We were venturing out into the woods, where I could be as close to nature as possible, in hopes of someone being able to teach me something about earth magic. In my mind it was my last hope in gaining an edge over Rowe and the other naturi; it was my only chance of survival if Aurora was actually released from her cage. But by the mood in the car, I was beginning to have my doubts as to whether what I wanted would be enough to save myself and those around me.
I pulled the car off the expressway and drove for more than an hour along one winding rural road after another until there were only trees and farmland for as far as the eye could see. At long last I pulled off onto a rutted dirt road that seemed to burrow down into a grove of trees. Once the car was off the road and unlikely to attract the attention of anyone who might randomly drive by, I put the car in neutral and killed the engine.
“Everyone out. We’re here,” I announced, opening my car door.
“Where exactly is here?” Shelly said as she got out of the car and looked over the roof at me.
“Middle of nowhere, middle of the woods,” I said, flashing her a wolfish grin. “I thought this would be the best place to practice in the event that anything caught on fire or worse.”
“Good logic,” Cynnia muttered behind me as she shut her door.
The trio of oh-so-happy campers followed me deeper into the woods. While Danaus, Cynnia, and I had perfect night vision, Shelly wasn’t quite so lucky. She lagged behind the group, stumbling over broken branches as she struggled to see in the pitch-black darkness. Finally, Danaus took her elbow so he could guide her through the woods.
I halted the hike by a narrow stream filled with ankle-deep water that flowed over smooth, algae-covered stones. Standing in the middle of the stream, I tried to ignore how my feet cooled as the water flowed over my leather boots while I lifted my arms over my head. My eyes fell almost completely shut in concentration as I reached deep within myself. Around us, five balls of fire flickered into existence and hovered overhead, beating back the darkness.
“This is my power—the creation and control of fire,” I announced to my companions. My strong, steady voice seemed to echo through the empty woods. “I’ve been able to do this since I was human. The power is fueled from the energy created by my soul. If I use it too much, I grow tired.”
“And you retained this ability even after your conversion from human to nightwalker,” Cynnia stated, settling on the bank of the stream, her eyes staring up at the fireball closest to her.
“I retained my soul, so I retained the ability.” I lowered my arms back to my sides while I extinguished two of the five fireballs. “But then, all nightwalkers are limited to soul magic, or blood magic as it is commonly known among my kind. We lose our connection to the earth when we’re reborn.”
“I’m confused,” Shelly said, speaking up. She carefully stepped down the bank to the edge of the stream so she was standing only a few feet away from me. Only Danaus remained higher up on the rise, looking down on us three, half hidden by the shadows. “If nightwalkers are limited to blood magic, why have you asked us to teach you earth magic? By your own admission, it should be impossible.”
“But then so is my unique ability in both human and nightwalker form,” I added, arching one brow at her. “What human have you known that could create fire? That’s the realm of witches and warlocks, and only the more skilled. I was breaking the rules the day I was born.”
“That logic doesn’t mean you can break them all,” Danaus called down at me, a smirk filling his tone.
“But I’ve already broken this next one,” I said, my gaze sliding from the hunter to Cynnia. “At the swell on the island of Crete, I could feel the energy from the earth. It pressed against my skin, and when I used my ability, it entered me. I could use that power from the earth to fuel my fire, instead of using the energy from my soul.”
“Amazing,” she breathed.
“Yes, but I couldn’t control it. It was pure raw energy that had found an outlet. I couldn’t stop it, and I couldn’t push it into any other kind of spell. There was only the need to create fire.”
“Do you know any other spells?” Shelly inquired.
“No.”
“Well, that’s part of your problem,” Shelly chuckled.
“But I’m not even sure how I technically control fire,” I countered. “I woke up one day and I could. Time and practice have made the ability stronger and more dynamic, but I don’t understand it any better.”
“Mira,” Cynnia slowly said, backing away from the edge of the water and up the bank toward Danaus. “At the risk of my own life, I was wondering if you considered that maybe, by some slight chance, you weren’t born human.”
“I was human,” I snapped, taking a step toward her.
“But as you said, humans can’t control fire like you do.”
With a wave of my hand, the last of the fireballs were extinguished, plunging the woods into total darkness. “And if I wasn’t human, what do you think I was?”
“Maybe you should have been a witch,” Shelly quickly interjected.
“We both know witches and warlocks are trained; they’re not born,” I briskly said, my gaze not wavering from the naturi that seemed to be cringing near Danaus’s feet. “No, you’ve got something else in mind.”
“What you’re describing is very similar…to how…light clan members manipulate fire,” Cynnia said haltingly.
I was out of the water in a flash, coming up the hill, but was immediately halted by Danaus’s long knife. He had lurched forward into a squat, hovering over Cynnia as he held the knife to my neck, holding me at bay. I had simply reacted to the horrid suggestion, no real thought crossing my brain. I wasn’t naturi. There was no part of me that held a strain of naturi.
“Mira?” Danaus inquired, his steady voice helping to draw back the veil of rage at the very suggestion. I had no doubt that he would like for it to be true. It would leave me with my own dark secret, much like my dear Danaus and the secret of his own powers.
