by Mia Marshall
I rocked back and forth, unable to do anything more than whimper.
Mac wrapped his left arm around my waist. He hauled me against his left side, my legs dangling. It was a rough hold that would leave bruises, but it kept his right half free to battle—though there was nothing for him to hit.
The first released me.
I allowed myself a second to go limp.
“Aidan!” Though his face was mostly human, hard claws dug into my skin.
“Still here.” My power had been returned, though I didn’t understand why.
“It’s here, too,” Mac confirmed. “I can smell the ozone.” He spun in a slow circle, following the thing as it moved. “You ready to run?”
Desert sand spun around us, an impromptu tornado summoned from the ground.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips together in a tight seal, then pinched my nostrils closed with the hand that wasn’t trapped against Mac. The sand still found me. It climbed into my ears until I heard only a dull echo of the outside world. It slid under my fingernails, pushing with unnatural force against my skin.
I clutched Mac, desperate to keep our connection as my senses were stolen and my nerve endings howled in pain.
I’d never battled a desert. Hell, before this summer I hadn’t even visited one.
Sometimes, you have to learn on the job.
I grasped my water magic and sent it from me in a rush, hoping to find anything to wash away the sand. There was only the gallon of water I’d brought with me. I gathered it in a large ball and waited. I couldn’t smell the creature like Mac could, but the thing emitted an emotional signature I could follow. Greed and determination and, underlying it all, a desperation so acute it brushed against fear. When all that need settled in a single spot, I flung the water at it.
The hot sand fell to the ground, abandoned by the first.
The second we were clear, Mac slung me across his shoulder and began running.
The landscape reformed, the flat surface rising and falling in an ever-changing obstacle course. Mac leapt across three new mounds of earth. The fourth rose as he flew over it, knocking his legs from under him.
He rolled as we landed, but my right side landed wrong. I heard the sickening snap of my arm breaking.
The thing was right above me. I felt its pleasure. Its satisfaction.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know if such a being could be defeated. I only knew I wasn’t going to die without using every weapon I possessed.
When I reached for the magic, I didn’t use one to boost the other as I had in the past. I was too exhausted for such finesse. I could only slam them together and hope they found a way to strengthen the other.
They collided in a crash that resonated throughout my body.
I slid across the ground, the impact knocking me backwards. The blast rocketed toward the first above me.
I laughed, loud and wild.
As the explosion spread across the hilltop, the first magic appeared.
As Luke said, it took the form of a woman, perhaps a leftover from the days when the firsts mated with human men, but it looked like no elemental I’d ever seen.
It looked like every elemental I’d ever seen.
Its eyes were a golden brown until it blinked, when they became the arctic blue of an ice, then the near black of a true fire. Its skin changed colors as it moved and the light hit the bones in new ways, turning it from bronze to gold to a pale white in the space of a heartbeat. The wild hair was black and brown and the lightest blond, all threaded together. It was like staring at a hologram, where multiple images existed simultaneously, and what you saw depended entirely on where you stood.
She was horrible, and she was also magnificent, and it was beyond me to look away.
“Mine.” This time the word was audible, her lips curving awkwardly around the single syllable.
The magic blast I created was already settling, and with it the flesh and blood creature began to fade.
Mac didn’t give her a chance to vanish. From his hands and knees, he launched himself at her. Though he wore skin, there was nothing human about the movement. A foot from the first, his hand sprouted rich black hair and the claws sharpened. He pulled back his right arm and swung.
The claws scraped across her chest, splitting the flesh wide open. Within the wounds I saw flashes of light, a tiny glimpse of the pure magic from which she was formed. More unexpected was the very mortal blood dripping from the cuts.
She paused, transfixed by the red stream sliding down her stomach.
“Time to go,” Mac said. He pulled me up by my good arm. I stumbled for several steps, but he didn’t slow down, and he didn’t let go.
The ledge approached. Two hundred feet, then one hundred. With only fifty feet to go, we dug deeper, finding reserves of speed to push us forward.
