Elemental Betrayal

by Elle Middaugh

  “Whoa, buddy!” Cade said, chuckling. “Finish your breakfast first. You’re gonna need the energy.”

  “He’s six, Cade,” Sienna deadpanned. “He has an infinite amount of energy.”

  I smirked. “She has a point.”

  Cade just smiled and shook his head. “All right then, let’s go.”

  As they walked out the door, I glanced at Sienna. “You ready to go get our asses kicked?”

  She snorted. “As always.”

  2

  Outside, the sun was just rising, casting ribbons of yellow and orange across the summer sky. We crossed the street and met up with the rest of the people who’d gathered out back on the cathedral’s lawn, stretching their quads and hamstrings under the shade of wide oak trees. They were Elementals who, like us, wanted to be the change they wished to see in the world. Their eyes locked on us as we silently found a place in the crowd.

  Calla stepped up onto a wooden box and everyone turned in her direction. She was tall, fit, and tatted, her edgy haircut lending her an even more commanding air. Half of her hair was shaved off, the other half French braided and draped over the front of her shoulder. A single streak of green was woven into the golden blonde like a vine. Then again, she was an Earth, so it might’ve been a real vine for all I knew.

  “All right,” Calla barked, her militant voice booming loudly over our heads. “Two-mile run for a warm-up. Let’s go!”

  Sienna and I tied up our hair then kicked our feet into a jog, bringing up the rear.

  “So, where’d you go last night?” she asked me.

  I sighed, knowing there was no way out of this conversation. “Radford.”

  Her eyes widened and her brows lowered. “That’s a little far for an overnight trip. What was so important?”

  “Another book for Aunt Marge,” I said, keeping it simple.

  “Right, but why’d you risk going so far by yourself?”

  Damn. She was good.

  As I jogged, I tried to think of an acceptable answer. I hated lying, and I tried to avoid it whenever possible. The fact was, I would’ve loved to tell Sienna, Cade, and whoever else about my shady dealings, but they wouldn’t understand. They’d say it was too dangerous and not worth the risk. They’d keep me from going, and I couldn’t have that.

  So, I told a lesser truth.

  “I don’t like feeling like a burden. Sometimes I need to prove to myself that I’m capable of doing these things alone.”

  “An unnecessary hazard,” she said, side-eyeing me with suspicion. “No one taken by the Shadow Sect is ever seen again, and the Elitists want you dead. If you were caught, this whole organization would crumble. There would be no Revolutionists, and no revolution.”

  After a silent moment, some of the tension left her face.

  “And you’re my best friend, Val. I don’t even want to imagine a world without you in it.”

  I smiled wide. “I love you, Sienna.”

  She snorted. “Love you too, biotch.”

  Xavier fell into step beside us then, a warm and hopeful smile lighting up his face. I could see the affection he had for her sparkling in his dark blue eyes.

  “Morning,” he said, grinning crookedly.

  Sienna kept her eyes forward. “Hi.”

  “You look nice today.”

  She glanced down at her plain white tee and black athletic shorts as she ran.

  “Thanks.”

  Xavier licked his lips and stared at the passing ground. “There’s a movie playing at the theater tonight. A couple of guys from the Fire group figured out how to run the projector machines. Wanna go with me?”

  Her brows lowered and she swallowed hard. “I don’t have time for watching movies, Xavier, and you shouldn’t either.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “Fair enough. See ya later, then.”

  He jogged ahead and disappeared into the crowd, leaving me with an aching heart. I stared at my best friend, wondering for the thousandth time why she kept pushing him away. I knew she cared about him. Thankfully, he was persistent, but she was so stubborn. I’d yet to figure out what had started her self-destructive cycle of non-commitment, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. She just refused to talk about it.

  I sighed and took a deep breath, sweat beading along my hairline. It hadn’t taken the sun long to turn the pavement into an oven of wavering heat. I used my power over Fire to tone it down a bit, at least until the run was over.

