“Hang on,” Joseph said. He picked up the broken chair and smashed it against the wall. Gathering the splattered pieces, he handed them out to the elementals and the fae. “You can’t go up there empty-handed. Stab him in the heart with this and it’ll all be over.”
Finn flipped his bit of chair over in his palm and grinned. “Cool.”
Eloise held her chair leg and stared at the jagged point. She hoped she didn’t have to use it…but if it came down to it, she’d shove it into Darius’s cold, dead heart.
“Let’s go,” she said, shoving the door open.
“When did she get so bloodthirsty?” Finn asked behind her, but she wasn’t listening—her thoughts were firmly on Hardy.
Hang on, she thought as she strode towards the highway. We’re coming.
One of the first things Joseph had learned about Australia was how vast the distances were. The EarthBore camp didn’t seem so far from Solace on the map, but it took them thirty minutes at top speed to reach minimum safe distance.
He pulled the silver hire car off the highway—voiding his insurance—and into a secluded thicket of gum trees slightly south of the EarthBore dig site. Kyne was sitting in the front passenger seat and pressed his palm against the dash to brace himself as the car jerked to a halt. The tyres slid in the loose dirt, spitting gravel out behind them.
Finn and Eloise sat in the back, and both had been silent the whole way up here.
Explosions continued to rock the whole area, the length between the detonations shortening. The last one felt like it’d gotten down to fifteen minutes. The one prior, twenty.
Finn felt them all, though he kept it to himself. He was as strong guy, but it was clear he was on the edge of an agonising end.
He cast a fleeting glance at the fae, who was looking increasingly worse. To Darius, the bomb was a way to blast deeper into the iron ore deposit, but for Finn, it was a weapon of mass destruction, one capable of mass genocide.
They got out of the car and made their way up the rise, weaving through the scrub. A plume of rust-coloured dirt marred the impossible blue of the sky, but the sun still beat down on their shoulders, hot and relentless. As they reached the top, they crouched low, silent as they looked down on the scar Darius had opened up across the outback.
Joseph surveyed the dig site, his gaze flying across the tents, to the machinery, then to the pit. It sank into the ground like a meteor crater, the dust and debris kicked up by explosions coating everything in a layer of red. The yellow excavator had turned a muddy brown and the khaki tents sagged as the falling dust gathered in the dips and creases of the fabric. Joseph tasted the grit on his tongue and spat, though it wasn’t the dirt that had him worried.
“Hardy’s in the tent in the middle,” Joseph said.
“How can you tell?” Kyne asked, keeping his voice low.
The vampire narrowed his eyes. “I can smell blood. Lots of it.”
Eloise tensed beside him. “We have to get down there.”
“I’ll say,” Finn muttered, holding his side.
“We need to split up,” Joseph said. “I’ll grab Hardy and go after Darius.”
“You can’t do both those things,” Eloise told him. “I know vampires can heal, but if it’s as bad as the look on your face says it is, you’re going to need help.” Joseph looked at Kyne, but she scowled at him. “I’ll go with you.”
Kyne shook his head. “Eloise—”
“No,” she snapped. “You and Finn should go after the bomb. I owe this to Hardy. I told him I’d be there no matter what, and I won’t let him down…not now.”
Joseph felt a pang of jealousy as he felt the full force of the little elemental’s ferocity. It’d been a long time since someone had gone to bat for him like that. A few centuries pursuing the immortal megalomaniac that had murdered his family and spending a couple of decades of being mercilessly tortured had left little room for much else. If he was being honest, he didn’t know who Joseph Cheapside was without his revenge plot.
Another explosion shuddered through the ground and the magical shockwave hit them all at once. For Joseph, it felt like a wave of static electricity, but Finn doubled over and coughed, spitting droplets of blood over the ochre dirt.
Eloise put her hand on the fae’s back in an attempt to soothe him.
