Bloodied Paws [BP Book 1]

A Fire's Devastation

[Addie]

I blinked as light flooded my eyes. I groaned, putting my hand over my eyes in annoyance. After a moment I knew for a fact I wasn't going to fall back asleep anytime soon, despite how groggy I felt, so I slowly pushed the blankets back and sat up, rubbing my eyes as I stood.

I was in my own room... weird, didn't I go to Grace's for a sleepover yesterday? After a moment of thinking I shrugged the feeling off. Probably just classic me confusing some dream with reality. I got dressed and left my room without a second thought about it.

A meow out of my vision made me turn. Sitting by the door of my room was a fluffy cat, white with many grey markings in its fur. Blue eyes blinked at me, a pink tongue briefly visible as the cat licked its lips.

I smiled. "Hey, Ragdoll."

The cat mewed, standing up and walking to me. Ragdoll walked between my legs, purring as he rubbed up against my ankle. I knelt down and stroked his head, and I heard his purrs escape his vocals.

"Good boy," I said with a smile. Standing back up and making sure not to step on the fluffy cat, I continued down the hall to the door. My second cat, a black one with amber eyes named Arachne, was sleeping on the counter, per usual. I decided not to disturb the feline's sleep, and walked out the door.

A slight breeze disturbed my hair, and I spit a few strands from my mouth. Birds chirped above, and I took a deep breath of the early summer air. The sun was rising in the sky, not sunrise but still much before noon. Maybe around nine o' clock. A glance at the time on my phone confirmed it: 9:17.

Though a quick look over the village told me something... was definitely wrong.

Usually, if I looked over the village roofs, I could see the tops of all my friends' houses. That I could still do... except one. Grace's. Her house was absent from my view where it normally isn't. I frowned. That's... really weird. Perhaps I should check it out?

Curiosity pulled my feet along the dirt path, my quick walk soon turning into a jog and then breaking into a run. I took multiple turns, knowing each path by heart, until I came across the place where Grace's home stood.

Or where it once stood.

In its place was a large pile of blackened, charred wood. Tendrils of smoke still rose from still burning hot areas. A fresh fire, burnt out to the point of dying. I stared, wide-eyed at the scene, speechless and breathless as dread threatened to claw my already dying good mood away.

"Addie!"

A voice snapped me from my trance, a voice from the rubble. A girl, shorter than me, with long, strawberry-blonde hair stood in the ash-ridden debris. In her eyes I saw the same panic I was feeling.

"Thank god you're here, come on! We don't know if Grace is here!" The girl said. Those very words made my heart drop to my stomach. I ran into the burnt-down pile of what used to be a house, looking about, telling myself:

She had to have gotten out, she had to have gotten out-

My hands gripped a crumbling plank, tossing the black chunk to the side. "What happened here, Nev?" I asked the short girl from where I stood. I didn't expect her to know, but it was all I could think to ask at the moment.

"I don't know," The girl, Neveah, said, "It was like this when I came down here. Tucker and Ireland are looking around in case she's injured and is somewhere in the village."

"Guys! She's here!"

Someone else spoke from outside my peripheral vision. I whipped around, seeing another girl with long, dark brown hair standing with a charred plank in her hand. Katherine. She had spoken. I inhaled, swiftly picking my way through the wood scattering the ground to get to where she stood.

I paused when I got there. My eyes widened, my hand covering my mouth in shock.

Grace. She was lying on the ground, covered mostly with ash and the remnants of wooden planks. Parts of her clothes were singed and black from the fire, her jaw slack and her eyes sightless. No breath stirred her form, her entire body limp and unmoving. She was dead, there was no question about that. Before I could stop them, I felt hot tears begin to streak down my face as whatever stability I felt snapped itself in half.

No, not her, not her, no...

A deluge of bittersweet memories took hold of my mind, every good time and every bad time I'd ever experienced with Grace flooding my senses. Of everyone in my friend group, I'd known her the longest. And now she's dead. All of it, whisked away with the passing of life.

The others that had been digging in the debris came over at Katherine's beckoning, all frozen with their eyes drawn to the corpse at our feet. Nev cried out in surprise and despair, taking a few steps back. Will, always having been more my friend than her's, simply stared, eyes unsure as to how he should be reacting. Katherine dropped the plank she held, exhaling sadly.

All of us knew she wouldn't be coming back.

"Nev, find Tucker and Ireland," Katherine said with barely a glance at the shorter girl. "Tell them we found her."

Nev stood there for a moment, tear-filled eyes flickering between Katherine and Grace's body before she fled to find the other two.

-

[Katherine]

We all stared at the body. We didn't know what to do, really. In all the years we'd come here, no one's died. One rare time, Will broke his arm from a fall, but other than that nothing as major has happened injury-wise. Now someone's dead.

A discoloring caught my eye. Bruises in dark spots were splotched around her neck. Looking at her head, the angle it sat at was undeniable - her neck had been broken. Crushed. I glanced at Will and Addie. If they noticed it, they didn't show it and didn't mention anything about it.

I observed where the burns seemed to be. All in all, there weren't many burns that were absolutely severe. Maybe some second-degree splotches here and there, one or so third-degree, but the rest seemed more like heat burns than fire burns.

In my mind I tried to convince myself, she inhaled too much smoke, maybe. Or she tripped and fell trying to escape, and it broke her neck.

But the bruises were only on her neck. And none of the planks I removed from on top of her would have crushed that specific bone like that. As much as I didn't want to admit it... this may have been murder.

I bit my lip as I racked my brain. It wasn't possible that one of us did it, right? We all knew Grace, and even those who didn't know her well didn't not like her, much less despise her enough to reach to measures like this to get rid of her.

I breathed out a huff.

I would get to the bottom of this.

No matter what it took.

-

:)

1244 words