“Well, worry no more. I’m here to help you kick some ass.” She put her hands on her hips like some kind of superhero and then took off into the air with one fist in the air. She soared right up to Jos, both of them looking over the landscape as magic began to explode from every angle.
They just looked so cool.
And I was staring way too long.
We may have found Míra, but she was not the only person we had come for.
They darted through the air in the direction of the trucks and all of the muscles in my back pulled into tight coils, my stomach twisting as I took off after them. I had only just caught up to them, all of us racing toward the lines of trucks that were barreling towards the border, when something exploded next to them.
It looked like someone had bottled an electrical storm and turned it into a bomb. The ground exploded, dirt and rocks and pieces of trucks arcing into the air as blast after blast hit around where the trucks had been.
“No!” Joclyn shouted before she disappeared, pulling herself into a Stutter and right to where Ilyan should be.
“Ry!” Míra yelled, holding out her hand, but I avoided contact. Like hell if I was going to risk that again.
“Don’t even think about it! You go! Help her! I’ll be there.” Míra gave me a pug faced pout but didn’t fight me before her magic sparked and she vanished, following Joclyn to somewhere below where the dirt and smoke were clearing to reveal the tangled remains of more than a dozen vehicles.
Even from here I could tell everything was worse than it appeared. Screams echoed over to me as nurses and civilians crawled out from under the wreckage, the boxes that one of the trucks had been storing beginning to ignite. Through it all, bullets showered over everything. Whoever had set off the bombs continued their assault, even though no one that had been in the trucks had been armed.
Before I could even land, another set of bombs went off some ways away, the same buzzing electrical mass arcing over the trees. Another convoy, or maybe a village? I had no idea what they attacked, but at that point it hardly mattered. These people were not soldiers, and these people were dying.
I landed in a plume of dirt, already pulling out my phone.
Wyn. We need a med team. Kyō arrived first.
I sent it along with our coordinates, hoping it would be enough, and that people would get here in time to help.
I yelled at a few of the survivors in Ukrainian, scanning them all for my brother's face. It was mostly women, and one drunk old man in a doctor's coat.
They all looked at me with the familiar dropped jaw gape of recognition. They had seen me before, on the posters and news reports probably. But for the first time this might actually work to our benefit.
“Have you seen my brother?” I asked, realizing too late that they would have no idea of the family relation. “Have you seen the other man like me?”
They all just stared, all but one, an older lady with dark curly hair who pointed further up the caravan, where magic was now sparking.
“Thank you! Stay here, help is coming!” I yelled again as I raced away, toward the magic that I recognized as Joclyn’s and Míra’s.
Colors blasted through the air, sparks rippling against those same lightning bolt explosions that had ripped the caravan to shreds. The ground shook with each blast, metal groaning as whatever was causing the lightning ripped more of the cars to bits.
Weaving through the wreckage, I rushed around toppled cars and over piles of rubble in my attempt to reach them. Screams echoed in my ears as I raced past people, telling them that help was on the way.
Gripping an old side mirror on the rusted truck, I flung myself over the wreckage, coming face to face with the electrical storm that was the battle that Jos and Míra were wrapped in.
Jos and Míra, fighting Ovailia.
Except it wasn’t Ovailia. She just looked remarkably like her. Long hair, stilettos, expression that looked like she was forced to keep poo in her mouth on a bet.
So much was the same. But so much was different. Starting with the electrical storm that was flying from her fingers.
I froze, watching them fight. Each woman a powerful firestorm as magic flew in every direction. Míra jumped and dodged, Jos weaved and attacked. And the Ovailia look-alike? She screamed like a mad man, letting that sparking magic fly everywhere.
Hell, she looked like a mad man with how she was raging, although that might have been because Jos and Míra were popping in and out of Stutters and forcing her into a giant game of whack-a-mole.
Fake-Ovailia screamed, turning toward where Míra had just appeared and sending a line of lightning right into where she had been.
Right into me.
“Well, shi--” Before I could even react, arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me into a few wooden crates with Míra right on top of me.
“You know, Ry,” Míra quipped, pushing some of her long blonde hair behind her ear as she half-laid over me. “You might want to leave this to the girls. Not that I don’t mind saving your ass.”
She winked at me, and then vanished, leaving me to roll over the rumble she had tackled me onto and groan. Maybe I did want to leave this to the girls. I just watched in awe as they moved closer and closer to the woman, who grew more and more deranged until Jos was right behind her.
With just one hand to the woman’s neck, Fake-Ovailia collapsed to the ground. Looking much like the rag doll that Nastya had.
“One down,” Jos sighed, already looking around the rubble for the same thing I was. “And let’s keep the head on this one, Míra. I have questions.”
“No fun,” Míra pouted, even as she turned to me and smiled.
We were nowhere near done, we still had to find my brother, but for one moment, one thing was in the right place.
Even though we still had someone else to find.
My stomach swam, my heart swelled, and I smiled back before collapsing back onto one of the boxes that had been thrown from the trucks. The wood shook from the impact, but it took me a second to realize that all of that shaking wasn’t just coming from the wood.