“We’ve got about ten minutes,” Finn said, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. “I reckon it might be the last one. My insides feel like slime.”
“Then we go,” Kyne said. “Finn, you’re with me.” He shot a warning glare at Joseph. “I’m trusting you with her.”
Eloise sighed and turned towards the EarthBore camp. “I can look after myself.”
“C’mon,” Finn said. “Our little desert pea will be fine. Me, on the other hand…I’d like it if I didn’t turn into pink mist in the next nine minutes.”
“Watch out for the humans,” Joseph said. “They’ll be compelled, so don’t bother trying to reason with any of them.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Finn rasped. “I’ve got some tricks of my own.”
Kyne nodded his agreement and turned to Eloise. “Be careful.”
“I will.” She smiled. “Love you…” Her gaze moved to Finn, “both of you.”
“Wow,” Finn said, backing away towards the pit. “Love you too, desert pea.”
Joseph led Eloise down the side of the hill, following the natural growth of the scrub. She stumbled a little in the scree and he steadied her before she landed on her backside. When they reached the last scrap of cover, he held up his hand.
He scanned the camp, looking for EarthBore workers and listening for movement. All he could hear was the rumbling over in the pit—the tents cast out an eerie silence that made him pause.
Darius wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean they were in the clear. He just hoped Kyne and Finn would get by undetected. Then, once they got Hardy out, he’d search out his maker and draw him away from the pit. Then he’d finally get his chance to kill him.
“Where are all the EarthBore workers?” Eloise whispered.
“The pit, probably.” He wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.
They skirted around the camp, keeping their heads low. The smell of blood rose with each step, along with the burn in his throat—his vampire side rearing its ugly head like an allergic reaction. They reached the main tent and the smell intensified.
“Stay behind me,” he told Eloise. “I’ll go in first.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. Sweeping back the tent flap, he saw Hardy and his stomach dropped.
The vampire was laid out on the ground, his arms over his head and his legs splayed, both wrists and ankles impaled with rusted bolts and hooks. The metal kept Hardy’s wounds from healing, allowing his blood to drain, taking his strength with it. The ground was soaked, the metallic reek of it thick in the air, and Joseph had to hold his breath for a moment.
Eloise gasped behind him, “Oh my God.”
Joseph put his hand on her shoulder. “Stay back. I’ll get him down.”
“But—”
“Eloise,” he interrupted, “he’s been drained of most of his blood. When he drops, he’ll start to heal, and that takes…” He coughed. “Well, he might not be able to control himself.”
Her eyes widened and she nodded. “O-okay.”
The metal had to be connected to another of Darius’s magical artefacts. There wast nowhere near enough reinforcement in the earth to hold anyone in place, especially not a vampire.
He knelt beside his friend. “Hold on there, old chap,” he murmured. “Let me just unhook you.”
He grasped the first bolt and snatched his hand back. His flesh sizzled and he hissed.
“What is it?” Eloise asked.
“Magic,” Joseph told her.
“Can you undo them?”
He nodded. “I can. It’ll just hurt like hell…”
Hardy moaned, his eyes cracking open. Joseph grimaced and grabbed th
e bolt again. He twisted, his flesh burning, and pulled it free. He moved to the second, the third, and the fourth as Eloise looked over his shoulder, the sound of her anxious heartbeat thrumming in his ears.
When the final bolt twisted free, Hardy’s eyes flew open and he gasped, his back arching as he clawed at Joseph’s arm.
“Hold on, old fella,” he said.
“The seal,” Hardy rasped. “It’s got into his head. It’s corrupted him.”
“I don’t doubt it, old fella,” Joseph said. “Just wait until you hear what that crazy old woman told your friend here.” He rubbed his thumb over one of the wounds. It was healing, but much too slowly for his liking.
It all seemed a little too easy…but Darius had been counting on it, hadn’t he?
Hardy’s gaze flew to Eloise. “What are you doing here? You can’t—”
“I can and I will,” she told him. “I promised you.”
