by H G Lynch
“That’s just a theory, Cris. Wouldn’t want to take the chance that you might suddenly try to save Lia. I think it’s best if you take the potion, just in case,” she said. Hey, she felt like crap right now, so anywhere she could get her kicks…
Cris sighed and hung his head. “I hate you, you know that? You are pure evil,” he grumbled, raising the bowl to his mouth.
Ember grinned. “Why, thank you.” She curtsied mockingly.
With one glower at her, Cris closed his eyes and tilted the bowl up. Spluttering, he dropped the bowl and bent over, putting a hand over his mouth as he tried not to puke.
Ember clapped him on the back. “There we go. Better safe than sorry,” she teased.
Cris cracked an eye open to glare at her, wrapping an arm around his stomach and leaning the other on his thigh. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to taste that stuff.” He gagged again and hung his head, breathing deeply.
Once Cris could stand straight again, Hiro sauntered over and nudged the overturned bowl on the ground with the toe of his trainer. He pulled a face of distaste, his nose wrinkling.
“That smells horrible,” he commented, and Perry snorted.
“No kidding,” he muttered.
Hiro shot him a look and opened his mouth to make some smart-aleck remark, but Ember cut him off.
“Okay, now that I can be sure nobody’s going to fall under Lia’s spell and try to kill me when my back’s turned, what do we do next?” she asked, bending to retrieve the Grimoire, which now had a covering of frost on its pages. Ember brushed it off with her fingers. She snapped the book shut and looked around, unsurprised to find that while they’d been conjuring potions, Lia had covered the entire area, as far as the eye could see, in ice. White paths of creeping frost disappeared into the trees, and deadly, pointed icicles hung from every branch of every tree, creating a wonderland of jagged, glacial coldness. It was irritatingly pretty to look at, just like Lia. Soon, that would change.
Brandon took the Grimoire from her and flipped it to a new page, using his finger to scan down the lines of slanted writing until he found what he was looking for. “Ah, here we go. First, we need to get Lia out of the lake. We need her in the open,” he said quietly, his eyes dating to the water. Ember snorted. It didn’t matter if Lia could hear them or not. She’d come out of the water for a chance to get at Ember, that she was sure of.
She waved a hand dismissively. “Easy. Next?”
Frowning, Brandon continued. “Someone will need to keep her busy, keep her out of the water, while we do the incantation. It needs to be repeated seven times, and she’s not going to like it. This will be painful for her—”
“It had better be,” Ember snapped, feeling her anger rising. The rumble of thunder seemed to be urging her fury on. She ran her tongue across her canines, letting her fangs spring free. It felt good to get angry again. Angry was energizing, exciting, fierce. She could handle being angry better than she could take the pain in her chest of her heart falling apart. Forget about that, her mind hissed at her and she obeyed gladly.
Brandon’s eyes widened and he continued hesitantly. “So…I think…Ember, if you would keep her busy…Hiro and Cris can do the incantation, and Perry and I will focus on preparing the power-crystal.”
Ember nodded. “Gladly. I’ve got a bone to pick with this man-stealing whore anyway.”
So, while Brandon and Perry got to work measuring out various ingredients, such as dried yew leaves and crystalized sea salt, and pouring them into a thick glass bottle, Ember made her way over the edge of the lake with Hiro right behind her. This close to the water, it was bitterly, bitterly cold. So cold that Ember’s fingers went numb within seconds, and her breath turned to frost in the air in front of her. The gnawing chill seeped through her clothes and into her bones, turning her blood to slush in her veins. Thunder clapped overhead, and a bolt of lightning lit the glistening ice to blinding brightness in a flash. Mist curled from the surface of the lake, but it wasn’t frozen over – there were just chunks of ice the size of footballs floating around like buoys.
Beside her, Hiro whistled and shoved his hands into his pockets, shaking his head violently as the mist crawled up his body and tried to turn into frost in his hair. “I thought sirens were all about water. What’s with the ice?” he grumbled, kicking a lump of snow that seemed to be dragging itself out of the water toward his feet. Ember shuddered.
