Rouge (38 page)

There he lay, sprinkled with
snow, his left leg under his right and one arm across his stomach. Eli’s head
rolled to one side, staring straight at her, except his eyes were firmly
closed.

Hunter’s breath caught in
her throat as if choking her. Her limbs collapsed and she fell to the floor.
With every mountain of courage she could muster, she crawled to his side at the
foot of the master bed. She imagined this was what her teacher had looked like
when the nurse had found her. Cold. Blue. Completely still. 

Shaking furiously, Hunter
reached out to touch Eli’s cheek. She didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t be
dead. Not Eli. Not the one person she cared most about in this twisted world.

The very tips of her fingers
rested on his skin and she drew them back sharply, gasping. He was rock hard
and freezing. Her eyes welled with tears. 

“Eli?” She rested a hand on his
chest and gently shook him. “Please Eli,” she begged. “Wake up. Wake up!”

Her quivering hands took Eli
in her arms and she held him against her chest. Fighting the ice that
surrounded her, Hunter summoned the warmth and felt her whole body glow with it.
But something wasn’t right. The flames felt disconnected and slow, as though
they too were suddenly defeated. She rocked him in her arms, whispering, tears
streaming down her face and falling on Eli’s lifeless chest. Praying that the
heat would somehow bring him back, she rested a hand on his cheek and felt the
ice cocooned around his skin melt beneath her fingers. But the ice had already
taken Eli. There was no pulse coursing through his veins, no heartbeat where it
should be. No life left in him.

With one final effort,
Hunter pressed her lips to his and blew warm air inside him. His chest inflated
and melted ice dripped from his body. The tuxedo slowly unfroze.

Hunter pulled away,
watching, waiting for a sign of life.

“No E-Eli,” she sobbed
deeply, her chest heaving. “N-no. Don’t. Leave. M-me. Please.”

He remained lifeless. And
the horrible truth dawned on her like a stormy cloud before the rain.

Eli was gone.

Because of Joshua.

Hunter began to shiver
violently, and not because of the ice. The fire was building. It bubbled,
boiled and expanded inside of her. Her eyes shot open.

And just like in the
alleyway, the flames burst from her very core as though the fire had suddenly
awoken from a long slumber. She let it burn through her and the cage of icy grief
and brokenness that had closed around her heart. In the reflection of the glass
window to her right, Hunter caught a glow amidst the pale darkness of the room
and the reflection of a bright ball of flames gazed back at her.

Gently and lovingly, Hunter
lay Eli back on the puddled floor. She looked down at the sleeping man she
loved and couldn’t pull herself away from him. She wanted to stay with him
forever. He never left her when she needed him. She owed it to him to stay.

“I won’t leave you here.”
Her voice was unlike her own. The fire was snaking through her, consuming her.
She didn’t have much longer before it took control of her completely.

With a heart as heavy as
stone, Hunter reached up to her neck and unclasped her necklace. It had been a
part of Hunter all her life, and now she was giving it to Eli. With a pain
deeper than any wound and no tears left to cry, Hunter tied the necklace around
his neck and laid his head back softly on the snow.

“I’ll make him pay Eli,” she
whispered. “I promise.”

Getting to her feet was like
fighting against gravity, but the flames were slipping through her skin. Joshua
awaited her. He was no longer her friend and guardian. He was a stranger, an
enemy. He was dead to her.

Joshua had to be close. He
was probably in the building right now, walking around the dance floor, his icy
eyes searching for her, waiting for her to find him.

I’m coming for you
Joshua, you sick son of a bitch.
It
felt right to hate him.
You killed Miss Smart, kidnapped Jack and took away
the only person I have ever loved more than myself; my best friend.

You have awoken a beast.

As if the fire now
controlled her thoughts as well, the flames that flickered over and inside
Hunter’s body burst across the room in one great blast of heat. She screamed in
fury and the fire exploded like a nuclear bomb, burning everything within reach
of her, swallowing it whole. The ice melted and the windows cracked and burst,
shattering into a million pieces. Hunter’s rage grew as the fire took a hold of
her heart, diminishing her grief and agony and transforming it into pure,
poisonous hatred.

She would mourn Eli soon.
But right now the pain was too raw. She was broken, and so it was easy to let
the fire take over.

And for the fire, revenge
was the only solution.

–
P
ART
5
–

THE
EMBERS THAT REMAIN

Hunter’s dress billowed behind her,
shredded from the flames that had burst from her skin and scorched like burnt
paper. In a fit of rage, she stalked through the hotel corridor and caught the
elevator to the foyer. She received shocked looks from some of the seniors
sitting on the couches and especially the staff, but everything was peripheral.
None of it mattered. All that mattered was finding Joshua and unleashing all
her wrath. For so long she’d worked so hard to keep the flames within her. For
so long she’d thought they were a burden and an evil part of her that would
never detach itself from her soul. Now, they were a weapon, a way to pay back
the real villain who had been hidden from view the entire battle. The fire
longed to be free, to burn through flesh and explode like the night in the
alley. Only this time, Hunter
wanted
to kill. It soaked through to her
very core. 

Where is he?
Her skin glowed, her muscles tense for
a fight. Her hair had fallen from the clips she’d carefully pinned earlier. She
would have looked demonic, had she stopped and stared at her reflection in the
windows. Hunter stalked back into the prom where the music thumped a heavy
techno beat. Clare danced on the fringe of the crowd, the glistening Prom Queen
crown bobbing on her head. The floor was packed with laughing students. Happy.
Blissful. Completely unaware that Eli was dead.

Hunter searched for a
shadow, but Joshua wouldn’t be so careless. He would be hiding, watching her,
waiting for her to strike. But fear was completely absent from Hunter. She
didn’t care if she walked right into his hands, so long as she could melt them.

