by Jaymin Eve
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “The Leights are very big on respect, and the overlord and his family always stand slightly apart from the rest of the villagers.”
“Probably doesn’t help that you move constantly, never settling in one place, never having a true sense of community.”
He nodded, his long, thick lashes framing his eyes as he blinked. “I’m used to it by now.” I heard the resignation in his voice. He might be used to it, but he didn’t particularly like it.
“You, Lexen, Xander, and Daniel … that makes sense to me now.”
He stilled. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “I understand how you all came to be so close, to mean so much to each other. You understand the others, because you each bear the burden of being a leader in your world. It’s a lonely job at the top. No one else could truly understand.”
Chase sighed, rubbing a hand across the shorter parts of his hair, moving the braids around so they clinked together. “I would have been lost without them. There is no denying it. I just wish we saw each other more.”
No doubt running different sections of Overworld kept them all busy. “At least you can sit together at school now.”
His smile was breathtaking. I had to blink a few times to clear my head. He was lethal to women everywhere, that was for sure. I also admired his strength and tranquil demeanor. But my heart was already spoken for, so he only rocked me a little. Whatever woman fell in love with him, she would probably forget her own name whenever he spoke.
With a bit of luck, I’d be around to see that.
A lot of Leights from this village were already seated. Apparently, it was food time for everyone. Just when we were about to drop into a spare corner of the rock area, a Leights ran up to Chase. He looked young, with very dark eyes and hair. He held out a hand and in it was a yellowed piece of parchment.
Chase took a moment to read it. My gaze immediately went to Emma. She was so still, staring at him, no doubt mentally urging him to hurry up. I switched my focus back to the Leights overlord, holding my breath as I waited to hear the news. Was this about Daniel and the others? Or completely unrelated news?
“Come on,” Star said with urgency. “Tell us, are they okay?”
Chase waited a few more beats, before he snapped to attention. “The network is hard to connect with here, but they got a message through. We need to head back to the central transporter. Lexen wants us to return there immediately.”
Emma leapt forward, clutching his arm tightly. “He’s okay, right? Tell me that he’s not hurt.”
Chase patted her shoulder and she shuddered like she was trying to keep herself together. “He seems fine. It sounds urgent, but not life-threatening.”
Emma sagged forward, and he caught her. I heard her murmuring Thank God over and over. I was just opening my mouth to ask about Daniel when Chase caught my eye. “According to this message, everyone appears to be okay at the moment, but we should move now.”
He straightened, wearing his calm warrior face. There was something so reassuring about him, just like Daniel. The four overlord minors were so confident that it felt like they could handle anything that was thrown at them.
“Are you sure?” Marsil didn’t seem quite as sure. “What if it’s a trap?”
Chase nodded. “We have to consider the possibility that it might be. We’ll be cautious. No one will leave the protective embrace of the Galinta until we know for sure this is a true message.”
We all agreed to this plan, and as excitement bubbled up inside of me, I had to acknowledge that it was seeing Daniel again that had me in this state.
“You’re a goner,” Emma said with a laugh. “I recognize that expression. And literally, the only reason you could get me to walk through the trees again today was if Lexen was waiting for me at the end. That’s love, my friend.”
We fist bumped it out, because the girl was so right. We were goners.
The journey back seemed faster. I got a good rhythm going with the branches, although I still had nothing on Chase. He was a ninja, silently moving through the trees. Star was fine; she didn’t even seem remotely tired. Marsil was practically carrying Emma by the time we reached the end, which was barred off by a bunch of leaves and branches. Through a few gaps I caught sight of the metal platform and the glowing transporter, but it was hard to see much else through the tiny spaces of the Galinta. It was getting late in the night as well, so it was only the light of the transporter illuminating the area.
Chase and Marsil were tall enough to see over the top of Emma and me, so we were all huddled closer together. Star stood back.
“I can’t see anyone,” I whispered, tilting my head to a new angle to see near the Royale area. Nothing there either.
Marsil shifted around. “I can connect better to the network here. Leights have very limited access. Let me see if there is anything obvious happening.”
He didn’t close his eyes, or touch anything, he just went very still and I could see that he was far away. His gaze unfocused … shifting off to the side of my head. After about two minutes of tense silence, he jolted minutely and then blinked. “I can’t see anything amiss. There are no signs of unauthorized travel. No other messages waiting for me.”
Chase squared his broad shoulders. “I’m going out to check the area. You all wait here.”
Marsil raised one eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “We can go together.”
Chase shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned to us. “Are you okay with staying here? I don’t mean to treat you as weak or less. Women are warriors as well, but in this case Emma and Callie are very important, so more caution must be taken.”
I hugged him; he was good people. He returned my hug, a burst of warmth branding me before I pulled away.
“Thank you,” I said. “I can only speak for myself, but I’m okay with this. You know this world better than me.”
I might have powers now, but I was still a newbie in Overworld.
“Cool with me, too,” Emma said with a smile. “I’m deathly afraid of dying a gruesome death.”
Star laughed. “What an odd fear to have.”
