She was breathing, but barely. He needed to get her out of the smoke.

He jerked her into his arms and ran.

The front entrance to the school was the closest way out, but the halls were still dense with smoke. His sneakers squeaked against the floor as he bolted around turns, trying to stay as low as he could.

Just as he made the final turn into the front atrium, he almost ran smack into a group of firemen.

“Here!” he cried, shoving the girl at one of them. “There are more!”

And before they could stop him, he was running again.

He almost left the second girl. The firemen were coming, and they couldn’t miss her in the middle of the hallway.

But this school was practically a maze. If they were trying to avoid the smoke, they might take a different route to the library and miss her altogether.

Before he even had it all reasoned out, the second girl was in his arms, and he was running for the front again.

This time the firemen tried to stop him. He heard shouts and felt a hand grab for the sleeve of his hoodie, but he ducked and bolted back into the smoke, running again for the library entrance.

He made it all the way to the hallway running parallel to the library before he found more bodies. The hall was so choked with smoke that he practically tripped over the first one. Two girls and a guy. He recognized the guy, Randy Sorenson. He played starting center for the football team.

He also outweighed Gabriel by a good fifty pounds.

Gabriel grabbed one of the girls first. She wasn’t breathing at all.

The smoke was so thick that he had to drag her. He made it down two hallways before finding firemen.

Good. He dropped her and ran back, yelling behind him, “Down this way! There are two more!”

When he heard them behind him, he passed Randy and the other girl and dove through the smoke into the library.

Fire swirled around his feet to welcome him. It was happy he was here.

Because it wanted him to help destroy.

The rage caught him by the throat and held on. This fire wanted destruction just like the fires he’d found in the community. The carpet flamed around him, sending plumes of smoke into the air. Every bookcase was fully consumed to the point that he couldn’t identify anything. He couldn’t hear a thing over the roaring flames.

It didn’t stop him from shouting. “Nick! Layne!”

Nothing. But he knew approximately where she would have waited, and he started forward.

Only to trip over another body.

This one was on fire, and he only knew it was a guy because of the shape. Not Nick too big. Gabriel swept his hands across the clothes, sending the fire off to find other things to burn. Then he hooked his hands under the boy’s arms and started to drag.

This guy was easily as heavy as Randy. Gabriel borrowed strength from his element, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

Suddenly, hands were there, beside his, helping to drag.

Gabriel looked up, expecting a fireman.

But finding Hunter.

“The firemen are waiting for hoses,” Hunter yelled. “It’s too hot. They can’t ”

“Is this guy alive?” he shouted.

A pause. “Yes.”

“Then shut the f**k up and pull.”

They got him to the entrance. Gabriel didn’t wait to see whether Hunter would follow him. He had more ground to cover.

Another girl was by the circulation desk, her skin red and blistered. Not breathing. He picked her up and carried her back to the entrance, pushing through when he didn’t see firemen there.

They were just outside in the hallway, however, in full gear, masks on, radios crackling .

Gabriel shoved the girl at one of them and turned to bolt, but another fireman grabbed him. Gabriel fought, but a second fireman caught his free arm.

They were wrestling him back, pulling him away from the library entrance, shouting something, but he couldn’t understand them through the masks and his fury.

Then Hunter was there, a gun in his hand.

And then he was pointing it at the fireman holding Gabriel.

They let him go real quick.

Gabriel didn’t even think about the implications of this. He just ducked under Hunter’s arm and ran back into the library.

Somehow, the smoke was thicker now. He crawled beneath it while flames snapped at his jeans and curled around his fingers.

He begged the fire to calm itself, to stop the rage.

It refused.

“Nick!” he yelled. “Layne!”

Nothing.

He crawled forward, around a row of bookcases, heading for the back of the library, where he knew Layne usually sat.

And all of a sudden, the smoke wasn’t as dense. He could see flames billowing from the bookcases above him, but the smoke was moving away, toward the entrance.

Nick. Nick had to be doing that.

But fire was everywhere. Bookcases lined the walls, blazing like suns against the cinder block.

Except for the small alcove, where the carpet was on fire.

And Gabriel could see two figures there, just barely out of reach of the flames.

He surged forward, sprinting through the fire. He slid to his knees into the alcove and sent the fire away, creating a bigger space around them.

Layne was crumpled against the wall. Nick was crouched beside her, his eyes clenched shut, his hands in fists. The air here was freezing and thin, and all of a sudden, Gabriel almost couldn’t breathe.

“Nick,” he gasped. “I’ll hold the fire. I need to ”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Nick let go. A blast of cold air rushed through the vents. The fire rejoiced, flaring higher.