“You don’t understand,” Hardy said, trying to sit. “He wanted you to—”
The tent flap opened with an abrupt whoosh, letting in a shard of sunlight…and Darius.
Eloise yelped as Joseph grabbed her arm and yanked her behind him. Hardy might feed, draining her of all her blood, but Darius would definitely kill her. She was much safer within Hardy’s reach.
“Joseph Cheapside,” Darius drawled, his eyes turning black, “it’s about time you made your move.”
Chapter 23
A rust-coloured haze billowed out of the pit, muddying the brilliant sapphire summer sky.
Kyne and Finn made their way around the edge of the EarthBore camp and headed towards the hole.
It was buzzing with activity. A worker was driving the excavator back towards the truck where another man was preparing the tray, clanging chains noisily. Another man stood on the Caldwell rig, messing with the hydraulics. Another appeared to be walking the perimeter of the pit, his bright yellow hardhat bobbing through the haze.
Darius was nowhere to be seen.
Finn pressed his closed fist against Kyne’s chest, holding him back as the yellow hardhat passed. Once the man’s back was to them, the fae stepped out into the open and made a beeline towards the pit, leaving Kyne no choice but to follow.
They’d made it halfway when Finn skidded to a stop. An EarthBore employee stood a dozen paces away, staring straight at them. The man’s white hardhat had turned a dull shade of rust, and his high-vis overalls weren’t so reflective anymore.
Kyne tensed, his muscles coiling as he readied himself to leap, but the man straightened his hardhat, turned, and walked in the opposite direction.
“What the…?” he muttered. “He was looking right at us. There’s no way he didn’t see us.”
“I’m an Unseelie fae,” Finn told him. “I like to charm beasts, but my real talents lie with illusion magic.”
“You could have told me. I almost pissed my pants.”
Finn sniggered and made his way to the edge of the pit.
“That’s how you hide your camp,” Kyne said, following him. He already suspected that was the case, but the fae had never explained it. It was best that he didn’t, all things considered. Secrets lost their power the more people who knew them.
“I can make people see what I want them to…within reason.” Finn looked over his shoulder. “But they can still hear us, so as much as I like having this deep and meaningful conversation, we best zip our lips.”
They stood at the edge of the pit and looked down into the dusty crater. The ramp Drew had told them about had been obliterated by the explosions, so they were forced to slide down the side. Their boots skidded in the scree—which changed colour as they descended through the top layers and into the iron ore—and kicked up a thick cloud of dust in their wake.
Kyne’s heartbeat sped up and he looked up towards the rim. No one had spotted them or called out their presence…yet.
“Here’s the culprit,” Finn said from below.
Kyne reached the bottom and coughed as dirty air filled his lungs, but when he saw the silver ball hovering a metre and a half off the ground, his expression fell. He’d never seen anything like it in his entire life.
It rotated slowly, an unmistakable static charge building up around it. He thought he could see some kind of symbols or writing etched on the outside, but he wasn’t certain. His power flared, his earth magic sensing silver, quartz, and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on—a foreign material from another world, most likely.
“What is it?” he asked.
“That’s an ash’strad,” Finn replied. “Nasty business is what it is. In my homeland, the fae have been through some pretty nasty civil wars. War is bad enough but when magic is involved, you get things like this.”
“Yeah, but what does it do?”
“It’s a bomb.”
“Of course, it’s a bomb.”
Finn made a face. “Then why’d you ask?”
Kyne resisted the urge to snap. Sometimes Finn’s dryness really got on his goat, but since they were standing before a primed magical explosive, he took a breath. “What does it do?”
“It’ll keep going off in increasing waves of intensity until,” Finn clapped his hands together, “boom. It will blow the ground apart like a meteor crashing into the Earth, and every fae within a five-kilometre radius will go splat.” Kyne’s eyes widened. “It’s the magic, you see. That’s why they’re called ash’strad.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Kyne said, his temper rising. They didn’t have time for this.
