably a doily—and stuffed it into my jacket.
One grandparent down, one to go.
“Grandpa? Where are you?”
“Merit!”
I froze. The sound was faint, but distinctly his. “Grandpa? I can hear you! Keep talking!”
“Merit . . . Go . . . out . . . house!”
I caught only intermittent words—“Out . . . house!”—but the meaning was clear enough. Those words also sounded like they were coming from far away. But I was feet from the bedroom. . . .
He wasn’t in the bedroom, I realized. He was in the basement.
The basement door was through the kitchen, so I’d have to backtrack and grope my way back to that side of the house—and then figure out a way to get him up again.
I dropped to the ground, where the air was still breathable and fresher, and crawled across the remains of the floor, ignoring the burning ash and glass beneath my hands. Adrenaline was pushing me now, sending me, regardless of the obstacle, toward the man who’d been like a father to me.
I crawled slowly forward, burned boards creaking beneath me as they struggled to hold up the remaining weight. I froze, not even taking a breath, before moving forward again.
My movement hadn’t been light enough.
Without warning, the boards beneath me snapped, sending me free-falling to the basement.
I landed with a bounce atop a jumble of boards, debris, and the shag carpeting I was suddenly glad my grandfather had kept. The fall knocked the air from my lungs, and for a moment I sucked in air as my body remembered how to breathe again.
Unfortunately, the craving for oxygen gave way to pain as my senses returned. I’d fallen on my side, which was now racked by a piercing pain. Slowly, ignoring the stabbing sensation, I got to my feet to move again.
“Grandpa?”
“Here, Merit.” He coughed, weakly enough that my heart nearly stopped.
“I’m coming, Grandpa. Hold on. I will be right there.”
I searched frantically through smoke and ash, trying to fulfill my promise, but it was nearly pitch-black in the basement, and I couldn’t find him.
The heat climbed as the fire roared above us. I pushed the most obvious question—assuming I survived this trip, how in God’s name was I going to get him safely out again?—from my mind, and focused on the task at hand, on breaking it into its smallest components.
Step one: Find my grandfather.
A burst of fire suddenly rushed above my head. Terrifying . . . but revealing. A few feet in front of me I saw a glint of light—the firelight dancing on the face of my grandfather’s watch. I dropped to my knees in ashy carpet, pushing aside half-burned books and pieces of what I assumed was Jeff’s computer.
I grabbed his hands.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I said, tears rushing my eyes.
He was on his back, surrounded by rubble. He squeezed my hands, which was a good sign, but across his abdomen was a gigantic wooden beam. It must have supported the basement ceiling and main floor.
Panic quickly set in, and I had to consciously remind myself to breathe slowly. A hyperventilating vampire would do no one any good.