Crush (Elemental Hearts, #3)

by Morgan, Jayelle

  Again, how? What was he? How was he doing this?

  It didn’t matter, because he was struggling. The wall of stone had met his outstretched hands and pushed him backward.

  He lowered a hand, and the flat-ish rock she stood on started to move.

  Instinctively, she knelt down and clung to the edge.

  It turned her away from Micah and careened down over the boulders and rocks. Behind her, she swore she heard him whisper her name, as if he was still over her shoulder.

  And then she heard it, felt it—the wall of stone fell.

  Suddenly she was surfing down the mountain, in the shadow of enormous waves of dirt and stone on either side of her.

  The sound of it was so deafening, she couldn’t hear anything at all. The rocks fell in violent waves behind her, beside her, in total silence. All her senses but her vision were muted. She could no longer feel the flat stone she gripped. There was no pain from the little sharp stones peppering her skin as she slid along. She couldn’t feel the breaths she knew were sawing out of her lungs, or taste the coppery tang of fear in her mouth any longer. She couldn’t smell or taste any of the dirt clogging the air. It was a silent, slow-motion movie of her own death.

  The edges of her vision darkened, and she went numb. Woozy, she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see the rocks that were going to end her life, anyway.

  MICAH FACED THE RAGING, crumbling mountain, fear leaching away to resignation. This was his one idea, his one chance. His one redemption.

  He closed his eyes and grounded himself in the Earth. Begged it to hear him, to help him, to have mercy on him.

  Levi and Ajax, somehow, accessed their powers when their family’s lives were in danger. Love had cracked them wide open and allowed whatever null the Chaolt had over their powers to fall away.

  So he clenched his eyes tighter, put his hands out, and begged the Earth, because he already loved.

  He loved and respected his fellow Warriors, and wanted to save them and their families. Baby Jackson and Brooke’s child yet to be born. Though he’d kept himself apart, kept himself from getting close, he loved them anyway. They were his village now. He loved and wanted to save all the humans and Erratics in Topaz Ridge.

  But most of all, he loved Jade. He knew that now, recognized that no one on Earth or Elementium could take her place. Sweet, strong Jade. If he had to choose who to save, it would be her.

  All this time, he’d been afraid of love. But the truth was, he was afraid of loving and losing.

  He wasn’t strong enough to lose any of them. Not the Warriors or their families, not Jade. Either he would be granted the power to stop the landslide and save them, or he would die trying.

  Luckily, he could do it all, and destroy the Chaolt as well, if he was just granted the power to do so. All he had to do was hold back the landslide. So he opened himself and prayed and begged.

  With a loving whisper in his mind, his Earth energy swelled through him. He felt it fill his body from down below and up above and all around and he roared with triumph.

  He turned to check Jade’s progress. She wasn’t far enough. She’d turned to look at him, anguish and bewilderment on her face.

  His distraction in looking for her allowed the landslide to gain ground, and he dug his heels into solid rock to try to keep it from pushing him back.

  He couldn’t let it win yet, he had to save Jade first.

  A portion of his power directed with one hand, he took the top off the boulder she was standing on, making it a flat plate, and sent it sliding away. Down, down and away, and hopefully out of range of the raging landslide.

  Hopefully. Because he would not be able to stop it.

  This was the last time he’d see Jade. He had so much he wanted to tell her, to explain, but he’d have to be satisfied with her safety.

  He put his hand up again with the other, pushing back with body and mind and until it felt like both were going to break. The effort to stop it, to hold up the barrier of power against the ocean of stone, was already eating at his body, his consciousness. He fell to one knee, hands still up and out, his heart breaking. He’d been granted his powers to halt the landslide, but it was just too much to hold back. His last chance, and it wasn’t going to work.

  He hoped he’d bought her enough time because he was almost out of it, his body weak and shaking and sweating and hurting as his powers used up his flesh faster than he could heal. The edges of the wall were crumbling, pulling down more and more rock.

  Which would fail first? His mortal body, or the immense well of energy he once thought infinite?

  He’d only thought that because he’d never had to hold back a whole mountain from crushing the woman he loved. Now he could see the bottom of that well, taste it. Hear the empty echo of it in his mind.

  He used every last grain of power, scraping for more, his body bowing with the effort. He must save Jade. He didn’t have the strength to lose her.

  But he still had the strength to save her.

  In his mind, he cupped his arms around the entire avalanche of stone, and with a last heave of power, turned it. Away from the town, away from Jade. Toward the Chaolt, and toward himself. In that big a volume, it acted more like water than stone.

  Elation filled him. He’d done it. He’d turned the landslide so it would neither overwhelm Jade nor sweep into the valley below. With her safely out of the way, it would fall, and it would cover the Chaolt fleeing down the mountain on foot, and bury their portal under so much rock they could never dig it out.

  His life was a small price to pay for that.

  Micah put his arms down. Exhausted, empty, he watched the wave of stone roll and crash toward him.

  He held Jade’s face in his memory, focusing on it instead of the wall of rock bearing down on him. The memory of their first kiss morphed into making love in the storm, in her bed, in his. Nights around the fire, talking. Every word she spoke to him, and every word she drew from him, imprinting her on his soul. On his heart.

