Fire Magic

by Holly Hook

  Chapter Eleven

  Due to the coming morning, we had to look up, in a hurry, where Thorne lived. I found an actual phone book in a booth and paged through it until I found his last name. Johnson. All three of us groaned when we saw that it was just behind Smith in commonness. Meanwhile, the sun was rising and my skin was starting to prickle with discomfort. I might be immune to fire now, but sunlight was different. The world was too bright and the beginnings of a headache were starting.

  Thorne was on the fifth page of Johnsons. He lived in an apartment on the other side of the city. “Can we take the Underground there?” I asked.

  “I was going to mention that,” Xavier said. “Yeah. We need to take the Underground most of the way there. I think we should stick with the sewer system and not the actual Underground.”

  More sirens went off. I hoped it wasn't another Abnormal being discovered and carted away. We were dropping like flies. Thoreau's forces were picking off the ones who had fled to the surface and had nowhere safe to go. The rest would return to the Underground at the words of that Elder War Mage and face the flames of the demon mayor's wrath as soon as he found a way to extract Leon's power.

  Xavier waved me and Liliana to a sewer and we climbed down, me into the relief of darkness. Then it was my turn to lead him and his sister along the side of a trickling river of sewer water in the very dim, almost nonexistent light.

  It took forever, hours almost, to reach the other side of town. We didn't descend any further into the sewer, to where the real Underground was below, but we didn't need to. I hoped no one was still left down there. I still worried about Janine and her mother. I hadn't seen them in hours, but it felt like forever. Thoreau knew that they had discovered his secret. If there was time, I would check on them before we left for that nightclub.

  We followed street names in white paint on the walls of the sewer. Xavier had been down here many times, which helped us navigate. At last, Xavier climbed a ladder. “I think this is the right street,” he said, lifting the cover and peering out into the full sunlight. “Yes. Thorne must live in an apartment. I think I see an old blanket by that Dumpster over there. I'll grab that for you and you can cover yourself while we run to the building.”

  I squinted and backed away from the light. Xavier jumped out, leaving me and Liliana waiting. She hadn't said much on the way over here, just a remark or two about how her feet were killing her. The poor girl hadn't slept all night and the fatigue was there under her eyes in dark bags. She was also hungry. She didn't smell like anything right now, like most people did throughout the day. I had forgotten how small thirteen year olds looked and I could see why Xavier wanted to protect her from Leon and the rest of his family. He had made the mistakes and taken me on to keep them off her back. It was a noble thing to do.

  “You have a great brother,” I told her.

  “He messes up a lot,” she said, looking at the wall.

  “No. You have a great brother,” I said. “You have no idea what he's gone through to keep crap away from you.”

  She sighed and looked away. “I wish he didn't make everyone so mad.”

  “He has to. None of us like making people mad.”

  Xavier returned with the blanket. “I don't think this one is too bad,” he said.

  He didn't have the sense of smell I did. It smelled like dirty clothes. Someone had been sleeping on it in the recent past, someone who hadn't had the chance to shower in that same time frame. But it was better than sun sickness. I cast the blanket over myself and we climbed into the daylight above.

  It was noon. We emerged in another alley and Xavier took my hand. We scrambled around the building, staying in the quiet and out of sight. More police sirens sounded and a black van that might be from the ATC sped past on the street. They didn't slow for us. It was a busy day at the ATC. They were getting a lot of new “patients.”

  “In,” Xavier said, taking me and Liliana through a dingy side door.

  Thorne's building was run down and in disrepair. The old steps were crumbling in places. Paint was peeling. I hadn't realized my martial arts instructor lived like this. It smelled like fast food, bad cooking, and even alcohol and hopelessness in places. This was an area far from downtown. It was as if Thorne had rejected the lifestyles of the people he trained. His Normal students were wealthy. I'd always thought Thorne would be the same.