The strain of keeping the
flames inside of her was making her hyperventilate. They threatened to burst
out of her fingers like a clogged hose, the fury and thirst for revenge almost
overpowering. Students gave her shocked glances, but most of them stayed well
clear of her. If she let go of control now, she would risk the entire senior
class knowing what she could do and who she truly was. Hunter ran to the exit
before another glance passed in her direction.

The air outside the hotel
was fresh and she breathed it in, letting it clear her thoughts. Her eyes
stung, dried out and puffy. She searched the road for any sign of his car.
Where
did Joshua go?
The apartment? The lab? What has he done with Jack?

She ran down the red carpet
steps to the corner of the main street and looked around. There were clusters
of pedestrians walking this way and that, but one particular figure caught her
eye. He stood to her left in the middle of the path, the dark streets shadowing
his features. She squinted, hoping it was him. A car drove past, the headlights
sweeping across the figure, illuminating Joshua’s face and the wicked smile he
wore.

Hunter tore after him. She
ran surprisingly well in Melissa’s heels, not keeping her eyes off the man who
had turned down a dark alley behind the hotel, his pace casual. By the time she
turned into the alleyway herself, he was standing there waiting for her.

The alley was dank, smelling
of garbage and rain.
Must these battles always take place in dirty
alleyways?
Déjà vu washed over her, but passed when she realized this was
nothing like the time before, when she was scared and confused and powerless
against the flames. She held the reigns now, and it was her choice to deliver
the kill.

A white light shone dimly
down upon them, illuminating Joshua’s pale face, his smirk. The last time she
saw him, Joshua was peering over her hospital bed as he drugged her, promising
to take care of everything, his eyes clouded with worry and darkness. But now
he looked like a new man - confident, even giddy. Perhaps that’s what killing
does to someone. Madness fit Joshua well.

What felt like minutes
passed before anyone spoke. Hunter couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth,
knowing if she did that flames would burst from it. She didn’t want to set
anything free just yet.

“That dress looks beautiful
on you,” said Joshua conversationally as he took his hand out of his pants
pocket.

Hunter clenched her fists
and breathed in deeply, but she couldn’t stop it. Her whole body was shaking
with fury and an eagerness to force her anger upon him. It no longer mattered
who he was. Father or friend, Joshua was nothing to her.

“Where’s… Jack,” she hissed
through teeth ground so hard together they physically hurt.

“You’ll find out pretty
soon, I expect.”

“Oh I will,” she snarled.
“Right after I burn your insides and watch them melt.”

“Ouch. That hurt just as
much as what you said to me the last time we spoke.”

“Is
that
why you
killed Eli?” she shouted, trying to breathe normally. She was surprised the
words hadn’t made her collapse in pain and grief. “Because you’ve, what, been
replaced
?”

“Seriously Hunter,” Joshua sighed.
“You need to chill.”

Before she could even move
her burning fingers, Joshua’s eyes snapped to an old tin bucket next to the
dumpster on his right filled with rainwater and ice. The bucket tipped at an
incredible speed and the water shot straight at Hunter, hitting her in the
chest. She yelped and her body was thrown against the concrete wall. Collapsing
on the curb, the bitter taste of blood filled her mouth, her body soaked in
water.

Hunter looked up through her
dripping hair at Joshua as he walked casually towards her, her back aching. He
was grinning from ear to ear, a sight she’d hardly seen before. He was
possessed, as if the thrill of hurting her was all he had to live for.

“What happened to you?” she
choked up at him.

“I’m still me, Sweetheart.”

Hunter’s stomach flipped
with fury and she spat out a mouthful of bitter sewer water and blood in his
face. “You’re insane,” she snapped. “And don’t call me ‘Sweetheart’.”

Hunter lifted her hands and pointed
them at Joshua, who looked down but didn’t have time to duck. A sea of flames
burst from the palms of her hands, so hot they were no longer flames but a
stream of magma that flew straight at Joshua.

What happened next she
didn’t expect. Just as the magma was about to collide with Joshua’s grinning
face, his hand swept in a semi-circle and the magma turned to snow with a
deafening hiss. It circled in the air as if floating in an invisible ball.
Hunter was frozen in complete shock, almost entranced by the incredible sight,
and then Joshua blew hard against the ball of snow. It fell on her, burying
her, suffocating her. She clawed it away from her face and summoned heat into
her hands again, but it had been flushed by the snow. She began to shiver uncontrollably.
Her hands burst free and she pushed herself out, collapsing on the wet concrete
sidewalk.

Joshua was laughing. “You’ve
got a lot to learn about your powers Hunter, and mine as well.”

Still paralyzed at the
thought of Joshua having powers - because it took her almost a week to come to
terms with her own - Hunter lost her grip on the flames that had been flushed
by the cold snow, and for the first time she felt scared.
Courage,
she
urged herself and looked up from the ground at Joshua. He was holding something
behind his back, and she prayed she’d never find out what it was.

Hunter slipped to her feet,
frozen on the outside but burning on the inside. She needed to get dry.

Air flowed into her and
Hunter exhaled hard. Her body burst into flames. Joshua jumped backwards and
dropped whatever it was he’d been clutching to the slippery bitumen of the
alley. It rolled toward the sewer grate, so small it would probably fall
through, and before he could reach it, Hunter threw herself at him.

Everything became confusing.
Joshua was cold and the fire didn’t agree with that. It took all her
concentration not to lose the flame, but it wasn’t coping. Joshua began to
laugh hysterically as they wrestled on the alleyway floor. Hunter clawed at his
face, but he continued to cackle, a sound that echoed in her head and wouldn’t
go away. He was stronger than her, and in seconds he had thrown her off his
body so she went sailing into the dumpster, hitting it with a deep clang.