Elemental Power

by Rachel Morgan

  “And that arxium gas machine thing?” Callie looked up, her eyebrows pinching together. “What the hell is that doing out here? And why didn’t they point it directly at us if they’re trying to kill us?”

  “Maybe they couldn’t see us,” Dad said. “Maybe they were trying to stir up the magic in the elements so nature would get rid of us instead. Did you see how the storm worsened almost instantly?”

  “Yes,” Ridley answered. “That gas or spray or whatever it was probably isn’t meant to get rid of any elementals who flee into the wastelands. It’s probably out here to mess with the weather. Maybe all those violent magical storms we get aren’t natural at all. People are the ones causing them.”

  Malachi looked up. “Sounds like a conspiracy theory.”

  “Okay, what’s your explanation?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say I disagreed with you.”

  “Guys, what’s that rattling sound?” Callie asked, looking around toward the back of the store. She climbed to her feet as Dad walked between the shoe displays to a door with a ‘Staff Only’ sign stuck to it. He reached for the handle, then paused. Instead of opening the door, he bent to look through the keyhole.

  “Okay, so …” He straightened and looked back at them. “There’s nothing on the other side of this wall. That part of the building’s been demolished.”

  “Wonderful,” Callie muttered.

  “If the storm gets any worse,” Dad added, “this wall probably won’t last long.” He rapped his knuckles against the door, and a hollow sound ensued. “I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be a permanent wall.”

  “Okay, so we’ll have to go back out there and find something better,” Ridley said. She walked to one of the windows and looked out. “I don’t know, I feel like I can see right through every other building. Nothing’s intact.”

  “We’ll find something,” Dad said. “We’ll just have to run a little further through the storm. Or maybe it won’t get any worse and we can wait it out here.”

  “Hopefully,” Ridley said, standing on tiptoe as she tried to peer back past the bus they’d crouched beside. And then— “Oh, crap.” Her stomach dropped. Amid the debris tearing through the air, she saw a figure. “Someone’s coming.”

  17

  “I don’t know if he’s coming here,” Ridley continued, “but he’s definitely moving in this direction. He’s … wait.” She squinted harder as Dad rushed to her side. “Is that … Archer?” He was racing along the road, leaping over the cracked parts and dodging flashes of magic as something small and dark streaked ahead of him. “Ember?” Ridley whispered.

  A few heartbeats later, Archer was skidding to a halt in front of the shoe shop and reaching for the door handle. There was a moment in which he looked through the glass and his eyes met Ridley’s. Then he pulled the door open, Ember raced in ahead of him, and he tugged it shut swiftly behind him. Before Ridley’s brain had a chance to catch up, she’d thrown her arms around him. He hugged her tightly. “How on earth did you find us?” she asked.

  “I didn’t,” he answered breathlessly. “Your cat did.”

  Ridley pulled back and looked down at the magic-mutated animal pawing at her shin. “Ember?”

  “If that’s what you named her, then yes.”

  “That’s—that’s amazing.”

  “Okay, you can keep the cat,” Dad said.

  Archer let out a brief laugh. “I’m not sure you ever really had a choice about that.”

  Dad clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Do you have any idea how we ended up out here?”

  Archer’s smile vanished. “No. I went back to the bunker this morning but neither of you were in any of the rec rooms or in your bedroom. I asked Christa, but she hadn’t seen you. I figured you must be around somewhere, so I searched pretty much the entire bunker and realized no one had seen any of you since last night. Christa found the cat wailing somewhere—I think it couldn’t figure out how to get out—so she asked me if I could take it with me.”

  The cat in question wouldn’t stop pawing at Ridley’s leg, so she bent to let it sniff her hand and rub its head against her knuckles.

  “Did you call her Ember?” Archer asked, and Ridley nodded. “Anyway, I was near the canal when Ember got away from me,” he continued. “She ran into that tunnel the canal goes through. The one that ends up out here on this side of the wall. I almost let her go, but then … I don’t know, then I thought about how she’s been following you around. So I ran after her.”

