A Taste of Ice (The Elementals)

by Hanna Martine

  He turned his face away. “I’m something else. Someone who knows you and your kind.”

  “Something else?” She almost laughed. “What does that mean? Who are you?”

  “I’m Tedran.” He still wouldn’t look at her. “I have different magic. I have illusions. It’s how I got away from you after bolting from the street performer. I made myself look like Shed’s cleaning lady. Pam didn’t know.”

  Then he whispered something that sounded as natural coming out of his mouth as the Ofarian words had escaping hers. In a glimmer of light and shadow, he transformed from being Xavier to a squat Hispanic woman. Cat jumped, hand to her pounding heart.

  “Touch me,” the strange woman said in Xavier’s voice. Cat just stood there. “Touch me.”

  She inched forward and pressed a single finger to the woman’s arm. The image shimmered and disappeared. Xavier rose before her again.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured. The enormity of what she’d just witnessed—on both their parts—made her start to hyperventilate. Not because she didn’t believe, but because she did.

  It was real. She’d found her answers.

  “The snowballs,” she said, “on the lake.”

  He licked his lips. “Yeah, that was an illusion.”

  She turned and went to the large corner booth.

  “Remember what you said to me the morning we met?” he asked at her back, his voice hushed. “You thought you recognized me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you did. In a way. Your kind…Ofarians…can sense other Secondaries, other magic-users. I think they’re called signatures, and each kind of Secondary’s feels different. That day you felt my signature.”

  She recalled so vividly that first mental tap on the shoulder, when she’d become aware of Xavier standing next to her before she’d even seen him. “I can still feel it,” she said, “though it’s different now that we’ve spent so much time together. Muted. I think I’ve felt them before, the signatures.” She flipped back through her memories, to all those strangers coming into her bar. “Like, a lot. I’ve been around others and I just never knew.”

  “It’s possible. I’m told there are a lot of Secondaries.”

  Xavier leaned his forearms on the divide between two booths and pressed his forehead into his clasped hands. “So there you have it,” he said. His tone made her want to cry.

  “Have what?”

  He turned his head to look at her. “A home. I just gave it to you in the form of your people.” He pushed off the booth and cut through the air with a hand. “And I can’t be a part of it.”

  “Because I’m…Ofarian?” Would that ever get easier to say?

  He winced. “Yes.”

  “Why not? Why not, Xavier? As long as we’re in the confessional, we might as well bring it all out.” When he still said nothing, she added, “You have issues with…Ofarians.”

  He released a short, pained laugh. His face was so haunted, and the sight of it scared her more than the water wrapping around her arm.

  “Please,” she said. “Talk to me.”

  It took a few moments, but he straightened. Faced her. And told her the most awful story she’d ever heard in a flat, emotionless voice.

  “I told you I came here three years ago. For two years before that I lived in San Francisco. But the time before that…I was a slave. I was born in what was called the Plant, a facility the Ofarians used to drain captive Tedrans of their glamour and sell it on the black market under the name Mendacia. They’d been doing it for generations. To keep it going they needed a steady supply of Tedrans. They had an elaborate breeding system set up. I was born inside a building with no windows. I lived there until seven years ago.”

  Cat covered her mouth with her hands. Xavier just plowed on.

  “Nora and Adine, the only two Tedrans not enslaved, broke me out of the Plant. Their plan was to kidnap the daughter of the Ofarian leader, Gwen Carroway, and force her to take down her own people and return the Tedrans back to the stars. She did both, but on her terms. In the end, the old Ofarian leadership was destroyed, the Plant shut down, and the Tedrans returned home. But in order to get them all back safely, I had to stay behind on Earth. To mask their departure with illusion.”

  Xavier just stood there, hands in his jeans pockets, eyes so far away he seemed blind. It was so much to digest. That piddly little water bracelet had scared her? She was a simpering coward next to this man.

  “I have no words,” she said slowly, each word hurting as it came out. “Nothing I can say will make things better for you. I know what you must see when you look at me. I understand your reaction this morning, when you must have realized—”

  “You want to hear about it?” A million ugly emotions were balled up in that nasty question and flung at her with destruction. “You want to know what the Ofarians did to me in the Plant?”

  The backs of her knees hit the bench. She hadn’t realized she’d been edging away from him. “Only if you want to tell me.” But did she want to hear it?

  “That’s not true. You want to know. I heard you ask me about it before you fell asleep last night. You want to know why I didn’t want to kiss you on the stairs. Why I wouldn’t let you touch me on the bus. Why I made you tell me what you wanted last night, and why I had you fuck me when I would’ve given anything—anything—to have just gone crazy on you.”

  His words sparked something inside her. Something she shouldn’t have been feeling at that moment. “Yes. I want to know all that.”

  His face turned terrifyingly blank. “It started right after my body changed. The guard who’d been in charge of me for pretty much my whole life took me to the Circle, which was what the Ofarians called the block where they bred the Tedrans. He sat me on a chair in front of the window. Made me watch a man and woman going at it. Made me understand what I was supposed to do with that hard stick between my legs.”

  Cat wasn’t one to swear, but holy shit.

