“No.” Tokoni put his hand on his shoulder, and he looked at him again. “You couldn’t save us. You couldn’t save me.”
“I know,” Micah ground out, his eyes burning as he stared at Tokoni. His first friend. “I should have been able to.”
The boy shook his head. “I know you feel like that, but you couldn’t. Look again.”
Micah turned to where the boy was pointing. It was the village, but it wasn’t. The buildings were modern and multi-storied, cars and bicycles drove down the narrow streets. Gleaming boats filled the cove. Gone were the huts, the cooking fires, the groves.
“Everyone dies, Maka,” Tokoni said, using Micah’s very first mortal name, a name he’d forgotten over the years. “You cannot save anyone from time. Death is part of life, and my mana has returned to the universe. Doesn’t matter when, or how, it happened.”
The boy then held his hands up, embracing the sky, and fell backward with a smile on his face. He landed in soft, loamy soil, eyes up, and said, “I am alive in the afterlife. I am the rocks and the soil and the lava.” He turned to meet Micah’s eyes. “I am not gone. I am not dead. I am alive in the Earth.”
Micah took a deep breath and nodded. It was clear what was happening now.
He’d died.
He’d had died in the landslide and joined Tokoni in the afterlife. His power had returned to the universe while his soul had gone here... wherever here was.
He looked over the water, guilt making him avoid Tokoni’s gaze. As glad as he was to see him, as happy as he was to see his home again... he would trade it all for a barren, cold mountain and the warm embrace of a certain woman.
Had he saved Jade? Did she live? She must, but if he didn’t, then he would never see her again.
That wasn’t supposed to hurt him here, right? Where was the peace? It hurt every bit as bad to miss Jade in death as it had to miss Tokoni in life. His eyes burned with the pain, the scene before him wavering with drops he wouldn’t let fall.
“I thought there was no pain in the afterlife? Only joy.” He could barely look at Tokoni as he asked, his throat tight and aching.
The boy sat up with a rustle of grass and then gave a sigh. The light weight of his hand landed on Micah’s shoulder.
“Maka. Friend.”
Micah closed his eyes, the drops finally releasing down his cheeks.
“Goodbye.”
Micah’s eyes flew open as Tokoni stood and took a few steps down the path.
“Wait.” He scrambled to his feet, but the boy was still walking away, toward a group of people.
“Wait, Tokoni!” He stepped after him, who seemed to have gotten farther away. Who seemed to be getting even farther away with each step.
The boy turned but didn’t stop walking. “The Earth is not ready to greet you yet, Maka.”
He took another step, yet didn’t move any closer. “What do you mean? Tokoni!”
Micah looked past him for answers, to the group of people, and was shocked to see faces he recognized. Names eluded him, but the man Tokoni was walking towards was his father, the woman to his right, his mother. Other faces stood out. Some from the village, some from later. One young man, with lighter skin and hair, stood a few rows back. He’d seen him last a few moments before the mountain fell. He lifted his hand in a wave, his soul once again present in his eyes.
Micah stopped moving, stopped breathing, if he even needed to in this place.
Tokoni looked back and waved too, a smile on his face that was at once innocent and knowing. Youthful, and ancient.
He joined the crowd, and they turned away, walking down the path.
Micah took more steps, but with each one, it seemed as if the soil pulled him backward instead of forward. Soon, he couldn’t take any more steps, didn’t have legs. Didn’t have a body. And the village and Tokoni disappeared into a point of light.
Micah couldn’t feel his arms or his legs. He couldn’t feel the blinding pain he’d had for a moment. All he could feel was... heavy. He was heavy, and the darkness above him was heavy, pressing him down. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t open his eyes. All he felt was the weight of the world on top of him. Buried, alone and in the dark.
But it was a familiar place for him to be, wasn’t it? Had been for decades.
He drifted to the bottom of his consciousness like a flat stone in a lake, a place where there were only feelings and not thoughts.
And then, a brightness. A strand of golden light through all the dark connecting him to... something. Out of the black, there came a face, a name. A feeling. Jade.
Trickling in through that thin shimmering line, power began to fill him again. The darkness didn’t feel quite as heavy, now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JADE WAS LOSING HOPE for what seemed like the fifth time today. The vines were digging, lifting out stone after stone, but there was still no sign of Micah. She’d been wrong.
And of course, she was wrong. There was no such thing as powers and she certainly didn’t have any, and trust her instincts? Why had she fallen for that? The only thing she could trust was logic, and logic told her she was having a freaking psychotic break due to stress from the landslide.
She was imagining all of this, she must be. Walker and the other men who’d come out of the vehicle, the discussion about powers. Imagining she’d felt something at the spot those surely imaginary vines were digging. Maybe, if she was lucky, she imagined the landslide, too, the collapse of her mine, Micah betraying her...
Wouldn’t that be nice?
But her arms and legs trembled, her teeth chattered with the departure of shock and adrenaline. Instead, she was tired. So unbelievably tired, that the effort to just stand there beside Walker, to not lay down on the rocks and let go, almost too much to bear.
He noticed. “Why don’t you sit down?”
