Firebird (The Elemental Wars Book 2)

by K. Gorman

  Kitty shrugged. “It was just a spell. They don’t hit like they used to.”

  ‘Used to’? Robin perked up. Just how much time did Kitty spend fighting Mages? As far as she knew—Meese had explained it to her more than once—Kitty was a normal Elemental, not a Mage. Could ordinary Elementals become immune to Mage magic?

  “You were unconscious,” Meese said.

  “Yeah.” Kitty inspected a chip in her violet nail polish. A thin scab ran across the back of her hand—a new scrape, by the looks of it. Recently closed. “I was.”

  An ache started in Robin’s back. She shifted, moving her legs from behind Kitty’s ass to level herself into a sitting position. Now, only Meese stayed down.

  Kitty’s bird-like eyes examined the redhead. “You look worse. He get you, too?”

  “Almost,” Meese said. “Gobardon saved us, just before…” She looked away, then back again, meeting Kitty’s eyes. Her flame stuttered in the air.

  Kitty reached forward, across the gap. She pressed the tips of her fingers onto Meese’s blanket, around her knee. Two rings flashed in the firelight. The wild edge slipped through Kitty’s face like an opera mask. She seemed otherworldly. Barely human. Feral.

  But, here, she was a friend.

  “Don’t worry,” the Electric girl said. “Gobardon and I will kill him.”

  She said it with a casualness that made Robin shiver.

  Meese frowned. “He’s dead.”

  “What?” Confusion softened the wildness on Kitty’s face.

  “Yeah,” Robin confirmed. “Ketan saw it. A bunch of black crystal ate him. The Mages and everyone went to investigate.”

  “Ketan?”

  “New Fire Elemental,” Meese said.

  “Oh, him. Huh.” Kitty straightened.

  With the wild edge softening even more, Robin could almost see her think.

  “Huh,” she said again. “I guess the other guy didn’t need us, after all.”

  Meese’s eyes sharpened. “What other guy?”

  “The Reaper,” Kitty said. “He was supposed to level the playing field for us. We didn’t think he’d actually manage to kill him.”

  Meese and Robin exchanged looks. Was Kitty really talking about a planned murder?

  “You did say you’d ‘take care of’ Michael,” Meese mused. “Gobardon, too?”

  Kitty nodded. “Gobardon likes you.”

  Silence resumed. The pensive expression dropped from Meese’s face. The firelight flickered in the room. Robin smelled the faintest hint of smoke.

  “So, you and…” Robin hesitated at the name. “Gobardon—you came here intending to kill Michael?”

  For the first time since she’d walked in, Kitty looked at Robin. Really looked. The confusion had dropped, replaced by a keen, heavy focus. Like she’d turned on the high beams of her mind and set them on Robin.

  She froze, feeling Kitty’s scrutiny as tangibly as she felt the fire burning beside her.

  Then, Kitty turned it off. Put it away. She went back to examining her nails.

  “Yes. We did exactly that. Now,” she started, and put her hands on her lap, palms down, and smoothed them down her jeans. Violet nail polish gleamed in the light. “Tell me about this black crystal.”

  There wasn’t much to tell. In fact, Kitty knew more about the crystal than they did—but not by much.

  “It’s the thing that ate their planet—mutated, magic-eating black crystal,” she explained. “Gobardon’s family was big into it, but he didn’t tell me much. I wonder if Roger knows more…”

  Her eyes wandered to the door.

  Meese and Robin exchanged another look. Kitty’s cues were not subtle.

  “Go,” Meese said. “I need to sleep, anyway.”

  Kitty was out the door before Meese had fully finished. A beam of light slanted over Robin’s bed, making the small bulb of flame seem insubstantial and ineffective.

  The Electric Elemental paused. “You need anything? Chocolate? Cupcakes? Alcohol?”

  “Just fill me in later,” Meese said. She’d already resettled onto the pillow, eyes closed.

  “Ta.”

  The door shut with a click. They heard Kitty walk away.

  Darkness resumed. What warmth remained of Meese’s fire was quickly dissipating.