  “The first time he put me in a breeding cell, I didn’t know what to feel. I wasn’t scared. I’d seen the other couples doing it and no one looked scared. He brought in a woman older than me by ten years at least. She lay down, spread her legs and showed me where to put it.” Xavier shook his head, his hair falling over his face in shame. “And I loved it. I thought the top of the world had been popped off and all the stars and sun shoved inside my body, even though at the time I had no idea what those things were. It was the greatest fucking thing.” He swallowed hard. “Until I saw how she didn’t love it. She didn’t resist, didn’t say no or push me away, but she went dead inside. And even though this was the only life I’d ever known, I sensed in my heart how lopsided the whole thing was. I was fourteen, did I mention that?”

  An awful sound filled the dining room and Cat realized it was her, trying to hold back a sob. The threatening look he threw her made her bury any tears before they fell.

  “I became their prize stud. I was a machine, hard all the time, ready whenever they needed me and even when they didn’t. He wouldn’t let me touch myself. At night he tied my hands behind my back and my blood would boil, dying for the next day. Dying for a woman.”

  He. He. That same guard, she guessed.

  Xavier was pacing now, making short work of the path between the outer booths and the tables in the center of the dining room. His body moved tightly, all constrained power and sexuality. She imagined him pacing like that in his cell, waiting for release.

  “And for some reason”—another ugly laugh—“I could get any Tedran woman pregnant. The ones who had problems, they brought to me. It always worked. Always. Never knew why, never questioned it. Just took whoever they gave me.”

  It was a long time before she could ask, “How many kids do you have?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Those weren’t tears glimmering in Xavier’s eyes. That was hatred, boiling up from inside and turning into something viscous and tangible.

  “This ‘he.’ This guard…”


  He tilted back his head and said to the ceiling. “Never knew his name. They didn’t exactly wear name tags. But he was the most consistent presence in my life. How fucked up is that?” His fingers wiggled near his throat. “Half of him was burned, like he’d been caught in a fire. One of his arms was a big mess.” He held out his shaking hands like they were filthy. “I can still feel that hand on my arms, Cat, pulling me through the corridors. He hated Tedrans more than anything. Amazing how people who don’t even understand why they hate, hate the strongest. And he took out that hate on me.”

  He wiped his hands on his jeans, long, slow rubs up and down his thighs. “He wasn’t there, when I went back with Gwen. I thought I was home free, that I’d never, ever have to see him again. Even though I was just as miserable on the outside as I was in the Plant, that was the one thing that I could be happy about.”

  He looked at her with horror, like she was one of them. How had that happened, when she’d started the day waking, blissful, in this man’s bed?

  She wrapped her arms around her middle, knowing that apologizing would only piss him off. What to say? Everything sounded dumb and patronizing and useless in her head. She went with: “He can’t hurt you anymore.” It was the truth, at least.

  Two long strides and he was inside her space, looming over her. “Oh, you think so? I saw him almost every goddamn day after I left Lake Tahoe. Adine and I went to San Francisco and I was jumping out of my skin. The Burned Man appeared to me in hallucinations. He haunted me, pushing me toward women like he had in the Plant. Tempting me. I was helpless.”

  “You said you hadn’t slept with anyone in three years.”

  He leaned closer, bending her backward over the table. She had to put her hands behind her to steady herself. “Because I slept with pretty much every woman in San Francisco before that. There wasn’t anyone left.” He reached up as if to touch her face, but then changed his mind. “I was careful, Cat. So careful. Adine shoved condoms at me like food, told me all about Primary diseases, dragged me to an Ofarian doctor Gwen told her about. But, above all, I didn’t want to get anyone pregnant.”

  In its crazy way, it all made so much sense now. Every stricken, lust-filled look he’d given her. The way he talked to her, so frankly, like he’d said it all before. How he wore sex like a second skin and exhibitionism meant nothing to him. How he’d pushed her away.

  “You stopped,” she whispered.

  “I had to. It was ruling me, and I was scared. I was scared for who I’d become and how far I had to fall.”

  He was staring at her mouth, his thighs pressed to hers, shoving her back into the table.

  She took a chance and touched his arm. The muscles underneath his long T-shirt were bunched so tightly she thought they might snap. His breath hissed through his flared nostrils.

  “And then you found cooking,” she said.

  “Oh, man.” His head dropped, cheek brushing hers. His other hand snaked around her lower back, holding her gently. “You get it,” he murmured. “It feels so good that you get it.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his. “How did you know when to stop? Sleeping around, I mean.”

  “When I realized I wanted to be normal, like a Primary. To blend in. I had to stop what had been bred into me.”

  She looked into his eyes. “You gave up sex.”

  He laughed shortly. “No, I abandoned it. Kicked it from a car going seventy and watched it roll around in the dirt. I didn’t look back. Moved here. And I didn’t have any problems with the Burned Man appearing except when—”

  “You talked to a woman. Or when one talked to you.”

  “Yes.” It was more an exhale than a word. “He was there the day I met you. When I looked at you and immediately wanted you.”

  “And when you kissed me on the steps.”

