by KT Strange
The room was dark except for a spear of moonlight that cast a long finger of light on the floor. I walked around the desk, ignoring my father’s imposing wing-backed chair where it was pushed to the side of the desk in the shadows. My fingers wrapped around the drawer and I pulled it open. Neat stacks of banded bills sat there, far more than would be needed for any delivery. I bit my lip and grabbed three stacks of twenties.
A throat clearing behind me made me jump.
I whirled in time to see the wing-back chair move. My father leaned forward, his silver hair glimmering in the moonlight.
His mouth opened, to shout some binding spell I was sure, and I didn’t even think. My hand shot up and lightning crackled out of my skin, speeding through the air toward him. It struck him in the shoulder and he inhaled, his shoulders slamming back against his chair. We were still for a moment, him gasping for breath, my mouth open in shock.
“Da..arcy…” he growled, his fingers fisting into a ball.
I turned and ran out of the room, my other hand still gripping the bills tight to my chest. I reached the front door, and screamed.
Forked fingers of red lightning crackled up out of the ground, sheeting along the door and licking at the ceiling. I stumbled back and turned, racing back up the stairs. I heard the confused shouts downstairs as the night maid was roused from her post in the kitchen. I slammed my bedroom door, and locked it, leaning into it for a long moment. My heart was racing. I had to get out. I had to get out. I stared at the window, then looked around my room. There wasn’t anything really to toss through the glass that would make it safe for me to climb through. Besides, if they’d spelled the nails to stay put, then the glass was probably unbreakable.
Determination flared in my heart and I stormed towards the window, shoving the stacks of twenties into my waistband as I did. That money was my freedom as much as anything else.
A thud behind me made me flinch.
“Darcy! You have a moment to open up this door or so help me,” my father, clearly recovered from the shock I’d given him, roared. Then I heard him mutter something, and a low male voice answer. That would’ve been the gameskeeper, come to help him. I had one shot at this.
I pressed my fingertip to one of the nails, held my breath and pushed, but this time, with the crackling lightning inside of me. The smell of burnt wood filled my nose, and a spike of heat stabbed my finger. I yanked my hand back and stared. The brass had melted, dripping down the frame, and when I gave the window small push, it moved just slightly.
I put my hands on the wooden frame, and shoved with my magic, calling up whatever of it was inside of me, right into one of the brass nails. My hands lit up, blue and white crawling up my arms, to encircle my shoulders. The window shuddered and then the glass popped, showering me in shards. I cried out and held my arm up to shield my eyes. Behind me, the door slammed open, almost coming off its hinges.
I didn’t bother to look. Stepping over the wood frame, I got one foot onto the trellis on the other side. My head moved just as a sizzling crack of red lightning hit the frame right by where I’d been.
Time was up.
I dropped, skidding down the trellis. Wood and vines snagged at my skin and I yelped. I landed on a bush that broke most of my fall, but my whole body ached. I rolled onto the ground and crawled a few feet as I got my breath back. Lightning struck around me and I had to duck as dirt sprayed up from the ground. Just five feet to the left was a forest full of cover, and if I made it I’d be—
“Darcy!” my father screamed, his voice bellowing. “Get back here!” The command rocked my body, and I jerked to my feet, turning to stare up at him. His hand was up, a ball of snapping, cracking red lightning churning in it. He pulled his arm back. My survival instincts, greater than any command could ever be, took over. I was at the edge of the woods, just inside of it, when the lightning-ball hit. The trees nearby shuddered, and I was knocked to my feet. I felt a burning sensation in my palm but staggered to my feet and kept running.
Another lightning-ball went off, but it was further away this time. Wood didn’t conduct electricity, and even magical electricity couldn’t get very far through it. My lungs screamed as I took a deer path and thudded toward where the main road was. As I skidded out onto the gravel, I took a breath as the quiet night fell all around me. My hand burned. I’d wrenched my ankle at one point.
My father had tried to kill me.
My father had tried to kill me.
