Rivals (Book 2 of The Warden series)

by Felicia Jedlicka

  His pacing matched the worry in his face. Something about this entire situation was causing him great unrest. Cori wondered if that something was the knowledge of their imminent death.

  Remi, the water elemental, was the only one sitting. Comfortably cross-legged on the floor, she looked to be meditating with her hands upturned on her knees. Her long black hair was pulled into a tight pony. Her creamy skin and narrow eyes made her look Asian, but the breadth of her face said otherwise.

  Hirem, the ice elemental, was leaning on the wall not far from Garr. His powers were not dissimilar to Onna’s, but physically he was her polar opposite. He had bronzed dark skin and hair. He looked Indian, but Cori couldn’t be sure. He was shorter than everyone including Remi, but his muscles was thick. He had ripped the sleeves off his gray jumpsuit, most likely out of necessity rather than rebellion. Even in his casual state, she could see the tight bulge in his bicep that she knew would be twice that size if he were flexing.

  It had only taken a few seconds to gather her necessary Intel. After that, she saw no reason to hide her presence.

  “Sorry I’m late.” The room awakened. Guards, Danato, Belus, and the elementals lifted their heads, opened their eyes, and turned to her. An unintentional smile spread across her face. “Looks like I’m more than fashionably late. I always did love a memorable entrance though.”

  She could see Danato and Belus fervently shaking their heads. The anger in their expressions was belied by the fear in their eyes. It should have been a warning to her, but instead it was the boost of confidence that she needed. Cleos had said she needed to be noncompliant. As long as they were shaking their heads, she knew she was on the right track.

  The elementals exchanged looks as she came in a little farther, meeting them only half way. Efrat, the electrical elemental, eyed her inquisitively. She noted his bright blue eyes. She had expected them to be brown. “Didn’t I kill you earlier?” he said without sarcasm as he approached her.

  She didn’t detect any distinct accent. She wondered if he was American. She hadn’t really thought about the origins of the elementals before now. “Yes, as a matter of fact, you did, Efrat.” She made sure to use his name so he would be aware she knew more about them than they knew about her. “I’m running on a nine-lives insurance plan, though. I’ve got three left.”

  His head tipped in examination of her. He wasn’t amused, but he appeared to be fascinated by her. Unfortunately, it was the same fascination that a cat held for a mouse. “Good. Each of my friends can kill you once.”

  “Dibs on last,” Remi said, joining Efrat. Remi, on closer inspection, wasn’t as attractive as she had been at a distance, but that might have only been because she was sneering.

  “So nice of you to offer, Remi,” Cori said, noting the name again, “but I don’t think I’ll survive the first one. You may want to reconsider your turn.”

  Remi reared, prepared to fire—or rather, water. Cori toggled the button on her weapon to orange.

  “Wait.” Efrat put his hand up to stop her. She reluctantly lowered her hands. “I would like to finish her. I hate to leave unfinished business.”

  “Me too,” Cori said. “Which is why I’m here to kick your ass.”

  Efrat laughed. It wasn’t a maniacal laugh like a comic book villain. It was honest amusement. Once again, she wondered where these elementals had come from and how they had come to be imprisoned here.

  “You are a sheep, little woman, and I am the big bad wolf. I’ll give you five seconds to join your shepherd and his flock, or I stop your heart.” His face was sincere. He would indeed let her surrender now unharmed. That meant he didn’t know about the jets that were only twenty-two minutes from turning the building into cinder and ash.

  “No sweetie, I’m not the sheep. I’m the hunter.” She switched her gun to fire and blasted Remi and Efrat with flames. They both leapt to the ground, ducking her attack. Remi countered with her water as she scrambled to a safer distance.

  Garr walked toward Cori, apparently tagged in by his experience with fire. He formed a ball of his own fire and threw it at her. She easily ducked the ball, which made her wonder if he was giving her a warning similar to Efrat. However, he continued to advance, forcing her back with multiple flame bursts that she managed to dodge or stifle with the oxygen-depleting clouds her gun provided.

