A Vial of Life

I could have sworn that I felt a touch of warmth rising in my cheeks, but being a vampire, I must have been imagining it. I swallowed. “Okay. Now I’m going to ask you ‘truth or dare’ again, and you’re going to choose dare, all right?”

He broke out in another laugh. “I don’t think that’s how this game is played, Rose.”

“Well, Mr. Achilles, this is my slumber party, and this is how I want to play it… Truth or dare?”

His face became solemn. “Your ladyship requires that I answer dare.”

Finally. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take his hands caressing my thighs.

I leaned in closer to his ear and whispered, “Make love to me.”

I was glad that he didn’t bother with any more banter. His hands slipped beneath my nightgown and parted it, baring me to him, while I stripped him of his robe.

I soon forgot that we were even still in my old bedroom. We could have been anywhere, back in our new treehouse, in the cabin of a boat—heck, even on the edge of a cliff. Caleb had such a way of consuming me that my brain seemed incapable of being aware of anything but the burning desire I held for him.

“Look how you’re corrupting me, Rose,” he breathed against my hair, as his tense body pressed against mine. “I thought we were here for a slumber party.”

* * *

I wasn’t sure how many hours passed before we finally rolled over onto our sides and drifted off to sleep.

But when I woke up, during what must have been the early hours of the morning, I knew immediately that something wasn’t right.

The atmosphere felt thick and heavy, and as my eyes shot open, I realized that wisps of smoke were spilling into the room from beneath the crack in the doorway.

I clutched Caleb and shook him awake.

“We need to get out of here!” I urged.

His confusion turned to shock as he caught sight of the smoke filling the room. Leaping out of bed, he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. He gripped the handle, pulling it ajar. Black smoke billowed inside. He closed the door immediately, even as I descended into a coughing fit. He placed his hand around the back of my neck and pushed me down toward the floor, where he crouched with me. Then he opened the door again. This time, through squinting eyes, I was able to see that the entire corridor was choked with smoke. And some feet away, coming from the direction of the living room, was the crackling of flames.

Oh, God. Where are my parents?

“Stay close to the floor,” Caleb said. His grip around the back of my neck tightened and he pushed me closer against the floorboards. He crawled toward the bed and snatched up our nightclothes from the mattress. He draped my nightgown around me, slipping my arms through the sleeves, while he put on his own robe and fastened the pull string tightly around his waist.

“Try to breathe into the hem of your gown,” he said. “Or better still, try not to breathe at all.”

As a vampire, I could hold my breath for a long time. I couldn’t have been more grateful for this ability as Caleb pushed open my bedroom door and we crawled out into the corridor. The smoke was so thick that it stung my eyes and made them water.

To our right, at the far end of the hallway, was a tall window, its Venetian blinds drawn. Caleb nodded in its direction, and we scrambled toward it. He made me stay on the floor while he reached up to pull open the blinds. But then he stalled. I gazed up to see what the matter was, and, to my horror, found myself staring through the glass at a wall of flames. The apartment was being consumed by fire from within and without.

Caleb grabbed my arm and pulled me back into my bedroom. We moved to the window in here. When we drew aside the heavy curtains, this window too was being licked by flames.

“What happened?” I breathed.

I didn’t have the first clue as to what could have caused the fire. Fires were a very rare occurrence in The Shade. Even though we lived in trees, the witches had designed the penthouses to be fire-safe. I couldn’t even remember the last fire that we’d had—other than when the dragons had stormed the island, though that hardly counted.

Fire inside the apartment, I could more easily wrap my head around. Perhaps there had been a gas explosion or something. But coming from the outside as well? What on earth had caused this inferno?

A coat of sweat broke out on my cold skin, and Caleb’s forehead shimmered too.

“What do we do?” I gasped. “We’re trapped.”

If we took a left down the corridor and headed toward the exit of the apartment, we would meet with the fire within the penthouse, yet it seemed that we couldn’t escape through the windows either without meeting with the blaze. We moved from room to room until we’d checked every single one on our side of the apartment, still untouched by fire, though becoming more and more choked with smoke each moment that passed. Each of the windows in these rooms looked out at the same flames.

I had been holding my breath as much as I could, but the fright and panic made it hard to regulate my breathing.

“We’re going to have to brave the flames,” Caleb said, his jaw set in a grimace.

The fire was encroaching both inside and outside the building, and we had to be quick. We checked the windows that we had access to once again, trying to find the window with the least amount of fire outside, but all looked just as deadly as the other. If we delayed any longer, we’d only make things worse for ourselves.

“Tie up your hair tightly,” Caleb ordered as he tore the blanket from my bed. I didn’t have a hair tie, but my hair was long and I managed to wrap it up in a tight bun. Spreading out the blanket, he began wrapping it around me, cocooning me in it. He grabbed three scarves from one of my open clothes bags and wrapped them around my legs and upper chest, securing the blanket against me, so securely that I was practically suffocating. He left enough of the blanket for me to pull over my head.