Read Online Ablaze (Indestructible Trilogy Book 2) by Emma L. Adams - Free Book Online Page A

that much is obvious.
    The guards frog-march me through the corridor. Definitely like a cave, even with the tiled floors and painted stone walls. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling illuminate every corner. I try to get a good look at the guards. They’re dressed in black, and their hoods are pulled up so it’s hard to make out their faces, at least without not looking where I’m walking. Soon enough, we come to another corridor lined with doors, and I’m strongly reminded of the old Pyro headquarters, except underground.
    Several more corridors later, we enter an area where the walls are painted white and the floor’s roughly tiled in an approximation of the Pyro HQ. Jared leads the way through a metal door and into a dimly lit room with actual furniture—a plush black sofa, several chairs, a bookshelf in the corner—and a television on a wooden table. An old, blocky TV with a VCR.
    I don’t know what I expected the quarters of a madman to look like—severed heads mounted on the walls, maybe?—but it’s so plain and ordinary. I stare, especially at the television set and the low table in front of the sofa, littered with car magazines, and even a remote control. I don’t realise my mouth’s slightly open until Jared turns and gives me a smile.
    “Not what you expected, hmm?”
    “You—you live here?”
    “Where did you expect me to live? Inside a volcano?” He laughs, a touch too loud to be entirely comfortable. I want to back away, but my arms are pinned to my sides.
    Apparently realising this, he says, “Guards, you can go.”
    And they let go. My upper arms are slightly numb, and I turn quickly to get a proper look at them. One’s hood’s fallen back slightly and what I see underneath makes my stomach turn. His skin’s been sewn together, but there are different patches of slightly different colours, some pale, some dark, others red.
    They’re experiments. That explains their unnatural strength.
    “Leah?” Jared beckons to me. I tense up, less-than-eager to follow him into his supervillain lair.
    “I promised not to hurt you,” he says. “See? You’re not restrained. You’re free to walk around as you like.”
    Not if you’re planning to cut me up. But he needs the Transcendent in one piece, right? I can’t trust him for a heartbeat, but I need to be here. Cas needs me to be here.
    “You said show me,” I say, gesturing at the room. “Show me what?”
    “This.” He walks over to the television, leaving me hovering in the doorway, and holds up an old video tape. “I think this is the one.”
    I raise my eyebrows.
    “This is an instructive video we used to show to recruits.”
    “And it still works?”
    “My colleagues and I appropriated fiend technology,” he says. “Believe it or not, they were as advanced a race as we once were, the Fiordans. Too bad it turned out like this for both of us, but we’ve adapted with the times.” He inserts the tape into the VCR.
    Despite the warning nagging at the back of my mind, I walk over to the TV as the screen lights up. Holy crap. It’s working. Then again, I suppose Murray did have a working PC in his office.
    “Come and sit down, Leah. I promise you it’s comfortable.”
    I walk forward a few more steps, but don’t sit. Jared hits a button and fast-forwards the video. The screen shows an all-too familiar sight.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    A burning red sky. Ground, cracked open by a rift wider than a house. And monsters crawling out of the gap. My nails bite into my palms.
    The fiends are crawling out, knocking people aside—yes, there are people everywhere.
    But something about them doesn’t look right. The way they move—fiends don’t move like that. And, now I see close up, the people don’t look right either.
    “That’s CGI,” I say. An idea long-forgotten, in this world. “You made that using a computer, right?”
    “My brother did. It was exceedingly difficult to capture live footage, before… recent