by K. Gorman
“You stole it.” Michael’s eyes seemed to darken, narrow. “It belongs to my people. You’re an outsider. A thief.”
Somehow, being called a thief didn’t have the same effect on her as it used to. And Michael didn’t scare her as much as he had before. Sophia had beaten him. He wasn’t the all-powerful terror he made himself out to be.
Of course, he was still a Mage. And she was still an Elemental.
“You can’t steal the willing,” she said. “The Phoenix wanted to come. He’s mine now.”
She didn’t point out that, here, he was the outsider. After all, she had been born here. He had crash-landed on the planet in an alien ship.
Michael’s expression turned darker. “We’ll see about that.”
Without a word, green lights flickered along his skin. Sigils for a spell. He took a step forward.
Mieshka tensed, bracing herself. Beside her, Ketan’s fingers slipped around her bicep. Roger shifted his stance. The glass knife reappeared in his hand.
Power built in the air. The earth hummed, vibrating in their bones. Dust shook itself free from the rafters above them, throwing old dirt and debris into the air. Bits of wood rained down as the alley shifted, ripping splinters free from the beams.
Pressure mounted in the air like the slow, absolute force of tectonic plates.
Then, it stopped. Waited.
With an equally slow smile, Michael stepped forward. He drew a large breath and raised his hand, the sigils glowing like some sophisticated, complicated, triumphant torch. He gave a disdainful sneer at the garbage that lined the alleyway.
“I suppose is a fitting place to end it for you. After all, you’re—” He cut himself off.
His head turned sharply to the brick wall beside him, eyes wide.
A second later, the bricks exploded.
Chapter 32
Sound concussed through the air like a heavy bass. Bricks flew through the alley, raining fragments of clay, chunks of mortar, and splintered wood across the ground. Three pieces smacked into Mieshka’s head, more into her shoulder. Fire burst from her skin in defense. Ketan pushed her back again, shielding her with his body. Dust choked the air, pushed into her throat.
The atmosphere turned into a hazy, gritty cloud. A new, electric light joined the mix, skittering about like a strobe at a rave.
When she looked around Ketan’s shoulder, two new Elementals had joined the fight.
Well, one Elemental and one Mage.
She saw Gobardon first, standing in the middle of the new hole in the wall, his face grim and dead serious. He wore the same cut and fitted business suit she’d seen him in before, although it had grown rumpled and disheveled with travel, and he’d unbuttoned the first button of his collar. The edges of his eyes were dark and bagged.
But his stare was intent. Fixated on his father.
Seeing them side by side, she could spot the similarities. Gobardon stood taller than Michael—but only just—and he had a slimmer build to him: narrower shoulders and chest, longer legs, thinner waist. Michael kept his skull shaved, but Gobardon had a sharply cut head of rich black hair, now coated in a fine layer of old white dust.
Green light danced on Michael’s skin, but Gobardon kept his magic dark. Secret.
“See? I told you I smelled a bunch of Elements.” Kitty peeked around what remained of the wall, dark eyes dancing as she met Mieshka’s gaze. She gave a little wave. “Hi, Meese.”
Stunned, she lifted her hand halfway up before the pain of her stitches stopped her. Dirt coated the bandage.
With her crutch gone, she abandoned her shame and leaned on Ketan for support.
He didn’t seem to mind.
Kitty stepped delicately through the brick-strewn alley. “This is, what, ninety percent of the magic users in Ryarne?”
“Seventy-five,” Roger corrected.
Amusement laced his voice. If his shoulder bothered him, she couldn’t tell. He’d shifted away from the boulder, quietly stepping in front of her and Ketan.
Finally, Gobardon spoke. “Hello, Father.”
He made the title sound like an insult. By the way Michael’s face darkened, she had a feeling it had been taken as such.
She remembered Kitty’s parting words to her, when she had first been injured by Michael.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of him for you.”
There’d been a casual edge to the way Kitty had said those words, one that Mieshka only now began to fully comprehend.
