by Mima
Aqua’s bitter voice filled her head. Filthy, loud, ugly, flopping things. Images of drowned bodies flowed past Xia, ghosts Aqua delighted in. Drown them, eat them, stop them. Hate, hate, hate. Wake!
Abruptly, Aqua’s dream shifted. Xia stood on the cobblestone beach. She looked at the endless, rippling expanse of gray ocean. The salt was sharp, smelling of things deeper than humans could understand. Macgregor was next to her, eating her hat. Someone stood behind her, warm and solid. He was very strong, his will aiding her as she kept her knees locked.
“Markos?”
No, it wasn’t Markos. Something about this male presence at her back made her proud, instead of restless and worried like she usually got with a partner. Her breasts ached, and her breath came in short gasps. Sliding her magic between the cobbles on the beach, she anchored herself. Out on the horizon, the ocean lifted. The man at her back faded, and she moaned. Wind swirled around her, excited to the point of frenzy. Xia whimpered. The water a few meters from her pulled back, was sucked away. It was like a fist being drawn back for a strike. The sound came to her now, a thundering rush.
The sky darkened, clouds lowering, and it began to pour. She was soaked in an instant, her long auburn hair plastered to her chest and back. She blinked to try to keep the growing wall in her view. Sending her power deeper, she worked her feet until they were buried in the cool cobbles. The water rose so high in front of her, she lost sight of the peak.
With a massive outlay, she demanded Aer’s presence, summoned with more force than she’d ever used. Surprised, confused by Aqua, Aer came, and Xia wrapped it around herself in a sphere of protection. She had time to swallow and take a reflexive breath before the water was on her. Her magic held, and her body was battered and lashed, but remained firm. She’d learned that much. Night after night she’d been torn and swirled in Aqua’s ferocious grasp, but now she stayed on the beach, even kept her limbs intact.
The Aer she’d called around her screamed to be severed from itself, as water covered them. And here was tonight’s test. Had she gathered enough air tonight to outlast Aqua’s fury and hear her secrets? Aqua buffeted so hard some of Aer was torn away. Grunting, Xia staggered in the hard cobbles, holding on to her surrounding cushion of air with all her might. Aqua threw horrors past Xia’s bubble view: monstrous fish and bodies ruined with violence and rot. Once, a harpoon launched through the globe of safety she’d gathered. Gasping, Xia threw herself to the side, the red sting of blood a shock.
It went on forever, until Xia was shaking with exhaustion, sweating, crying. Aer shrank, and shrank, used by Xia, taken by Aqua. Her brain ached with the weight of dark water above her. The beach no longer felt like land. The tidal wave settled in as a massive flood. She was in her tomb on the bottom of the ocean. In the end, Aqua was a bare kiss away from her lips, and finally, Xia couldn’t help but look up. Nothing. No glimmer of light beyond that coming from her own body, no shimmer of surface above her. Nothing but black water strewn with carnage.
The water bulged in toward her and the first icy touch of it on her left shoulder blade made her shriek. Sucking air too fast, her breaths loud in her ears, Xia sobbed. Then it was pressing to her thighs like an icy dagger and Xia struggled to pull out of the dreamtime, knowing she’d lost again. It didn’t matter that the coming torment was only psychic. She desperately tried to rouse herself to avoid it.
Seaweed wrapped around one ankle, the sandpaper rush of shark skin abraded her arm, and the shock of water up to her waist took her chance for a last breath. The current wrenched her away from earth and pulled until she felt bones break. Liquid poured into her lungs, and the world was nothing but writhing pain. Something bit into her knee and shook her body like a rag doll. She felt the warmth of her blood around her leg, an odd relief from the paralyzing cold.
Head throbbing, Xia tried to rise above herself, to let Aqua enjoy her pain and terror while she slipped between. Squid tentacles wrapped around her throat. Screaming, she slipped dangerously far from her body.
Keep Ignis fed. At all costs, keep him fed and happy. Soon Aqua will be too strong, even were he to wake. But until then, keep him busy.
