by India Arden
I found the guys gathered in the warehouse, with all the various boxes and bins pushed tight to the walls and a large space cleared in the center. Symbols were chalked on the floor, geometric patterns filled with interconnected circles and stars. Carefully done, but somewhat lopsided, as if they were drawn by someone not entirely confident of their placement.
Zephyr’s voice carried. He was talking fast. “If you were there and I was here when we Bonded…maybe there is no circuit to complete. Maybe it’s more of a daisy chain.”
Sterling said, “Now, there’s an image I’ll never unsee. And as much as I find it amusing to hold hands with each of you, we’ve tried that combination. And every other possible arrangement, too. Something must be missing.”
Rain was facing me, and he perked up visibly when our gazes locked. His hair was tied back in a sloppy man-bun with tendrils fallen free, and the turquoise-tinged blue of his eyes was vivid, even from across the room. He was the tallest of the four. Probably the most handsome, too.
And he’d tried to entice me into a three-way.
I blushed and looked away.
Ember dropped Sterling’s hand, turned to me and said, “Is there anything you can tell us about the Bonding? Anything at all?”
“I’d never even heard of it until you brought it up. I’m sorry.”
Zephyr snatched up a printout from a nearby shelf, brought it over and thrust it into my hands. “Maybe they didn’t call it the Bonding. Maybe they called it something else. Take a look at this and see if anything rings true.”
The printout was new but the document it had been scanned from was very, very old. It was written longhand, in cursive that was as difficult to read as it was beautiful. It would take a while to puzzle through. I curled up on the couch, and I read.
The universe is regulated from the Paternal Foundation through the four elemental forces; this Foundation is variously called—The IYNX, Soul of the World, and The Constructive Wisdom, and exists in the perfection of the tetrad of Ignis, Aer, Terra, and Acqua: harmoniously dispositioned to Essentia Feminam, the Universal Force. The order, administration, and functions of the Divine Powers are also shewn here, typified by their various elements, which Bonded, may travel without hindrance through the Otherwise.
Below that was a bunch of drawings of pentagrams and other shapes, neater versions of the stuff they’d chalked on the floor.
“Other than the four elements,” I said, “none of this is familiar.” I saw Ember’s face fall—subtly, of course, because if anyone knew how to put up a brave front, it was him. But he’d been harboring hope, even if he’d been telling himself it was useless. And now I’d managed to disappoint him. Again.
“Harmoniously dispositioned,” Zephyr said. “It means we need to stand in the right order—”
“Which we’ve already tried,” Sterling said.
“—and traveling without hindrance is obviously that thing we did.”
Huh? “What…thing?”
The guys all looked at each other. Ember muttered, “I guess you were too busy to tell her about it while you were tucking her in last night.”
Sterling’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as he kenned to the whole dynamic, but the tension flowed past Rain like it was nothing. I’ve heard motivational speakers say you should have a mind like water. Not overreacting, not underreacting, and always returning to a point of calm. Whether it was his manifestation of the element, or just his natural disposition…Rain didn’t do embarrassment. Equably, he said, “Not sure how it came across to you, Princess, but yesterday at the park, the four of us somehow slipped out of time. That’s how we ditched the Masters and all those cops.”
“I figured someone knocked me out.”
Zephyr said, “Maybe someone did. And maybe that someone was us. We were moving freely through the, uh—d’you guys think it was the Otherwise from the writings?—but there was all kinds of resistance around you.”
“I did feel…wrong, somehow…when I woke up.”
“We need to be more careful,” Zephyr said. “We don’t know enough to go dragging her around like that when there could be some kind of consequence.”
“Like having Blaze set you on fire?” Sterling said dryly. “Hard to imagine that’s preferable to a little existential motion sickness.”
“You don’t know it’s something as transitory as that,” Zephyr insisted.
Sterling dropped down onto the couch beside me and held out his hand. Black glitter nail polish and silver rings. Hesitantly, I took it…and did my best not to feel like a giddy schoolgirl over him holding my hand. He closed his eyes, and the faintest echo of a tingle played across my palm. “She’s fine.” He let go of my hand, then added, “Although some electrolytes would help knock out that headache.”