They weren’t here for a happy family reunion. They were here for blood.
By the look on his face, Michael knew it. His gaze flicked from one to the other, taking them in.
“So, it’s come to this?” There was a spark in his eyes that she couldn’t quite identify. It didn’t look happy. “You’ve come to kill me?”
“Yes,” Gobardon said simply.
Michael didn’t seem surprised at all by the intent. If anything, he seemed curious.
“Why? Why now?” The syllables slurred when he spoke, as if his brain wasn’t quite focused on the language. A second later, he switched to the Mages’ mother tongue. “Brei?”
Gobardon answered in plain, simple English, his tone drained of any emotion except the hard, dark resolve in his eyes. “I know about Rurutia.”
Those four words turned Michael’s face into a cold, hardened mask. A slim veneer of disgust twisted his lips into a grotesque smile. The earth shuddered beneath them as green sigils gathered on his fists, more than there had been before. Their light changed, shifted, spiked into the air. Timbers creaked above their head.
“Then you can die like the dog you are,” he said.
Gobardon leapt with a shout, but Michael had already made his move. Mieshka saw a hasty spell fly over his skin, slip into the ground.
The two magics met like a bomb.
Power shivered through the air. The ground fountained up between them, fracturing and fissuring and wrenching with power. Solid concrete and brick tumbled apart, cracking as the two Mages’ energies collided. The sidewalk crunched into waves like sand on the beach.
Then, as the spells dissipated, their energy spent and worn, Kitty jumped into the fray.
The alleyway exploded with sound. Sudden, sharp light blinded Mieshka’s vision, burning electric-blue dots into her retinas. She felt a hand on her shoulder, dragging her away. Her feet protested, but her mind was too numb to think. The air smelled like ozone, like fire. She struggled, and the Phoenix burned into her like the sun.
She exploded.
The hand on her shoulder snapped away. Heat rushed around her. She felt more than light in her eyes now, more than the simple sunlight of the Phoenix’s awareness. The air was volcanic, crackling, ignited.
When her vision cleared, everything was on fire.
A voice spoke close to her ear. “Meese, can you hear me?”
She glanced around. Tiny fires burned on the black ground, as small as her tea lights. Desert-hot air scorched her face, folded like forge fire on her tongue.
“Mieshka.”
The voice was back. This time, she located it on her left.
Roger crouched beside her. Slowly, she felt the hand on her shoulder. Gold light blasted onto his face, making his eyes narrow and squint. Heat burned through her with the intensity of a Roman candle. When she lifted her hand, fire licked through the bandages.
A racket clamored down the alley. Gobardon and Kitty were there, harrying a dusty-looking Michael away from the group. The alley was no longer dim, but lit by a wall of fire that barred Michael from reaching her.
Her fire. Her wall.
She struggled against the ground. Her muscles ached, wounds burned. It felt like her brain had disconnected from her body, and her limbs weren’t responding quite right. When had she fallen? She tried to remember, but her head felt like a hot, limp sponge. Embers shot through her veins.
“She’s burning up.”
The new voice came from her other side. Ketan stoo
d by the opposite wall, pain threading his eyes. He cradled one hand in the other, and a curl of smoke rose from it. The skin was black and pink. Singed.
Had she done that?
Roger’s hand pressed more firmly onto her shoulder. “We need to leave. Can you walk?”
She looked down. At least, part of her had tried to stand up. She had a leg bent underneath her, ready to push up from the floor, but the other leg had barely moved.
That was the one with the worst injuries, she remembered. Back from when Michael had stabbed her with the lab equipment. It felt numb, overused. Like she’d just tried to run a marathon on it.
Roger pulled her to her feet with his good arm. Then, he motioned to Ketan. The Fire Elemental went to her other side, propping his shoulder under her own. He hesitated for a moment, and she got a closer look at his hand.
