by Sarah Jaune
“She threw a block at my head,” Eli yawned as he rubbed Alexi’s back, and she practically strangled him with her small arms. “Then got upset when I said I didn’t want to play. I kind of yelled.”
“Ah,” Maia sighed, then turned back around and walked out again, leaving Eli to deal with the two-year-old. That was Maia. Eli made the mess, so he was the one to fix it.
Ivy padded in a moment later and flopped down on Graham’s vacant bed. “It’s too early.”
“You’re telling me,” Eli said as he rubbed at the sore spot on the back of his head. Alexi had a good arm.
Eli and Ivy did end up going to school that day, mostly because they were already awake anyway, but he wasn’t sure either of them took in more than five words that were said. By the time they’d eaten dinner that night, they’d filled Pablo and Maia in on the kids in New Orleans, and Pablo had left to make some phone calls about them.
Eli was intensely curious about how Pablo contacted the Guard, but it wasn’t something Pablo was ready to share with him yet. If they ran into trouble in a zone and couldn’t get themselves out, they were told to wait for help to come.
They didn’t have to wait long to hear that there was already a Pursuer in New Orleans looking in on the kids, and that they didn’t need to go.
It was a relief and a disappointment, all wrapped up into one. On the one hand, it was nice to be home and not driving all over the place, but at the same time it had felt to Eli as though he and Ivy should be the ones going after the kids, since they’d been so close.
However, if someone was already there, then there really was no need.
“Hopefully the Pursuer doesn’t find anything,” Maia said after Pablo’s explanation.
There was no chance of that. If the Pursuer found nothing, then they weren’t looking hard enough. They had Coral’s word that the kids were being abused. She was impossible to lie to, which meant the kids were being abused.
“You have schoolwork to catch up on,” Pablo reminded him, “plus a back that’s injured and needs some time to heal. This is a good time to take a break.”
Eli hadn’t told them about Ivy’s breakdown or the tornado. They’d handled it well enough, and he didn’t want to embarrass Ivy any more than she’d already been. But thinking back on it, Eli knew Pablo was right, just not about Eli’s recovery. Ivy was doing better now that she’d had a day to recover from her scare, but she still didn’t seem to be herself.
She was quiet around him, and it felt like she hadn’t wanted to hang out with him much that day. They had sat together, but she didn’t really talk to him.
Eli shut it down and went to get ready for bed. He had school again the next day and a test in math.
CHAPTER 7
THE RUN
“Eli,” came a soft voice from behind him in the hall after science class.
Eli turned to see a red-headed girl that he thought was named Autumn. “Hi,” Eli said, turning to wait while she caught up to him.
She smiled with even, white teeth and stared up at him through lashes that were dark, despite her light, vibrant hair.
His stomach did a funny twist.
“How did you do on the test?” she asked as she clutched her books to her chest.
“Oh,” Eli’s brain had stopped functioning for a moment. “Uh, good, I think. It wasn’t too hard.”
Autumn brushed her long, crimson hair back over her shoulder and gave him another dazzling smile. “I think I did okay, as well. Are you going to the dance tonight?”
Eli’s mind stuttered something along the lines of, ‘d-d-d-dance,’ but thankfully his mouth didn’t react that stupidly. “No.”
Her expression fell for just the briefest moment, then she brightened. “Well, if you change your mind, save me a dance, all right?”
He blinked in confusion as he tried to piece together what, exactly, was going on. “Uh, sure, okay,” Eli replied, hoping he wasn’t committing to anything.
Autumn wiggled her fingers in a goodbye gesture and continued on down the hall.
Eli tried to move but his feet felt glued to the floor.
“Why did you say no?” Ivy asked, jolting him out of his stupor as she came up beside him.
He turned to stare at her blankly. “I…” Eli had no idea why he’d said no.
Ivy sighed and pushed on his shoulder. “Come on, we have English.”
The day seemed extremely long after that, partially because Eli’s brain continued to seem fuzzy and slow. He didn’t take in a single word that was said to him as his mind replayed what had happened with Autumn.
She’d been flirting with him. It had taken about an hour for that to sink in. This meant, if there was any logic to be had in this situation, that Autumn, beautiful Autumn, liked him.
The whole thing was just weird.
By the time they were leaving school, all Eli wanted to do was run.
Ivy glanced at the sky as they walked with Graham and Oliver back to his house. “It might rain.”
“It won’t rain,” Oliver told her. “But I’m still not going running.” Oliver was in shape, sort of, but he didn’t enjoy exercising. It was something he did under extreme protestations, only when Maia or Pablo made him.
“Graham?” Eli asked his other brother.
“I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven’t started,” Graham sighed.
Eli glanced to Ivy who shrugged. “Why not? I have nothing else to do.”
The moment they were back at Eli’s house, they changed into shorts and headed out onto the wooded trails behind his house.
