ParaWars Uprising

by Caitlin Greer

  But I am the storm. And I don’t believe him. I can and will beat him.

  He comes back at me in a full-on aerial charge, sword out. I’m done playing. Fisticuffs is all well and good, but not against a sword, especially not one of the soul-sucking variety. The lightning crackles through me again and again, shooting through my hands at him until I feel like I’m nothing but wild, feral electricity. The storm around us rages harder, wind turning to gales that whip through the sky. Thunder shatters my ears, rain pelts my soaked skin. My eyes narrow, trying to see through the torrent.

  Grittanus screams, trying to reach me through my tempest. But his wings are like sails, and with a final bright bolt, he flies off into the dark storm.

  It occurs to me a little too late that might not be the best thing in the world. Because now I don’t know where he is.

  Shit. Really dumb, Kendry.

  I should never have let myself lose sight of him. There are too many fights going on around me, and too many distractions. I’ll never find him. I let the lightning tear open the sky, targeting every enemy para I can. And as I spin and search, I find myself looking for Axel as well.

  But I don’t see either of them. And my whirlwind rages on, with me in the center. Untouchable.

  Until an arm closes around me from behind, and the soul-wrenching feeling is back. Grittanus pushes the tip of his sword to my side.

  “You and I, Kendry, we have unfinished business.”

  Electricity scatters across my skin. I wonder if my lightning would hurt me.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  Right, like I’m going to listen to him. I release the bolt anyway. It surges through me, and I know it hits him. I can feel him behind me, spasming from the shock. But he doesn’t let go. I lash out again, stronger. The lightning burns in me and through me. Grittanus’ back arches, pushing him into me. Through the thunder and the rain, I can hear his teeth grinding, stone on stone.

  My hand grabs at the arm that holds my waist, channeling another shock directly into him as I try to wrench him off me. Again and again, I shock us together, blasting him with enough voltage to melt steel. He doesn’t let go, though. I don’t know what else to throw at him.

  And then he tenses, and the sword point breaks skin, sliding into my side.

  The world rocks like a tiny boat on an endless sea in the middle of a hurricane, wave after wave pitching it up and down and sideways. I don’t feel the pain. I feel the pull. I feel like a rift has opened in the universe, and I’m being sucked through it.

  “Don’t fight it so hard, Kendry.”

  The world rocks and spins and thunders.

  “I promised you could join me. If you won’t do it voluntarily…” The sword twists as he drives it deeper into me. The world has gone sideways and upside down and backwards, folding in and out.

  “…then we can do it the hard way.”

  The sword twists again, and I can feel my grip slipping.

  “Either way, Axelrod will live to weep over your broken, lifeless, soulless body.”

  Like hell. Grittanus’ taunt gives me the fire I need. The world may be inside out, but as long as Axel is in it, I will do everything humanly—or paranormally—possible to stay here. He wrenches the sword again, and I scream.

  But I’ve found my center. He’s given it to me, without any idea that he has. I reach back to grab the sword. The lightning courses through me again, supercharging me, and with a wordless scream I pull against it, pulling it out of me. Grittanus’ voice joins mine as he pushes back. Lightning arcs around us as the world continues to slide sideways. The blade cuts into my hand where I’m holding it, but I’m not giving up. And inch by precious inch, I’m rewarded.

  “Kendry!”

  Axel’s voice cuts through the upside down reality, through the thunder, the roaring wind, the pelting rain. It cuts through Grittanus’ screaming, and through the un-pain of his soul sword. It stabs me to the heart, and gives me the little bit extra I need to rip the sword from my body and from Grittanus’ hand.

  “NO!”

  Lightning blazes through me as Grittanus claws at me. But his screams are cut short as he’s torn off of me. The maelstrom swells in me again as I turn to see the two gargoyles battle, sword and blood still dripping from my hand. My side blazes like an electrical socket arcing in a thunderstorm. Grittanus looks much worse for the wear. His stone skin is streaked black and cracking, probably from all the lightning. His hair has come out of the tidy ponytail, and his once-neat uniform is shredded.