“What the hell?” I jumped up, backing away from the box as the wood began to splinter and crack, almost like an egg.
An egg that birthed not one, but ten brightly colored Vilỳ’s. Not the Vilỳ’s that Edmund had poisoned and Joclyn and I had spent years hunting down, but the colorful creatures like Rinax, that bastard who had taken off before this war had even started and now flew out of the box, right to Joclyn.
“Took you long enough,” he spat, his usual cranky self. “We’ve been waiting for your assistance for days. Your skill with sight is clearly lacking.”
Leave it to Rinax to get Joclyn raging. Her face screwed up, cheeks reddening. I half expected her to push Rinax back and scold him for vanishing. Instead, she reached out and hugged him.
I had never heard someone swear so much just for being hugged.
“Where did you come from?” she gushed, still holding on to him as he fought.
“I came from a box, you psycho, now let me go! I need to check on my kids!” She released him and he flew back to the box in a streak of blue, leaving Jos and me to stare at each other in confusion. Míra, however, was laughing like a mad woman.
“Kids?” Jos squeaked before we all raced after him to the four other Vilỳ that I had briefly seen when the box cracked under me. “What do you mean you have kids?”
“I mean I told you I was going to replenish my race and find some of my kind who were not affected by Edmund and his experiments. I found all that was left and was coming back to you when the she-bitch over there caught me.” He didn’t even look at us as he spoke, and was instead fluttering around each of the tiny Vilỳ in the box.
He looked like the flustered nursemaid I had when I was a toddler, which would make sense seeing as each of the creatures in the box were less than half his size and didn’t appear to be any older than… well… a toddler.
“Oh my god! They are
so cute!” Míra squealed coming up right beside me. I jumped at that high pitch of her voice, my magic and nerves so on edge I reacted like we were being attacked.
I wasn’t the only one.
Rinax swirled around, angry little face and sharp nailed finger pointing right in her face. “They are not cute. They are my children.”
I took one step to the side to get between Míra and Rinax. Not that I thought Rinax would do anything. I grew up with him, although he was in a cage and took off the second I released him so what did I know?
“Okay, whatever you say angry man,” Míra said from around me, clearly not bothered by the flying sphinx. “They are still cute.”
He gave her one last look, but seemed to decide against saying anything else and soared back to the box, and to Joclyn, who was gushing just as much.
“Where did you find them?” Joclyn asked, wagging her fingers above them like she was some kind of human mobile. They cooed and reached for her fingers, one of them gnashing the horrifyingly sharp teeth that Vilỳ had. Jos didn’t even seem to notice that she almost got her fingers cut off. She just kept looking at them like they were the cutest things in the world.
Weird, considering they all kind of looked like pug nosed dogs covered in slime. I passed on the chorus of ‘cutes’ that I was trapped in.
“I had to go to the end of the longest continent, so that I could find a tree where purple flowers sleep during the day,” Rinax began, his voice just as irritated even though what he was talking about seemed like a fairytale. “I needed to coax the tree to birth the Vilỳ with an offering of snow taken from the peaks of the candy mountains where the last Xamander sleeps.”
“Wow.” Míra gasped the second Rinax had finished.
“You can’t be serious,” I groaned. None of that even made sense. There wasn’t even anything called Xamander.
“Of course I’m not serious. You children are stupid and gullible.” He slammed the lid back on the box of Vilỳ babies and held it out before him as he hovered in the air, blue wings fluttering violently with the effort to keep both himself and the box afloat. “I hatched them.”
“I missed you Rinax,” Joclyn said, patting him on the head and sending him back to scowling.
He immediately started swearing again.
16
Ilyan
Blackness overtook me. Snippets of words whispered through the black, everything rocking as my body was jostled to the side as spots of light flared in what I could have sworn was a woman’s profile.
I tried to focus on it, but faded away as muffled voices yelled from a distance, the sounds garbled and broken.
“He’s dangerous. Don’t touch him.”
“Sedate him.”
“How is he still alive?”
“Isn’t he the one they have been looking for?”
“I won’t let you fall, Joclyn.”
That last one came from inside of me.
Joclyn.
Her name was an anchor and I clung to it as I fell through the black of my sanity and back into memory. Wind tangled through my long hair, brushing over my face as long branches swayed above me.
A small robin on the branch beside me frozen in the midst of its twittering song, the leaves that surrounded him beginning to twitch before they began to rewind. The wind pulled me back as the leaves swayed in reverse. Air and memory sucked by me as I tumbled through the trees, the wind that carried me swallowing everything.
Trees pulled away from me, my arms moving awkwardly as the branches that I had propelled myself through were instead pushed away. The branches thinned before they were gone, everything moving so fast I could only make out swatches of green until I was standing right in front of her.
I would have recognized the dark hair and silver eyes anywhere, the dusting of freckles was so faint I was sure only my powerful eyes could see them. She stood before me, practically hiding behind that hair, underneath a hoodie so large she drowned in it.
