Authors note: The first chapter was left vague for a reason, you'll find out in chapter 2 here! Song for this chapter is "I See Fire" by Celtic Woman. Please take a listen before or during reading! Thanks!
Lucifer looked down at the slip of paper in his hand. After sealing the deal with Grace, she had written down a name and an address before ordering two shots of vodka from the passing waitress. She held one glass out to him before downing her own. "This is the life I trade mine for. I get the feeling you know where I'll be, whenever you're ready." Lucifer watched her turn and walk away, something niggling him at the base of his brain.
He looked down at the piece of paper again before looking up at the neon glowing sign above his head. 'Hospital.' "Right then, this is taking an interesting turn." He mumbled to himself before walking in and taking the elevator to the sixth floor, labeled 'ICU'. He walked up to the nurses station and leaned against it as the busty, red-headed nurse looked up at him and blushed. "Hello my dear, I'm looking for a patient. Would you be so kind as to tell me what room Matthew Jordan is in?" If possible the nurse blushed harder and stuttered, "W…well… it…its past visiting h…hours, perhaps you could come back tomorrow morning, my shift gets off at 6am." Her gushing made Lucifer smile charmingly, this was going to be too easy. "Well you see, I'm here on a favor for-"
"Grace? Oh that girl, she spends so much time here I wasn't surprised to see her here already when I came in, she doesn't normally leave the hospital but come to think of it, I haven't seen her for a few hours. She must have been called away, maybe its a stroke of luck that she's a firefighter in the station next to the hospital he was brought to. When she's not on a call, instead of staying at the station with the other firefighters, she's up here. You know she was in the accident that killed her parents too? Such a tragedy. You must be coming to check on Matty for her."
Lucifer stood up after finding himself leaning in on the counter, perplexed but clapped his hands together pleased with the information the overly chatty nurse was giving him. "Yes, Grace asked me to stop by and visit. Can you make an exception this one time?" The nurse blushed again. "I suppose, its nice she's at least getting out of the hospital. She's been burning both ends of the candle between the wildfires up on the hills, healing herself, and being here. Her brother has been here for almost a year now but he's taken a turn for the worst and she has barely left his side. The poor thing."
'Brother!' Lucifer thought. And he could now place that smokey smell he had gotten the night before at Lux. Pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together now. Desperation for the life of her brother apparently to be spared. She leaned forward conspiratorially, with her arms on the desk it was an obvious attempt to push her breasts up in her nurses scrubs as she stared moony eyed at Lucifer. "Matty is in room 665."
"Ah! So close to my favorite number." The nurse looked at him confused. "Ah never mind. I'll see myself to his room." Lucifer walked down the hall before stopping before the glass sliding doors leading to room 665. He leaned back and looked at the room number next door. 667. Of course they would skip a number. He rolled his eyes. Sliding the door open he walked towards the bed, observing the young man laying amidst a plethora of tubing and wires.
Hooked up to IV's, a heart monitor, and a breathing tube, it was almost difficult to make out the features of the boy who appeared to be in his late teens. Lucifer grabbed the medical chart hanging off foot of the bed and began reading.
Name? Matthew; Birthdate? 5/9; Age? 17. A bunch of numbers and levels of things that were too medical sounding for Lucifer to care before he got to the bottom. Emergency Contacts? A note was written in next to it, 'parents deceased, sister is guardian'. Under the note was Grace's name and information. What was written at the very bottom of the chart made Lucifer pause. "Chief medical complaint, third degree burns over 37% of lower body, second degree burns present 36% upper body." His eyes lifted back to the boy in the bed and he saw the same thick and heavy scaring he had seen on Grace's arm. Burn scars.
It made sense to him that a sister would try to save the life of her brother, perhaps it was all her fault and she burned with guilt? Lucifer could feel the life of the young man slipping away into the darkness. He instinctively thought he should relish in that but realized, as his features darkened and his mouth turned down at the thought, he didn't. He felt something else well up in his chest. An uncomfortable feeling, a tightness that felt like his body was being squeezed in a cocoon that covered him head to toe. Was this the "sympathy" Chloe was always saying he didn't feel? Well, a deal was a deal. Lucifer rested his hand on Matthew's blanket covered feet. As soon as he made contact, images that were sharp and quickly shifting like an old time cellophane movie blazed into his mind.
A car that had rolled over on a dark stretch of road. There was a small fire in the engine compartment. A blonde woman manages to crawl her way out of the back passenger seat. A few battered presents are scattered around mixed in with the debris. A view of her face shows she's bleeding heavily but her blue eyes go from wide with fear to a set and determined look. She looked at the fire and immediately dove back in to the front seats. Lucifer could hear her calling out. "Mom!" "Dad!" She was trying to shake them conscious. "Keep breathing, I'm going to check on Matthew!" She backed out of upside down front passenger window, across shards of broken glass that cut up her clothes and into her skin. She saw gas from the fuel tank was leaking out down the sides of the car. Diving back into the back seat, she shakes her brother and he grunts before coming to and then groans. "Can you unhook your seatbelt? We need to get mom and dad out, there's a fire!" The boy is too dazed and in shock to do much but is finally able to unlatch his seatbelt and fall forward onto the roof of the car at the same time there is an explosion at the front.
She pulls herself back out and looks seeing the whole undercarriage is now engulfed. The fuel that had been leaking now had a curtain of fire between her and her unconscious parents, and that curtain was rapidly spreading towards the back. The sweatshirt she had been wearing was now wiping down the side above the open back seat window, trying to stall the flames that would cut her off from her brother. She reached in with both arms. "Grab my arms Matthew! Hold on!" She slowly began pulling him towards the window as the flames cascaded down the other side of the car and suddenly ignited the fuel that had been leaking onto the pavement under the car. The whole thing flared up as she jerked back out.
