by H G Lynch
“I warned you, Ember! I warned you that you couldn’t beat me! While you were napping in the trees, I took the chance to remove your little friends from the equation!” Liandra shrieked, pointing to where Cris and Brandon had been last time she’d looked. They were still there, but they were lying on the white frosted ground, the ice crawling over them, encasing them in crystalline coffins. Perry was sprawled alongside them, but Hiro was nowhere to be seen.
Panic flared inside Ember, and she tried not to show it. She thought the vampires could survive being encased in ice, but Cris surely couldn’t. And where was Hiro? And somebody needed to finish the incantation to take away Lia’s power or else…or else I’m screwed, Ember thought with surprising calmness as her quick panic abated. I’m screwed already, aren’t I? I can hardly walk, I’m about to be too weak to hold onto what little power I have, and I have no way out of here.
Just as she thought it, the magic sizzling under her skin flickered, sputtered, and died. Benji vanished in mid-air as he leaped for Lia. With her magic, the rest of her energy seemed to float away from her, and she fell to her knees, gasping as the fingers of her left hand dug into the hard, icy dirt of the clearing, tearing out blades of grass and shards of ice sinking under her fingernails. She squeezed her eyes closed to stop the world spinning in front of her. Her body shook with the effort of not passing out, her head was pounding agonizingly, and blood streaked the right side of her face from whatever head wound she’d sustained when she flew through the trees. Her searing broken arm was healing far too slowly, her ankle throbbed, and her ribs still ached with hot pain. There was nothing she could do…there was no way…she couldn’t…
She felt a hand of water close around her throat, cutting off her air and lifted her off the ground, dragging her into her air and across the clearing to hover in front of Liandra. Choking, Ember pried at the watery hand with one hand, but it was useless. Her fingers sank right through the liquid until she was scratching off her own skin. There was blood and dirt and skin under her fingernails, and her fingertips were blackened. The rain was still rushing down on them, pouring into Ember’s eyes and mouth as she struggled for air. There was a moment of sheer terror as she realized there was nobody to save her this time. Sherry wouldn’t be dropping out of the air on her faery wings and using her own ice power to freeze Lia still. Reid wouldn’t be running in from nowhere with a rune-marked knife to stab Lia in the back. That thought made her heart twist in agony, the thought that Reid wouldn’t save her this time. That she wasn’t sure she wanted him to save her.
Lia’s face was blurry in front of Ember’s eyes, grey smoke dancing on the edges of her vision, but she could still see the siren’s gleeful, evil smile. “Poor, stupid little girl. You really thought you had a chance against me. And now you’re going to die, and I’m going to and find your boy-Oops, sorry, ex-boyfriend, and celebrate,” Lia taunted, giggling madly.
Ember didn’t have enough energy to care. She was cold and wet and tired, and Reid wasn’t hers anymore anyway. Now she just wanted to sleep. If Lia would just put her down, she’d go to sleep for a while.
She passed out for a moment, just a few seconds of everything going black, and when she blinked her eyes open again, she was on the ground. All of her was still blazing in agony, but Lia was the one screaming. She was clawing at herself, her eyes wide with terror, her body jerking and spasming as blue smoke seeped out through her skin, billowing from her mouth and ears. Somewhere far away, Ember could faintly hear a voice, but she couldn’t tell who it was or what they were saying. Ember lay on her back, staring up at the siren girl screaming in agony, ripping her green hair out and carving gouges in her face and chest as she tried to hold the smoke inside herself. The rain fell into Ember’s eyes, running down her face, making her vision blur, but she could see well enough to witness what happened next. A roar of thunder rolled across the sky, making the ground tremble under her, and then a shard of bright lightning shredded the clouds, zipping down from the heavens and striking a tree on the edge of the clearing. In an instant, the tree burst into flames, and the ice around it started to melt. Ember watched the beautiful, roaring fire engulfing the tree and spreading to the tree next to it, heedless of the pouring rain.
