by RJ Blain
Perhaps Euthal had avoided hitting me with Hypnos’s power on purpose as I’d already made a mess of his plans. Assuming I survived, I’d have to do a lot of thinking about the warlock, his motivations, and his planning.
Brilliance? Impulsiveness? Thriving on the challenge of tossing together a plan?
If the warlock worked off the cuff, I’d be pissed enough to breathe fire. Then again, I’d probably just spew steam instead of fire. Some days, being a water elementalist sucked. Why couldn’t I solve some problems with a liberal application of fire?
I wouldn’t even hesitate to light Euthal on fire and roast marshmallows while he burned.
Being a strong water elementalist didn’t help me forge the kind of connection I needed to infiltrate Hypnos’s dark sea. No matter how I probed at the kraken with my magic, it didn’t respond to me.
That left me with my initial haphazard plan, which involved drenching the entirety of San Francisco until my water touched the warlock or the fish with godly aspirations. Once I identified them, I might be able to do something.
I couldn’t drown a fish, but I could beat the hell out of it with my water, smash it into buildings, and otherwise assault its corporeal form. If it went incorporeal, I’d be stuck, but until then, I’d do what I could.
Surfacing, I bobbed in the rolling waves, staring at San Francisco’s distant shores.
Every cloud had a silver lining, and Hypnos’s magic benefited me in an odd way; none of the ocean’s denizens would notice I made a mess of their home while attempting to flush Euthal out of San Francisco. The tricky part would be keeping my magic and the subsequent floods from drowning any of the comatose victims lying on the streets.
I’d have my work cut out for me.
I already regretted not accepting my boss’s offer to get the hell out of the city. Even if I survived another nuke, what I intended to do would stretch my magic to its absolute limit. For one brief moment, as my rain fell on the city, I’d feel everything from the smallest cracks in a building’s bricks to the people lying in the streets. The dead would chill me, while the living would wash over my skin in a warm wave. Much like the FBI’s scanner, my magic would adhere to the subject of my search, Euthal and Hypnos.
It’d be easy to find Euthal; I’d look for someone who reflected all the elements. A warlock would have all four elements within him, a living contradiction my magic could detect. Invisibility wouldn’t protect him from my water.
I’d find him, even if I found him through his missing presence as my water fell in a single, unbroken sheet over the city. My power would rise up from every cranny, slicking over the interior and exterior of every building before retreating back to its source.
I’d never done a search on such a large scale before, and I supposed I might destroy myself trying to find him. More regrets surfaced, but I ignored them the best I could.
I’d spent so much time working and not enough time living.
A pity, that.
Delaying would only make it harder, so I closed my eyes and spread my hands out over the water’s surface, focusing on its cool caress against my skin. Nothing stirred, and the wrongness of it grated against my nerves. I remembered the sensation from growing up and riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time. I, being a reckless little girl unwilling to listen to Dad, had crashed spectacularly, sliding along the gravel edging the driveway.
I’d cried over the scrapes, yelled at my father when he’d tried to pick me up, and I’d run back to my bike so he wouldn’t take it away from me, gotten back on, and tried again.
I couldn’t remember how many times I’d fallen or how many packs of bandages I’d used up covering all my scrapes. In the end, I’d overcome the challenge of my bike.
Some childhood lessons had been more painful than others.
I missed the days of learning to ride my bike. While falling hurt, things had been so much simpler then. Failure now led to one place: death and destruction. For San Francisco, my death too early would lead to the loss of too many lives.
Some choices weren’t choices at all, and failure wasn’t an option.
I siphoned water from the ocean, converting it to the clinging mist, which I urged to rise. The air chilled around me. As far as I could sense, which far surpassed what I could merely see, I evaporated the water and created thick clouds in the sky. Thunder rumbled, particles in the air charging as more and more molecules of water and air battled, my magic circumventing nature’s intent.
Electricity wasn’t the true domain of a water elementalist, but I could coax the finicky element into doing my bidding with a little work. Lightning, while unpredictable in nature, could be guided to strike in a spot of my choosing. Earth elementalists could neutralize lightning altogether, but in a pinch, I could channel it.
It would be dangerous at best.
I really needed a new job. Assuming I survived, I’d put some serious thought into staging a rebellion and hiding under Raymond’s bed as I couldn’t hide under a waterbed. Would anyone blame me for quitting? Maybe I could take a vacation. Did FBI quad supervisors get vacations?
I hadn’t taken a vacation since I’d been recruited.
Then again, death counted as a rather long and unwanted vacation. Sighing, I refocused my attention on funneling as much water into the clouds as I could, growing it until black blanketed the entirety of San Francisco and its neighboring cities. I wouldn’t take any chances. From southern San Jose to upper Richmond, I’d seek the bastard out and drag his albino ass out to sea. Then, to make certain the government knew where to drop their stupid nuke, I’d make the sort of fuss quads feared facing while on duty.
The sea would churn, the sky would rage, and I would control every wave to touch the shore. If allowed to run unchecked, a nuclear detonation would create a tidal surge capable of killing thousands.
