Teja shook her head, confused by the chatter inside her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, until all she could hear was howl of the wind past her ears and the emptiness echoing inside her chest. Then, she refocused on the pyres burning below her.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Rings of fire.
It didn’t matter what she did, now. It was all over, anyway. Even Heaven had stopped answering its calls, so maybe God and Gaia had moved on from this universe. Maybe it was for the best. Teja slowly loosened her grip on the gargoyle and prepared to meet the darkness awaiting her. No pearly gates or peaceful green fields. Just oblivion. A total blackout.
The whispers returned, more persuasive, now. Promising her the one thing that she couldn’t ignore. They said that someone important was waiting for her. That he would be all alone if she jumped.
They said she had a Match.
Teja hesitated, her heartbeat speeding up. Was it a lie? Did it matter? Even if she found her Match, what good would she be to him, now? The world was ending and she was empty. Caring for another person was the last thing she wanted.
But, she still found herself drawing back from the edge, because… she felt him. Through her shock and grief, she saw something shimmering on the horizon. Something that cut through her haze and had her fighting to think clearly. She had a Match.
Wait.
She was a Fire Phase. If her Match was out there, she couldn’t just abandon him in this god-awful world. It went against every rule of her House. Her first and only priority was to protect him. She had to stay with him, no matter what. She couldn’t kill herself.
She had to live.
Teja stepped back from the ledge. As she did, one the roof tiles shifted under her weight. It threw her off balance and she lost her footing. Her hand grabbed for the gargoyle, trying to steady herself, but it was too late.
Her grip on the building failed and she was suddenly freefalling towards the ground. The hot wind blew past her head, as she nosedived towards the courtyard, far below. She didn’t have time to cry out. Even the whispers in her head went silent as she plummeted downward.
As the stone pavement raced up to meet her.
As she fell through clouds of thickening smoke.
As she saw her future compressed into nanoseconds.
Teja plummeted towards the cobblestones.
…But she never hit the ground.
Chapter One
The police suddenly found a new element in the fight that not only upset their calculations,
but themselves as well
Robert Barr- "The Face And The Mask"
Two Years Later: Christmas Eve Morning
“We need to talk, Chief Pryce.”
Sullivan Pryce paused at his secretary’s desk, shooting her a surprised look. Randa Goldrush was a pragmatic and distant woman, who barely spoke three words a day to him. She never wanted to talk. It was one of the reasons he’d hired her. When it came to screening resumes, he looked for buzzwords like “practically mute” and “antisocial.” The last thing he wanted was some cheerful employee who brought him cupcakes on his birthday or wanted to carpool.
“Talk?” He repeated warily. “About what?”
“You said to let you know if I heard any interesting rumors. Well, I have.”
Sullivan’s mood zoomed upward. “Rumors about the Elementals?”
He also liked job candidates who could help him gather information on the mutant Cult of what-the-fuck-evers who’d infiltrated his town. That had been a huge factor in hiring Randa. He’d been understandably skeptical when she’d first applied for the job, but she’d turned out to be a tirelessly worker, with no interest in socializing and no love for the rest of her kind.
She and Sullivan got along great.
A few months before, the so-called “Elementals” had shown up in Mayport Beach, Florida. As the chief of police, Sullivan had suspected they were up to no good, even before he’d known they were a mutant Cult of what-the-fuck-evers. Since then, he’d arrested them for countless crimes, watched them preform impossible feats, been stalked by them, insulted by them, and kissed by one of them.
Also, there was a twelve hour period of Sullivan’s life that he couldn’t account for and he knew they somehow were responsible.
Several weeks before, he’d been walking home through the park. The next thing he knew, it was morning and he was waking up face down on his front lawn. The only clues he had as to where he’d been were slightly frostbitten fingers and a strange looking gun tucked in his waistband. Even those clues were weird, since there was ordinarily very little chance of frostbite in South Florida and the gun was like nothing he’d ever seen. And Sullivan had seen a lot of guns in his life. Obviously, something Cult-y had happened.