“It literally means death star,” the fae told him. “And yes, I’ve seen Star Wars.”
“What do we do now?” He moved around the spinning orb, the buildup of magic making his bones rattle. “Can we shut it down?”
“Nope.”
The miner’s expression faded as he realised what it meant, not only for Solace and the seal…but for Finn.
“There has to be a way,” he said. “It can’t end like this.”
“It has to end sometime,” Finn told him, and for the first time Kyne thought he saw what looked like fear in the fae’s silver eyes.
“No.” He grasped Finn’s arm and wrenched him away from the bomb. “Not today.”
The fae stumbled, then steadied himself. He’d gone quiet…too quiet.
“Finn.”
“I think…” His brow creased. “I think I can trap the explosion around the orb. It’ll contain the shockwave and make the device implode.” He clicked his fingers. “No, I know it will.” He lowered his hand. “Wait…”
“Which is it?” Kyne asked. “You think or you know?” They only had a few minutes to decide.
Finn bit his bottom lip and looked at the ash’strad. It rotated in a serenely menacing way, making Kyne’s hackles rise along with the hair on his arms.
“I can do it,” the fae said.
“Finn,” Kyne grasped his shoulder, “will you survive this?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Probably… It’s hard to say.”
“Then there has to be another way.”
“Yeah, nah,” the fae said. “There isn’t, but my magic is the only thing that’ll contain the blast. We are on a timer, you know.”
Kyne grimaced and grasped Finn’s shoulder. There wasn’t anything he could do to stop the device or dampen the blast. Even if he could cover in the pit with his elemental magic, it wouldn’t be enough. The shockwave was the real danger, and no amount of rock could stop it from tearing Finn and the other fae apart.
He shook Finn to get his attention. “I know you think you always get the rough end of the stick, but you’ve always been part of our family.”
Finn smiled and grasped the miner’s shoulder in return. “Ashlar an lor, shride lei an val’ash.”
Kyne didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded a lot like goodbye. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”
“Go,” the fae told him. “I like to think I’m amazing, but there is a margin of error. Our little desert pea will
kill me if you kick the bucket.”
“You’re very noncommittal, you know that?”
Finn chuckled. “I like a good surprise. Save one of Joseph’s party poppers for me?”
“You got it.”
Kyne scurried up the side of the pit, using his elemental power to steady the scree. When he reached the top, he cast one last look downwards but couldn’t see the bottom through the dust.
“Good luck, mate,” he said, then made a run for it.
As Kyne disappeared over the top of the crater, Finn closed his hands around the ash’strad. He focused his magic, allowing it to surface and cover the orb in thick layers, the rush of power familiar, yet alien to the touch.
It’d been a long time since he’d called on this much magic. When he’d first been exiled to this world, he’d made a promise to never call upon it again. It was too much trouble.
He’d stuck to simple things, like making friends with snakes and lizards. He’d hidden the camp out of necessity, but compared to the magic he was weaving now, that illusion was a drop in the ocean.
You give so much for them and this isn’t even your world, Siora’s words echoed in his mind. She’d be angry knowing he was here. He’d helped save Solace and been a victim of the chaos surrounding the seal, but where else would he go?
Finn thought of Eloise, Kyne, and the other Exiles—they were his family now, even Vera.
His home world was a distant memory. This place, this red heart dusted with opal, was his home.
And he’d protect it.
The orb stopped turning and cracked open like a sliced orange, letting out brilliant shards of icy blue light. His body began to quake, making his limbs turn into jelly, and he knew he was in trouble.
Big trouble.
Finn tightened his hands around the orb and called on every last scrap of his magic, pouring it around the device.
“You piece of za’adei filth,” he cursed. “Not today. Not today!”
The ash’strad clicked and his eyes widened as the buildup of power began to discharge.
Desert Flame Page 21