His shirt melted into his skin, his flesh burned away. He was running, running! The heat killed him!
Lithe was as tall as a tree, stretching around him, climbing all over him, pushing him to the earth, reaching for the sun.
She was singing, screaming, roaring.
And there was the fire world. It opened the door, asked him to come inside. Beckoned with crazy, flaming fingers as long as broomsticks.
But he was dropping anyway, falling. He had seen something beyond the flames, and stumbled toward it.
The Sound.
Splash!
He sank and for one beautiful second, all was calm, painless. He felt the flame numbers, the nothing-numbers cycle down until they were gone, void.
He was void.
Then as he broke the surface to breathe, the sizzling on his chest began again.
He grabbed for the edge of the pavement, his arms flailed.
And he breathed, but the pain was slowly killing him, eating him. His vision fogged. He had an overwhelming sense that he had lost something.
Lithe!
He spun in the water to see nothing but the sunken metal pan sticking into the mud in the shallows of the sound. The oven mitts floated in a halo of ash.
Lithe was gone.
He had killed her.
He searched frantically for a flame somewhere, just a small spark.
The building was still, just a pile of dust and rubble. There was nothing, no flame, no sparks. In fact, it was raining now, a drizzle of drops hit the water.
He pulled himself from the water and collapsed onto the pavement.
"Lithe . . ." he whispered, his charred fingers curling around a soggy oven mitt.
He began to lose consciousness.
"Lithe . . ."
The burn was so painful it erased his soul.
JE LEEST
The Song of Burning Souls (COMPLETE)
ParanormaalThe song haunted Andrew's dreams. Then he found the singer: Lithe-a girl made of flame who lives in the vents of his apartment building. Slowly, she shows him the fire world, a brilliant place where there are no lonely winters. But these glimpses ar...