  He whispered her name.

  Then threw his head back and yelled out his despair as the landslide overcame him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  JADE SAT ON THE ROCK, unable to move. Unable to think. She needed to get up, get help, but all she could do was look at the ruin of the mountain before her. It looked like a god-sized excavator had come down and scooped out one whole side and then poured it down around her.

  She stood on shaky legs, leaving a bloody hand-print on the stone she used to pull herself up.

  She looked around, trying to get her bearings. Where was camp? There were no trees left, no bushes. No life.

  There was no way anyone survived that. How had she?

  Dirt was still thick in the air, and what had been bright morning light now filtered through the cloud of dust with a reddish tinge. The sun was a dim orb shining weakly through clouds of drifting dirt.

  Vehicles slid to a sudden stop behind her, kicking up more dust. She’d slid all the way to the road?

  She turned as two men jumped out the open doors, rushing toward her.

  Help. Help was coming.

  “Please,” she said voice weak. She pointed behind her, up the mountain, and pushed words past the dryness and ache of her throat. “Please, a man is trapped up there.”

  A tall man with shaggy blond hair reached her first, grabbed her by the upper arms. “Is it Micah?”

  “You know Micah?” These men knew Micah?

  “Yes, we know him. Is it Micah who’s trapped?” He punctuated his question with a little shake that helped her focus.

  “Yes. Yes, it’s him.” It was her turn to grip his upper arms. “Please help me find him. He’s got to be hurt—”

  “I’m his commander, Walker. This is Rowan,” he said, nodding to the red-haired and bearded man beside him. “We work with Micah. Can you tell me what happened?”

  “I don’t know how I got out of there. Everything moved so fast after the people came...” Jade put a h
and to her head. “I don’t know. I’m not sure, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Walker said. “Just tell me what you can remember. What people?

  “We were arguing, and these people came down the mountain. There was something about them... One of them touched me...” And it was like all of her anger at Micah exploded out of her, the ground and the sky and her soul shaking with it. “Everything was shaking. And then I saw the landslide.”

  The wave of rock that had surged toward them would haunt her dreams the rest of her life. So would Micah’s last look in her direction, apology and pain all in one. All she could remember after that was rolling along with the rocks, deafened by the sound of them, sure they would bury her any second. They hadn’t. She’d made it to the bottom of the mountain, the end of the landslide. Alive.

  “I think somehow, Micah saved me.” She looked up at Walker and felt the protective shell of shock fracture from speaking his name out loud again. “He sacrificed himself for me.”

  Would he have done that if he didn’t care for her? Had she been wrong?

  Her last words to him were angry, hateful. Jade curled over her knees, arms gripping around her middle, trying to hold her broken pieces together.

  “I think I killed him. I was just so angry at him. I wanted to hurt him like he hurt me. And after that boy touched me... It just all came out. And that’s when the landslide started.”

  “Listen, we don’t have much time. Micah could still be alive, and I think you can help us find him. Will you help?”

  “Any way I can,” she said looking at Walker, eyes burning. “But what can I do?”

  “I know what I’m about to tell you will sound insane, but I need you to trust your instincts.”

  Trust your instincts. Isn’t that what Micah had been telling her over and over?

  “Okay.” A tear finally fell, leaving a hot trail down her cheek.

  “Okay, good.” The man took a big breath and then dove right in. To insanity. “Micah is special. He has elemental powers, powers of the Earth. He was here to protect you, because you posses Earth powers, too.”

  “What?” Sure, Micah was different. She’d sensed that about him from the beginning. He believed the Earth spoke, that it could listen. He sang to it. He’d sung to her, too.

  “Just listen. Focus.” The authority in the man’s voice drew her back from her thoughts to what he was saying. “You have Earth powers, too.”

  She began to shake her head.

  “You do. You caused the landslide. It was an accident, but you did. And now I need you to use your powers to help us find him.”

  Oh, god. It was real? She’d hurt him, she’d killed him. She’d felt his gaze across acres of stone, and it had been understanding. Forgiving.

  But she’d killed him with her anger.

  Tears choked her as she tried to muffle a sob with her hand. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to hurt him like that—”

  “I know. Jade?” He waited until she looked up at him through blurry vision before continuing. “I know you didn’t mean to, you didn’t have control. You didn’t make the choice. But you’ve got to help me find him now. You’re his only chance.”

  She’d hurt him, and now she was his only chance at survival?

  “Time is running out, Jade. I can’t find him, because I’m Water. You have to do it. Please.”

  Guilt did what logic couldn’t. It allowed her to put aside the improbability of what he was saying and try. She could try for Micah, couldn’t she?

  Yes, she could.

  “Okay,” she said, swiping grit and tears off her face with the back of her hand. “Tell me what to do.”

  Walker pulled her up on her wobbly legs and squeezed her hands. “I need you to walk around, walk all over the rocks. Try to sense him. Think about the Earth, and think about him, and see if you can pinpoint where he is. You felt something around him, right?”

