“He told me that a meeting was scheduled with the High Priestess. The Hand had some critical information he wanted to address. He sounded so sincere that I let him by. I let all of them by. Ship after ship after ship. I should have known.”
Finn choked, fingers shaking as he brushed at a tear slipping down his cheek. I felt my body growing cold, the numbness I’d carefully tucked away before was now spearing its icy fingers through my chest.
I didn’t want to hear this.
Any of this.
“I let them right by. Right by the border where the bubble started. The bubble that was supposed to encase the entire compound in the instance of an attack, sending us cascading deep into the sea. We would have been untouchable there. But instead I let them through. Our immaculate defense system immediately compromised.” His voice hitched and he met my eyes again, gaze boring into mine. Searching, pleading.
“After the last ship passed the border, they drew out the guns and the bombs and the balls of fire. I knew I’d messed up the second I felt that first fireball hit the temple, destroying the infirmary before anyone even saw what was coming.
“When I was messing around with my comrades I’d missed an incoming communication from Air. It was right there in front of me, bright as day on the console. A warning. The Order was already laying siege there. They knew there was nothing they could do to stop them but they tried to warn us. They fucking tried to warn us and I missed the comm by twenty minutes. Twenty.” He slammed his hands down on the hood of the car, denting it. Dark hair sprouted from the backs of his hands, the start of his shift, but he shoved it back with a shriek.
His pain was palpable.
I was in no position to soothe it.
“I fired off our own warning to Earth and Fire, telling them what was coming. Telling them that it was also too late for us. I hoped they saw it, hoped that their commanders weren’t as stupid as I was, that getting not one but two alerts would keep them sharp. But I needed to do more. I had to do more, so I turned on our beacon.
“The beacon sent a bright beam of light into the sky pulsing out a warning. We only ever planned to use it as a last defense because it tells everyone exactly where you are and what’s going on. But all the temples had one and were trained to look to the skies, to see the signs that a beacon had been activated at any of the three other camps. I knew they’d see it. I also knew that the second I activated it that whatever the Order had come to do would only be that much worse. They wouldn’t want any of us escaping alive.” I was freezing, the pain leeching far into my bones. I wasn’t sure it would ever fully fade.
Finn’s face was bloodless, eyes hazy as he recalled that horrifying day. “I’d already sent the rest of my team out to join the battle. Most of them were boys. Human teenagers with so much life ahead of them. Teenagers who sacrificed their lives that day in bravery I’ll never know. Because I looked out there and knew I would die. I saw the chaos, the blood and the destruction and the tragedy and knew this was the end of the line.
“I’m one of about a dozen kelpies left on Earth, Zara.” His voice cracked. “We’ve been hunted to the brink of extinction. I couldn’t die, couldn’t lose it all, not without doing my part to carry on our lineage,” his voice was unsteady, skin ashen. “And I couldn’t face that reality. I couldn’t accept that was the end, that that was how I was going to go.
“Instead, I ran. I could have gone up to the highest towers, I could have helped sneak the High Priestess out. I could have done more that day to help protect you, to protect our home. But I didn’t.” My knees buckled and I barely kept myself from sinking to the ground, a bullet through my heart. He couldn’t look me in the face. “I ran. I fled like the coward I never knew I was. And I hid. I went into hibernation in my secret space and I hid from everything until the Kraken woke me.”
His face snapped to the side when I slapped him. I wasn’t even aware I’d moved until my palm met this cheek, an explosion of magic and suffering colliding in a potent punch. His face was twisted, fallen, disgusted with himself as he slowly swiveled his head again to look at me.
We were two strangers after all.
He’d betrayed his people.
He’d betrayed me.
But as I opened my mouth to speak, words dripping with acid on the tip of my tongue, a searing pain lanced through my right eye, cutting a deep groove across my brain. Sparks of red flashed across my vision, and I bent in two.
“Zara…hear me. Run. Go. The God of Air…dead. Toren… be next.”
Like a badly tuned radio, Geoffrey’s voice filtered through my head.
A threat and a promise.
Geoffrey had said all those days ago that we were connected. He, me, all the other Gods. His connection to the First was the strongest.
I don’t know when he got there, but Ryder’s hands suddenly gripped mine and pulled me to my feet. Cuts filled with grit and sand burned from where I’d cut them as I’d fallen.
“He’s threatening Joseph.”
“You aren’t making any sense,” Ryder said.
“Geoffrey. He’s in my head. I could hear him, like in my dreams, only more disjointed.” I tugged on my hair helplessly. “He was threatening Joseph. Or saying he was dead. I’m not sure. But we have to find him. If we don’t…”
Finn cursed.
Ryder cleared his throat. “It’s a good thing I’m pretty sure I can teleport now, isn’t it? And that I know where we’re going.”
My head whipped around and I thought I heard something crack in my neck. “Are you sure?”
He rocked back and forth on his heels. “About eighty percent sure.”
“That… that doesn’t sound—” Finn started before his mouth snapped shut at my glare.