Slowly, slowly, Ember let her mind-limb skulk out of her skull and spread across the ground, reaching and crawling toward the trees, toward the fire. Every inch the mental net stretched added more pain to the agony lancing through her head, but she knew if she could just gather the heat, she could finish Lia off. The invisi-limb started collecting heat while it was nowhere near the burning trees, the fire was so intense Ember could feel the heat from where she was lying, nearly thirty feet away. But she needed all the heat she could get. So she pushed her invisi-limb further, further, until it struck the base of the trees and started to rise. The sudden jolt of power, of energy and blazing heat, made her gasp. It bloomed under her skin, inside her bones, bursting from every cell, and the pain in her head and her broken arm sank away under the euphoria of the incredible, buzzing power. Now, if she could just…direct it…
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Ember pushed herself into a sitting position while Lia continued to scream, the blue smoke pouring out of her faster and faster. Looking around, Ember’s gaze followed the direction the smoke was heading, and she saw Hiro, standing tall and blazing, his wild hair flying around his sharp face. He was holding the Grimoire, chanting the incantation, and the blue smoke was flooding into the glass bottle at his feet. He was taking Lia’s power.
Ember raised both her arms, feeling her dislocated shoulder and broken bone scream in protest, and bit her lip so hard she drew blood, tearing her lip open on her fangs. Grey washed her vision for a moment, and she pushed it back determinedly. She needed to do this. Carefully, achingly, she forced herself to her feet, forced her wobbling legs to hold her. Red light spilled over the clearing, over the rippling water and whirling liquid pillars of Lia’s magic, from the burning fire, and lightning sliced the sky over and over, thunder rattling the bones of the trees. Rain soaked everything, merging with the melting frost and ice and running into the lake. The black clouds choked the sky in a charcoal covering like smoke. And Ember felt all of it around her and inside her.
With a single scream, she arched her body as all the heat inside her, all her magnificent power burst free in a rush, and flames erupted from the ground right below Lia, swallowing her whole in a torrent of blazing, crackling, whirling fire. Lia’s screams rang into the trees and sky, then ended with horrible abruptness. Gasping, Ember released her power and felt a whoomph as it left her, stealing the true last of her energy with it. She fell to the ground with no care for her broken arm or sore ankle or cracked ribs. She hit the dirt carelessly and stayed there.
And that was it. That was when everything inside her collapsed from exhaustion. She was too tired to feel anything, say anything, move anything. She just lay there, breathing, listening to her own breathing and the rustle of the trees and the roar of the fire and the patter of rain. The rain danced on her skin, creating soft, cold streams down her arms and face. It felt good now — now that the rain had eased a little — getting soaked through and just sitting there. It was peaceful, not to have any emotions roiling inside her, no real thoughts bubbling in her brain. She'd had enough excitement and adventure to last her forever, she'd felt enough anger and hurt and happiness and fear and love that she never wanted to feel any of it ever again.
She wanted to go home — not to the academy, but really home, to Scotland — and spend a few weeks tucked away in a dark room with her books and MP3 player. She was done being angry with Reid and Sherry, done feeling hurt and betrayed, done being scared when her dreams and nightmares showed her things she knew could happen in reality, done pushing herself beyond her humanity to a creature with fangs and magic fire, done riding the insane rollercoaster that came with loving somebody so much it was unbearable without them near. It took too much effort, too much energy, and now she was done
.
Right there in the rain, sitting on the wet, grassy bank of Onyx Lake, Ember decided she was going home, she was going back to Scotland if it killed her.
Chapter Twelve
It took Ember three days to arrange everything for going home. She called her parents, handed in a letter to the school headmaster, and got most of her packing done. She had a couple of drawers of clothes left to load into her suitcase, but other than that, she was set for going home tomorrow.
