I skidded on the ground, sending gravel flying across its cracked and thirsty surface, falling by Joseph’s side. My fingers blindly groped for the knife as I dragged the God of Air several feet away from his self-proclaimed executioner. The sharp edges of its jeweled handle pricked my skin. I yelled in triumph, seeing Joseph’s eyes ignite with understanding, and together we rolled him onto his stomach where I slashed the ropes binding his arms and legs together.
Only then did I look back at the dozens of fey sprinting toward us, weapons and magic at the ready. Many clutched translucent shields in a variety of colors and sizes, shields that deflected the bullets being sprayed in their direction. My jaw dropped with my body as I pushed myself lower to the ground, army crawling away from the Order soldiers.
I’d known they were coming. But I hadn’t expected so many.
I recognized Finn’s horrific horse form. Smoke curled from his nostrils and eyes blazed red as coals as he charged forward, tossing his head in irritation as bullets hit his hide. Large, hairy wings sprouted from his back and flapped errantly as he propelled himself forward. Many of the other fey resembled creatures I’d only read about in history and picture books. From green-skinned pixies with translucent wings to shifters with feline forms and claw-like hands. Above them, creatures the size of my hand fluttered on butterfly wings, trailing streams of smoke and powder behind them.
Some of them shot arrows from wicked-looking bows while others fired bolts and balls of colorful magic from their hands and eyes. There were dozens of them, maybe even hundreds, an army unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. And they’d come for me.
Joseph snatched up a gun one of the soldiers had dropped and popped to his feet. He lifted the sight to his face and fired, his motions practiced and easy. Blood sprayed from a soldier’s neck and down he went. Joseph reached for me. Sparks danced between our joined hands, magic singing loud in my ears, the connection necessary to awaken his magic barely starting to form.
And a blue orb shattered the ground, ripping our hands apart, and sending us flying before I could fully trigger it. Coughing, I pressed my sleeve to my face, trying to breathe through the smoke, searching for the God, but not finding him. He’d gotten lost in the fray.
A roar sounded behind me, and when I turned back, I found the general, mouth twisted as he dropped the barbed and bloodied arrowhead to the dirt. His attention fixed on me as he started forward, uncaring of both bullets and magic alike.
I still clutched the jeweled knife and it cut the underside of my palm as I scrambled backward.
He might not be worried about getting shot, but I certainly was.
A shadow fell over me, and something imposing dropped to the ground. The general looked over my head, his eyes tipping up and up and up. My blood froze as my head tipped back. Towering over me, skin hard as rock and black as night, towered a creature with swirling red eyes and twisting horns that curled over his ears. Clawed hands reached for me, gnashing teeth bared.
But for some reason I wasn’t afraid.
Even before the scent of cinnamon and smoke washed over me as he scooped me off the ground.
Ryder had come.
A giant winged horse charged past him, hooves flashing as he kicked an Order soldier in the head. The man fell to the ground in a spray of blood. He didn’t move.
“Hang on,” Ryder yelled over the screams of battle. The fey had hit the Order forces with everything they had. The world around me slipped into a tiny vortex as he transported us to the outer edge of the battle. He dropped me to my feet when we landed, and I felt him sway against me.
“You shouldn’t have—”
“Be mad at me later. Though you’re hot when you’re angry.” He tweaked my nose, then turned to the battlefield. “There’s Anisra in those cannons. I can tell. You need to shut them off.”
“But I—”
Firm lips pressed hard against mine, fingers still sharp with talons gripped the back of my head, smashing my face tight against his. And I kissed him back. Kissed him for all I was worth, knowing that there was a real possibility this might be our last.
And then he was gone.
A cluster of soldiers stood between me and several death-machines. That’s why the soldiers all wore masks. So they’d survive, while we died.
And Ryder had left before I’d had a chance to tell him my magic wasn’t exactly working.
