Vars rushed up to them, but kept his hand clenched on Jake’s to make sure he knew where the boy was at all times. His muscles were heavy, and each movement a struggle, but there was no way around it. He had to tell them what happened so that they knew no more explosions would come.
“It’s Damon! He must have stayed here after the wedding, hidden somewhere like a cockroach. He planted explosives.”
Fire reflected in Jake’s eyes as they all watched more people escaping the sinking ship of a building.
“Fox, Rev, and Gray are still unaccounted for,” Beast said in a voice that seemed to barely pass his throat.
Laurent wrapped himself around Beast. “I’m sure they ran. The property is vast, we will meet them soon.”
“But what if they don’t?” Fox’s wife emerged from the crowd and grabbed Beast’s forearm, her face pale as if she were a ghost, about to melt into the snow. “Do something! He’s not answering his phone! There must be something!”
Just as she said that, the beam above the entrance in front of them suddenly broke like a match in someone’s hands. It spat bright sparks all over, sending the crowd of survivors into panic.
Joker stood still, his usual grin gone as he watched their life scorch like a funeral pyre. “Why didn’t the sprinklers work? What about smoke alarms?” he suddenly exploded, spinning around and approaching Knight in fast strides. “Why didn’t they work?”
Knight showed his teeth and pushed at Joker’s chest, stepping forward like the embodiment of fury. “I check them every fucking week. Can’t you see someone planned this, you moron? They must have disabled the system as well!”
“It’s fire. I can go inside!” Jake tried to pull his hand out of Vars's grip, but that only made Vars squeeze it harder. “There’s people still in there!”
As if to answer his words, a scream from the building got their attention. Fox stood in a window on the second floor, already climbing over the ledge as bright orange illuminated his back.
The glow lit up the sides of his face and transformed its middle into a black void with two shining holes for eyes. Something thudded behind him, and he fell. A scream rose from dozens of throats, soon followed by a loud yell, rusty with pain.
Vars pulled on Jake’s hand, pushing through the crowd of hangarounds like a battering ram. In the snow, Fox had his arms around his wife, and he was alive, but the way his right leg rested against the snow, twisted at an unnatural angle, had Damon’s blood coming up Vars’s throat.
“Gray and Rev are still in there,” Fox growled through clenched teeth. He grabbed a handful of snow, squeezing it like a stress ball. “They’re trapped. I tried to get to them, but the extinguishers are bust!”
Beast rapidly shook his shoulders. “Where? Where are they?”
Fox was going pale, and Knight kneeled right next to him, proficiently dealing with the broken leg. Vars had never seen him so focused before, the clown-like attitude he sometimes adapted was nowhere to be found.
“In the corridor by Rev’s workshop!” Fox screamed when Knight moved his leg, but despite barely catching his breath, he kept going. “The idiots must have tried to get the jewels.”
Beast shook his head and rubbed his face. He was thinking, but time was running out fast, and the fire brigade was nowhere to be seen yet. Without protective gear, it would be impossible to enter the area Fox mentioned, entrenched deep inside the building, behind a secret entrance that kept the workshop where the stolen and smuggled jewelry was stored and worked on, hidden.
“Why aren’t they coming?” hissed Beast and pulled out his phone, choosing the three numbers again.
Vars’s attention slipped for half a second when a screaming hangaround fell from a window nearby. In that moment, Jake slipped his hand out of Vars’s and ran.
In the blink of an eye. Vars stood alone in the crowd of frightened people, but when he spotted Jake rushing for the nearest door, he ran after him in long, fast strides over the squashed snow. His temples pulsed at a rapid pace, throat getting tighter with every second until Jake was too close to the open heat, too far away from him.
“Jake, stop!”
An invisible force pulled on Jake’s neck so hard he fell into the snow that was quickly turning into mud.
“I’ve got to go, Vars! I have to! I’m the only one who can stand the fire!” he shouted, staring back in horror.
The flames reflected off his eyes and made them look wild, unhinged. Vars slowed down, approaching with an invisible hole growing inside his chest. It was all his fault. If it wasn’t for his presence, Damon would have never targeted the club. Jake would have never been put in this position.