A Taste of Ice (The Elementals)

by Hanna Martine

  Griffin’s expression brightened. “Shit. Yes. We completely fell for it.”

  Xavier held up a hand. “But I didn’t use my own power.” He really, really couldn’t believe he was doing this. His next words came out barbed, resisting their exit. “It worked because I made that man swallow Mendacia. I can make a tennis racket look like Michael’s dead body, but the second anyone touches it the illusion will die. I need Mendacia.”

  Which would be impossible, considering Xavier had used every last drop of Mendacia to disguise the ship carrying the freed Tedrans as it rose out of Lake Tahoe and soared out of Earth’s atmosphere. He still remembered how terrible and glorious that had felt. All that power, underneath his skin. All that power, made from Tedran lives.

  “I have a bottle. At my house.” Griffin’s olive skin paled. He slanted his gaze toward the sun gleaming behind the mountains. “I’ve kept it all this time to remind me what we once were. What we’re trying to be.”

  Trying to be. If that wasn’t telling.

  “I’m not killing anyone,” Xavier told him, “but if you can get it to me, I’ll help you out.”

  Griffin immediately spun away, muttering into his phone.

  A hollowness ate away at Xavier, but he would do this, because Cat’s safety depended on it. How strange, given that just two weeks ago he had been so intent on wedging himself into the Primary world. Now, once again, he was trying to sweep it away.

  The wind picked up, making him think of Jase.

  “Gwen will take care of her,” Reed said at his shoulder, with a meaningful look toward Cat.

  He exhaled, the pain in his chest worth the weight of a mountain or two. “I know. There’s so much I don’t know, but I know that.”

  “All right.” Griffin came back to them. “The bottle will meet us at the Plant.”

  All strength left Xavier’s body. “No. I can’t—”

  “Xavier, if we wait for it to get here we lose time with Heath Colfax. We need Cat to get what’s in his head and we need it now. My people can drive the Mendacia to Nevada faster than they can get it to Colorado by plane. Who knows where Kekona is now, who she’s contacted. We’re relying on hours here, not days.”

  The wind swept Xavier’s hair across his face and he swiped at it, wishing, for once, that he had the nerve to go as bald as Reed. Cat hadn’t asked him to go to the Plant with her, and he hadn’t offered. Now he had no other choice. Face it like a man. A healed man.

  “All right,” he said.

  Griffin had the grace to look humbled. “Thank you, Xavier. I feel like I say that to you every time we’re together.” He clapped a hand on Xavier’s shoulder and Xavier winced. The adrenaline had vanished hours ago. Now rushed in the pain from all the fights and the debilitating exhaustion.

  Griffin frowned, then waved over an Ofarian soldier. “My EMT will look at you. Don’t say no.” Then he lifted his phone to his mouth again and barked into it. “I want evidence Michael Ebrecht is leaving Colorado on a private plane tonight. False departure records. Aircraft registration. Everything. And I want a plane we can set on autopilot to drive into the ground outside of Reno…”

  Xavier didn’t hear the rest. He was already walking toward Cat. Gwen saw him approach, gave Cat’s arm a squeeze, and fell back toward Reed.

  Xavier stood in front of her, his beautiful, brave Cat. “I’m going to the Plant.”

  Her chin quivered, but she clamped her jaw shut and the emotion transferred to her eyes, making them all clear and lovely. Like water. Never in a million years would she have asked him to go back there. He knew that. But some tiny part of her was glad they’d be together. And maybe he felt the same.

  “Xavier,” Griffin called out. “Everything’s all set.”

  Xavier acknowledged the Ofarian leader with a lift of the chin.

  Cat blinked up at him. “Set for what?”

  He inhaled deeply. “I’m going to Nevada in order to fake Michael’s death with glamour.”

  She touched her lips. “Oh, God. You’d do that?”

  “I don’t have a choice. They need to make sure Michael’s not a threat while all this stuff with Kekona goes down…” He reached out, slid his arms around her waist. “And I’m going for you, too.”

  She smiled, but it was broken. “Don’t say that. I don’t want to be the one responsible for sending you back there.”