The surge would hit an invisible barrier I erected at the shoreline, and not a drop of water would pass without my leave. It wouldn’t last; my workings never did. But for several hours, as long as the United States didn’t hesitate, my city would be as safe as I could make it.
With nothing left to do, I released a thin sheet of water from the swollen clouds and summoned it from the ground, the pipes within buildings, and anywhere else I could reach.
The sea engulfed San Francisco, and awareness of the city and all within it burst through me. None of the bodies, locked in slumber, had names; they weren’t Euthal, so I ignored their presence.
I couldn’t help them, not yet.
In the midst of the deluge, I found a single life that pinged against my magic. I perceived him as a stench so pervasive I could taste his foul magic on my tongue. Part of him sang to me, which I identified as his water magic reacting to mine. The rest of him recoiled from me, even his fledgling earthen abilities.
A shore could contain an ocean, but a stone couldn’t withstand the force of a flood.
With him, something unnatural stirred, and it brushed against my senses, considering me as I considered it. I amused it, but with its amusement came some other softer, gentler emotion I couldn’t readily identify.
I assumed it was Hypnos.
Dealing with Hypnos could wait. I concentrated my magic on Euthal, wound up, and gave him the equivalent of a magical slap across the face. Had we been living in the dark ages, I would’ve been using a gauntlet, we would’ve been getting on our horses, and doing our best to skewer each other with lances.
I could go for a good jousting session, and I didn’t care I had no idea how to ride a horse.
While I wanted to kill the bastard where he stood, without being able to truly visualize where he stood and what he did, I couldn’t risk it. I could kill hundreds trying to eliminate him—or bring down an entire building.
If I killed him in the city, the government might still opt to drop the nuke directly onto San Francisco instead of being lured out over the ocean along with Euthal. Without knowing how long I had, I couldn’t afford to retu
rn to the city to confirm the kill, contact the government, and hope I wasn’t too late.
From my distance, I wouldn’t be able to guarantee a kill even if I ambushed the bastard.
Tagging him with my magic, I gave the equivalent of a second slap, gathered some of my magic, and shaped it into the slender form of a Chinese dragon.
I guided it forward, keeping most of my attention on Euthal. For a long moment, I worried my lure wouldn’t work, but he drew closer, following after my dragon through the city streets.
To make it clear I knew where he’d been, I guided him through the park to Strawberry Hill before sending him to the shore and to my ocean. As I had no interest in facing him without any protections, while I waited for him to figure out how to cross the water, I bent the water to my will, encasing myself in the serpentine form of a dragon, drawing up silt from the ocean floor to create a shell within the water. I froze the water around the silt, and concentrated my magic until it formed a protective barrier around me.
My magic wouldn’t protect me from a nuke being dropped on my head, but I held some hope I could withstand a middling warlock for a while. I’d find out soon enough if I could take on a warlock and win.
It pissed me off that I still lost even if I won, but at least the entire city wouldn’t lose with me.
Hypnos arrived first, and since I’d seen it a short time ago, it had grown, almost a match for my dragon form. Through it, I got my first real look at Euthal.
The man had exchanged jeans and denim shirt for a white suit, and if I hadn’t known better, I might’ve believed him to be an angel. He walked through the air, his steps hesitant. I smirked at that.
When I’d first learned to walk on water, I’d barely been able to keep my balance. Taking the shape of a dragon, however separate from my physical body, tempted me to pull the sort of pranks Eddy enjoyed at her worst.
I snorted a stream of water at the warlock’s feet. Euthal plunged into the water to shoot skyward a moment later, spluttering curses. Gliding forward, I kept an eye on Hypnos, who moved out of my way.
While Euthal recovered and regained his feet, standing fifty feet over the surface of the ocean, I drew the clouds from over San Francisco and condensed it into a black, roiling ball over our heads, a beacon of darkness.
Rain fell, and I listened to it patter, aware of every drop absorbing into my draconic shell.
“What are you?” Euthal demanded, and his fury heated the air around him, and my rain boiled away when it struck him.
Instead of answering, I regarded Hypnos, considering how best to handle the fish. “Release those you’ve put to sleep.”
“Or what?” Euthal demanded.
“I wasn’t speaking to you.” I coiled my dragon’s body and waved a forearm with its lethal, curved claws to dismiss his presence.
His anger intensified, scorching the air around him.
“Hypnos.”
The fish jerked as though I’d struck him across the face.
“You will release them, and you will not prey upon the living without their consent again. You will release them from their dreams, and you will cease siphoning their energy. Furthermore, you will give this warlock none of your powers.”
Something about Hypnos’s stare made it clear the fish had zero intentions of listening to me without a fight. I met its gaze. “I recommend you go back to sleep without a fuss and wake all your victims, or you’ll find your stay here coming to a very abrupt and permanent end.”
Hypnos opened his mouth, and I swore the fish laughed at me.
“I’ll bury you,” I promised. Within the statuette would do, and I’d dump it in the deepest hole I could find so no one could find it ever again. The hole in Pechengsky, Russia might do the trick.
“How dare you! That is mine.”
I gathered moisture on the brink of freezing in the clouds above, condensed it into ice, and gave Euthal another taste of my power. If he wanted power, I’d show him power.