  When we arrived back at the old church about half an hour later, all four coaches were at the head of the group.

  “All right,” Miranda said, waving a hand in the air. “Waters are with me at the combat and mixed martial arts area!”

  Xavier and the other Waters followed her over.

  Soren stepped up next. “Winds at strength training!”

  “Oh, thank god,” Sienna muttered. “I’d much rather lift weights than get my ass handed to me trying to use a weapon.”

  I tried to hold back my laugh as she and the Winds followed Soren to the dumbbells.

  Then Tom addressed the group. “Fires with me at weapons!”

  And finally, Calla. “Earths are on parkour with me. Everybody move out!”

  I was never entirely sure which group I belonged to, Fires or Waters, so I mostly just hopped back and forth between the two. On this day, I figured I’d join the Fires and brush up on my recently acquired skills with a blade.

  Kale, one of Cade’s friends who’d recently joined our cause, met me at the weapons area and waved.

  Picking up a dagger, I smiled. “Hey, Kale, how’s it going?”

  He grinned. Hours of practicing in the sun had made his tan skin even darker. It contrasted nicely against his buzzed light brown hair.

  “It’s not going too bad. But hey, I’m supposed to tell you your dad called.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  I took a deep breath, set the dagger down, and started toward the cathedral. If Dad needed to talk to me, he would probably be bearing bad news.

  My father was the head advisor to the Modernists—in other words, the head advisor to Holden. As much as he loved and supported me, he believed too deeply in the Modernist cause to change political parties. He was one of those ‘blend seamlessly into human society’ junkies.

  At first, it had kind of hurt my feelings that he didn’t just change to my side, but in time, I’d gotten over it. Like all his years with the navy, he was simply doing his job. His commitment to duty had always trumped everything else, and rather than letting myself get salty about it, I recognized his loyalty as a strength. If I ever won him over to the Revolutionist cause, it’d be because he damn well believed in it.

  I entered the communications room, which had probably once been the office of a bishop or a priest. Bookshelves covered the walls, and an ornate wooden desk stood strong in the middle atop a scarlet rug. A man with jet-black hair and pale white skin sat reclined behind a laptop. When his eyes met mine, he immediately snapped upright.

  “Valerie,” he said, almost reverently. “Jameson called a few minutes ago. He has news regarding the Elitists.”

  Great.

  I sighed. “Thanks, Dave.”

  He handed me the phone then pretended to busy himself with watching the local news.

  I dialed Dad’s number, and he answered on the first ring. “Hi, sweetheart.”

  “Hey, Dad,” I said casually, even though none of this crap could be taken lightly. “What’s up?”

  He sighed. “You know how Holden amped up the intel department when he took over as Modernist leader?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, it finally paid off. We have some new information regarding your mother, grandfather, and—”

  “Don’t call them that,” I practically spat. They had done unforgivable things in their immortal lifetimes, like intentionally killing innocent people and aggressively pursuing world dominance, just to name just a couple of the bigger ones. I had no desire to associate myself with
them.

  Dad took a deep breath and sighed. “Fine. We have information on Amelia, Nicholai, and the other Elitist who managed to escape the Shadow Sect that day—Loren Marlowe.”

  I leaned a hip against the desk and crossed my arms. “What about them?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone. Holden has forbidden it, and for good reason—phone lines are easily tapped. He wants to meet and discuss it with you himself.”

  “Of course he does,” I muttered, more to myself than to my father.

  Cade wouldn’t like that one bit, seeing as how Holden and I had something of a romantic history. Unfortunately, we needed whatever information he possessed if we were going to stay on top of Nicholai’s nefarious plans.

  “When and where?”

  “He said it’s up to you, though there is a festival going on in downtown Center Allegheny this week. With the commotion of the festivities, I’m sure it’d be difficult for anyone to overhear.”

  “Seriously?”