“It’s impossible.”
“A lot of things about you are impossible,” he said in a low voice. “Why is this?”
Gritting my teeth, I stepped backward down the hill until I was in the water again, letting the cool feeling soothe my anger and ease the tension that hummed through my body. With a wave of both my hands, the five fireballs reappeared in the air. However, this time they were somewhat larger and crackled a little louder, as if matching my lingering anger.
“If I possessed any naturi blood within my system, it would have killed the nightwalkers that made me,” I explained, starting to get my emotions back under control as I logically thought about it. “Naturi blood is poisonous, even in its most diluted form. Besides, you’re saying that it’s possible for a naturi and a human to have a child together, which is not only highly unlikely, it’s impossible. The closest thing to a naturi half-breed is a shapeshifter, right?”
“That’s true,” Cynnia softly admitted, her eyes dropping down to the grass at her feet. “The whole thing is nigh impossible, but you have to admit that the similarity is striking.”
“Striking,” I growled, kicking a rock out of my way. “But impossible. I knew my parents. They were both human.”
“Then it’s just some kind of genetic mutation,” Shelly suggested, clearly trying to smooth over the tension.
I bit my lip, holding in another snide remark. She was trying to be nice, but making it sound like I was a freak of nature wasn’t much of an improvement. “I’m not naturi. Making me into a nightwalker would have killed my creators.” Sadira, Jabari, and Tabor would have been instantly poisoned by my blood, resulting in their deaths. I would never have been turned into a nightwalker.
Shoving both of my hands into my hair, I pushed it out of my eyes as I turned to look at my companions again. “But we’re getting off topic. My heritage has nothing to do with what I want tonight. Teach me how to use earth magic. Teach me how to control the energy that comes up
out of the earth.”
“Can you feel the earth’s energy now?” Cynnia asked, starting to scoot back down to the bank again now that I was acting like a rational creature again.
“No.”
“Take off your shoes,” she instructed.
With a huff, I waded to the bank and sat down in the soft earth, ignoring that fact that I was getting mud on the seat of my leather pants. Barefoot, I flinched at the coldness of the water as I returned to the stream. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses. I could feel Danaus and Shelly near me. I could sense other humans miles away and nightwalkers clustered together to the east, back in my domain. But there was no feeling of energy similar to what I had felt on Crete. The only flow beneath my feet was the cold water in the stream.
“I still don’t feel anything,” I sighed, letting my eyes fall shut as I concentrated harder, but there was only nothingness where there should have been energy.
“What if I fed you some earth energy?” Shelly said, causing my eyes to snap open.
“How?”
She rose to her feet and snapped her fingers, creating a small ball of fire just above her fingertips. She was going to throw the fire at me and I would catch it. It was similar to what had happened to me in London with the earth witch that had attacked me. At that time, I had sensed a flow of energy, but couldn’t identify it or understand it.
“Bigger.”
With a wave of her hand, the ball of fire grew until it was the size of a basketball. I nodded and she flung the fire at me. Reaching out my right hand, I caught it then let it flow down my body like a snake until the fire hit the water and was extinguished. For a moment the connection of the fire and water caused a dull roar in my head. I could hear the flow of power beneath the surface of the earth. It tingled through my toes for a second and then completely vanished. It lasted for only a second, but I felt it.
“There! I felt it! It was faint, but I felt something,” I cried. Stepping out of the water to the opposite bank, I shouted, “Do it again!”
Shelly repeated the spell and I allowed the fire to wash down my frame until it was absorbed by the earth. The feeling was stronger this time, but it was still only a feeling. I didn’t feel a part of it in any way as I had in Crete. It was as if the earth was indifferent to my existence.
“I can feel it, but I can’t tap into the power itself. It just flows right past me.”
“Beneath your feet?” Cynnia asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t feel it in the air?” Shelly inquired, crinkling her nose as she stared at me.
“No.”
“Mira, earth magic users draw their power from the air. Only the oldest and most skilled can actually draw it from deep within the earth, where it is the strongest and hardest to manipulate,” she explained.
“Also, only naturi have been known to consistently draw their power directly from the flows in the earth,” Cynnia added. “The fact that you can feel it means you’re sensitive to only the strongest points of power. The odds of you being able to learn how to use earth magic is extremely slim, if not impossible. Unless you’re at a swell, you won’t be able to sense the magic to use it.”
With my teeth clenched in frustration, I flopped down on the opposite bank and looked over at my companions. Yes, the similarities between my abilities and the naturi light clan were striking, but that’s all it was. I wasn’t a naturi, didn’t have any ties to the naturi, thus I didn’t have any ties to nature. For some reason, the earth could use me as a weapon of destruction, but I couldn’t use it.
“Then teach me a new spell,” I said in a low, weary voice.
“But you can’t use earth magic,” Shelly countered, her gaze dancing from me to Cynnia.
“I saw a warlock do a protection spell. It created a physical barrier between him and his assailant. Can you teach me that? If I can learn to do it using blood magic, maybe I can channel the earth magic into it when I’m in Peru.”