  “And she actually found me,” Ridley said in wonder as she straightened.

  “Oh, and I grabbed your bags at some point,” he added, and Ridley noticed for the first time that he had a backpack slung over each shoulder. “By the time I figured out you weren’t there … I don’t know. I knew something wasn’t right. If you disappeared from the bunker, then somebody there must have been responsible, so I knew if I did find you, I certainly wouldn’t be taking you back.” He lowered both bags to floor.

  “Thank you so much,” Ridley said, thinking of the picture frame inside with the photo of her and Mom and Dad.

  “You didn’t happen to grab our stuff too, did you?” Malachi asked.

  “I didn’t actually take anything with me to the bunker,” Callie said. “I left my home in kind of a rush.”

  “No, sorry,” Archer said to Malachi. “I wasn’t anywhere near your room when I grabbed these, and then once the cat got away from me … well, there was no turning back at that point.”

  “Ah, well. I guess it’s just stuff, isn’t it,” Malachi said. “At least we’re alive.”

  “Yeah, thank goodness for that.” Archer’s eyes met Ridley’s for a moment before he added, “I sent a message for backup while I was still close enough to the wall to get signal, but I don’t know when it’ll be received, so it’s a good thing we don’t actually need it.”

  “A message to who?” Dad asked.

  “It’s a number I was given for the community we’re heading to. A contact of theirs. I don’t know where this person is based or how often he or she communicates with the other elementals. I was running after the cat, and I didn’t have many options, so I just called and left a voice message saying we’re outside Lumina City and need help. I thought the society might have caught you out here somewhere and that I’d need help getting you out. Kind of a long shot, since it could be days until they show up, but I was desperate.”

  “Maybe we’ll meet them along the way,” Ridley said. “I mean, if some of them do come to help us.”

  “Yeah. So you don’t remember what happened?” Archer asked, looking around at each of them.

  “We think someone must have drugged us,” Malachi said. “We woke up just outside the wall with a bunch of people with guns coming toward us. We only got away because of Old Man Mr. Kayne here.”

  Dad sighed and muttered, “I’m going to get a complex about my age if this ‘old man’ stuff doesn’t stop soon.”

  “They drugged us with arxium,” Ridley told Archer. “And possibly something else—they would have had to give Dad something else, at least—but there was definitely arxium involved. We couldn’t use our own magic.”

  Archer shook his head, a deep frown causing a line to form between his eyebrows. “Someone must have heard us talking yesterday. I don’t think any of us said the word ‘elemental,’ but maybe we said enough for someone who knows about them to figure it out.”

  “But still,” Callie said, “why would anyone who’s part of that community want to get rid of us? Everyone’s there because they want to be free to use magic, and elementals are no different.”

  “Unless the Shadow Society planted someone there to seek out elementals,” Dad said.

  “I guess that’s possible,” Ridley said. She pushed one hand through her hair, then pulled it back down quickly as she felt a sting across her palm. She’d forgotten all about landing on the road and scraping her hand. She lowered it to her side, telling herself she’d deal with it lat
er. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “I know you never wanted to go to the bunker, and now this has happened.”

  “Oh, and don’t forget the arxium gas machine thing,” Callie added. She looked at Archer. “We were trying to escape among the ruins, and this dome-shaped machine popped up and sprayed arxium everywhere.”

  To Ridley’s surprise, Archer simply nodded. “I wondered about that when the storm suddenly got worse. I’ve heard rumors about things like that.”

  “Really?” Dad asked.

  “Yes, from a few people in the elemental community I lived with. Not from anyone in Lumina City. I’m sure most people have no idea those machines are out here.”

  “Machines plural?” Ridley asked.

  “I think so. That’s what I’ve heard. They’re buried in the ground around all the surviving cities.”

  Ridley slowly shook her head, remembering an argument she’d had with Archer not too long ago. She’d reminded him that the government wanted to reclaim the wastelands. They wanted things to be safe out here so they could begin to rebuild the world. It seemed crazy that they’d go as far as to manufacture deadly storms in order to keep everyone and everything contained within cities. And yet … it was starting to seem as though that might be the case. Unless it wasn’t the government. Unless it was some other organization—like the Shadow Society—and those who now governed the world had no clue what was really going on.

