Elemental Betrayal

by Elle Middaugh

  “Shut up, Holden,” I growled, fighting the urge to punch him in the face.

  “Seriously, you’re gonna flip the truck if you don’t slow down.”

  “I said shut up!” I yelled as flaming blue ice spread out across the steering wheel.

  Lilly and Elise shared an uneasy glance. I could tell they agreed with Holden and wanted me to slow down, but they also valued their lives and didn’t want to get into an argument with me. I could only imagine the terrified look on Pax’s face. I glanced in the rearview mirror, and sure enough, he looked petrified.

  I sighed and reined my elements back in. Then I tightly pursed my lips and slowed the truck a bit.

  “Better?” I snapped.

  “Much,” Holden said, flopping into the back seat once more.

  I rolled my eyes and again fought against the urge to slug his dumb ass. As we rounded the next turn, I was suddenly glad I’d listened to him.

  A man stood in the middle of the road, a man I knew to be dead. So, maybe it was a ghost, not a man, but I didn’t want to risk hitting him—just in case.

  I slammed the breaks as hard as I could, and a loud screech ripped through the air along with the rancid scent of burning rubber. My seatbelt locked, and I braced my arms at the wheel.

  A few breathless seconds later, we stopped, surrounded by a cloud of white smoke.

  Chase’s electric blue eyes were open wide, but half of his mouth was curved into a guiltless grin.

  Holden’s face again popped up between the headrests.

  “Is that…?” he asked, as confused as I was.

  “Sure as hell looks like him.”

  “But, I thought he was…? Does that mean he’s not…?”

  I shook my head, still staring at Chase. “No, I killed him myself. I even saw him in the afterlife. I know he was dead.”

  “Well then what the fuck…” Holden muttered, his voice trailing off when Chase strolled over to my window and knocked.

  Like an idiot, I pushed the button and lowered the glass.

  “Hey, Val. Hey, Holden,” he said, grinning. Then his gaze fell on my cousin and he paled, swallowing hard like his throat had suddenly gone dry. “Elise…long time no see, beautiful.” She rolled her eyes and turned away, so Chase peered farther into the truck. “Who are your new friends?”

  I glanced over at Lilly and nodded so she knew it was safe to speak to him. I hadn’t forgotten that he was the one who’d nearly killed Cade with a fireball, but for some reason, I was just rolling with this. Maybe it was because of what he’d said in the afterlife? At least part of me believed his apology had been genuine.

  “Lilly Atwood,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He shook it. “Chase Theron. And you are?” He directed his gaze toward Pax.

  “Paxton Boggs, but you can call me Pax.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Chase said with a friendly smile, shaking his hand, too.

  All right, I thought to myself, Time to cut to the chase, Chase.

  “Why are you here? How are you here?”

  “Oh, about that,” he said, stepping back a few feet. He lit a flame in his right hand then grew a tree in the left before lighting the thing on fire. There was no smoke, no charcoaled branches, no ashes. The tree was aflame but completely alive. “Pretty sweet, huh?”

  Dear Jesus… Or I supposed the correct phrase would be Dear Eve. I pictured her up there in Euphoria with an innocent look on her face and a shrug in her shoulders. What? she’d say to the others. You told me to pick whatever Elemental I wanted to be my champion. I picked him. As if it were totally inconsequential that she’d chosen a dead guy.

  “How the hell is this possible?” Holden finally blurted out.

  Chase merely shrugged and withdrew his elements. “The gods can do whatever they want.”

  Clearly.

  I sighed and rubbed at my face in frustration. “So, did Eve fill you in on what’s going on, then?”

  “A bit. I’m supposed to try to kill Nicholai before the rest of you. Sounds simple enough.”

  “Like hell it will be,” Elise threatened.

  Chase bit his lip and stared at her, his eyes full of heat.

  There was something different about him. He seemed more genuine. He’d been a tricky little player in his former life, but now he appeared to be an easygoing guy without a care in the world.