Again Shelly looked over at Cynnia, who shrugged one shoulder. Both women looked skeptical but seemed willing to try.
And try they did for more than four hours. We worked through the night until I was shaking with exhaustion. I had used up much of my soul energy to create this magical barrier that was strong enough by the end to stop Danaus’s blade. Its strength was never consistent, but it was a start. I suspected that it might be easier to manipulate when I had an excess of energy flowing through my frame.
By the end of the evening, I threw the car keys at Danaus and settled into the passenger seat, trying to ignore the mud that was being smeared across the leather seats. But in truth I was too exhausted to care. Danaus drove us back toward my domain, back to the protection of my city and away from the dark, indifferent woods.
Did you get what you wanted? his voice whispered through my head, and my eyes grew heavy.
No, but it’s a start.
Mira…
I’m not part naturi, Danaus. They would never have survived the transformation, I replied, thinking of my three beloved makers and the care they had taken in making me into a First Blood nightwalker.
The similarity is…
Creepy, I finished. Too creepy.
I was confident that I wasn’t a naturi, that I had no relation to the naturi race. Yet, for the first time in my entire existence I was forced to wonder, had I truly been born human? Unfortunately, I doubted I would have the chance to find the answer to that question, since we flew to Peru tomorrow night.
Seventeen
Upon waking, I hit my head, banged my knee, and stubbed my toe all at the same time. I had forgotten that I was curled up in a trunk and not stretched out on a bed in Savannah. We had been somewhere over the Atlantic when I finally curled up in the trunk I brought along before hopping on a plane just outside the city. I hated the thing before I even climbed into it. It was cramped, and the only lock was on the exterior. I preferred my metal alloy, fireproof box with its double interior locks and silk lining. Unfortunately, I was once again traveling without my bodyguards, and I didn’t want to worry about Danaus trying to maneuver the coffin while trying to keep an eye on Shelly and Cynnia at the same time. Gabriel had offered to come along, but that would mean bringing Matsui along as well, and I wasn’t prepared to be asleep around my newest guardian. Trust came with time.
Now I was stuck with a trunk that Houdini would have felt at home in. I, on the other hand, needed to get the hell out of the thing before I developed an acute case of claustrophobia. Shifting as best as I could in the tiny space, I put my back into the lid and slowly pushed, testing to see if it was locked. I had the strength to force open the trunk anyway, but no desire to break the one lock on my only protection during the daylight hours for the next couple of days. Luckily, the lid offered no resistance.
Sighing as I stood, I instantly banged my head against a metal rod and wooden plank. Barely stifling a string of curses that were perched on the tip of my tongue, I hunched down and rubbed the top of my head as I looked around. The room was positively tiny, with an extremely low ceiling and a pair of sliding wood doors inches from my face. The curses escaped me this time in a rough whisper as I realized I was standing in a closet. As if waking up in a trunk wasn’t bad enough. No, Danaus had shoved me a closet.
With my teeth clenched, I slipped my fingernails into the crack between the door and the wall. Yet, I froze in the act of sliding the door open when I heard a doorknob turning in the next room. Someone was coming and it wasn’t Danaus. The hunter was already in the room, and by the sound of his soft, steady breathing, asleep on the bed. Sliding the door open without a sound, I smiled to see that the room was pitch-black except for the shaft of light that cut through it as the stranger entered.
The man with short black hair blinked against the inky darkness, waiting for his eyes to finally adjust to the gloom. I wasn’t about to give him the chance. Sweeping soundlessly across the room, I clamped my right hand on his throat and slammed him into the wall behind
him. At the same time, I pushed the door shut, plunging the room back into total darkness. I could still see him clearly, but I knew he could see nothing of me.
“What are you doing here?” I snarled.
“I—I’m sorry I’m late,” he stumbled, his speech carrying a thick accent that made his words difficult to understand. “I had trouble getting away from the bar.”
“The bar? What are you talking about? Late for what? Who are you?”
“Let him go, Mira,” Danaus’s calm voice interjected before the man could speak.
Turning my head to the right, I saw Danaus kneeling on the bed, knife in hand. I hadn’t even heard him move.
“He was sneaking into the room,” I said. My grip had not changed. A little tighter and I would crush his windpipe.
“He’s from Themis.”
While not the most reassuring information, it was enough to buy him some time. Releasing the man’s throat, I stepped away, flipping on the overhead light as I walked to the opposite side of the room.
“Mira, this is Eduardo, one of the few Themis contacts in South America and the only one located in Peru,” Danaus explained.
When I reached the far corner of the room, I turned on my heel to face the man. I knew I didn’t look my best, but I hadn’t expected the violence of his reaction. Eduardo attempted to back up, but he was already against the wall so all he achieved was hitting the back of his head. His dark brown eyes widened and he quickly crossed himself with a shaking hand. A string of words escaped him, but they were spoken in neither English nor Spanish. I could only guess it was Quechua or one of the Highland dialects, but couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that those hushed words teased at memories in my brain of nights spent on Machu Picchu, sounding too similar to the dialect used by the Incans centuries ago. They had watched as I was tortured by the naturi, their hushed conversations swirling around me.
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