I punch his shoulder, lightly. “Don’t handle me, okay? That guy gives me the creeps.”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
“Hell, yes. Did you even listen to him? The guy’s crazier than a Disney child star.”
Something in me loosens a little bit. “I know, right? What kind of nutcase abandons his entire life to follow some imaginary queen to the other side of the world?”
“You could hear that?” He gives me a surprised look before his eyes flicker with understanding. “Ah. Yes. A queen.”
“Am I missing something?”
“What do you think?”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. “Point is that the guy’s a total trainwreck and it’s all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. You’re just as much of a victim as that poor idiot.” He smiles wryly. “Or as much of an idiot as that poor victim. It works either way.”
I try to return his smile, mainly because I appreciate the effort he’s making. “So what happens now?”
“Well, if you continue to stay out here, my mom will have to treat her second case of sunstroke today. And she’s never been that good of a nurse, in spite of what she might believe.”
“I’ll get out of the sun, okay?” I manage another faint smile. “Give me a break. I meant, what’s really going to happen now?”
“We need to leave ASAP.”
“Where will we go?”
“Excellent question.”
“Nobody has any ideas?”
“What do you think?”
“Just tell me.”
He shrugs. “Ingrid wants to renew contact with the Blue Clan. The Seakeepers have always helped Black in the past, even when it cost them. Gunn doesn’t trust the Blue Lord so he’s against it. My mom doesn’t trust the Blue Lady, so she’s against it too.”
“Where do they want to go?”
“According to Gunn, the Red Lady offered us shelter, but Ingrid won’t even consider it. My mom doesn’t like the idea either. The Red Lady may want to help, but she’s too weak to offer any real protection. And the Red Lord hates you, which means that we can’t really trust Red; we won’t know whose side any Bloodkeeper is on until it’s too late.”
“Anyone else?”
“White’s out of the question, obviously. The White Lord might not have walked out with the White Lady, but there’s no way we can trust him. Nobody understands why he broke with her anyway; the whole thing’s a mystery.”
“I never even considered White.”
“The Earthkeepers voted in favor of the Truce but, as Gunn pointed out, since the White Lady rebelled against the majority decision and swore to kill you herself, Green has very notably not offered Black any help or refuge.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“The Pendragons?”
“At this stage Ingrid is still refusing point-blank, so it might not happen.”
“Do I get any say in this?”
“Do you want a say?”
I look up to find his dark eyes a little less warm and chocolaty than usual. Almost challenging.
“Like anyone’s interested in my opinion.”
“Dude. All this. Everything. It’s all about you.”
“Then why do I feel so helpless all the time?”
“Because that’s just how it feels to be a person?”
I pull a face. “You know what I mean. I feel like I never get to decide anything. Everything just keeps happening to me.”
Daniel briefly looks heavenward, then rubs his forefinger and this thumb together. “This is me playing the world’s smallest violin for your pain.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“You do realize that technically you could just make us all do what you want?”
Part of my brain registers that there’s an unusual note of impatience in his voice, but at this point I’m too hot to care. I take the hat from my head, wave it before my face like a fan.
“You’re talking about what I did after the trial? And that night when I sent Jack Pendragon into the fire?”
“Uhm. Yeah.”
I sigh. “I can’t just turn it on and off, you know.”
“Of course you can. You’re a firemaster now.”
I frown, fan myself a bit harder. “Why would you even say something like that?”
“Because it’s true?”
“No it’s not!” I slap the hat against his head, annoyed.
“Hey, what was that for? Did I miss something?”
“Uhm. Yeah. The part where I’m completely clueless and not a firemaster at all.”
“I certainly didn’t miss the part where you’re completely clueless.” His voice is as dry as I’ve ever heard it. “Because that would basically be your whole life.”
I punch his shoulder. “Don’t be a dick.”
He doesn’t punch me back. “What did you think a firemaster was? You’ve mastered controlling heat and flame, which are the basic skills. As well as,” he counts it out on his fingers, “the binding, the blinding, and the seeing. That’s three out of three, which means you’ve mastered the deep skills of firemagic too.”
“But I did those last three by accident.” I give up fanning, put the hat back on my head.
“Dude.” He shakes his head. “How did you think this worked? Did you think there would be an exam? Some kind of ritual? A ceremony with a medal?”
“Maybe?”
“Well, it doesn’t work that way. Nobody cares whether you find it difficult or do it by accident. The only thing that matters is if you’re powerful enough to master all the skills mentioned in the Codex, and you are. So.” He holds an imaginary trophy out towards me. “Ta-dah! You’re a firemaster. Congratulations.”
I don’t take the imaginary trophy from him. “This isn’t what I expected.”
“Now there’s a surprise.”
I turn my head, lifting the hat a little to give him a searching look. “Is it just me, or am I detecting a tad more animosity from you than usual?”
“Jess. I love you. But you’re a fucking idiot.”