“I guess sirens can control it in any state. Ice just works best for her because she’s hoping to freeze me to death before she has to face me in a fair fight. Probably because she knows she’d lose,” Ember said it just loud enough that Lia would know she was really talking to her. If she was going to lure Lia out, this was the way to do it. “Come on, Lia, I know you’re in there, hiding in the water like a coward. I told you that if you even so much as thought about Reid again, I’d do whatever I needed to in order to get you out of my life. You messed with his head, you ruined him, and now I’m going to kill you for that – if you’re not too afraid to face me.”
In the center of the lake, something shifted, a blur under the icy water, and Ember took a careful step back from the edge. She was already gathering up all the heat she could find. Hiro tensed next to her, and she could feel the buzzing of his anticipation through the bond. Then the water in the middle of the lake began to rise upward in a spiraling tornado of mercury and ice. Slowly, the wavering cylinder of liquid began to shiver and shake, ribbons of blue and white and silver sliding and twisting, morphing into something else, shaping a human figure from the water. Little by little, the water dripped away to reveal pale, silvery flesh and swaths of long, green hair. A cloak of shimmering, swirling water coated Lia up to her waist, and as far as Ember could tell, the water was all she was wearing. Ember kind of wanted to throw a shirt at her and tell her to put some damn clothes on, but she figured it’d be pointless so she didn’t waste her breath.
Floating above the surface of the lake, Liandra sneered at Ember, her bare feet gliding across the air as she sauntered closer, silver water dripping down her. The white mist followed her, clinging to her skin and writhing around her, a transparent coat that moved with her every breath. “Well, well. I wondered how long it would take you to get back here with a death squad. Where’s your precious boyfriend now, honey?” Lia laughed, and it sounded like tinkling bells.
It made Ember want to slap her. The siren’s green hair floated around her head, eerily like she was underwater, and the color of her eyes kept shifting from hazel to silver to blue and back again.
Behind her, Ember heard Cris and Hiro chanting in low voices, and then a roar of thunder overrode them. A knife of lightning sliced open the sky, tearing open the black clouds. A hail of rain came pelting down, and Lia laughed again maniacally, joyfully, tipping her face up to the sky and spreading her arms. Ember glared at her, feeling the heavy rain drops pounding on her and running down her face. Within seconds, she was soaked through, and the darkness inside her began to leak out. She smirked coldly, and Lia’s grin faltered for just a moment. Ah, yes, even the great siren could be taken aback by Ember’s cruel smirk. It fueled Ember’s darkness and her fury, the heat inside her rising until it swelled behind her ribs, ready to burst free.
With her hair falling into her face in dripping ribbons, glaring dangerously up at the siren girl, Ember said, “Actually, he’s ex-boyfriend now. But you already knew that. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? All along, you wanted Reid for yourself, and now that he’s available, you’re not going to have the chance to have him. It’s a little ironic, and oh-so tragic, if you ask me. Just like Romeo and Juliet,” she was provoking Lia, and she was enjoying it. Her skin was prickling hot, the power inside her rushing and squirming to be released from the constraint of her body. The rain turned to steam on her skin, and she backed away from the lake, beckoning Lia forward tauntingly. Lia’s multi-hued eyes narrowed and she stepped onto the frost-coated grass. It melted under her feet and the dew joined th
e writhing skirt of water around Lia’s hips. She walked with a sort of slow grace, like someone wading through thigh-high water.
Liandra shook her head, the tentacles of green around her head bobbing. “You just don’t get it, do you? There’s no way you can beat me, firefly. Oh yes, that’s right, I know about Reid’s little nickname for you. I also know why he calls you that. Your silly fire ability.” She threw back her head, laughing wildly. “Too bad it’s going to be useless against my water. I’ve got all the power of the lake and the rain and the ice that’s draining all your precious heat away. You’ve got so little to work with. My power is all but unlimited.” She held up her hands, palms up, and Ember watched as the water in the lake rose behind her, forming two spinning pillars of water, each nearly twenty feet high.
Overhead, lightning flashed again, and thunder boomed a moment later. The wind whirled and screamed viciously, throwing the stinging rain at them almost horizontally, lashing Ember’s hair into her face and threatening to make her lose her balance on the slick, frosty grass. The storm was fully upon them now, and Ember could sense Lia getting stronger, even as her own power started to waver and dwindle. The temperature was dropping fast, sinking lower and lower, and there was so little heat to pull energy from.
