THE CRACKLE OF flames and a permeating heat roused me.

I had no knowledge of how I’d come to land safely, but when I opened my eyes, I was lying in the middle of a searing fire. The snap and pop of the fire consuming the bracken around me rang in my ears. The intensity of the flames blazing at either side of me warned that I wouldn’t be safe lying where I was for very long.

Gingerly, I tested my fingers and my toes, wiggling them tentatively to ensure I had control. My left ankle protested a little as I shifted my leg, but otherwise I was able to move.

I was alive.

Mostly.

With great care, I lifted each limb and gathered myself together. My ankle hurt more each time I shifted.

I hope it’s not broken.

I attempted to shrug off the agony as my need to survive kicked in. After all, there was nothing I could do for my ankle until I was safe. The flames posed an imminent threat, and I needed to escape them.

Pulling myself up onto all fours, I half-crawled, half-dragged myself away from the fire. The familiar prickling over my skin told me the sunbird had helped guide me to the ground, but I knew from experience that she didn’t make me fireproof. The memory of the agony of the burns on my shoulders and the self-inflicted one on my wrist, as well as the time it took to recover from them, was enough to keep me moving despite the battle with my ankle. I inched forward, trying to piece together the events that had led to the inferno.

Once I’d forced myself to move far enough away from the flames that the heat was no longer biting at my skin, I looked around for some sort of shelter. I couldn’t be certain that my swan dive would be enough to convince Ethan and Louise I was dead, but just in case it wasn’t, I wanted to hide before anyone came looking for me. I only hoped Clay trusted me enough to come searching, otherwise I would have to turn into the hunter and find him again. I wouldn’t allow any more missed opportunities or half-truths to tear us apart.

I hated that I had done precisely what Clay had said I never would—I was pretending to be dead for my own benefit. But my intention had never been to make him believe I was gone. All I’d hoped to do with my maneuver was to give the two of us some breathing room to escape.

If he didn’t come to find me, I would just have to regroup and find some way to contact him again. We’d reunited before and, now that I knew without any doubt that he loved me and I could trust him to the ends of the Earth—literally—I would do everything in my power to ensure we were reunited again. If he thought I was dead, I’d hunt him down and prove that his sister wasn’t the only one who could have a miraculous recovery.

Physically, I was able to live without him, but I didn’t want to. He was my beacon of light in a world that wanted me dead. I wasn’t willing to give that up for anything, not anymore.

At the base of the outcrop, I found a tiny fissure in the rock, just a little larger than my own body. I twisted myself into the space and followed the crack as it eventually widened a little before opening up fully into a dark, cavernous space.

Crawling into the cave, I pressed myself against the wall nearest the crack so I could hear what was happening outside. Once I was sure I was as safe as I could be, I listened more carefully to my aching body and tried to assess the damage I’d inflicted on myself. My left shoulder was strained and it hurt if I moved it too suddenly or used it too much. A rash of tiny cuts covered the left side of my body, and the landing had torn shreds from my clothes in places. My ankle was the worst injury, it protested each time I tried to put weight on it, aching and throbbing and threatening to give out beneath me. It didn’t seem obviously broken, but it was swollen and sore to touch. I couldn’t be certain of the extent of the damage until I could examine it in the light.

Resting my head against the rocks, I tried to remember my fall and the landing. The moment the sunbird took over was easy to recall but everything from then on was a little blurry and rushed. I remembered the ground rising steadily and then the flames engulfing me in a matter of seconds. The other thing I recalled was the wind rushing upward at me, blasting my face with superheated air.

It hadn’t been exactly the escape I’d hoped for in the few seconds before I’d jumped, but I was thankful I hadn’t misjudged my abilities completely and simply smashed into the ground below.

I thought about Clay on top of the lookout with his family. I was sure they wouldn’t hurt him unless he forced them to, and I hoped that he’d stayed calm and trusted I knew what I was doing. Or at least, thought I might. It was easy to imagine him trying to hurtle himself off the outcrop to follow me, especially after seeing the resulting fire that would likely be interpreted as signaling my death. If he could understand and be patient, things would work out.

Stuck in the cave with an aching body that refused to follow my instructions any longer, there was little more to do than give in to that hope. I pulled my legs close to my body, wrapping my arms around them, and then I tried to rest. A fluttering of wings and high-pitched squeals and squeaks high overhead in the darkness meant I would definitely be spending the night with less than pleasant company. With some effort, I managed to tune out the sounds of the creatures rustling deeper in the cave.

At some stage during the night, a rustle of wind from the depths of the darkness rushed by me and whooshed out through the fissure. Accompanying the breeze was a disgusting scent that called to mind the stench of death and decay.