  Seeing no achievement in her defensive tactics other than singed eyebrows, she switched her gun to electricity. She shot at Garr, hoping the change in strategy would get him off her back, but Efrat was in range to deflect the charge. His unnatural blue tentacles of electricity met with her gold ones and disappeared into oblivion.

  She turned her attention back to Garr, who had thrown a fresh bundle of inferno at her. She flattened to the ground, escaping the bulk of the skin-melting heat. Her clothes, however, caught fire. Before she could perform the appropriate, albeit painful, stop, drop, and roll technique, she felt water on her back.

  Aaryn joined the battle and quelled the fire with a quick swipe of her moisture-rich hands.

  Efrat turned his attack on the new arrival. Lightning trickled from his fingers. Cori sat up and aimed a deflecting bolt at him. This time the two streams collided in a blinding flash that was to no one’s advantage.

  While everyone was blinking away stars, Cori noticed that Hirem had not joined the fight yet. He seemed annoyed with the new battle and was astutely observing everyone, but nothing had coaxed him to retaliate… yet.

  She heard a rumble and crash behind her. She looked back to see Rodan crashing through the gym wall, creating his own door. His arrival was fortuitous since Garr was creating another ball of fire. He threw the rolling pyre right at her, leaving her no space to duck.

  Rodan’s arms and head wrapped around her, to protect her from the blaze. Her fear of being cooked wasn’t alleviated in the interior of his shelled protection, but his molten joints clamped tight, shutting out the bulk of the heat. It was still the hottest sauna she had ever been in, but it wouldn’t kill her.

  When Rodan released her, she saw Hirem had finally joined the fight. He was using his ice to attack Aaryn, pummeling her with a frosty wave. She was at risk of freezing to the floor like a tongue to a flagpole in winter, but Onna turned his torrent of freezing snow into snowflakes that fell before they reached Aaryn.

  Hirem looked at Onna, angry and surprised. She waved her fingers at him daintily. “I’m not a hack-job, dear,” she said, answering whatever questions he had about her skillset.

  Remi, in the meantime, had caught onto the game and went after Rodan to saturate his hot lava joints. Aaryn dove into the path of her water spray, soaking it up like a sponge. “Oh thank you, I needed that,” she quipped.

  Garr threw more fireballs at Aaryn, but her refreshed flexibility became her defense. She shifted and bent in ways a yogi could only dream of. Even Hirem’s ice barrages were useless since none of them could hit her.

  Remi turned her water attack back to Rodan, but with a simple wave of her hand, Onna turned the water into icicles that shattered against Rodan’s rock body.

  Efrat, in an attempt to help his cohorts, shot out bolts every which way. Cori stopped each one with her dampening shot. He paused and looked her over again. His fascination with the puny insect before him was rapidly turning into impatience for the nuisance rodent he couldn’t quite trap.

  She smiled at him. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it would only egg him on, but she couldn’t help but enjoy being the pain in his ass. As she suspected, her audacity baited him. He advanced on her, ignoring everyone in the room. Unfortunately, everyone in the room was too occupied to come to her rescue.

  Cori backed away from him, leaving her farther from her comrades, but she didn’t know what else to do. She knew it would only take one more attack to kill her. As it was, she wasn’t feeling too good. Her head no longer hurt, but her eyes were getting blurry. That wasn’t a good sign.

  She countered two more of his bolts. He still advanced
. The wall was gaining on her; diminishing the ground she could retreat to. She decided to change her attack. She switched settings and hit him with a spray of fog, temporarily depriving him of oxygen. It might have served well to extinguish a comrade on fire, but aside from a sudden fit of coughing and hand waving to clear the cloud, Efrat was unaffected. The lame attack did, however, stop his advance.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was getting bored of the back and forth. I thought I’d try something else.” She frowned.

  “So am I. That’s why I’m going to bash your head into the wall… again.”

  Behind Efrat, Cori could see that Remi had redirected her attack back to Onna. Her water hit had frozen the old woman in place and she was struggling to release herself while defending further attacks.