Faintly, she could hear Cris and Hiro still chanting, yelling over the wind, the words distorted in the storm. Still, she wasn’t going to back down. She had to keep Lia distracted. She had to get her to strike, to fight, to wear herself out. So she lifted her chin and sneered, laughing at Lia. “You’re pathetic, Lia. You wanted Reid, but the only way you could get him interested in you was to use your stupid siren powers on him. Ever since that first day at the lake, you’ve been chasing him. You tried to get me out of the scene so you could move in on him, but it didn’t quite work. You killed those other boys so he’d have a reason to be near the lake, where you could sing your siren song and trap him in your web of melodies. You just didn’t count on me showing up and breaking your little spell. You see, Lia, that’s what makes this all so…so ridiculously pathetic; you went through all of this — faking being a student, killing other boys, working your silly magic on him – to snag Reid, and you know what? When I first met him, I did everything I could to keep him away from me, and he still fell in love with me. He still loves me now. He loves me enough that he broke free of your spell at the sound of my voice.” Ember paused, swallowing, determined not to let Lia see her tears or the trembling of her mouth. “This is what you don’t get, Lia: Love is stronger than magic, and magic can be strengthened by love. Which is why you’re about to have your ass kicked.”
With a roar of rage, Lia pointed one arm straight toward Ember, and one of the spiraling columns of water rotating in the lake behind her flew forward, an icy blue liquid snake striking. It moved so fast that Ember didn’t have time to fling her fire magic in return. As it was, she threw herself to the side, barely dodging the torrent of water that tried to slam into her. She smacked her elbow hard when she hit the ground, pain lancing up her arm, and rolled back to her feet, ignoring the pain. But by the time she got to her feet, the other pillar of water was diving for her, and she dropped to her stomach so it swung over her, splattering gallons of water down on her. Choking, Ember flipped herself over in a somersault, landing on her feet, just as the first pillar came racing toward her, a giant, liquid skipping rope. Drawing on her years of gymnastics training when she was younger, she dropped back into a crab, letting the rope sail over her by merely a few inches. She could have sworn she saw a fish caught inside the watery vortex.
Damn it! She needed more heat, but there was no more to be had, and no time to gather it anyway as the writhing snakes of water lunged at her again, simultaneously this time. She tried to dodge, but her feet slipped on the wet grass, and she went down hard, falling onto her back. The impact winded her and immobilized her in shock for a second too long. The water pillars were changing shape, growing taller and thinner, more like whips. One whip came down on her before she could get to her feet, a hundred gallons of rushing water smacking her in the stomach, hard as rock. She screamed as she felt a rib crack, and water flooded into her mouth. There was a roaring her ears that could have been her own blood, the wind, or the mass of moving water.
Desperate to breathe, she flipped over onto her hands and knees, clutching her ribs, and coughed onto the grass. The water that came up from her lungs was tinted with red. Every breath was a sudden burst of agony, white hot pain blazing down her left side. She couldn’t get enough air. Probably had a punctured lung, and she didn’t know how long it would take to heal. If she could just get a moment to pause and think, to draw strength and power…
And then she heard Lia scream. Her head snapped up and she saw Lia fighting a small red fox with its jaws clamped around her leg. Hiro. She should have known he couldn’t sit this out on the sidelines. He was bound to protect her. Lia’s distraction gave Ember just a few seconds, but it was enough time for her rib to start repairing itself and she threw out her mind-limb as far as it would stretch, nearly a kilometer wide and several stories high, catching all the rising heat lingering around the clouds. It still wasn’t that much, but it would have to do. She pulled herself to her feet and spread her hands, letting the flames erupt from her palms, the fiery stacks growing and growing until they were ten feet tall and several inches in diameter. They were tiny compared to Lia’s water snakes, but the ribbons of gold and orange sizzled and crackled, hissing and spitting in the pouring rain without going out. It would take more than a little water to dampen her fire.
