No vampire could have survived that burst of fire.
Aaron turned to ash before my eyes, and with him so did every part of me that mattered.
Screams wailed as the flames erupted higher, illuminating the night with a menacing glow, consuming the figure within moments.
He was gone. Aaron. He was dead.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel.
It was my nightmare, and I couldn’t register what just happened.
I’d stayed away to keep him safe.
No, I stayed away so it wouldn’t hurt. So I could survive this very thing.
Then it was like a bomb detonated in my chest, ripping me open. I slowly looked down, expecting to see a blown-out cavity where my ribcage was.
After all that, I lost him anyway and the devastation...
The roar of the crowd faded until I heard nothing. My vision blurred, the world around me dimming as every part of my internal being ripped itself apart in screaming agony.
It didn’t matter. It never mattered. No matter how I tried to keep myself safe, how I tried to stay away, I was still here, and Aaron wasn’t, and it hurt as if we’d spent millennia together. But we didn’t. I wasted time. I wasted all my moments with him.
I hurt him to keep him away to prevent this and it never mattered.
A new rush of murmurs rolled over the crowd, an incoherent buzzing to my dulled senses. Only when Miranda grabbed my arm did I bring myself to look up again.
Just when it seemed the horror could not deepen, a helmeted figure emerged from the smoke.
Confusion twisted a knife to my internal chaos.
Was it his soul walking from the fire, ready to cross the afterlife? No, when vampire souls crystallize, they cannot move on from their vessel. My eyes couldn’t comprehend what theywere seeing. I forced my lids to blink to clear my vision, but he was still there.
“It’s him, oh my God, he survived.”
“Can vampires do that? I thought they couldn’t survive fire?”
They can’t. There was absolutely no way Aaron survived that conflagration…
The helmet came off with a cascade of sun-bleached waves, revealing Aaron's familiar face to the astonished crowd.
The cheers erupted in wild, unrestrained screams as Aaron waved.
“What?” Miranda said next to me. “How?”
My mind calculated faster than the speed of light, putting tiny details together. Something was different about Aaron’s glow when he started the stunt, the way his face was now etched with tension and paled despite his smile as he let the crowd witness his death-defying feat.
People reached out, desperate for just a touch, a brush of Aaron’s hand, and he obliged as he walked by, headed toward us on Seth’s dais.
I was caught in the icy grip of truth. It hadn’t been him doing those stunts. Whoever had caught fire like that was gone.
15
AARON
Seth was waiting for me in the Menaggio’s VIP club, along with Timothy and Miranda. I recognized a number of the gods from the Convergence in attendance, hanging about with cocktails. Ones I didn’t care to see again.
I couldn’t bring myself to even greet my friends before tearing into Seth.
