Chapter L
Ring of Fire
She would never complain about the desert heat again. Of course complaining could only happen if she got out of this alive. She'd never been in a fire before, not a live one like this. She'd woefully overestimated her skills. She could smell burning hair, her own blonde locks were singeing in the heat of the fire. It was hard to breathe, smoke and ash was thick in the air, like a dense fog that had no end. The walls around her were alive with flame. The floor was consumed by the burning beast of the greedy fire. Even the ceiling was aflame. The house was ready to collapse onto itself and burn to the ground, with all of them inside. She could barely hear Nick. Beside her a picture frame slowly cracked in the intense heat. Under the glass a picture of a much younger Gil Grissom and a woman who could only be his mother began to bubble and blacken until it was beyond recognition.
She heard the cracks and felt Nick lurch beside her. He turned around and she saw, to her great horror, that his broad and well toned back was on fire. She beat the flames out, burning her own hands in the process. By the time she was done, Nick looked like he'd been flame-broiled.
They hadn't intended to split up, but they did. She heard Nick's cry, he'd found Grissom. That left Lady Heather to her. Since he'd said nothing, she could assume she hadn't been in the bedroom as well. She moved to the next door, it was a closet. The fire leapt on the linens as soon as she opened the door. Whatever Grissom had kept there was now reduced to fodder. There was only one more door in the hall and Sofia almost smacked herself. Where did a woman always go for a last minute check before wild sex? The bathroom, obviously. She pushed open the door with her entire weight.
Lying on the floor, serene and still like a sleeping angel, or devil, was Lady Heather. She was dressed in a black skirt that hugged her curves like a custom-made glove and the tight black corset was half undone at the top, showing more of the woman's breasts than was prudent. Lady Heather had been about to get lucky. Until some asshole kiddie terrorist had decided to spoil all of her naughty fun. Broken pipes sprayed water everywhere, which had protected the redhead from the damaging fire. "Saved by toliet water, tell that one to your friends." Though she made light of it, the woman was very lucky. They all were.
Sofia bent down and hefted the woman over her shoulders in a basic fireman's carry. To her great relief, the woman groaned in protest. The Dark Lady of Vegas was down, but she definitely wasn't out. Blood trickled down her face and Sofia saw that a gash ran across one cheek and up to her temple. The woman was going to have a headache from hell. "Assuming we both don't end up there before we get out."
Muttering to herself, she started out of the bathroom, "One day you and I are going to have a normal meeting. One that doesn't start with one of us being unconscious and getting snugly with our partner."
The bathroom mirror, cracked and shattered into a spiderweb pattern from the intense heat, reflected the two of them in a carnival fun house array of angles and shapes. She eased out of the room, trying her best not to jostle the woman over her shoulders. "Gil would blow a fuse if I damaged his Mistress...or is it the other way around? Never mind, I don't want to know." Since she usually talked to herself, talking to an unconscious woman between violent coughs and gasps for breaths was probably a step-up on the sanity scale.
Her arms were bare and open to the red hot cinders and sparks of the fire. They burned as if someone was jabbing her with red-hot needles over and over. It was hard to see. It was getting hard to walk. Between the other woman's weight and the melting soles of her shoes, Sofia felt bogged down. It was hard to breathe; every time she inhaled she only got ash and thick black smoke. There was precious little breathable air left in the home.
She could almost see the end of the hall. She was almost there. A piece of ceiling fell on her and burnt the hand that was holding Lady Heather steady across her shoulders. She looked up and saw it. The beam came crashing down and she dove to the floor. It lay across her legs, heavy and scorching hot. It burnt through the pathetic cotton protection of her sweats and she could feel the skin and meat of her leg start to burn and bubble. She couldn't help it, she wasn't inhuman or immune to pain; Sofia Curtis screamed.
Lying on the ground, dangerously close to a hungry patch of fire was Lady Heather's inert body. That woman was depending on her. Outside, Sofia knew, Sara was waiting for her. She twisted around and started the painful process of pushing the beam off of herself. It put her in mind of the last crumbling building she'd fool-heartedly gone into. Little Nicki's legs had been pinned under a beam too. Sofia finally pushed and kicked the beam away. She could actually smell the stench of her own, burnt flesh. Her stomach revolted and she gagged. The air on the floor was less smoky, but she had to get up. She had to get out. She had to get out now, while the getting was good or she would die here. It wasn't her day to die. She crawled over to Heather. "All right, let's try this again. Feel free to wakeup any time and assist me in getting your S&M ass out of here." The woman didn't move. "I didn't think so."
She put the woman over her shoulders again and regained her footing, leaning on the burning wall to get up. If every step before had been painful, this was agony. One foot in front of the other, holding the image of Sara in her mind's eye for motivation, she went forward.
She heard Nick before she saw him. He was gasping for breath, almost doubled over from Grissom's weight. The front room, with the door, was gone. All that met them was a wall of flickering red, orange, and yellow death. Nick's curse just about summed it up. They were stuck. She wiped the blood, sweat and ash out of her eyes, "What do we do?" She met his eyes and saw pain and fear to match her own dancing in them.
His eyes darted to the far wall. "I'VE GOT A PLAN!"
She followed his eyeline. "YOU'VE WATCHED TOO MANY MOVIES!" He looked at her again, his face black with soot. "YOU GOT A BETTER IDEA?!" She shook her head, "NO I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW YOU'RE INSANE!"
They started running as fast as they could possibly move. They both prayed that the plan, such as it was, would work. They darted into a wall of fire and smoke and disappeared.
Author's Note: I can almost hear the sighs of relief all the way over here. Not that they're safe yet, but still.
