Lost Causes (20 page)

For the second time, death had other plans.

Eila vanished. One moment she towered above us, and the next there was only empty air. The ball of weaponized magic vanished with her.

“What the…” I muttered. I ran to the spot where she’d just stood. It was empty, not even a hint of power.

Three large darts lay on the ground.

Three large tranquilizer darts, the sort that could hold a serum designed to neutralize magic.

“I said you would need a ninja. When will you learn I am always right?” I turned, a grin already forming, to find Simon standing a hundred feet away with a tranquilizer gun in his hands.

CHAPTER 21

“I
s she dead?” I whispered, afraid any noise would summon her back.

“Ding dong.” Sera stood next to me and tested the air. “No fire energy. Nothing.”

“But the drug doesn’t destroy magic,” I said, uncertain. “It only turns it off for a bit.”

Mac’s brow creased in thought. “It could be different. She had no humanity.”

“Literally or figuratively,” I said. “It could wear off. It always did for me. How full were those darts?”

Vivian emerged from the trees, Jet trailing.

“I think the official term is a buttload,” Jet said. “All we had left.”

I kept checking the air, afraid Eila would reappear with no warning. “Maybe she’s dead. Maybe not. We can’t be sure. Which means…”

For approximately three seconds, my friends stared at each other, then we leapt into motion. We threw questions and answers back and forth, making plans with each step. We could have hours to escape, or we could have minutes.

For the second time, I retrieved Luke from the Pacific and brought him soaring lightly over the trees on a wave.

He landed on his feet and took in the chaos in a single glance. “What do you need me to do?”

“Where’s Ani?”

“She took the elementals we freed, though one insisted on coming with me to camp. The rest headed for the other side of the mountain. If you follow the coast, you’ll meet up with them.”

Sera didn’t hesitate. “I’m not leaving her.” She sprinted toward the northeast. At a steady clip, it was a thirty-minute walk. At the rate she was going, she’d be there in five.

The residents hadn’t moved. They watched the chaos with equal parts shock and uncertainty.

“Can someone check on the camp? See who’s going with us?” I asked.

Luke took off and Mac followed.

“Wait!” I called them back.

The residents watched from a distance, unsure about their next step.

I crouched and placed both hands on the ground. I probed until I found the fat veins of magic running through the land. With a grin, I drew on the single thread within me. It was going to be many years before I tired of finding fused power instead of broken pieces.

I wasn’t capable of removing all the energy embedded in the ground. Only the fire and water belonged to me, but this was a Hawaiian island, and those were its dominant elements. I couldn’t claim an elemental’s power like a first could—but unlike people, land wasn’t sentient. There was no battle of wills as I drew large swathes of magic, enriching myself and minimizing the island’s hold on those who stood upon it.

I sat back, exhilarated, and watched free will return to people who’d long ago stopped looking for it. They studied each other and the burning camp, as if they were doubtful about where they were or how they got there.

“Now.” I said. “Now they may be ready to go. Vivian, what’s the plan for getting off?”

“We’re anchored there.” She indicated a spot to the southeast. Jet adjusted her arm until it pointed due east.

I found the vessel with ease, but the anchor was no lightweight. This wasn’t the same boat that brought us here. That one would have been hard-pressed to hold fifteen people, and only if they didn’t have personal space issues.

I directed a little magic toward the ocean, telling it to loosen the sand that gripped the anchor. “Did you bring a freaking yacht? How many can it hold?”

“Everyone, of course.” While the others ran around like mad, Simon strolled around the camp, examining the evidence of the final battle.

“You had a lot of faith in me.”

“This was not our doing.” Simon’s lips curled upwards in a secret smile. “Though I am unsurprised to see you cured at last.”

“How did you find us?”

Simon held up a tiny electronic screen with a red dot. Jet’s tracker had done its job.

The anchor released in a sudden burst, the boat practically flying toward me.

I no longer controlled it. “Guys?”

Before they could answer, thunder rolled across the island.

It wasn’t a storm. It was dozens of feet pounding toward me. A few of them carried bags, but most brought nothing but themselves. Packing would have slowed their escape. A steady stream of camp residents hurried past me, heading to a rescue most hadn’t known they wanted.

