“I know what he was,” she screamed at me. “I was there when he died, right there with him when he threw himself in front of that thing to save me!” She looked to the ground. “He couldn’t even speak. He was so burned. He tried to say something, tried to tell me something, but all that came out was blood. And Mother, she tried to run, but it chased her. It literally chased her. Now what kind of fire do you know that does that?” She shook her head again. “And it’s my fault, you know.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, holding her firmly. “It’s not anybody’s fault.”
“It most certainly the hell is,” she swore. It was the first time I had ever heard my sister use such language. For an instant, I almost told her to lower her voice lest Father hear her.
Then I realized he never would.
“Do you know what they said to each other when they saw the fire?” Gemma asked, looking up at me. “Mother was cooking a roast and Father was complaining about milk prices. They looked up and saw it, flames running toward the house in some un-regently sprint, and they weren’t even surprised. Mother looked at Father and said ‘By the regent, Alaric. They found out about our daughter.”
She broke down again, tears running hard and hot down her face.
“Something is after me, Razz. It killed our parents the first time it tried. I don’t want it to kill you—”
“Shut up, Gemma,” I said, finally breaking. “You’re in shock. It’s a perfectly reasonable reaction after all you’ve been through. I understand how much this hurts, and I can’t even imagine seeing the things you’ve seen and being expected to move on from it. But if you think I’m going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself, or worse, try to convince me to put you in sector-sponsored housing to save me from some mythical monster you’ve imagined up, then you don’t know me at all.” I grabbed her wrist. “We only have each other now. In the entire sector, and in whatever does or does not lie beyond it, it is only you and me.”
“There is a monster,” she said, brushing tears from her face.
“There isn’t,” I said. “But if there was, then it would be very foolish to come after the only person I have left in the world.” I lifted my arm and let blue energy crackle around it, cold swishing around me the way it always did when my powers came into play. “Nothing is coming for us, Gemma. Not if it knows what’s good for it.”
Chapter 7
Gemma had nearly stopped shaking by the time we made it back to my housing quarters. She had taken to looking out the window, staring silently as the rolling hills and empty expanses of the Dustlands morphed and shifted into the seemingly endless barrage of stone and metal buildings that made up the circle.
The first time I came here seemed like a lifetime ago. It had been such a joyous occasion for me. My breath had caught in my throat and my heart had sped up with each passing moment. Now, everything carried a new weight, an unfamiliar darkness.
My sister’s first taste of this place was noticeably different, and not just because we had just lost our parents.
Gemma wasn’t like me. First off, as far as we could tell, she wasn’t touched by magic. And secondly, and perhaps more importantly, she had never had any desire to come to this place.
Unlike me, my little sister never felt out of place in the Dustlands. She never felt listless and wasted as she tended to the crops or fed the livestock. She didn’t look at those rolling hills and farmer’s markets as if she were a prisoner yearning to escape. It was her home. They were her people, her hills, and her markets.
I had always envied her for that. She was at peace there…in her home—something I could never manage regardless of how hard I tried.
But now, it occurred to me that she hadn’t only lost her family. She had also lost her home. She lost the future she had planned out for herself.
She wasn’t going to marry the son of a farmer. She wasn’t going to set up a home right down the street from where we grew up. She wasn’t going to raise children in the shade of the oak trees we used to climb on and smile as Mother and Father watched the babies grow.
It was all gone, and now she was being dragged into a world she didn’t know, one she didn’t ask for and didn’t want. She was never going to feel at home again, and I ached for that. Because I knew just what it felt like.
“This is us,” I said when the transport pulled to a stop a few blocks away from my housing building.
I marched to the end of the tram, showing my credentials to the driver.
He looked them over. “Your curfew was six hours ago,” he said, looking at me side-eyed.
“Emergency,” I explained, showing him the slip my grief consoler handed me when she met me for the first time.
He grunted. “Go directly to housing. You don’t have the authority to be outside at this hour.”
Gemma’s eyes narrowed. “Authority?” she asked incredulously. “You don’t need authority to go outside.”
“Yes, you do,” I answered, grabbing her arm and squeezing it tightly. “Here you do.”
I nodded at the driver, letting him know I understood what he was saying and would comply. Then I dragged Gemma out behind me and headed toward my building.
“Let go of me,” she said, jerking her arm out of my grasp. “I can walk on my own!”
“I’m sure you can,” I said, sighing. “But this place isn’t like back at home. People can be dangerous out here.”
“So?” she asked. It was as if she were trying to piss me off. “You said you wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
“And I won’t,” I said, grabbing her arm again and pulling her forward. “But there’s a difference between reacting to trouble and courting it. I don’t have the energy for the latter.”
Gemma groaned as I pulled her into my building, scanning my fingerprint and explaining to the doorman why I was out at this late hour.
“Don’t let it happen again,” he muttered.
“We only had the one set of parents,” Gemma spit out. “So I doubt that’ll be a problem.”