We needed only three more steps to launch ourselves over the ridge and begin the downhill sprint when we slammed to a stop.
A slab of ice stood between us and escape. I’d witnessed a similar trick before, but that had been in rainy Oregon. Not even a full ice could find enough moisture in the middle of a desert to build such a barrier.
It didn’t matter how she’d done it. I wrapped flames around it.
I blinked, and it melted. I wasn’t strong enough to do that on my own.
The wall vanished, revealing Sera.
I’d seen her angry, and I’d seen her use her power, but I’d never seen this avenging goddess. Fire didn’t spark from her fingers, and she didn’t hold fireballs in her palms.
Sera was made of fire as she stepped toward us, every inch of her skin alight.
The first magic appeared between us, still visible. Sera pushed all her flames toward it. The thing absorbed the warmth, and for a moment her eyes and hair stopped shifting with each movement and became the black of a fire elemental. That was its only reaction.
Sera had thrown all her power at the creature, and it reacted with less interest than most people showed at a mosquito bite.
The first magic studied the newcomer, her expression more curious than threatened. Her mouth moved. Seconds later, the words reached us. “I do not need you.”
A flick of her hand, and Sera flew beyond the ridge. I screamed, and in my fear and rage I found my strength.
This time, when my magics collided, I knew what to expect. I tried to ignore the maniacal glee that poured through me, how parts of myself shifted like tectonic plates. The explosion hit the creature square in the chest. More cracks appeared in her skin, more flashes of light.
She touched her wounds, the movement uncertain. We didn’t wait to see what happened when the effect wore off. Mac and I stumbled over the edge and let gravity propel us forward. Sera was already rising to meet us, her face bloody.
“Go, go!” I shouted.
She glanced past me. Whatever she saw convinced her. She raced ahead of us.
Sera leapt onto the bus, skipping two steps. Mac and I followed. Miriam was already at the wheel, the engine running. Before the door closed, the bus pulled into the road.
We didn’t make it ten feet before Miriam swerved to avoid the crackling wall of flames. She evaded that, only to spin the wheel away from the sheet of ice improbably rising from the scorching ground. Next, she slammed on the brakes before we crashed into a pile of red rocks.
The first was turning us in a circle, forcing us back to her.
I raced down the aisle, peering through the front window. The thing stood atop the hill, arms wide in a cruel parody of a welcoming gesture.
“I’ll help.” Luke’s voice shook. His bike was parked on the side of the road, but he’d been waiting on the bus with the others. “I can neutralize the desert, at least.”
I didn’t trust him, but I could accuse him of half-truths and treachery later—say, when we weren’t escaping a creature that made me feel downright sane by comparison.
When the desert sands started to spin again, Luke pulled th
em to the ground, clearing our vision. With hundreds of feet between us, I felt the thing’s anger rise.
My magic felt wrong. It struggled to rebuild itself as it was before I created the explosions, but it was too sluggish to make any progress.
I knew how to recharge it. “Miriam, get us on the road. Sera, get a needle ready. Don’t even fucking argue.” I gave into the pure calm I found in both my magics.
The first had desert, fire, and ice, but I’d found no evidence she controlled water.
The bottles in the bus exploded, the liquid rushing toward me and through an open window. I added my fire side to the mix, using it to boost my power. The two threads intertwined and flew toward the creature. The water spun in a circle around her.
I felt her grasping, trying to claim my water half once more, but the magic moved too fast. Fueled by the fire, it spun around her. I increased my attack until the water was nothing but a blur.
Already, she was turning it to ice and melting it. I wrenched my power to me before she could grab hold again.
Miriam made the old bus fly.
Soon a thousand feet separated us from the hill, then fifteen hundred. No further barriers stood in our way.
An enraged scream echoed through my head. We all cringed and covered our ears, though the voice was inescapable.
With another thousand feet, the sound faded.
