Free Souls of Fire by Vanessa Black Page B

consciousness that had continuously whispered to him, urging him for days to delve into the mystery of why he felt so strange, finally broke free of its confinement.
    Inhibited no longer, it didn’t merely whisper. It shouted!
    With a cry so ferocious, Aaron hadn’t believed it possible, his inner voice raged at him to do what his dream image of her had so desperately pleaded with her last breath.
    Running from the room as fast as his legs would carry him, he finally listened to his inner voice; governed by the bond between them, it guided him without fail in the direction of her room. Carrying his laboring body along, his feet hit the floor in powerful rhythmic motions.
    As each step thumped loudly in Aaron’s ears, in complete synchronicity with his frantically beating heart, his mind replayed the image of her desperate request, the breathless whisper that had escaped her dying lips.
    As he rushed toward her, hoping against hope that he wasn’t too late, her last words echoed hollowly inside his head.
     
    “Save … me.”
     
    Aaron sprinted up three flights of stairs in the girl’s building. The bond that continued to guide him had grown weaker and weaker as the minutes flew by, threatening to break off at any second and leave him utterly helpless in finding her, thereby condemning the girl to death.
    Although, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the moment he no longer felt the connection he would already be too late because it meant that her heart had stopped beating.
    Vowing not even to entertain such a notion, he pushed on down the hall, feeling the tiny spark of the bond going out just as he reached her door.
    Refusing to give up on her, frantically trying and failing to open the door which she had obviously locked, he let the panic he felt completely take over his senses, willing his adrenaline-flooded body to do the only thing he could think of that might still save her ― if it wasn’t already too late.
    Retreating as far as he could, he inhaled deeply, and then charged straight for her door, crashing into it, and taking it down with the force of a raging bull, showering the hall and her room with an array of wooden splinters.
    How long had it been since he had felt her spark go out?
    Seconds? Minutes? He no longer knew!
    Running toward her unmoving, deathly pale body, he tried to block everything else from his thoughts as he concentrated single-mindedly on what he needed to do.
    Feeling for a pulse, his heart skipped a couple of beats when his senses confirmed what he had already felt to be true:
    Her heart was no longer beating!
    Aaron couldn’t let her be dead!
    The sound of her pleading last words haunted him. It would be his fault if she was dead. Because he had hesitated!
    She had used the bond between them and had cried out for help. He had been her only hope.
    And he had failed her!
    Beside himself at this very thought, he clutched at her, pulling her upper body toward him, starting to fill her lungs with air and massage her no longer beating heart.
    A minute went by, then another. More minutes passed.
     
    Nothing.
    No intake of breath.
    No heartbeat.
    No spark!
     
    Completely overwhelmed by everything that had happened that night, and left with a sense of loss so acute, so painful, that he could hardly breathe, Aaron hugged her body to his, no longer concerned about appearances.
    Holding her close, he rocked her gently, mourning the loss of a life he hadn’t come to know and the rupture of a link he hadn’t come to understand, and now never would; and knowing deep down that he could have prevented this tragedy if he had only been braver and had acted more decidedly.
    As he bent down and placed a gentle kiss on her cold lifeless lips, tears of regret rolling silently down his cheeks to glisten upon her beautiful white skin, he felt it.
     
    A spark!
     
    It was so weak and had flickered so unsteadily that, for a moment, Aaron thought he might have imagined it. Then he felt