After she’d gotten back from the lake – well, after Hiro had transported her back to her room, and not before she’d melted Cris, Perry and Brandon out of their ice cocoons – she’d taken a bath and drank some blood from a blood bag, napped for a good long time, and woken up to find Sherry sitting on the floor, staring at her with wet green eyes. With Lia dead, Sherry was free of the siren’s compulsion and full of guilt for how she’d acted toward her best friend. For an hour, all Sherry could say was how sorry she was. And Ember forgave her. It was pretty easy to forgive Sherry for, basically, being a bitch. It wasn’t so easy to forgive…certain other people for their…indiscretions, whether they were under compulsion or not – and Ember still wasn’t sure she believed that…certain people…had been under compulsion while they committed their indiscretions.
Yeah. She hadn’t forgiven Reid. She hadn’t seen him since before the fight with Lia. He’d been around, asking about her, asking to see her, but Hiro kept him away, and Ember was grateful. She didn’t want to see him. She couldn’t stand to see him. She’d already said her goodbyes to Cris and Sherry and Hiro, knowing it wasn’t really goodbye because they’d keep in touch. But with Reid…it was just goodbye. It had to be. And she wasn’t sure she could say it without falling to pieces. So it was easier if she didn’t see him again before she left. A clean break, as such.
On her last day at Acorn Hills, she was sitting in front of her open laptop with her fingers hovering over the keyboard. She’d finally gotten the time to sit down and write that email back to Julie, and she still had no idea what to say. There was too much to say in one email. It would take forever to explain all the ways in which her life had gone wrong in the last two months.
Chewing her lip, she glanced around the room she was sitting in, wondering if she would miss it, if she would miss the pale blue walls and the cracks in the white ceiling plaster, if she would miss the pretty wooden wardrobe and the little en-suite bathroom and the view of the sprawling forest she got out the window. She was sure she’d miss the forest, no matter how many bad experiences she’d had in it. She’d miss her tree. But maybe it was better that she was leaving them behind as well. For all the bad memories she had of the proud pines and shadowy boughs, she had good ones too – good memories that would only hurt her after this. It was best to leave the memories with the other secrets of the whispering forest.
Turning back to her laptop, Ember stared at the glowing screen and the blank email page, and sighed. In the end, she settled for typing the simplest thing she could think of:
Hey, Julie.
I’m coming home. Get the welcome party ready.
Ember. X
*****
** Reid **
Lying on his stomach with his hands folded on his pillow and his chin resting on the back of his hands, Reid scowled at the wall at the head of his bed. He’d been counting the tiny holes in the pale blue paint, left behind from years of people pushing thumbtacks into the wall to hold up posters. Pale blue was such a stupid color for a dorm room. Pale blue was a depressing color. It was barely even a color. It was just a handful of shades away from grey, and it was so institutional it made the whole place feel like a mental ward.
Maybe that was fitting, though, because he was starting to feel like he ought to be in a mental ward. His brain wouldn’t shut up, kept spazzing out and replaying memories he’d rather forget, memories that ripped him apart over and over. The one that his cruel mind liked to play over again best was the look on Ember’s face when she found him at the lake with Lia. God, if he could just forget that moment, burn it from his mind, he might be able to free himself of the pain for long enough to beat Hiro’s head in so he could go and talk to Ember. The little rat wouldn’t let him near her, wouldn’t even tell him how she was doing. How was he supposed to fix this if he couldn’t see her? He had to fix this. He would apologize, explain, beg on his knees, do whatever it took to make her take him back. This was serious, but it wasn’t permanent. It couldn’t be. Ember was just mad right now, but she’d get over it and forgive him and take him back and it would make them both stronger. He just needed to make her see past the hurt and fury.
He was tempted to enlist Cris’s help in getting in to see Ember. Cris was the only person still really talking to him – and, even knowing what had happened between him and Ember, Reid couldn’t dislike the American boy. He’d told Reid everything that had happened at the lake, though Reid had the feeling he’d told him purposely to make Reid feel guiltier. Ember had been in trouble, in danger, and he hadn’t been there to protect her. Brandon, of all people, had been there to help her, and that little rat-fox, Hiro, had saved her in the end. It made him sick to his stomach thinking of it, imagining Ember lying in the grass, bleeding, broken. He hated himself. He hated himself more than she could ever hate him, so much more than the rest of them seemed to hate him.