  “So many other times. The lake, the bus, the hallway of my own damn house…Every time I lost sight of you—the second it became about me, about fucking and coming and taking what I’d been trained to take—he was there.”

  A wave of guilt washed over her and she tried to shove him away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Last night…what sex must have done to you.”

  “No, that’s the thing.” His arm around her back tightened. His eyes found hers and clamped on. His voice lightened and he actually sounded excited. “He wasn’t there last night. I kicked him out of my bedroom and he stayed out. Because it was all for you; I made sure it was all for you. I was tested and I passed.”

  The words touched her deeply but still made her sad. “It wasn’t all for me. I saw how much you loved it. Sex shouldn’t be one-sided. It’s give and take. And you did both last night.”

  “No. It can’t be about me.”

  “Yes, it can. When I went down on you, you loved that. When I was on top, you should have seen your face. You’re healing yourself, Xavier.”

  His brow furrowed deeply and she drew fingers across the lines. She gave him a smile.

  “Do you think that maybe you’re a little scared to live wholly in the human world? Do you think that your subconscious is clinging to the Burned Man because of that fear?”

  “Ah, fuck. Don’t say that. I don’t want that to be true.”

  “Sex isn’t about him anymore. You’re moving on.”

  He was denying it, shaking his head, but she knew it to be true. She just had to get him to see it.

  His hands slid up to her face and he cradled it like he had on the ice. “When I met you,” he said, his eyes closing, “I told myself that I was just going to use you to help me get better, to be a normal Primary. To learn how to talk to a woman, nothing more.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?” He slid his lips across her temple and let them hover over her ear. “I want to learn how to love you.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Just when she thought she’d won, that she’d broken through to him, that her heart couldn’t balloon any larger, Xavier sucked in a breath and pushed away. Torment veiled his eyes and the chill in the restaurant sliced between them. His anger was slowly starting to become hers.

  “But you won’t let yourself,” she said, more bitterly than she’d intended, “because of what I am.”

  His wide shoulders bunched up. “You think I want you to be one of them? It’s killing me, Cat.”

  “Just—”

  With a slash of his arm, he spun away. “How did this get so turned around? I didn’t want any of this to come out. This isn’t about me.”

  A fist closed around her stomach, squeezed it tight. “What is it about then?”

  He scrubbed his face with his hands then stabbed his fingers into his hair.

  “Just say it, Xavier.”

  “Okay.” He blew out a breath. “Other Secondaries have gone missing. Apparently some Ofarians from very near here. I came to get you tonight to warn you, to make sure you’re safe.” He was back to saying every word very precisely and very slowly.

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what the other Secondaries are—maybe an air elemental, or a fire; she wasn’t specific—just that they’re gone.”

  “She?”

  He toed a chair to make it perfectly flush with the table. “Gwen.”

  “Gwen.” She flipped back through the story he’d just told her. “The Ofarian you kidnapped. The one who brought down her own people.”

  “Yeah. We haven’t talked since I left California but we spoke tonight. She’s the one who called during breakfast the other day, and then again this morning.” He cleared his throat. “I told her about you.”

  “You told her before you told me.”

  “She convinced me to tell you.”

  Cat gasped. “You weren’t going to say anything otherwise. Were you?”

  “At first, no.” He focused on a little pile of crumbs on the floor the cleaning crew had missed. “I was going to let you leave. Go back to Florida, where I wouldn’t have had to face it, or you, ever agai
n.”

  “Jesus, Xavier.” The curse tasted sour.

  “But then I realized how much I’ve hated being a coward all these years. And how much I want to see you safe, for you to have the life you deserve.” Chin down, he lifted just his eyes to hers. “You’re my enemy, Cat, and I—”

  “I’m not your enemy!” The shout pinged all around the empty restaurant. She took a hard swallow and stepped closer. “You know that, right? Deep down, you know I’m not your enemy.”

  He drew his lips in so tightly they disappeared. She could tell by the glassiness of his eyes that he was just going to run right over that one.

  “Gwen says you need to learn how to use your powers before it starts to affect your mind. She wants to teach you.”

  That explained a lot. The constant distraction. The shift in her art over time, how at first it had been rapturous and free-flowing, and lately, in the past year or two, it had grown more agitated, more frustrated. Like her.

  She could only imagine, at this rate, what her art would look like in another year. Or two.

  Or what would happen to her brain.

  “She wants you to call her.” He dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a piece of paper. When he handed it to her, his hand shook so badly the paper rattled. And when she took the paper, she saw that it had been wadded up and flattened and wadded up and flattened several times.

  “Okay, I will.” He’d just handed her everything she’d always wanted. Why wasn’t she happier?

  They stared hard at one another.

  “I’d been thinking,” he began, then gave a little shake of his head, breaking eye contact. “I’d been hoping that you and I could…be together. Somehow. You made me hope. You made me believe.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “I can’t afford that belief.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the idea of us is more powerful than the reality. Now that I know what you are, I can’t help it; I’ve put up this wall. I tell myself that you’re different, that you’re not really one of them. But if you call Gwen and she brings you into the Ofarian world, I don’t know if I could handle that.”