  “You’re not sending me.” He pulled her even closer. “I can stay here in Colorado and watch you fly away. I can be a prick and demand that I’ll only help Griffin on my terms. But the thing is, this place, this town, won’t ever be the same to me without you. It’s my fucking hang-ups that screwed everything up between us—”

  “No, that’s not true.”

  “But really, what am I going to do? Go back to my job, my house, and sink back into that hole that I’d tricked myself into believing was contentment? I’m going back to Nevada because that’s where Griffin needs me. It’s where—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—innocent Ofarians need me. I’m going back to Nevada because if I want to move on with my life, I should be able to leave my past in the past, right?”

  Now her hands slid around his back, making his whole body come alive. He touched his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “And I’m going back with you. If you want a hand to hold when you meet your father, I’ll give you one.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I want that.”

  At this point, he’d do anything she asked. Anything.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Cat got her first and last look at Mendacia when an Ofarian named David met them in the middle of the Nevada barrenness. When he passed the small vial to Griffin, she could see the worn-out places on the silver label where the leader’s fingers fit so well. She could picture him sitting alone in his office or home or wherever, holding the bottle and staring into everything that had gone wrong for his people.

  For their people, she corrected herself.

  Without emotion, Xavier snatched the bottle from Griffin and the cage holding two rats from David. Xavier held one rat in his palm, popped the vial’s cork with a thumb, and poured the thick liquid down the rat’s throat.

  Cat gasped. Mendacia was the exact color of Xavier’s eyes.

  She stood with David—who said he’d been good friends with Gwen since junior high and Griffin since high school—and watched, fascinated, as Xavier manipulated his magic.

  He fed the other rat, then wove an illusionary spell on both animals, making one into a pilot—whose identity the half-Tedran tech master Adine Jones had created in less than an hour solely to serve his death—and the other into Michael Ebrecht. Xavier had gotten it eerily right. Cat went up and touched the new Michael, his skin real but chillingly not real. An Ofarian stuffed Michael’s wallet into the faux-Michael’s pocket and they sent the small plane up in the air on some sort of sophisticated remote and autopilot.

  Cat and Xavier, Griffin and David, were speeding down the highway, deeper into the cold Nevada scrub, when David, sitting next to her, played with buttons on a handheld computer. She swiveled in her seat to watch the tiny plane fall from the sky and crash in a great fireball in the middle of nowhere.

  She thought of Helen and how, despite Michael’s many, many shortcomings, his “favorite former stepmom” would be devastated.

  The whole ride to the Plant, Xavier sat next to her with his head bowed. He didn’t fidget; he didn’t wield that invisible knife. He just sat there, breathing, eyes on his knees. When the giant, gray building, with no outside markings and nothing else around for miles, appeared in the distance, she knew it had to be the Plant.

  She reached for Xavier. He’d said he’d hold her hand, but she wanted to take his first.

  The moment Griffin and David guided them into the Plant, Xavier’s head lifted. He was going in with his chin raised and eyes opened, and Cat felt a surge of love for him. He didn’t have to go inside. He’d done what he came to Nevada to do. He could have waited in the car out in the p
arking lot. But he didn’t.

  Gwen and Reed should have arrived hours earlier with Lea. Griffin had refused to allow Lea time with her father until they knew everything she knew. Gwen had volunteered to interrogate her sister regarding her actions and the probable Ofarian mole, an assignment that garnered Gwen a whole heck of a lot of respect from Cat, given that the only two surviving members of Gwen’s family were imprisoned here.

  Michael and Sean would be given quarters and taken care of in the Plant until their situation was evaluated. The two Ofarians who had also been Lea’s victims were to be taken away for questioning and medical checks by the head Ofarian doctor, who was also David’s wife.

  Now Cat and the three men—two Ofarian, one Tedran—walked slowly through the quiet, dimly lit corridors of the Plant. When they passed through a narrow hallway lined with doors that had been bricked over, the newer rectangles a lighter shade, Xavier shut down. He squeezed her hand so hard she lost feeling, but there was no expression on his wan face. Griffin awkwardly cleared his throat.

