by K. Gorman
And then, she saw it. One of Scorchio’s stars was moving.
A plane.
There was no way they’d had time to reboot the shield. She knew it. Aiden had only just left—and besides that, the engines were trashed, anyway.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
A different kind of ringing began in her head. She started to shake again—not a soft shake, but a full, jittering seizure through her hands and arms, breath catching in a sob in her throat. Her eyes went wide, following the plane’s path. It sped over the valley’s lights like a jet-powered hawk above a feast.
The Phoenix rose, and her control slipped. Fire crawled up her clothes and kissed her cheek in gentle heat.
“I looked you up after our last meeting,” Kauffmann went on, oblivious to the danger. The alcohol was dark in his glass. “I’m sorry about your mother. You can understand why I want to protect my family.”
Her mind stuttered to a halt. Then, it erupted.
He couldn’t have picked a worse topic.
The hole of grief under her lungs burst like a dam, the hard anger sucking her breath down as the emotions exploded together. She clenched her fists hard as the anger and grief rocked through her, teeth baring as the fire rose within her, crackling loose from its constraints as her mental ability to give a shit for the person in front of her gave way to blind rage. The fire burned bright around her, lighting her reflection in the window like a roman candle as she raised her right arm.
“I will never understand,” she said.
She took the liquor cabinet first. Lacquered wood caught like kindling, freeing spirits with a soft whumph and the smash of breaking glass. It blazed in the window, reflecting in Kauffmann’s eyes as he turned to watch it. As his drink caught her eye, she tipped fire into that, too.
He stared at it with a loose, maddening sobriety, then put his glass back on the desk beside him.
“I guess I won’t be drinking anymore.”
Her attention returned to the plane, its solitary light cold with distance, blinking like a far-off beacon.
The Phoenix had an answer to that, too.
Fire rocked through her, and Kauffmann took a step back. The cityscape wavered before her eyes as the Phoenix reached past her, expanding into the room through her skin. Orange flames heated to gold, then blue, then white. Wings of fire extended, and a high trill sounded through her body.
She raised a burning hand.
“Meese!”
Jo had abandoned Gerard, turning to her with a panicked expression. The bar’s fire put her muscled figure in a stark silhouette, outlining every gun and hard edge, every hair that had slid free of the bun. White fire reflected in her wide eyes.
Gerard had the same eyes. By the expression on his face, she doubted he would ever underestimate her again.
Her hands stopped shaking. In her mind, she saw the end of her power. The Phoenix had near infinite fire, but its wick was burning out.
She pointed her burning hand to the sky. Fire burned a black hole into the ceiling above. Its cry was made of hissing air and crackling drywall. The plane was closer now, its light blinking a beacon for it.
Come on, Mom. She closed her eyes. Let this work.
She let the Phoenix fly.
With a shuddering jolt, they left the room. She felt a sense of weightlessness, of rushing air, of her stomach doing a slow flip.
Then, they exploded.
She was barely aware anything after that, only of the fire.
Fire enough to burn a thousand forests.
Fire enough to burn the sun.
Fire enough for Hell.
Chapter 38
Mieshka dropped to the floor like a limp puppet. As Jo watched, what remained of the fire snuffed out on her clothes, leaving her body dark, normal, and unmoving. Smoke rose from her prone form.
No. God, please no.
The bar still burned behind her—she could feel its heat on her back, like an open oven set to broil. Gun in hand, she looked back to the man she’d shot. At this point, it was fairly safe to say that he wouldn’t move. Too much of his blood soaked the carpet for any heroics.
Kauffmann leaned back over his desk, one hand raised as if to shield himself.
When Mieshka didn’t move, he lowered it. “What did she do?”
Jo’s jaw tensed. Behind, something fell on the bar, and a blast of heat hit her back. The smell reminded her of other fires, where burst trees had splintered, looking like they’d gotten kneecapped in the trunk. Singed sap had given the frontline a pine-fresh scent to its smoke.
She rounded on Kauffmann, who was staring down at Mieshka with mild shock and puzzlement on his face.
“You. You brought this.”
She leveled her gun at him. He didn’t notice, still staring at the burning sky. The fire reflected in his eyes. Soon, they’d have to move—or be trapped.
“What did she do?” he asked again.
With a quick glance at Gerard, Jo took a few steps forward and knelt by the fallen redhead. Her skin was hot, like someone who’d been by the campfire too long, but Jo felt a pulse in her neck.
She was alive. Breathing shallowly, but alive.
Jo stood again. When she looked up, Kauffmann was too close for her liking.
She flipped the gun over. The movement caught his drunken eye. He watched as she slammed the butt into his face.
The wet smack satisfied some dark part of her. He flinched back late, scrabbled at his desk, and slid to the floor.
She bent down and pilfered through his pockets. Unarmed.
“Look. Outside.” Gerard sat against the cracked, bloodied glass.
Her attention snapped to the hand inside his coat. She’d searched him, though, and there was nothing under the jacket but a bullet wound, so she looked out the window.
