Dragonfury 01 - Fury of Fire

paint peeling, eaves sagging, sad-looking couch on display beneath the glow of lights on either side of the scarred cedar door.
    Duffle bag bumping against the side of her leg, she climbed the crooked porch steps and knocked on the cedar panel. She waited a minute, ears tuned and listening hard.
    Nothing. No squeak of wood floors. Not a glimmer of movement from inside.
    Myst rapped harder, the contact making her knuckles ache as she peered through one of the narrow windows flanking the door. Unobstructed by curtains, the view gave her a straight shot down the corridor into the kitchen. On the floor, flowing out from behind the island, a dark pool spilled over light tile.
    Her heart jumped like a jackrabbit.
    From this distance, she couldn’t be sure, but…
    “Goddamn it.” Myst dropped her bag and yanked her phone out of her jacket pocket. She dialed nine-one-one and banged on the door with the heel of her hand. “Caroline!”
    No answer.
    She twisted the door handle. Locked.
    “Shit.”
    Scanning the porch, she looked for something heavy. She needed to get in there. Maybe the dark stain was spaghetti sauce. Maybe she was losing her ever-loving mind. But she didn’t think so. She’d had a bad feeling all day…one of the those ride-your-ass-and-won’t-let-you-go kind of things.
    A spade-shaped shovel caught her eye. Running past the ratty couch, she grabbed hold of the wooden shaft, jerking the tool away from its lean against the wall. The phone still ringing in her ear, she returned to the front door. Turning her face away, she wound up with one arm and set metal to glass. The window exploded inward, shooting shards into the entryway.
    Not wasting a second, she reached through the opening and flipped the deadbolt. An instant later, she was through the door with her bag, sprinting down the hallway and into the kitchen.
    “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?”
    “Oh, God.”
    “Ma’am?”
    Myst stood frozen, phone to her ear, paralyzing shock pumping through her veins. Caroline lay sprawled on the floor between the island and the sink in a pool of her own blood. The horror of it registered, sent her spinning back to another scene. One in which her mother lay instead.
    “Ma’am? Ma’am?” The voice broke through, firm tone commanding her attention. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
    Her medical training kicked in. “Myst Munroe, DNP out of Seattle. Send an ambulance. I’ve got a pregnant woman down. Eight months along. She’s…God, there’s so much blood.”
    She snapped on her gloves and, shoes sliding, waded into the bloodbath. Needing both hands free, she hit speakerphone and tossed the phone onto a clean patch of tile.
    “Where are you?”
    Checking the girl’s vitals, she rattled off the address. “Get here. Get here fast. She’s nonresponsive.”
    “Myst, stay on the line with me. I’m connecting to dispatch.”
    It wasn’t going to be fast enough. The EMTs wouldn’t reach them in time. Caroline was bleeding from the inside out. And an internal bleed was nothing she could stop, not without an operating room and a damned good surgeon.
    Myst dragged her bag over. She must find a way to—
    Caroline grabbed hold of her wrist. Her dark eyelashes flickered against her pale cheeks.
    “Caroline, honey. Stay with me.” Two fingertips pressed to the girl’s carotid, Myst checked her pupils for dilation and counted off the seconds. “Stay with me. Come on, darling. Help is on the way.”
    Her lips moved. No sound came out. She tried again and whispered, “Save him.”
    “Who, honey?”
    “My baby,” she breathed, more wheeze than words. “Save…my baby.”
    “I will. I promise. The ambulance is coming. We’ll get you to the hospital.”
    A lie. Point-blank and terrible.
    Myst felt it like a knife to the chest. Neither one of them was going to make it out of the situation unscathed. She swallowed the tears working their way up the back of her throat. God, if only she’d insisted Caroline see her. If only she’d come sooner. She could’ve skipped supper, could’ve driven faster, could’ve—
    “Myst?” The nine-one-one responder came back on the line. “An ambulance is rolling to you. ETA thirty minutes.”
    Caroline’s pulse fluttered as her breath slowed to a rattle inside her chest.
    “That’s too long.”
    “Hang in there. Help’s coming.”
    Static interrupting her words, the woman kept talking. Myst stopped listening, grim reality hitting her hard as