  We were dealing with out-of-control Elementals hell-bent on enslaving humanity, and the Modernists were having a freaking festival? Why weren’t they training their damn asses off like we were?

  Dad picked up on my condescending tone. “Yes, Valerie. Holden understands better than his father did that people crave distractions. Happy followers are much more likely to stay followers.”

  I bit my lip. I had a feeling he was aiming that statement at me. Glancing out the office window, I watched Revolutionist fighters training in the sweltering heat. None of us had unwound in months…

  “Fine. I’ll meet him by the river tonight,” I said. “At the State Street Bridge around nine o’clock.”

  “Okay. I’ll let him know,” Dad said. Then he paused. “What are we having for dinner? I assume we’ll eat before you head over there.”

  I laughed loudly. “I’ll have to ask Cade.”

  Dad and I had never been good at cooking. I didn’t know how we’d survived as long as we had. Sienna and Xavier sucked at it too, and Kendrick was too young to be terribly proficient. Basically, if Cade hadn’t moved in, we all would have been living on takeout—assuming anyone was still around to run a fast food chain. I was pretty sure no one was, so we’d probably just be dead.

  I smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “Maybe we can con him into making homemade pizza.”

  “Sounds delicious.”

  I laughed, and he sighed.

  “I have to get back to work now, sweetheart, but I’ll see you later. I love you.”

  “Love you too, Dad.” I hung up the phone and immediately looked at Dave reclining behind the desk. “I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything,” he said, perking up.

  “Spread the word—we’re taking a night off. At dusk, anyone who wants to hit up the festival on the riverfront in Center Allegheny can meet me at the parking lot and tag along.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling wide.

  As he started making phone calls, I strolled back outside and over to the weapons station. Across the field, I saw Cade and Kendrick jumping from wall to wall, Sienna and the Winds pumping iron with red faces, and Xavier and the Waters throwing and dodging punches. Everyone seemed…fine, but maybe a little solemn and severe.

  Okay, fine. Dad was right. My team seriously needed some downtime.

  Tom already had the Fire Elementals aiming at targets. Sometimes we used our supernatural abilities as the weapons, and other times we focused on manmade devices. Either way, the varied training sessions were essential to our arsenal of techniques. We had been normal Elementals just a few months earlier, but we were slowly becoming soldiers. We had to be ready for anything Nicholai and the Elitists threw at us—maybe literally.

  I grabbed the dagger once more and tossed it lightly from hand to hand, testing its weight.

  Speaking up over the thwacks of speared targets, Tom addressed the group. “If someone throws a knife at you, what should you do?”

  “Block it,” one of the Fires called out.

  Tom shrugged. “Sure, but with what?”

  “Whatever’s lying around,” another said.

  “What if there’s nothing at all?” he asked, effectively gathering everyone’s attention. “How do you block with Fire?”

  Their eyes fell to their shuffling feet.

  It was a good question, really. Earths could block with wood, stone, metal, or almost anything natural and Waters could block with thick walls of ice, but Fires and Winds? They had nothing solid to conjure up. So, how could they defend themselves?

  I never would’ve known the answer myself if it hadn’t been for Aunt Marge and her vast array of Elemental literature.

  “It can be done,” Tom said, encouraging the group. “The key is concentration, not necessarily mental—though that’s a big part of it—but physical concentration, a close gathering of things. In this case, it’s power. You have to learn to force your power into a compact state. It will then become violent and volatile, destroying anything that gets close to its vortex at a breakneck speed.”

  He paused his speech and stared right at me, looking like some mischievous god of chaos.

  “Valerie, knife me.”

  Quickly, I whipped the dagger at our instructor’s chest. He threw his hands up, compressing his power into an angry ball of furious energy, and the knife crumbled to ash at his feet.

  “You ready?” he asked me, dispersing his power and grabbing a knife of his own.

  This time, I prepared to put up an angry shield of compressed fire and nodded.