Pollution and moisture put a slight haze over the city, giving the air a glow. Far below, a lot of vehicles crowded the curb in front of the Cyprios Skytower. The army, she thought. Late, as usual.
“The sky,” he said.
She looked up, and her eyes grew wide.
There, spreading across the star-strewn deep blue, was fire. It drifted like ten thousand Will O’ Wisps, growing with the movement of a giant amoeba. Jo moved closer to the window, watching it spread. It was a forest fire for the sky.
“What did she do?” Gerard asked this time, not Kauffmann.
Jo could take a guess. The fire was following the same pattern as the Mages’ shield.
She glanced down at Mieshka, who did not move. Turning back to Kauffmann, she flipped her gun back around.
His eyes, though blurred by alcohol, fixed on the barrel as she pointed it at him. His mouth tightened. She’d done him a good blow to the jaw.
Fire seethed inside of Jo, too.
Kauffmann spoke. “You won’t shoot me. I didn’t…”
Jo did not smile as he trailed off. She had no sarcastic quip. Her face was stone. Impassive. Full of faults. She thought of shooting him, if only because she was angry and he said she wouldn’t. Thought, too, of all the soldiers they’d encountered today. How many of them had died? How many lived? And how many would still die, before the night was out?
“You brought this,” she said.
He flinched.
She hit him again. The butt of her gun pummeled hard onto his upper back. He had nowhere to fall. He curled over from the pain and whimpered.
Gently, she cradled Mieshka’s small shoulders. As she dragged her away, the sprinklers spurted on. The wall of glass blurred with water, tinting orange in the city’s light.
The elevator dipped as Jo stepped onto it. She leaned Mieshka against the wall, noticing that her skin wasn’t as hot as before. Standing up, Jo stepped onto the threshold and took in the room.
Gerard watched her by the window. The bar fire had spread to the carpet. Her boot stopped the door from closing. She stared at him, considering her options.
He held her stare.
She swore. Mieshk
a was making her too soft.
She spun a chair into the door to keep it open and walked over to the bleeding man. Except for a tiny whine of pain, he didn’t protest as she dragged him close to the threshold. She put him next to the couch outside the elevator, kicked the chair out, and watched while she waited for the doors to close.
“I’ll send it back up when I’m done. Ambulance ought to have come by now, with all the fire alarms we’ve set off.” Kauffmann was still doubled over by his desk, staring up at the sky. Water darkened his slate-gray suit. “Try not to bring your boss.”
“Thanks,” said Gerard, whose wound had a tougher time with the water.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the kid. She’d hate herself if I let someone else die.”
They exchanged a long look. The door rumbled shut. She tapped the button, then turned back to Mieshka.
She was still out, which made Jo worry. Hopefully, this was some sort of magical side effect and not brain damage. Something that ended with her alive and well.
Jo looked away, and her gaze caught on an engraved warning in the control panel.
‘In case of fire, use stairs.’
Her laugh was a single, savage vowel.
Chapter 39
Aiden was no longer tired. Buck’s driving had seen to that.
He punched the hatchback to speeds inadvisable in traffic, its little engine whining. It was not a smooth ride, but it was quick. Within five minutes, Buck sped into the roundabout that marked the turnoff for Aiden’s neighborhood. Loose change rattled in the cup holder as the car cranked through traffic. A chorus of horns followed them.
Aiden braced himself against the door, knees knocking the glovebox. He clutched the flaring Fire crystal to the seatbelt across his chest, watching the road blur.
It still wasn’t fast enough.
“Whose car is this?”
“Mo’s.”
“Nice of him to lend it.”
Aiden itched to use his magic. Unfortunately, the laws of teleportation specified an ‘only teleport yourself’ rule. There were nasty consequences if he brought a friend.
The crystal had enough energy for two people. Maybe more.
Hence Buck’s manic driving.
He glanced over. Buck’s face had dropped its usual Zen. His forehead furrowed as the Little Engine That Could got boxed in. A traffic light turned red. Buck stared at it, focused. His arms were tense on the wheel.
Aiden didn’t blame him. He felt antsy without the shield.
“Will Meese be okay?” Buck asked. “She seemed a bit… fiery.”
Aiden leaned his head back, closing his eyes. It seemed his apprentice had grown on them.
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. Give it time.”
A lot of time. More time than he’d estimated. She’d been dumped with a lot of power. By her experience leeching power through the transfer, it was like going from a straw to a firehose.
“What’s that?”
The crystal pulsed in his hand. Through his eyelids, the light above them changed. Aiden frowned. Opening them, he glanced through the windshield.
Above—high above—a silent curtain of fire spread over the sky.
And it did so with an energy signature that was familiar to his Elemental senses.
That wasn’t an enemy attack.
He swore.
“It’s Meese. Keep going. I’ll meet you at the engine.”
Aiden left the Fire crystal in the cup holder, pulled on his Element, and teleported.
Chapter 40
Chris huddled in the shadows next to her, tense and alert, his dark eyes reflecting the nearest light as they slipped over the scene again and again.
Robin could understand. She was doing something similar—though, by the strained look on his face, she might be doing it for different reasons.
