Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (39 page)

“Endora, wait.” His fingers stung as
they closed around my wrist.

I spun to face him. The mask was still
in place, but cracks were starting to appear.

“Who is he?” I demanded.

“Let me take care of this, please.”
His green eyes were pleading now. “Go outside and wait for me. No
matter what happens, do not come back inside and do not go anywhere
with someone besides me.”

“Kannon, what is going on?”

“I won’t let anything happen to her.”
With that Kannon was gone, leaving me staring after him.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I go
after him? Should I trust him? I barely knew him. He’d said that
some Egrgoroi were bad. Evil. Was Bryson one of the evil Egrgoroi?
I tried to recall the one time we’d been in close physical
proximity, the night of my birthday when he’d suggested that I jump
off the cliff at Caswell Lake. The conflicting emotions that I felt
around Kannon and the two Egrgoroi boys in the mall weren’t present
that night. What did that mean?

“Where’s Dev? They are going to
announce king and queen soon.” Elizabeth was panting and her cheeks
were flushed from dancing.

“Kannon just went to find her,” I
mumbled.

A shrill noise drowned out the music
and my classmates’ voices. The lights blinked off, replaced by
pulsing white emergency lights.

“If everyone could move to the nearest
exit. Do not panic. Walk, do not run.” Principal Beam was barely
audible over the continued blaring of the alarm.

Devon. Kannon. Where were they?
Between the darkness and my panicked classmates, I had no hope of
finding either of them in the chaos. People swarmed around me,
bumping me in their haste to run, not walk, to the exit. I stood
frozen, unsure what to do.

Before he went after Devon, Kannon had
told me to go outside. Had he known this was going to happen? Did
Bryson Daniels have something to do with this?

“Eel, come on,” Elizabeth shouted to
be heard. Her hand was on my elbow, urging me forward. Cooper was
on her other side, his bow tie wrapped around his forehead like
Tarzan. Seeing him like that sparked a memory: fire.

“Fire,” I said aloud.

“Exactly. This place is on fire.
That’s why we have to go outside,” Elizabeth said, exasperated by
my refusal to move.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold on to
the memory. This was important. I saw myself walking down a
smoke-filled corridor, calling Devon’s name. She was trapped. She
was going to die if I didn’t find her.

“Go. I have to find Devon,” I told
Elizabeth, gently pushing her away.

“You have to come.”

The ballroom was quickly emptying of
people, only to be replaced by smoke wafting in from a hallway to
the right.

“Cooper,” I tried appealing to him
instead. “Take her outside. I’ll be right behind you.”

“No,” Elizabeth protested. “I’m not
leaving you.”

“Cooper,” I begged. There wasn’t time
for this; I needed to get to Devon.

Cooper hesitated, waging some internal
debate that I wasn’t privy to. He stared into my eyes. Whatever he
saw – determination, resolve, desperation – made his decision for
him. “Come on, Liz. Let’s go.”

Elizabeth’s protests faded as I ran
towards the smoky corridor. My heels were slowing me down, so I
took several seconds to kick them aside. I glanced over my shoulder
and caught Cooper dragging Elizabeth through the entranceway. They
were the last people to leave the ballroom.

The smoke was dense and stung my eyes.
I used the skirt of my dress to cover my mouth and nose. Heat
surged all around me, growing stronger and more uncomfortable the
deeper I plunged into the corridor. The exposed skin of my arms
felt like it was blistering, but the pain made me move
faster.

“Devon!” I shouted, worried that the
wailing fire alarms would prevent her from hearing my
cries.

The gray-black cloud was so thick that
I couldn’t see where I was going. A brief moment of panic made me
falter. Was I going the right way? Sure, the smoke was coming from
this direction. And as the saying goes, where there’s smoke there’s
fire. But was I sure that Devon was trapped near the
flashpoint?

In my dream she had been. Except in my
dream, Kannon, not Devon, was waiting for me at the end of this
hallway. But he’d gone searching for her, so she had to be there
too, right?

With newfound determination, I dropped
to my hands and knees. The air close to the floor wasn’t as smoky,
and I sucked in the relatively fresh air. My lungs burned from
inhaling so much smoke - the dress had been a poor filter. But my
own health seemed unimportant. This was Devon we were talking
about. She was my best friend. My partner in crime. Had the roles
been reversed, she wouldn’t have let a little smoke stand between
us.

“Devon!” I shouted again.

A coughing fit overtook me,
temporarily stalling my progress. But my efforts were rewarded when
I began to hear banging coming from the direction I was moving. The
sound was faint and only audible between the intermittent wails of
the fire alarm. Still, it gave me hope – she was still
alive.

Deciding that crawling was too slow, I
got to my feet, crouching low, and continued towards the banging.
The heat was almost unbearable. My face felt like it was melting.
But finally, I reached a door. I knew it was there, not because I
saw it, but because I ran into it. Headfirst. The collision caused
me to fall backwards. Disoriented and not thinking straight, I
blindly grabbed for the door handle, remembering too late that it
would be hot. The metal seared my palm and I cried out, inhaling a
great deal of smoke in the process.

I swore at my stupidity, then wrapped
my uninjured hand in the skirt of my dress and tried the handle a
second time. The damned door was locked. Of course. Oddly, this
development wasn’t a surprise. In my dream the door had been locked
as well. I knew what was coming next: an explosion. I took several
steps backwards and curled into a ball, hands over my head, and
waited. I wasn’t disappointed.

The wooden floor shook
beneath me and I moaned Devon’s name, fearing the worst.
The door is going to open now
, I thought. And it did. Just like in my dream, Kannon was
framed in the doorway. His hair was a mess, blood ran down one side
of his face, and the buttons of his shirt were ripped
open.