  He threw the knife at me and I quickly blocked it, disintegrating the blade almost instantly.

  “Earths and Waters can’t do this,” he said, staring back into the wide eyes of the class. “When we Fires create a shield, the object being hurled at us will hyper-incinerate into ash. When Winds do it, the object hyper-erodes into dust.”

  I let go of the Fire shield, and my element quickly funneled back into my palms.

  Slowly, a girl put her hand up. “What if the object being hurled at us isn’t a knife? What if it’s an element, like wind or something?”

  Tom cocked his head and nodded. “A very good question. Blocking your own element is oftentimes pointless, as it usually won’t hurt you, and it’s definitely never lethal. Blocking physical objects like ice or a tree branch created by a Water or an Earth will end in much the same way as the dagger. When it comes to Winds, all we can do is protect our bodies from nasty gales. We can’t actually stop them from blowing us around.”

  He strolled over to the practice weapons made of blunt wood, which already had dents, burn marks, and missing chunks from prior training sessions. He gestured for Kale and me to pass them out then continued his lesson.

  “As always, keep in mind that your power only ranges so far, and the well is only so deep. The farthest radius is only about what?”

  “Thirty yards,” the Fires echoed back.

  “Right,” he said with a gratified smile. “And the endurance of power depends entirely on the task you’re performing. Just as you can walk much longer than you can sprint, you can generate fire much longer than you can generate a fire shield.”

  It actually made a lot of sense.

  “Depending on your Elemental strength, physical fitness, and proximity to your element in nature, you could feasibly use your power nonstop for up to an hour, or intermittently for hours on end.” Tom clasped his hands behind his back and paced as he continued. “Recall that Fires are weakest at night, when there’s no sunshine and less heat to help us recharge. If you’re ever on a mission and it’s nearing dusk, remember to use power sparingly, and do what you can to preserve energy. You can never know what you’ll have to deal with out there, and I certainly wouldn’t put it past the Elitists to target us at our weakest.”

  Or the Shadow Sect, I thought with an eye roll.

  “Pair up! Let’s practice making shields.”

  The Fires nodded in response and quickly got to
work. At first their efforts were clumsy and unsure, but by the time our training time was over for the day, a good number of them had a solid handle on creating a shield and effectively blocking oncoming objects.

  To say I was proud would be an understatement.

  These Elementals had come from all over the place, some even from different states and countries, to join our cause and contribute to our campaign. When they’d first shown up, many were at ground zero as far as skills were concerned. Now, they were all but machines, practiced to the point of instinctive efficiency.

  I was finally beginning to believe we had a chance at victory over the Elitists.

  “All right, guys, that’s it for today!” Tom announced. “I’ll see you all at the festival tonight.”

  That got everybody cheering excitedly. Even I smiled.

  Until I remembered why I was going.

  Ugh. Politics freaking suck.

  3

  Cade and Kendrick walked over to me as the crowd of recruits rushed away.

  “How was your first day, buddy?” I asked with a smile, bending down to his level.

  “It was awesome!” he shouted, bouncing around from foot to foot. “I learned how to dive over barriers, and how to jump from wall to wall, and how to hide and sneak!”

  My brows rose. “You really did learn a lot. Was it harder than you thought?”

  His brown eyes rolled to the side and he blushed. “Yeah. There was more running and stuff than I thought there would be.”

  I laughed and stood back up. “Better head home and get cleaned up. We’re talking Cade into making pizza for dinner.”

  Cade raised a brow and chuckled. “Oh, are we now?”

  “Shhh,” I said to my brother playfully. “Don’t tell him.”

  Kendrick giggled as Sienna caught up to us and took his hand.

  “Come on, buddy. Let’s give the lovebirds some time.”

  “You wanna play video games?” he asked as he skipped along beside her.

  “You know it.”

  Of course—there was time for video games, but no time for a date at the movies.

  As they strolled away, Cade smirked and crossed his arms. “What’s the catch?”