The Firebrand by Susan Wiggs Read Free Book Online Page B

felt adrift, his sense of direction unseated by a force too huge to control.
    Rand didn't like things he couldn't control.
    He drove himself harder, pulling insistently at Diana, who by now was so exhausted that she lacked the energy to complain. He focused on one thing and one thing only— getting to Christine.
    They passed Ficelle's Paint and Varnish Factory, a long, low building that covered half a block. Firebrands rained down on the roof of the factory, and an ominous glow throbbed behind its small, square windows.
    "I think we're almost there," Rand told his wife. "Only a block to go." Diana coughed. "I can't see anything."
    "It's just there, see?" His heart lifted as he spotted the distinctive dome of Sterling House.
    Then a roaring gust of wind cleared the smoke like the parting of a curtain. It gave Rand a glimpse of hell. Sterling House, where he'd left his baby daughter, was engulfed in flames.
    "No!" he bellowed, and for the first time, he let go of Diana's hand.
    As he started to run, an unnatural and toxic burst of white heat flared inside the varnish factory. A flash, followed by an earsplitting explosion, shattered the night. The detonation sucked the oxygen from the air, from his lungs, even.
    The force of it picked him up off his feet and blasted him backward. The landing broke his arm; he could feel the dull snap of the bone, the stunning pain. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself up and dove for Diana, who lay slumped on the pavement.
    As he covered her body with his own, chunks of brick from the collapsing building rained over him. With his good arm, he tried to hold on to his wife and pull them both away, but the shower of bricks turned to a deluge. Rand could feel the breaking of his ribs, and then his shoulder was struck numb. The falling rubble kept coming in a thick, deadly avalanche, burying him and Diana.
    No oh no oh please... The disjointed plea was drowned by the lethal crash of the building. Diana made a sound— his name, perhaps—and her hands clutched at him. Something hard and sharp struck his skull.
    He had the sensation of floating, though he could not have moved amid all the falling bricks. There was no pain anymore. Only light. A hole in the sky, its edges burning, a white glow in the center.
    And then there was nothing.

Chapter Five

    "Look at that," Phoebe said, indicating a building by the river. "The hose crew has simply abandoned Sterling House."
    The fashionable hotel's distinctive glass dome glowed bright yellow as flames licked up its walls. In the smoke-filled street in front of the residence, a cart was
    reeling in its hoses and moving on.
    "I imagine they realized they could never control the fire," Lucy said. They'd seen so much destruction on the slow journey to the bridge that she began to feel as beaten down as the crew. "Let's pray the building was evacuated," she added. Most of the hotel's windows disgorged mouthfuls of flame. But on the second story, a single window stared at her like a blank, dark eye.
    As they drew closer to the river, she spied an elderly man struggling along the roadside with painful slowness. When a woman bumped him in her rush to the bridge, he stumbled.
    "Driver, stop for a moment!" Lucy jumped out of the cart. "I'm going to give my seat to that gentleman," she said. Phoebe opened her mouth to deliver the expected protest, but Lucy held up her hand. "Don't waste time arguing," she said, pulling the shaken, wheezing man to the cart and tucking a saddle blanket around him. "You've got to get across the river before the bridge gets even more crowded."
    "But if you do something noble, then I shall have to," Phoebe wailed.
    "Dear, you must stay with the cart," Lucy said, accustomed to mollifying her friend. "The most noble thing you can do is hold fast to this gentleman and keep him in the cart. I'll follow on foot."
    The elderly man shuddered and closed his eyes. Lucy put Phoebe's arm around bis shoulders and signaled to the driver to move on.