While Zephyr dug a warm sports drink out of a nearby backpack, Ember planted himself in front of me, hands on hips, and said, “We absolutely have to get the hang of the Bonding if we want to stay a step ahead of the Masters. Anything you can remember from your studies, anything at all….”
I wanted so desperately to please him. But whatever he was looking for, I didn’t have it. “I’m sorry,” I said for the umpteenth time. He turned away, and my heart sank.
Zephyr said, “If we’re all here, we’re all safe, that’s what matters. But I can’t deny, I’m dying to know what it looked like from the peanut gallery. I mean, did we blur out of existence? Was there a flash of energy? Or were we just there one moment, gone the next?”
Sterling said, “The news is claiming we planted bombs. Which, I guess, if you were solidly in denial, could have explained everything that happened back at the green.”
Zephyr said, “It’s worth noting that reporters didn’t mention any of the official Arcane Masters using their mojo, either. If the Masters point out the fact that we’ve Transfigured, they’d be admitting they’ve come into a bunch of fresh talent themselves. So as far as the public’s concerned, the only new Arcane Master is Flood.”
Rain was strolling around the diagrams on the floor, considering them. “The thing I don’t get is all the pentagrams. You’d think that with four elements, there’d be four-pointed shapes, maybe something more like a compass.”
No one really knew what to say to that.
Zephyr said, “What about these circles? There are four circles. If we re-drew the diagram so it was smaller, we could reach each others’ hands from the circles.”
Rain said, “That doesn’t seem like the formation we took back there in the green.”
“Not deliberately,” Zephyr agreed. “But it was all pretty chaotic, don’tcha think? Maybe we did somehow fall into the right arrangement, even if it was just for a second. And that second was enough to form a Bonding.”
“Forget about the diagram,” Ember said. “Imagine the scene back at the park. Think about where you were standing.” The guys all huddled together and closed their eyes. “Sterling, I was pulling you away from the sandbox.”
“And Rain had his arm around me too…Zephyr was over there….”
“C’mon, guys, focus,” Zephyr said. “Tap into the Arcana.”
While the guys struggled to activate the Bonding, I combed through the old text, searching desperately for something that sounded familiar. But nothing did. While my father and the other Masters still wore all that silly ceremonial regalia, the words had been modernized to keep up with the times, more than I’d ever realized, and the Arcane terminology I knew might have little to do with the first findings. I pushed myself to think harder, to come up with even the glimmer of an idea. Something. Anything. Because I was aching to prove myself. Not to all of the Rebels. Just Ember. To erase that look of disappointment in his eyes, and replace it was something else. Admiration? That seemed like a stretch. I’d settle for respect.
But the harder I focused, the more elusive the words felt. And pretty soon I realized that with all four Arcane Rebels straining to ply their elemental abilities, the weirdly tangible but indescribable sensation of the en
ergetic shift had crept up on me, and it was growing stronger by the moment. “Actually,” I said, “I’d better visit the powder room.”
“Closest one’s the guard station,” Sterling said. “You can take my bike, it’s still in the hall.”
I’d never ridden anything other than a spin bike, and I didn’t trust myself to learn with half an energy drink threatening to make a reappearance. But when I staggered out into the hall, I felt better. Marginally. But noticeably. And with each step I put between the Rebels and me, the more the nausea ebbed and the stronger I felt.
By the time I got to the guard room, I didn’t need to vomit, but I did take the time to clean up. I coaxed a bit of water from the faucet—only enough to dampen a washcloth—and tried to clean myself up. My makeup was worn off, my hair was lank, and I’d probably lost a few pounds since the whole ordeal began. I couldn’t do anything about any of that, but I could do my best to scrub away the remaining traces of the sewers.