  “Cupcakes and alcohol?” Robin said to the room.

  “Probably not a good combo with my meds,” Meese grunted. Robin heard the blanket rustle as she moved. “Her heart’s in the right place. Head? Not so much.”

  Chapter 41

  The buildings stretched up around him, full of dust, dim light, and a cool, damp smell. Cobbled stones bumped through the soles of his shoes as they cut through one of the more genteel alleys in the Core.

  It was funny. In all his explorations, he’d never found this part of the Underground. Perhaps a sixth sense had kept him away from the Society’s haunt—a part of him that knew he’d end up on the wrong side of their law.

  And now, the Society’s most powerful members surrounded him.

  With each step, a sense of dread solidified in Ketan’s stomach.

  What if they didn't find anything?

  Or, even worse, what if they did?

  His memories of the black crystal were brief, hectic, and awash with adrenaline. Not the most reliable narrative. And he'd even made a wrong turn.

  The Underground was a twisty, confusing place.

  They were close now. Maybe two minutes. The mouth of the alley yawned up ahead, revealing the dim yellow street he’d run away from. Already, he could see the edge of the building…

  Aiden broke off his conversation with the Water Mage and joined him, matching his step.

  “How long?”

  He nodded toward the end of the alley. “It’s just up ahead.”

  “What? Oh.” Aiden made an impatient gesture with his hand. “No, how long have you been able to set things on fire?”

  Oh. Right. For a second, he had forgotten about that part. “I awakened last year.”

  “Awakened? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

  Shadow cut across most of Aiden’s face, but there was just enough light to see the quirk of his eyebrow.

  He relaxed. Suddenly, the Fire Mage didn’t seem so intimidating.

  “Yeah,” Ketan said. “That’s what they say in Terremain, anyway.”

  “Are there enough ‘awakenings’ in Terremain to justify the new verb use?”

  “Er… I’ve heard of six, excluding Kitty’s.”

  Aiden missed a step. “Seven? All different?”

  “Electric, Earth, Water, Shadow…” He counted them off on his fingers. “Not sure of the others.”

  The Fire Mage cast a look back. The Water Mage followed close behind, her head bowed over her phone. The screen underlit her face with pale luminescence.

  When she didn’t speak, Aiden turned back to him. “Are you sure there weren’t eight awakenings?”

  “Well, yeah,” Ketan said. “Including mine.”

  Aiden gave him a flat look. They’d reached the alley mouth now, and the two paused at its edge. Fear pricked at Ketan’s neck as he remembered why they’d come. He snapped around, scanning the street. Memories of the crystal flushed through his brain, and he pushed them back.

  But Aiden hadn’t finished with the previous subject.

  “Eight, Sophia. Did you hear that? Eight.”

  He seemed caught up on the number, but Ketan couldn’t figure out why. By the look on his face, the Fire Mage had just gone through an awakening himself. He certainly wasn’t as dead tired as he’d appeared earlier.

  “I heard,” she said. After a moment, she slid her phone back into her pocket and looked up, past Aiden. Her eyes met Ketan’s. “Where?”

  The building was as he’d left it—a brickwork face built solidly against the street. Nothing about its front suggested the violence that had ripped through its back and sides—it was perfect, as far as Underground standards went. Pretty, e
ven. Decorative window sashes stood out against the dark-stained brickwork, their pale color turned somewhat dingy by neglect. Matching buttresses vanished into the darkness past the Underground’s support rafters, their slate-gray ends just barely visible in the lighting.

  The front door even had a filigreed arch over its frame—something he hadn’t noticed when he’d burst out, running for his life.

  Pieces of the door still lay on the street, blackened and charred from his Element.

  Roger sidled up to one of them. When he nudged it with his toe, the wood made a hollow sound against the street.

  That was when Ketan noticed how quiet everything was.

  Fear tingled into his blood. His heart hammered faster. When he took a step, his limbs stiffened like cold meat.

  He forced himself to take a breath, to push through the panic. Paralysis wouldn’t help him—not here, not against the crystal. And panic would only get him so far.

  He had a job to do.