Aqua ripped off her arm with the force of a current, while the shark took her leg. Several jellyfish plastered over her torso, seizing her body with agony, while seaweed flowed into her mouth and pushed down her throat. There was nothing to see in the dark, nothing at all, as the glow from her astral body dimmed. The world was dark and pain.
Xia woke up to the small blue glow of her Cookie Monster nightlight. Gagging, she scrambled for the bathroom on rubbery legs. She only made it to the linoleum before she retched, her body shaking. Gripping her wrist with her opposite hand, she held tight, reminding herself the loss of her arm wasn’t real, just the dreamtime. She jerked herself to her knees and finished in the toilet. Listing back against the wall, she gasped, pissed and scared and grateful to be alive.
Then came her usual cry. The tears were bitter, angry. But tonight, after a fruitless month of these visions, as her body struggled to learn it was still whole, there was at least the pumping excitement that she had heard something. She’d caught a tiny clue. When she dashed the tears away, she noticed the blood. Stilling, she stared at the smear on the white tiles. Raising her hands, she saw blood on her right arm and tracked the trail up. A cut, six centimeters long. A cut, leaving a trail of blood. Real blood. Real cut.
Shrieking in rage, Xia surged to her feet and stormed into the dark living room. She fumbled in her basket until she found her cell and dialed Sanders, the Chamber’s emergency operator for Great Britain.
“Night watch.”
“I’m being tracked. I got hit in the dreamtime tonight.”
“Morphi Xia?”
“Yes!”
“How bad is your rampart?”
Xia seethed. She knew he was assuming that if she was hurt, her bodyguard was incapacitated, if not dead. That he would think she was raving about being hurt herself if she had a wounded rampart down pissed her off even more. “I don’t have one. But I need one now.”
There was a long silence. Cautiously, the precise, upper-crust English voice said, “Markos has sent you into the Scottish gloaming with no rampart?”
“Sanders, I’m the one that said no guard. Ramparts just get in the way.”
“Unless you get attacked.”
“Yeah, yeah. The bastard tried to harpoon me!” She tried to juggle the blood seeping down her arm so that it wouldn’t spill.
“Have you called for an ambulance?”
“It’s just a scratch. And it was a lucky toss. I don’t think he was actually at my location. I’m going to have to remain at this location, so I need a rampart.”
“All right. Your rampart will be there by dawn.”
“A guy, Sanders. No girls.” Ramparts weren’t always lovers, but Xia found attraction was inevitable.
“I have your profile. Are you calling Markos, or shall I?”
Xia rummaged in the kitchen drawer for an old towel. Her mouth tasted foul and her arm finally began to sting. She was bleeding all over. Dammit, all these towels were too nice. “You call him.” The thought of what he’d sent her in that letter pushed her blood pressure even higher. Fuck him and his stupid letter and his stupid secrets. “And you tell him—”
A few pissy retorts zinged through her head. She sighed heavily, finally just grabbing up the cute tea towel that said Hilan’ Coo with a picture of a shaggy Highland cow on it. She pressed it to her throbbing arm. “Tell him I’m taking tomorrow off.”
“Do you need immediate medical or magical assistance, Morphi?”
“No.” Xia ended the call and set the phone on the counter. She turned on the kitchen light, and immediately some of her tension eased. Fumbling with only her bad arm’s hand, she got out a baggie, filled it with a few ice cubes, and smashed them with a rolling pin, which made her arm scream in pain. Then she folded the bloody towel around them and pressed it firmly to her arm.
Moaning, she went on shaky legs to the bathroom, stepping over the vomit to the toothpaste. She undid the cap with her teeth, sucked in a small mouthful and chewed it up. Rinsing by drinking from the faucet, she flushed the vomit, and stumbled to the bed. Blood stained the sheets, still damp with sweat.
Growling with frustration, Xia pulled her robe off the wall hook and went back to the main room. The couch was cool and scratchy, but at least it was away from the bedroom. She adjusted her hold on the cold pack and pressed it to her biceps tightly. Her robe made a poor blanket and she shivered. Staring at the swirled plaster ceiling, Xia tried to blank her mind, to still her thoughts and steady her heart.
