Paragon - Chapter 56: Chapter 56

It all burned.
The walls. The floor. Even the air around me as I raced through what was left of it all. I moved fast enough not to let the flames have the exposed parts of my skin but it still took layers off my hands, off my boots–
The heartbeats led me to the end of the hallway where half the ceiling had collapsed already and a swimming pool sized hole lay between me and the group of mortals barricaded behind a set of burning doors. There was no screaming. Which meant they had less time.
I cursed as another wave of flames tore through the air and took more of the ceiling away. The smoke was everywhere and I had only heartbeats and patches of clear view to guide me.
I took several paces back against the burning walls and ignored the damage my body was racing to heal on my skin. The bloodlust would seek its payment soon. It never let you have immortal power without its fair share in return.
I ran without another linger thought.
A blur of a fireman's jacket between an impossible distance and the remaining hallway. I landed in a roll and front kicked the doorway without any hesitation. The flames hadn't reached them inside but they were all unconscious. That made exposing myself less of a problem.
I took the largest two mortals first over my shoulder like a pack mule before taking the smaller child in my other arm close to my body.
The building shuddered.
I ignored the roaring in my instincts that demanded their liquid gold. The lifeblood that would make me faster, strong, heal better to–
I shook my head and leapt to the window kicking at the sides viciously before it all crumpled away into the night sky. It looked like the mortals had tried and failed to open it... A fatal flaw in modern designs.
I had no such trouble.
A gaping hole now let in the fresh night air and sounds of sirens and screams below. I kept them firmly in my grip as I calculated the distance to the ground below. A seven floor drop even in my arms would be enough to kill them. I sighed through my nose and quickly untangled the largest mortal so I could have one free arm.
With the two of them over one shoulder I leapt from the lip of the hole in the building. The night air rushed us along with the smoke and flame clawing up the side of the building. But I sank my limbs into the stone of the building like icepicks and scaled the dangers down better than the most seasoned climber.
The problem was how much time it cost me.
As soon as I hit the tarmac on the side of the building I walked their unconscious bodies forward toward the back of an emergency vehicle. Its owners were too busy helping the rest of the smoky faced survivors.
It was then that I noticed my teeth sharp in my mouth. The thought of their scents hung a little too heavily on my jacket. I shook my head viciously and stared back up at the flaming building.
"Focus. God damn it." I growled.
I began the climb faster without the hinderance now. Without the need to consider the safety for those that didn't have the luxury of healing.
The flames kissed my skin as I yanked myself through the burning floor and into the hole in the window. My hands had resealed shut by the time I fell into the dark room with the unconscious mortal. I threw him onto my back and almost hissed when the desire hit me harder than it had in so long.
I staggered to the wall and refused to take another breath.
Control. Not fear. Calm your mind and do the work.
The route down felt like a lifetime. When I safely left the mortal beside the others I looked up to the remains of the building. The firefighters had stopped going in now at all. The rest of the building was comprised. But there was still one more floor unchecked above the one I had been. One I hadn't heard any beating hearts...
But I couldn't be sure.
"Fuck." I muttered, shrugging of the burned remains of the jacket.
I looked down at my dark shirt that would do nothing for it and the fireman's trousers.
"Fuck it." I growled, running at the wall once more and kicking myself high into the air before sinking my hands into the stone and rushing higher.
I dodged waves of flame enveloping the top of the building rapidly. I couldn't go any further without putting immortality to its healing limit. So I threw myself through a window one floor below the desired burning mess.
I crouched in the smoked out room and shut my eyes.
I let my senses carry so far I could hear the voices and radios on the ground. So far I could hear the hearts of those now safe. I sharpened it. So finely as I had when I found the one that meant everything to me that night.
Crying.
My eyes flashed open.
A child's cry. Wrapped behind many walls. Many flames. I looked around me and seized the first hefty item I could find. Then I threw it with all my available strength and collapsed the ceiling above me. I dodged the incoming fireball of floor that dropped.
The cry sounded louder.
I jumped above through the hole and narrowed my eyes through the smoke and chaos. The heat was unbearable and took my shirt sleeves quickly. I moved as fast as I could. Throwing myself through doors and walls in the direction of it. My skin was so black and dust covered I wouldn't recognise myself.
The pants held their own and kept my legs in one piece. But my arms were run raw from the heat and flames I went through. My vision was turning redder by the second. If I didn't find this mortal soon the demon in me would end the very thing I was to save–
I blasted my way through another wall of plaster and wood and finally stopped in the smoke when I heard the cry under the door of a bathroom. A towel pushed below and a male... dead before the doorway–as if doing this last thing before it was too late to save himself.
