Gripping the handle, Julian braced himself to pull the door open. Glancing behind him, he saw most of the others hiding within one of the rooms off the hall. Quinn stood behind him, unwilling to take safety with the others.

“Stay behind me,” he said for the tenth time.

She rolled her eyes, but her foot tapped anxiously against the floor. “I know.”

Straightening his shoulders, he braced his other hand against the wall as he pulled back on the handle. The hinges of the door creaked as they bent, the metal of the door twisting to give way to his grasp.

The handle broke off suddenly, causing him to take a stumbling step back before he caught his balance. He tossed the metal handle aside. It clattered against the concrete before rolling to settle against the wall as he stepped up to the door again. Feeling over the cool metal, he wrapped one hand around the twisted frame and slid his other hand up by the hinges. The hinges had given away enough to allow room for his fingers to slip through.

He used all of his strength to wrench backward, tearing the door free of the wall. Jumping back, he slammed the metal door down in front of him to use it as a shield while he pinned Quinn against the wall behind him. A concussive boom caused the floor beneath his feet to lurch as a wave of fire erupted from the doorway. He almost could have believed a fire-breathing dragon had been unleashed on them as the flames continued to roll outward, snapping at the air before him and nearly reaching the room where the others were.

The strength of the explosion and the wall of fire pounding against him, pushed him more firmly into Quinn as he labored to keep the door between them and the flames. The metal heated beneath his palm, causing the door to glow a vibrant orange color. His skin blistered and peeled away from his muscles until all that remained were the bones of his fingertips. His arms shook as his muscles strained from the force.

The tentacles of her power slithered over his skin, an influx of life strengthened him. The skin on his hands began to heal as rapidly as it peeled away.

“Keep that life for you,” he managed to grate out between his teeth.

“It’s for us,” she replied before her head dropped against his back.

“Quinn—”

“You know it didn’t all go back to them. I always keep some life, whether it’s intentional or not, there is more in me than I need right now!”

She shouted the words at him, but he barely heard her over the crackling wave of fire battering them. He had no idea what The Commission had used to fuel this fire, but they’d certainly never intended for anyone to walk away from it.

“We have to move back,” he yelled at her, his voice dry and cracking from the heat of the flames.

She started to edge her way down the hall toward the first room. “Almost—” Her words abruptly cut off as a twisting, wrenching sound filled the air. The floor beneath his feet shook and heaved before the ground plunged out from under him.

***

Quinn’s head spun. The buzzing in her ears was an incessant noise that nearly drowned out the agony of her battered body. She tried to recall what had happened, tried to understand where she was, but everything around her was too chaotic. Blood filled her nostrils, smoke clogged her throat, and the lump on the side of her head throbbed as if it were a living thing.

She had to remember what had happened and where she was; if she didn’t, she would die.

She had no idea how she knew that, she just knew it. Screams resonated in her ears, somehow piercing through the horrible buzzing. If she found that beehive, she’d smash it with her bare hands.

Julian!

He was with her somewhere amongst the buzzing and pain and smoke. Fire!

Her eyes flew open as bits and pieces of the events that had transpired filtered over her. There had been explosions and a fire. Julian had stood before her with a door, and then…

She blinked against the smoke, trying to clear her vision of the cloying substance as the crackling of flames briefly drowned out the buzzing. Heat beat against her skin, causing sweat to plaster her clothes to her. The smoke was acrid on her tongue and debris coated her lashes when she tried to blink her watering eyes in an attempt to clear her vision.

Something shifted above her. Whatever it was pressed down more firmly on her chest and caused a startled cry to escape her. She realized she couldn’t see, not because of the smoke, but because she was buried beneath something. Lifting her hands, her fingers fumbled over the rough surface of whatever lay on top of her. Cool and rigid to the touch, it took her a minute to realize she lay beneath a pile of concrete.

The floor gave way.

The final rush of memory was a relief that didn’t last long. Julian was down here with her, as vulnerable as she was. The others could also be here, or had it only been their section of floor that collapsed?

Adrenaline flooded her body at the thought of those she loved trapped in this hell with her. She shoved harder against the rubble weighing her down but jerked her hand back when a piece of metal rebar sticking through the concrete sliced across her hand. Blood welled forth and spilled down her palm. Taking hold of the slab again, she shoved it angrily off of her and blinked as she tried to take in what she could of her surroundings.

