Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,85

Gabriel. “I don’t know much about fire, but I don’t think you’re supposed to run toward it!”

With a frustrated yelp, she yanked her arm free and kept running. But with everyone else rushing toward the door, she felt like a fish swimming upstream. Heat from the flames blazed her skin as she scanned the room, searching for his face, until she finally spotted a body slumped against a wooden support beam only mètres away from the voracious flames. He was unconscious, his chin lolling against his chest.

“Marcellus!” Alouette cried out, shock and fear rippling through her.

At the sound of her voice, Marcellus’s eyelids dragged open. He smiled wistfully up at her, like he wasn’t seconds away from being burned alive.

“Alouette?” he said in a misty, far-off tone. “Am I dreaming?”

Alouette wrapped her arms around him and tried to lift him to his feet. “No, you’re not dreaming. But you need to get up.”

“Dead, then?”

She grunted from the effort of trying to hoist him up. “Not dead, either. Marcellus, please. Help me. I can’t lift you.”

Then, all at once, he seemed to register the flames, the burning building, the danger. His eyes snapped open and he looked urgently from Alouette to the fire. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” She gestured desperately to the encroaching flames. “But you need to move.”

Leaning on Alouette for strength, Marcellus rose unsteadily to his feet, and they hobbled quickly out of reach of the fire. Marcellus held his hand to his head as though he were trying to steady the room. “You’re real,” he whispered, finally focusing on her with clear eyes. He shook his head. “What are you doing—?” But his question was stopped short by a soft, muffled cry coming from somewhere behind them.

“Sols! Cerise,” Marcellus exclaimed.

Alouette spun around to find the dark-haired girl from the bar writhing on the ground with a dirty rag stuffed into her mouth. Her hands and ankles were bound. Marcellus charged toward her, dropped to his knees, and began fumbling with the ropes bound around her ankles. Alouette went to work on her wrists. A second later, a loud cracking noise rang out above and, as they turned toward the sound, a ceiling beam engulfed in hungry, blinding flames came crashing down to the floor behind them.

“Hurry!” Alouette cried as her trembling fingers fought to untie the rope.

Just then, the kitchen door swung open and Gabriel emerged with a knife clutched in one hand. “Move aside,” he commanded as he knelt down beside the girl and began to saw through the rope.

“Cerise,” Marcellus spoke directly to the girl. He obviously knew her somehow. “Can you walk?”

The girl nodded, her dark eyes brimming with gratitude.

“C’mon.” Marcellus yanked Cerise to her feet and they charged toward the front door. But it was a dead end. The fallen beam from the ceiling had completely blocked the entrance. The old door and half the wall around it were now consumed in flames. Panic clawed at Alouette’s chest, and now, in the consuming heat and smothering smoke, she fully understood why starting fires had been banned on Laterre. They were volatile and ravenous and out of control.

“I don’t understand,” Marcellus called out, stumbling away from the flames. “I’ve never seen a fire catch so fast. It was just supposed to be a small flame. To scare everyone away.”

“The weed wine,” Alouette said with sudden realization. She remembered the stickiness of the tables and floors from when she was little. The noxious alcohol that clung to everything. “It must be flammable.”

Marcellus glanced anxiously around the burning inn. “How do we get out?”

“Over here!” Gabriel darted behind the bar and they all followed after him, through a rickety door, and into the grimy kitchen. Alouette held her breath, trying to stave off the bitter memories of this place that swarmed around her like flies, biting at her skin.

“Fric,” Gabriel said, pulling to a sudden halt in the middle of the room. Alouette followed his gaze until they were both staring out the same window, at the flashing orange lights of Policier patroleurs, transporteurs, and …

Her heart clattered to a halt behind her ribs.

Droids.

She’d prayed she’d never have to see another one of those metal monsters for as long as she lived.

“They must have followed us here,” Gabriel said to Alouette.

“Followed you?” Marcellus asked with wide eyes.

“We’re trapped.” Gabriel collapsed against the counter.

“Hold on.” The girl named Cerise pulled a TéléCom from her pocket and bent over it, her long dark hair curtaining her face. “I have