They didn’t push it for speed. Eli could run at super-human speeds with his magic, but he wanted a running partner, which meant holding a pace that Ivy could maintain for a while.
The trees around them were magnificent. Thousands upon thousands of giant cedars lined the green, mossy paths with ferns dancing to a small breeze. The smell of the woods was a tangy, fresh odor that only gave Eli more energy as they went. It was damp, new, and yet, very old. These woods were tens of thousands of years old, unchanged and fixed. He loved the way the late afternoon light filtered down through the trees, lighting the path for them in a soft, hazy glow.
Feet pounded on the dirt, breaths panted in time with their steps, and Eli’s heart beat steadily in his chest as they started up the trail that led to a stream that Ivy always loved to visit when they went running.
They ran in tranquil silence until they came to the stream, where they stopped, both of them panting. Ivy leaned against a tree as sweat trickled down her flushed face.
Although not as winded, Eli also felt his lungs working to pull in enough oxygen to keep him going. He grinned at Ivy, loving how running cleared everything up for him.
“Don’t…” Ivy wheezed, “Smirk…” cough, “at me.”
“I wasn’t,” Eli denied as his lungs finally filled completely. “I was just thinking how much I love running.”
She nodded, but didn’t reply. Eli wandered over to the stream, and bent to splash his burning face with the cool, fresh water. As he stood again, he saw Ivy studying him closely. “What?” he asked her.
“Why didn’t you want to go to the dance with Autumn?” Ivy wondered curiously.
Eli shrugged, glancing away. “I dunno. It just wasn’t… it’s…” he struggled to explain what didn’t make sense, even to him. Autumn was nice, smart, and pretty. She was probably someone he could be friends with, if he could be friends with someone who wasn’t magical. “It can’t go anywhere.”
“Why not?” Ivy retorted, a little exasperated. “You don’t know it can’t go anywhere. Zen’s brother, Pistol, is probably going to marry a girl who isn’t magical. You don’t even have parents around to object.”
“But, we’re hiding, remember?” Eli pointed out as he continued to stare off into the woods. “I can’t tell her I’m magical. Everyone already knows that Pistol is magical.”
“Yeah, but,” Ivy moved around to get into his line of sight. He saw that her co
lor was coming down, back to her pale complexion, and her hair was falling out of its bun to hang down around her face in messy, wild strands. “If she proved trustworthy, you could tell her.”
Eli quirked a brow, crossed his arms, and stared at her. “Really?”
Ivy hesitated only a moment. “No, not really. Oliver and Graham are both dating sometimes, though. It might help you feel more normal.”
“It’s the whole attachment thing,” Eli said without meaning to. He hadn’t realized until that moment that it was weighing on him. “We’re going everywhere around the country, meeting a lot of magical people. If I make an attachment, then that’s it, right?”
“Well,” she said in a tone that wasn’t exactly sure. “Your mother had an attachment that wasn’t your father. She chose to ignore it.”
“My mother is heartless and crazy,” he reminded her bluntly. “She’s not exactly who I want to follow after.”
“And,” Ivy went on like he hadn’t just spoke, “Coral says both our hearts are closed right now, so it’s not like you could make an attachment anyway.”
“I don’t think getting my heart broken by dating random people will help,” Eli said simply.
Ivy shook her blonde head and turned away to stretch out her calves, propping herself up with a tree. “You’re just being stubborn. You won’t know how to be in a relationship unless you practice.”
“I can’t risk being in a relationship and exposing my strength,” he growled, feeling himself getting annoyed. “I could hurt someone, Ivy!”
She glanced back at him; her big, green eyes were steady as she regarded him. “You’re not going to hurt anyone.”
“You don’t know that,” he retorted. “Why aren’t you going to the dance?”
Ivy’s cheeks went pink, but she met his gaze defiantly. “I asked two guys and they said no.”
Feeling suddenly deflated, Eli stuck his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t… sorry. Why?”
“The first already had a date, and the second didn’t want to go,” Ivy shrugged, finally turning away. “But, at least I tried! You’re just hiding away, hoping to skate through like your life will fix itself.”
“That’s not fair,” he said sulkily. He hadn’t been hiding away, exactly, but he had good reason to think that his dad could be out to get him. They’d been kidnapped by his father’s henchmen only seven months before. “I’d never thought about Autumn that way, you know! I didn’t even know her name was Autumn. I only guessed that—” Eli’s breath caught as he heard the low, warning growl behind him. He straightened and turned slowly to scan the trees.
He didn’t need to look too far to see the almond colored eyes in a gray, furry body. He saw the teeth too as the wolf’s lip curled up to growl again.
“Oh, daggers,” Ivy groaned as she moved to his side.
The wolf was massive. Head to tail it had to be at least eight feet long and weighing in at over two hundred pounds. The eyes were such a light brown that they almost appeared to be yellow. The gray fur was sleek and so uniformly gray that Eli had trouble believing it was real.