  “Okay, so that’s all really crazy,” Callie said, “but we can talk about it later. What about right now? What’s our plan? Are we going to head into the wastelands with no clothes or food or … anything?”

  “When the storm clears and we’ve recovered from the arxium, we can actually go back,” Malachi said. “Not to the bunker, but we can hide somewhere else. We can do that air thing to get over the wall and then get whatever we need.”

  “The wall is so high,” Callie whispered.

  Ridley thought of the eighty-fourth floor she’d leaped off with Dad and Archer not too long ago. She’d been so desperate to escape Brex Tower at that point that she’d barely thought of how high it was. Perhaps if she hadn’t known how high the ballroom was the other night, she would have been able to jump from there too. “It isn’t too bad if you don’t think about how high it is,” she told Callie.

  “And we don’t all have to go back,” Dad reminded her, “if you don’t think you can do it.”

  At the back of the store, the semi-permanent wall rattled louder, and everyone turned to look at it. “I don’t think we can stay here much longer,” Dad added.

  “Surely being partially sheltered by whatever’s left of this building is better than going out there to find somewhere else to hide?” Malachi asked.

  “Well, maybe,” Dad said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “’Cause it looks like it’s getting worse out there,” Malachi added, moving closer to the window. It had begun to rain now, and droplets splattered fiercely against the windows and door.

  “And the magic is making it even more dangerous out there,” Archer added.

  “You said magic wouldn’t harm us,” Callie reminded him, an accusing edge to her tone.

  “It wouldn’t usually, but all this arxium is aggravating it.”

  “I’m not looking forward to breathing that stuff in again,” Malachi said. “My stomach hasn’t recovered yet from the first dose.”

  “That part shouldn’t be too bad now,” Archer said. “The storm’s been going on for a while, so it’s probably blown most of it away. It’s the actual magic out there that’s just so … wild and angry. Still raging against all that arxium they pumped into the air earlier.”

  “I remember you talking about it like that before,” Ridley said. “As if it has some kind of intelligence.”

  He looked at her. “It kind of does, doesn’t it?”

  She was about to reply, but her words vanished from her mind as the wall at the back of the store was ripped cleanly away from the rest of the building. The wind swept through, sending shoes and boxes flying. Callie shrieked and jumped out of the way as a display shelf skidded across the floor toward her. Ridley was about to grab her backpack when a glance at the window revealed a metal pole hurtling toward the front of the store. “Get down!” she yelled. She dropped to the floor, shielding Ember with her body and covering her head with her hands. A moment later, she heard the smash and shatter. Glass rained over her as the pole clanged onto the ground somewhere in front of the store. Slowly, she looked up and around at the others on the floor. “Everyone okay?” she called as rain stung her face.

  “Yeah, but we need to find better shelter,” Dad answered, pushing himself onto his feet. Ridley pulled her bag hastily onto her back, scooped Ember up beneath one arm, and handed Dad his bag.

  “I can take her if you want,” Archer offered. “Or carry your bag.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s fine,” Ridley said automatically. But as Ember’s hair aggravated the grazed skin on her right palm, she decided it was okay to accept help. “Actually, thank you,” she said, placing Ember in his arms.

  Dad opened the door—what was left of it—and hurried into the street. Bracing herself, Ridley ventured out after him. She was half drenched within seconds. “There,” Dad shouted as he pointed. “The Huntley Hotel. Do you see it?”

  Lightning forked across the sky, brightening the storm-gray landscape for a moment, and Ridley could clearly see the double H on a building not too far away. “Yes,” she shouted as she reached his side.

  “It’s the closest building that looks, well, mostly intact.”

  “Seems pretty solid from here,” Archer shouted, and Ridley realized he was just behind her. She looked around and saw Ember zipped up inside the front of his jacket with only her head poking out. Some teeny, tiny part of Ridley’s mind—the part that clearly wasn’t worried about staying alive right now—thought, Ah, how cute. But she gave it a good mental smack and turned back to face the hotel.