  Axel, on the other hand, is a true sight for sore eyes. His long black leather trench coat flaps in the wind, and even in the torrential rain, he looks perfect.

  The sword throbs in my hand as they fight. It’s still pulling at me, pulling at the sparking wound in my side. My anger surges again. I raise the sword up, grabbing it with both hands, shoving the fury of the storm around me into this one small object. Lightning flickers across my hands and into it, building slowly, until it arcs out around me. My hands burn where they hold the sword. The noise of the fighting below and around me disappears in the crackling heat of the spark-shedding blade.

  My hands raise it up above my head, lightning flying everywhere. In the distance, I can hear Grittanus’ insane laughter.

  “No, Kendry, don’t!”

  I ignore Axel’s words. My hands fly down with all the force I can muster, bringing the flat of the blade crashing into my rising knee.

  The world and its chaos disappear.

  A blast of power rocks over me in that moment when the soul sword breaks. It’s not physical, it doesn’t blow me over. It washes through me like a magical flood, and in it are visions and sights that move too fast for me to see. I hear Grittanus’ insane laughter, and feel the chill of a soul-deep darkness. And then it vanishes, and the world returns.

  The soul sword is gone, but everything else is as it was the moment I broke it across my knee. Axel has Grittanus in a full nelson, stone straining against stone.

  “You think you’ve won!” he’s screaming. “You have no idea! You think bullets were the only thing I made?” His laugh has gone past insanity, and I have no idea what exists on the far side of that. His black eyes are mad, dancing. “Tick tick, Kendry! None of you will survive!”

  Axel roars, his muscles straining, and with a sickening crack that reverberates through the storm and the mountains louder than thunder, Grittanus’ neck snaps. With a heave, Axel drops the motionless stone body. His eyes lift to find mine.

  But my mind is racing. Tick tick. Bullets that melt stone. Heavy artillery that does the same. Why stop there? Why not go whole-hog?

  Grittanus never did anything by half.

  He’d have an insurance plan, in case things didn’t go the way he wanted.

  Tick tick.

  Oh God.

  Tick tick.

  He made a bomb. A para bomb. Or rather, an anti-para bomb. And it could be anywhere.

  But it’s not anywhere. He’d have put it where it could do the most damage, destroy the most. Hurt the most.

  “The Conclave chambers.”

  “What?” Axel looks at me, confused. “What about the Conclave?”

  “There’s no time!” I can still hear his psychotic laugh in my head. I’m already racing through the air.

  “What are you talking about? Kendry!” His wings flap hard, carrying him through the unending squall to keep up with me.

  “He made a bomb, Axel!” I’m sure we’ll be too late. I’m amazed it hasn’t gone off already. “Like the bullets, but worse!”

  And then I’m right. Horribly, tragically, epically right. Because it does go off. But I’m wrong, too, because it isn’t in the Conclave, like I thought. It’s somewhere below me, in the center of the fighting. It blows outwards, knocking down paras and humans and trees and everything. The thwump of the explosion echoes again and again. The force of it sends shockwaves rolling throughout the valley.

  But nothing is louder than my scre
am.

  In the moment of detonation, my maelstrom sweeps and swirls in tight, tighter than any hurricane, tighter than a tornado, tight as a pocket dimension. The rain and wind and lightning focus in on the bomb itself. I can’t stop the shockwave. I can’t contain the blast.

  But I can fold my storm in on the contents, the liquid fire that burns and melts. I can keep it from killing my family. I can keep it from killing Axel.

  I just don’t know if I can keep it from killing me.

  Because whatever Grittanus made the stuff out of, it’s eating at my storm, folding itself into the magic of it, and backfeeding into me.

  And oh, it burns. It scalds. And I know I’m screaming, and I can’t stop.

  Oh please God, make it stop!

  No. I don’t care if it stops. Just keep them safe. Keep them all safe.

  Keep him safe.

  And then he’s there with me, in the burning spinning swirling tempest. His cool touch wraps me up. Wings envelope me, forming its own tiny world of welcome cool air. Cold and yet still warm stone arms enfold me.