I gripped Ryder’s shoulders, getting right in his face. “Yes or no? This is entirely your call. You know your limits. But we’re in a pretty desperate situation right now. And I don’t know what we’ll do if you don’t think you can do it.”
He grimaced. “I can do it. Being around you in general has helped. You’re always throwing off magic. Add in the kiss and the impossibility of this situation… I have enough. I can do it.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
“Shouldn’t we form some sort of plan before we go teleporting into the middle of nowhere?” Finn asked, stepping between Ryder and me. “Maybe strategize a little?”
“Strategize for what?” I fired back, heart pounding a hot and fast tempo. “We don’t know what to expect. I got a straight threat from the Order a few random words from a guy who hates me to work with here. And time is running out.” My voice cut off on a whine.
“He’s got a point though,” said Ryder. He shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled out an ever-present stick of gum. “We might just be facing your Hand and a handful of his biggest goons. Or we could be going up against an entire army. And I can’t guarantee I’ll be much help after teleporting. I think we plan to combat an army and downgrade from there.”
I took a steadying breath. That made sense. We couldn’t afford to be stupid about this.
“Alright. Fine.” I nibbled on a nail, sorting through my thoughts. “Finn, do I remember correctly when you in Norway that there are fey everywhere?”
34
Geoffrey
Not yet.
A web of bluish-white encased my heart, pulsated around my lungs.
I’m not done with you yet.
Limp muscles flexed and locked.
I think I blinked.
Your story is only beginning.
Awareness trickled through my abused brain as the vibrant taste of life swept across my tongue. I didn’t know that sweet, feminine voice. But it was my salvation.
“Who are you?” I asked, words I shouldn’t have been able to speak.
Muscles in my arms flexed.
My legs braced.
Don’t let me down.
“What?”
A panel of stained wood and a patch of dirty re
d carpet appeared as I blinked. My cheek pressed against the surface of the hard pew. I was alive. The hand that had gone limp at my side twitched, blue sparks spitting from the skin as magic took hold, burning the poison from my veins. A haziness still floated in the back of my mind as I struggled to grasp… something.
When you feel the jolt, pull with all you have, Geoffrey.
“What?”
Pull.
35
Zara
“It’s like a pull,” Ryder explained for the umpteenth time. “That’s how it will feel.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” I said, but moved between with boys obligingly with my arms outstretched. The thought of touching Finn right now made my skin crawl, but holding hands was apparently part of how this whole thing worked.
Ryder smiled again with a confidence I wasn’t quite getting myself, and accepted my offer. His rough thumb stroked the back of my hand. Finn’s face was full of questions as he looked from my eyes to my hand and back again, but reluctantly he reached out and loosely clasped it in his sweaty grip.
Yep. Skin definitely crawling right now.
“Alright, let’s go,” Ryder gasped. His grip turned ironclad.
The little hairs on my arms stood on end, little amber-colored sparks flicking off the ends in tiny fireworks. Static charged my hair and clothes. A weird whooshing filled my ears and I could barely feel my feet. With extreme effort I turned to look at Ryder, his face twisted with intense concentration, hair flapping in an invisible wind. His eyes glowed red from the slit between his lids and his features grew sharper, thinner, meaner.
I could understand why incubi were considered demons in many cultures.
A jolt rocked my arm where it was clenched tight in Ryder’s fist. His palms glowed gold, the light seeping and reaching and engulfing the three of us, and as it spread its evil tendrils all I could feel was pain, mind-numbing pain. I could feel us shaking like lids of metal trash cans in a hurricane, the sound filling my ears an aggressive, never-ending roar. Light blazed and then…
It was quiet.
Completely still.
I cracked an eyelid I didn’t remember closing, then immediately wished I hadn’t.
Directly across from us, maybe fifty yards away, stood three-hundred or so odd soldiers. They assembled in long, neat rows and wore familiar black armor and grey face-masks. Each person also clutched a big, lethal-looking gun. A dozen or so cannons, similar to the ones that shot green lasers at us in Kansas City, perched at the outer edges of the small army.
It was a small wonder we hadn’t teleported right in the middle of that nasty little mess.
Something heavy thudded to the ground. Ryder. His normally dark tan took on a grey pallor. His eyes were open but exhausted, lifeless. No wonder teleportation wasn’t something he could do on a whim. Even with my magic filling him to overcapacity, it had taken everything he had to get us here.
“Here” apparently being a small, isolated desert.
I frowned as I surveyed the cracked, sunken earth.
I understood now why the Order brought me here. We were in the middle of a massive lake bed that had run dry some time ago. What had once contained cool, crystalline water was now a crater in the ground. An outer wall rose high at our backs, dipping maybe fifty feet. We stood in a part that was maybe one hundred feet deep, and when I scanned the horizon, I couldn’t see the other end. The earth itself was dry and dusty, void of vegetation.
No wonder the lake wasn’t on any map. It technically didn’t exist anymore.
“Well look who finally showed up.”
I… had never heard that voice before.