  I wasn’t sure what grudge Elise might’ve been holding against the old him, but it was clear said grudge was still in full effect. Chase would have his work cut out for him if he was seriously thinking about pursuing her again.

  There was a single seat left in the truck’s cab, and it had Chase’s name on it. Then we’d only need to find Sienna and Xavier and rescue Cade before we could finally take Nicholai down once and for all.

  Easy peasy.

  “Get in,” I told him, and Holden opened the back door.

  Once Chase was settled, I threw the truck into drive and continued our quest to find the others.

  I looked to my right, at the girls in the front seat. Then I glanced up into the rearview mirror and peeked at the guys in the back. We were…an interesting group, full of strangers, ex-lovers, new friends, and ex-enemies, all given a second chance. I couldn’t even begin to guess why the gods had seen fit to make us the champions of the human realm, but I had to hope there was a damn good reason for it.

  “Whoa! What are these?” Chase asked, holding up one of the strange weapons Elise had brought.

  I’d been meaning to ask the exact same thing.

  “Put that down,” she ordered him sternly. “Those are Surge Protectors—very rare, very expensive weapons. I was only able to steal five of them, and they’re our only hope of defeating some of the stronger Elitists.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked as I maneuvered the truck along the winding roads.

  “Because we don’t want a giant target on our backs,” she explained. “When you kill an Elemental, you take their power into yourself. Some of those bastards have way more than their fair share. The Surge Protectors keep the power from going into you and channel it back out into the environment to be absorbed by the element it came from.”

  Lilly’s mouth was agape. “That’s amazing.”

  Elise smiled at her. “One is for Nicholai. One is for Amelia—sorry Val.”

  I shook my head and gripped the wheel tighter. “She’s not my mother, just an egg donor. She’s simply another tyrant.”

  “One is for Brad Rosenthorn,” Elise continued, ignoring the fact that he was the sperm donor who’d participated in creating her. Clearly, our family sucked. “One is for Erion Skyden, and one is for Draven Skyden. There are others who are almost as powerful, but those are the ones we need to focus on.”

  I nodded. “So, what happens to the Surge Protectors after we kill someone? Can we use them again?”

  “They shatter,” she said. “You can only use them once.”

  Holden leaned forward from the back seat. “What if we miss? Or have to stab someone else with it?”

  She shook her head. “Then you’ve wasted it. We only have one shot at this. If we can’t avert their powers, we’re going to have to take them into ourselves, and if we do that, we’re as good as dead. We’ll never be off the Shadow Sect’s radar. They’ll hunt us down until each and every one of us is dead and the balance of power is restored.”

  Pax let out a low whistle. “No offense, but I’m pretty damn glad the gods didn’t choose me.”

  Lilly turned around and glared at him. “Thanks, Pax, I’m sure that makes everyone feel loads better.”

  We rounded another bend in the road, and I quickly slowed the truck to a crawl.

  “Oh my god,” I muttered as I took in the scene before me.

  The forest ended abruptly, replaced by steaming craters, jagged mountains, and bits of splintered wood and charcoal. Chunks of stone stuck out sharply from the dirt piles, and the clouds overhead were a menacing, swirling gray. It looked like an atomic bomb ha
d gone off, destroying everything in sight. I had no idea what this place had looked like before—more forest, a city, town, or whatever—but now it just looked like a wasteland.

  I put the truck in park in the middle of the road and climbed out.

  One structure remained intact, and I was fairly certain it had been erected after the destruction. It looked like a mud-brick bastion, complete with buttresses and bonfires.

  “An Elitist stronghold?” Holden muttered to anyone who dared to guess.

  “The Elitist stronghold,” I answered, feeling my insides twist and tighten.

  This was it.

  The final showdown.

  31

  Cade

  “Wake up.”

  I was roused by a swift kick to the ribs.

  Immediately, I gagged, spewing blood-red spittle onto the cave floor.

  Cave?

  I coughed as another wave of vomiting overwhelmed me.