He was helping her to a sitting position when the ground in front of them exploded. Walker yanked her back, and she stumbled, unbalanced, and he had to half drag her away from the rain of stones falling from the sky. What the hell was happening? Was it her, had she done this?
She looked up Walker, panicking, but he shook his head, calm. And even though the other man had backed away in a hurry too, he seemed calm as well.
Expectant, maybe. They had all stopped to stare at the place Rowan had been digging with his vines.
The vines were gone now, but a glow had started below the ground. Like the glow of lava, but paler, yellower, the radiance shining out between stones.
Then the glow and the boulders and the dirt coalesced, and a giant being of stone crawled out of the earth.
And looked right at her.
The giant stone form shambled toward her on its fists like a gorilla, gravel shooting out in all directions each time a heavy hand landed.
A jumbled collection of boulders of various sizes, with shining gold runes on its arms, that moved with the sound of falling rock.
Glowing, iris-less golden eyes held her gaze as it came forward.
She was split into two parts on the inside; one side screaming with fright, telling her to run away. The other side whispering, It’s Micah. He won’t hurt you.
She might not have ignored the part of her that told her to run if her feet could have moved, but she was rooted to the spot with fear and awe and soul-deep exhaustion. And hope.
He lumbered toward her, closer, head dropping low as he did. It scraped the ground as he bowed even lower, stopping near her feet. His head alone was almost as tall as she was, his shoulders and the rest of his body towering over her.
He stayed there like that while Jade tried to breathe. Hope flared to life, making her chest burn from more than her fast breaths.
Hesitantly, she reached out a hand.
Fingers shaking, she touched the tips against a flat stone that made up what would be the bridge of his nose, if he had one.
It felt just like regular stone; cold, hard, rough. But the vibration inside her as she touched it, told he
r it really was alive. It really was him.
She took a step forward and flattened her hand against him.
“Micah,” she whispered, eyes stinging. By all that was holy, this was Micah? What had happened to him?
Could he understand her? She prayed he could. He needed to know...
“Micah. I’m sorry I blamed you, I should have trusted you. I should’ve trusted my gut when it told me you wouldn’t do that kind of thing.” She took another step and pressed her forehead against his cold, grainy brow, closing her eyes. “I should have trusted my heart. I...” Her throat squeezed shut, but she pushed past it. She should have said this when he was a man. “Thank you for saving me. I love you.”
A rumble like a deep groan came from him, and she pulled back a bit. He closed his eyes and went still. The vibration through her bones subsided.
Her heart sank like a stone. “Micah?”
Silence.
She looked back to Walker, but his expression gave her no clues.
But then a part of Micah’s shoulder fell off with a hard thud she felt through her feet. Then, a section of his elbow.
She didn’t understand. What was happening?
His hand crumbled, the weight of him now leaned to one side on a disintegrating pillar of stone.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her away from the deteriorating form that used to be Micah.
Bit by bit, rocks fragmented into gravel and rained from him down on to the ground in front of her. More of him sloughed away, falling into piles around him.
Slowly, the primitive form of stone disintegrated into rubble, the life gone from it. All her hope from a few minutes ago turned to dust. She’d lost Micah, twice.
Frozen, eyes so wide they hurt, she watched him crumble, and hope crumbled with him. She clutched her chest, the pain there almost too much to bear. She couldn’t breathe. Was he... was he dead? Really dead, this time?
As the piles of stones settled, pebbles still rolling away, her searching eyes picked out an oddly rounded shape among all the sharp angles of rock.
When it moved slightly, she gasped. Then all at once, Micah burst up from the rubble, glyphs glimmering on his arms. He shook the dust and gravel from his shoulders and hair, and then met her eyes with his own, the golden glow hiding the brown.
His skin the same color of the stone he was surrounded by, he was undeniably, gloriously alive. And naked.
Sweet Jesus, he was alive.
Jade burst from whoever’s hands had been holding her and ran to him. She scrambled over the rocks, not even feeling them, intent on Micah’s face.
He was alive.
She ran until she hit the solid, warm wall of him. Eyes clenched close and cheek against his bare pec, she squeezed with all her might.
He felt warm and smooth, and real. Alive. And when his arms came up around her, she could finally catch a breath. It caught on its way in, stuttered on its way out, and then suddenly she was crying again.
Dammit.
She wanted to tell him again that she was sorry. That she loved him. Ask what the hell had happened, and what was going on, and was she dead or dreaming? But all that would come out was gasping sobs.
It was too much. All of it. The mine, the attack, the landslide. The aftermath, and these people and the things they’d told her, and that Micah had been something other than a man only moments ago. Thinking she’d lost him more than once. She couldn’t process it all, she could only cry.
JADE SAT IN THE CHAIR, staring blankly as Emory, the woman who’d introduced herself as a nurse, cleaned and wrapped her hands. If it weren’t for her and Micah’s presence, she would feel completely intimidated being surrounded by so many large men.
Large men, who had all powers.
Maybe they did intimidate her, a bit. But damned if she’d let it show.
“So you’re not from Earth?”
