want to die ever again, and from everything I’d heard, drowning is a very unpleasant way to go. A life that alternated between drowning and being suspended in the airless dark of death wasn’t worth living. Maybe I should have been hoping he followed through with the threat, because at least while he was drowning me, he wouldn’t be raping me, but I wanted to live. Where there’s life, there’s hope, right?
Konstantin sighed in mock regret. “Such a shame the pool is too shallow. Of course, there is that lovely pond out back. As you might have noticed, I wouldn’t have any trouble melting all that inconvenient ice.”
Oh good, I wasn’t going to be drowning in the next five seconds. One could argue that things were looking up.
Konstantin continued on past the pool, carrying me up to the ground floor and then wending his way through the house to the back door. I remembered his previous comments about overkill and wondered what the hell he was up to. If he was planning some additional safeguard to reassure himself that Anderson was trapped, then why was he leaving the house?
I hadn’t realized my clothes were damp with sweat until we made it outside and a blast of wind plastered them tightly against my skin. I started shivering almost immediately. Konstantin wasn’t wearing a coat, but the cold didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he could generate his own heat using his powers. Or maybe his excitement over whatever torture he had in mind was enough to keep him warm.
I had mostly stopped struggling. I was just too exhausted to keep it up, and while I was determined to fight to the bitter end, I had decided to conserve my energy for that mythical moment where fighting might actually do some good.
Slung over Konstantin’s shoulder as I was, I couldn’t see where we were going, but then I didn’t need to see. We were going to the pond, of course. Whether he truly meant to toss me in there or was just trying to push my fear to the max, I didn’t know.
I didn’t have a properly scaled map of the property in my head, but when Konstantin came to a stop, I knew we weren’t anywhere near far enough away from the house to have reached the pond yet. Konstantin let go of me and ducked his shoulder so I would roll helplessly off. I hit the snow with a cry of pain as my broken rib reminded me it hadn’t finished healing yet.
“You might want to watch this,” Konstantin said, reaching down and dragging me into a sitting position by the collar of my shirt.
I sat panting and shivering in the snow, my eyes squeezed half shut as I waited out the pain. Konstantin stood slightly in front of me and held out his hands like he had in the basement. Ignoring the biting cold, I let my fingers sift through whatever snow they could reach, hoping to find something I could use as a weapon. There was no way I could throw anything with my hands bound behind me, but I might be able to use my feet.
It was a long shot, no doubt about it. But a long shot was better than no shot, so I kept searching.
Once again, I felt a blast of heat, and something like an invisible fireball shot from Konstantin’s hands toward the house. I could track its progress as it evaporated the snow in its path. It expanded as it traveled, growing wider until when it hit the house it was almost wide enough to engulf it.
The moment Konstantin’s fireball hit the house, it went up in flames, the walls practically melting away. The fire spread instantly, racing around the walls and over the roof. Windows shattered, and the flames crawled in like living things, all blue and white with heat. I’d been shivering and cold a moment ago, but now I felt like I was sitting in an oven.
In a matter of seconds, the entire house was ablaze, the flames roaring with the fury of a forest fire. Konstantin basked in the glow of the fire for a moment, then frowned.
“Hmm,” he said. “Perhaps we’re still standing a little too close.”
It was almost unbearably hot, and I was more than happy to put some more distance between myself and the fire. I’d have liked it a lot better if Konstantin hadn’t moved me by grabbing hold of my braid and dragging me