Since he’d never blacked out or lost time before, he could only assume that the Elementals had somehow roofied him. All he wanted for Christmas was the whole gaggle of them booted out of town. He just wasn’t sure how to achieve that goal. Not legally, anyway.
No matter how aggravated he got, Sullivan wasn’t about to break the law to see them gone. He believed in justice. He took his job seriously and he followed the rules. Sure he had a video tape of them just appearing out of thin air and unprovable speculation that they were involved in a beheading or two, but none of that was going to hold up in court. He needed to find a legitimate, not-weird reason to evict the bastards from Mayport Beach.
The first logical step was to learn all he could about them. If he was going to fight those freaks, he’d need information. Randa knew all the details of their bullshit backstory and she was willing to answer his questions in clear and matter-of-fact ways. It was one of her best qualities.
Randa was an “Elemental,” but her own kind seemed to hate her. To Sullivan, that was the best possible reference she could have. Tall and too thin, with the face of a debutant and clothing straight out of Amish Vogue, Randa was the only “Elemental” he trusted.
Well, no. That wasn’t exactly true.
Sullivan didn’t trust anyone.
But, Randa was at least pleasant and predictable. She was one of the few female mutants who never hit on him, she kept to herself, and she typed eighty words a minute. In short, weirdo or not, she was one hell of a receptionist.
Now, she eyed him with sad concern. Randa was always sad. She was one of those people who’d obviously fallen apart at some point and never fully recovered. She’d patched up the pieces, but she was still fragile along every crack line. By this point, she seemed to have resigned herself to never fully healing. Randa didn’t mope about it or try to hide it, she just endured. Sullivan respected that about her.
After he ran the other weirdos out of Mayport, Randa could stay. She was a nice kid, who just needed a break.
“The rumors are about you.” She explained in her quiet voice. “Rumors about the Happiness box.”
“The what box?”
“The Happiness box.” She repeated. “If you have it, you need to give it to Job, of the Earth House immediately. It’s very important. You can’t imagine the destruction it will cause if it falls into the wrong hands.”
Sullivan stared at her and gave up on deciphering that gibberish. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That wasn’t unusual, though. She might be Employee of the Month, but Randa was still a Cult member. Half of everything she said was straight out of a “Dungeons & Dragons” manual. “What is a Happiness box?”
Her eyebrows tugged together like she was confused by the question. Or confused that he would need to ask the question. “It’s one of the Tablets of Fate, of course.”
“Yeeeaaaaaah.” He drew out the word in a humoring tone. Well, that just cleared everything right up. “Like… from that videogame?”
“No, the Tablets are real. They’re very powerful and people seem to think you have one. There are rumors everywhere.”
Sullivan was still drawing a blank. “Well, the rumors are wrong. I d
on’t have one, so ‘people’ are out of luck.” Dismissing the whole nutty conversation, he started for the door. “You want tacos for lunch? The stand by the pier is making red and green tortilla shells, in honor of Christmas Eve. I’ll bring you back some.”
“No one is going to believe you don’t have the Happiness box, though.” Randa called, ignoring the question. “They’re going to come looking for you, Chief Pryce.”
Sullivan didn’t want to hurt Randa’s feelings by rolling his eyes, but it was hard to resist. “Well, if they show up, tell them I’ll be at the pier.” The Cult was always loitering down there, so it was the ideal place to stake them out. He headed out into the sunshine.
The best part about living in Florida was the balmy temperatures. Even at Christmas, it was eighty degrees. Mayport Beach was small oasis of bungalows and palm trees, situated on the Gulf of Mexico. Sullivan had grown-up in the sleepy town. He loved the place, especially now, during the holidays. Every December, there were twinkling lights and plastic flamingoes in Santa hats on every street. As ridiculous and tacky as they were, the decorations reminded him of his grandparents and the only happy memories of his childhood.
Of course, thanks to the Cult, thinking about his grandparents also reminded him of the fact that his grandfather was supposedly an incognito Elemental. And that Sullivan shared his extraterrestrial DNA. And that all the Cult women wanted to mate with him to perpetuate their creepy species or something.