Skin had bubbled around his knuckles, a mixture of pink and black. Blood stuck to the skin. The smell of burning rose in the air.
Nausea hit her like a storm. They held her up as she bent over, but nothing came out. Her stomach was as dry as the heat that flickered through her.
Too hot, too hot.
The ground rumbled as they turned her up the alleyway, away from the fight. The rafters burned above them, raining motes of ash down from the ceiling.
Firelight danced on the walls.
No wonder they had to leave. She’d set fire to everything.
She tripped on the remnants of her crutch as she left. The broken and charred wood skittered away from the toe of her shoe. Smoke lifted into her nose, as familiar to her as it was foreign. Her power slipped through her mind like a winter bonfire. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. Everything in her mind was hot, raging fire.
Her knees buckled beneath her. Roger and Ketan caught her fall.
“We have to get her to Aiden,” Roger said.
He wasn’t talking to her, she realized, but to Ketan.
He frowned. “The Fire Mage? Has he… does this happen often?”
Their conversation was cut short.
The earth shivered beneath them. The three of them stumbled, buckling into each other.
For the first time in the few months she’d known him, Roger hissed in pain. His eyes turned deadly as he looked behind them.
“I didn’t say you could go.” Michael walked through the wall of fire, pieces of earth spreading the flames as if they were nothing more than a silk curtain. Green sigils danced on his skin, slipped through his fingers, skittered across his cheek. Some of them looked familiar, as if she had seen them before.
Kitty and Gobardon sprinted for the opening.
A wall of earth jutted up behind him, blocking them. A single large green sigil shimmered in its middle, locking it in place.
Mieshka’s power shivered through her as he drew close.
He stopped, barely a meter away, and smiled a slow smile.
The fire backlit him spectacularly. The black clothes he wore no longer blended in with the alley, but silhouetted him sharply against the shifting gold and red fire behind him. Her fire. He stood there with an arrogant tilt to his jaw, looking down on her with a polished sneer, self-assured and confident.
Rage bubbled up inside her, faster than light.
“Fuck you,” she snarled.
Her good hand made a clawed gesture at her side. Fire slid onto the back of it, condensed. As it shivered into one spindly line of light, its color shifted like embers at the base of a fire, tightening into the distinct shape of a rune.
Michael’s eyes widened.
He reached forward, fingers grasping into claws, as if mirroring her own hand. Sigils of green light emanated from his skin, bright and lucid even in the light of the flames, as if all their energy somehow made them more noticeable. Shouts rang out behind him, crackles of electricity, thuds and thumps on the other side of his holding wall.
Michael stretched his hand out toward her, the tendons tight under his skin, joints paling with pressure.
But she struck first.
Fire exploded from her hand like a jet engine. It ripped across the space, seared the air, incinerated the rafters. Fire leapt high in front of her, blinding, burning, blistering.
When it cleared, Michael was on the ground.
A line of green cut across the alley between them, and something within her recognized the shield spell. On her side of the line, heat had blackened the concrete, charred its surface. Smoke rose in a cloud, acrid and foul.
On his side, the road was clear.
But some part of her attack had gotten through. Parts of his clothes smoldered. Smoke rose from his shoulders, and his skin seemed redder than normal.
Mieshka felt her skin cool in the air, like a gun barrel smoking from a bullet.
Roger and Ketan had gone very, very still.
When Michael looked up, his face twisted with fury. But before he could do anything more than rise to a seated position, they heard a large thump. The wall behind him cracked, the pulsing sigil on it vanishing.
Then, it exploded.
Gobardon’s face appeared in the destruction, green sigils shivering on his skin like angry sprites. Father and son looked at each other with unconcealed expressions of disgust.
But only one of them had come for the other’s blood.
Gobardon stepped through the hole like a wolf, rounding on Michael. Dust and dirt smeared the once impeccable lines of his suit, and he had torn his shirt at some point. He looked half crazed—but not like Kitty, who by most accounts was crazy. The wildness his eyes displayed had much more teeth than Mieshka had ever seen from the so-called wild card of Terremain.