I gulped and jumped to the side as a large bolt of yellow light zipped past me. The fey who’d thrown it fell to the ground with a watery shriek. A soldier shot her in the head. Tingles of bluish-silver threads shot to my fingertips, but when I tried to send them out, nothing happened.
Desperation twisted in my chest.
But I had to try. I’d hate myself if I didn’t.
While the terrain itself was relatively flat, it was littered with boulders big enough to hide someone as small as me. I used those to my advantage, darting and running toward the action—and those cannons—until I was able to scoop up a gun some soldier had dropped. As I rounded the curve of the last boulder standing between me and one of the cannons, a soldier popped up. The barrel of her gun rose with her, but I moved without thinking, lashing out with the butt of my weapon, cracking her in the face.
The distraction cost me, though.
The barrel of the cannon burned white-hot.
And it was pointed at –
“Finn!” I screamed, stupidly pushing through fighting humans and fey alike. My voice was lost in the sounds of battle. The cannon fired. A beam of light that blurred at the edges fired from its mouth—not Anisra—and a sharp whinny split the air like a siren. A gigantic hoof the size of a couch smashed down beside me. Finn flew backward as he stumbled and droplets of red rained down. A second hoof crashed down as he let out another ear-shattering scream. Both front legs lifted, scraping the skies, before the horse tipped back, wings beating frantically, and he collapsed on his side.
The ground shook like a small earthquake.
Those caught under his falling body didn’t emerge again.
I’d thrown my hands over my face, peering up through the open webs of my fingers as he fell, staring in shocked horror.
“Finn!” I screamed again, jumping over bodies, magic blazing hot and useless whenever someone stepped in my path. I had to get to him, had to save him. I barely noticed the soldier at my right collapse, but the boy wielding the gun who killed him was impossible to ignore.
“Follow me,” Joseph yelled, thrusting his gun in the direction of my fallen friend. “I’ll clear the way.”
My back slammed against his as I gripped my gun, firing it at people who came up behind us. Sometimes I hit them, other times magic knocked them out. I yelped when Joseph nearly ripped my arm from my socket and dropped me by the kelpie’s head lying heavily on the ground. Joseph’s hand lingering on my elbow, drawn to the painful pull of magic between us. It wanted to ignite. A few seconds more.
Gunfire chattered and my shoulder exploded in agony. A bullet punched through the muscle. Joseph’s eyes blazed hot and he turned around, already firing at the man who’d shot me. I returned to Finn as the God of Air stood guard.
The kelpie was wheezing, painfully drawing air into his lungs. His slimy, seaweed infested hair was drenched with sweat. One great, red eye rolled toward me as I called out his name again, softer this time. Steam from his nostrils curled around me as I placed a hand on his nose, and he shuddered.
“It’s ok, pal. Let’s get this sorted out,” was the warning I gave him before sending a blast of magic through him. I prayed it would work. The Kraken said I needed either It’s or Finn’s direction and I had neither. So I was shocked when it worked, the healing part of my abilities blasting past those requiring the presence of water. The bluish thread connecting Finn with me pulled tight; his body wanted to heal, it knew what it needed to do.
The beam had sliced clean through his chest, leaving a gaping, sucking hole in its wake. Everything in my body revolted against the a
gony he was feeling. Blood gushed from the injury, staining everything around us bright red. I slammed my eyes closed as I shoved my magic harder into him, working with this will, praying for the wound to heal. It rushed in torrents of energy, flowing from me like water from the mouth of a waterfall, uncontrollable in its intensity.
If the Healer is needed first, something is going to go incredibly, horribly wrong. Ryder’s words from what felt like forever ago burned in my ears. I couldn’t lose Finn. Wouldn’t lose Finn. I was a healer. I could do this.
My concentration split as my magic branched out, a roaring inferno tearing through his veins, and all at once, the tide changed. I knew I’d won. His own magic rode the wave, taking over for my abilities and releasing me from its hold.
I pulled out, drained from the effort.