This isn’t right,
I thought. This wasn’t how the dream went. He
shouldn’t have been hurt.

“Jesus, Endora. I told you to go
outside!” He coughed, a deep raspy noise that made him groan, and
hurried to my side. “Are you okay?”

Our faces were inches apart. Both his
right eye and his lower lip were swollen. I touched his cheek with
my fingers to make sure he was real. This definitely hadn’t
happened in my dream. Where were the fire creatures?

“Can you walk? Are you hurt? We need
to go.”

Kannon’s grip was gentle but firm on
my waist. He pulled me to my feet.

“Devon?” I said weakly.

“She’s fine. But we won’t be if we
don’t go now.”

I refused to move. Could I trust him?
I’d never actually seen her in my dream. I had no idea where she
was supposed to be.

“Endora, please. I promise she is
safe.”

“I hope she’s worth it,” a cold voice
spoke from behind us.

Despite the blistering heat, my blood
froze. I didn’t need to turn around to know it was Bryson. Kannon
didn’t give me a choice now. He picked me up, threw me over his
shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and started running. Laughter
followed us, louder than the fire alarm. I wondered whether the
noise was actually inside of my head.

Instead of the ballroom being at the
end of the hallway where I thought it was, there was another door.
Kannon used his hip to depress the bar and it opened. Cold air
chilled my back and when Kannon set me back on my feet, I greedily
gulped it in. Kannon fell to his knees, coughing and
wheezing.

“Are you okay?” he asked between
wheezes.

“Me?” I laughed dryly.
“Are
you
okay?”

Tentatively, I touched his swollen
eye. He winced but didn’t pull away.

“What happened in there?” I asked
quietly.

Kannon shook his head. “I’ll explain
later. Right now, we need to get out of here.”

With a great deal of effort, Kannon
stood, clutching his ribs. Since his shirt was ripped, scratches on
his chest were visible. I wanted to press him for details about
what happened, but he was already on the move.

The grass was cold and damp beneath my
feet. It felt so good, soothing my hot skin. I followed Kannon
around the back of the building. Apparently, we’d left through a
back exit. My classmates were congregated in the parking lot. Fire
engines lined the circular drive, looking out of place among the
white and black limos. Firemen in yellow jumpsuits were hauling
thick white hoses off of the trucks. Several police cruisers had
also responded to the alarms, and uniformed officers were standing
with Principal Beam off to one side.

“We can’t go up there,” Kannon said.
“The cops will want to question us.”

One look at Kannon’s bruised and
bloodied face told me he was right.

“I need to let my friends know I’m
okay, though,” I said.

“You can call them later.”

“How are we going to get
home?”

The country club was a twenty-minute
drive from my house; we couldn’t walk. Kannon was in no shape to
walk anywhere. He needed medical attention.

“Cab,” Kannon said. He reached in his
pants pocket for his cell. “Damn.”

“What?”

“It’s broken.” He held up the phone so
I could see the blank display.

I’d left my evening bag at the table,
which meant we had no phone.

“There’s a gas station not far from
here,” I suggested. “They probably have a pay phone.”

Despite my doubts about whether Kannon
could walk that far, he did so without complaint. Miraculously, the
gas station did still have a working pay phone, and we used that
and the Yellow Pages to call a cab. Next, I dialed Devon’s cell
number.

It rang three times before her muffled
voice answered. “Hello?” Sirens wailed in the background, making it
hard to hear her. But the relief I felt at hearing her say that one
word was indescribable.

“Devon.” My voice broke on her
name.

“Eel?!” she shouted. “Is that you?
Where are you?”

“I’m with Kannon,” I said. “We’re
safe.”

“He saved my life, Eel,” she sobbed.
“Bryson is a monster. One minute we were making out, and the next
he had me tied up. Fire shot from his hands. He was going to kill
me.”

I closed my eyes and rested my
forehead against the cold glass of the phone booth. How could I
have let this happen? I’d known she was in danger. I should have
trusted my gut, should have listened to the voices in my head
telling me not to go to prom.

“
He said that if I hadn’t
meddled in things that weren’t my business then none of this would
have happened.” Devon was still crying in my ear. “The fire was my
fault. I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, sweetie. It’s not your fault.
You didn’t do anything wrong.” The fire was my fault. Bryson had
only gone after Devon because of me. Even if the gods didn’t want
her messing with Egrgoroi affairs, she’d only done it to help
me.

A mechanical voice broke into our
conversation, directing me to “Please deposit fifty cents to
continue the phone call.”

“Dev, I have to go,” I said hurriedly.
“I’m so glad you’re okay. I’ll call you—” A dial tone filled my
ear. I replaced the receiver, fighting back my own
tears.

After several deep, calming breaths, I
regained a modicum of composure, took Kannon’s wallet and went
inside the convenience store to purchase first-aid supplies. The
selection was subpar at best, but it would have to do.

Armed with bottled water, gauze,
Neosporin, and peroxide, I sat on the curb beside Kannon and
silently began cleaning the cuts on his face.

“I haven’t been completely honest with
you,” he said quietly, keeping his gaze straight
forward.

I said nothing, but my hands shook as
I dabbed peroxide on his temple. Kannon winced but otherwise showed
no sign that he was in pain.

“The lake was a
coincidence. That much was true. And the first dream I had about
you
was
about us
meeting at Elizabeth’s party. But I wasn’t joking when I told you
we were supposed to come here tonight together.”

My fingers stilled. I didn’t like
where this was going. All the dreams about Kannon flooded my mind
at once. My heart started hammering against my ribs. He was the
enemy. My original impression of him, the fear I’d felt at the
lake, was correct. Kannon was dangerous.

I took a shaky breath that hurt my
lungs. “What exactly are you saying?”