A sort of shock came over me and I stared blankly down at my burning hand. A piece of glass was stuck in the palm. I reached to pull it out and just cut my fingers more. I hissed and lifted my hand to my mouth and pulled the glass out with my teeth, spitting the shard on the ground.
It wasn’t deep, but it hurt.
I pressed the bloody cut to my stomach to stop the bleeding and looked down the road. They’d think I’d follow the road to the highway, if they decided to track me down. I turned and went the opposite way, ducking into the brush. The moon was out and that was some small comfort. My hand throbbed along with my pulse and I was surprised I wasn’t crying. Maybe I was too upset to cry. I just felt numb.
It was going to be a long night, but the wedge of bills pressing into my belly made it worth it.
That and the look on my father’s face when I’d hit him with my own lightning.
Small payback after a lifetime of him using his powers to taunt me.
With that bitter thought in the back of my mind, I held my uninjured hand out in front of me and started walking. There was a byway a few miles out. I could take that and walk to civilization there, even if it meant walking all night.
Eleven
Darcy
At first, I was cold in the swampy, forest air, but after a few minutes of fighting the grasping branches, a sweat broke out underneath the knitted top I was wearing. There was a constant, itching prickle on the back of my neck, as I ducked through the woods along the edge of the road, staying just inside where the brush would hide me if someone came driving along to look.
I tried not to consider what my father was thinking. Did he regret telling the council he would not stand for me being stripped of my lightning? A grim smirk crossed my face. It was still a shock that I’d done that, that I’d shocked him. I glanced down at my hands. Maybe my grandmother was right. Maybe the storms had been in me all along.
Maybe… I was powerful enough to make a heartstone. As soon as I thought the words, I nearly laughed. I was lucky that I hadn’t shocked myself instead of my father. Making a heartstone was out of the question.
As if laughing at me, there was a soft rumble in the sky above me. I looked up. Through the leaves, dark clouds had gathered. A breeze tugged at my hair, and a solid crack of lightning lit up the forest around me.
For a moment there was silent. That’s when the dull spattering of water on leaves started up.
“Oh, you have to be kidding,” I breathed as the rain poured down. Thankfully, the canopy of leaves took most of the brunt of drenching liquid, and I ducked under the thick shelter of a particularly dense fir tree. Wrapping my arms tight around me, I looked out across the woods as the rain came tumbling down. If I’d been a good weather witch, like my grandmother, like my father, I could have chased the clouds away. If I couldn’t even do that, there was no way in hell I could make a heartstone. I closed my eyes and took a slow, deep breath, tried to center myself like my grandmother taught me, and looked inside of me for the place the lightning came from.
All of us, even mundane humans, have a pillar of strength inside of us. Some are more in-tune with it than others. Some are totally deaf to it. I was more on the deaf side. If I had to put it into words, it was like trying to hum along to a song I could half-remember, the notes all disjointed and coming at the wrong time.
I breathed again. This hated exercise I’d had to do over and over as a young girl, felt like stretching muscles I hadn’t moved in a long time. Down, deep, inside me, inside what made me Darcy, it w
as there, the living and breathing core of molten lightning, waiting for me to tap into it and control it.
It was like a light, shining out in front of my closed eyes. I was warm, all over, and I lifted my hands up, trying to chase the heat with my fingers. The breath halted in my throat and I froze as my vision lit up so brightly that I winced. Streaks of blue and white crossed along the inside of my eyelids, and I opened my eyes. Lightning sparked along my hands, glistening over my skin, wrapping up my arms. It sizzled over the arms of my sweater, thankfully not burning the fabric off. It was brighter than it had ever been and I shivered, staring at the power moving between my fingers as if it had always been there.
I moved my gaze upward. How had my grandmother done it? I threw my hands up to the sky, willing my power up to the clouds, to push them away and give me a break from the rain, anything.
My hair lifted off my shoulders, as lightning crackled and streamed up from my finger-tips. It should have disappeared, fizzled out, like it always did before I’d stopped trying, but it kept going, unending, lighting up the forest around me. It pierced the canopy of leaves, and flared out of my sight, up to the heavens.
