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“Layne!” Gabriel dove forward. The horse had come down the center of the aisle, so he didn’t know which side to check first.
This new silence was terrifying.
He started left.
Closed door. Closed door. Open door but no Layne. Maybe it had been pushed open by one of the earlier horses.
The heat was scorching his lungs. He refused to think of what it must be doing to Layne’s.
He scurried across the aisle. Closed door. Closed door. Closed where the hell was she?
And then his hand came down on something solid.
A body.
She wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. When he put his hands on her face, he felt something wet blood, running from her hairline. Gabriel was choking on smoke, on tears, on saying her name. He had her in his arms, but it was like clutching a doll.
Power breathed in the air around him. A fierce contradiction to the lifeless girl in his arms.
He wanted to lie down and die beside her.
But the sheer irony was that he could lie here forever, and the fire would never hurt him.
So much energy, right here for his taking. He could level the woods around them, could destroy the entire city.
But he couldn’t save one person.
He slid his hand against her throat, checking for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. His fingers slid through blood, and he choked on another sob.
Blood.
He remembered the night Becca’s father had tried to kill them all, when they’d been standing in three feet of water, and Chris had been so sure Becca was dead. They’d pulled her broken body from a mangled car. Blood had been everywhere. Chris had cut his hand on glass, and he’d put his blood to hers.
He’d fed his power into her.
She’d been healed.
She’d lived.
But Becca was an Elemental a Fifth, like Hunter. Had that been part of it? Had her body known to draw from Chris’s energy, to heal itself?
Gabriel didn’t know. But he was already pounding his knuckles into the rough concrete of the aisle, feeling the skin break.
He was already inciting the flames higher, pulling power from the fire, drawing strength from the inferno around him.
Energy coiled inside him, waiting for release. He felt strong, like he could tear this building down. Like he could destroy towns. Cities. Like energy could pour from his fingertips with the power of a hundred suns.
Gabriel coiled his hand into a fist and pressed his knuckles to her forehead, blood to blood.
And then he drove all that energy into her.
Layne’s body jerked so hard he almost dropped her. But then she didn’t move.
“Layne!” He caught her up against his chest. Her head fell against his shoulder. “Layne?”
Nothing.
He choked on another sob.
