Ignition Point (14 page)

And then she’d gone for her first grounding. She had been four, and had started working with a Spark tutor often enough that she’d built up her own feedback. She clutched her mother’s hand, staring at her brother’s profile as he climbed up to the platform ahead of her. Sweat dampened his hair as they climbed the open, winding stairs, despite the chilled winter air on their cheeks. She’d watched those in line before them go first, removing clothes, standing shivering on the platform for a moment before being encased in blinding electric light. Their bodies were rigid, corded with agony, and the crash wasn’t merely loud up that close. It deafened her, froze her in place while the vibrations shook through the platform to her bare feet and up her small body.

When it was over, the Sparks fell, collapsed from the pain to the heated floor of the platform. Council employees scooted forward, lifting them and moving them inside to spend their hour in recovery before heading back to family, job, or school. It was an efficient system, a machine that ran smoothly so long as the cogs were well-oiled by obedient citizens.

She blinked the memory away. “This is a safe place. Nobody but me makes the rules. I like it here just fine.”

“Are you sure about that?” His tone dropped as he leaned in and smiled, voice turning low and persuasive. His proximity, coupled with her awareness of their chemistry, set off alarm bells in her head. “I’m a man in a position to be good to the right woman.”

Heat flooded her face, but it wasn’t embarrassment. It was anger. The man was a head and half taller than her tiny self, so more than six feet tall. He was older, perhaps early thirties, and dark, with olive skin and black hair trimmed close to his head. He moved with a sinuous grace that reminded her of how long it had been since she’d made her way back to find a boy in the city. The whole package was wrapped in a perfectly preserved, black, relic-silk shirt.

Everything about him screamed C-notes and sex. He expected her to believe he was this interested in
her—
a
skinny, short, reclusive Spark? Oh, she wouldn’t deny the sexual spark between them. And she knew her dark red hair and blue-green eyes were unusual, but so were the galaxies of dark freckles spinning across her skin. And she was
fragrant
today. The damn water heater she’d scavenged and dragged across the desert was broken again—it never worked more than a week or two before it burned out every circuit she attached to it.

In spite of her self-conscious anger, Lena could feel the pull as her body tried to respond to his lure, heat swirling low and slow in her belly. It pissed her off even more. Plus, a bit of chemistry between strangers didn’t explain this level of attention. Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t her.

Please don’t be stupid enough that you came out here to prey on me.
It wouldn’t go the way they planned.

“I’m not the right woman.” Lena stood, keeping the stool between her and the man in front of her. “And I’m not interested.”

She shook her head. It wasn’t just figurative alarms going off in her head. She could hear the Dust at the back of her mind, a sibilance, not quite a whisper.  The Dust liked to help. Lena knew to let it. Reyes spoke again, a pleasant drone she ignored. She focused on the images the Dust flashed in her mind.

Six intruders made their way across the desert, moving through the blanket of Dust and sand. They encircled her home in pairs. Teams of two? Council agents.

And two more, she realized, inside of it with her. The Council had found her. Her father hadn’t been wrong.

Rage ticked her eyelid. With every step of the agents across the desert, everything she had built went up like so much tinder. Unlike the mid-range Sparks who tried to flee the Council, Lena could keep them from dragging her back to be a power plant slave. All she had to do was everything her parents had warned her against. She’d have to reveal her true abilities.

She focused on the Dust within their bodies.

Wake up, little friends. Wake up. I have work for you. Listen….

Reyes stopped speaking the moment she went still. He exchanged a look with Lucas before looking back at her. It was all the time she needed.

Lungs and muscles. Lungs and muscles. No breath. No movement.

She could see the shift behind his eyes as he realized he had underestimated her, and then he gasped. His windpipe and lungs constricted, then he grabbed at his chest. His muscles locked. Lucas made a wet, wheezing sound as he collapsed to the floor, body rigid.

Lena stepped away from behind the stool and moved sideways across the room. Reyes’s face purpled, and veins stood out in his neck and forehead. He shouldn’t still be standing.

“Your friends are coming,” She had no idea why she spoke. “I’m sorry it hurts, but you should have left me alone. I wasn’t bothering anyone.” Lena didn’t even know if he could hear her. His face was filled with terrible effort. She hated that she felt guilty. “The Dust will stop once I’m gone. If you make it, don’t look for me. I won’t hold back next time.”