Gobardon said nothing. He just attacked.
Magic snapped through the air, dizzying to follow. The earth shook, rumbled, folded around them. Dust rained down from what was left of the rafters.
Now that Michael was fighting someone else, Mieshka could see his magic better. It arced through the air, subtle lines of green lights that were hard to track. You had to look at them sideways, look at them at the right angle, like catching spider’s silk in the sunlight. Or maybe he had to knock it against other magic to make it visible. Sometimes, when the bombs hit Ryarne’s shield, the TV cameras caught the flash of Elemental magic that protected the city.
Just a flash, nothing more.
But the bombers were infrequent, at best. Here, Gobardon hit Michael with everything he had.
Michael’s shield was, at least to her, quite visible.
Kitty joined the fray, blasting Michael’s shield with heavy bolts of electricity. The air filled with ozone.
Michael curled farther into the corner, trapped by the animosity unleashed onto him.
After a full minute, the first crack in his shield appeared, looking like a sick green fissure in a nearly invisible globe. Within the shield, his face was grim with concentration.
Then, his head swiveled her way.
Mieshka felt more than saw the new spell hit the ground. The floor cracked and broke apart. More dust shook loose from the rafters. One fell, and the piece of wood landed with a heavy, hard thunk three feet to her right.
The walls and buildings shook. Cracks formed in their foundations.
She retreated, feet moving back from the cracks as bricks began to rain down. Ketan and Roger, seeing the same thing she did, dragged her away. She yelped as the motion grabbed at her stitches.
The noise made Gobardon swing his head around. He read the situation in less than a second, quickly realizing what Michael had done.
His eyes widened.
Then, Michael brought the whole alleyway down on her.
She ducked her head as the ceiling fell, pelting debris onto her head. The earth roared. The world darkened and tumbled, and her firelight was snuffed out. She felt Ketan’s arm tighten around her, felt him press closer to her, push her down. She braced herself, waiting for the impact.
It never came.
After a few seconds, she peeked out.
Dust ch
oked the dirty air, making her take shallow, careful breaths.
Bricks and stones formed a dome around them, though there were gaps between them, through which she saw her fire still burning in the alleyway outside. Her throat felt dry. There was a coppery taste in her mouth. Green light shimmered underneath, snapping at the underside of the rock, working it into place like roots from a tree. She spotted several sigils, dimmer than night-lights, sliding through the air.
Then, she realized that she, Ketan, and Roger were not alone. Gobardon stood with them, his arms straining with the effort it took to hold up the rock.
By the looks of it, he was holding back more than just simple brick and stone. Michael wouldn’t give up his spells, not that easily, and a rockslide from an Earth Mage was never just a rockslide.
Slowly, painfully, both hands flexed tight with effort, Gobardon pulled the rocks apart. His breath came in short, pained bursts.
When they saw the alleyway again, Michael was on his feet, and Kitty had retreated to the wall.
Gobardon’s face twisted. For a second, Michael turned to face their way. But he didn’t look at Mieshka; his look was for his son only. His lips twisted into an ugly smile. He raised his hand, a single sigil burning clearly on the back.
“No!” Gobardon shouted. He leapt forward, magic forming on his fingers.
Michael released the spell.
Kitty flew back as if she’d been struck. She hit the bricks with a sickening thump, and Mieshka heard the pained breath that left her as she slid down the wall.
Gobardon sprinted forward.
But before he had taken two steps, Michael’s fist tightened again. The stones Gobardon had protected her from now crunched back to life, reforming the attack from earlier. She heard them crack, break. A brick near her elbow snapped from pressure. One half tumbled against her foot.
Gobardon stopped, his breath catching as his magic switched back to defense.
He reformed the shield structure, the muscles bunching in his arms and tightening across the shoulders from effort. Sweat glistened on his skin. His gaze dropped to Kitty, who didn’t move.