Mac led the way, and Luke brought up the rear. Luke was in bare feet, and he’d lost his shirt during his repeated trips to the sea. Now he wore nothing but a pair of dripping cotton pants and a big old grin.

Behind Luke, Tricia supported the exhausted desert who’d been on the mountain. They moved with a shuffling gait, as fast as they could with the woman’s limited strength. Though the desert cast hateful glances at Tricia, she didn’t reject her help.

“We’re almost there,” Tricia urged.

“Mama!” A desert fought against the tide of refugees. “They said… I couldn’t believe.”

It took me a moment to place her. I’d seen her at breakfast on our first day, the desert who didn’t appear to like Luke. It made sense now. If he’d become Eila’s new pet desert, her mother would have been devoured.

The daughter wrapped her mother in a tight hug. Neither of them was able to speak, but words weren’t necessary. There was both joy and suffering in their reunion, and it was all I could do not to break down sobbing.

Tears ran in rivers down Tricia’s cheeks.

The small family hobbled toward freedom.

I checked in with the beach elemental. “Is that everyone?”

“Yes. No one chose to stay.”

“Good.” I glanced over her shoulder at the abandoned camp in the distance. Any building that remained standing, I burned to the ground. “Let’s go.”

Tricia hesitated. “I think I’ll stay.”

I knew her expression well. I’d seen it in the mirror too many times to count. It was the look of someone who believed she was past redemption.

“What do you think that will accomplish? You can stay here and become Eila’s only food source, or you can come with us and try to actually help these people. It’s your decision, and I won’t make it for you, but I should point out that you’ve already made enough bad choices for a lifetime. Maybe try something different.” I spoke for both of us, and I believed every word.

She nodded once and followed the others. Maybe she only needed to hear one person say she’d be welcome.

When I arrived at the beach, the islanders were already being hauled over the railing. The boat was less than a hundred feet from shore.

Except boat wasn’t the best word. It was a yacht worthy of a starring role in a 90s rap video. I half expected to see scantily-clad women drinking Cristal and dancing to a thumping beat.

Instead, I saw Grams.

“Aidan!” It was difficult to hear her at this distance and with all the surrounding noise, but every word was precious. “It’s about time you got here,” she said. “It’s quite mean of you to make an old woman do all the work.”

This day was just full of surprises. My face broke into a grin so wide they could view it from space.

Grams had transformed the ocean surface into a solid path that the islanders could walk on almost as easily as they could walk on land. While she might technically be old, she looked more like a well-maintained New York socialite than someone in her tenth century of life.

I cupped a hand around my mouth to amplify the sound and yelled to her. “I’ve been a little busy. Aren’t you supposed to be in prison?”

“It was dull. I made other plans.”

I urged Tricia ahead of me. She was the last person to cross, and Grams allowed the water to soften behind her, the pathway disappearing.

“Your turn, dear.”

I didn’t need to reach for my magic. It was just there, humming under my skin, more a part of me than ever before. I spread my arms wide and asked the water to push me forward. My heels skimmed across the surface, body flying to rejoin my friends and family.

“We’ve got to make a pickup,” I told Grams, already pointing the yacht north. Working together, it took us five seconds to move two miles. Sera and Ani were already on the shore.

The freed elementals huddled behind them. They squinted at the approaching boat, unable to believe rescue had arrived.

“Get us as close as you can.” I helped Grams create another path for Luke and Mac, and the three of us ran across the ocean.

We worked together with very few words. Mac took the stone and ice, throwing them over his shoulders in a fireman’s hold. Luke grabbed a couple more. Only two were left. Sera supported the beach’s left side and Ani did the same on the right, though she watched Sera the entire time. The water was easy. I told the sea to treat its child well, and it did the rest. The woman floated to the yacht, passing the others on the way.

We were done.

I wanted to do a victory dance, but that could wait. I signaled Grams to start moving toward open water. She knew I’d catch up.

I was fifteen feet from the boat when an invisible tether wrapped around my waist and hauled me backwards.

It was like being punched in the gut by a giant. The magic rushed to heal me as the tether drew me relentlessly toward shore.

Shouts came from the yacht, the words indecipherable but the panic clear. Mac dove into the ocean and began swimming, long strokes that would never reach me in time. Sera screamed, arms flailing in the universal symbol for “Turn this fucking thing around.” When the boat didn’t respond fast enough, she leapt in after Mac.