Immediately she heard her brothers screams and despite the pain that erupted across her hands and forearms, she reached in again and grabbed his hands. She pulled and pulled, inching him out as the flames licked what parts of his body they could reach. Finally she had him out and she dragged him away from the car, leaving a trail of chunks of burnt skin. She got up again and started towards the car when a second explosions entirely engulfs the car. The scorching heat refuses to let her get any nearer. She falls to her knees screaming, "Mom, Dad!" She sits at the edge where she feels the heat singeing everything and raises her arms to look at them. The burns were bad between her elbows and wrists. Her arms went limp next to her as she sat down on her heels and looked up at the night sky. "God! Please! Don't take my family." The only response she gets is continuing to watch her parents burn inside the car before she collapses to the side. As the shock from her deep burns sets in, the tears roll from her eyes, making her vision cloudy before it goes black.
Lucifer jerks his hands back, breathing heavily. The flames had felt real even to him standing in the hospital room. He could still smell the mixed burning smells of human and metal. This feeling inside him… what does it mean? Why is it so uncomfortable? Slowly Lucifer lowers his head, closes his eyes and for a moment replaces his hands on Matthew's feet.
As Lucifer opens his eyes again, he looks down upon the young man who's toes were starting to slowly wriggle, the beginnings of consciousness starting to ebb their way into his brain.
"Ladder 3, we are moving on to do a sweep of the second floor." Grace released the button on the side of her mic and took a deep breath as she and her partner reached the top of the stairs. "Make it quick Lieutenant, we will try and hold it from advancing." Smoke was rapidly filling the long hallway of the insanely large four story house on the hilltop. Of course it would be a huge house with an actual active fire chewing its way through each floor. No! It couldn't be the little, tiny two bedroom bungalows that had lined the road in the neighborhoods leading to the behemoth that the 6th Battalion, 1st division had faced on their arrival with smoke billowing out of the fourth floor and flames licking the top of the open window frames. And of course the battalion chief who'd taken over the scene had aired over their radios that there was an elderly woman and a child somewhere inside.
Grace sighed one more time as the back of her hand checked the first door before opening it and scanning the mostly empty, hazy, smoke filled room. The woman had been found, barely conscious, trying to crawl up the stairs between the first and second floors. Which was their first clue that the child was probably somewhere on one of the floors above. More doors, more checking, still no child as she and her partner reached the bottom of the staircase leading up to the third floor. By now the smoke was so thick, they were on their knees to stay below the smoke line. They had only gotten halfway down the hallway before they had had to put on their SCBA gear to breath.
Grace knew they weren't going to make it to the fourth floor, she sent up a quick prayer that the child was in one of the first rooms if they had any hope of finding the kid alive. As they reached the top of the next flight of stairs, she knew they had to pick up the pace, flames were starting to lick at the tops of the door frames of any open doors down the hall. She checked the first door again before opening it and swinging the door wide. She couldn't see more than a foot in front of her face but something told her, this was the room. That gut instinct that bordered on premonitions. Her father, a veteran firefighter himself, had always told her to listen to gut instinct because maybe, just maybe, it was God's way of speaking to you in a crisis. As she worked her way around the room on her hands and knees, she noticed flames were starting to show around the edges of the ceiling. Odd. Almost as if this hellfire was trying to reach down and take hold as much of whatever it could get its hot, orange fingers on. Grace huffed out a chuckle as she thought about how ironic it was that last night she had offered to spend eternity in hell, surrounded by fire and yet here she was, still alive and yet fire was all around her.
Just then, her hand bumped something somewhat soft and squishy. She felt a small hand then an arm before finding the child's head. "Ladder 3, we've located the child and are working our way down. We will need medics at the door." Grace turned her head as much as all her gear would allow and looked back at her partner and they started backing out of the room. The creaking and groaning that had filled her ears since she first entered the house suddenly erupted into crackling and cracking. They both looked up at the ceiling and found it to be almost completely consumed by fire. The sky above them was literally on fire, fed by the old wooden beams and lack of fire retardant material used in modern construction. She could see the walls were starting to darken and the paint peel. The fire had found a path down past them behind the walls. If what was happening above them was also happening below… They were out of time. Grace yelled over the roar of the fire, "Take the kid, I'll bring up the rear." She shoved the limp child up to her partner and as he pulled her up against him, he looked back at his partner. The sounds of creaking and groaning were deafening and vibrations could be felt under them. He looked in her eyes as they suddenly widened and the floor below her gave way as fire erupted through the new gaping hole. "No! Lieutenant, noooo!" Grabbing his radio he shouted "Mayday, mayday, fireman down. Mayday." Now carrying the limp body of the child, the firefighter used his boots and pushed himself along the floor to the top of the stairs before standing up and racing down the steps and out of the house, dropping the child into medics arms but as he turns to go back in, his arm is grabbed by the battalion chief. "Where is the Lieutenant?"
"We were crawling back to the stairs when she pushed the kid to me out in the hallway. The room she was in, the floor just collapsed under her. She knew Chief, she knew it was going to fall." Immediate action began as firefighters mobilized, teams taking an offensive position with their hoses to beat down this burning demon and make a path to send in a rescue team. But the flames seemed to laugh at them and just kept coming.
Authors note: Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome!