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Donovan stared down at him in disbelief. He had just killed a man.
Again.
But there was no time to dwell on it. The nightmares would have to come later.
He turned to Sasha as fire crawled up his living room wall and grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet. “We have to go. Now!”
“The vest!”
He swore and grabbed another knife. He wasn’t careful as he sawed through the straps holding it on her because—hell, they were as good as dead anyway if they didn’t get it off before racing through the inferno bearing down on them. The vest fell to the floor with a thunk, and Sasha jumped away from it.
“Matilda!” She spun toward the garage at the back of the house.
Since the fire was coming from the front, he decided it was as good a direction as any. “Spirit! Let’s go!”
The door between the kitchen and garage hung off its hinges. Later, he’d be impressed that Spirit had managed to break through, but now he just jumped over the wreckage and followed Sasha into the garage.
She had Matilda up on her back, the big dog’s front paws wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “Where do we go?”
He spotted his bike and then looked at the back door that led out to his patio and beyond that, a cliff dropping into the Razorrock River. He opened the door, then climbed onto the bike and offered her his helmet.
She followed his gaze and horror bloomed across her features. “Donovan. No.”
The ground shook as the first explosion of what promised to be a firework show ripped through the house.
“Fuck,” Sasha said on a sob and jumped on the back of his bike, pulling on the helmet.
He grabbed Spirit and hoisted her up in front of him, then revved the engine. “I’m so sorry, Sasha. Hang on to me if you can.”
“Just go!”
They careened through the back doorway and raced along the narrow path between the house and the cliff. They made it halfway down the path when a massive explosion shook the ground beneath them, and his house splintered, raining down as deadly shrapnel.
The path gave way beneath the tires.
Sasha shrieked and wrapped her arms around Donovan’s waist, hoping that Matilda’s claws digging into her shoulders would keep the dog on her back as the superheated air whistled past her ears.
They were going to die.
Another jolt shook her as the bike hit a ledge on the side of the cliff, somehow still upright. They bounced like a ball from one rocky ledge to the next before suddenly plunging into the icy river.
Sasha gasped and sucked in a lungful of water. She swam to the surface, gagging as Matilda’s claws dug deeper into her shoulders. Somehow the dog was still clinging to her back like a huge fuzzy book bag.
The poor girl was going to need a lifetime of doggie therapy after this.
She coughed and searched for Donovan. She didn’t see him, but Spirit was there, her little black head bobbing in the water next to the crashed bike, paws paddling frantically.
Sasha went under again. When she surfaced, she ripped off the helmet that kept weighing her down. “Donovan!”
He popped up downstream and coughed hard, spitting up water. His head was bleeding, and his eyes looked dazed, but he was in one piece. She swam over to him.
“Get to shore.” His voice was strangled as he pointed to the far shore, opposite the fire. “Over there.”
They they half-swam, half-bobbed across the river, then crawled up the steep, muddy shoreline and collapsed in the mud. On the ridge overhead, the fire snapped and growled, as if angry they had escaped. Smoke clogged the air, and the sky had deepened to an apocalyptic red.
Sasha extracted Matilda from her back. She was bleeding where the dog’s claws had dug into her shoulders, but she didn’t care.
They were alive.
