Legends of Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 4)

by A. L. Knorr

  “What pattern?”

  “It’s better if you see it for yourself. Along with securing security clearance to share our latest intel on Nero with you, I have permission to share the live map. You’ll find login information and a link in your email. We expect to have an app ready to download within the week where it will be easier to watch the progress.”

  “That’s... amazing,” I said, impressed at this nimble reaction the agency was able to muster in the middle of such chaos.

  “It is, but I fear the heroic efforts being made by our mages and ex-mages is not enough. We still don’t know why the fires are going out, and if we don’t know why then we can’t stop it. There’s a feeling like the ground is crumbling beneath us.”

  “Does it have something to do with the orb Ryan gave Nero? It must.”

  “I believe so but I am having a difficult time convincing my superiors. The old legends don’t hold much credibility.”

  “I didn’t know you had superiors. Didn’t you start the Agency?”

  “I got it off the ground, yes, but I don’t run it. I’m just a member of the board. I don’t have authority when it comes to operations. If I can’t convince them that the relic has something to do with what’s happening, then they’ll never redirect resources, especially with our ranks running so thin.”

  My mind spun like a carousel and I felt like I was trying to breathe in hot soup. Pressing my back against the cool stone wall behind me, I slid down to sit on the paving stones in the alley.

  “Tell me what to do, Basil,” I breathed. If I didn’t have an order, I wouldn’t move from this spot. I felt paralyzed and overwhelmed.

  “When you’re finished with the police, go straight to your villa. I would suggest you move out right away, but there’s a chance Gage could free himself and if you move and they’ve taken his phone, he won’t be able to find you. Sit tight for now. Do you have a WiFi connection there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Go into your email first thing and look at the map I’ll send you access to. It will help you understand the scope of what we’re dealing with. Make note of any patterns. It will be difficult, but try not to let it upset you. You’ll want to contact some of your friends. Keep it to a minimum. The agency’s hotline is being bombarded already so try not to alarm anyone unnecessarily.”

  I sucked in a breath and began to squeeze my temples with my fingers. It felt like my heart had taken up residence in my forehead. Why was Basil talking about my friends? Who had lost their fire? “What about Gage?”

  “I’ll send you the intel on Nero I have permission to send, but you’ll have to wait for a login for an encrypted site. An agent will call you through that site. I believe our best chance of recovering Gage is to find Nero.”

  I pressed my back against the wall and got to my feet. Looking both ways as I stepped into the street. The police were standing beside their smart-car drinking coffee. I resisted the urge to make a face at them as I headed for the villa, happy at least for a task to focus on. “Okay. Thanks, Basil.”

  “Things are moving fast. I’ll be in touch again soon.”

  Returning to the villa, the first thing I did was check my email for the link from Basil. When it hadn’t yet come in, I turned on an audible notification, stripped off my clothes and stepped into the bathroom for my second shower of the day, more from a desire to wash off the horrific events than from any need to be clean. With hot spray pounding the back of my neck, I dropped my head and closed my eyes.

  Wherever Gage might be I hoped he had water. The longer we went without contact, the more likely it was that Gage had been taken for his fire, not for his money.

  I turned off the shower and got out, wrapping myself in a robe. As I was drying my hair, my inbox chime sounded from the kitchen. Not bothering to dry properly or dress, I scampered across the cool tile floor. Clicking on Basil’s email, I opened his link and followed the prompts to download the Agency’s proprietary software. While it downloaded, I hurriedly scrubbed my skin dry, pulled on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and spiraled my wet curls up into a topknot. I slid into the chair as the software finished downloading.

  I installed it and input the username and password Basil had provided. A map of the world against a black background blinked into existence, borders and coastlines marked with a thin, pale gray line. Tiny individual lights scattered across the land masses in clusters, the way city lights looked from an airplane window at thirty-thousand feet on a clear night. My jaw went slack as I studied the backlit speckles. There had to be fifty-thousand of them. More lit up as I watched, concentrated around urban areas but occasionally in the middle of black, rural zones. I staggered under the realization that all of these individual lights represented magi whose fires had been snuffed. The sheer number of them made my vision blur as blood drained from my head. My hand drifted to cover my mouth and I stared, horrified, as tiny lights were added to the map with every second that passed. This was the intel trickling in from the agencies that were partnering with Arcturus.

  When the shock wore off enough to think, I used the mouse to hover over a cluster of lights. Small boxes popped up in a menu down the right-hand side containing information connected to the lights I was rolling over. Some lights had full names and nothing else, some had names and a date. I noticed after some moments that the majority of dates were either March of this year or December of last year. A few were listed as July, from the snuffing that had just taken place. Some boxes had a birth date marked. Some lights had no helpful information attached at all, just three little flashing dots, indicating that intel was yet to arrive.

  My eye was drawn to the island of the UK where clusters were concentrated in London, Edinburgh, Manchester, and other large cities. A few lights were scattered throughout the rest of the country. Rolling my mouse over these, I froze as Liu Xiaotian’s name popped up.

  Liu had lost her fire. Liu was Burned. So Burned magi were not immune to what was happening. I shivered as I continued to roll the mouse. Any hopes I had been resting on immunity to the snuffing thanks to my Burned status went up in smoke.