Jesus, it was bad enough they were mutants, but did they have to be insane mutants?
Sullivan wanted to talk to his cousin about the otherworldly visitors, but Melanie was engaged to one of the freaks. Whatever was happening, she undoubtedly knew waaaay more about it than Sullivan did and she wasn’t sharing. Clearly, he couldn’t trust her to tell him anything useful. She was on their side. So fine. He’d figure out a way to get rid of the Cult on his own.
Mayport Beach paid him to protect its citizens and, while it wasn’t explicitly stated in the charter, he was pretty sure that mandate included teleporting mutants.
Crossing the street, Sullivan headed for the beach. He could see the shiny gold star on top of the Christmas tree as he drew closer to the pier. The town put it up every year, decorating it with be-glittered seashells and brightly painted wooden fish.
The fifteen foot pine drew Cult members like moths to porch light. They seemed fascinated with it. Apparently, they didn’t have Christmas on Krypton, because they were always trying to figure out what the tree “meant.” He counted six of them just standing around, staring up at it like it was an inscrutable painting. Two even had their heads tilted as if they were viewing it in a gallery, their arms crossed over their chests and their eyes narrowed in deep concentration.
It was too bad he planned to see them all long gone before springtime. They’d probably love the annual performance art exhibition that Mayportians creatively entitled: “The Easter Egg Hunt.”
Sullivan’s eyes automatically checked faces, hoping to spot the one Cult member he wanted to see. Dark hair, and hazel eyes and a face like Sofia Loren. She always looked like his deepest, most hopeless fantasies come to life.
Teja.
For some reason he couldn’t fathom, Teja seemed even more fixated on him than the rest of the mutants. A few weeks ago, she’d shown up at his house and bluntly told him they should have sex. Other Cult women suggested that, too, but Teja was the only one who’d ever gotten him to agree.
Even after Teja explained that she could never have any feelings for him and that it was just about sex… Even knowing she couldn’t possibly be attracted to someone with a gigantic scar on his face… Even realizing it was all some kind of Cult-y trick to get passed his defenses… Sullivan had still been helpless to resist. He would’ve accepted any caveats to have her.
Most of the time, Sullivan went through the motions of living, mired in apathy and loneliness, but he felt alive when Teja was with him. In his whole life, that crazy woman was the only thing that made him believe in magic.
That pissed him off more than anything.
When he kissed her, something deep inside had roared that she was his. All his instincts had lit up like fireworks, telling him that he was finally where he belonged. But almost as soon as their lips touched, Teja had panicked. Clearly, whatever the rest of the Cult had offered her to seduce Sullivan, it wasn’t worth going through with actually seducing Sullivan. She’d whispered “I can’t do this” and disappeared from his arms. Leaving him alone and unbelievably frustrated.
He hadn’t seen her since. So many times since that night, he’d searched around town for her, but she wasn’t there. She’d even apparently stopped her idiot family from shadowing his every move, (“guarding him” they’d called it) so Sullivan suspected that she was done with him. He’d probably never see Teja again.
But he still always looked for her.
Sullivan sighed when he once again came up empty. Teja wasn’t there. Christ, why did he even want to see her? She was gorgeous and magical, but the woman was a weirdo. Wherever she was, Sullivan’s goal should be to send all the rest of the Cult off to join her.
He couldn’t trust Teja or anyone else.
Scanning the crowd for the brunette bane-of-his-existence wasn’t a total waste of time, though. Since he was keeping tabs on every Cult member he saw, he used his phone to surreptitiously snap pictures of the ones he didn’t immediately recognize and make notes on their distinguishing features.
The colored stripes in their hair had to signify something. Maybe some kind of rank. They all had them and they came in a variety of hues. He needed to ask Randa about it. Since Sullivan was colorblind, it was hard to differentiate all the shades, but he did his best. This group had one navy blue streak, three neon green or maybe orange, one that might have been brown or…
He abruptly stopped his analysis, his instincts firing up.