I stepped away from Finn and Ryder, moving closer to the too-still army. I did recognized the patches symbolizing the Order soldiers, but I didn’t recognize the man who stood slightly forward, apart from them. His face was blank, his eyes dark as he surveyed me, then looked past me at my companions. He dressed simply: bare arms bulged from the holes of his dark vest, and a long sword hung from his hip. It rested against his dark pants that tapered at the ankle, ending in black shoes.
At his feet knelt the boy from the photograph on the television. Joseph’s hands and legs were bound in white rope. Someone had stuffed a gag in his mouth.
The God of Air looked remarkably unfazed. If anything, he was bored, maybe even a little annoyed. Wind fluttered across his face, blowing his long, shoulder-length hair around his neck. Glasses with plastic, black frames had slipped to the tip of his nose. He was maybe three or four years older than me.
Unbidden, my magic sprang forward. It arced painfully, ribbons spurting from my body like flares from the sun. It reached for him, wanting him, demanding to awaken the power that burned in his core. Power he was born to wield.
I resisted its will and pushed my magic down, trying to ignore the fervent chanting in my head.
The man in front watched me watch Joseph.
“Who are you?” I said.
Dark eyes narrowed beneath thick brows that nearly met in the middle of his face. “I’m Toren Almasi, general of the Order, second to the Hand.”
“So Geoffrey sent you.”
“Of sorts.”
What did that mean?
“Why am I here?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
I glanced at Joseph who twisted his torso unhelpfully.
“And if it’s not?”
“Then you’re stupid, like he said.”
Whoa now. My hands went to my hips. “So what does that make you since I was able to escape back in Kansas City? That should have been a pretty open, shut situation, right?”
“Maybe I wanted you to escape.”
That didn’t make any sense.
“I—”
“Have you heard of this place? Do you understand its significance?”
A gust of wind flicked my braid over my shoulder. I scuffed a boot on the ground. “No.” This time I deliberately sent my magic out, and felt an answering ring. The fey had answered my call.
“Thousands of years ago, this part of the continent was struck with a peculiar catastrophe. The Great Lakes were drained over a span of mere months. I’d go into the details but it’s entirely too messy.”
Oh, so the general liked to talk did he? Lovely.
He does like to hear himself talk, that’s for sure.
My eyes zinged to those of the man kneeling on the ground. His head tipped to the side. Given he was gagged and tied, his mobility was pretty limited.
Got a plan?
You can talk to me?
You sound like this is the strangest thing that’s happened to you all day.
My lips trembled. The pull on my mind strengthened.
The general continued, “A densely populated area soon found itself without any source of water. What were they to do, but to call in the Gods to save them? Fortunately for all involved, while they’d aged considerably, the Gods were still around. Earth and Water responded to the request and banded together to solve this particular crisis.”
Is this the strangest thing to happen to you all day?
I mean, I was kidnapped. But on the stress-o-meter, that probably ranks about a seven, he replied. I could tell I was going to get along with this guy just swimmingly.
“But their solution had unintended consequences. Like most things surrounding the Gods,” the general said. My eyebrows winged up. Someone held a grudge. “By refilling the lakes, they were forced to draw water from other surrounding bodies of water. Where we’re standing used to be a massive lake surrounded by trees and wildlife. Their actions sucked it dry and killed everything in the area. It’s one of four lakes that suffered greatly.”
I sensed a metaphor here.
But I also sensed something else.
Something more substantial.
Something that…
“You have no powers here, Zara. Your magic is useless in this barren wasteland. I called you here so you could witness both the destructive nature of the Gods,
and the destruction of one of your own.”
Oh. So that was the metaphor he was going for.
“Oh,” I said. Behind me, Finn rustled. I hoped he was fulfilling his part of our plan and communicating with the fey.
I’d hate to see what ranks a ten on that scale.
I’m pretty sure we’re about to see it in a few minutes. His head bobbed on his shoulders in a so-so kind of way, and the general cuffed him on the ear.
Joseph appeared unfazed. So, what’s the plan.
Pretty sure you’ll see it in a few seconds.
You might want to say something now, because…
“Are you two communicating somehow?” Oh, that was why. The general jerked Joseph to his feet and held him against his chest. A jeweled knife I hadn’t noticed before was now clutched to his throat. My magic trembled in my hands but couldn’t find anywhere to go. Behind the general, the assembled soldiers shifted, the barrels of two-hundred guns pointed right at me.
It was de ja vu all over again.
And I knew how this particular story ended.
“I hope you’re both paying attention now,” Toren called, teeth clenched as the knife kissed Joseph’s neck. “Because Joseph Windrunner, God of Air, as the general of the Order, commander of its many armies, I sentence you to die.”
The knife moved as I did, my feet sending me lurching forward just as…
…an arrow sprouted from the general’s shoulder.
No, that wasn’t right. The arrow had flown right past me, hitting its target with precision. Behind me, someone let out a whooping holler as the clatter of dozens of guns firing at once filled my ears. I tasted blood in my mouth. The knife clattered to the ground as the general yelled, face contorted with surprise and pain. His hand shot to the shaft of the arrow as he tried to jerk it out. Joseph collapsed to his knees, shoulders and abdominal muscles working furiously as he tried to both free himself and wiggle away at the same time.
Walk on Water Page 27