  Names flashed before my eyes, and I began to pick up on the pattern Basil mentioned. Not all, but a majority of the names looked to be of Asian descent. Noticing this in the UK prompted me to take the mouse across the world to the Asian countries, where clusters of lights congealed around urban centers. Rolling over these revealed a majority of Asian names with a few non-Asian names mixed in. Impatient to understand, I drew the mouse to the other side of the world where clusters of lights were gathered throughout the Americas. Rolling over these names revealed more information.

  A higher concentration of December dates appeared when I rolled over the magi in South America, and there was a correlation between the Asian names and the July snuffing. It was a loose pattern, not completely consistent.

  My eye was drawn to the little island of Japan, and the groups there. My stomach dropped as I thought of Tomio. Hand shaking a little, I rolled over the clusters there, dreading the appearance of Tomio’s name. It didn’t pop up, but there might be too many listed for me to stumble over his entry by chance.

  Noticing a search bar in the upper left-hand corner, I clicked on it and typed ‘Tomio’.

  A long list of Tomios appeared, eliciting a squeak from me. But my heart calmed as I scrolled down the names and did not find any combination of ‘Tomio’ and ‘Nakano’.

  Still. Basil had mentioned I might want to call friends for a reason.

  I liberated my phone from my bag and dialed Tomio as I checked the time and made a quick calculation. It would be almost seven pm in Tokyo. It rang twice and then clicked as Tomio picked up. From the light sound of his voice, I knew his fire had not gone out.

  “Saxony? Hey!” He sounded delighted to hear from me.

  “Hi.” I let out a long breath as some of the tension eased out of my neck and shoulders. “You sound well.”

  “I am. Even better when I saw your name come up o
n my caller ID. After you updated me about Eira and the games, I wasn’t sure you wanted to have anything to do with me until the school year started again. How are you? Man, I’m happy to hear from you.”

  He was grinning. I could hear it in his tone. I closed my eyes, dreading that I was about to wipe that grin away.

  “You’ve still got your fire, I guess,” I said, clearing my throat.

  Tomio paused. “Yes. Why? What’s happened? Are you okay?”

  “I still have mine too, but lots of magi don’t.”

  His voice turned breathy. “More fires have gone out?”

  “Yes. I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything about it over there. I’m looking at a map Basil shared with me. The agency is documenting who has lost their fire and where they are. A lot of them are Asian, Tomio. More than half. That’s why I called you. I was worried—” I gulped and forced myself to slow down.

  “Basil shared Agency intel with you?”

  “Because Gage has been kidnapped. I’m in Naples, by the way.”

  Dead air. Then, incredulously: “Back up. What?”

  “I’m sorry, Tomio. I’m doing a terrible job communicating. Are you sitting down?”

  “Well, I am now. Holy shit-balls, Saxony. What is going on over there?”

  Tomio listened while I caught him up. When I got to how Gage was taken around the same time Basil learned about more fires being snuffed, he interrupted me.

  “I’m coming. Sit tight. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I stuttered in shock. “What? No. Th-that’s not why I called.”

  Impatiently, and with a grunt of annoyance: “I know that, Saxony. But first of all, Gage—one of my best friends, or at least he was before I snogged his girl—has disappeared. Second of all, you’re all alone there without any help from Basil, while I’m hanging out in the sun playing chess with my auntie. I’m wasted here, so I’m coming. I’m already looking up tickets.”

  I could hear his fingers flying over a keyboard in the background. “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t be stupid. This is an emergency. If I were you, I’d be getting on the phone to some of those elemental friends of yours and looping them in.”

  “They know I’m here.”

  “Do they know Gage is missing?”

  “No, it just happened. I’ve barely had time to wrap my own mind around it.”

  “Do Gage’s parents know?”

  “Yes. Basil told them. I don’t know how long they’ll wait to come, it might depend on what the police suggest.”

  Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard in the background. Tomio sounded almost gleeful that he had something exciting to do. “Right. How about Ryan?”

  “I tried calling him but couldn’t get through so I sent him a voice text. He hasn’t responded. I can’t tell if he’s received it or not, but Gage said he was trying to get a rushed visa to visit Iran.”

  The tapping paused. “That’s interesting. Why?”

  “I have no idea but it has to have something to do with Nero.”

  Something thumped in the background, followed by a zipping sound. Tomio let out a long growl of frustration.

  “You okay? What are you doing?”

  “I just broke the zipper on my luggage. I have to go. I’m having butterfingers. I’ll call you back as soon as I’ve booked my ticket.”

  We said goodbye but I kept the phone against my ear and didn’t hang up until Tomio did. Hearing the sound of him on the other end gave me comfort. When the line went dead a feeling of abject loneliness washed over me, but incredibly, Tomio was coming, and the knowledge that I wouldn’t be alone for long would tide me over until he arrived.