“Will she follow?” Vivian whispered, but her voice rang through the quiet and nervous bus.
Luke dropped into a seat, his face ashen. He looked like a man who’d woken from a nightmare and was trying to convince himself it wasn’t real. “She can’t. The firsts are trapped on the land where they were born. It’s the only reason I could escape before. She wouldn’t have let me go. If I’d gone up with you…” He didn’t finish, but the utter terror in his voice filled in the blanks.
Mac walked to Luke and picked him up by his throat until his head was pressed against the roof. Luke didn’t struggle. “Give me one reason we don’t throw you off the bus right now.”
Luke twisted his head toward me, and the others followed.
I held a ball of water in one hand, a ball of flames in the other, and with calm detachment debated the best method to kill this man.
“Because I’m the guy who knows how her power works.”
The needle slid into my neck, and I didn’t fight it. I’d be awake soon enough, and the magic would be waiting.
CHAPTER 10
When I woke, the pounding inside my skull made a good argument for a head transplant.
They’d created a makeshift cot for me at the back of the bus, several blankets in the aisle softening the hard floor beneath me. Mac watched me from above.
After blinking and groaning for fifteen minutes, I managed to push myself onto my elbows. “How long?”
“A day.” He hadn’t changed his clothes since I lost consciousness.
“You there?” I tried to ask if he’d watched over me, but two-word sentences seemed about my limit.
He tilted his head, working to interpret my question. “Yes, I’m here.”
I grunted and bent my right leg, then my left. At this rate, I might be standing by Christmas.
I attempted to clarify my point. “No babysitter.”
“Then stop acting crazy.” Sera’s head popped up from the seat in front of us.
I swallowed, but my mouth was dry, the movement rough. Sera threw a canteen down to me. I gulped the water, though it was lukewarm and tasted slightly metallic, and I began to feel less wretched. More like death warmed over than death itself. At least my broken arm had healed while I slept.
I pushed myself up fully, then took a moment to catch my breath. “How much did you use?”
Sera studied me, watching for any change. “Only a few drops. We’ve got to make it last as long as we can.”
“Did you kill Luke while I was out?”
“No.” Mac’s statement might have been more promising if he hadn’t added “Not yet” under his breath.
“You interrogate him?”
“Nope,” said Sera. “We thought you should be there for that. Miriam’s been guarding him, though that may be an excuse to drool over his muscles.”
I pulled myself to standing. The world wobbled a bit, then settled. After a while, my stomach did the same. Steadying myself with both hands on the seat backs, I shuffled toward the front of the bus and stepped outside. The sun was setting, streaks of red and orange fighting a losing battle against the encroaching darkness.
“Where are we?”
Vivian was perched on a rock, fingers on her laptop keyboard. “Smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Don’t worry. I’m not connected to anything.” The anger in her voice wasn’t directed at anyone else. The rest of us had already forgiven Vivian for her overconfidence. She hadn’t caught up with us yet.
Simon sat next to her. “We do not seem to have a destination right now.”
That was an understatement. We’d found the dual, and we’d found the promised cure, and we’d barely escaped with our lives. It was safe to say our current plan had some flaws.
“Where is he?” Sera said.
Vivian pointed to a small group of trees, where Miriam and Luke competed to see who could lasso the highest branch.
“Wasn’t she supposed to tie him up?” Mac asked.
“Let’s get this over with.” I forced my body to take long, confident strides toward the pair. “So, Luke. It turns out that thing was a homicidal nutcase who attacked first and asked questions never. Something you forgot to mention?”
He dropped the rope and turned to face me, looking both resigned and defensive.
“I gave you what I knew. I… it’s a long story.”
It was a weak response, and the unimpressed faces surrounding him seemed to agree.
“And yet,” I said, “I’m pretty sure we can squeeze story time in between our busy schedule of running for our lives and driving aimlessly around the desert.”
He nodded, just once. “I’ll tell you, under one condition.”
I waited. I wasn’t particularly inclined to agree to his terms.
