One Grave at a Time

Yeah, I still had enough juice in me for that. The lantern Kramer had on the ground, the one he sought to terrify us with because of that flickering flame and its ominous portent, would only make it easier for us to be found by anyone flying overhead.

Kramer recoiled, wiping his hand on his tunic as though my tears were poisonous. "I will burn them from you, Hexe!"

I trusted that my message had been sent, and now, it was time to quit playing possum and kick some evil ass.

"I'd like to see you try that."

He grabbed the lantern, the look in his eyes telling me he wasn't bluffing this time. What he felt in my tears must have warned him that it wasn't worth the risk to rape and torture me first. But because he'd been off by a centimeter or so when he stabbed the silver knife into my chest, I didn't hesitate to wrench my arms down, breaking the metal cuffs restraining me. It jostled the knife, but not enough to shred my heart, and before Kramer could correct that error, I yanked the blade out. Two hard jerks were my feet ripping free of the restraints, leaving nothing but the dried cornhusks at the bottom of the empty pole to catch fire when Kramer threw the lantern at me.

They went up with a whoosh, the gasoline Kramer doused me with having soaked them, too. I'd leapt back far enough to avoid any fumes on me igniting, but he'd spilled gasoline on Lisa and Francine, too. And the cornstalks around us, dried and crackling from the lateness of the season, were like tall, skinny matchsticks.

Kramer howled in frustration at missing me with the lantern. Sarah took one look at the flames and started to crawl away from the clearing as fast as she could. I ran to Francine, knocking her pole over with a linebacker tackle and ripping the metal off her wrists and ankles. She gasped in pain behind her gag, but Kramer hadn't given up on his grisly intentions so easily. He snatched at the burning husks on the ground and threw one at us.

The spot where her pole had been flared with the contact from those greedy orange and yellow tongues, but I yanked her away in time.

"Run!" I yelled, giving her a shove for emphasis. Lisa's muffled screams told me what I already knew-that Kramer was now focused on her. He grinned as he threw a burning husk at her, not even seeming to notice that the bottom of his robe dragged in the flames.

I didn't have time to knock her out of the way. It had taken precious seconds to free Francine and get her safely out of the sodden, flammable circle at her feet. That glowing bundle arced toward Lisa and I knew, with crystal clarity, the only thing I could do to save her. Instead of aiming for the screaming woman helplessly chained to the pole, I threw myself at the burning missile, snatching it and taking it with me as I landed outside the triangular clearing.

Flames raced up my arms, blazing into an avalanche of fire once they reached my gasoline-soaked clothes. Pain so intense it robbed me of thought scalded over me, spreading to cover my body in an instant. In the brief moments it took them to reach my face, I realized I'd vaulted myself straight up into the sky, doing the worst thing possible by flying and fanning the flames. It hadn't even been a conscious decision-all my primal mind knew was that it wanted away from this torture. With the willpower I had left in me, screaming as pain exploded in every nerve ending, I forced myself down into the fields and began to roll as fast as I could away from Kramer and the others.

You'll heal, you'll heal, you'll heal. I clung to that litany while my mind exploded with the agony of my flesh being eaten away by those merciless flames. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, but I could feel everything, including the excruciating inner searing when I screamed again, and it drew flames into my mouth. Every instinct urged me stop rolling over what felt like razors ripping away at what was left of my flesh. To run from the overwhelming suffering that spared no inch of me, but with the last vestiges of my sanity, I ignored those urges and kept rolling.

After what felt like a thousand years, I realized I could see again. I was tucked into the fetal position, still rolling blindly across the fields. I used my blurry vision to spot the few remaining patches of fire on my feet where my boots had melted around them, then slapped at them. The movement sent riptides of anguish on top of what was already more pain than I could ever remember feeling, but I kept swatting at the flames until they were out and all the shoe remains were off my feet.

For a dazed moment as I looked down at myself, I thought I was somehow still wearing my black jeans and blouse. But then I realized the dark tatters hanging over me weren't clothes-it was my own charred skin. In the midst of the searing pain, I wanted to vomit and scream out of sheer horror, but Francine and Lisa were still fighting for their lives against a maniac determined to murder them. No matter what I looked like or how much it hurt, I didn't have the option of panicking over the fire's ravages or waiting until I finished healing to move. I had to act now, or burning myself to crisp by running into that fiery projectile had been for nothing.

I got up, unable to stuff back my gasp at what moving did to my blackened and cracking skin. You'll heal, I repeated ruthlessly, then tried to force myself into the air. At the first attempt, I flopped back down immediately, cornhusks tearing into my still-partially-charred skin when I crashed. With another pained gasp, I got back up and tried again, flinging myself forward.

This time, I made it about thirty yards before I crashed, but it was enough for me to pinpoint where the deadly amber glow was. I ran in that direction, giving up on flying, the pain slowly starting to ease. Normally vampire injuries healed almost instantly, but with the extent of the damage the flames had caused both to skin and muscle, the healing was taking several minutes. Or it hurt so badly that it felt that way.

I burst into the triangular clearing right as flames licked the dry vegetation at the base of Lisa's pole. Without slowing down, I barreled into her and lifted upward at the same time. The pole stayed in the ground, but the impact ripped Lisa free of the metal bindings. When the gasoline ignited and shot up the pole, she was already several feet above it, safely free of the flames.

That didn't make her muffled screams decrease. Right before we crashed down, I saw that she stared at me with abject terror. Then I flipped so I'd take the bulk of the landing, stuffing back a shout as the impact reverberated through me, and the husks felt like they ripped all the new skin off my back.

Lisa expressed her gratitude for me sheltering her against the worst of the crash by punching and kicking me as soon as we skidded to a halt. The rough fall had knocked her gag loose, so she screamed between huge gasps of breath. Normally a human smacking and kicking me would have laughably little effect, but I fought the urge to crawl back into the fetal position and concentrated on catching her hands instead.