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Magic of the Wood House

Page 2

by Cassandra Gannon


  The practical side of her knew that wouldn’t really work, that her family would suffer when she died, even if they never saw her body. But, Teja was too worn out to listen. She’d poured everything she had, every drop of her energy, into trying to keep Oberon alive.

  And she’d failed.

  There was nothing left inside of her, now. Whatever spark or passion she’d had for life had gone out.

  Teja was one of the most powerful Phases. She controlled two Elements, something unprecedented in Elemental history. She helped support two Houses. So few Phases possessed her skills and level of power. But, she’d been helpless to save her grandfather, the one person she loved most in the world.

  The Doors’ Light My Fire cued up, the familiar keyboard and drum introduction drawing her attention. Jim Morrison was right. The time to hesitate was through.

  Teja leaned over slightly, so she could experience the dizzy view straight down. A sensation of vertigo had her vision swimming for a beat. She could almost feel the ground rushing up to meet her. Jumping wouldn’t be so hard. All she had to do was let go.

  Teja was very, very ready to let go.

  She pulled the headphones off and set the iPod aside. All around her the Fire Kingdom stretched out endlessly. The Kingdoms in the Elemental realm all looked different, depending on their Element. The Water Kingdom had magical waterfalls and crystal clear pools. The Shadowland was a grey and shifting landscape of darkness. The Cold Kingdom was predominantly ice and snow. The Fire Kingdom was world ablaze.

  Electricity had gone out the second day of the Fall, but the Fire Kingdom was still illuminated. And not just by the funeral pyres. It glowed at the edges, with volcanic reds and yellows. Flowing rivers of lava poured over black igneous rocks and towering volcanoes rimmed the perimeter in forbidding peaks. It was beautiful, in a stark and alien away; a place like nowhere else in existence. Teja loved the Fire Kingdom.

  It was the only spot she wanted to spend the last few moments of her life.

  Teja got to her feet. It would be best to jump while standing. It gave her an extra few feet to topple from. The smoke-filled air blew through her long curls, whistling enticingly; calling her downward. The toes of her battered Converses poked out passed the edge of the roof.

  She should’ve changed clothes before she died. Even for someone as unconcerned with her appearance as Teja, it seemed sort of wrong to commit suicide in ripped jeans and old sneakers. Overtop of her white t-shirt she wore the letterman style cardigan that had once belonged to Oberon. There was a large, red “O” at the bottom, which had struck his fancy and he’d stolen it from some human college student back in the 1920s. Since the Fall began, Teja hadn’t taken the damn thing off.

  Still, killing oneself was a solemn occasion. She should probably wear mourning gray and maybe some heels. Except, she didn’t have the energy to go find new clothes.

  She just didn’t care.

  Teja inched forward a bit more. The Fire Palace was a study in Gothic architecture, right down to the hideous stone gargoyles on the roofline. Several of them seemed to smirk at her as she prepared to jump. Her hand caught hold of the one closest to her. Using his horn for balance, she leaned out, her body extended over the open air.

  If any slight part of her doubted that she could actually commit suicide, it was quieted. Teja, in that second, could absolutely let go of the gargoyle, push off the roof, and plunge to her death. There was something so shocking about that, it actually penetrated her hopelessness. The quiet confidence in her plan vanished and a thread on her normal thought pattern tried to peak through.

  She was about to kill herself. She could really do it.

  Something whispered at her to turn back.

  The voice was sure and strong, telling her that she needed to survive. It cried that she was leaving her family to suffer alone. It screamed that it wasn’t her time. It said she was needed.

  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 prefor
m 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 don’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.

&nbs
p; 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.

 

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