Ignited by Desni Dantone Read Free Book Online

charged. Freak number two followed close behind.
    I was vaguely aware of the two in the living room turning to me at around the same time. Distantly, I was aware of one of them falling to the floor, and Gran standing over him with the fire poker. My ears picked up what sounded like Nathan finishing off the one in the kitchen with the knife.
    Death all around me. Three of them coming at me now. And, boy, were they fast.
    Half way up the stairs, icy fingers gripped my ankles and jerked my feet out from under me. My face slammed into the edge of a step, and then was dragged across the coarse carpet as I was hauled back down the stairs. I dug my nails in, reached for anything to hold on to, but came up empty. Three sets of hands were on me, tearing at my clothes, pulling my hair, and scratching my skin in their frantic attempt to get to me. My legs flailed wildly, and I thought I connected with someone’s face before a pair of hands restrained my legs to prevent me from doing further damage. Another set grabbed my arms and maneuvered them behind my back. I looked over my shoulder at the culprit, just as another body moved into my line of sight behind him.
    A formidable Nathan threw himself at the one who had my arms restrained, wrestled him off me. Next, the weight on my legs lifted, leaving me to scrap one on one with the last one.
    I wiggled out from under him enough to scramble up two steps. I turned as he lunged for me, kicked, and connected with his nose. It was a hard kick, but his lips merely twisted into an angry snarl as he leveled his gaze on me. His eyes shone a dark shade of gold—empty, with nothing behind them—like tiny portals straight into hell.  
    Behind him, Nathan impaled the one he had tackled, twisting the knife into his chest, where his heart should be. I screamed and looked away. Too late. The vision was etched into my mind forever—another one for the nightmares. I pushed through the psychological trauma, pulled it together, and prepared to battle with the golden eyed freak on top of me again.
    Only I didn’t have to.
    Nathan stepped behind him, hoisted him off me, and plunged the knife into his back. Blood dripped toward me in a steady red stream as I frantically tried to crawl out from under it, and then...poof. The body disintegrated into a cloud of vapor. And that evaporated into...nothing.
    Nathan stood over me, the man’s blood on his clothes, his face, and his hands. No body. At the foot of the stairs, the body that should have been there was also gone.
    He’d been stabbed in the heart, I was sure of it. So where was he?
    My eyes met Nathan’s briefly before he turned to assist Gran. Together, they easily took down the last one, and he joined his buddies in their vaporized states. Or whatever it was that I had just witnessed.
    I choked back the bile that rose in my throat and looked for something to lean against before I toppled over. As an afterthought, I opted to climb down the stairs first, before I fell down them.
    Nathan stood over the body Gran had left on the living room floor. I had thought he was dead. He wasn’t. Not yet. Same with the first one Nathan had stabbed in the stomach. He was alive and groaning loudly from the kitchen floor. 
    Scary men, dead and vanished. Others left bleeding to death on the floor. I felt like I was in a Hitchcock film. There was no way this was happening. People didn’t just vaporize. I shut my eyes and counted to five before opening them again. The two bodies were still there; the other three were still gone.
    I sat numbly on the bottom step, my legs too wobbly to support me any longer. Maybe I was going crazy? This had been the last straw. My brain simply couldn’t handle anymore death, and I snapped.
    And started seeing things that weren’t really happening? 
    Gran came to my side and I looked up at her appreciatively. In my periphery, I saw Nathan plunge the knife into the chest of the man on the floor in the living room. Too late, I closed