“Stef!” I couldn’t see her. “Sam!” The smoke was too thick, and the fire too bright as it ate through the old wood of the mill, consuming walls and support beams and crates of woven fabric. My vision swam, fogging at the edges. When I searched for Sarit, she was gone, too.
Guards still flooded through the building, coming in from the door at the other end of the mill. Blue speared the smoke, aiming right at me, but my sylph caught the blast, then shifted around me where fire burned a loom. Heat poured into the sylph, smothering the fire a fraction before the sylph had to guard me again.
“Cris! Sarit!” My foot bumped something soft, and I stumbled over a body, the blackened corpse of a guard. I screamed and scrambled over him, toward the bags piled by the door.
Someone knocked me over as I reached for my backpack. My elbow and shoulder and head hit the floor, and the sudden pain shocked me back into alertness. I turned around and found a giant of a man bearing down on me.
Merton.
My sylph roared up between us, thick and black and burning. At the last second, Merton must have realized the sylph would block his shot. He turned and the blue targeting light beamed across the room, landing on Sam as he stumbled from the wreckage of a torched loom.
Stef shoved Sam aside.
Red and black welled up across her throat. A chunk of her hair seared off. Her eyes grew wide as she and Sam crashed to the floor.
My sylph surged up and wrapped itself around Merton. Three more shadows left their mostly dead targets and pooled over Merton, who screamed as his skin blistered and sloughed and blackened. The stench of burned flesh and hair overpowered the smoke. As Merton’s screams fell into gasps and gurgles, I looked away. I didn’t want to see him die.
Head spinning from the smoke and pain, I groped for my backpack and hauled it over my shoulders.
Bodies littered the floor, most of them burned beyond recognition. But the guards were gone. Either dead or dying. The fire still blazed, roaring across the weaving room and through to the other areas. I had to get out. But first I had to gather my friends.
“Sam.” I coughed out his name as I staggered over corpses. “Stef. Sarit.”
The sylph formed a line against the fire, absorbing what heat and flame they could to keep it from spreading, but it wouldn’t be long before the building collapsed further.
Stef’s eyes were wide and glassy. She wasn’t moving, but she gasped a little. The burn on her throat made a heavy dark line, surrounded by red.
“No.” I stumbled and dropped in front of her as Sam and Sarit approached, too. “Stef, come on. We’ve got to go.”
She blinked, long and slow, and her eyes rolled toward me, though she seemed unfocused. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out.
Sam reached for her, stopped, reached again. Tears dripped down his face. “You’re okay. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we need you.”
She closed her eyes and mouthed, “No.”
Sarit leaned over and hugged me. Her voice was ragged as she spoke by my ear. “You have to go. Get Sam and go. I’ll release the rest of the sylph and tell them to follow you.”
Fire rushed around us, licking toward the door and the bags there.
“You have to come find us, too.” I took Sarit’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “I’m not losing you. Come find us after you set the sylph free.”
She glanced at her arms, speckled with burn marks. Her face, too, had dark bruises blooming, or smoke stains. I couldn’t tell. “Okay.” Her cough was deep and dry, and blood dotted her arm where she tried to cover her mouth. “You have to go. Promise you’ll stop him.”
“I promise.” Tears ached around my eyes as I hugged her again, then touched Stef’s cheek. Her skin was warm, but the heat wasn’t from within her. It was the fire’s. I searched for the words to tell her how much she meant to me, but nothing came. Nothing big or important enough. “I love you.” The roar of the fire crushed my whisper.
Somewhere else in the mill, wood crashed to the floor, and flames rushed through the hall.
Sam was petting Stef’s hair, repeating something that was lost in the cacophony. I wanted to let him stay with her, but Sarit glared at me and I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”
He struggled against me. “No.”
Footsteps clomped through the mill. More guards. “Come on!”
Sylph flew through the fire, holding it back from us, but the fire grew and their numbers stayed the same.
Stef wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see her breathing. Sarit bent over her, sobbing, but when she looked at me, her eyes were fierce and demanding.
I hauled Sam to his feet, and we scrambled over burned bodies. His face was dark with rage and smoke as he accepted the backpack I thrust into his arms.
Ten guards emerged from the hallway, air masks over their faces. I leveled my pistol and shot, and one clutched his shoulder as he turned and saw me through the smoke. He aimed back at me, then dropped as blue light flashed from Sarit’s pistol.