by Kit Jennings
The old man reached over and pried the sword from her unprotesting hand. She hadn’t realized she she’d still been gripping it. “We need to get you down to the Flame before you light the place up like a beacon.”
Declan and Bobby each took a hand and pulled her to the floor where her knees sagged. Both were tall enough to drag her up off the floor when they pulled her limp arms around their shoulders. Together they propelled her through the kitchen and down into the cellar, the toes of her boots drawing thin, wavering lines across the dirt floor. They helped her down the stairs where she pulled away and stumbled to the brick-lined fire pit of the Flame.
She scraped her palms on the brick and mortar rim, and the Flame flared in response. The heat within her built to volcano pitch, her guts beginning to twist and strain against its inevitable rising.
“Feed the energy into the Flame,” The old man urged. He came around the other side of the pit, eyes flashing in the dark. “Deep breath now, exhale slowly, let it flow.”
She bled the raw, raging power in her belly into the Flame with preternatural slowness, head hanging between her extended arms as sweat dripped and sizzled on the bricks beneath her.
The fire glowed bright cherry red like the inside of the old man’s pipe with fresh tobacco packed in. A few of the weaker bricks began to crack under the pressure.
The old man didn’t take his gaze off her. “Now’s the time to do it, girl. You can compel the Flame to your bidding if you’re quick, now it’s glutted on your energy.”
She stared at him, breathing hard. “I can’t. I don’t have anything left.”
“You can if it means protecting them everlasting. Especially from what’s coming.”
She filled her eyes with the raging fire, white-hot molten veins popping and snapping in its depths. Had she done that?
Get them out of here. She’d hadn’t the resources before, but now—
Now Brighid’s Eternal Flame answered her call. She imagined the labyrinth of underground passages and bridge tunnels filling with that searing light, pure as moon glow, turn after turn, spiral after spiral like a Declan’s cross, washing the Burnout Zone clean of taint. She thought of it flooding over people like the muted syrup glow of dawn light, filling the landscape with the hope of a fresh new day.
Finally it was full to bursting, testing the boundaries of her influence, lapping against the sides like a bathtub about to overflow. Instead of pulling the drain she lifted the entire tub and, step by careful step so as not to spill a drop, pivoted into between.
Dead, echoing silence enhanced the crushing weight in her care, the sloshing light reaching into the infinite dark. She wrapped a cushion of shadow around her burden, chill tang of nothing freezing the sheen of sweat pricking to the surface of her skin like a rash, and turned the rest of the way. Her ears popped as the pressure released her to the other side. She stumbled on the edge, and set her burden down before it could slip from her rigidly held control.
A quick arm around her waist pulled her back before she fell in the fire as the world spun topsy-turvy once more. Declan pulled her into a sheltering embrace, pressing her against his chest as though having pulled her from a towering precipice. She shook from head to toe like a tree of autumn leaves.
“I’ve got you,” he breathed in his velvet growl.
Outside a strange thing happened. The Burnout Zone was still there, with its derelict buildings and tumbled bridge, but not a single soul could be found within its boundaries.
It was a ghost town, and no one outside its limits could recall anyone having been there at all.
Declan slid stew and bread across the table to her while the old man remounted her sword on the back wall and Bobby collected the candles and Charles took the cauldron to the Flame where the dregs awaited dinner. He was talking about piping water in to a nearby cavern where people could bathe, and converting vaults into common rooms and sleeping areas. With the other biospheres down it would be a major operation to ensure refugees could find a way to them—an underground Underground, so to speak. Nothing demon would be able to make it through, so Dreamtech would have to send human agents. And when they did, said agents would be returned in bits. Dreamtech would get the point. Eventually.
“What happens now?” Declan wanted to know.
“I don’t know.” Aika spooned pepper- and whiskey-seared lamb into her mouth. It was glorious. “What would you like to happen?”
Declan crossed his long arms on the table and shrugged. “I’d like to go somewhere. With you, I mean.”
Aika paused to rip a hunk of fresh bread into chunks. “Like a holiday?” She’d never had one. The idea was something of a revelation.
“Something like that.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere the sun soaks into your skin, with air you can breathe.” He watched her reaction carefully. “Anywhere you like.”
Aika didn’t answer immediately. Hunger came first, and it had been an exhausting few days. What had been so impossible before now required new focus to come to terms with.
One shining new possibility presented itself for her consideration. She used bread to daub the remnants of her dinner from the wide ceramic bowl and popped the morsel in her mouth.
“Well,” she said, wiping her hands with a white cloth napkin. “How do you feel about meeting my family?”
Sometime later, somewhere in Ireland—
Cotton-candy clouds drifted in a sky of blue-watered silk, velvety rolling hills of perfect green rippling in a mild wind. Air that filled the lungs with exhilaration, and sun that soaked into the skin.
A patch of white marred the otherwise unending green sea. Closer inspection might reveal the patch to be a white silk dress, apparently abandoned.
Soft laughter carried on the breeze, followed by a muted splash.
Two figures, waist deep in a glass-clear lake reflecting the sky, embraced and entangled in long dark hair. In the distance, the stark bone white of a small cottage with a turf roof huddled on a low hill.
And not another person for miles around.
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Want to know more about Aika? Go back to the beginning with AIKA (Keepers of the Flame: Origins #1).
About the Author
Kit Jennings hails from a long line of Irish storytellers and musicians, so it came as no surprise to her mother when she taught herself to read from the back of cereal boxes at the ripe age of three. Now she’s fulfilling her familial obligations by foisting her stories on an unsuspecting public.
She resides in Florida with her long-suffering, supportive husband, gators in the backyard, and two Ninja Katz underfoot, Thing 1 and Thing 2.
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