  He gives me hope.

  And I take that hope, take his strength, take his unwavering love. I take him, and all he is, and all he makes me.

  And I take hold of the inferno.

  The rain falls, cold and wet around us. Lightning stabs the ground. Thunder echoes in the mountains. Wind swirls and blows.

  And the rain around us turns to fire.

  Wrapped in the safety of Axel’s arms, his wings, the surety of his love, we hover twenty feet above the ground as fire falls around us like rain, strangely, oddly harmless. The trees don’t burn. The grass, what’s left beneath the feet of two armies, doesn’t burn.

  The only thing that burns are intentions. The traitors’ army watches their hopes fade. The human soldiers are long gone—dead or run away. Grittanus lies dead, as does Rockfort. Their coup is in shambles.

  The Conclave army knows they’ve won in a glance. All that remains is cleanup.

  And I… I hold tight to Axel. I never want to let go again.

  Eventually, his arms loosen a little. Enough to look down at me. Enough to run his thumb across my cheekbone. Enough for me to see both pain and joy in his eyes.

  “Kendry…” His soft voice is too much.

  “Oh God, Axel… I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

  “Kendry.” My torrent of words stops as his finger slides over my lips. “It’s okay. It’s over.”

  I give a ghost of a laugh, with a ghost of a smile. In response, he kisses the tears from my cheeks, his lips barely touching my skin. Around us, as his wings slide back to rest, the rain is only soft, autumn rain. The wind no longer howls. The lightning is gone, and the thunder rumbles quietly in the distance.

  Axel’s kisses drift from my cheeks to my lips. Stone lips graze mine, breath mingling light and warm, and then harder, full of need. And then he gasps, his rock hard hands tightening for a second, and I open my eyes to see the burning embers of his nightly change glow over him. Stone becomes flesh once again.

  Below us, a slow cheer rises.

  He kisses my forehead. “Should we go down?”

  I’m already lowering us in response. Dad is waiting, his hounds still chasing stragglers. Sitting behind him on his black charger is Mom. I swear she wasn’t there before, but then again, Dad is one of the oldest of the demis. I’m sure he can weave a glamour with the best of them. I smile as my feet touch the ground, already pushing out of Axel’s arms towards them.

  But the smile fades quickly.

  “Kendry, wait…”

  With the power of the storm draining away, my legs are too weak to hold me. It’s not until I fall over that I remember there’s a gaping sword wound in my side. My hand, when I touch it, comes away warm and wet, and red.

  “Axel…”

  I didn’t realize my legs were going numb. I didn’t realize it was only adrenaline and magic and sheer determined stubbornness that was keeping me going.

  I didn’t realize how cold I was.

  I didn’t realize how dark it was.

  “Axel…”

  I don’t know if I’m actually speaking or not. I don’t know if anyone can hear me. I feel hands over me, touching me, lifting me.

  I want Axel. I’m sure if there are hands lifting me, then they’re his. But I can’t see him. I can’t feel him.

  I can’t find him.

  I hear the thunder rumble one last time, and the too-slow pounding of blood in my ears.

  And then there’s nothing but silence, and darkness.

  I dream of fire and rain and lightning. Of great dark forests and primal gods that rule them.

  I dream of pocket worlds that devour souls, and molten rock with faces that I feel like I should know.

  They aren’t kind, my dreams. But I imagine dying isn’t kind, either. Especially not dying in battle. There are no valkyrja come to bear me to Valhöll. No ghosts to guide me, no Bean Sidhe to wail my mortality.

  Darkness and nightmares. Visions of death. The pain in my side, that never ends. Burning, throbbing pain.

  If it isn’t death, I wish it would be.

  I don’t like to be alone in the dark.

  It lasts too long.

  When it clears, it’s like the sunrise after a hurricane. Days of storm and rain and chaos, and shattering destruction, but the sun comes out and it doesn’t matter how bad it all is, because for a fraction of a second, there’s hope in the world again.