I clenched my fists, and the lightning broke off. There was no other way to say it; the lightning fizzled and sparked for a moment before fading as if it had never been there at all. There was a rumble above me and I let my hands fall to my sides. The smattering of rain petered out. Elation hummed through me.
I’d done it. I’d done it. I’d stopped the rains and the storm. I peeked out from under my fir tree, trying to see through the leaves to the sky. It was still cloudy up above, but at least the rain had stopped.
I sighed in relief and stepped out from under the tree.
BOOM!
Lightning struck, hitting the ground right in front of me. The earth under me sprayed up, as if a fist was punching from under it, and the force of the lightning knocked me backward, through the brush. Pain sliced across my shoulder as I rolled, side over side, along the ground and thumped up against the base of a tree. My lungs were on fire; I could barely breathe. I lifted my face from the ground and spat out a mouthful of dirt. My shoulder ached, throbbing and moving was hard. What had just happened?
I wiped dirt from my face with clumsy fingers, I stared at the devastation the lightning blow-back had caused. There was a hole two feet deep in the ground, smoke rising from it where the strike had hit. A ring of flattened brush radiated outward from the spot, and past me another ten feet, grass bent over, and bushes squashed. The trees still stood, but the bark on the side facing the strike-spot was splattered with leaves and thrown twigs. Thunder rumbled ominously overhead.
So… maybe I hadn’t… um, done it.
The quiet noise of dripping reached my ears and I looked up just in time for a fat drop to hit me right between the eyes. The rains started up again, harder this time, pounding down on the tree canopy hard enough to filter through and land, heavy, on my skin.
Fuck.
I staggered to my feet and brushed off my sweater before the dirt could turn to mud. The sky lit up, turning green leaves silver, and the thunder roared after it. I licked my lips, tasting the dirt and salt there from my sweat. Okay, so maybe throwing lightning up into the sky was a bad idea. But… I could barely remember any of the lessons my grandmother had taught me about weather magic, mostly because I never got beyond the most basic of sparking up with my fingers.
I held my arm over my head to stave off the rain and began pushing through the brush again.
At least if it was stormy out, any searchers would have a hard time finding me.
I walked forever, my shoes soaked through and rubbing against my skin. I was going to have some serious blisters. The only thing that kept me going was the desire to see my guys again, my pack, and Max. I’d fucked up bad and I tried not to replay my conversations with Cash over and over in my head. Yeah, he’d pressured me, but… I felt sick about it. He hadn’t pushed that hard. He was desperate. This was his survival, and the survival of the pack on the line.
And I’d thrown that desperation, his cry for help, in his face.
I was a shitty person. The woods ended abruptly, with a shuttered gas-station and of all things, a payphone standing to one side of it. The lights were dimmed and it was obviously closed. I squinted across the pavement.
Rain blew across the ground, water puddling everywhere. The empty parking lot around the gas-station looked like small lake. Oh well, it’s not like my shoes were dry anyway. I glanced up at the sky, but the thunder and lightning had died off.
Water splashed up my legs as I ran across the wet cement, showering me in more bone-chilling liquid. I huddled under the scant shelter the phone booth offered and lifted the receiver. I could make a collect call, right? They still did that? I pressed the receiver to my ear.
Silence.
I swallowed down disappointment and hit the switch hook to hopefully make the line come on. I’d never used a pay phone, ever, and maybe it was too much to ask that this one worked…
Nothing.
Frustration welled up inside me and I slammed the receiver down so hard that it bounced off the hook and fell, swinging from its cord. Nothing was going right. I knew I should have never left the guys, but now it was like the universe was punishing me extra for being an idiot. I eyed the phone up.
Well… maybe… I reached for the receiver. My grandmother had said once that she could trick phones into making calls long distance, back when they cost a fortune and even witches were grumpy about paying for it.
