Chapter 14 - The Final Blaze
The brutal impact shook the hallway walls, sending dust raining down from the ceiling. Mark pinned the stranger to the floor, driving his fists downward with desperate, furious strength, but the man in the trench coat fought back with lethal efficiency, rolling them over and pinning Mark beneath him.
"Mark!" Elena screamed, crawling across the floor toward them, but she was too weak to pull the heavy man away.
Lily stood frozen in the center of the hallway, her hands glowing with an intense, blinding amber light. The heat was unbearable now, warping the wallpaper and melting the plastic frame of the wall sconce. The entire second-floor hallway was transforming into a furnace, exactly as it had three weeks ago. Only this time, there was no hiding the truth. The fire wasn't an accident caused by sleepwalking—it was the natural defense mechanism of a girl whose very biology responded to extreme stress by igniting the air around her.
The stranger raised his fist to strike Mark across the temple, but froze as a wave of intense heat washed over his face. He looked up, his wide eyes locking onto Lily.
"Don't do it, girl," the man snarled, blood dripping from his nose. "If you let go, this whole house goes up with us inside."
"Let him go," Lily whispered, her voice echoing with an unnatural, resonant hum that sounded like a chorus of voices speaking all at once.
She raised her glowing hands, pointing them straight at the wooden floorboards between the two men. The wood instantly turned cherry-red, smoking and bubbling as the flames licked upward in a ring of bright orange fire.
Mark seized the distraction. With a sudden burst of adrenaline, he kicked upward, throwing the stranger off balance and tumbling him backward down the open attic stairs. The man let out a sharp, startled yell as he plunged into the pitch-black void above, the sound abruptly cut off by a heavy, echoing crash from the darkness.
Mark scrambled back up, coughing violently from the thick black smoke, and lunged toward Lily and Elena.
"Get out! Both of you, out the window!" Mark roared over the roaring crackle of the flames spreading across the hallway carpet.
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Elena grabbed Lily’s hand, pulling her toward the master bedroom as the roof above them began to groan under the crushing weight of the spreading fire.
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