  We found his apartment number on the top floor. The door was locked and he wasn't home. I couldn't smell him. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Easy. We break in,” Xavier said. “My family can pay for the lock on his door.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Xavier lifted one hand and a magenta glow surrounded it, turning to lightning bolts that danced around each other.

  “Xavier!” Liliana hissed. “Stop doing stupid things.”

  “Be quiet,” I told her. “He's doing this to keep you safe. Thorne will understand.”

  Well, I hoped. He was Normal but he still had some fighting skills.

  The lock gave with no problem when Xavier tossed the charge at it. The door swung in and showed us a really worn down apartment with a tube TV on a stand and a bunch of fast food drink cups all over the end table. The couch was scratched up and several cats lay together on it. Every single cat picked up its head, eyed me, and ran towards the back of the place. One slid on the kitchen linoleum and slid into a chair on the way. It sounded like a stampede of little feet.

  “I hate it when that happens,” I said. It always made me feel like a freak.

  Xavier closed the door with care and did the bolt. “That still works,” he said. “I'll explain everything. Liliana, you might want to sleep on the couch. I'll cook something for you.”

  I waited for her to protest about the cat hair but she didn't. Liliana flopped onto the couch, right in the middle of the hairs and scratches as if it were most comfortable bed in the world. Xavier smiled at me. “I take it you don't ever cook?”

  “I made some cookies for Foods once,” I said. “That was weird. I had to tell everyone in class that day that I was sick and couldn't sample any of the food.”

  “And?” Xavier asked.

  “I burned the cookies. I had never cooked before. Janine still said they were good but I think she was just trying to make me feel better.”

  “You should leave this for me,” he said. “I've made a few things. Toasted cheese, mostly. Usually Nora makes my food, but she's so busy dealing with everyone else's demands that I like to give her a break. I'd do it more, but if I messed up the kitchen I'd just make Aunt Primrose go through the roof at everybody.”

  “You're not like the rest of your family.” Xavier was a good guy.

  “I don't want to be,” he said. “They hate that I never want to be home and they wonder why. Maybe you should sleep, too.”

  I wondered where my next meal would come from and if Xavier would witness it. I had gotten lucky last time. The librarian might be in the hospital right now, getting tested for the rare gene that a vindictive part of me hoped that he had.

  And despite not sleeping in over twenty-four hours, I still had a lot of energy. I felt like I could go for another day without it, but it might be a good idea to rest if the next stop was The Pit. So I wandered into the living room, found a spot on the floor that wasn't too gross, and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling. I was glad I'd be sleeping while Xavier and Liliana ate. I wouldn't have any horrible urges while they took on the smell of heavenly toasted cheese.

  * * * * *

  “At least I know why my lock is busted,” Thorne said.

  I came to. It was still daylight. Some of it was pouring through the kitchen window ahead and a lone cat had dared come out to sniff my socks with its cold little kitty nose. But as soon as I sat up, the cat darted into the back of the apartment.

  Thorne stood in front of the now-closed front door, the bolt done tight. He nodded to me and offered a hand. I took it and let him help me up. I caught a glimpse of his scarred wr
ist, where some of his other students had bitten him over the years, drawing blood for their tests. He had offered me that same wrist right before fighting Allunna and I had refused.

  Xavier had been watching.

  And if he offered now, I still couldn't do it, not even after the librarian. It was different when it was people that I knew.

  “We had to get in,” Xavier said, empty plate in hand. He and Liliana were sitting on the couch. “We had nowhere else to go.”

  They smelled like toasted cheese now, both of them. A mixture of food and wood smoke filled the room. Thorne, on the other hand, carried no scent right now. He was hungry.

  “Who did you make angry?” Thorne asked. “What member of your family?”

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I interrupted an Elder War Mage meeting. I only knew the fact that Thoreau was planning to vaporize the whole Underground and one of the guys wanted to move everyone back there, but me interrupting was way worse than that.”

  Thorne grabbed his remote and turned on the TV. It fizzled at first, then burst to life. “I know how they are,” Thorne said. “They're always right. Don't dare interrupt them. They hold all the wisdom in the world.”