I closed my eyes and reached out with my power. A thin tendril of light unfurled in front of my closed eyes, and I pushed it through the receiver, into the phone.
Looking back now, I really should have learnt my lesson when I’d made the thunderstorm worse, not better. The phone receiver crackled and nearly melted in my hand. I shrieked and yanked back, as electricity buzzed around the telephone cable. The receiver hung down, misshapen and smoking.
I pressed my lips together in a tight line. The empty street continued behind me, rain washing over the pavement. In the distance, over the rain somehow, I could hear cars and decided to head out that way. Cars meant people. People meant a place that was actually open and would let me use the phone if they didn’t get freaked out over me looking like a swamp monster.
My shoes squelched with every step, and my skin was so cold it hurt. There was a line of dark-windowed corporate looking buildings to my left, but the traffic noises were getting louder.
I turned the corner of a long block, leaving the gas station and the (now seriously totally) broken pay-phone and the business park behind me. A cry of relief bubbled up in my throat at the familiar logo and light it gave off.
Denny’s.
There was a Denny’s.
I’d never been so happy to see the crappy diner in my life.
I ran across the parking lot, dodging puddles and soon found myself inside, in the warmth and being loaned a portable phone to call Max.
Because I knew, if anyone, Max would forgive me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to the guys just yet, even though in my heart I knew I would be returning to them if they’d have me.
The side of my neck itched, probably from dripping rain-water, as Mary, a matronly server brought me a cup of tea and a some paper towels to squeeze out the water from my hair.
“There now, girl, you need anything, you just holler,” she said to me, patting me on the shoulder. She’d sat me at the back of the restaurant, right by a heater and a hallway that led to the gas-station the Denny’s was attached to. My clothes were going to dry hard and crunchy, from the dirt and rain, but at least they’d be dry.
“Just a little bit of bravery,” I said, looking down at the phone in my hand. My gut was trembling. This was almost worse than facing down my father. Almost. Mary gazed and me and shook her head.
“You show up here, looking like the Devil himself caught you and you escaped. I think you’ve plenty of brave in y
ou. Make the call. Whoever it is will be happy to hear from you.” She buzzed off without another word and I gulped down a lungful of air.
Maybe she was right. Maybe I was brave.
I dialed Max’s number and lifted the phone to my ear, hand trembling.
“Hello?” Max’s voice was suspicious.
“Max,” I whispered. I heard her exhale.
“Holy fuck.”
“I’m—"
“Holy fuck you’re safe,” she sounded so shaken up. “Oh my god, I thought you were dead. I was about to put out like, a police thing, but I was scared your family would see it or something and… I didn’t know what the fuck to do, seriously Darce…” She fell quiet. “I’m so mad at you.”
I bit my lip.
“I’m sorry.”
“You better be.”
“I am. I am, please, you don’t have to forgive me… just…” Just what? What could I say? “I made a big mistake. I’m coming home. I just needed to let you know. I’m gonna try to get to an airport and get a plane ticket.”
“Where are you? Are you good for the ticket?”
“Home. Or what was home. I’m at a Denny’s now. And yeah I have money.” I shifted uncomfortably on the booth’s plasticky seat. My wet legs were sticking to it as they dried. “Can you… just let my professor know, and Willa?”
“And what about the guys? You want me to pass on a message to Willa?”
I closed my eyes. They’d be going to Nashville for their next date. Would they even want to see me?
“Ouch,” I hissed, the itching on my neck turning into a sting. I slapped my hand against the skin and pulled it away, expecting to see a mosquito there. Nothing.
“You okay?” Max sighed. “I don’t even want to know. I’m so mad at you! I don’t even want to ask how you are. Or what happened. But I want to know. Just… promise me, Darce, please, you’re like family to me, never do this again. Never run away. Please? No matter how bad it is, no matter what happens, I will always be there for you. Always.” The honesty in her voice made me ache to be back at our dorm, snuggled up next to her as we marathoned 90’s teen movies. I seriously needed a Clueless and Bring It On fix right then.