“No matter what you think of me right now, you keep me with you.” He met my eyes, and his own were determined. “I’ve picked up a bit of wisdom over the years, and you need it.”
Despite everything, I wasn’t ready to walk away from the only dual who understood how to control his power. “Okay.”
“No.” Both of us turned to Mac. His ears were rounding, teeth elongating. “You’re a lying bastard who damn near killed us all. You gave us no warning what to expect up there.”
“I didn’t know!” He looked at all of us in turn, hoping to find a sympathetic face. “I was about to tell you what the cure would entail, but the damn cat was too impatient.”
Simon bristled, but he couldn’t argue.
“I swear, when I left, she was unstable, but unstable like unpredictable, moody. Not mass grave unstable.”
“Left?” Sera stepped closer. “I thought you said you escaped.”
“I did! She doesn’t let people go. And I said that could happen to you, too. I warned you she would play with your magic and try to keep you.”
I took a step closer, fighting for calm. “I could have survived being a prisoner. I could have even dealt with a creature who viewed my power as her personal entertainment system. That’s not what happened. She tried to steal our magic. She ripped it from our bodies.”
Luke swallowed. “I didn’t know,” he said again. “She only fed a little, one or two sips. Easy to replenish. Nothing like what you’re describing.”
I wanted to believe him, but there were still too many holes in the story.
Sera picked up a desert rock. She threw it in the air, and each time she caught it her grip was a little tighter. “Was she sipping from the ice, too? Cause I’m not understanding how an ice could replenish itself in the middle of a desert.” Her voice was dangerously calm.
“There was one el
emental she didn’t feed from, another desert. The creature fed her instead, giving her sips of magic. I guess it was like a drug, cause she worshipped the first. She went on our supply runs, because we knew she’d always return. She brought food, clothes, and bags of ice, enough to refuel the ice's magic. That’s why some elementals sought the first out. They’d heard stories from that desert of a mystical, generous creature.”
Simon gave Luke the kind of disdainful look only a cat could manage. “I am trying to care about any of this. I am not succeeding. Tell us about the cure so we can decide whether you are of any use. You will not be interrupted you this time.”
Luke met my eyes. “Learning about the cure isn’t enough. Not without a first.”
We waited, keeping Simon’s promise not to interrupt.
“The thing is, you’ve been wrong, Aidan. Separating the threads isn’t the cure. You need to join them, and join them permanently. Only a first can do that. So if you’re gonna try this again, maybe you all oughta care what I went through.”
Luke glared at the cat shifter. Simon gave him a slow, lazy blink.
“You wanna know what happened to me? Firsts control magic. You discovered that for yourselves. Well, she’d never met a dual before I stumbled into her lair. She played with both my fire and desert every day. She pulled the threads apart and stitched them back together. Whenever she ripped them apart, I thought I was dying. When she joined them, I was reborn, though that was its own torment. I was mad or sane depending on her whims. She enjoyed putting it together the most. She watched me, and though it’s hard to call anything they do human, she felt smug. Really damn pleased with herself, like she had a secret. And when I got used to being whole, she’d rip it apart. Some days she let me wallow in memories. Sometimes she stripped my humanity and demanded I fight another of her pets. Once, I killed another fire, and she rewarded me by fusing the magic together right away so I could stand over the corpse of the man I’d suffocated with desert sand.”
Each word was coated in bitterness. It was impossible to say how much of his hatred was for the first and how much was for himself.
Luke shook his head, forcing himself back to the present. “Anyway. That day, she’d just finished putting the threads together. I felt her glee, as usual, but I also felt her hunger. Fewer visitors were coming those days, and she’d been taking a bit more from each of us when she fed. That’s when a stone elemental appeared out of the blue, drawn by the rumors of a pure, glorious creature. Her joy at having a new element after so long distracted her. I didn’t waste my chance. I ran as fast as I’ve ever run in my life. Three of us did. Two didn’t made it off that slope.”