Emma shrugged. “That’s me, irrationally afraid of things. Gruesome deaths, clowns, jogging, centipedes, and whatever the hell a mothball is.”
My face actually hurt I was smiling so hard. “I hate dolls,” I admitted. “Those creepy eyes always feel like they’re watching me.”
“Yes!” Emma cried. “Holy shit, yes, dolls are creepy as freak.”
We stopped joking around when Chase reached out and touched the branches – they parted for him. “We’ll be right back,” he said, stepping forward.
Star and Emma hugged Marsil, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough with him to do that. Chase – and Lexen – felt like the next best thing to Daniel. As Emma said, they were brother figures … family. Marsil was different, but I did pat his arm.
“Good luck. Don’t die.”
Chase winked, and Marsil just shook his head. As they stepped out, I scanned across the metal area again; there was absolutely nothing out of place. Not a single Daelighter in sight. Once the guys were out of the trees, the leaves closed back across in front of us. The three of us pushed forward, all trying to find a gap to see through.
“I have a bad feeling,” Star whispered. “It’s too quiet out there. I mean, someone is always coming and going through the transporter, but…”
“Should we call them back?” I asked with urgency. Daniel, where are you? He had to be okay. He had to be.
“Just keep an eye out,” Emma said. “If they need our help, we’re going to have to figure out how to get out of these trees.”
I had a feeling they wouldn’t let us go easily, and none of us had any idea how to speak with them. For some time, we kept a vigilant watch on Chase and Marsil. They walked the perimeter of the large area. I lost sight of them once or twice when they moved out of the range of my peephole and the light, but
they appeared again quickly enough and nothing attacked them.
Eventually they made their way back to where we were waiting. The branches parted under Chase’s command and Emma stepped out first. Star and I followed.
“Do you think the message was wrong?” I asked Chase.
His brow furrowed as he answered. “It’s possible. I didn’t recognize the Leights who handed it to me, but that doesn’t mean anything. One of the very outer villages is visiting for a festival, so there are a lot of different Daelighters about.”
Or it could have been Laous. What if he’d somehow figured out a way to take people from all four houses and turn them to his cause? That way he could access all four lands easily without having to go there himself. Just as I had that thought, a series of clicks and cracks rang through the air. Chase cursed and threw himself protectively over Emma and me as a blast shattered the air around us.
Chapter 15
Chase was a big guy. He knocked us down so fast that I didn’t get a chance to even throw an arm out to take some of the impact. My head slammed into the ground. My ears rang, and I couldn’t focus my eyes – they watered every time I tried. Whatever they’d hit us with continued on for many minutes, ringing and shaking the ground.
Once it stopped, it took me at least fifty rapid blinks to be able to see, only to realize there was a shoulder in front of me. I tried to shift the Daelighter off me, but he was immovable.
“What’s going on?” I screamed, my ears still not recovered.
Chase’s mouth was opening and closing, but I couldn’t get much of what he said. I did manage to lip read the word “attack.” He repeated it at least three times.
“Laous?” I guessed.
He pulled his focus from me to look around and I checked on Emma. Her eyes were closed and my heart immediately stopped beating. Jiggling my arm until I managed to get it free, I reached out and shook her shoulder. “Emma,” I shouted. “Em!”
No movement or sign of consciousness. I was at an awkward angle to feel for a pulse, but I managed to contort myself into some stupid pose to reach her neck, and almost cried when there was a fluttering under my fingertips. She was alive, that was the most important thing. Hopefully she’d just been knocked unconscious in the blast. I still didn’t know what sort of bomb or attack it had even been. There had been a loud bang, shaking ground, and a burst of energy, but no heat or fire.
“We need to move,” Chase said. He was on his feet in a heartbeat; I was yanked up in the same instant. Emma was still completely out. Gently, he lifted her into his arms, cradling her body with great care.
Marsil and Star joined us. They had been thrown a few feet away, but both seemed to be okay. “What happened to Emma?” Star asked, her voice high and reedy. My hearing was finally coming back online.
“I think she must have been knocked out when that blast hit,” I said. “Her pulse felt fine to me, but I’m not a doctor.”
Star didn’t look relieved. If anything, her expression grew more strained. “We need to get her to a healer, immediately. Nothing can happen to her.”
Chase handed her to the slender woman. “Take her. Take her and go immediately to Darken. And trust no one. We were betrayed here.”
Star took Emma’s weight like it was nothing, hugging her close before immediately sprinting toward the transporter.
“You should go with her,” Chase told me. “That blast was meant to disorientate and injure us but not kill. There’s a reason they’re trying to keep us in one piece, and I think that reason might be you and Emma.”
I agreed with that, but before I could follow Star, Daelighters were suddenly everywhere on the platform, climbing over the edge of the three lands that surrounded us and appearing through the transporter. Star, who was right at the ball of light now, managed to snag a glowing strand before anyone could touch her. But Chase, Marsil, and I were too far away to use the same escape.
“They’re coming in from all territories,” Marsil said, his voice a low grumble of anger.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“We’re part of the resistance,” a man standing in front of House of Darken answered.