There was nothing fake about those teeth, though.
“Eli,” Ivy said from beside him. “Wolves travel in packs, right?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, having no trouble pulling that fact from his head. Unlike when he’d been talking to Autumn, his brain actually worked when it came to fighting. “So, you watch behind us, okay? Use the stream.”
“Okay,” she said as she moved around to stand at his back.
Eli stared directly into the wolf’s eyes and didn’t move. He tried not to blink, as he tried to seem big and tough, not like a short, skinny sixteen-year-old. Sure, he’d grown some in the last year, but he had nothing on this wolf for size.
“Here they come,” Ivy told him.
He didn’t glance around. He didn’t want them to get the jump on him when his attention was diverted.
Eli raised his hand when the wolf made to step forward, and pushed it gently back, creating a virtual wall that the wolf could not cross.
It paused, staring at the air in front of it, clearly confused. The wolf took another testing step and met with the resistance that Eli was sending out.
It wasn’t really a wall, exactly, more like Eli was moving the wolf back when it came too close.
Eli heard the water rush up and out of the banks behind him, and a wolf yelp in pain. He didn’t dare glance back to see.
“Go!” Eli bellowed, pushing the wolf back further.
That was when the attack hit. Two wolves charged them, one from either side, leaping onto them with bared teeth. The one that hit Eli was huge, black and tan, with an ear that had a chunk missing.
The powerful, massive jaws latched down on his arm, breaking the skin through his shirt. Eli cried out, as he grabbed the wolf’s jaw and twisted, breaking not only the wolf’s bite, but also its jaw. He felt, more than heard, the bones snap as the wolf let out a pitiful cry and fell to the ground.
Eli sprang up to pull a tan wolf off of Ivy, just as another leapt onto his back, knocking him to the ground.
He rolled with it, and sprang up onto his feet, pushing it off. It, and another, came again to attack him, but he grabbed them, one in each hand and smashed them together, knocking them both out.
A wave of water washed over them, knocking him off his feet and sweeping the wolves away from them.
Ivy pushed herself up in the mud, bloody and soaked, as the wolves that were still standing regrouped fifteen feet away.
Eli threw out his hands and yelled, bellowing at the top of his lungs as he pushed the creatures away in a massive surge of power that left them rolling, smashing into trees, and crashing into boulders. Eli panted as he stepped towards Ivy, his feet sinking into a puddle from the wave she’d sent over herself. He touched her cheek where a wolf’s tooth had left a deep scratch. Eli wished he could heal her, just as Zen could so easy heal them. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, although her eyes were clouded in pain. “It bit me.”
“Me, too,” Eli said as he pulled his shirt back to reveal the ravaged skin. “We have to get back and get to a hospital.”
Ivy nodded as she glanced around. “They’re gone or dead.”
“Yeah,” he replied as he regarded the wolf that lay dying behind him. Eli felt horrible about killing it, but it was going to eat him.
There was no other option. They’d tried to scare them away.
“Come on,” Ivy took his hand, and they began their slow hobble back to the house. “The wolves have never bothered us before.”
“I know,” Eli limped slightly as he pulled his injured arm in close to his body. “We’ve run out here plenty of times, and I’ve never seen them. I’ve never even heard of them attacking humans before this.”
“We don’t see much big game, though,” she said as her teeth chattered. “I hate using water to defend myself! I always end up freezing.”
He couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s effective, though. You’re not exhausted like the last time, either.”
“I didn’t need as much water,” she pointed out as they made their way down the trail.
“It’s too bad you can’t just dry your clothes,” Eli said after a minute of silent walking. For whatever reason, Ivy had never been able to force the water off herself.
Thankfully, they didn’t run into anything else until they reached Eli’s house.
Maia immediately put them in the jeep and drove them to the nearest hospital, which was almost an hour away.
“It’s amazing you’re even alive,” one of the doctors said to Eli as they gave him something to sleep. “You have several torn muscles and major bruising.”
Eli shrugged as he began to drift off. “We… got… lucky.”
He woke up to find he’d had major reconstructive surgery, and that he and Ivy were in the intensive care unit. Thankfully, they’d been allowed to be next to each other. Ivy’s green eyes were the first thing Eli was abl
e to focus on. “You okay?” she asked softly.
“No,” he said, wanting to shake his head, but unable to move that much. “You?”
“No,” she agreed. “Next time, let’s just go to the dance.”
Eli cracked a smile, then groaned at the pain. “How long are we here for?”
“At least another day, I think,” Ivy said sadly. “The food is horrible.”
“Great,” he said through a huge yawn. “Is Maia still here or did she go back?”
“My mom is here,” Ivy explained. She didn’t mean her birth mom, of course. Ivy’s mom had been dead for many years now. She meant her foster mother, but the hospital staff would assume something else. “They’re taking turns being here with us.”