  As I studied the map further, my thoughts turned to my mom. She’d never been happy about what had happened to me, even after I’d told her that I felt it was destiny that I had become a mage. I wondered if she’d be happy if my fire was snuffed. And how would I feel to return to the ranks of the natural? It would be weird, having become accustomed to having such power at my fingertips, only to have it disappear overnight. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go back to regular life, except that Akiko, Georjie and Targa had—in their own way—gone through this with me. I’d feel left out if I returned to normal.

  Closing my eyes, I tuned in to my fire. It was quiet, banked and waiting to be of service, my ever-present companion, my battery of heat and energy. Shivering, I opened my eyes, not wanting to think about it too hard. I didn’t have the emotional stamina to explain everything all over again, especially to my mom. Better to leave them out of things for a little while. I’d rather call them when I had a resolution to share, not while trouble was mounting. All it would do was stress them out, they might even get the crazy notion that they could be helpful and get on plane the way Gage had, the way Tomio was doing. I couldn’t have that.

  I also didn’t have the fortitude to bring Georjie and Targa up to speed just yet. We’d shared a long video call before I’d left England, each of them taking a turn explaining adventures they’d recently been on, trouble they’d recently been in. Targa had been to Atlantis and Georjie had visited a fae-dimension she’d called Stavarjak. They’d each faced life-threatening circumstances on their own and had prevailed. Not that I’d have been able to help them immediately even if they had asked for help, I’d been engaged in finals at the academy, and then the Fire Games.

  I was one of a trio of powerful elementals. They’d been strong, even when mostly—or in the case of Georjie, completely—on her own. Targa had broken a curse and Georjie faced down that hellish sounding witch. No one had come to their aid, even when they’d promised to. I could be strong, too. It was my turn to buck up and use my powers for what they were meant for: taking on bad guys, and winning.

  Seven

  No Answer Is An Answer

  The next time I found myself at the Naples International Airport it was mid-afternoon instead of dawn, and I was sick of the place. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. It seemed a suspicious character stood at every corner, looked down from the upper-floor railings, and lurked at the exits like haunted spooks. I moved away from small crowds to stand out in the open where no one was at my elbow, a tricky thing to pull off in such a busy place.

  When Tomio emerged from the arrivals gate carrying a backpack and pulling a medium-sized rolling duffle-bag, I hardly recognized the look on his face as pleasure. I flew at him. He wrapped his arms around me and I squeezed back as I scoped out the faces of those behind him.

  “Come on.” Releasing him, I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the parking lot on the south side of the terminal, elbowing my way through the crowd in a decidedly un-Canadian way.

  “Nice to see you too, my flight was fine thanks,” Tomio said as I dragged him along. “Don’t you just love those new Dreamliner models with the tinted windows? Man, they are so cool, so roomy. And they say the upgraded ventilation system helps a lot with jetlag, though I’ve never had a problem with that myself. Would have been nice if they’d asked me ahead of time if lentils give me gas, though. I would have been able to warn the nice lady beside me—” Tomio prattled on until I stopped beside a small, red Fiat and popped the trunk. He finally stopped rambling when he saw my wheels.

  “You rented a car?” Tomio lifted his bags into the tiny trunk.

  “The Agency arranged it. Don’t trust the cabbies anymore. Get in and buckle up.” I commanded, sliding behind the wheel. He slammed the trunk and got in.

  I piloted the Fiat out of the parking space before Tomio even had the door closed. Ignoring his side-long glances, which said he was wondering if I’d lost my mind, I guided the car onto the autostrada, noticing he hadn’t fastened his belt yet.

  “Seatbelt, please,” I said with a glance at the rear-view mirror.

  Tomio looked over his shoulder at the road behind us as he pulled at his shoulder-strap and fixed the belt into place. “Are you okay? Whoa!”

  Dodging a semi-truck and slipping between two vans and into the
fast lane, I dropped into third gear, angling for the Vespucci exit.

  He twisted in his seat. “That was a sixteen-wheeler back there, not a dog-sled!”

  I changed lanes to pass a laboring Mercedes spewing fumes. Tomio grabbed the handle above the door and shrank down like a dog about to get smacked as I took a roundabout a little too fast, eyeballing a black SUV with tinted windows as it swung across my rear-view mirror. More than one horn blasted as we exited the rotunda.

  “I think you’ve spent too much time in Italy,” Tomio muttered, cringing as I swerved too late to miss a pothole. There was a crunch beneath the car. Someone beeped.

  “Italians use their horns just to tell you they’re there,” I said as we zipped along Via Nuovo Marina, the Bay of Naples looming large on the left.

  Tomio watched the window as we flew by a white Audi with a disgruntled driver. “Are they also telling you to have a nice day when they flip you the bird?”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Seriously, Saxony. This is a side of you I’ve never seen. Sam Hornish Jr. called. He wants his driving back.”

  “Who is that?” I geared down as the back of a yellow van with its brake lights on loomed in front of us.

  “One of the most dangerous NASCAR spring cup drivers of the decade. His career is peppered with crashes and exactly zero trips down victory lane.”

  “You like NASCAR?” With another glance at the rear-view, I guided the Fiat onto the narrow Via Ernesto Capocci. Finally convinced we were not being tailed, I slowed down to thirty and swerved to avoid a trio of pastel colored Vespas carrying tanned, laughing tourists.