  Yeah, she had. That vibration inside her when he was close, when he touched her. When he made her feel the Earth.

  She nodded.

  “I want you to focus on that feeling, and tell us where you sense it.”

  It wouldn’t work. The things he was saying, they were insane. She’d lost her mind. How long had it been gone—

  Micah, her heart cried. She’d seen amazing things she’d ignored. His strength, his eyes glowing. Him holding back an entire mountain to get her to safety.

  “Okay,” she whispered. She was going to take everything Micah’s commander was saying at face value. Insane or not, she had to try. She would trust her instincts, which were all crying out for her to do something.

  Walker led her up onto the toe of the landslide, the first ridge where rubble covered the land, and let go of her hand.

  She stood there for a second and then turned an uncertain glance back to the men behind her. She stood a head taller than them, and they were all looking up at her.

  Trusting her, trusting that she could do this.

  She turned back, swallowing hard, and closed her eyes. With a fist to her stomach, she summoned that feeling Micah gave her, and visualized with all her might.

  Standing on the mountainside after she’d just hit her big strike, his smile and his warm brown eyes glowing. His hand stroking across her cheek, his lips meeting hers.

  It made her entire body hum, just like it had then.

  She opened her eyes and began to walk, slowly, hands open and loose at her sides, the way she’d seen Micah do it. When it got steeper, she climbed. Walker and the others followed her a bit behind.

  Finally, she stood on another ridge. Searching the fall of boulders, she tried to find identifying marks, anything to show her where her claim might have been, where Micah had been standing when the mountain came down.

  But he would have slid with the rocks, right? Probably. So he’d be lower than that. Jade turned around and walked back down. And then back up, second-guessing herself. Would the soil and rock have rolled over him, or carried him away?

  She covered as much ground as she could, breathing, focusing. Searching with her whole body instead of just her vision.

  Please, Micah, just give me something.

  If everything Walker was saying was true, if Micah was powerful enough to change the direction of a landslide, surely, surely, he could help her find him.

  If he was conscious. If he was alive.

  Every second that ticked by might be the moment he took his last breath. Hurry, she had to hurry.

  Eyes glazing over with constant tears, she walked and crawled over the rocks.

  She closed her eyes again, took that sensation inside her, and pictured it like a ball of golden light. She imagined it flowing out from her feet, her hands, seeping through the cracks and spaces between the boulders, spreading out to search. Waiting for a ping, a tickle, a glow. Any damned thing that might give her a clue.

  Opening her eyes, she realized she’d been going in circles.

  Gasping through her tears, she turned to Walker. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it, I can’t find him. I don’t feel anything.”

  She couldn’t find him, couldn’t save him. And the deepening lines in the faces of the others told her they were losing hope, too.

  But wait... she was going in circles. She made a few more, on purpose this time. There was one spot she kept stopping at.

  She met Walker’s darkening gaze again. “Maybe... here? I don’t know for sure, I could be wrong—”

  Thick, bright green shapes pushed up between the rocks, and she stumbled back. What the hell were they?

  Walker gently took her hand and pulled her away from where she’d been standing, as the green things stretched and swelled and lengthened.

  They were vines. Her brain finally registered the fact that vines were quickly coming up out of the barren, rocky ground.

  So, Micah wasn’t the only one of these men with powers.

  The man to the right of Walker, the one with orangey-red hair—Rowan?—was glowing. Brig
ht green light poured out from in between all the black on his arms. From his eyes, too.

  He stood the way she’d seen Micah do it, staring intently at the spot where she’d been. The place where vines grew and twined around one another. And just like rope, the twisted plants were stronger together than they were alone.

  They bowed over and grabbed boulders the size of cars, lifting them and sitting them gently off to the side.

  They were digging.

  MICAH’S FIRST VIEW was the sparkling ocean. Where was he?

  He glanced down at his hands, his clothes, the ground with its soft black soil. The thick forest of tropical trees below him, extending to the sea. Tiny tendrils of smoke rose in the distance. Cooking fires.

  He was home. His home island.

  “I feel like the chief when I’m up here.”

  Micah turned his head and his heart jumped in his chest with a very real thump.

  Sitting beside him was Tokoni.

  Tokoni turned to him, and Micah studied the young face that had gone blurry in his memories, now perfectly clear before him.

  The boy smiled. “My father often visits here when he needs to think, he says. He can see the whole village, the whole island at once. Says it gives him perspective.”

  His words held a hint of a memory. Was this real? Or was he imagining it?

  Not sure what to say, not sure he could speak, Micah gazed at the scene before him again.

  Everyone he’d known, nestled in a village by a cove, surrounded by trees. He looked back at Tokoni, who met his eyes with a somber gaze.

  “They’re all gone now.”

  With dread, Micah looked back. The sky was dark with unnatural gray clouds blocking out the sun. Dust, like fog, wound between crumbled buildings. Rocks and soil buried most of the village. Weeping could be heard in the distance. His heart spasmed again, and he put a fist to his chest, pressing hard at the pain there and closing his eyes.

  He should have been able to save them.