I didn't watch him fall.
I turned and ran through the wall of heat to the corner of the room. I ripped the smoking tarp away.
Lily was curled in a ball, coughing, her face pressed into the floorboards.
"Daddy?" she wheezed.
"I've got you," I said. I scooped her up, wrapping the heavy canvas tarp around her like a cocoon. "Hold your breath, bug. Deep breath. Now."
She buried her face in my chest.
The door was blocked by fire, but the wall beside it—the one Marcus had smashed through with the axe—was crumbling. The studs were exposed.
I lowered my shoulder and rammed through the weakened drywall. We tumbled out into the hallway, landing on the carpet in a heap of dust and smoke.
The air out here was cooler, though still thick with haze.
"Downstairs," I coughed. "Go. Go. Go."
We scrambled down the stairs, sliding more than running. I kept one hand on the wall and one arm around Lily. The house groaned around us, the bones of the structure warping in the heat above.
We hit the ground floor. I didn't stop for coats. I didn't stop for shoes.
I kicked the front door open.
The cold hit us like a sledgehammer, but it felt like salvation. The blizzard was still raging, but compared to the attic, it was paradise.
I ran until my lungs burned from the cold instead of the smoke. We made it to the edge of the woods, near where my ruined Jeep sat buried in the drift.
I collapsed into the snow, pulling Lily onto my lap. I wrapped my arms around her, shielding her from the wind, rocking back and forth.
Above us, the attic window glowed like an angry orange eye. Flames licked up the roof, fighting the snow.
"Is the monster gone?" Lily asked, her voice muffled by my shirt.
I looked at the spot under the attic window.
The snow was disturbed there. A crater.
Inside the crater, I could see a dark shape. It wasn't moving. The falling snow was already beginning to bury it, softening the edges, turning the tragedy into a mound of white.
Red blood and black ink pooled around the shape, staining the pristine snow. But as the fresh flakes fell, the colors began to fade, covered by the relentless white.
"Yeah, bug," I whispered, kissing the top of her smoky, static-filled hair. "He's gone."
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.