  It was a world without windows, a life without light. And somewhere in here was Cat’s father. Gwen had said anyone and everyone directly involved with the Plant—anyone who’d knowingly perpetuated the horror without trying to stop it—had been imprisoned here. Cat wasn’t sure if that seemed fair, especially given Colfax’s circumstances for seeking employment here in the first place.

  They entered a cell block, a wide corridor whose cinder block walls had been painted a light blue. The place was carpeted, and each cell had a bed and a couch. Books. Not cushy by any means, but comfortable.

  Xavier stopped, tugged his hand from Cat’s, and slowly turned around to face Griffin. “I see you redecorated.”

  Griffin shifted under Xavier’s harsh stare and said carefully, “There was a lengthy debate over how to modify the Plant to accommodate the new Ofarian prisoners. Some felt the place should be left exactly as it was so the Ofarians would get the exact same treatment as the Tedran slaves. Others wanted to essentially make it a hotel.”

  “So you made the executive decision to spruce the place up?” Xavier bit out. “Make it a little cheerier for your own?”

  Griffin’s jaw ticked. “Big decisions are done by vote now. I’m a moderator and, in some cases, a tiebreaker. Not a dictator.”

  “Aha. So the Ofarian people at large didn’t want to see their own criminals sitting in a gray cell with the constant buzz of neutralizer lights picking at their brains and destroying their sanity.”

  Griffin drew a deep breath through his nose. “There are basic rights that all people deserve—Primary and Secondary. We recognized the grave mistakes we’d made for many generations and wanted to send a message that we are changing. Evolving. It was a very, very difficult choice to make, Xavier. Do not walk in here and assume these criminals have it easy by any definition. They’ve all been given enough nelicoda to fry their water magic, the very thing that makes them Ofarian. They are incarcerated. They are being punished. They will be in here the rest of their lives. And you are free.”

  The two men stared at each other. Xavier had four inches on Griffin, but Griffin looked every bit the born leader.

  Griffin’s phone rang. He answered it without breaking eye contact with Xavier. He grunted into it, shut it, then turned to Cat. “David will take you to meet Heath in the conference room. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes. Gwen needs me.” He jogged off, leaving Cat to wonder and worry about how things were going between Gwen and Lea.

  With a tight smile, David gestured her and Xavier out of the cell block and toward a T intersection. David was blond, too, but in a muddier fashion than Xavier. There was a casual air to his personality and posture, but he wore that same intense focus that all Ofarians seemed to have. Like they were forever trying to shift the weight of their worries around on their shoulders. That worry never went away; they just had to figure out how to bear it. She wondered if she’d ever get to be like that, and the prospect frightened her.

  The panic returned without warning. That awful feeling of being engulfed by the flow of something she couldn’t stop or manage.

  When they came to the T intersection, Xavier stopped walking. He stared off to the left, where the carpeted hallway curved around in a gentle arc and disappeared into complete darkness.

  David slid his hands into his pockets and nudged his chin in the direction of Xavier’s glassy-eyed stare. “It’s storage now. Nobody wanted anything to do with the Circle. And did you see? We bricked over the old draining rooms.”

  Xavier swiveled around, ignoring David to find Cat’s eyes. “Let’s go,” he barked. “We’re not here for me.”

  David brought them to a part of the Plant devoted to offices, the space utilitarian and plain, but clean. He opened a door between two fake ficus trees, flipped on the light inside, and gestured them into a conference room. A round table occupied the center of the room, with six cushioned rolling chairs positioned around it. Another door stood on the opposite end of the room. David pointed to it.

  “They’ll bring him in through there. I’ll wait for Griffin out in the hall.”

  David stepped out, leaving the door open a crack. She and Xavier turned to each other.

  “Are you—” she began.

  A blaze of passion rolled over his gunmetal eyes and he was on her in an instant, pressing her back against the wall, his mouth hot and wet over hers. She gave in to him, because he was Xavier and he ignited something fierce in her. She was the match, forever waiting for him to strike her into flame. And, like a match, that flame happened instantly and with a brilliant, intense burst of color and heat.