She hadn’t penetrated through Aqua’s conscious front, but she’d picked up an echo. And it was a doozy. Terra was Aqua’s natural opposite. So why were the voices focused on Ignis? Chewing on her lips, Xia considered it all night, until the room lightened with dawn, and finally, she heard a car coming down her drive. It would be her rampart. Oh, Lord and Lady, she was tired. Her body had stiffened, despite the fact her torture had been mental.
Getting up and putting the robe on was agony. The car’s lights blinded her through the front window before they cut off. She tottered to the entrance, dreading the welcoming dance. Footsteps crunched on the gravel, and she opened the door.
“Hello.” Damn, her voice was all froggy. She cleared her throat, which made her sound as nervous as a novice. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Aye.” His silhouette was huge. Broad shoulders, solid thighs, big hands at the end of thick, long arms. The faint dawn revealed light-colored, shaggy hair. He paused on the step down from her, shadowed by the carport.
A man of few words, then. “I’m Xia. Come on in.” She turned and hobbled back to the couch. “What’s your name?”
She eased down on the cushions with protesting muscles, her shoulder aching from continuing to hold the ice pack firmly against her arm.
“Adam McConnell.”
She looked up so fast she pinched a nerve in her neck. And there he was, lit by the kitchen light, standing in her living room, closing her door behind him. Adam the built, blond, black-eyed jerk of a selkie-hamster.
“Ohhh.” Xia pinched the bridge of her nose. Her skin stank, her hair was snarled and stank, her breath stank, and she was sticky with blood. Magic Weekly should see her now.
“Let me see your arm.”
“That’s not what I was moaning over.”
Blessedly, the phone rang out to the cheerful tune of “Turkey in the Straw”. She struggled up from the couch. “That’s Markos, my advocate, our team leader. I should get it.” She’d programmed the tune in for his calls after he’d assigned her to the Atlantic coast, in the land of the gloaming. The big, fat bull turkey.
She swept into the kitchen and flipped open the phone. “Hello, Markos.”
His Greek accent was thick tonight. “Tell me the selkie is there by now.”
“He’s here.” She eyed the huge man looking around her living room.
He blew out roughly. “Good. Now you can rest.”
She thought of the vomit on her bathroom floor, of her sheets. “Sure.”
“You signed for my letter. Did you read it?”
She sulked.
“Read it, Xia.”
Turning her back, she lowered her voice, wondering how good selkie hearing was. “I know what’s in it.”
He sighed again. “Xia, the order came from the Chamber. You’re one of our best, love. I checked on your rampart. He’s capable of being your anchor.”
She went rigid. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “He’s Aqua’s!”
“That’s just superstition. He’s a damn old elemental. I’ve already emailed you his file.”
Frustration bloomed and overwhelmed her pain. Her brain raced with the implications. Elementals were extremely solitary. Born with a closer bond to one of the Four, they were magical elite, and that came with a territorial urge against others. That Adam had agreed to be her rampart, and possibly knew she’d soon need an anchor for a subsumation ritual, probably meant she would be reassigned off Markos’s team and over to him. Adam, the damn old elemental that he apparently was, wouldn’t agree to such an arrangement if she was subordinate to someone else. And Markos’s temper would be even worse if he had another elemental on his team. She just didn’t think two elementals would ever be put into such close proximity. It was asking for trouble, as well as a waste of powerful resources. Markos wasn’t her advocate anymore?
It meant a world of difference in their roles. One where he wouldn’t be a temporary guest. Instead, she’d be his to command. It would complicate the sheet play immensely, putting her on the defensive instead of setting them up as partners.
Xia took the ice pack and smashed it on the counter. “What! What!” She was so eloquent sometimes.
“Breathe, dancer. Where were you wounded?”
“Don’t call me pet names, you fire-fink. Am I being transferred?”
“I asked you a question.” That haughty minotaur’s sneer just set her back up.
“And maybe I’m not yours to question anymore.” Her arm itched. Looking down, she saw the blood had seeped through the sleeve. Dammit. The wound was spelled. She slapped the ice back on it, breath hitching at the pain.
