Los Angeles Library Fire Novels & Stories

Time was gone. We went in. Heat slammed into us the moment we crossed the threshold, suffocating and dense, smoke cutting visibility as the air turned heavy. Above us, the structure creaked, unstable. Ray moved ahead with purpose. I stayed close, close enough that losing him was not an option. We reached the archive room. Half of it was already gone. Flames tore through shelves, paper catching instantly, years of records turning to ash. Ray moved straight in, focused and searching.

Too late, he noticed the trail of liquid following behind them, and the fumes of the liquid she'd splashed all over him tickled his nose. Sofia and Natalia didn't look back as they dropped their candles, still repeating the Apostle's Creed. The loud whoosh of the first flames almost drowned out Alonzo's screams as the trail of gasoline caught fire and raced towards him, where he was pinned, helpless. By the time the five women met up a few hundred feet away where they'd left the getaway car, the gasoline they'd surrounded the palazzo with had caught flames, and the whole place was engulfed in minutes. They stood only for a few seconds more, watching the blaze as the older ones surrounded the

I was at the edge of my seat as my heart pounded like a jackhammer against its sternum. “Thelma!” Each second she didn’t reply filled me with even more terror. “It’s…the,” The line kept breaking. “The Pack—“ “The Pack” Eliana echoed. “Something’s wrong with the Pack.” “What’s wrong with the Pack, Thelma?” I asked, miles away from them and what she said next was enough to collapse my whole world. One word—the worst of them all. “Fire.” “There’s been a fire, Alpha Denver” Thelma yelled. “Oh my God” Eliana clutched her lips with her hands. “Oh my God, Denver” There was a sharp, numbing sound that pierced through my ears as I held the phone.

Because it was mine. I stumbled back, horrified, only to see my hands glowing brighter, scales flickering over my skin. The flames licked up the walls of the library, devouring the shelves, then wrapped themselves around the dormitory windows. Students pounded against the glass, their faces desperate as the heat warped the stone. “No,” I whispered, clutching my head. “Stop. Please, stop—” But it didn’t. The fire roared louder, gleeful in its chaos. One by one, their voices silenced, and when the smoke cleared enough for me to see, bodies lay scattered across the courtyard, charred and lifeless.

Some glowed as Lina’s had, while others pulsated with darkness, or shot off sparks that danced silently in the air. The Librarian’s were everywhere, on every level of the library. I wanted to ask Orion what he thought their official jobs were, because they didn’t seem to be doing much other than prowling the stacks with their creepy, elongated limbs and their ominous click, click, clicking. If it were up to me I’d fire them all. Literally, I’d set them all on fire. As we reached what had to be level fifty or sixty down, I noticed many of the stacks and shelves were charred. Everything seemed to be covered in a thick layer of soot. The scent changed from that of musk and dust to the remnants

Cassian POV The firefighters were able to put out the fire in the library before it burned down the entire building, but between the flames, the smoke, and the water used to put it out, we lost three-quarters of the books. The head librarian, Marianne, was barely able to hold back her tears at the town meeting when we heard the reports. “We weren’t able to find any source for the fire,” our Fire Chief, Taylor, finished, folding his arms. “No accelerants were found, but the way it spread couldn’t have been natural, either.”

"I was part of a special unit. We were... we were tasked with monitoring certain threats—natural disasters, potential wars, that kind of thing. But then we started hearing rumors. Whispers about something bigger. Something we couldn’t control." He paused, his jaw clenching. "We were told to keep it quiet. Not to panic the public. That there were plans in place to handle it. But those plans... they were too late. By the time we realized how bad it was going to get, it was already happening. The fires, the destruction... The Burning wasn’t an accident, Maya. It was inevitable." I felt like the floor had just dropped out from under me. My mind reeled, trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“Sybil?” He shook his head. “Council. Sybil’s cowed for now. She’s desperate, but not stupid. The suits are the ones we can’t read. Lyra’s sniffed out three traps in the sewer lines already. Most are just decoys—power outages, food shipments misrouted. But yesterday, the library annex on Jefferson burned.” She swallowed on instinct. The library was supposed to be neutral territory, a refuge for wolves, humans, even the odd daywalker. Information was currency.

I reported it, Elias whispered. To whom. To the emergency line. To internal security. What happened? They told me there was no incident. No call logged. No outage recorded. Valerie clenched her teeth. Someone erased it. Yes. Then the fire happened. Not in the house. In the archive building. The one across the street. The same night. Elias’s voice broke. They said it was an accident. But I was there. The fire started in the records room. The place where camera feeds were stored.

Keren appeared to be back in her room, taking a nap as I heard Miss Stewart gossiping in the kitchen with Chef Lydia. When had they bonded? I wondered, taking a seat on the couch and gently turning on the TV. The news that greeted me was about a school in Los Angeles engulfed in fire, with two students trapped inside until they were carried out. I watched as the two trapped students were wheeled into an ambulance on stretchers. While I wondered what had occurred, a news reporter appeared on the screen.