  And then the horrible reality crashes down. In my case, it’s the pain. No magical healing, this time. I remember Axel or Danu or someone telling me you can only have so many before bad things happen. No drugs to make it better, either. So either I’m really lucky, and Grittanus’ sword didn’t do too much besides leave a freaking great big hole in me, or they risked a healing anyway to take care of the worst of it.

  Either way, it hurts. Like the I’m-not-going-to-be-moving-for-days kind of hurt.

  But waking is better than dreaming. At least I know I’m alive.

  When the realization of pain fades enough to allow me to think, my eyes crack open. My first thought is that they must have put me back in my old room, because I see the window, and the balcony where Axel first kissed me. New bed though, and new wardrobe. My room. There’s a kind of odd hiccup of a laugh at that thought. It is my room. This is my home. And then there’s sadness, because I realize that Greenbriar won’t ever be home again. But I have memories here now, and family. And that’s okay.

  My gaze trails over the room, my mind wandering. I don’t want to even think about moving. My torso is wrapped tightly, in thick layers of bandage that hold me in and together. It takes another minute to realize it’s not only bandage holding me tight. And I should have known.

  Of course Axel would be here, waiting for me to wake up.

  I’m contemplating the pros and cons of moving when he removes the need.

  “How do you feel?”

  Oh, the ways I could answer that. I settle for going without the sarcasm. “Hurt.” Actually, it’s a struggle to get out that much. I have one hell of a case of cottonmouth.

  “You’re lucky hurting is all.”

  It takes me a few tries to get my mouth working. “How bad?” Well, kind of working.

  “The you-really-should-be-dead kind of bad.”

  I grunt in response. No wonder it hurts so much. And no wonder he sounds so annoyed at me.

  “How could you not know you had a gaping hole in your side? Two, in fact?”

  I was kind of busy. Breaking a soul sword, and keeping bombs from blowing everyone up. I think I have an excuse. But saying any or all of that requires way too much effort. Raising my middle finger is so easy in comparison.

  Axel laughs. “I suppose I’ll give you a pass. You were kind of busy.”

  Exactly. Thank you for noticing. “Thirsty.”

  “I’m sure you are. Can you move, do you think?”

  Oh sure, let me just jump up and go g
rab something to drink. “No.”

  He chuckles again. “Come on. I’ll help.” The bed moves with him, and then his strong hands are lifting me up, helping me sit, to lean against him. And I was right. Moving sucks ass.

  “Here.” His hand moves in the dark, lifting something up to me. A cup. The water in it is cool and so, so good. I want it all, my hands coming up to hold it to my mouth, but Axel pulls it away. “Easy. Don’t want to get sick.”

  Screw getting sick. I want the water. But then, I don’t want to think about coughing, or worse, heaving, so I suppose doing it his way is better. He’s so patient with me, too, forcing me to sip a little at a time, until I’m satisfied.

  “Better?”

  I nod. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Ah, she can speak!” I can hear the laughter in his voice, and it makes me happy. Things can’t be all that bad. I hope.

  “Once I swallowed the cotton, yes.” Talking is easier, but it still takes a lot out of me. “How long?”

  “How long were you out?” He sighs. “A few days. Danu tried to heal you. It didn’t go so well.”

  “What happened?”

  He grunts, and adjusts his seat before he answers. His arms wrap back around me protectively. “Your body can only take so many healings before it rejects them. The fact that Grittanus used a soul sword… Kendry, most people don’t survive ten seconds with a soul sword. Nobody pulls them out and then breaks them. It doesn’t happen.”

  “So…” I have to think a little, to put it into as few words as possible. “So the whole weird rainbow-y shadow vision thing…” Crap. I really don’t know how to explain it.

  “The what?”

  “When I broke the sword.”

  “Okay, I got that. What happened?”

  “There was some kind of, I don’t know, magical backlash?” Ugh. Way too much effort still. Panting is not attractive. He passes me the water again, and I’m smart enough to stick with his advice, and only sip.

  “It blasted through me, and I saw things. Felt things. I heard Grittanus laughing, even though you had him in a choke hold. And then it got really cold.” Another sip, more panting. Talking should not put me so out of breath. It’s really frustrating.