Ricky and Sherry had both been giving him the silent treatment for days now, though he didn’t think Sherry really had the right to. She’d been under Lia’s spell, too. She’d said things, screamed things even, at Ember that should have never been said. She’d abandoned her best friend to go shopping with the siren girl while Ember was struggling to hold herself together over his stupid betrayal.
He was just considering whether to go and find Cris or simply bash his head on the wall for a while, when he heard the door open. A wedge of light spilled across the dark room for a moment, illuminating the glass bottles on the desk and clouding the window so that he could see Ricky’s reflection standing in the doorway. Ricky closed the door carefully and the light disappeared, leaving them in darkness once more. Irritatingly, Ricky walked to the desk and flipped on the table lamp, throwing gold light across the room and reducing the shadows Reid had been befriending to pale ghosts in the corners. The brunette boy was hovering on his feet, and Reid could feel his gaze eating holes in the back of his skull.
“Stop staring at me, Ricky, or I swear to God, I’ll rip your eyes out,” Reid snapped, glaring at the wall in front of him. He’d lost count of the pin-holes now. He thought he’d been on seventy-four, but it could have been seventy-three. A small part of his mind told him it wasn’t important, that he had better things to do than moping, but he told it to shut up. He was thinking, planning. Counting the holes just kept him sane while he did the thinking and planning.
Ricky made a soft noise, almost a sigh, and Reid heard the springs in the other bed creak as Ricky sat down. Then, for the first time in four days, Ricky spoke to him. “Reid, have you…spoken to Ember…since….?” He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. There was no need to put into words all the things that Reid wished he could take back.
Carefully, Reid shook his head. “No. I’ve tried a hundred times, but that stupid fox won’t let me near her.” He hated that fox almost as much as he hated himself. All of this was the Kitsune’s fault. If he hadn’t told Ember about his kiss with Lia, Ember wouldn’t have been upset and angry and distancing herself from him, and he wouldn’t have ended up at the lake when he did because he would have been with Ember, where he was meant to be, and his world wouldn’t have blown up and sucked him down into the excruciating depths of hell.
The room was silent for a minute, but Reid could practically hear the sizzle of Ricky’s brain as he thought very, very hard about whatever he was going to say next. Hesitantly, he said, “I think you should go and talk to her.”
With a grunt, Reid rolled over and glowered at the brunette boy. “Did you miss the part where I said Hiro was—”
“I’ll explain it to Hiro. Just…I really think you need to go and see her. Like…now.” Something in Ricky’s voice, in his expression, stopped Reid from asking why. Instead, he just nodded somberly and got to his feet. Rising off his bed, Ricky met Reid’s even gaze with shadowed eyes, something like sympathy hiding in the blue-green depths, and put a hand on his friend’s arm in a gesture of support. It made Reid exceedingly nervous. Two hours ago, Ricky had been pointedly ignoring his existence, furious on Ember’s behalf – as if she weren’t mad enough herself – and now he was acting like someone had died. Something had changed, or maybe it was just something that Ricky had been keeping from him for the past four days, but whatever was going on, Reid wasn’t going to like it.
When he reached Ember’s room, the door was open. Cautiously, he peered around the door frame and looked into the room. Hiro was nowhere to be seen – Ricky must have drawn him off somewhere. But Ember was there, standing by her bed with her back to him, and his heart rose just a little, before abruptly plummeting into his stomach when he saw the suitcase lying open in front of her.
Her head was bowed as she folded clothes neatly and stacked them into the big suitcase, her golden hair falling on either side of her neck, exposing the delicate skin there. She worked swiftly and silently, and he watched the lines of her shoulder blades moving under her jumper as she folded a t-shirt. Somehow, she looked smaller and much more fragile than usual, as if the fight with Lia had taken all her feisty spirit out of her…or maybe it had been breaking up with him that had broken her so. It didn’t matter, because he was about to fix that.