  “They sure do,” Xavier said.

  It took me a moment before I realized they were both being sarcastic. “So,” Thorne said. “How did you come across this knowledge? Was it Elsina? I hope she didn't get caught up in the sweep.” He didn't even sound angry about the broken lock.

  “The sweep?” Xavier asked.

  “Look,” Thorne said, motioning to the TV.

  The news was on. It was three-thirty in the afternoon according to the corner of the screen, but this was a special report. A black ATC van stood behind a female reporter who was talking in a low voice. There was an apartment building onscreen that didn't look too different from this one.

  Big, white letters on a red banner told us what this was about. RECORD NUMBERS OF ABNORMALS LOCATED AND CAPTURED.

  And below it, smaller text read, ATC: HUNDREDS OF ADMISSIONS EXPECTED THIS WEEK.

  “This must be why the Elders want to move everyone back underground,” Thorne said. “I heard about it from Trish. She was staying with my sister.”

  “I agree,” Xavier said. “But Thoreau is going to unleash Leon's magic on everyone who does. Elsina did see it and I trust her. She was right when I was going to fall off the ladder when I was eight.” He cleared his throat and set his plate down on the coffee table. “She even saw it when my last battle partner was going to be lost. I didn't want to believe her and she paid the price.”

  “She what?” I asked. I hadn't known about that.

  “I don't want to talk about it,” Xavier said. “But the point is, I can't ignore Elsina's dreams or visions anymore. She saw purple fire burning everyone who was in the Underground. And from what she said, it was quite a few people. I bet Thoreau's glad his ATC is capturing all so many of us but he knows the rest will get scared and go back under. They're the ones who are going to vaporized. He's got all his bases covered. There won't be an Underground after the next week and then no one will be able to stop Thorne.”

  “I'm afraid you could be right,” Thorne said. “I just wish the Elders would listen to someone besides themselves. They want to protect the Underground but they don't know how to look around them and see.”

  Xavier cleared his throat. “I know you'll want to tell Trish this and stop us, but Alyssa and I have a plan.”

  He went on to tell Thorne the whole thing, then politely asked for some weapons at the end. Thorne's eyes got bigger and bigger as Xavier spoke. There was no way he wanted to see us go off to almost certain death.

  “Xavier. Alyssa. You can't visit those ruins,” he said. “Alyssa, I thought you were dead after Leon...never mind. I was glad to hear that you'd lived when he didn't find your body, but it breaks my heart to lose any students. I'd hate to see my best student lost forever. Thoreau might want you to go to the Dark Council. Whatever's inside of you that he wants to awaken will be within the abilities of the Council. It could be part of the reason he took Leon's body.”

  “All he has to do is throw some Shadow Wraiths at me to wake up whatever else he wants to wake up in me,” I said. “He already threw some fire at me and now stone golems burn when I stab them. He doesn't need a Dark Council to do the rest.”

  “We don't know that. If Thoreau wants to wake something up in you, it can't be good.” Thorne had never been so serious with me in my life. He was glaring at me like he never had before.

  “But if we don't go to the Dark Council, hundreds or thousands of people are going to die,” I said. “That might include some of your other students. Your Abnormal ones, anyway.”

  Thorne brushed past us. “I'm sorry, but I'm calling Trish and telling her about this.”

  “Stop!” Xavier protested. He paled with horror. “She'll kill me!”

  “She won't,” Thorne said, stopping between the kitchen and the living room. “There must be a better way to reorganize the Underground. We can fight back. Find a new place to hide.”

  “There won't be any members left if we don't have our old place safe and we don't get Leon's body back,” Xavier said. “Where do we hide, Thorne?” He chased the man into his kitchen and nearly tripped on a cat.

  Liliana had stayed on the couch the whole time, eating her toasted cheese, as if arguments of this magnitude were normal. “You know, my brother might be an idiot, but I think he's right this time,” she said, eyes on the horrible news. “We're the only ones who can do something about this and all the adults are trying to stop us. Why won't they just help us or go instead?”