Hours later the wind picked up again, blowing the putrid scent back into my resting place. I didn’t want to investigate, too concerned about what I might find, so I curled away from the smell and the rustle of the wind, and tried to get some sleep.

Resting fitfully, night passed and eventually dawned into a new day. A sliver of pink light crept into the cave, warning me of the advancing time. Despite trying to sleep, I had spent the majority of the night pressed against the wall, listening for any sounds outside that indicated someone—either Clay or his family—was looking for me.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, the light turned from pink to white and grew brighter. Pulling myself up to a standing position first, I carefully limped back to the entrance of my little hideaway. I crept as far forward into the fissure as I could before I would have to twist myself back out through the entrance and reveal my location.

I surveyed the devastation the fire I’d created had caused to the forest—the flames had blackened and scorched the rocks and burned all of the shrubbery away. Knowing there was little more I could do in the short term, especially while my ankle was still aching and unwilling to move, I pressed myself against the rocks and waited for any signs of life nearby.

Without any method of telling the time other than watching the angle of the sun from my awkward hiding place, I had no real idea of how long I waited with nothing more than my own thoughts to keep me company.

Footsteps approaching my hiding spot and craned my neck to get a better view of whoever had arrived.

“Evie!” Clay shouted my name. The sound was wonderful despite that fact that his voice was just as full of desperation as it had been when I’d fallen the night before. His tears and panic were evident in his tone. I celebrated the fact that he’d returned for me, he’d trusted me, but overwhelming that was my need to soothe away the agony I’d caused him and reassure him that I was okay.

I needed to be certain that he was alone.

Despite needing to be at his side, I didn’t want to run into the arms of his family if they were nearby. It would cause us to lose any benefit that my slightly uncalculated risk had gained.

“Evie!”

Stretching out my fingers, I grabbed hold of a few loose stones on the cave floor. I twisted myself into a position where I caught a glimpse of Clay. He’d found the place where I’d landed and was bent over the burnt bracken. Just as I was about to toss one of the small rocks in his direction to get his attention, Ethan approached him from behind.

My heart raced as I caught a glimpse of Ethan’s face, and I sank back into the fissure to ensure I was out of sight. His proximity sent my fear into overdrive. The memory of that face behind the wheel of the Hummer while I’d had to drive madly through the streets of Charlotte to escape, the words he’d spoken at my Tallahassee campsite, and the more recent image of him behind the barrel of a gun were all still crystal clear. He was a killer with no remorse.

I clenched my fist around the rocks in my fist before dropping them when they heated to the point where they branded patterns into my skin.

The sound seemed to spook Ethan rather than tip him off to my location. There might have been a chink in his fearless armor after all.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Bro,” Ethan said, grabbing at the back of Clay’s shirt and trying to pull him away.

“She has to be around here somewhere,” Clay said, tugging out of his brother’s hold.

“It’s not safe here.” Ethan’s head swiveled left and right as if he was maintaining a constant watch for something. I wondered whether it was me he was scared of, but the thought didn’t sit right. He hadn’t been nearly as apprehensive of me the night before. That may have been because he’d been in apparent control, with a gun leveled at my head, but it still didn’t make sense. “If you hadn’t taken off like a bat out of hell, I could have at least grabbed some weapons. Now we’re out here unprotected. I don’t like it.”

“I’m not leaving without knowing what happened.”

“She died, man.” His words proved that he wasn’t afraid I was around.

Then what is he afraid of?

“No. She didn’t die.” Clay was adamant about my survival, and his faith in me buoyed me. With his fists clenched at his sides and the way his head darted from side to side, it was clear tension roiled in him, but his faith gave me hope he’d at least understood my actions.

“Look at the evidence all around you. Remember, whoosh! Now let’s get back to the car so I can at least grab my stuff.”

“I don’t believe that, I can’t. I’d know if she was gone. I’d know it in here.” He pointed to his chest. “She’s not. She definitely can’t be. I can’t believe it. I won’t. She isn’t gone . . .” Maybe it wasn’t faith so much as blind hope. He rambled as fear etched across his face before twisting in place as it grew too much to contain. He twisted in place and shouted my name again. “Evie!”

Seeming to understand his brother wasn’t going to relent anytime soon, Ethan kneeled beside him and reassuringly patted his back. “I know you think you felt something for her, but she wasn’t human. You know we have to eliminate all threats to humanity. That’s done now. She’s no longer a threat to anyone.”

Clay spun around and pushed Ethan away. “You don’t get to talk about her like that! Not anymore! Not ever again.”