  Rodan spat a lava ball near her to melt her free.

  Aaryn had sacrificed herself and jumped on Hirem to protect Onna in her vulnerable state. Hirem’s super freezing hands and her super moist body had stuck together. Cori might have found it amusing if she hadn’t had the image of the tongue on the flagpole still in her mind.

  Cori deflected another bolt from Efrat. He wasn’t so much advancing now as intimidating her. She knew the battle was turning and so did he. She got the impression from the delight in his eyes that he was indeed planning to finish her off.

  Garr blasted Onna with a steady surge of fire. It seemed to take all her energy to create a shield of ice to keep her safe. With his ice protector occupied, Rodan was at the mercy of Remi, who was producing a deluge to immobilize him. Cori could hear the beast’s joints crack as they turned rigid.

  The unfolding scene forced Cori to lower her armament and resort to her tried and true defense: her mouth. It was a long shot, but there was one question that had slowly been forming in the back of her foggy mind.

  Efrat was visibly taken aback by her surrender. Once his astonishment passed, he stalked forward for a physical confrontation.

  “Why haven’t you killed me?” she asked.

  He stopped. His eyes looked her over like she had asked him for a light in a burning building. “I’m working on that, sweetie,” he retorted.

  “No, you’re not.” She didn’t really know what her point was, or if it mattered, but her mind was slowly forming an argument for her off-the-cuff verbal stall. “You gave me five seconds. You’ve been holding back your attacks. Even Garr threw a few attacks that were easy to duck. You all could have fired at once, but you didn’t.” His face revealed nothing for her to interpret. “You clearly have control, so why hostages instead of victims? You’re the bad guy, right? Why aren’t you killing everyone?”

  His examination of her never stopped, but the smug smile did fade momentarily. His eyes narrowed and his lips twitched slightly toward a frown. “Yeah, I’m the bad guy,” he ground out. “I don’t know what you think is going on here, sheep, but your interpretation is just as skewed as the rest of them.” He raised hands that were trickling with veins of blue. “As far as I’m concerned, this is self-defense.”

  She must have looked crestfallen, because his smirk reappeared. She lost focus, finally giving in to the muzzle on her brain function. He raised his hands and fired. She didn’t fire back. An electrical storm of blue and gold danced in front of her. She was so out of it, it took her several seconds to realize the glittering display was from the bolt being deflected.

  The shots came from beside her. She turned and saw guards protecting her from Efrat’s attack. A frontal assault was being waged against the other three elementals. The guards were even smart enough to free Rodan to help. Someone dumped water on Aaryn to free her from Hirem before they attacked him.

  Cori surveyed the room and saw Danato ordering the guards and directing the attack. Belus was too wounded to do much, but he was helping free more guards. Cleos was collecting the stash of weapons that they had taken off Belus and was handing them out as well. She caught sight of Mr. Nose who was staring at her with stunned awe. She smiled at him and started laughing. Her disregard for the rules was saving that asshole’s life.

  She caught Danato’s attention and he grabbed the first guard to pass him and pointed her out to him. The guard’s eyes widened and he sprinted toward her, apparently eager to do Danato’s bidding and fetch her. Her muddled brain couldn’t begin to register the earnest concern on his face as he barreled toward her.

  She turned back to the tapering battle and jumped at the sight of Efrat only inches away from her. His hands snapped with power, outstretched to strangle the last of her life away, but his attack had been stalled. The two guards currently preventing her demise had lassoed his shoulders to drag him back, but Efrat was still inching forward in slow motion, no doubt propelled by the sheer will of the murderous intent his angry blue eyes were broadcasting to her.

  Without the energy to fight or flee, she stumbled back, flopping on the floor before his hands could grip her neck.The minion guard sent to help her arrived and used the force of his velocity to coldcock Efrat.

  Cori heard the bone-on-bone smack as Efrat’s head twisted to the side and he went limp. With wide eyes and a slight pant from his exertion, the guard turned to her and helped her off the floor. She stared at him with increasing awe for his one-punch knockout. He might have even broken Efrat’s jaw. “Thanks-” she finally thought to say.