The guys, meanwhile, were still working on the Bonding. Thanks to the surveillance cameras, I could watch them attempt their magic from two different angles. The sound channel was still tuned to the break room, and I didn’t bother trying to locate the warehouse. I knew each of them well enough to guess at what they were saying by their body language. Zephyr, all gesticulation, was trying to think through a new angle to the problem. Rain encouraged them all to chill out. Sterling called it like he saw it, while Ember entreated everyone to remember that the fate of the whole entire world hinged on their success. But no pressure. Just do your best.
Which would never, ever be good enough.
I planted my elbows on the desk, propped my chin in my hands, and watched the four guys position and re-position themselves while they called to their Arcane aspects and tried so earnestly to Bond. I’d grown attached to all of them, each in his own way. And if disappointing Ember was bad, letting all four of them down was exponentially worse.
I’d spent most of my life feeling so hopeless I’d grown inured to the sensation, but just a few days with the Rebels had ignited a hope within me I’d never known was possible. Feeling that hope drain away was torture.
Who knows how long I wallowed in self-pity, but luckily, I was too despondent to bother lying down. I was still staring vacantly at the security monitors when I saw motion on one of the pictures that had been a boring shot of the field outside the parking lot.
Now, there was a man in it.
He was the type of person you’d see panhandling in the park or rummaging through trash, a tall, gangly guy with spiked blond hair and a shabby overcoat. I wasn’t too worried. Lerman’s must have been tempting to scavengers. Even though anything of value had been stripped away twenty years ago, in a building this size, it stood to reason that something might still be gleaned.
It was just one man, though. And although I didn’t like the looks of him, I knew if the Rebels could handle themselves against an official Tetrad and a few dozen cops, they had nothing to fear from one scraggly vagrant.
And then the SWAT team streamed in behind him, and I rethought my assessment.
I slammed all the audio toggles one way, and then the other. “Guys? Can you hear me? Guys?” but it was no use. The audio only went one way. Damn it—why hadn’t I taken the bike? I pounded down the hallway to the warehouse, calling out to them long before there was any chance of them hearing me. By the time I rounded the last corner, I had a stitch in my side and was struggling to catch my breath.
Ember ran out to meet me and overtook me in the hall. “Are you okay?”
“Cops,” I gasped out. “They’re here. Sneaking through the field.”
The other three guys caught up to us. “Do we face them,” Zephyr said, “or do we hide?”
Between gulps of air, I said, “They’re not here to talk. They’re decked out in shields and body armor.”
Sterling said, “Maybe we let them trample through the place while we hole up in the mechanical room. Chances are they’ll just see what everyone else sees, anyhow. The shell of an old department store that’s been so thoroughly looted, even the rubble’s missing.”
“It wasn’t just cops,” I said, “some guy was leading them. A homeless guy with spiky blond hair.”
Everybody stiffened, and Rain said, “What’d I tell you? Plenty of people would sleep just fine knowing they’d turned us in, on the bed of a hundred K.”
“Side door,” Ember snapped, “now.”
Rain and Sterling obeyed without question and took off, but Zephyr hung back, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if he couldn’t quite pick which way to run. “But our go-bags are all by the back door.”
“Now!” Ember barked, and Zephyr sprinted off behind the other guys.
I was nowhere near a second wind, but when Ember clasped hands with me, somehow, I found the strength to run. At the exit we staggered to a stop, but not so I could catch my breath.
“Aurora.” Ember took me by the shoulders and looked deep into my eyes. His strong jaw was set, and his irises were roiling topaz. “You know about the cars. If anything happens to us, promise me. You find a car, and you drive.”
“Not without you.”
He plowed on ahead. “Just drive. Get out of here and start somewhere new.”
“Okay,” I said, mostly to make him stop talking about this unthinkable future in which we were forced apart.
What I didn’t see coming was the kiss.
He crushed his mouth to mine, a move too desperate to contain even a hint of tenderness, and yet the kiss was as fragile as a heartbeat. I should have been frightened, but I wasn’t. I was elated. I melted into him as naturally as honey into butter, and in my heart, something brittle cracked open—a protective shell that had been forming so long, I hadn’t even known it was there.