“Gemma,” I hissed at her, jerking her forward. “I’m sorry. She’s not from here,” I said, apologizing to the doorman.
“Are you insane?” I asked, looking at her as I pulled her up the stairs. “Haven’t we been through enough today? Do you want to get us in trouble?”
“Me,” she said, biting her lip. “I’ve been through enough today. You missed it all, just like everything.”
“Don’t start,” I warned, settling in front of the door to my quarters and shooting a warning glance at her. “Don’t you dare say—”
“That you weren’t there?” she asked, totally ignoring the anger in my eyes. “Why not? You weren’t there, Razz. You never were. Even when you were around, you were off somewhere else in your head. How does it feel?” she asked, bitterness thick in her words. “Is it worth it just to be here?”
“Worth what?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” she asked. “You have magic. You’ve got powers. You could have saved them if you’d have been there, but you weren’t. Because, at the end of the day, this place is more important to you than your family was.”
“How dare you?” I asked, my voice turning cold. My hands started trembling. I needed to step back before I hurt her. She’d just witnessed our parents’ deaths. But some lines needed to be drawn. “You think this is easy for me? It’s not, Gemma. None of this is what I thought it was going to be.”
I pointed my finger square in her face. “I told you what happened to Mother and Father wasn’t your fault, and I meant that—but it’s not my fault, either. And I’m not about to stand here and let you say it was.”
Gemma blinked hard, her face scrunching into something so full of pain and despair that I barely even recognized it.
“I…I’m sorry,” she blurted, a torrent of tears cascading down her cheeks. “I don’t know what I was thinking, Razz. I just—I don’t know anything anymore.”
She coll
ided with me, and I wrapped my arms around her. I felt the heat of her tears pressed firmly against my chest.
“It’s okay, Gem,” I said, running my finger across the scanner so the door would open. “It’s okay.”
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I half-expected Henrick to still be inside, maybe with a freshly brewed pot of tea, or, at the very least, a shoulder to cry on.
But that was ridiculous. I didn’t know him like that. Besides, it wasn’t like he was very supportive when he found out what happened anyway.
No, as I moved into the room, my arm slung around Gemma, I realized it would just be the two of us, the way it would likely be for quite a while moving forward.
My sister was a mess, so I brewed some tea up myself and slipped a little valerian root in there. Muttering an incantation—something I learned from an old spell book I found in a far corner of the library back home—my energy sparked. That would do it. This would be a pretty potent sleeping potion. I smiled to myself, proud I could get this much right.
Gemma slurped the top layer while she waited for the tea to cool, reminding me of the many winters we spent together curled up with mugs of hot cocoa while we waited for our toes to defrost by the fire.
She was right. She had been through a lot more than I had. She needed to sleep, even if she couldn’t get it done without a little mystical assistance. And a few moments later, she did just that.
This day was officially behind her. And though tomorrow likely wouldn’t be any easier, nor the day after that or even the one after, we could always hope that each day would be better than the last.
I collapsed on the couch, leaving the bed to Gemma. Tomorrow, we would have to apply for housing to place a second bed in the living area. Until then, I would make do with a lumpy pillow and thin sheet.
Not that it would matter. I wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight regardless of what the arrangements were. My mind was racing too quickly to rest.
I was the grown-up now. My sister was dependent on me. For her sake, I was going to have to pretend I knew what I was doing. I was going to have to fake competence and fake confidence until I was good enough for it to be the real deal. In the meantime, I had to hope to the regent that Gemma didn’t notice how badly I was winging it.
All I wanted was for her to have a good life. All I wanted was for her to be happy. For someone in this family to be happy.
I ran hands through my hair, looking up at the ceiling and counting the tiles for what had to be the tenth time in an hour.
Yep, still twelve.
Sighing loudly, I turned on my side.
I had never been the type to sleep on my back, and if I didn’t want a ravager nearly breaking through the wall again tomorrow, I was going to have to try to rest my eyes.
But every time I tried—every time my eyelids flickered closed—horrific images were there to meet me. Fire and burning flesh scarred my vision. My mother screaming as she tried to run for help, my father flinging himself in harm’s way to save the daughter who hadn’t left him. And what had I been up to while all of this was happening? Getting myself in trouble in some sketchy back-alley room.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to steel myself. I couldn’t allow this. This blatant self-pity, even if it were routed in a sense of responsibility, wouldn’t do Gemma any good. She needed stability in her life now. Someone needed to care for her who was capable of the task at hand.
Regent’s name, I should have given her away. What was I thinking? I wasn’t ready for this.
I felt something prickle at my mind, an intruder in my innermost thoughts. Turning around, I wondered if Gemma had somehow woken up. Perhaps the weight of her stare—maybe even the weight of her judgement—was the discomfort I was feeling.
But she was still snoring softly, covered up to her neck in the patchwork blanket I had taken from home. It was now doubly special, seeing as how it was the only piece of the place that had survived.
I sat up, running fingers through my hair again as the uneasiness inside of me grew larger and harder to ignore.