  How the hell did I end up in a cave? Who’s here? And why do I feel like fucking death?

  There was a clicking sound, the sound of metal sliding past metal, and then another loud click. Suddenly, I was thrust into a sitting position and the cold barrel of a handgun was pressed into my left bicep.

  “Where are the other demigods?”

  Nicholai.

  Shit. shit. shit.

  “I don’t know.”

  Bang!

  The bullet tore through my flesh, multiplying the already excruciating pain in my body and brain. A cry escaped my lips as I fought like hell to contain the tears that had sprung into my vision.

  The barrel, much hotter now, was jabbed into my other arm.

  “I’ll ask you again. Where are the others?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Bang!

  I yelled as pain flared everywhere and tears flooded down my cheeks. I was too weak to hold them back. “Why the fuck are you doing this?”

  This was it. I was going to die. For some reason, the thought was almost comforting. At least the pain would be over then.

  Nicholai chuckled, and to my complete surprise and chagrin, he withdrew the weapon. Plopping down on the cave floor, he crossed his legs and smiled.

  “I want your power, but I don’t need it,” he told me arrogantly. “Allow me to tell you a tale while you slowly bleed out. Consider it a bedtime story of sorts.”

  Sick bastard.

  My whole body shook, and the more blood I lost, the colder I felt. It was like ice was crawling through my veins. I wondered if that was what Val felt when her Water powers took over.

  “When I was a boy, no one gave a shit about me,” Nicholai said. “My powers were weak. My body was thin and frail. I was awkward and bullied incessantly. My little brother, Maksim, was the same way. Our parents hated us. We were blemishes on them and the whole Prett family line.”

  He glanced at me, and for a moment, his features blurred. I had to blink a few times before my vision cleared again.

  “You don’t have a damned clue what that’s like, do you, boy? You’ve always been the golden child, the perfect one, full of confidence and strength.”

  He sneered and rolled his eyes in disgust.

  I didn’t have the energy to deny his accusation, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to. He was right.

  “One day a warrior came to our shitty little town,” Nicholai continued.

  I had to scrape at the walls of my brain to remember if this was somehow connected to the first thing he’d said.

  “He was a big, strong man with powers exceeding anything I’d ever seen. I was afraid of him, but everyone else was enamored. They oohed and aahed and showered him with praise and adoration—something I’d never once experienced. As jealousy bloomed into emboldened anger, I somehow managed to get up the balls to ask him how he’d achieved such greatness.

  “The warrior said, ‘It’s not glorious, boy. Power always comes with a price. I was forced into war, forced into killing, and the power grew against my will. I hate being treated like a hero, and I hate the attention.’ And then he stalked off, leaving me to contemplate his words for days, weeks, months, years…until I became absolutely furious.”

  My body slumped over onto the cold cave floor and I tried not to puke at the excruciating pain in my limbs. I forced my eyes open and the cave spun.

  Why would that make him furious?

  Nicholai threw his arms into the air, waving the gun around like the madman he was. “The bastard had everything I ever wanted—attention, appreciation, love—but he didn’t even want it! He had power, strength, and respect—and he hated it! Well you know what, you brutish bastard? I HATED YOU!”

  He fired a few shots into the ceiling, knocking chunks of stone and dust into the middle of the cavern.

  For some fucked up reason, I almost sympathized with him. It was like the more blood I lost, the more compliant my mind seemed to become.

  Nicholai ran a hand through his white-blond hair and got a grip on himself. “Thanks to him, I knew what I needed to do to get what I wanted—I needed to kill.”

  My teeth started chattering as more freezing cold filled me, and I tried my damnedest not to drift off into sleep…or death. As much as I hated to admit it, I was interested in the story he was weaving.

  He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “There was only one person I knew who was weaker than me, one person I’d be able to attack without the fear of retaliation or death.”

  I groaned, but I wasn’t sure if it was out loud or not.

  Not Maksim…

  But I already knew it was coming.

  Nicholai’s features drooped lifelessly as sadness and regret flooded his face.

