Ignited by Desni Dantone Read Free Book Online Page A

my eyes, trying to block it out. Gran’s hand rested on my shoulder, silently encouraging me to keep them shut as Nathan’s footsteps moved across the room. A moment later, the moaning in the kitchen stopped. I finally opened my eyes and wasn’t surprised to see that both bodies were now gone. Other than two pools of blood on the floor, and smeared all over us, no signs remained of the five men that had been in the house. 
    I couldn’t have imagined it. Even though I kind of wished I had. Even if that meant I was crazy. 
    Nathan looked a little concerned as he approached me where I rocked on the steps, my knees pulled up against my chest in a sort of seated fetal position. After what I had just witnessed, he probably expected that I would need a strait jacket and a padded room.
    He crouched in front of me, and used a kitchen towel to wipe away the blood on my face. I let him, in too much of a shock to care what he did. When he was done there, he moved to my hands. That was when I saw the blood all over them. I snatched the towel from him and scrubbed my hands until they hurt. My vision blurry from unshed tears, I couldn’t tell if I was making any progress. I scrubbed harder, faster, desperate to get it off of me.
    Finally, Nathan placed his hand over mine to stop me. “You got it.” He withdrew the towel from my trembling fingers. “You okay?”
    I lifted my eyes to his and nodded numbly. I didn’t think he believed me, but we didn’t exactly have time to nurture my mental health at the moment.
    He turned to Gran. “We’ve got to go,” he said, and what little concern I thought I had seen on his face for me a second ago vanished.
    I was vaguely aware of his voice in the distance as he spoke to Gran. I swayed back and forth, not listening to either of them. Five guys—the three creepy ones from the parking lot and the two that had been at the party with Alec—were dead and gone in a matter of minutes. Where did Alec fit in? Where did I? And where in the hell did they go?
    Had Alec been here too? Or...had he not been here because he was already gone, killed on that dark narrow trail?
    My heart lurched as if a cold hand had reached down my throat and gripped it. I lifted my eyes, widened with terror, to the man I knew nothing about as he wiped his bloodied knife with the towel. Perhaps feeling my gaze on him, he looked at me, his face blank.
    “Did you kill Alec too?” The words stuck in my throat, and I nearly choked on them.
    Nathan stared at me for a long time, then scoffed and turned away without an answer.
    I took that as a yes and sprung off the steps, launching myself at his back like a feral cat. He spun around with lightening quick reflexes and caught me mid-leap. It was pathetic, really, how easily he swatted me off him. I regrouped and flew into him again, connecting a fist with his chest before his hands clamped around my wrists and froze my poorly planned assault. I shoved against him as hard as I could, but barely budged him.
    “Did you kill Alec?” There was an audible tremor in my voice this time.
    He looked at me and, even if only briefly, I saw a flash of compassion in his eyes.
    No. No way. I must have imagined it. I shoved against him again. “Did you?” 
    His answer was stiff. “No.”
    I didn’t know if I believed him, but then I had no way to find out one way or the other. With no choice but to take his word for it, I twisted my hands out of his grasp. He could have held me there all night if he wanted to, but he let me go and left me to rub my wrists as he crossed the room to grab my book bag off the floor. He turned for the door without another look at me.
    Gran called after him. “Nathan, wait.”
    He stopped and turned, my book bag flung over his shoulder like he was about to walk to the bus stop. For a moment, it made him look less hostile. If I didn’t dislike him so much, I might have even found it cute.
    He was nice looking. I couldn’t deny that.
    Nor could I deny the