Standing, I headed to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. My specific quarters allowed two per night, which wasn’t a lot. Still, Gemma likely wouldn’t wake until the morning, and the quota would have reset by then.
As I stood, I caught site of a red flicker off in the distance. Instantly, my eyes darted toward it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
There, climbing up the side of an adjacent building like a slithering snake scouring for its next meal, was a flicker of moving fire.
“What in the sector?” I said aloud, moving closer to the window with quickly widening eyes.
This couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. I had seen magic before. It was, after all, prevalent in this part of the sector. But never had I seen something like this, so overt, so remarkably powerful.
The streak of flame danced up the neighboring building, pausing as it passed through the windows, as if it were looking inside of them.
My hand flew to my mouth as I realized what was happening. Gemma was right. The fire that had killed our parents…it wasn’t some mistake. It wasn’t a normal fire that just got out of hand or spread because someone left it untended.
It was this…this thing…this magic, this predator.
And it had come back for her.
My throat tightened as I watched it slide across the building, undoubtedly looking for my baby sister, coming to finish the job it started in the Dustlands.
This was it. The tragedy that had wiped half my family from the face of the sector was now going to make a clean sweep of them.
But not if I could help it.
Power surged through me, and as if somehow the fire could read my mind, the streak of flame split. First, it tore off into two, then four, then eight, and then sixteen.
Regent save us. There was too much of it.
“Gemma,” I screamed, turning to her with my heart in my throat.
I had one chance. This thing might have been able to multiply faster than the long-eared rodents from back home, but it still hadn’t spotted us. If I could get us out of here before that happened, then we had a chance to make it. I could make good on my word. I could protect my sister as I’d promised.
“Gemma,” I repeated. “Get up! We’ve got to get out of here!”
She didn’t move. Didn’t even budge.
That was when I remembered. The truth of it hit me like a ton of coppers spilled from a torn bag.
“My sleeping potion,” I said, the blood going still in my veins.
I looked back out the window. The flame streaks were so numerous now that they covered the adjacent building like a swarm.
And then, to my absolute horror, one of them turned.
Without eyes, there was no way it could have looked at me. But if it had been possible for it to catch sight of me, that was what would have happened.
The flame streak lunged from the adjacent building, floating in the air toward my window quicker than anything I had ever seen without an engine. The others began to follow, each of them moving from the other building and rushing toward us.
It had seen her somehow. It had caught her scent or traced her energy or whatever this thing did to find people. Regardless of the method or even the reason, these things found my sister and were on their way to destroy her.
And me, the person who had sworn to protect her with my last breath, what had I done? I’d called her a liar, yelled at her, drugged her, and basically sealed her fate.
Yeah. Not my shining hour. Not at all.
Chapter 8
The flame streaks darted toward us, and Gemma was asleep—fast asleep. My potion would stay in effect until long after the flames consumed her. I didn’t even bother trying to wake her up again. There wasn’t time.
I could power up, blast the flame streaks with my abilities, but this wasn’t a ravager. This was magic, potent magic, that had spread so quickly and violently it would take a hundred of me to have
even the slightest chance of fighting it off.
I was going to have to run, and I was going to have to take my sister with me.
Without even really knowing where the strength came from, I pulled my sister into my arms. At sixteen, Gemma was nearly every bit as big as I was. If only I’d had this strength earlier when trying to shut the door on Henrick. Adrenaline, though, was perhaps the strongest magic there was.
Her body pressed against my chest as I dared one more look back out the window. The flames bore down on me. On us. The heat in the room rose, and I turned, trying to figure out how to open the door without a free hand to scan my finger on the pad. I had to settle for kicking the damn thing open.
It gave way under my foot, again powered by what had to be pure adrenaline, just as the window shattered in the room.
A rush of white-hot energy bolted behind us, and I turned, rushing down the staircase as it followed behind me like some stray dog looking for a handout.
But these weren’t dogs, and they wouldn’t settle for scraps off the dinner table. They wanted my sister dead, and there was no way I could allow that.
Flames kissed the stairwell, burning it behind us and setting fire to everything they touched. I circled down the staircase, nearly sliding as I propped Gemma up against my chest.
And that was when it hit me.
I would never make it like this. I couldn’t outrun the fire, not carrying my sister in my arms anyway. But if I could slide, if I could alleviate the weight of Gemma pulling me down, I just might stand a chance.
My palms turned downward, and I pulled at the energy inside of me. It sprayed out in bright blue torrents of ice. The cold power covered the floor, creating a makeshift slide across the circling staircase.
Suddenly, I didn’t have to worry about carrying Gemma or about hauling my feet down the steps. All I needed to do was lean back, let go, and let the ice take me away.
I set Gemma on the icy floor in front of me, letting go of all but her hand, and closed my eyes as I rushed down the staircase like they were the Dustland Valleys after a summer snow.
Under: an Adult Dystopian Paranormal Romance: Sector 5 (The Othala Witch Collection) Page 6