Smoke obscured her vision. When she tilted her head back, she spotted the snapping flames filling the hallway only ten feet away from her. For now, the fire rolled over itself where it was, but if it found something to feed it further, it would spread toward her. Red flashes rebounded off the smoke and reflected crazily around her. The buzzing increased and she realized now it came from a blaring fire alarm and the flashes were lights from the alarm.

The Commission had set their building on fire, and she had a feeling it hadn’t been on purpose. Something in their design of this place was flawed. The building hadn’t been strong enough to withstand the wave of flames they’d unleashed.

Where is Julian?

Panic clawed at her chest. He couldn’t have fallen that far away from her, could he?

She searched the rubble for him as she pushed more concrete off her. She finally succeeded in dragging her legs out from under the debris. Bruised and battered, her muscles and bones protested the movement as she rose. Her ankle screamed when she tried to put her full weight on it, but when she gingerly tested standing on it again, she realized nothing was broken this time.

She staggered to the side and rested her hand against the wall as screams pierced through the buzzing again. She tried to search through the darkness for the source of the screams, but whoever it was remained hidden by the smoke.

She began to make out words over the roaring of the flames. “Quinn! Julian!”

Looking up and nearly ten feet away from her, she stared at the jagged hole in the floor and saw the faces of the others as they stood at the edge of it. Fire rolled across the ceiling toward the hole. The flames growing higher as they sought out the oxygen above.

She tore her attention away from the hole to focus on the rubble beneath her feet. Julian had to be under here, or…

Had he somehow fallen into the fire while she’d been thrown clear of it?

A lump formed in her throat. This time the tears pricking her eyes had nothing to do with the smoke burning them, and everything to do with the possibility that Julian may already be gone.

No, she would know if he was. She’d felt him leave her when Zach had staked him; she would have felt it again now, but where was he? She searched inside herself for the thin thread of her ability that had been linking them before. It took her only a moment to realize it was gone.

That means nothing! It was a new development you had no idea about it. It could have broken when you were knocked out, or before that.

She told herself this repeatedly, but her chest felt as if it were being crushed by the terror clawing at her. Staggering forward, her hands scrambled over the concrete as her senses searched for anything other than the smoke, fire, and screams. She was so hot that entering Hell itself might feel cold right now, but the wall was surprisingly cool against her fingertips.

Stumbling over a block of concrete, her foot became tangled on the edge of it and she nearly went down. Her twisted ankle throbbed, so she leaned against the wall to take a moment to steady herself.

Looking above her once more, she realized that she stood almost directly beneath the hole now. The smoke cleared away enough for her to spot Chris standing above her, pointing repeatedly at something she couldn’t see. She shoved herself away from the wall and lurched toward where he pointed. There, at the edge of the pile of debris, she saw a hand curling out from beneath a slab of concrete.

Julian! It had to be!

She leaped forward and fell beside the hand. Her knees smacked against the concrete, but she barely felt the pain in them as she grabbed at the debris and threw it aside. Her fingernails broke away with her frantic movements and blood dripped from her fingers to stain the gray chunks beneath her a deep shade of maroon.

Lifting another piece of rubble out of the way, her heart fell into her stomach when she revealed a pair of brown eyes staring blearily up at her. She almost drew back her fist and drove it into the blood-streaked face beneath her as frustration crashed over her. Knocking him out wouldn’t help her though.

“Where is he?” she screamed hoarsely at the man trapped beneath her.

The man blinked up at her and released a moan. Quinn turned away from him to search the rubble. The man had chosen his course when he’d agreed to help The Commission. Her course was to find Julian; that was all that mattered right now.

She tilted her head back to look at the hole above her again, but Chris had been driven away from it by the smoke and flames closing in above her. Rising to her feet again, she balanced herself on the shifting rubble with her hands out at her sides.

“Julian!” She strained to hear any cries for help over the fire closing in on her. The heat licked at her hair, blowing it forward. Tears streaked her face as the acrid smoke thickened and burned her eyes. She doubted her voice carried more than a foot or two beyond her, but she continued to shout for him. “Julian!”

She made her way deeper into the catacombs of the burning building. The flashing red lights cast shadows through the smoke, disorienting her more than helping her find her way.

“Julian!” she screamed again. “Julian!”

A sound to her right had her spinning in that direction. She nearly smacked into the wall beside her. She ran her hand over the smooth concrete, feeling her way forward. Her hand fell away into nothing, and she felt blindly around the open space.

