“Of course not,” she snapped, too harsh in her denial.
It was my turn to laugh. “Because it always goes so well for you.”
Liam had betrayed me, but I couldn’t let that pain cripple me. Right now it was Dune. This had to end today.
She looked at me, her eyes seeming to calculate. “I may have underestimated you, but I’m not the only one. I want you on my team, to be a part of what’s coming.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aolians have cowered in the darkness for too long. We have amazing gifts, and we should be able to use them without the fear that has plagued our kind for thousands of years. We should be gods to humans, but instead we hide, because even with what we can do, how we can help, how we can create and provide, they have always feared us enough to kill us. All I want is a world where we no longer have to hide. A world with you and your color, where the Healers can provide miracles, where there is no poverty, no disease, where the governments are controlled so there is no more death in meaningless squabbles. A world where Aolians can prosper.”
“I’m listening,” I said. Hadn’t I asked myself the same question so many times before? Why did we have to hide? Could there be a world where we could use our gifts for good instead of hiding them? Why couldn’t we use our powers for everyone to see? Couldn’t Aolians save and help so many lives? Couldn’t we make this world a better place?
But underneath her words loomed something sinister.
“Thousands of years of history have shown us that Aolians and humans cannot live together as equals in harmony.” Dune gave another shrug.
“So what would you do?”
“Humans are less than Aolians. We are the ones who are strong.” Her eyes shone bright, with a sickening sort of fire that would ignite and consume and destroy. “Those who do not bow down and worship us like the gods we are would be killed.”
I choked. “Enslave or kill . . . all the humans?” I couldn’t process it; the idea was monstrous, so horrifying and nauseating. And yet, a part of me could understand what Dune was saying, and why she would say it, and that sickened me even more. But her words were a slow drip of honey over rusted razor wire. The sweet coating did not hide the poison beneath.
“We should have let the humans kill each other off years ago.” A dreamy look crossed Dune’s face for a moment. “We could have in the last world war, and the one before that, or with one of the many plagues that could have killed them all, but no, an Aolian always had to step in and help.”
“And you think you’re superior?” I turned to Liam, not hiding the loathing in my voice. “You work with her? This is what you want?”
“No, of course not!” Liam reached out to me, but I stepped back. “My father isn’t a good person, but he . . . we don’t have anything to do with this.”
Dune continued. “Don’t you think that future Aolian children should get a chance to use their powers, to reach their full potential?”
“What about future human children?” I asked.
“Aolians are superior in every way. It’s time we showed the world.”
But my mom, Aunt Jessie, everyone at art school, little Oliver down the street whom I used to babysit—all of them would be enslaved or dead if Dune got her way, just because they were born without some innate power.
“And I want you on my side.” Dune’s voice was like a caress. “Together you and I would be amazing . . . unstoppable.”
I was horrified that I let myself imagine this new world, devoid of suffering and poverty. But right and wrong always had two sides, and what was right for one group of people was not necessarily what was right for the other. What did it mean to be good? Maybe that was the wrong question. Maybe people weren’t broken up into good and bad. Maybe people were just people. What was I?
I was an Aolian. A Colorist. But those things were forced on me by the blood that flowed through my veins. What did I choose to love with the hours and days I’d spent looking at the world around me through the beauty and the pain that always encircled us? What did I choose to spend my life being?
An artist.
A line Van Gogh had written to his brother so long ago flitted across my mind.
I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.
No perfect world could be built on the ashes of so many. The only thing that mattered in this life was love.
I took a deep breath and knew these words would mean my death. “I refuse to be a monster.”
Dune looked genuinely sorry. “This is your last chance. This time we won’t play nice. I will have the Aveum, with or without your help. Now you’ve gotten close to the Aveum—you’re too much of a liability. You’re too strong to let live.” She turned to her soldiers. “Leave the boy alone. His father would make too much trouble if something happened to him. But she has what we need to find the Aveum.”
The Aolians bolted forward.
34
If we were living in wartime we’d possibly have to fight, we’d regret it. We’d bemoan not living in peacetime, But at all events the necessity being there—we’d fight.
—Vincent van Gogh
I sighed in relief. Even though he’d lied to me, I loved Liam and was glad he wouldn’t be a part of this fight. He would go on living after I was gone. His lies had made me love him, made me care so deeply. But those feelings turned to rage.
Six Aolians moved forward in unison. I stepped into the basic fighting stance that Liam had shown me. He still stood there, between me and Dune, even though she told him he could go. Instead of disappearing into the winding streets of Paris, in two quick steps he was beside me, in a stance of his own.
“What are you still doing here? This isn’t your fight.”
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
Before I could argue, a wave reached out of the Seine River and crashed down on top of me. It slammed me hard into the cement of the sidewalk. I tumbled and scraped, and my lungs screamed out for air.
These were Aolians, and I needed to use my Talent if I was going to have a chance at surviving. My red couldn’t fight this muddy water.
