“Quinn!” he shouted through the smoke burning his throat. The lights and buzzing sound abruptly cut off. He didn’t know if someone had shut the alarms off or if the fire had destroyed them. “Quinn!”
A flash of movement on his right spun him in that direction as something fell from the flames. He blinked against the smoke as he tried to comprehend if what he saw was real, or if his mind had snapped and he’d started to hallucinate. When he looked again, he realized the vision wasn’t vanishing.
Rubble shifted beneath his feet as he covered the ten feet between him and Quinn in a single bound. Flames engulfed her body as she managed to lift herself up from the debris and fling herself forward. He had no idea what she was trying to get to until he heard a scream.
Tearing the remains of his pants off, Julian fell beside her. He didn’t acknowledge the man trapped by the rubble as he worked to smother the flames enveloping Quinn’s blackened flesh. His clothes went up in flames almost instantly. Nearly all the bones in his hands and all the way up to his forearm were visible as he beat at the flames with his bare hands. The man beneath the rubble shrank further, and his gray skin flaked away from him.
Quinn was working to replenish her body, but if Julian couldn’t get the flames out, it wouldn’t matter as she would rebuild flesh only to have it burn away again.
A blast of something white burst over them, burying them within its cool depths and pushing back the fire encroaching on them. Julian turned his head away from it as the white spray momentarily blinded him. Lifting his hands, he wiped the substance away from his lashes.
Whatever the white coating was, it had smothered most of the flames on Quinn. He rapidly smothered the rest of them. The man beneath the rubble took on the withered appearance of a mummified corpse before his body crumpled into ash.
“Quinn,” Julian grasped her shoulders.
The scream she released made it sound as if she’d been chewing on hot coals. He jerked his hands away from her, but he couldn’t leave her face down on the concrete. Ever so tenderly, he carefully rolled her over. He didn’t know if she saw him through the haze of pain in her honeyed eyes. Blisters and white foam covered the reddened areas of the skin she’d managed to heal, while other parts of her remained charred and muscle peeked through. Bits of her blackened flesh broke off in his hand to reveal the pink muscle beneath.
“Quinn,” he moaned, afraid to touch her again and bring her more pain. He rested his fingers against her forehead, one of the few places on her that had a patch of nearly pristine skin. “I’m here. You’re going to be okay. Stay with me.”
“Julian! Julian, we have to go!” He barely heard the shouts above the crackling of the flames encroaching on them again. “Julian!”
Movement beside him had him lashing out at whoever had dared to approach them. Julian snarled and snapped his fangs at the intruder as he swung a skeletal hand out. Chris yelped and stumbled away from him when Julian caught hold of something hard. A fire extinguisher flew from Chris’s hands to bounce off the wall.
Rage and anguish clouded Julian’s mind. Before he could launch at Chris and ease his need for death, another fire extinguisher swung out and cracked him in the shoulder, knocking him back. He bared his fangs as he turned to find Melissa standing there.
She held the fire extinguisher as if she were going to bash him in the skull with it. “We just saved your lives, asshole!” she spat. “Now, let’s go!”
Julian shook his head to try to clear it of the bloodlust pulsing through him. He had to get it together, or he’d end up killing his friends.
Feeling in control enough to risk going near his friends, he went to pick Quinn up, but her hands clasped his before he could slide them under her. He felt the jolt of her power as she latched onto him, but she didn’t pull anything away from him.
“Take what you need from me, Dewdrop,” he murmured.
“No. Help me stand.” The words croaked from her throat.
“I’ll carry you.”
“No. Someone else could be lurking nearby. We have to be prepared and… I can’t take that much touch. Not now.”
Fighting against every one of his instincts to lift her and take her from there, he wrapped his arm tenderly around her bare waist and lifted her to her feet. She stood on top of the pile, wobbling like a newborn colt as she surveyed the wreckage around her. Julian wanted to draw her closer against him, but he didn’t dare with her brutalized skin.
When she took a tremulous step forward, flakes of white fell away to expose more of her ruined skin. She had no hair left anywhere on her body, and parts of her ears and lips had burnt away, but steely resolve shone through the agony in her eyes.