I skewed his other foot with another lance of ice, rained pellets of hail down on his head, and released my hold on the clouds above. Thunder crashed, and lightning boiled the sea beneath us as it struck around us in writhing bolts. The air crackled.
Euthal screamed, a mix of pain and anger.
“How would you like to be tenderized today, Dimitri Damascus Euthal? Or should I say John K. Smith?”
“How did you learn that name?” he growled. He grabbed my ice, which still protruded from his foot, and pulled.
I wrapped the ice around his foot, and I created a chain, which I dropped into the ocean and coiled around one of the kraken’s arms. I hoped the behemoth woke and took its anger out on the warlock. I’d help.
“That falls under the none of your business category.”
With a single lash of my dragon’s tail, I coaxed the dark clouds to release all its water, and it fell around us in a hammering deluge.
The warlock created a sparking, red shield over his head. I observed with interest as black and blue tendrils rose from the barrier.
If he wanted to waste his magic countering some rain and ice, I’d let him. The ocean’s inherent magic surged beneath me despite its denizens trapped in Hypnos’s grasp.
“Devour her,” Euthal ordered. “Make her power mine. All of it.”
If I couldn’t rain on Hypnos’s parade without invitation or Elizabeth’s magic, I’d let the fish do the work for me. I smiled.
Hypnos hesitated, and I thought the fish was wiser than the warlock, which made sense.
No one ever accused a warlock of sanity.
When Hypnos came for me, I went with it willingly so I might once again enter its dark sea.
Chapter Seventeen
In a world of dark water and magic, I took the form of my water dragon, leaving behind the chains of my fragile, human body. I supposed I’d found my limit, becoming one with my element.
There were worse ways to go.
I could’ve had a nuke dropped on my head first.
Then again, I could always escape Hypnos’s dark sea and have a nuke dropped on my head as the finale. On the slim chance I survived, I would go with my plan of hiding under Raymond’s bed and refusing to come out for at least a week. I thought a week of hiding under a bed while doing the equivalent of burying my head in the sand was justified.
Like the first time Hypnos had attacked my city, one—or several—of the victims had gotten the idea to shield themselves from the fish god’s power. Unlike the first time, they did a much better job of preventing Hypnos from feeding.
A few braver souls opted to battle the fish on their terms outside of the shield, and the kraken numbered among them.
It met my gaze with a dark eye. A ghostly image of an icy chain around one of its arms linked it to Euthal, who strained against my binding.
Stranger things had happened, but I wasn’t going to complain if my icy shackle packed more of a punch than I’d expected. For my general plan to have Euthal nuked from existence to work, he needed to stay put.
“You bitch!” Euthal howled.
Why did men insist on calling women bitches when we did something they disliked? “Surely you can come up with something more creative than that.”
He spewed more curses and struggled in my hold.
I glided through the dark waters, giving the kraken plenty of space while eyeing Hypnos. How did one beat a mythological being? Or, at least, something created to be the image of what an ancient civilization believed to be a god.
It opened its mouth, and a pale blue nimbus seeped out of its maw.
I encased the ghostly fish in a block of ice and glared at it. The glow intensified.
I returned my attention to Euthal. “So, warlock. Please tell me this is something more creative than a generalized power grab.”
“It is.”
“I don’t suppose you’re willing to spew out your plans for my convenience? It’d make this a great deal more pleasant for me.”
“Perhaps,
if I think it’s worth my while.”
Sometimes, secrets worked best when exposed, and I trusted in my boss’s warning about the type of bomb they intended to dump on us. “I’d rather not have a nuke, the kind neither of us will survive, dropped on my head. I’ve survived through one such bombing, and this is that bomb’s bigger, badder brother.”
That gave him pause. “They’re going to drop a nuke?”
“And it’s not the kind we walk away from.”
“Nobody drops nukes on anyone anymore.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“What were you expecting? Seriously? A warlock rampages through San Francisco and knocks out most of its population for unknown purposes using a giant death fish—and yes, because it has killed, it’s automatically assumed it’ll kill again. A nuke is the safe bet. You know, assuming they drop the kind that doesn’t have a survivability rate. Which is the kind the UN authorized.”
“And how do you know this?”
“A little songbird told me so.”
“Some songbird.”
“Considering my job is to keep you here long enough for them to drop the bomb, you would be right. Some songbird. Spending time with you and your pet giant death fish is not how I wanted to end my life, but here we are.”
“You shackled me to keep me from running.”
“It’s a pleasant surprise it’s working, really. I hadn’t been expecting that. I’ll take the fluke, though, especially if it means I get to take you out with me when we go.”
“You’re suicidal.”
“No. Well, I suppose in the situation, yes, that’s accurate. I have family and friends in San Francisco, and I have a choice on letting them drop the bomb on me or on them. Family and friends being influenced by your fucking fish. It’s a simple decision for me. I die, they live. You die, they live. Your stupid little fish fucking dies, they live.”
As neither of my parents had the kind of firepower required to take on a death fish, they were likely somewhere in the mass of captives hiding within the shield.