Finally, it sank into her dazed mind that she’d found an opening in what she assumed was the main tunnel beneath the building. She saw only a flash of movement before a hand grabbed her wrist.

Quinn jerked back, flattening herself against the wall when a small whistling sound pierced through the buzzing. Something whizzed past her face, creating a shift in the smoke. Quinn lashed out, bringing her hand down on the arm that had swung at her. She smashed into someone’s forearm with enough force to crack bone. A woman screamed as the coppery tang of her blood filled the air and the stake she’d been clutching clattered against the concrete.

Quinn pulled her arm back and drove her fist into the woman’s face. The woman’s scream abruptly cut off as the punch knocked her teeth out, causing the woman to gag on them. Quinn enclosed her hand around the woman’s neck and dragged her into the tunnel with the flames.

Blood pooled from between the hands the woman covered her mouth with. She moved her hands away only to spit out a few of her teeth. Quinn kept hold of the woman as she dragged her toward the fire. Tentacles of power slithered from Quinn’s palm and into the woman. She gave a subtle tug on the woman’s life force in order to heal the wounds she’d sustained from her fall. Judging by the swell of life within the woman, she was a Hunter.

The woman’s head swung toward her when she felt Quinn taking from her. “What argh ya doon?” her voice was so thick and heavy with blood when she spoke that Quinn struggled to understand her.

Ignoring the question, she drew more from the woman until Quinn was certain the woman wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight or get very far if she tried to escape. The woman’s life fueled her, heightening her senses. Beneath the cloying scent of the fire and smoke, she scented Julian.

The woman’s legs trembled. With a whimper, she jerked against Quinn’s hold when the fire blasted against their skin, but Quinn didn’t relinquish her. They were nearly to where she’d left the trapped man when something crunched behind her.

The woman’s feet flew off the ground as Quinn whipped around to face whatever was behind her. She jerked to the side when a man with a massive bruise on the side of his face, a swollen black eye, and his clothes hanging in tatters on him lunged at her with a stake in hand. The stake sliced down her arm, digging into the bone and bouncing off it.

Biting back a scream, Quinn released the woman and drove her elbow into the man’s Adam’s apple. He choked, and his eyes bugged out as his hand flew to his throat. Using Quinn’s distraction to her advantage, the woman jumped at her. Her fingers hooked into Quinn’s necklace, and with an abrupt tug, her locket gave way. Dismay swelled within Quinn as that piece of her family fell away from her. She punched the woman in the face again, sending her reeling into the wall.

With the woman temporarily out of the way, Quinn lunged to finish off the man before he could completely recover. Before she could grab him, a blast of something hit her in the chest, flinging her back. Her spine screamed in agony when she crashed onto the jagged pile of debris and bounced across it. A broken piece of rebar pierced through her side, impaling her and stopping her from falling into the fire.

This time, she was unable to hold back a cry of pain as agony burst through her body. The man had telekinesis, she realized as she grasped at the rebar and tried to lift herself off of it. Pinned like this, she wouldn’t be able to fight against the two Hunters stalking her. Blackness swarmed before her eyes as unconsciousness threatened to drag her under. If she passed out now, they’d kill her.

Muscle and skin gripped at the foreign object piercing her. Her hands slipped in the blood coating the broken metal, and she fell back down it. Despite the heat of the fire blazing against her back, an icy sheen of sweat coated her. Through the thick smoke, the battered man steadily approached her, but this time he had a crossbow in hand.

“We saw what you did to the others outside,” he said, his voice raspy from smoke. “They want me to capture you, but I think that’s a very bad idea.”

“You won’t make it out of here alive,” Quinn choked out.

The man smiled maliciously as he lifted the crossbow and aimed it at her heart. “Maybe not, but neither will you.”

A roar rent the air. It reverberated off the walls and caused the rebar to vibrate within her flesh. Something charged out of the thick smoke, materializing from another side tunnel she hadn’t seen before.

She got only a glimpse of Julian, bloody with his pants hanging in tatters around him, before he crashed into the man. The impact caused a bone to snap in the man’s body with a loud crack and the crossbow to fly out of his grasp. The weapon skittered away, coming up against the woman’s feet. She lurched toward it and snatched it from the ground before swinging it toward Quinn.

They were no longer touching, but Quinn could still feel her tendrils of power interwoven within the woman. Quinn clamped down on the woman’s life force as she fired the bolt.