The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

No.
    One second those jeans were filthy and tattered.
    The next, they were normal, clean and whole jeans.
    John Doe was still barefoot and half-naked, but his chest — the phoenix wound — was healing before my eyes.
    “What the—?”
    It was all I had time to say before he vanished. More like moved so fast I couldn’t really perceive it. I caught the flash of something silver, an image like a bird with bright wings outstretched. Then he was standing on my other side, by the door. The scent of cinnamon and cloves washed through my senses.
    John Doe opened his perfect mouth and growled as he took hold of my arm, a grip as firm as a vice. He pulled me away from the window, almost against his hard, tanned chest.
    I didn’t fight.
    Couldn’t.
    Thoughts barely formed in what was left of my mind, but I realized he was pushing me away from him now, away from the window and towards the office door.
    At that moment, John Doe finally spoke, and his voice rumbled deep and low. Mountains might have mustered that resonance, if stone could find its own voice.
    What he said was: “Run.”
Three
    Every nerve in my body fired, propelling me out of my office door into the admissions hallway.
    For a split second my mind jerked back in time, to Armenia, to that awful sunlit day when I found my mother’s body. I had run like this, crazy and unbalanced, into the streets, down the road until I made it to my father’s base.
    The memory made me stumble.
    Fall to one knee.
    A bolt of pain fractured the past and brought me back to the present.
    Behind me, back in my office, glass crashed and shattered.
    Concrete and mortar and plaster shot through my open office door, spraying across the tiles and stinging my calves.
    I shoved myself back to my feet, throat closing, eyes tearing. Blood roared in my ears as I tried to move fast, but I felt my right knee give with a tearing agony.
    Someone — or something — behind me let out a roar like a rabid bull.
    “Shit. Shit. Shit!” I dragged my bad leg down the admissions hallway, past all the closed doors and darkened windows. My mind focused on the hospital’s back door, on the cold metal handle that would let me out into the snowy night.
    John Doe shouted something in a language I had known before, but didn’t remember.
    What the fuck is happening here? To me. To him!
    I looked over my shoulder, and silvery light almost blinded me.
    Fire poured out of my office door in sharp, massive jets, so big they almost reached me.
    I barely got my face turned away before I almost lost my eyebrows. My skin ached from the heat as I fell forwards, one limping step at a time. I smelled burning hair. My own. Thick, sulphurous clouds made me choke as I tried to breathe, and each time my bad knee tried to flex, I let out a scream.
    John Doe.
    No way had he survived that explosion of fire.
    But he had to.
    I didn’t want him to be dead.
    I didn’t want to die.
    That friggin’ door seemed like a mile away, even though it was less than ten feet now.
    Fireballs streaked past me on both sides. Door facings splintered. Sprinklers went off, pulsing with the fast, hard beat of my heart.
    I lurched forwards, slipped again, banged my hurt knee on the tile floor, and yelped.
    Something huge and flaming and bellowing soared over my head and slammed to its feet right in front of me, blocking my path to the back door.
    Oh God. It has gigantic, scaly feet.
    Not real. I had to be hallucinating.
    Boom, said my dead father’s voice. Here come the monsters.
    Claws the size of butcher knives gouged into the tiles, grating so loud they blotted out the hospital’s fire alarm.
    My heart stopped beating, and my breathing stopped too. My chest squeezed in on itself as I looked up into a tower of fire with scaly arms and clawed paws. Unnatural black-coal eyes burned with hungry hatred, and the thing grabbed for me.
    I screamed, dropped, and rolled away from it.
    Smoke choked me.
    I couldn’t see.
    I used the hallway wall to pull myself up again and raised my arms in defensive posture.
    No way out of the back door. If I ran the other way, there was only an elevator, and I might lead the thing to the patient floors.
    That thought spiked some anger into my terror.
    Not happening.
    I’d die first.
    The fire-thing hesitated, maybe confused - or amused - by my fighting stance.
    My breathing and pulse picked up again. Like I was ready to fight. “Screw you!” I yelled at the creature.
    I’m insane.
    I’m going to die right