“Yeah. Not exactly news to me.”
I expected him to return my smile, but he doesn’t. Instead he jumps up and walks a few steps away before coming back to loom over me, scowling. “And see, that’s the real problem right there. How can you be so smug about your own ignorance? When are you going to realize that all this is real, and it’s happening right now?”
“Hey. What’s going on?” I reach out a hand to him.
He swats my hand away. “Stop asking me that.”
“What? What did I do?” I get up so that I can face him, confused by his behavior. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry.”
“You never understand. Anything. Because you don’t try to understand. It’s like you don’t want to know. Like you’re enjoying your ignorance.”
“Wow.” I take a step back. “Way harsh, dude.”
“No. It’s not.” He starts pacing, waving his hands, as if he’s bottled something up for so long that now it’s bursting out of him and he can’t stay still any longer. “Last year both our lives changed. We found out that we’ve been born into this secret world with its own strange rules, and secrets, and history, and enemies, and God knows what else. And a lot of bad stuff happened, and we both had to become different people, and we both lost things that were important to us. But while I spent the last six months trying to learn everything I could about this new world, you’ve learned almost nothing. It’s like you want to remain ignorant of our new reality, and I just don’t understand it.”
I raise my hands. “Look, I know it was stupid to let Jack Pendragon Enthrall me –”
“I’m not even talking about that! But now you mention it—fantastic example of how dangerous your attitude can be. Why did you go to the Pendragon house that night without knowing anything about who or what they are? How could you have wasted all those months af
ter the trial without bothering to learn a single fucking thing about your magic?”
“I didn’t learn nothing.”
“Yes. You did.” He glares at me accusingly. “You even went back to school like some… ordinary girl! As if the whole damn world wasn’t about to come crumbling down around your ears.”
“Actually, I missed over four months of school.”
“There’s so much you don’t understand! So much you…” It takes a couple of seconds before my quiet words penetrate the fog of his anger. “Wait. You what?”
“I only went back to school at the end of March.”
He stops pacing, suddenly looking a bit wary. “Why?”
“I broke my leg really badly in February, so I spent a couple of weeks in hospital after that. And before I hurt my leg, I was too weak and too sick to go to school.”
He frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. “Why? What happened?”
I’m not ready to talk about it yet, but if anyone deserves my honesty, it’s Daniel.
There’s no putting it off anymore.
There’s never going to be a right moment anyway.
“Ingrid decided to drill me into my power. We started not long after you left and only stopped after I had to go to hospital to save my leg. One of the doctors got seriously concerned about the state I was in and alerted the police. We had to ask Jack Pendragon to make it go away.”
I watch as all the blood leaves Daniel’s face. He obviously knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“Which drills did you do?”
“The primary cycle of the First Protocols. Earth and Water first. Then Blood, then Sky.”
He goes completely still. “Ingrid did this?”
“No. But she was always there. Looking at me.” I pause, trying to swallow the sudden, overwhelming sense of shame. “There were two of them. I don’t even know if they were men or women because they wore these creepy orange masks and heavy robes.” I pull my face into a grimace. “Apparently they were professionals and very careful to strictly adhere to the prescribed protocols.”
“The Masked Ones.” His mouth falls open. “Jesus.”
“I thought maybe your mom told you.”
“I don’t think she has any idea this happened.” He walks closer to me, slowly looking me up and down. “You don’t have a single mark on you.”
“It all disappeared after that night at the Pendragons.” I stretch out my arms, look down at my perfectly healthy body. “It was insane. Like the shine just washed away all those months of suffering.”
“Does Gunn know?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Of course. That’s why he’s been so angry at Ingrid.”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s why your feelings for him are so confused. It’s not really about his shine-sickness at all.” He raises the bottom of his t-shirt a little and bends over to wipes the sweat from his face.
“No, I don’t blame him for the shine-sickness. But… It’s kind of pathetic, you know? When the drills started… I used to pray every night for him to save me. Not to God, you understand, to him. To Gunn. I tried to send my thoughts out into the universe, calling and calling to him. But he never came. He didn’t save me. Nobody saved me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I don’t know.”
He starts patting his shorts, presumably looking for his cigarettes.
“I guess once I arrived here, feeling so healthy, in the sunshine, with you and your family being so nice, I just… I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I wanted to pretend it never happened. That everything was still the same.”
By now it’s patently clear to me that he must’ve left his cigarettes at home, but Daniel is still going through his pockets, obsessively looking for something that’s not there.
“Shit dude.” He gives up his search, puts a clumsy arm around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
I bite back the tears burning at the back of my throat. “I know I missed a lot of chances to learn about my magic. But after we started the drills, I wasn’t allowed to speak to Ingrid anymore, and afterward… I couldn’t bring myself to ask her anything. I was afraid of her. Maybe I even hated her.”
“Well, I certainly hate her now.”