“You hang in there,” I said, gasping, leaning on his nose. “I can’t do anything else right now, but Gods help me if you die. I’ll come to the second life and kill you again with my own hands. Understand?” I hoped my expression was as hard as I envisioned it to be, but the soft whinny he gave in response told me I probably wasn’t successful. “I need to find those cannons and shut them down.”
Forcing myself to leave his side without a backwards look, I started moving forward again. Joseph had left me at some point, and I wondered if he was anywhere nearby. The cannon that had fired at Finn lay in pieces on the ground. Another fey must have gotten to it. Beyond it, though, I saw another cannon. This one had a different nozzle.
Anisra.
A few soldiers hunkered down around the machinery, helmets and gloves on the ground next to them as they tinkered with the mechanics. Smoke billowed from a hole toward the back. Someone had hit it, but obviously it wasn’t enough to bring it down completely. A circle of guards surrounded it, effectively shooting and killing anything that came anywhere near.
Weariness dragged on my body, but I pushed forward, using the gun as a baseball bat.
I didn’t know how I didn’t get shot.
I barely made it half the distance before I ran square into a mass of bodies, including five masked soldiers. Three of them toted guns and swung them my way, fingers squeezing the triggers hard.
A shout to my left was all the warning I got before a half-naked man whose bottom half was all deer scooped me up and jerked me to his side. The gunfire hit the dirt around his hooves. A herd of the beasts bearing crossbows spouting arrows poured around us as I scrambled onto the fey’s back, laying low to avoid getting shot.
“I need to get to the cannon!” I shrieked in his ear, leaning as far forward as I dared, clutching him as hard as I could. “I have to stop them from unleashing Anisra.”
His antlered head lowered, and he charged forward in a full-strength gallop as he loaded another arrow into his crossbow. A pull of the trigger and another masked figure crumpled.
“Sometimes the best way forward is sideways,” he said. A thick, ropy scar snaked across the left side of his face and stopped at the corner of his mouth.
A female version of whatever these guys were cantered up on our right and snarled, her black hair flying over a tanned face and glittery green eyes. She didn’t carry a crossbow, but instead clutched a curved blade in one bloodied hand. She didn’t stop looking for danger and shot to the side, sinking the weapon into the stomach of someone else who was shooting at us.
“The pixies were able to circle around to the right of the cannon,” my savior explained, a rumble shaking his chest again as I adjusted my grip. “They’re taking out the defenses as we speak.”
Sure enough, I could see that we were circling the cannon from behind, approaching from the opposite side. The pixies glowed a brilliant emerald in my second sight, the misty, swirly magic of theirs glowing a similar color as they cut down wave after wave of Order soldiers. One of the smaller pixies that seemed to be leading the charge turned toward us as we approached, her ink-filled eyes taking me in steadily.
The deer-guy came to a halt on the edge of the action and I slipped from his back, jarring my knees as I landed hard. He was much taller than I’d anticipated.
“Had you waited but a moment more, I would have helped you down.”
“No need.” I was already moving toward the cannon. Over my shoulder I tossed, “Thanks for the ride, though.”
“Anytime.”
The pixie leader grabbed my arm and dragged me forward. I tried not to focus on how her long green fingers had not one but two extra knuckles. She thrust me through the mass of warring bodies. Her other hand bore claws that she sunk right into the chest of a human and twisted out his heart. The bright, metallic scent of fresh blood filled the air and saliva coated my mouth as my stomach roiled.
She wrenched me forward again, this time a whip of thorns lashing out and strangling someone rushing at us, before pushing me roughly in front of her, pointing right at the Anisra cannon. My path forward was clear, the rest of the human defense distracted by an onslaught of fey bodies that resembled gophers.
“Take it out.” Her lips brushed the shell of my ear as she spoke in the most musical voice I’d ever heard. It was like vocalized honey. “I’d hoped to meet you under friendlier circumstances.”
And then she was gone with a flash of that whip.