From the first moment I laid eyes on Ember, even before he was anything more than the Red Leather Rebel to me, I’d been waiting for this kiss—imagining how he’d taste, how he’d feel…more importantly, how he’d make me feel. Because when I looked at Ember, I didn’t see a Rebel threat. I saw hope.
Teeth clashed, stubble rasped, and it was over before it even began. While I blinked away my surprise, he turned on his heel and took off toward the exit, dragging me along behind him.
Rain waited in the doorway, gesturing for us to hurry. We tumbled outside and down a rusted set of metal steps, into an overgrown warren of dumpsters and weeds. Sterling held out a hand to help me down the steps. I almost didn’t take it, but good thing I did. Because the sickening lurch that happened back at the green came over me again, and with no warning whatsoever, the world went dark.
28
EMBER
The Bonding came on so suddenly, it was like trying to force open a locked door, only to have someone unhitch the lock on your final try…and landing on your ass as it flew open. Color leached from the world, and Aurora’s hand in mine went lifeless. Not cold, and not hard. More like warm clay.
Rain, startled, gasped and dropped her hand. The Bonding held.
“Who was touching who?” Zephyr demanded.
Sterling said, “D’you really think now’s the time to try and learn magic?”
“We’ve got time,” Zephyr told him. “Now that we’re Bonded, we have as much time as we need.”
I looked at Aurora. Her heart-shaped face was pale, and her hair floated behind her, its gold muted, buoyed by air currents that were as still as everything else in this place. In the…Otherwise. “Don’t move her,” I said. “We don’t know if that’s what made her sick.”
“What happens if we split up?” Zephyr asked. “Does the Bonding fall apart?
No one knew.
“There’s no time to experiment now,” I said. “We need to go deal with Sidehustle and his friends.” And though it might be overkill, wordlessly, we all agreed to clasp hands and make our way around the building. Sterling may have smirked a little, but if a snarky comment about the hand-holding had come to mind, he didn’t voice
it.
We found the SWAT team just half a block from the parking lot. The overgrown area had been landscaped once. In the twenty years since the Riots, weed trees had flourished, and sheltered the expanse from the public eye. Now teenagers ducked into the weedy tree line to drink…the heel of my boot crunched into a tiny glass crack vile. How naïve of me to think they were just drinking.
The cops—four men, one woman—were dressed in tactical camo, with assault rifles deadly enough to shoot through our thickest fire doors. They stood, frozen, in various stances that were threatening even at rest, like a bag of plastic army men scattered on the playground. Sidehustle had been turning around to talk to them, and we’d caught him mid-whirl with his coat flared out, his eyes half-blinking and his mouth open. It was like something out of the Matrix…if the Matrix paused on the worst candid snapshot you’d ever found yourself in, and not some cool action pose.
He was also covered in an un-Matrix-like substance. Something more like faint traces of spiderweb, but black. Sterling let go of my hand and hooked a bit of the black web off Sidehustle’s chin. I personally wouldn’t have voluntarily touched it, but Sterling’s never been squeamish. When he rubbed it between his fingers, it disappeared. “What now?”
I’d been avoiding thinking about that question. I’ve never killed a person. I don’t think I could. Not unless it was self-defense. And even then, chances are, I’d hesitate. And now, with time enough to measure my reaction? No way could I ever harm someone else in such a cold and calculated move and be able to live with myself afterward.
Whenever I paused long enough to turn around a single thought, Zephyr would’ve run through a half dozen ideas or more. Thankfully, now was no exception. “Let’s say we were to re-create what we did with Aurora last night, pick everyone up, scatter them around town, leave ’em disoriented and queasy. Hold on, that wouldn’t work. They’d know something was up. And what then? Not only would they come back for more. They’d bring backup.”
“Okay,” Sterling said. “What if we cleared out the warehouse so it looks like we were never there? The whole thing’s a bust, Sidehustle comes off like a slimeball who’s just wasted everyone’s time, the warehouse falls off the authorities’ radar, and it’s back to status quo.”