“She’s fighting her own demons. I don’t think there’s any evil in her, only guilt and grief and misery.”
“She’s gonna be a lot more miserable before this day is over.”
I manage a wan little smile. “Thanks, but please don’t start anything. What’s done is done, and the last thing we need is more drama.”
His arm around my shoulders is starting to sweat, so I don’t mind too much when he lets go and steps away. “I don’t know how you can be so zen about this.”
“Believe me, I’m not. But you were right, earlier. A lot of it was my own fault. If I’d known what I was letting myself in for, I would’ve refused to do it, and I honestly don’t think she’d have forced me. But I didn’t know anything and once we started... There was no turning back.”
“I’m going to kill that crazy old bat.”
“Dude.”
“No. I’m serious. And you’re wrong: none of this is your fault. I could ask my mom everything I needed to know. Who could you ask? Your torturer?”
I look down at my sneakers. They’ve turned a rusty color of red-brown; I don’t think I’ll ever get them clean again.
“It wasn’t just that. I think… I think maybe I was also really scared to know the truth. The drills just felt like such a punishment, you know? Why would they have done those things to girls like me for, like, thousands of years, if we weren’t evil? As in, really evil. Monsters.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It sucked.”
He touches my shoulder, gently turning me around.
“We should get out of the heat.”
“I know.”
As we walk back to the house, I feel a little lighter, as if a burden I didn’t know I was carrying has been lifted from me.
“Am I really a firemaster?”
“Afraid so.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I have no idea.” He gives my shoulder a reassuring little punch. “But I suspect we’ll find out soon enough.”
Chapter 18
The Christian God is often associated with fire (a burning bush in the Old Testament; the Holy Ghost’s tongues of fire in the New Testament) while in Hindu mythology, Agni, the god of fire, represents the essential energy of life in the universe. In the Kabbalah, the element of fire is linked to the highest of the four worlds, where fire flows from the white light of the infinite, and Zoroastrianism sees fire as representing the Supreme God’s wisdom: a light that pushes back against the dark of ignorance and chaos.
Despite this close connection with the divine, however, fire is rarely seen as a purely positive phenomenon. The Christian religion, for example, also views fire as a sign of the wrath of God, who punishes sinners in lakes of hellfire, and in the famous Fire Sermon the Buddha uses fire as a purely negative symbol to describe all suffering.
From Myth, History, and the Order of Keepers, by Sofia Rodriguez (2000)
The others start arriving before the sun even sets.
Not all of them are wounded or on foot. Some arrive in military-style trucks, one or two on motorbikes, a group in dusty SUVs, a couple in what looks like a souped-up little Beetle and one woman in a helicopter. Some of them are well rested and fed; some are tired and starving; some are calm and lucid; some are raving. By nightfall we have a grand total of nineteen uninvited guests at the house.
All desperate to serve the young queen.
I hide in my room with the door locked, the blinds closed, and the curtains drawn, desperately wishing that I’d spent the last month learning to disappear instead of starting fires.
For the first few hours things remain reasonably peaceful. But then a few of the more d
esperate ones start hurling themselves against my door, and one guy cuts himself to shreds when he breaks my window with his bare hands. In the end Ingrid has to stand outside my bedroom door while Gunn guards my window. Their strange Black Clan magic seems to repel the fanatics easily enough, but it soon becomes blindingly obvious that this situation can’t go on indefinitely. It’s been a long day and we’re all really tired.
I’m going to have to do something; I just don’t know what.
When Sofia knocks on my door, an hour or so before midnight, I’m willing to try just about anything. Which is just as well, because her plan almost makes me choke on the sandwich she brought me.
“You want me to do what?”
“I want you to be the queen they came here to worship.”
“No. Not happening. That bunch of freaks are crazy enough already without me pretending to be some imaginary queen.”
“I didn’t say anything about pretending.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to be their queen. I want you to walk out there, shining as brightly as you can, and I want you to use your firemagic to bind them. Order them to forget all about you and send them back to their lives and their families. Use your power to do something good.”
I sit down on my bed, my knees turned to jelly. “Do you think that’s possible?”
When she sits down next to me, her gaze is calm and so steely that I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry.
“There’s a couple of Seakeepers out there. Canadians. After the trial they never went back to their home, where they’d left their eight-month-old baby in the care of her aunt. That baby is a little girl named Susan, who can now walk and dance and who likes music and has six teeth. Or at least, she had six teeth a month ago; she might have more now. The baby can’t remember her mother or father, and her aunt can’t look after her anymore because she lost her job and her boyfriend and she’s sliding into depression. There’s no other family. If her parents don’t return soon, baby Susan is going straight into care.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I went through the mother’s phone to make sure she really is who she claims to be.”
Suddenly, my sandwich tastes like cardboard.
“I guess you told me this story for a reason.”
Fireborn (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 2) Page 18