  “My pleasure, ma’am.” He braced her arm and walked her away from the battle scene. “It’s the least I can do. You did save our butts, after all.” He looked familiar and his southern drawl reminded her of the man who had saved her from being raped when she first came to the prison. If it was the same man, then this was the second debt of gratitude that she owed him.

  She gave up trying to decipher his identity since her brain was about to explode, and concentrated on walking.

  She was brought straight to Danato. He didn’t look happy to see her. She didn’t know what kind of trouble she was in, but she presumed that he would wait to yell at her in private. As he looked her over, his demeanor softened. Nothing about her wounds were obvious, but judging by how weak she felt, she could imagine how she looked.

  She noticed Cleos shift behind Danato, his hands already freshly cuffed.

  “Cleos.” She moved away from the crutch of her guard to check on him, but Danato stepped in her way.

  “Why is he out?” Danato asked.

  Cori stepped back in shock. “You had a front-row seat, Danato; please don’t tell me you missed the part where we saved the day.”

  “He is not to be trusted, Cori.” Danato lowered his voice, despite the fact that Cleos was only a few feet away and could hear him just fine. “You need to stay away from him.”

  Cori slowly stepped around Danato. She kept eye contact with him as she did. She sidled up to Cleos and took his arm, partially for effect, but also because she was too dizzy to stand on her own. “I couldn’t have done this without him. I won’t let you—”

  “Cori.” Cleos spoke softly, but it was enough to stop her rant. “You should step away from me.”

  She searched his eyes for some explanation for this slight, but he was already pulling his arm from her grasp. “What?” she asked appalled.

  “Just a little space, please,” he said.

  Cori stepped away, staring at him with condemning shock. “What the hell is wrong with—?” Before she could finish she convulsed and vomited up blood. She observed the blood splattered at her feet. She looked back at Cleos, who gave her a sympathetic I told you so smile. “Oh, right.”

  32

  Cori woke in the infirmary. It was her second week in recovery. According to Danato, they’d had to tap her skull to relieve the hemorrhaging pressure on her brain. She had spent some time in surgery after that so they could repair the internal damage that was leaking blood into her lungs and stomach.

  She later learned he had underplayed the seriousness of the wounds. The nurses told the story a little differently. Her blood pressure had plummeted so severely during
the emergency drain that they had to restart her heart. After several transfusions, two resuscitations, and a boatload of drugs the names of which she couldn’t pronounce, she was alive and kicking.

  Well, the kicking had yet to come, but she was alive.

  And bored.

  The boredom was more of a punishment than the recovery pain. Danato visited with her every day. They discussed her actions pleasantly albeit with a few tense moments. He was careful not to suggest that her actions were wrong since they clearly saved the prison, but there was a lot of debate about the promises she had made to the inmates that helped her.

  After some lengthy back and forth, he conceded to abide by whatever requests were reasonable and didn’t require excessive paperwork to the board. Other than that, he refused to offer a timeline, nor would he promise that all the prisoners would receive a reward of some kind.

  Cori had expected to see him again when she woke that morning, but she was surprised to see a different face. In the room’s corner, a man sat against the wall, reading. His broad shoulders overshadowed the tiny plastic chair that he was sitting in. His brawny frame made him look overweight, but on closer inspection, he was in rather good shape. His black slacks and black button-down shirt seemed to beg for a priest’s collar, but the three unfastened buttons exhibiting his neck and chest said otherwise. He wore tiny oval-shaped spectacles that were just barely tinted.

  His hair was dark auburn, with flyaway hairs that demanded to stand tall, whether he wanted them to or not. A slight smile lit his face as he sat reading. She wasn’t sure if that was a permanent fixture to his face, or if his book was amusing him.

  The book looked like one of the many red bound books that Danato kept in his study, the books she couldn’t get her brain around. “Are you another corporate guru?” she asked with a hoarse throat.