He had the Darken “dark” hair going on. “Laous will free us from the control of humans. We’re the superior beings and will not bow down to grubbers.”
There was a beat of silence. Was he waiting for me to applaud or something? Considering I was mostly “grubber,” that was not likely to happen anytime soon.
“What do you want?” Chase looked very unhappy. His eyes locked on the section of the platform which held about half a dozen of his people. The Leights were all male, wearing tan color leather pants, and no shirts. Their ages ranged from very young – maybe twelve – to a few who looked older than us.
“We need to collect the two secret keepers,” another one of the resistance members said. “Laous wants them kept safe. They may be important for the final step in freeing the starslight from the Earth.”
There was no one here this time for them to threaten and gain my compliance. I trusted that Marsil and Chase could look after themselves. So this time I was going to fight, even if it meant I died here today.
“Come quietly with us and no one will get hurt.” Royale this time, the blond group standing close by, their skin still wet. The women wore bikinis and the men boxer briefs, all made from a wetsuit sort of material. Flashes of scales appeared and disappeared in irregular intervals across their bodies, and I would have been much more intrigued by this “almost mermaid” thing, except they were trying to kid-freaking-nap me again.
“Is it still called kidnap when I’m an adult?” I fumed, the random question snapping out.
Chase flashed me an amused grin. “Adult-nap?”
I shrugged, narrowing my eyes on some of the resistance closest to me. “That’s more like an afternoon nap.”
Marsil chimed in: “Maybe abduct?”
I nodded a few times, like I was seriously considering it. “Abduct would work, especially since you’re aliens. Yes … I feel like that’s the correct wording.”
Our glib conversation died off as the three of us fell in back to back, so we could see the threats coming.
“You need to shut the hell up, grubber,” an Imperial told me, creeping closer with other Daelighters at his side. “We warned Daniel not to mess with your kind. He didn’t listen.”
He sneered at me, and I recognized him then. It was the guy from the hallway at school, the one who’d fought with Daniel.
“He’s going to kill you,” I said sweetly, smiling as broadly as I could. “I hope you’ve said all your goodbyes.”
I got another sneer. “Some of us are willing to die for our cause.”
I chuckled, sucking in a deep breath and willing the energy inside of me to rise again. “Yes,” I agreed. “Some of us are.”
I leapt forward, flames rising across my body in an instant, waves of heat visible in the air around me. I smashed into the group of Imperials, who had been only a few feet away, preparing to snatch me up.
I knew my power wouldn’t do that much to them; they all had this same power from their land. Hopefully mine was stronger because of Daniel. I just needed to buy us enough time that we’d have a chance to run for it, back to the land of Leights.
Screams echoed, and I also heard skin sizzling. I rolled off fast, not wanting to inflict too much damage. It took me longer than it should have to focus on the scene, on the bodies … which were now nothing more than ash. No, oh my God, no. A scream ripped from me in one long sound, my chest heaving in and out.
My flames disappeared as I wrapped my arms around myself, pulling the energy back inside. “I killed them,” I whimpered over and over. I couldn’t seem to take my eyes from the scene. The piles of ash that reminded me of old-school vampire television shows, like I’d staked them all in the chest.
“Callie, we need to get to the trees. Can you make it?”
I jumped as Chase put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’
t touch me,” I shrieked, eyes still locked on the ash.
The Leights overlord followed my line of sight, and before I could jump away again he wrapped an arm around me and hauled me closer. “You did what you had to, to protect yourself,” he said firmly. “They were going to steal you away. This is not your fault.”
“What if I hurt you?” I said, breath heaving in and out. “I didn’t realize it would do that – just completely ash them.”
He shook his head. “You won’t hurt me, I’ve been with you for hours and you have not lost control once. Did you call up this power?” I nodded, and he shrugged. “See, you already have great control. You’ll have gotten that from Daniel. He has better control than almost anyone. The only time I’ve ever seen him lose it, in the last many years, is when they took you from the school.”
The truth of what he was saying penetrated. Yes, I was now a deadly weapon, but a weapon did not kill on its own. I would just have to work extra hard to always control myself. To always keep the people I cared about safe.
“Can you move now?” he asked me, and I nodded, able to step back from him and stand straight. My breathing and heartrate slowly returned to normal, but I still couldn’t look at the piles of ash. Chase nudged me forward, toward the other side of the platform.
“Where is Marsil?” I asked as we turned to run toward the land of Leights. I had killed the Imperials, but there were still three other houses which should be attacking. So where were they?
I got my answer when we stepped past the bright lights of the transporter and I saw the single Daelighter going up against a large group. Marsil was fighting fiercely, sending out bursts of power that looked like lightning and wind, just managing to hold them off.
When we were a few steps away, someone hit Marsil in the side of the head and he went down. I swung my leg out and cracked that Daelighter across the face, knocking him off Marsil. Chase let out a low vibration of anger; I felt a crackle of energy, and heard … splintering wood, maybe … and when I looked at Chase again, he was gone.