I bored my fingers into a crack in the sidewalk with the hand not clutching the paint tubes. Through the torrent of rushing water, I spotted a blurry figure, arms outstretched with the movement of pushing me under the water. My lungs burned as I choked. I didn’t have time to be gentle. The red in the Aolian’s body called out to me. It would be so easy to tear, rip, to destroy. Bodies were so strong, yet so weak. All I would have to do is squeeze the red beating of her heart.
I still couldn’t do it.
Life was fragile, and it was not my right to decide when it should end.
I flung out my hand and slammed against the red in her body. She flew backward and landed on the ground with a thud. In the same moment the water fell away. I climbed to my knees, coughing and sputtering. I pushed her again, and she rolled along the ground, faster and faster, before she hit her head on a bench and went limp.
I sprinted the twenty yards back to where Liam stood, fighting the others. Four were still on their feet. One hung under the bridge, metal bands securing his feet and wrists.
Liam held a thin metal shield in front of him that shimmered like the scales of a fish, and a sword that looked like the ones lining the walls of his dojo. As much defense as it was offense, he’d told me once. A gash along his cheek bled down into the white of his shirt. I wondered why our attackers didn’t use guns, but of course, Liam could control guns.
A woman reached down and touched the ground at her feet, and an ice path grew, freezing the water that had not yet found its way back into the river. We were soaked, and it instantly froze us in place. I knew what it meant to be cold in Montana, but I’d never experienced anything like this. The ice settled into my bones, and even the red of my blood slowed. Blinding pain started first in my finger tips and then traveled to the rest of my body. I couldn’t move, as my muscles started to shut down with the cold.<
br />
I searched frantically for something I could use as a weapon.
Pebbles and some rocks the size of my fist now lined the sidewalk, dredged up with the mass of river water. For a horrifying moment, I thought the river had stolen the pigment from my paint tubes, but it was just that my blood was so cold.
With a wrenching pain, I flicked my wrist and flung the paint onto the rocks at my feet.
The red hit the rocks and wrapped around them as if I’d dipped them in a thin layer of chocolate. I pushed one the size of a golf ball, as hard and as fast as I could toward the Lady of Ice.
I hit her in the chest and knocked her backward, but she still sent the cold forward. I threw another and then another, raining the rocks down on her. With the final one, I hit her hard in the temple, and knocked her off her feet, unconscious.
“Let me,” Liam said. One of his metal snakes encircled her wrists, and she received the same treatment as the other Aolian, still hanging unconscious under the bridge.
An Aolian appeared out of nowhere, directly in front of Liam. He punched Liam in the stomach, and then disappeared again, only to reappear and punch him in the kidney and disappear. Liam cried out in pain and swiped with his sword at where the figure had just disappeared.
But it wasn’t like when Cate disappeared. No, this person wasn’t there anymore. I could still sense the red of Cate’s blood when she turned invisible, but this man was gone, no red left to sense.
Teleporter.
This happened a few more times, and I realized it wasn’t entirely true. For a split second before he appeared, I felt the red coming. To the eye, the disappearance was instantaneous, but it wasn’t. I concentrated on that.
Something crawled at my feet, something warm and red and alive, but I ignored it.
“Front left!” I yelled. But Liam wasn’t fast enough.
The man reappeared and struck Liam in the back of the neck and disappeared.
“Front right!” I screamed again. Liam’s blade rang out just as the man reappeared. He seemed not to understand when he looked down and there was a sword sticking out of his leg. He fell to the ground, screaming, in the midst of . . . rats.
I screamed as one bit through my shoe and into the soft flesh of my foot.
Thousands of them covered the street and the sidewalk, called up no doubt from the stinking sewers and dark, underground basements. Gross, gross, gross! I hated rats. With a flick of my wrist, I shoved against the red of the one that bit me, and he landed fifty feet away. But another took its place.
Liam swung his sword at them, but there were too many to be effective. Rats everywhere, all clawing and shoving past one another to get to us. Another bite and another. They climbed up my jeans, gnawing as they went. Ripping holes with their tiny claws. Blood soaked through my clothes as I tried to swat them away.
I didn’t know it was possible to get angrier than I already was, but . . . rats. There wasn’t a more disgusting creature, with their long hairless tails and their protruding teeth. Revulsion, anger, hate, pain, anger.
I drew an invisible line with my Talent where the outside of the rats tried to burrow their way through others to get to us. I pulled at the line, gathering all the red inside the rats. They skidded along, swept up by my Talent like a squeegee clearing water. They tumbled and scraped, frantic with being out of control. But I wasn’t pulling them towards me.
The first of them toppled into the river, their squeaks filled with terror.
“No!” one of Dune’s Aolians screamed. She must have released her hold on them because they stopped trying to eat me, and turned to run, their fear at being outside and visible in the day palpable.
A prick of sadness at their fate, disgusting vermin that they were, tried to fight past the anger. They would not have been here if that Aolian hadn’t used them as a weapon. But I wouldn’t leave them to attack us again.
