A Shade of Vampire 39: A Rip of Realms(2)

“Stand back,” I yelled out, simultaneously swinging the vulture head, with Ruby holding the other side, into the door. The first hit reverberated up my arms painfully, but the second swing smashed the wooden paneling, creating a hole in the door. We swung again, and this time the vulture head went sailing through the door, splintering it completely.

“One by one—out you go!” Ruby ushered the kids through as quickly as she could. They stumbled and practically fell over themselves trying to get out, each face appearing soot- and tear-stained in the daylight.

The last few disappeared out of sight, and I looked around.

“Where’s Yelena?” I asked. I hadn’t seen her go through the door.

“We’re missing two!” Jenney cried out, half out of the door as she counted the heads of the kids.

The inferno was getting closer, and Ruby looked worriedly back down the corridor.

“We need to leave now,” she replied, holding on to the sleeve of my robe.

“Not without her!” I yelled, pulling back my robe and twisting out of her grasp.

“That’s suicide!”

“I don’t care,” I retorted, running back the way we had come. I knew none of them would follow me—Ruby would want to, but Jenney and Julian wouldn’t let her. But there was no way I would leave Yelena on her own. I didn’t know why she’d run off, but I owed it to her to go after her—for everything she’d done for me—and everything I’d done to her. Yeah. I owed her. I owed her big time.

I ran back along the corridor, my body breaking out in a sweat as the heat from the blaze battered me, unrelenting and dry, my face feeling like it was going to melt off. My eyes started to water, the smoke irritating them and blocking off any oxygen so that my head swam.

“Yelena!” I called out, coughing and spluttering, knowing that it was probably useless to call her name. She wouldn’t be able to hear me over the sound of the fire and falling stone.

The fire was only several feet ahead of me: a solid wall of flame, blocking my path…which meant she had to be in one of the rooms off this part of the corridor, or else she was dead.

“Yelena!” I roared again, kicking open the doors that I passed. Most of them were bedrooms, as small and cramped as Ash’s had been. I bent low, trying to make out human forms in the billows of smoke that poured in from the blaze of the corridor. There wasn’t time to give each of them more than a cursory look—there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide anyway. I just had to keep searching rooms and hope that she was in one of them.

I was two more doors from the blaze when the door to the left flew open and Yelena came staggering out, carrying the young Portuguese kid in her arms. His body lay limp, but Yelena was choking badly.

“He ran off…he didn’t understand,” she hacked out, before she started to sway on her feet. She stumbled forward, and I rushed forward to catch them both before they smacked into the ground.

‘Yelena!” I cried out, trying to shake her upright, whilst keeping one eye on the flames that were snaking closer by the second. “You need to stand up! Please—I can’t do this without you!”

The boy looked dead to the world, and I didn’t know if he was alive or not, but his expressionless face and closed eyes didn’t give me much hope. I took him out of her arms and flung him over my shoulder as best I could—he was small and light, but I wasn’t going to be able to carry them both.

“Wake UP!” I screamed at her. I pulled at her waist with my spare hand, pulling her upward so that her body was leaning against mine.

“Just let me rest here for a minute…” she murmured, disorientated and completely oblivious to the flames and, even more worrying, the sound of the ceiling starting to rumble and creak.

Without stopping to think, I started to move forward, grabbing Yelena more tightly. I staggered toward the dim light up ahead, just able to make out the cries of Ruby and Julian urging me forward.

I could practically feel the flames inches away from my bare neck.

We have to make it.

Don’t stop…

The fumes were starting to get to me. The hint of daylight started to move about as my vision blurred, but I kept my grip on Yelena tight, putting one foot in front of the other.

The broken doorway was only about five feet in front of me when the ceiling started to cave in. I shoved Yelena in front of me, pushing her through the break in the door and into Ruby’s outstretched hands. Without waiting to see whether or not the coast was clear, I launched myself through with the boy still over my shoulder.

I smacked into Yelena’s back, breathing in a lungful of air before I slapped down, hard, onto the ground.