A presence came up next to her in the kitchen. “Get off the phone. Your arm needs attention.”
At the same time, Markos was growling. “What’s this note you’re off duty tonight. If you’re not incapacitated, I need you on duty. Reports say we’re keeping Aqua distracted and dispersed. This is good work, Xia.”
The fact that she needed tomorrow—no, today—to send the ungrateful shit a secret, sealed message with what she’d learned made her pant with fury. “You over-hung snort face! I’m scared, I’m hurt, I’m tired of failing, and I need to prepare for your stupid letter. Give me a fucking break.”
“No breaks if we all die, dancer.”
She opened her mouth to retort when a huge hand plucked the phone from her and snapped it shut. She spun, snatching at it, and he let her take it.
“Hey!” She glared at him. Now Markos would think she hung up on him, something that really set him off.
He reached for the neck of her robe, face closed, black eyes steady. She slapped at him, but with a twist of his wrist, he captured her hand and pulled it down, taking the bag of mostly melted ice from her. “Stop. It’s been hours and you’re still bleeding from a small wound. Think.”
Xia licked her lips, desperately thirsty. For a whisky. The Scottish knew their whisky, that’s for sure. She realized what he’d said and nodded forlornly, setting the phone aside. He put his hands on her ribs and lifted her up onto the counter. It took a second, as if she were a bag of potatoes. The outline of his huge hands burned against her torso after he took them away.
Without arguing, she watched as he peeled the robe off her shoulder and down her arm, baring one breast. He didn’t look at it at all. She knew because she watched him carefully. Instead, he wet the bloody towel in the sink and cleaned around the cut, which still bled freely, if mildly, due its size. Holding herself still, she found it surreal to be sitting on her kitchen counter in front of the local ferry operator she’d met on a daytrip over to Skye.
“What did this?”
“Harpoon.”
His jaw flexed. “This will hurt.”
“I know.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a penknife. He flipped it open and moved to the stove, where he heated the blade for several seconds in the pretty blue gas flame. Moving back to her, he wrapped gentle, firm fingers around her arm just below the cut, and set the tip of the knife to her skin. Without any hesitation, he cut a shallow circle around the entire slash. Xia kept her teeth clenched. Cursed when her eyes welled and spilled over against her will.
When he was done, he hovered his cupped palm over the bloody circle. He met her eyes. His black depths sent fear stabbing deep. She b
linked rapidly, her lashes heavy and wet.
“Morphi, I am your rampart.”
She swallowed, trying not to gasp at the sting. She couldn’t get the air to answer and had no words to say anyway. She nodded. As introductions went, you couldn’t get more official, more terse. Yet somehow, she was deeply reassured by his simple statement of their assigned relationship. He’d just assumed responsibility for her.
“Look away.”
She closed her eyes. He spoke the spell of cleansing. The flash of light exploded even from behind her lids. She jerked back at the bone-striking pain, her head cracking on the cupboard behind her. Her breath caught on a sob. Quickly, the wet towel was tied around her arm, achingly tight.
Then the robe was up onto her shoulder again, and he pulled her forward off the counter to stand. Tucking her face into his neck, he held her carefully. “Ssshhh, lass. ’Tis done.” He was warm and smelled fresh. “Shhh.”
“Th-thank you. I hate doing that alone.” Once an assassin found a morphi in the dreamtime, he could use a spelled weapon to damage her physical body. Cleansing a spelled wound was a matter of brute magical force, quick and owie.
He stilled. “Why does he let you work without a rampart?”
“Oh, don’t get all stuffy. I rarely get tagged. Working alone is easier.”
The phone rang out in the fiddle tune again. Adam snatched it up and opened before the fifth note. “Adam.”
“Hey. Give it.” She reached for it but he stepped away, sweeping her arm back easily, turning to give her a massive shoulder in a ratty T-shirt identical to the one she’d seen him in earlier. This one was blue. She heard the rumble of Markos’s angry voice. The fact it was contained in the tinny speaker of the cell phone didn’t make him sound any less powerful.