She studied all of them, landing on Micah. She wished he was the one telling her all these things, but he just stood propped up against the wall, arms crossed. Silent. Silent and distant, when she felt like her world was imploding and she needed him close.
Walker shook his head. “We’re from another dimension, if you will. An Elemental world. When we come here, we get a mortal form. Physically, we are not really different from you.”
He was wrong about that. Most human men weren’t built the way they were, weren’t as handsome or as striking or as strong. She’d never met a human man who had even half as much presence as each of these guys.
Jade heard a small sound from Emory and looked up to see her lips tilted in a half smile, eyes sparkling. She must’ve been thinking something similar, and Jade almost smiled herself. Except they expected her to believe the unbelievable.
Micah was an Elemental whose powers were Earth. She’d seen that with her own eyes, hadn’t she? He’d held back an entire landslide until she was able to get to safety. And there had been hints even before that. The way he found where the crystals were, the crevasse where they made love that hadn’t been there before. So many other little signs she could identify looking back, but how could she have known what she was really seeing, experiencing?
“And the others? The ones who came after me?” The people who somehow looked sinister, who’d instantly kicked up her fight-or flight-response. The ones who smelled like sulfur and charcoal and vinyl, with the static eyes who touched her and scooped her out and made her nightmarish, angry thoughts into reality.
Her eyes darted to Micah again, guilt making her stomach churn. She’d wanted to hurt him, and she had. She hadn’t meant to, but how could she have possibly known about all...this?
“Those who attacked you... they weren’t people. They are Chaolt, and their mission as far as we can tell, is to make Erratics like you self-destruct, using their powers to cause as much chaos and devastation as possible. Micah was stationed there to guard the portal to the Chaos world. When you showed up, I instructed him to drain your powers, to keep you from being a target for them.”
She looked to Micah for confirmation, and he nodded. “I needed to do it slowly because it has side effects and I didn’t want you to get hurt trying to mine.” He hadn’t moved, but he was at least was finally looking at her, speaking to her.
“How do you drain people?” she asked while staring at him, a terrible suspicion creeping into her heart.
“Through touch.”
Her heart spasmed and quaked with doubt. He’d needed her to trust him, so he could touch her. To drain her, to keep her safe. “So everything was for your mission?” The way he opened up for her, made her feel for him? All so he could complete his mission? “Were you draining me when we were making love?”
Jade was aware of the vacuum she left in the room with her words, every eye turning to look at Micah. And she didn’t care, she needed to know.
He looked down at the floor and closed his eyes.
He did. He manipulated her, lied to her, he tricked her—
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she took a deep breath around the pain that had been threatening to overwhelm her.
Emory’s hands were still on hers, the bandages on her left hand only half done, but she felt a squeeze on her good hand and met her eyes again.
Emory’s gaze was soft, gentle, understanding. Watering. And she had the biggest smile on her face. She looked utterly delighted.
Jade gave her a strong side-eye before she noticed there were more people smiling, the Warrior with long hair holding the baby. He nudged the black-haired guy next to him, both of them looking between her and Micah with grins on their faces.
Why? Why was everyone so damned happy?
She felt like she was dying. Or was already dead, stuck in some kind of weird purgatory where everything she thought she knew about the world, about Micah, was different. A world where everyone was crazy.
“Seriously, Micah?” Walker muttered. He sighed, eyes closed and his finge
rs on the bridge of his nose. “That would be why the Chaolt came after you. Because you weren’t fully drained.”
At least the commander seemed closer to her emotional level. Which was so very far from happy.
She had no gems to sell to care for her mother, and no more time this year to get any. Her mom would have to stay in that horrible place another year. And she had no idea how Micah really felt about her, how much of it was true and how much was duty. And she wasn’t going to explore that with him, with everyone standing around the room listening to them. But why couldn’t he just say something? Something to tell her it was real. She’d told him she loved him when he was nothing but a beast of stone.
And he had yet to say anything significant to her. He had yet to explain that his feelings were real, or they weren’t. Whether he really cared for her, or it was all the means to an end.
But the lack of explanation from him felt like explanation enough.
Jade looked down and her eyes and throat burned. Emory rubbed her back, but Jade didn’t want her sympathy. She wanted to go home.
Bandages done, she looked up at Walker. “Am I free to go?”
Surprise flashed across his features. “We have no intention of keeping you here if you don’t want to stay. But it would be safer for you if you aren’t drained all the way yet.”
“Safer or not, I have a family member to take care of. I can’t stay.”
True, her mom wouldn’t know how long she’d been gone anyway, how long or short it had been since her last visit. But she just couldn’t face anything to do with this or Micah right now.
She wasn’t sure she could face her mom, either, knowing she’d failed to get the money to move her to a nicer place, knowing she’d failed to take care of her.
But that was still preferable to this.
Jade hopped off the stool. To Walker, she said, “Thanks for filling me in on everything. And thanks for the bandages, Emory,” she said to her.
A knot in her throat, she turned to Micah. “Thank you for saving my life.” He didn’t say a word, just stood there looking at the ground over his folded arms. If he had something truly important to say, he’d say it. He’d made that clear early on, right?
Crush (Elemental Hearts, #3) Page 16