  He raised a hand, ignoring the shake he felt in his muscles. “Over there.”

  All eyes turned to the building.

  No one moved closer.

  “Roger, was this where you guys fought?” Sophia watched the building, face blank, eyes shifting over the scene.

  “In the alley to the side.” His right arm was bound tightly to his chest in a sling, but his left hung loose by his side. The paleness of his hand stood out against his clothes. Despite the injury, he seemed to be the only one willing to move. He walked toward them, a subtle hitch to his normally glass-smooth stride. “We were down a little ways. Past the building.”

  “That’s not where I saw him,” Ketan said.

  Aiden growled something in his old language. The syllables had a strange staccato lilt to them. He flipped the flashlight in his hand. Its metal exterior rang when he caught it.

  “I suppose we’ll have to go inside, see for ourselves. Gobardon?”

  “The back quarter of the building has collapsed. I can feel where the earth has piled up.” The Earth Mage stood a little further back from them, head bowed. There was a tension to his body that Ketan hadn’t noticed before. His eyes darted around, as if searching for something. After a few seconds, he looked up. “I can’t feel anything after that.”

  Aiden’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t feel or can’t? Is something blocking you?”

  Gobardon shook his head, brow furrowing. “It’s like there’s… nothing. Maybe if I push a little…”

  “Don’t.” Sophia’s voice cut like a knife. “It’ll eat it, if it’s there. You won’t see anything.”

  Ketan kept quiet, soaking it all in. He felt like a fish in a new tank. Everything was different. Mages were foreign to him. He had no idea what Gobardon had just tried to do, but clearly, Sophia and Aiden knew. He must have been doing something magically. Something that would allow him to… Sense whatever was there? he guessed.

  Well, he was an Earth Mage. And the Underground was made of earth. Maybe that had something to do with it.

  “What are the rules?” Roger had stopped, head turned to the building like a hound on a scent. “It eats magic and grows. What if there’s no magic?”

  “It grows slower without magic,” Aiden said. “Like winter fudge.”

  “So, theoretically, it should have slowed.”

  Aiden and Sophia exchanged a look.

  “You’re not going in,” the Water Mage said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Someone needs to,” Roger said.

  A shiver crawled up Ketan’s spine. He remembered the way Roger had fought Michael—he’d done it without fear, without doubt. It hadn’t been a clean fight, but it had been professional. Before the crystal had taken Michael, Roger had made him bleed.

  He’d planned for that fight in the same way he planned to face the crystal now—as merely another obstacle to overcome.

  But the Mages had other plans.

  “Aiden, Gobardon, and I are going,” Sophia said. She raised an eyebrow. “We’re the only ones who can teleport ourselves out.”

  If her snub insulted Roger, he didn’t show it. His face maintained the same placid calm. He switched to support in less than a breath. “What do you need?”

  “Some caution tape, for starters. Set up a quarantine—but not in a way that will cause panic.”

  “If anyone asks, you’re renovating.” Roger’s eyes slid to Gobardon. “How much area do you need?”

  “Give us five blocks,” Sophia said. “Warn them of dust.”

  “But not of magic-eating crystal,” Aiden added.

  Roger nodded to one of the Society members who had followed them out and made a curt gesture. The man vanished back up the alley with a tip of his hat. Roger soon followed, his cell phone in his hand.

  The last Ketan saw of him, he was walking back up the alley, his head bowed over the screen of his phone.

  Then, they were alone.

  Well, as alone as four people could get. The Mages stared at the building, trepidation clear in their faces. Sophia, in particular, looked like she’d just swallowed a sour lemon.

  “Either of you got any better ideas than walking in and looking at it?”

  “Nope,” Aiden said.

  She crinkled her nose. Her phone had reappeared in her hand, and now, she slipped it back into her pocket. Her knuckles cracked when she stretched them.

  Ketan raised a hand. “Can I come?”

  The glare she leveled him with could have cut glass. It was like he was an especially large bug she’d found in her kitchen.

  He had to remind himself that, in her eyes, he was a criminal.

  But then, she shrugged. Turned around. Stepped forward. “Sure, why not? Come on in.”