I wasted no time. The machine was easily three times taller than me. They must have finally gotten it working again because someone had equipped the damn thing before they’d been attacked. Red blood dripping from the console and deep scratches in the metal body of the device told of their likely fate. It was on some sort of timer.
A timer that had less than three minutes remaining.
A timer that just finished syncing.
A timer I had a really bad feeling was connected to all of the cannons.
I stabbed uselessly at the controls, not sure what I was doing but hoping, somehow, I would punch the off-button. Hell. I wasn’t going to be able to stop the timer. I’d have to destroy it some other way. I darted around the front of the machine, looking up and up at the long nozzle that would start spraying the killer gas in to the air.
I was out of ideas.
I was out of magic.
…or was I?
The general had said former Gods of Water and Earth worked in conjunction to pull the water from this area to another—forcing the climate to drastically change in this spot. And this spot alone. But if a God were able to draw that kind of reaction from the Earth, then surely a God could do the opposite.
The timer beeped, its beat matching that of my heart.
What if the fates or whatever it was that had asked me to walk on water before hadn’t literally meant it? What if…
The world around me faded as my hands ghosted toward my face.
Magic hummed and twisted and buzzed beneath my veins.
What if they were only asking me to do the impossible: perform a miracle.
The laws of my kind stated I needed my element nearby in order to manipulate it. I couldn’t create it with my own two hands. Earth didn’t work like that. Mass was mass, and volume was volume. They were set in finite amounts.
But my entire life I’d grown up not knowing the rules.
My fingers curled into fists.
Why should I start living by them now?
My body pulsed hot, white light blinding me to the world as I called on my energy, as I begged my magic to do what I desperately needed it to do. My magic, the friends who helped guide it, strained as they rushed to comply with my demands, not knowing or realizing or caring that I was asking the literal impossible.
A crack shattered the air.
My ears cleared as the sound of screams and gunfire died.
My body straightened as the first tremor shook the ground.
The fey knew what was happening. I could see it in the way they rushed from battle, abandoning their counterparts in the belly of the lake bed, sprinting and flying and ghosting toward the great walls.
Another tremor, this one louder and longer rattl
ed the earth at my feet.
The crack in the ground from a mile away raced toward us, raced toward me, splitting the bottom of the lake in two.
A geyser of water shot high in the sky.
No, the lake wouldn’t slowly refill.
This would be as violent as the impact of a meteor.
Spray from the geysers soaked my feet, streamed from my hair.
And then it happened.
Euphoria rocked my insides, shook me so hard I thought I might rattle apart.
Shards of sunshine splintered the clouds, beams landing on my upturned face, engulfing me in a spotlight. I gasped at the heat full of energy and vigor, my arms spread wide over my head in astonished delight.
I was an element.
One with the Earth.
One of four most powerful beings to ever breathe.
I was the God of Water.
And I was the First. And I would awaken the others.
You are worthy of water.
An inferno of raw power burst from my body, sending the world rocking on its axis. So much magic, too much for me to ever hold, to ever use, consumed me whole, the feeling both the most painful and most pleasurable sensation I’d ever felt. My connection to the world ran deep. Part of me still connected to the universe beyond my newfound abilities registered trees on the outskirts of the lake bowing outward, the ripple effects spanning farther and farther.
In that moment, the world changed again.
Just as it had hundreds of times before.
Magic was back.
Something shadowy snatched me up, pulling me tight against its chest, and I opened my eyes, unafraid of what I might find. Warm, gold eyes blinked back at me. Of course he’d have wings.
“You’re glowing again.”
“I may never stop.”
Below us, the earth spewed violently, water gushing in immense waterfalls and spouts and geysers. The world once broken, was now right again. A whirlpool churned angrily in the middle of the not-so-dead lake, sucking in soldiers still screaming, arms flailing, unable to slip from the unrelenting current. At the bottom of the massive pool were heavy cannons filled with poison.
Walk on Water Page 28