I pushed against my restraints. It did no good. The cord wasn’t only formed of water. It was also earth and ice and sand welded together, unbreakable.

A wall of fire erupted before me, a line of flames so immense even the Pacific Ocean couldn’t extinguish them. I could no longer see the yacht, and those on it could no longer see me. Mac and Sera were caught on the other side.

Eila flung me onto the sand. I rolled, finding my feet. A heavy wad of earth struck my chest and I stumbled backwards. Sand wrapped around my legs, my chest, my neck.

The humanoid shape Eila assumed expanded and blurred, the edges fuzzy with crackling magic. She soared above me, inconceivable power stretching into the sky. When I was nothing but a bug before her, she crashed to the earth, shaking it so hard my head swung in every direction and my jaw snapped shut. Whiplash, I thought distantly. Chipped teeth. Blood ran from my mouth and trickled down my chin.

I spared no more energy for healing. I yanked a wave over my body, needing the ocean to draw the sand away.

I summoned every bit of strength I’d ever known, then searched for more. Now that I was healed, I was free to use all the power I possessed.

Luke thought creation magic was more powerful than destruction. It was time to test that theory.

The water spun and condensed as I shaped it into arms and legs, then built a torso and head. Its hair grew long and straight. Cheekbones emerged from its soft face. The hips narrowed and the limbs lengthened.

Fire slid inside the being and gave it life, making it glow with energy. Like the first, it was a creature of pure magic.

Eila swatted at it. I created another, and another, and soon a small army of my doppelgängers swarmed her. They ripped at her with greedy hands, grabbing small pieces and feeding the power back to me.

Eila’s cry wasn’t human or animal. It came from a place of fear so primal I thought it might be the first terror the world had ever known. A fear of an oblivion so absolute that magic had created our world to escape its emptiness.

It was an oblivion to which Eila refused to return. She vibrated, a movement so quick there seemed to be two of her. My army fell from her body. She turned each one to ice, and they splintered as they hit the ground.

I tried building another, but something was wrong. Even surrounded by my elements, I couldn’t maintain my strength. My army grew smaller and weaker. Months of exposure to a drug that weakened me was taking its toll.

Eila shrank to her former size, solidifying into the humanoid shape I knew and loathed. When she reached into me, I realized her earlier touches had been gentle. She burned me with anger and froze me with malice. It didn’t matter how strong I was. It didn’t even matter if I was the strongest elemental in the world. To her, I was a mouse battling a lion. “You are not whole. You cannot defeat me.”

Eila grabbed that tiny thread, the loose fire that could undo me and send me spiraling into permanent darkness.

“Mine,” she whispered. She tugged.

Then she vanished.

Sera’s dark curls were plastered against her skull, and she’d kicked off her pants during her swim. They would have weighed her down.

“Who puts up a wall of flames to block a fire?” she asked. “These firsts may be all-powerful and such, but they aren’t that bright, are they?”

She dropped the casing of the final dart. “Let’s move.”

Then again, I remembered, the mouse had outwitted the lion.

When running from a creature intent on your death, with dozens of refugees and several fugitives along for the ride, it’s best to lie low for a bit. Fortunately, staying hidden is one thing at which elementals excelled.

Fires raised the practice of concealment to an art form. While the rest of us lived on isolated islands and glaciers or deep in unmapped forests and deserts, they preferred to make like a Bond villain and live underneath a volcano.

The Blais family compound had been built so long ago no one knew whether the elementals had built their homes into the volcanoes or the volcanoes had formed around their children. The entrances were concealed, and once inside there was no sign of common construction materials like plaster or brick. There definitely wasn’t any wood. Instead, the compound was a maze of curving tunnels. Some had been formed by the flow of magma, while others had been helped along by its inhabitants, but none were flat and orderly. Navigating the ups and downs of a single path would cover your thigh workout for the day.

Some of the tunnels opened up into immense caverns. Others shrank until my head brushed the ceiling. A generous person would say the Blais family was average height. I preferred calling Sera a short-ass. Whatever the case, she was able to slide through the corridors as easily as I navigated the ocean. Mac, Luke, and I, on the other hand, kept bumping our heads and cursing.