The invisible line scuttled forward, sweeping the rats past Liam’s legs and mine, into the water. The water splashed high onto the stone bank, and more and more rats fell en masse. Only one remained, and with a flick of my finger, it plunked into the river, now only flowing blissfully again, without indication the rats had been there.
The Aolian who controlled the rats fell to her knees, sobbing.
“They’re just rats, Megan,” Dune said, her typical mask altered by disgust.
Without a word, the woman got to her feet, sprinted to the river, and dived in.
Evidently, I wasn’t the only one made crazy by my Talent. The red of her body did not let go of life, but instead was surrounded by thousands of tiny spots of red. She was saving them.
Weird.
I let the image go and turned back to Dune. She stood, flanked by three other Aolians.
“Come on, Dune,” I said. “Are you still afraid to fight me yourself?”
Dune didn’t say anything, but her gaze flickered around her. “You really think I would be scared of you?” Dune said with a scoff. “You are still nothing compared to me.”
The glass gathered below Dune’s feet in glittering waves. I didn’t know what she was planning, but I didn’t want Liam to get hurt by accident, so I ran up the steps and sprinted to where Dune stood on the bridge.
Dune turned to the other Aolians. “Get the boy, but she is mine.”
This new, metal-wielding Liam could take care of himself, but three against one? I turned back toward him, and our eyes met for a brief moment. He gave a sad smile but nodded me forward.
I turned my back on him to face Dune.
“Let’s end this once and for all,” I said. But the last time we’d fought, I’d been barely able to get away. It had to end here. I couldn’t live, always wondering when she would appear. I would go down fighting, not huddled in some room waiting for her to find me.
“You don’t look anything like your dad,” Dune said, “but I hear him every time you open your mouth.”
“You sure know a lot about my dad,” I said, stalling. What could I do with the little red I had?
“You could say we knew each other intimately.” The way she said intimately made me cringe.
Gross.
“He had me, one of the most powerful Aolians in a decade, and he fell for a human.” She said the word with all the disgust I’d had for the rats. “He could have had anyone, but he chose a mortal with no Talent, who could do what? Play the cello as a mere mortal would. It was disgusting.”
Everything clicked into place. “This hatred of me isn’t about the Aveum, is it?” I couldn’t believe it. Not only did the father I didn’t remember saddle me with being an Aolian, but he left a jealous, glass-wielding, crazy lady to hunt me down later.
Thanks a lot, Dad.
“I’ll have the Aveum,” Dune said. “But killing you will be my pleasure. I could never pass up the opportunity to inflict more pain on the woman who stole the man I loved.”
“But you did offer me a place with you,” I said.
“Your Talent is rare. Of course I want it on our side. But you’ve as good as led us to the Aveum, and while it breaks my heart to have such a unique gift lost to the world, I can see that you’re too attached to the humans to be of any use. It can’t be helped.”
“You act as if we aren’t also human, in addition to being Aolian.” The bile rose in my throat at her casual dismissal of life.
“We’re better than they are, and that’s all that matters.” Dune’s gaze shifted to where Liam fought the Aolians behind me. “I see you had better taste.”
I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder also.
“Liam’s a very powerful Aolian, even if you didn’t know he was,” Dune said. “Too bad I couldn’t have him on my side either. Xander’s grip is too tight.” She sighed. “We’ll have to kill him, too, as he doesn’t show any sign of backing down. The boys will make it look like an accident, and Xander will have no one to blame but himself. But you and I will know that it’s really your fault.”
Liam’s attention was
fixed on the woman in front of him, and he didn’t see the man who came up hard on his side.
I didn’t scream. There wasn’t enough time, instead I flung out another red-covered rock and hit the man square between the eyes, giving Liam a chance to defend himself against the others.
“Have you listened to yourself?” I asked, not looking back at her. “No wonder my dad chose my mom instead of you. You are the one that isn’t human anymore.”
I couldn’t tear my gaze from Liam and didn’t see what split open my chest.
35
We do feel that in reality we count for little, and that to be a link in the chain of artists we are paying a high price for health, in youth, in liberty, none of which we enjoy.
—Vincent van Gogh
The pain sheared into my consciousness. I’d never experienced pain before now. This could only lead to death.
A transparent handle stuck out of the left side of my chest.
I searched inside myself. No red spread into the cavity of my lungs; the wound was too high. Had she done this on purpose? Not killed me in one fell swoop? I turned back to Dune. The world now traveled in slow motion.
“Is that the best you can do?” I asked. I seized the red now covering the surface of the knife inside me and pushed.
I gasped and then screamed as it left my body. The crippling pain was twice as bad coming out as it was going in. The knife fell, but I caught it with my Talent before it shattered on the ground, and I saw why.
Both edges were viciously serrated and barbed, and they tore at my flesh coming out. My blood dripped down the surface.
“Oh, yes, I can do better,” Dune said with a malicious smile.
She didn’t give me a chance to respond. Glittering specks in the air was the only warning the onslaught of glass was coming. The clear surface held nothing I could use, and my pathetic tubes of paint were nothing. But last time I’d deflected the glass and not gone to the source.
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