Page 59 of From the Ashes

Is he even still alive?

CHAPTER 23

Colt

My ears are still ringingas I gradually peel my eyelids open. What the fuck just happened?

I cough and press my fingertips to my head. They come away red and sticky. I can feel something stinging on my scalp, but seeing as I can wiggle all my extremities, I chose to believe that means it’s not that bad. I’m sure Zahir said something once about head wounds bleeding worse than they look.

My heart pangs. I’m confused and in pain, but the one thing I know for sure is he’s the only person I want to see right now.

That isn’t going to happen, though. So I take a breath and focus on the ground where I’m lying. It’s dark but I can still see that there’s crap everywhere and dust settling all around me.

Earthquake.

Oh, yeah. That’s what happened.

“Colt?” my mother’s voice rings out.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I say back, blinking and trying to look through the gloom. “Dad? Portia?”

“What the fuck was that?” my father grumbles in outrage.

Portia moans. “Still here. I think.”

I start flexing my muscles and twisting my limbs, pretty certain that apart from being banged up, I don’t have anything terrible to worry about. “Anyone injured?”

“My arm hurts,” my mom says, making my heart contract. I know we were just fighting, but I’m never not going to care about her, no matter what. She sounds so scared.

“I’m fine but I’m stuck,” my father says with a huff. “Get over here and help me out.”

“I’m okay,” Portia replies to me. “Areyouokay?”

“Debatable,” I tell her with a laugh that quickly becomes a moan. “I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow…”

As I manage to finally sit up, my words trail off as I see something twitching on the wet floor in front of me. Something small and colorful.

It’s one of the baby koi carp. It’s suffocating.

Suddenly, I’m up on my feet, spinning around, looking for anything that I can use to help. The empty wine bucket is lying on its side under the table we were sitting at mere moments ago. I grab it and look at the fish tank. The top has been smashed off. There’re bits of wall and fake cherry blossom petals in the water, and it’s leaking fast through the broken glass. The other koi is swimming around in the few inches of water left, clearly agitated.

“Colton!” my father barks. “Stop fucking around and help me!”

I ignore him.

Only wobbling a little on my feet, I leap over to the tank, scooping up that fish and what water I can in the wine bucket. By some stroke of luck, the fake tree branches appear to have stopped a lot of the dust from settling on the water, hopefully making it more hospitable for the fish.

After getting as much into the bucket as I can without risking hurting the little thing, I turn around and approach the flappingone on the floor. I don’t know if I’m going to hurt it. But if I leave it there, it’s definitely going to die. So being as careful as I can, I slip my fingers around its orange and silver body. It has a noticeably round, plump body, which I think makes it easier to quickly pluck off the floor and dunk into the bucket.

I stare for a second as the most recently rescued fish stills. Just as I’ve convinced myself that by grabbing it, I did more harm than good, it jerks like a dog shaking itself after swimming in a lake. Then the two koi start flitting about in their new mini metal home.

“Jesus Christ,” I say weakly. “You scared me for a second there, fishy.”

“COLT!” my father practically screams. “Stop ignoring me and?—”

“You said you weren’t injured, just stuck,” I interrupt him calmly. “That fish was dying. It’s okay now.”

“Fish?” he splutters. Now I’m on my feet I can see that he is indeed pinned down by what I would guess is a metal beam from the ceiling. But as he said himself, he doesn’t look particularly wounded. “We were just eating fucking fish! What the fuck are you?—”

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