  “That's because adults want to protect kids,” I said. “Hey. I'm almost an adult. And they don't know what to do any better than we do sometimes.”

  Liliana's gaze shifted to a small hallway and back to me. She was trying to tell me something.

  I got it. The weapons stash. I had been asleep while she and Xavier had been awake to investigate the place.

  I followed Liliana into the hallway while Xavier and Thorne continued to argue out in the kitchen. A cat meowed. Liliana led me to the final door and pushed it open.

  “Wow,” was all I could say.

  It was as if Thorne kept a gross apartment to make any thieves suspect that there was nothing valuable in this place. Here was his secret.

  The hardwood floor was so shiny that it gave off our reflections. Thorne had every wall of this room covered in weapons—very sharp swords on stands and even some battle staffs and a mace on the opposite wall. I could tell by running my finger down the edge of one of the swords that these were the real deal, not wall hangers.

  “You should take your pick,” Liliana said. “Xavier can't hold him off much longer. Then we need to go.”

  A small cut on my finger burned, then healed. “This one will work,” I said, prying it off the stand. The metal gleamed in the pale light that was coming through the curtains. “There's just one problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “The sun's out.”

  “Then we'll have to go back in the sewer,” Liliana said. It was clear she and Xavier had talked about this while I was asleep. “Thorne won't be able to come after us if you can see down there.”

  “This sword feels good in my hand,” I said. I did a test swing through the air to make sure. It felt light in my grasp, light and deadly. I remembered Thorne's words that you had to find a weapon that felt like an extension of yourself. This one felt like it was it, as if the sword itself had drawn me towards it. It had a beautiful handle with flaming dragons on it which molded to my grasp perfectly.

  “Look, Thorne. If you call Trish hundreds of Abnormals and even some Normals are going to die in the Underground. Like I said, I trust Elsina.” Xavier was speaking louder and louder.

  “You are not going,” Thorne repeated.

  I wondered if Thorne would notice his sword missing or if he would forgive me.

  We left the room and I close
d the door. Liliana waited in the living room while I grabbed my blanket off the floor and slipped out of the apartment. It was best if Thorne didn't see me with the sword in my hand. I covered myself in the blanket and walked down the stairs to the ground floor, leaving Liliana up in the apartment and praying no one would see me like this. The sun poured in through the glass windows and tried to poke through my thick shield, but I could withstand it. For now.

  Xavier's and Thorne's argument continued. I could still hear it from down here with my superior hearing. Thorne had moved on to how kids should not go up against demons like Thoreau in the first place and how only experienced War Mages should even think about it. Liliana was joining in, telling Xavier to knock off the arguing already. It was her hint that I was waiting out here.

  “Listen to your sister,” Thorne said.

  “No,” Xavier said.

  “He's a moron,” Liliana said.

  Liliana really, really needed to treat Xavier better. It was as if she were taking all her frustrations out on him after losing most of her family. He was an easy target. I might have another talk with her later.

  “Shut up,” Xavier told her.

  “Xavier, you idiot!” Liliana shouted. “Why don't we just leave?”

  “You are not going anywhere,” Thorne said. “Trish is on her way.”

  “It's daylight,” Xavier said. “She never goes out in the sun, so we're leaving.” He and his sister stormed towards the door.

  “Where's Alyssa?” Thorne asked.

  The two of them bolted for the door and opened it. In seconds Xavier and Liliana were down but Thorne was on their heels. He must have seen me there, shrouded like some dingy ghost. I hoped he didn't notice the sword. I had that under the blanket, too.

  “You are not leaving,” Thorne repeated.

  “We are,” I said, going for the door.

  “Do you want to be found?” Thorne asked, stopping at the base of the stairs while Xavier and Liliana joined me. He kept his voice low. He knew he couldn't physically stop us. Thorne had only words now.