Sullivan lifted his head with a snap, looking around. Something was wrong. He could feel it. He didn’t believe in premonitions, but, all his life, he’d had an uncanny ability to sense when things were about to go FUBAR. There was just enough time to brace himself and then a tornado slammed into him.
The concentrated cyclone of air lifted him off his feet and sent him flying. He felt his body twisting. He heard screaming as people scattered. He saw the palm tree he was about to hit headfirst and knew it was going to fracture his skull.
…But, somehow it didn’t.
The tree seemed to move at the last second. Sullivan had no idea how, but he missed it. He hit the ground twenty feet from where he’d started, but without a snapped neck. He didn’t believe in miracles, either, but the physics of that near-miss seemed impossible. It was like the tree just shifted out of the way for him. It was definitely weird.
At the moment, though, he had bigger problems than vanishing vegetation. Swearing fluidly, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and already knew that this was the Cult’s fault.
“Hand it over, human!” A male voice bellowed. “You know you can’t win this.”
Christ, he hated it when they called him “human.”
Sullivan’s world was still spinning as a pair of gigantic hands seized him. A monstrous Cult member dragged him to his feet. Since Sullivan topped out at just over six and a half feet, he was used to being the biggest guy in the room. Whoever this Cult member was, he had Sullivan beat. The guy was like a giant on steroids. His blonde hair was shaved into a Mohawk, except for the yellow streak at his temple. Dressed in black and grinning at the havoc he’d caused, he tossed Sullivan backwards like a sack of flour.
“Don’t bother fighting, because you can’t win, boy.” The guy taunted as Sullivan hit the sand, for the second time. “Just give me the box and live to lose another day.”
Box? This was about that rumor Randa had been talking about? Someone actually believed that shit?
“Are you fucking stupid?” Sullivan got out, standing up, again.
The guy obviously did
n’t like that question. He let loose another volley of air. It hit Sullivan’s chest like a cannon and he skidded across the beach, wondering if his ribs had just cracked.
“Son-of-a-bitch.” He glared at Mr. Mohawk, his hand going to his injured side. “That’s it. You are under a-goddamn-rrest, asshole.” He staggered to his feet yet again, because Sullivan had never known when to stay down. No matter how stupid it was, he always kept fighting.
The guy gave a slow smile as Sullivan faced him. “I kinda hoped you’d be warrior. It just makes this more fun.”
“No!” A woman ran forward, looking panicked. “Stop!”
A couple months before, she’d introduced herself to Sullivan as “Hadlyn Red-Cloud. The Cult seemed to favor names plagiarized from the American West. Hallie was one of the more persistent weirdoes shadowing him. Last week, she’d offered to buy him an airplane in exchange for going out to dinner with her. Sullivan had turned it down, but she still wasn’t giving up. Like a lot of Cult members, she kept asking him out, no matter how many times he locked her up for stalking.
As a group, they weren’t great at taking hints.
“Sax, what the hell do you think you’re doing?!” She shrieked. “Job said Sullivan was to be protected and you know it. Haven’t you Air Phases done enough damage without you hurting…?”
“I don’t give a shit what Job says!” The giant named Sax interrupted. “And I’ve been Banished by the pussies in the Air House, so I don’t give a shit about them, either. As for you and the Weather Phases, you need to go back to planning afternoon showers and stay out of my way, Hallie. I’m finally going to get the power I deserve and no one will stop me. Not you and not him.” He jabbed a finger at Sullivan. “This filthy primate is going to give me what I want or I’ll break every bone in his body. So, fuck off unless you want the same.”
“He could be someone’s Match, you idiot!” Hadlyn insisted. “Parson was his grandfather. He’s the best hope we have of…”
“Hallie, get away from him.” Sullivan interrupted and pulled his gun free. Actually, it wasn’t his gun. It was the one he’d found hidden at the small of his back that morning he’d woken up on his front lawn. From the position of it in his waistband, Sullivan had known he was the one who’d put it there, but damn if he could remember where it had come from. It had to be some kind of Cult weapon. “Sir, I’m going to ask you nicely to get on the ground and put your hands behind your back.”
Queen of the Magnetland (The Elemental Phases Book 5) Page 32