I didn't let myself feel for him.
I couldn't yet. I broke the door handle and threw all of the monster in me to the furthest place I had. I couldn't come this far to become one to this child. There may still be a mother down below.
I ripped the towel off the floor and strode into the bathroom without another second to reconsider. I wrapped the towel quickly around the screaming child that was quickly coughing more than anything else. I pulled her close to my chest and raced to the nearest wall of the bedroom. Anything was better than the way I had come.
A hallway emerged from the smoke and dust around me. A billowing runway for me to sprint to. An elevator shaft at its end. I could have sang songs for the relief. But I had no time for that either. I pushed the limits of my abilities to race down that smoking hallway.
The red vision sank ever closer and the desires pulling the darkest part of myself towards the pulse in my arms grew and grew. So enticing. Deserved. The mortals deserved nothing. I stopped at the edge of the dark hole in the lift and looked down at the child wrapped in the towel. I couldn't even see her face.
The red tinted more and my teeth became sharp.
"Don't be a hero, detective."
"Never."
Never.
But I could. I could be for you.
I gripped the steel cable before I could change my mind and dropped into the shadows of the elevator. The smoke cleared almost instantly. The rush down was quick and the ground floor hit the remains of my boots like it did in a different city. With a different mortal.
I flung myself out as the darkness in my vision got worse. As my teeth became more prominent. As my instincts demanded the nearest thing to me. Too much had been taken. Nothing repaid. I felt the strength waning. The speed slowed.
I stumbled out of the buildings front doors looking more mortal than any of them. Shouts sounded. But I couldn't allow myself to be close to any of it. Not now.
Not when I was becoming something else too quickly.
I carefully lowered the child as the mortals ran to us. As soon as her body touched the ground I staggered away. Into a broken run that was chased by shouts behind me. I didn't know what they said. I needed that chrome packet in the car. Just one was enough. Enough to...
I hit something.
A car. I staggered to the ground as the sidewalk spun around me. My vision was almost all red now. The heartbeats around me becoming the only thing I could think about. The one thing stopping me was that I hadn't yet taken in a fresh breath. If I did I would be undone.
The car.
Just get to the car. So close now. I yanked myself up and stumbled the rest down the street. It wasn't until I heard that familiar heartbeat that I realised my mistake in all of this. The one mortal I hadn't factored in my state. The one mortal that called to me more than any other and was opening the door to run to me–
"Stop!" My voice wasn't even my own. "Quinn–don't–"
I threw my hands in front of me. I couldn't imagine the state I looked. Shirt almost burnt away, fireman's trousers, blackened skin and caked in rubble–
Then that delicious heartbeat surrounded every other sense in me and I let my breathing slip for just one. Single. Moment.
The remaining colour left my vision and all I could see was red.
All I could see was a mortal. All for me.
* * * * *
A lifetime ago I was a good person.
I knew so because I could help people and feel no personal cost. There was never the urge to open someone's throat right after I had helped them. Admittedly I had joined the front line cause partly to escape my family's clutches. To at least make one choice for myself.
If it condemned me to a shorter one then so be it. At least I would be free to choose.
An immortal had so few choices. That was the greatest irony. You had the power to perform great deeds. Yet were condemned to follow the orders of the elites. Free to live forever and access to anything the material world had to offer. Then doomed to exist without finding meaning in any of it around you.
That was until Quinn.
All of that was before. In the past. It was too good to last. Nothing that good was meant to hold over time–I knew this better than anyone. The cost was always too much.
I stared at hands that weren't my own.
Black and grey as they took hold of something warm and breakable. I was locked in a faraway place and a familiar one. It was always like looking through a distant and hazed lens. It was too late to rationalise why or how. The demon would focus on that.
It was curious. Seeing it happen like it had all that time ago. A different mortal this time. She was beautiful yet she didn't seem scared... Only concerned. Her heart beat out of fear for the one that held her. That wasn't like the last time. Curious indeed.
Those hands pinned her against the car.
I watched her through this distant place as the monster of darkness snarled down at her. Wrapped in that familiar aura of pure desire and lethality. How could she not scream in the face of it? No one failed to cower before such a monster.
She spoke something clearly. As calmly as anyone ever had.
The internal monster didn't care. It took her by the throat and her voice with it. This was all so different... Wrong? Well perhaps. But I could only watch on. This was not my body to control. I wasn't this thing that sucked life away.
Yet that heartbeat was really something...
I watched. Stuck in some thick liquid of time as it slowed. As those teeth grew long and glinted as sharp as daggers in the night. I couldn't see that–yet I knew they were there. They weren't my own. They weren't–mine.