At last, Lia managed to kick Hiro off her leg, throwing him across the clearing, where he smacked into a tree with a sickening howl of pain. Red flared up behind Ember’s eyes, and she growled, a sound so low it rumbled in her chest. Liandra turned her eyes back to Ember and got hit in the chest by a snake of flame that knocked her backward through the air. Screaming in pain and fury, Lia righted herself, a circular scorch mark just above her left breast leaking blood and fluid, and flung an orb of water at Ember. With superior vampire speed, Ember dodged, jumping straight up into the sky and lashing out with a whip of fire as thin and flexible as wire. The whip hit Lia’s stomach, slicing a line of burns across the skin. Ember smirked, breathing hard, battle-lust and bloodlust fighting inside her. The rain stung her eyes, her hair flew wildly around her, and adrenaline pumped through her veins, kicking her heart into top gear so it thrashed madly in her chest, behind her slowly healing cracked ribs.
“Is that the best you’ve got!” Lia screeched, laughing insanely. Water gathered under her and lifted her higher off the ground until she floated six feet in the air. Thunder erupted from the churning clouds, and lightning followed close behind, a jagged spear of light hitting the ground just a few feet from where Ember was standing. It left a smoking patch of blackened grass where it touched and Ember realized then that there was a lot more heat in the area than she’d been picking up on. Her magic net collected the heat lingering from the lightning strike, and she laughed at the new rush of power. Damn, it felt good. That was a lot of heat and a lot of energy. If she could catch lightning, she could incinerate Lia with ease.
Lia’s swirling tentacles of water were waving wildly as they awaited commands. With a sharp motion, Lia commanded them forward again, lashing at Ember. This time, Ember didn’t just dodge. She focused her fire into a new shape, reforming it so fast you’d have had to play it in slow motion to see what really happened. The pillars of water hit a blazing shield of flame, sizzling violently, gallons of water turning to gallons of steam in an instant. There was so much of it that it clouded the battlefield, but Ember had the advantage. As a vampire, she could locate living minds, and she knew exactly where Lia was. Dropping her fiery shield, she blasted her fire toward the ground.
In seconds, there was a full-sized flaming tiger standing in front of her. Benji let out a bellowing roar so loud it shook the icicles from some of the trees. Ember pointed through the billowing clouds of steam t
o where she knew Liandra was. “Attack, Benji!” she commanded, and her awesome tiger of gold and red ribbons lunged, disappearing into the fog. Then Ember whirled, searching for some sign of her friends, listening hard over the roar of the wind and thunder and rushing water. If she really strained her ears, she thought she could hear Cris still chanting, but her ears could have been playing tricks on her. There was so much noise it was hard to tell.
Out of nowhere, a crushing weight slammed into Ember’s back and flung her through the air. It knocked the breath out of her so she couldn’t scream, and the force dislocated her shoulder. She hit the ground somewhere beyond the edge of the trees, whacking her arm on a branch, breaking it. She tried to scream without air, clutching her arm to her chest, blinding pain flashing white behind her eyes. She felt blood trickle down her face from a head wound. When she pried her eyes open, everything was dancing with grey dots, and nausea rose up over her like a wave. She shut her eyes, breathing through gritted teeth, willing herself not to throw up. Holding her broken arm tightly to her chest, she tried to get to her feet, but her ankle buckled under her and she tumbled down against a tree, twigs embedding themselves in her arm. She hissed in both pain and frustration, slumping against the base of the tree, praying the icicles swinging from it wouldn’t fall on her head. God, her gums were burning. She needed blood, desperately needed it. Maybe she could just sit here, at least until her arm healed...
But then she heard Lia’s laugh echoing through the trees, reverberating off the icicles with crystalline quality, and she knew she couldn’t just sit here. Locking down her throat so she wouldn’t scream, she used her good arm to pull her to her feet, and put her weight on her sore ankle. She’d probably broken a bone in her foot, but it didn’t matter. It would heal.
She limped through the trees, using branches and icy tree trunks to keep her upright, and finally found her way back to the clearing, where Lia was waiting for her with her pillars of water. There was still a lot of steam on the field, and Benji was doing a suitable job of keeping Lia’s twisting water snakes busy, lunging around and roaring fire, sparks hitting Lia’s bare flesh every so often. But Ember was getting weaker by the minute and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold onto her magic. The heat was fading, her power faltering under the repeated onslaught of Lia’s endless icy water. She needed more heat, more energy, and fast.