Consuming Fire

Chapter 40

Everywhere around her, Hunter could see Agents. The last time she came in contact with them, they were dragging her body into the back of a van. But here, she had a reason to fight. She had people depending on her. Her blood pumped in her chest.

I won't let them win.

But they were powerless, thanks to Mikayla. And now they weren't just up for ransom. The Agents were prepared to kill them all.

The fire snaked through her skin. To her left, the dying embers of the campfire sparked in agreement. Mikayla's power was strong –

But she was stronger. She just had to keep them talking.

"What's in this for you, Jet?" she shouted at him.

"Uh, entertainment?" he shrugged. Then he laughed and waved a hand at her. "No really, I'm just excited to see your new little hideaway. So this is where you guys escaped to? This is the wonderful safe-zone Dr. Rosenthal recommended? Did he tell you we'd never find it or some bullshit like that?"

Hunter pursed her lips and looked at the others. For a moment she let Jet get to her. Dr. Rosenthal said this was the safest place for them, and still the Agents found it.

That's when she realized that nowhere was safe. Not when Dr. Wolfe was still breathing.

"Okay Jet. We give up," she said.

There were gasps of protest from the others.

"Hunter-"

"It's okay, Joshua," she said. "He's right; there's nowhere else for us to go. We can't escape the Agents." She pointed at the men circling them. "Or these mutants. There's too many of them."

Grinning, Jet and Mikayla leaned toward them as if they were simply going to turn themselves in. But Hunter would not go down without a fight. The Agents took her once before, outnumbered her, caught her off guard. She had her powers then as well.

But she was broken and alone. She'd lost Eli. She'd lost everything. Now she was healing and surrounded by people who cared for her. Friends she called her family. And though Mikayla might have blocked her powers, she had not taken them away. If Hunter could summon the fire from the Death Caves with an entrapment around her wrist, she could certainly bring forth the flame inside her.

I'm here, the fire whispered. Use me.

"Guys," said Hunter with a sigh as she turned to the group. "There's nothing more we can do. Well – except this."

Quicker than they could blink, Hunter dropped to the ground, wrenched a tree branch from the dying fire behind her, spun back and launched the branch straight at Mikayla like a shot-put ball. As she did, a surge of energy exploded in her core and the fire burst through her arms to the tips of her fingers, setting the tree branch alight just as it left her hands.

"DUCK!" she yelled.

The Agents opened fire on them.

The flaming torch flew at Mikayla and Jet, but using his telekinesis, Jet was able to stop the branch mid-air. He let it drop on the shore of the lake, looked down at Mikayla and saw her cowering by his side.

With their powers free, the fight resumed. Hunter was angrier than ever, the fire burning bright and exploding the trees where several of the mutants were fleeing toward. The ground rumbled as Mosi buried Agents in the dirt. Marcus was fighting hand-to-hand combat, and once he got his fingers around a taser, he used it to direct current at three mutants at a time. For a moment, it looked like they were winning.

And for a moment, Hunter was distracted by this revelation.

"Hunter!" someone screamed at her.

Almost in slow motion, Hunter whirled around and saw an Agent only a few meters away throw a kitchen knife right at her chest. She didn't have time to catch her breath knowing she was too late, that she was about to die.

Then, a cloud of dirt sprayed her and when she opened her eyes and spluttered through the dust, she saw Benji stumble backwards and then collapse on the ground. The knife stuck out of the center of his small chest. His eyes were wide as he lay on the cobbled shore of the lake.

Hunter felt as if the knife had stabbed her – and continued to do so – as she bent down beside Benji's body. Bullets whizzed around her. She looked up at the Agent, who did not bat a single eyelid for the small child he had just killed. She was practically fuming, fire sparking all around her body as she launched a blazing ball of fire at the Agent.

It felt like Sammy dying all over again.

"You killed him!" she shrieked. "You-"

Suddenly there was a male scream like nothing she'd ever heard before, causing her to whirl toward the sound. Mosi was being lifted off the ground and Hunter saw Jet with his hands directed at the floating body. Jet was drawing his hands apart as though cracking open a coconut. Hunter could hear the pain in Mosi's screams and formed a flaming ball of fire to throw at Jet when someone violently pushed her down from behind and she went face-first into the ground. Hunter flipped immediately and saw a woman. She was feral looking and she laughed at Hunter with a crazy gleam in her eyes. Her hair was ratted and her teeth were blackened and broken.

"Hunter the fire girl," she said and laughed again. The harmony of her laugh and Mosi's shrieking made a spine-tingling combination. "I remember you from the caves."

Hunter scrambled to her feet but the woman pounced on her again, cackling loudly in her ear. Hunter set her wrists on fire and grabbed the woman's cheeks, burning her skin, but she didn't seem to care. Her skin melted and yet she kept on laughing.

"Don't feel it," she said as she shook her head in Hunter's hands. "Don't feel it. Don't feel it, ha ha ha!"

She's crazy. Hunter kicked the woman in the stomach. "Get off-"

"Mosi!" someone screeched and from Hunter's left, she felt a spray of blood wash over her like a wave. When she opened her eyes, she saw Mosi's body, torn in half, lying on the shore of the lake just meters from her.

No. Not Mosi.