This was not the woman I had seen in so many of my memories, she was not the powerful fighter that I had dreamed of for months. This was a child, a weak, whimpering thing that was one step away from running rather than accomplishing whatever task was ahead of her.
The change tangled in my gut, my muscles tensing in frustration.
Seeing her like this could have easily confused me, seeing the child and not the woman I knew. Instead, it only made me love her all the more. Knowing what she would overcome. Knowing what she would become. The emotion circled through me, the whispers of emotions and all the memories performing a kind of tango that only made my commitment to her stronger.
“I won’t let you fall, Joclyn,” I whispered as I stepped around her, heart tensing with the need to grab her, to hold her close. I pushed the desire away. “I promise you this above all else, I will never let anything hurt you. I am only here to protect you.”
She looked to the trees in trepidation. Her silver eyes narrowed at the forest as if the plants had wronged her, somehow. The deep scowl tangled in her brow before she pulled out her bottom lip and grumbled, “Okay.”
I tried not to chuckle at that, the obstinance an odd memory that I had attached to Ovailia for some reason.
Another thing I wasn’t remembering.
“Now,” I instructed, coming to stand behind her, “get down and prepare to jump.”
My hands lifted toward her, hovering an inch away from her back in preparation to help. She moved before I could, crouching to the ground as I stood strong, the fluttering of my heart making it hard to breathe.
“Now call the wind to you,” my voice was a whisper as I crouched down behind her, unable to stay far away for long.
I remained there, as close as I dared, as a powerful torrent began to whip around us, throwing hair and clothes into uncomfortable patterns.
“Now, jump.”
There was the briefest hesitation, just enough to make me worry she wouldn’t do it. To think that she didn’t have faith in me… in herself. I jerked toward her just as she released a shaky exhale, and with one leap she soared into the air.
Her trepidation was gone as she flew, her body straightening as her arms stretched to feel the wind, as she controlled it. As she used her power.
It flowed behind her in waves, the power swelling as her magic connected to the world. As though it was the world. The strength of it in that moment made it hard to breathe.
She alone can hold your magic.
The thought filled my memory, the words followed by a swell of pride and love that was so familiar. I forced out my own shaky breath, knowing in that moment that I was witnessing more than her strength, more than her power. I was seeing a glimmer of the confidence she was hiding. I was seeing the woman she would become.
It was beautiful.
She was beautiful.
I was lost in it, until everything began to change.
I felt her magic waver before she did, the wind changing direction before she did. Jumping into the air, my own magic caught me, taking me right to her just as she began to panic. As she began to fall. Pure terror lined her face as I caught her, arms holding her close as I gave my heart and soul the thing they longed for.
Her.
Having her so close was a live wire through my veins. I pressed her into me, unable to control myself. Unable to let her go. She was here, I needed to protect her.
I would always protect her.
Bringing us to land on a tree branch, I forced out an exhale,, the reluctant motions making her stumble a bit over the tree’s wide arm.
“I told you I wouldn’t let you fall.”
“Thank you, My Lord.” She looked down, withdrawing into her hoodie as she spoke in little more than a mumble.
“I am just Ilyan now, Joclyn.” I longed to step forward, to hold her again, to press her against me. But even though I knew the ‘me’ that was in the memory didn’t know everything that was coming, he stayed still, watching her through the longing, through a pain of lo
ss that didn’t quite fit.
“Thank you, Ilyan.”
It was a longing that only got worse with the sound of my name on her voice.
My name. All the need, all of the loss, all of the confusion of the last few years faded as I regained the one thing I had longed for almost more than her.
My name.
“You are very welcome.” The calm of my voice didn’t match the joy I felt at my name, it didn’t match the desire I had to hold her against me. Still, I didn’t move. “Now, we are going to do it again, but this time I want you to focus on the wind. Set your mind on what it is doing and how I am controlling it…”
These words I had heard before, on the battlefield as I launched myself into the air for the first time. The reminder of the battle swallowed the memory, the image dissipating into spots of color before it was gone altogether, leaving me staring at the black of my subconscious as I once again began to fall.
“Do not let fear enter your mind. I will be here, always.” My own voice came to me through the darkness, the never-ending fall broken up by what I was sure was a soft mattress, the faint beeping I knew so well echoing through my mind and making it clear where I was.
Where I had returned.
I tried to move, to see if the restraints had returned, to prepare to fight if needed. But my body remained frozen, the steady beeping turning into a haunting metronome in my mind.
“They kept no record of him,” a younger man said, his voice shaking with uncertainty, or fear judging by the snap of the man that came after.
“Either that or they took the record with them. He was important to them. That makes him important to us.”
The heart rate monitor accelerated as I continued to fight against the weight my body was under. I tried to open my eyes, to tell them who I was, to ask for Kaye, to find Joclyn. Nothing happened, I lay still, trapped in darkness, listening to the sound of my heart as my lingering memories kept me company.
“I will be here always,” I whispered, the words drowned by the shouts of the men and alarm as they yelled.
“He’s going into cardiac arrest!”
Flare of Villainy: The Imdalind Series, Book 10 Page 11