  “Okay, that’s where we’re going,” she shouted to Malachi and Callie as they joined them in the middle of the street and started moving forward. “The Huntley Hotel.”

  “And if magic grabs hold of any of us,” Archer said, “and we end up separated, don’t stop. Just get to the Huntley. Got it?”

  “I wish I could say no,” Callie whimpered. “I feel like it wasn’t that bad staying back there in the shoe shop.”

  “Hey, you’ll be fine,” Malachi told her, taking hold of her hand as they started running. “This is better than being killed by a high-speed shoe to the head.”

  “What about being killed by a high-speed car to the head?” Callie wailed. “Or pretty much anything else that’s flying around out heeeee—”

  Callie’s scream was lost to the wind as a flash of magic snaked around her and Malachi like a lasso and whipped them into the air. Within seconds, they’d vanished into the storm. “Ohmygosh,” Ridley gasped, stumbling to a halt. “They’re—”

  “They’ll be fine,” Archer said.

  “You don’t know that!” she shouted.

  “We can’t do anything for them!” Dad shouted, reaching back to grab her hand and pull her forward. “Just keep moving. They’ll meet us there.”

  They’ll meet us there? They’ll MEET US THERE? As if they’d merely taken a simple detour instead of being whiplashed through the air by magic? Ridley’s mind filled with hysterical laughter as she ran behind Dad, catching her foot on a clump of grass that had grown up through the cracked road. Her hand slipped out of Dad’s as she stumbled, but she continued running as soon as she’d caught her balance.

  They squeezed between bumper-to-bumper vehicles that blocked most of an intersection, finally making their way beyond the pileup past more crumbled, weather-worn buildings. Rain lashed at Ridley’s face and wind buffeted her from all sides as she dodged the flashes of magic as best she could. A table flew across the road, and she dropped to the ground to be sure she was out of its path as it soared overhead. Looking
back, she found that Archer had crouched down too, with one arm wrapped around his middle, probably to keep Ember in place.

  “All good?” he yelled as lightning illuminated his face for a moment.

  “Yes, you?” she responded, blinking away the raindrops on her eyelids. Archer nodded. After a glance toward the sky to make sure nothing new was about to fly into her, Ridley stood and faced forward.

  Dad was nowhere to be seen.

  “What?” Her racing heart lodged itself somewhere in her throat as her eyes darted across the dimly lit landscape. “Dad?” she shouted. She wiped a hand across her wet face and squinted harder with every flash of lightning, hoping to see him somewhere nearby.

  Archer’s hand gripped her arm as he moved to stand beside her. “We need to keep moving, Ridley. We’ll meet him there.”

  “But—no—what if he’s—”

  “Wait, that’s him!” Archer pointed to the right beyond a taxi and a building that was nothing more than a pile of rubble. On the other side, someone who looked like he might possibly be her father was standing halfway down a staircase that jutted up amid a few low, broken walls. Ridley jumped up and down, waving wildly and yelling, “Dad! Over here!”

  He seemed frozen for several long moments, until suddenly he began waving frantically with both arms. “Yes! He’s seen us.” Ridley lowered her arms as Archer made a waving motion toward the Huntley Hotel. Dad mimicked him before starting his descent down the staircase. “See?” Archer said, pushing Ridley ahead of him. “Stick to the plan and we’ll meet him there.”

  “Okay,” she answered, then yelped in fright and jumped to the side as a bolt of magic shot straight down and sizzled through the roof of the taxi. She paused to take a deep breath—and then the entire car burst into thousands of glowing blue shards that rained down around her and Archer, forming droplets of water that mingled with the rain.

  “Holy WHAT?” Ridley gasped. “What the hell was that?”

  “Just keep moving!” Archer said, turning her toward the Huntley and giving her a nudge. She hadn’t missed the fear in his voice though. What if magic did that to one of them? What if it had already done that to Malachi and Callie?