At first, they’d been doing roughly what Ian had predicted and what she had actually first suggested herself—moving boxes around. Except these boxes were filled with armor, ammunition, and explosives. Mostly, she noticed that the explosives were carted around by older people, but after a while, and after more than a few second-glances to Chris and herself, they ended up carrying those, too.
There was, it turned out, not quite as many people gathered for the attack than they’d have liked.
Which meant that, when it came time to carry everything to the place where they were actually going to attack, everyone went.
Including herself and Chris.
And, when their delivery mission had finished, a few people—both men and women, she noticed—started handing out weapons.
The woman that handed her a gun paused after, her eyebrows drawing together as she likely registered just how young Robin was.
“You, uh, know how to use this?” she asked.
“Yep,” Robin said.
“All right, then.”
She swiveled and jogged away, back to retrieve other firearms.
A second later, someone else put a different gun in Chris’ hands.
They didn’t ask any questions.
“What the fuck?” Chris said. “This is fucking insane. We’re supposed to be organized—have rules. We’re way too fucking young for this.”
“Actually, recruitment age is supposed to drop to fourteen next year, which matches the age for gun licenses.” She shot him a grin. “I think it’s for training and base maintenance purposes, but, y’know.”
“Great. So I’m allowed to legally kill people before I’m allowed to legally have sex?”
“Yep. It is only a proposed law, though. Besides…” She nodded up the tunnel, toward the end of it where she’d last seen the explosives go. “Clearly, they need the people. We can at least help them with that, even if it’s only to artificially boost their numbers and do random shit like open and close doors or something.”
She shot him a smile before continuing. “I do know how to use this, by the way. My brother showed me. We used to practice with his gun in the apartment—empty, of course. He never let me shoot anything.” She wrinkled her nose. “Probably because he was using bullets owned by the military, and it would have been a notable waste.”
“You used to practice shooting a real gun in your apartment?”
“An empty gun. You know, not loaded. Only dangerous if you whack someone over the head with it.”
Chris had been switching his stunned look from her, to the gun in his hand, and back to her for the past minute, but her last sentence put his attention straight on her.
They stared at each other for a minute, then she made a frustrated noise in her throat.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Checking that the safety was on, she laid her gun on the ground and reached over to take his.
“Here,” she said, angling it so that the tip was pointed at the ground and the side of the gun caught the light enough for him to see. “You see this little slidey-button? Kind of like the button on Mr. Morrison’s old DVD player? This is the safety. Right now, it’s on, which means the gun won’t fire. If you slide it back like this…” She demonstrated what she meant, and the safety made a barely-audible click. “It’s now off, and the gun will fire. Got it?”
“Er, yes?”
“Good. So keep this fucking thing on—” She slid it back into position, then put her hands on the gun, demonstrating for him. “—and if you need to fire, use both hands like this. Don’t keep your finger on the trigger while we’re walking. That’s stupid, and everyone around will side-eye the fuck out of you. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
“Good.” She handed the gun back to him and bent back down to pick up hers. “And keep it pointed at the floor. It makes everyone nervous if you don’t.”
As she straightened, she caught the eye of someone across the tunnel—a proper soldier, she guessed by his build and the way he stood. He seemed amused, with the traces of a smile edging out at the corner of his mouth.
She was about to address him when a signal went up the line.
It was time.
*
Staying in the back didn’t quite work the way she’d thought it would. When the line began to move—really move, everyone rushing to the front in a compact churn—and the attack started, she and Chris were swept up in the tide.
She lost him in less than a minute, pushed apart by the crowd.
It was all she could do to keep her footing in the loose dirt and broken concrete of the tunnel.
A team of soldiers must have gone in first. Either that, or the Underground people worked fast. By the time she reached the mouth of the tunnel and stepped over the three feet of broken remains that had smashed them from the Underground and into a well-lit, pristine white hallway, she heard they’d already cleared the first five floors and were working their way through the sixth.
Two enemy soldiers sat bound against the wall, guarded by a man who pointed a gun in the vicinity of their heads.
One of the bound-up men caught her eye as she passed.
She caught Homeguard patch on his uniform. And stuttered to a stop.
What the...?
She frowned, pausing to do a double-take at the man guarding them—a clear denizen of the Underground by the non-military-issue weapon he held and the mix of street and exercise clothing he wore—and the two soldiers on the ground.
Then, it clicked.
Jesus Christ, they’re wearing fake uniforms.
Okay, she probably should have expected that—it would have been pretty obvious to anyone if the Swarzgard soldiers had frolicked into Ryarne wearing their usual gear—but, for some reason, it felt like an extra insult. As if they had, on a personal level, betrayed her.
Anger snarled through her. Determined, she strode to the end of the hall, found the staircase that everyone had been funneling toward a minute ago, and started her way up.
This time, she heard gunfire.
She flinched, ducking her head, then glanced up as her mind registered just how far away it sounded—definitely not on her floor, or the one above. More like ten floors, if she’d heard right. She followed the stairs up, one hand hooked around the metal, using it to swing herself around the turns on the landings like she did with the ones at school.