  Guess he was more expendable than Roger.

  *

  Wood creaked under their feet. The building hadn’t seen much occupation over the past seventy-odd years—possibly even longer, by the looks of the antique light fixtures dangling from the ceiling. The Mages’ flashlights lit up the space in a way his fire had not, catching large swaths of the interior in circles of bright white light.

  He’d been wrong before—the building hadn’t been a factory; it had been a studio. Parts of the floor rose up from the rest, rendered in what Ketan assumed to be special wood. Ballet barres stood out from the walls. What he’d thought had been machinery before turned out to be a large piano, half-covered by a dusty sheet. Missing keys smiled at them like broken teeth.

  Dust lay thick across everything, tickling his nose when they kicked it up.

  Sophia’s flashlight focused to the floor. A distinct boot mark marred the otherwise perfect coating of dust. He didn’t have to look at his feet to know they’d be a match.

  Then, her beam lifted to the next room, and the pit dropped out of his stomach.

  The entire room was coated in black crystal. It lined the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, glittering in Sophia’s light like a dark, mystical cave. Spikes and spears stuck out from all angles, growing larger toward the back of the room.

  The ones closest to them were small. Tiny. Barely bigger than the studs on Leloni’s jacket.

  Sophia swore.

  “You know this is the first time I’ve actually seen it?” Her breath caught in her throat. The beam of her light shivered, never leaving the face of the door.

  “Me, too.” Aiden shifted from behind her, walking to the side to get a better angle on the room. Facets of light darted about, refracted from the new crystals he found. “It’s all over everything in there.”

  “We don’t know if it’s burrowed into the floor,” she said. “Gobardon?”

  “The floor’s fine. Nothing wrong with it.”

  Gobardon’s voice had a husky, raw tone to it. Like Aiden, he’d moved to the side. Ketan watched his flashlight cut another path into the dark, revealing more and more crystals. Some of them leapt nearly half a meter tall at the back, with trunks thicker than some trees.

  Then, in the silence, they heard the quiet cric
k of growing crystal.

  “We need to bury it,” Aiden said. “Gobardon? Can you—?”

  “I want to see my father,” the Earth Mage said. He rounded on Ketan, and his expression had returned to normal. “Where?”

  The word wasn’t so much a question as a demand. Ketan shrank back as Gobardon advanced a step.

  “In the alley, down the side.” He cast an eye back to the crystal, feeling a shiver stiffen his nerves. “It’s probably all covered by now.”

  “And likely much more aggressive, closer to its source,” Aiden said. “You can’t go down there. It’s too dangerous.”

  Gobardon’s face twisted. The emotion that crossed it was not a pretty one. The light made it obscene, like the poster from some old horror movie. It was a mix of disgust, disbelief, and desperation.

  But his eyes held its core. Hatred seethed within them. It seemed to hum around him, as tangible as a dry heat.

  “I have to see my father.” The tone had changed little, but the room’s quiet made the difference obvious.

  “He’s dead,” Sophia told him. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “I need to make sure.”

  For the first time, he saw Gobardon’s implacable mask crack. The other two Mages had stiffened, their attention turned not to the crystal, but to the man.

  Then, something clicked inside of him. Gobardon’s words sank in. He didn’t want to help his father—he wanted to make sure he was dead.

  Confidence returned. He took a step forward, crossed his arms, and caught the Mage’s attention. “He’s dead. I saw it.”

  Gobardon’s eyes bored into him, burning as hot as Ketan’s Element, fixing on him as if he were a buoy in a storm. Ketan stood quietly under the Earth Mage’s scrutiny, holding his ground as a flurry of emotions crossed the Mage’s face: fear, hate, despair, grief.

  In the silence, they all heard another crick.

  It returned Gobardon to the present. His eyes cleared. The tension left his shoulders.

  In less than a second, he was back to his old, suave self. When he addressed Ketan, it was with all the professionalism of a lawyer addressing his client.

  “You saw it?”

  “I did.”

  He shrugged and then straightened the edges of his jacket over his broad shoulders. “If you are lying, I will kill you.”