Everybody Burns - Victoria Sue

Prologue

If you fight fire with fire everybody burns

William Ogden 10/28/1927-7/7/1998

Click.

Every breath in Eli’s body stilled. He didn’t even have the time to take a last one.

Scrape.

The door never opened soundlessly. There was a small whimper of wood as if the hinges in the old house were as mind-numbingly terrified as he was.

Creak.

The first stair. He didn’t bother to hide the sound. Eli could. He knew if you put your foot to the right, you could tread with no noise. Become a ghost. Flit from room to room praying you weren’t noticed. Weren’t seen.

Whoosh.

The whisper of air. More deafening than the tread of each step as he climbed to the attic. Nearer. Closer. Then bitter. The noise tasted acrid on his tongue as if inhaling the sound brought the poison. But then it was. He was. A poison so suffocating it crept inside him until it leaked from his body. The last time he had been made to sleep on sheets so wet he never thought he would ever be dry again.

Thud.

Was that his foot on the stair or the last flailing echo of his heart knowing he was trapped? Another and another. Each one the sick sound of finality. And tonight it would be, one way or another. Eli’s fingers tightened around the tiny blade. So small to fight such a huge monster. Either way he didn’t care. If the monster didn’t die, then he would. Eli pressed his lips together, and the sting in his fingers reminded him it would be over tonight whichever way. He hoped for one outcome simply to save the others. The smaller ones that would be brought to the house after he was gone. The one where children were forgotten. The one where the monster lived. The one where you lay in the sickened sweat from your body night after night and listened to the sound of the door downstairs.

Shrill. The scream in his mind as the door opened and the half-light that shadowed the size fourteens that forever were the start of his waking nightmare. The pulsating in his chest was silenced. Only the pain in his fingers from a grip so tight kept him conscious. Awake when he craved for oblivion.

Hatred. It burned so bright. Kept him alive when he hungered after death. And of every raucous sound he knew, some so vile they were only ever whispered, hate thundered on.

Tonight, it would be deafening.

Chapter One

Daniel looked around the room. They were all there with one important exception. My new partner. And he had a feeling he wasn’t the only one in the room that was wondering where the hell he was. He’d noticed Sawyer shoot a couple of puzzled looks to Gael, and Finn had checked his phone a few times. In five weeks he had seen more of Jared who worked in personnel sorting out his transfer than he had seen of Eli. It was a joke. He walked into a room and you could guarantee that pretty much as soon as he could, Eli would leave it. He knew it would take some adjustment, and he had been about as thrilled as Eli when Gregory had announced their partnership at Jacob’s barbecue, but he really felt that in over a very frustrating month they would have at least managed to grab a cup of coffee together.

At least Vance and Sam were making progress. Vance had wasted no time moving into Sam’s new apartment with him and Luis, and all three of them were thriving. He was thrilled for his “not so little” brother.

And it had been a quiet month. Gregory had immediately ordered Vance and Sam to report to Lieutenant Jameson from district two. All the Tampa districts wanted to see if they should have their own team in addition to the normal specialty teams including Hostage Negotiation, Tactical Response, K9 Squad etcetera, but Talon and Gregory thought not. There weren’t enough enhanced agents for starters, and Talon wanted agent pairs incorporated into the regular teams.

And no one could say Gregory wasn’t a smart man. Vance’s popularity—their family’s reputation—had caused Tampa PD to disband the Enhanced Unit, or ENu as they called it. The SWAT team that simply existed to control enhanced. Gregory needed to ride that wave now.

Eli had been there—for once—as Talon explained their plans last month. “This wasn’t the arrangement we were going with initially, but replicating what we have here is going to be impossible. We also are wondering if there is some way we can