He stood over Ethan and from my vantage point, every detail of his enraged face was crystal clear. His nostrils flared, his cheeks were pink, and his fingers clenched and unclenched tightly at his side.

“You don’t get it, do you?” His voice rose as he clearly enunciated every syllable.

“Don’t get what exactly?” Ethan asked in a voice ringing with ice and death.

Clay’s mouth twisted in disgust. “If you took two seconds to pull your head out of your ass, you’d see that last night Evie could have easily killed you or Louise. She could have stood and fought.” As he spoke in a venomous growl, he turned and walked away from Ethan. “You’ve seen the devastation she can cause first hand. It would have been nothing for her to release flames that would have destroyed us all. She was close enough that she could have even grabbed either one of you and taken you over the edge with her. But she didn’t.”

“But—” Ethan went to interrupt Clay’s tirade, but Clay spun on him.

“No!” Clay shouted to cut him off. His rage had turned vocal. His face was red and he was practically panting as rage surged through him. “You need to listen to me. She didn’t do that because she isn’t evil. The idea of killing the two of you was probably the furthest thing from her mind. It wouldn’t even have registered as a possibility because that’s just not how she thinks. Evie is a good person! And I don’t give a shit what you or anyone else thinks about her anymore.”

I wanted to rush to him because of the support he was showing me. The fact Ethan was unarmed made it especially tempting—only I wasn’t sure that his idea of “no weapons” actually meant unarmed. Clay had always regarded his handgun as an extension of himself.

Clay breathed out once more heavily before raising his eyes back to his brother. “Okay?”

Ethan wisely chose to keep his mouth shut and just nodded. I wondered whether he’d ever seen his brother as furious as he had been for the last few minutes.

“We do have to go though,” Ethan said as Clay brought his breathing under control. “I told you it wasn’t a coincidence that Dad and I were in the area.”

Clay snorted. “I still don’t believe that you weren’t hunting Evie. I know how badly Dad wanted to get her into the treatment room.” A visible shudder ran through his body and in reaction to it, one raced down my spine.

Treatment room? It sounded like something from a nightmare. One that I would be walking into if I didn’t figure out a way to get to Clay and get the hell out of the area as quickly as we could.

“I told you, Lou was hunting her. And yeah, maybe Dad would have loved to get the phoenix into the hands of the Assessors, but what you overheard was us talking about transferring Lou back to Bayview so we could get her the best care.”

Clay frowned and looked like he was going to argue.

“Dad and I were already in the area when Lou called us, I swear to you, man. The bosses wanted us to look into the deaths in the area. We still don’t know the cause, but we have our suspicions. So, believe it or not, we just happened to be close when Lou called. In fact, I think she might have herded you to this spot because of it.”

“She couldn’t know where we were going to go,” Clay said.

Ethan sighed before rubbing his forehead. “And a shepherd doesn’t know which direction his sheep will run, but he still gets them to where they need to be. You know all this. You’ve lived this life too. I mean look at you, man! What happened to all the training you had, to all of your knowledge? I don’t understand throwing all of that away for a monster.”

“Evie is not a monster,” Clay bristled.

“Whatever, can we please just go back to the car?”

“I told you, I’m not leaving until I know what happened to her. But you can feel free to fuck off whenever you want. I’m not making you stay.”

“You’re willing to become another unexplained death just to find out what happened to her?” Ethan asked incredulously.

Clay just stared at Ethan, clearly unwilling to answer what he considered a stupid question. I tried to get his attention by squeezing a little farther out of the hole, but I wasn’t sure he would be able to see me in the darkness. I decided I could risk pushing myself right to the entrance of the cave while Ethan faced away from me. I was certain that provided Clay could keep his initial reaction in check, we’d be okay. If not, it was two against one—much better odds than the night before.

When I moved, a warm breeze brushed across the back of my neck. The rush of air, almost like the breath of a great beast exhaling across my shoulders, carried the same rancid scent I’d noticed during the night—fetid meat and rotten flesh. A soft hissing behind me accompanied another warm gust. I didn’t even have enough space to turn around and see what had issued the breeze and made the sounds, but had a growing certainty it was something organic. The thought terrified me, and an urge to flee built in me. The tiny gap that had led me to my refuge had now become my trap.

Without a thought about the danger I was throwing myself into, not with my instincts screaming that it couldn’t be worse than whatever lurked behind, I twisted through the fissure in the rock and pushed out into the clearing. My heart pounded as I moved. In my haste, I sliced my arm against a sharp rock that jutted out just a little farther than those around it. The moment I was free, I turned to face whatever had been behind me in the cave. My ankle and speed tripped me up, and I tumbled to the ground.