When The Fire Went Out chapter 11

Just when I thought I was dead for sure, the door blew open with a crash.

Henry burst into view.

My eyes stung instantly. In every life-or-death moment, he’s the one who shows up. Every. Single. Time.

Jaw clenched, he charged forward with an iron bar in his hand and brought it down on Aves’s father’s skull before anyone could react. The man dropped instantly, limp as a cut cord.

Aves’s eyes went blood-red. She lunged at him with her knife. Her mother rushed out of the kitchen with a cleaver.

But two women were no match for a young, furious man. Henry swung again—one blow to the mother, another straight to Aves’s head.

The horrifying thing was:

Aves didn’t seem to feel a thing.

Blood streamed down her face, yet she didn’t even make a sound.

Realizing brute force was pointless, Henry threw the iron bar aside and tackled her. They both crashed to the floor in a violent tangle.

They rolled across the tiles, but Henry was stronger. He eventually managed to pin her down. Barely.

Aves thrashed like a wild animal, a guttural sound ripping from her throat—nothing human. More than once she nearly bucked him off.

“Gia! Pull out her jade cicada—now!”

His shout snapped through the chaos.

I froze for half a second.

“If she’s not human, the only way to stop her is to remove the jade cicada! Hurry!” he shouted again, straining under her weight.

That jolted me. I scrambled to Aves.

I hesitated—but only for a moment. Then I gritted my teeth, reached down, and yanked the jade cicada out of her body.

“Henry—what do I do with it?!”

“Break it!”

I raised it high and smashed it onto the floor. It shattered instantly, and the centipede inside—huge and black—showed out.

“Kill it!” he barked.

I lifted my foot—but panic seized me. What if I missed? What if it bit me?

So I grabbed the nearest wooden stool and brought it down again and again until the creature was nothing but a black-red smear.

At that exact moment, Aves went limp. Her body collapsed, soft and heavy like wet clay.

Henry, dripping sweat, released her and rolled off, panting hard.

Then—a scream from the doorway.

My heart shot up to my throat.

I turned.

It was their next-door neighbor, holding a trash bag.

“Someone’s dead—!there’s been a murder” she shrieked, dropping the trash bag and sprinting away.

“Henry… what do we do?” My voice cracked. We’d been seen. No one would believe this was self-defense—not with three bodies on the ground.

“We have to go,” he said, grabbing my hand.

We ran.

But before we even made it out of the complex, police sirens wailed around us. Patrol cars screeched in from both sides, lights flashing. A dozen armed officers aimed guns straight at us.

Henry raised his hands slowly.

“I killed them,” he said. “It has nothing to do with Gia.”

Tears blurred my vision. You never really know who cares about you until you’re staring death in the face.

“No!” I cried. “They tried to kill me first—we were defending ourselves!”

But no one listened.

Cold handcuffs snapped around our wrists, and we were shoved into the back of a police car.