  His kiss was hungry and hard, as only he was capable of. The crush of his body against hers, the strong length of his thigh pushed between her legs…it had been ages since they’d touched like this. The improperness of the situation and location and timing just barely registered. It was there, faintly poking at the back of her mind, but she skillfully ignored it. Ever since the morning after they’d first had sex, when she’d twirled the water, she’d felt Xavier slipping away. Now he was here, against her, kissing her like he wanted to regain every inch lost.

  “I want you out of these clothes.” He was against her mouth, in her brain, in her bloodstream.

  Yes. She wanted that, too. Just the two of them and their skin. And he’d loom over her, chest to chest, and slide into her. He’d…Wait.

  She was wearing a black Ofarian uniform. When she’d emerged from the bathroom at the house in Colorado wearing it, Xavier had turned away, but not before she saw how much the clothing bothered him. Did he want to sleep with her again? Or did he just want her, literally, out of Ofarian clothing? Was this an angry kiss? One of those he didn’t want to want?

  And hadn’t he once told her that just the walk from his cell to the Circle had automatically switched on his libido? He’d been conditioned to want sex just by being here. What exactly was he reacting to? Her, or something entirely out of her control?

  Xavier reached around her neck and pulled her hair away from her skin. There. He found that spot just below her ear that made her knees crumple. She whimpered, tilted her head more to give him better access.

  “I miss that sound.” He swirled his tongue, the words seeping into her. “I’ve missed you, Cat.”

  The best possible thing he could say.

  She clutched at the waistband of his jeans. He’d accepted a shirt from Reed and a coat from David, but had refused to put on anything Ofarian black. At her touch, his stomach muscles clenched and she traced the hard ridges with her fingertips. Just below, his erection nudged hard against her belly and it was all she could do not to reach for it right there.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she said, and he groaned.

  Suddenly Xavier stopped. His lips left her skin and he turned his head away from her. “Go away, you bastard,” he snarled, even as he ground himself between her legs. “You don’t belong here anymore.”

  “What?” Cat man
aged to whisper. She could barely stand, barely think.

  A strange man’s voice rumbled through the conference room. It sounded like a wild animal had clawed out the man’s voice box and he’d tucked it back in, tatters and all.

  “And where exactly do I belong then, 267X?”

  Cat froze. Xavier froze.

  He pushed off but kept her caged within his arms. He squeezed his eyes shut and his breath hissed in and out of his nose. “Cat,” he whispered. “Tell me you don’t see him. Please tell me you don’t see him.”

  But Cat did. Across the table, she saw the paunchy Ofarian prisoner dressed in a gray jumpsuit, half his face melted from fire, and eyes she recognized as her own.

  Heath Colfax, her father.

  Heath Colfax, the Burned Man.

  Xavier spun away from her and flew out of the conference room so fast that by the time Cat dragged herself out from under the shock and ran after him, he’d already reached the end of the hall.

  “Xavier!”

  He didn’t turn around.

  From the opposite direction, Griffin called her name. She half turned toward the Ofarian leader, now stalking toward her. “Not now,” she told him, so afraid to lose track of Xavier.

  “Yes. Now.”

  Griffin’s severe tone cemented her boots to the floor. He jogged up, his thick eyebrows drawn tightly together. “Keko has made it back to her people. She’s rallied them against us. The Chimeran chief has called the Senatus together for immediate war council. I need the fire elementals’ location. I need it now.”

  She whirled around, but Xavier had disappeared from sight.

  “Shit!” The curse came out surprisingly easy. “Shit! Fuck!” She wrapped her arms around her head, spun in a circle.

  She couldn’t let him just run off like that, not after all that he’d told her that night in Shed.

  “Just wait,” Cat told Griffin, then sped off down the corridor after Xavier.

  The place was a maze. On the way in she’d paid more attention to him than to the pattern of lefts and rights. She called his name again and again. No answer, just the sharp, jangling echo of the cinder block walls throwing her own voice right back at her.