It started like a kiss. A slow deathless one that could have been a lover.
Sculpted lips against smooth skin on the mortal's neck. She took a breath like she knew it was coming. Like she accepted this act of darkness along with everything else this monster was. Who was I to stop it? No one could stop an immortal like this. Not when those teeth punctured the skin.
The blood hit me. It hit me.
A thousand things did. Two sides of me. The one that watched like it did the first time and the roaring eternal beast that drove me right over the edge. It drank deep and the two sides of me collided again and again. A silent war that threatened to tear me apart.
Me. Monster. Me. Fletcher. Her. Demon. Her–no–me. Who?
The taste was enough to send the strongest immortal blind. To sate your desire forever and then some. That was what she was. What was I? Who was I now? Did it matter?
Another sip of the richest lifeblood filled me and the warmth with it. It punched me in the chest again... Like a another jolt. Was it power or warning? The lines were too blurred. The need too much. Was I getting back more of myself or more of the monster? Both were stronger than ever.
A whisper.
So faint it barely reached past the buzz in my head. The battle of power between the mortal and the immortal. Then it came out faint once more. So close. A breath. Weaker still.
Fletcher.
Tara...
So innocent and pure. It had no right to be near such a collision of darkness.
"F-fletcher..." It whispered again with a breath.
The jolt hit my memories harder than any taste of desire. Like a hand taking yours right before you fell below the depths and pulled you back. A mere mortal ripping you away from a deathless grip. Impossible.
You're the most interesting thing that's happened in my life since I bothered to remember...
Fletcher. When are you going to kiss me...
NO. She is immortal bounty. The lifeblood in our veins–
It's me. I know you're in there...
Come back to me...
Worthless sentiment. Our power will always be in them–they are nothing more than–
If I am the tree, Quinn. You are the sun.
You always have been.
My eyes were more open than they have ever been. I was Tara Fletcher. And I was immortal. I chose to leave the demon in hell in that moment and leave every other part of me with her. I felt my teeth draw inside me and a small breath leave Quinn in my arms as I caught her against me.
The horror I felt was nothing compared to the terror I had of her mortality in that second.
"Quinn." I rasped, shaking my head and tracking her vitals and the slow beat of her heart. I thought I had already taken so much. I could have taken her life so easily there and then and there would be no returning–
I felt her palm slowly take the side of my black stained face. Half conscious she looked at me and muttered between us, "See... you're always... in there."
"I'm getting you to a hospital." I said flatly, scooping her up in my arms. Hating that this unfound strength and vitality came at the cost she had to bare. Always taking.
"You're not." She murmured, slumping into the seat as I shut her door and bolted over to my own. I shook my head and looked across at her.
"Maybe it's a good thing Paragon will need me soon..."
This brought some life back into her despite everything. She rolled her head at me with a glare.
"Take me back with you. Now."
I fired the ignition and made to ignore her.
"Fletcher I can't..." Her voice broke and made a part of me break with it. I stopped the car and watched her. "I can't risk spending the next few days–in a sterile room while you disappear..."
I pulled my hand off the wheel and cupped the side of her face.
"I can't stand what I've done to you–"
Her weak laugh stopped me. "And I can't love you more. Look at you." She shook her head in my hand. "You came back barely standing. An immortal barely holding out. You even dared to tell me the risks they took going in... How many was it you saved this time?" I didn't answer. She didn't seem to need it either way. "So no. Tara Fletcher. You cannot leave me anywhere you won't be. I'm going to wake up with you."
We stared at each other. Those green eyes still managing to burn their way into my soul despite the dark outside. Despite how I had almost ended the light in those eyes permanently. I moved my thumb slowly across her jawline and she closed her eyes.
"For you. I do this." I said slowly, feeling her relax, "–I will get supplies and come back, we do not debate that." Her eyes flashed in what was left of her strength but she nodded.
I leant back in the chair and let a long breath leave me.
"We need to talk about this later, Quinn. What I did tonight can never happen again. I'm not sure if I can ever forgive myself for it as it is... But I need us to know our limits. I need this. I cannot even see straight." I took another measured breath and looked back at her.
But Quinn Adams was already fast asleep.
Her beautiful face relaxed and her hair running over her face. Two tiny trails of blood were the only thing that told the truth of it. The wound was already healed shut. Much like an immortal wound–only she remained just as fragile.
"Why did you have to choose me, Quinn..." I sighed, brushing back the strands. "You could have been so much safer. So much..." I stopped myself and leant back in the chair staring out at the night roads. "–I don't even know anymore."