Free The Devil's Fire by Matt Tomerlin

to find the room filled with smoke. His eyes stung. He blinked until tears lined the lids. He felt a strong pressure in his lungs, as though someone was sitting on his chest. He sprang from the chair and searched frantically for the source of the smoke. He swept through the room, unable to see two feet beyond the swirling haze. He stumbled several feet and bumped into a wall before deciding it best to evacuate. He felt along the wall until his fingers brushed over the groove of the door.
    He hesitated. He was forgetting something.
    The girl!
    He shook his head, damning his stupidity, and thrust himself into the smoke. He pushed through for several paces, the room seeming larger than he remembered. The fumes burned at his eyes, forcing the lids to squeeze shut involuntarily. When he opened them again, he saw that the bed was on fire.
    He made the mistake of gasping. The sudden inhalation sucked ash into his lungs and he crumpled to his knees in a fit of coughs. The air was cleaner below, giving him a chance to recover his breath. He spared a second glance at the bed and saw that the fire that consumed it was now spreading toward him along the planks of the floor.
    He glanced around, reacquainting himself with the cabin. Once he was sure of the direction he had come, he scampered for the exit on all fours. He continued until his head slammed into a slender pair of legs. They were hard and resolute, like steel poles firmly rooted in the floor. He peered upward, scaling the legs as they curved into a pair of slender hips, glistening with sweat. He continued upward, past a naked waist, past small but firm breasts, past a slim, elegant neck, past a sharp jaw and unsmiling lips. . . until finally he met the eyes of Katherine Lindsay.
    She was taller and sleeker than he remembered. Her hair was on fire and each truss writhed like a serpent. Her skin was as white as ivory. Her eyes were obsidian. A terrible grin suddenly split her face, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth.
    She must have thought him pathetic on all fours, because she started to laugh. Her chest heaved with every giggle and her hair billowed until the flames touched the roof. The ceiling was set alight by an outward spreading blaze that rolled over the rafters like water over stones in a brook. Wooden planks cracked and popped as the flames chewed away at them.
    She extended a hand, fingernails stretching into long and shiny black claws. Her awful giggles transcended her, echoing throughout the room and mingling with the roar of fire until it seemed that the flames themselves were laughing at him in a collective hellish chorus.
    He beheld a tiny man entrapped within in her black eyes. Imprinted on the man's face was an expression of stark terror. Griffith was overcome with pity for the sniveling little man, and in turn saw his pity reflected in that man's face. As the fire encircled the doomed man from behind, he felt the flames lapping at his own back with claws as sharp as those that were closing over his head.
    He screamed.
     
    He woke with a start that nearly toppled him from his chair. He righted himself by dropping his feet from the desk to the floor. His boots pounded the planks too loudly, and he checked to see if he had woken the girl.
    She was still asleep on the opposite side of the cabin. The bed was not on fire. The room was not filled with smoke. Thin trails of soft morning light spilled in through the foggy windows to highlight particles of dust.
    The room ensnared a morning chill that was a welcome contrast to the burning fury of his nightmare. Griffith allowed himself a small chuckle at the vividness of his imagination. He had suffered hideously creative nightmares as long as he could remember, often waking in a cold sweat. Before she died when he was only six years old, he remembered his mother racing in and sitting at his bedside to calm him. She always lit a single candle before leaving, but the flickering light only made matters worse, scattering