  “I killed him. I killed my little brother, my one and only friend in the world, the only person who truly cared about me…in exchange for the false love of a crowd. I slit his throat, and as the blood cascaded out, I watched in horror at the accusation in his eyes. ‘Why, brother? Why would you do this to me? I loved you. I trusted you.’ And then I was forced to watch him die, fear and self-loathing eating at my core like maggots and worms until his power surged within me. It filled me with ecstasy and adrenaline, a sensation I’d never felt before, one I wanted more of and quickly became addicted to. I buried his body so deep in the earth no one would ever find his bones.”

  He glanced at me, probably to see if I was still alive or not. I wasn’t sure what he saw in my expression. My eyes were open but unmoving; it took too much energy to blink. My breaths were slow and shallow, my lungs on the verge of faltering, my heart on the verge of stopping.

  “I’ve thought about quitting a million times,” he admitted quietly. “Thought about giving up the killing and the addiction to power, but then it always felt like my brother’s life would’ve been wasted, like he’d have died completely in vain. And so, I keep pushing onward, never stopping but always looking back…” He scratched his chin with the gun barrel. “I do it all for him, as a fucked-up sort of apology, but I know he’ll never forgive me…and I’ll never forgive me.”

  He took a deep breath and his features hardened once more. Reaching over, he pressed his fingers into my neck, feeling the dismal fluttering of my pulse.

  “Not much longer now, boy.”

  He stood and straightened his crisp dress shirt then adjusted his watch.

  I got the feeling he was late for something, or perhaps right on time.

  As he strolled from the cave, my eyelids drifted shut…

  And darkness claimed me.

  32

  As long as I’d waited for this moment, as much as I’d wanted it, I was stupidly underprepared. I had no plan of attack, no strategy, just a duel-minded determination to save Cade and kill Nicholai. No other rational thoughts made an appearance.

  Thankfully, Elise, Chase, and Holden were there. The three of them had worked for highly organized administrations and understood the necessity of a game plan. They pulled us all behind a tall mound of debris and started drawing in the dirt
.

  My eyes drifted away from the Xs, Os, and lines, and my gaze flitted through the trees that stood beyond the destruction. If the Revolutionists were trailing Nicholai closely, they ought to be showing up any minute now. I wished they’d move faster. We needed Sienna and Xavier.

  Ida’s words continued to echo in my mind. You’re all going to have to work together if you want to overpower Nicholai.

  “Valerie!” Elise snapped. “Are you even listening?”

  I turned to her. “Sorry.”

  She sighed. “Do you and Pax want to take the left side?”

  “No, I want the middle,” I said. “A straight shot into the fortress to rescue Cade, and a clear shot at Nicholai as soon as he shows his arrogant face.”

  “We all want a shot at him, Val,” she reminded me. “Whoever gets the first or clearest shot takes it, okay?”

  I nodded. “Fine, but I still want the middle.”

  “Down the middle is probably the hardest route you could choose.” She pursed her lips and studied the dirt drawing carefully then turned to Holden. “If you and Chase take the right, Lilly and I will take the left. I don’t know how many Elitists they have holed up in there, but this should allow us to cover the most ground.”

  Holden nodded, but Chase looked around in confusion, seemingly on the same wavelength as me. “Where is the rest of our team? You can’t seriously expect us to storm the place with odds of six to, like, a thousand.”

  Elise glanced at me. “The longer we wait, the higher the chance of Cade dying. We need him, and as soon as possible, especially if we hope to win.”

  Holden dusted his hand across the ground and cleared the map. Then he drew new Xs, Os, and lines. “So, what we really need to do is stick together, forming a line right up the middle, and get to Cade as quickly as possible.”

  “But, again,” Chase pointed out, “it’ll be pointless without backup. We need to wait on the Revolutionists to show up. Sienna and Xavier are with them anyway, right? And we need them, too.”

  Elise growled in frustration while I cleared the dusty map once more, setting up my own game plan.