Storm Born (21 page)

Mortis looked me up and down quickly. He smiled.
 

“You have been coming along nicely,” he remarked. His grin widened. “I am proud.”
 

Chapter 9
 

Proud. Mortis, leader of the Mistrals and the man who’d stabbed and tortured me, was proud of my progress. I had no reasonable reaction to that. So I ended up doing the stupidest thing imaginable.
 

I laughed.
 

It was more of an awkward, skittering sound in my throat, but it was the only noise I could make.
 

Mortis blinked slowly, no emotion crossing his face.
 

Turve shook me violently. “Show respect,” he growled.
 

“Peace, Turve,” Mortis said.
 

The shaking stopped. I was still dizzy. Mortis took a step closer to me, placing his hand on Turve’s arm. The stocky warrior released me, but I didn’t try to run. No way I would get more than a step before Mortis or Turve caught me. Even if luck were on my side for once, Ferno and Declan would mow down any other escape attempt.
 

Maybe escape would have been possible if I hadn’t already been in a fight. As it was, I was weaker than a pane of glass against a wrecking ball.
 

Mortis tucked his fingers under my chin and tilted my head back. I flinched, my fingers curling reflexively. Jet black eyes scoured me, predatory and precise.
 

“I am told you are tethered to Hadrian, and the evidence of that is clear around me,” he nodded at the ice covering the mud and the snow sweeping around us. “Has he begun to train you?”
 

I didn’t think about an answer for his question. I was fixed on the two more important words. 
Tether
and 
Hadrian
.
 

I had no way of knowing if my message got through to Hadrian or the Precips. I didn’t know if they were coming to help me, and I couldn’t keep waiting. I didn’t want to gather energy from the air again, to give into my Stormkind half, but I knew I couldn’t hold back against people like Declan and the Mistrals. They wouldn’t hold back with me. Maybe Hadrian was wrong, and I could control my powers without letting myself become consumed by the energy in the air.
 

Might as well try. Wasn’t like I had anything to lose.
 

Except my life. 
 

“Answer him girl,” growled Turve.
 

I still hesitated, then said, “Nothing. We didn’t have time.”
 

It was mostly true. I learned more about Hadrian and the Guardians than I did about any kind of control or finesse with these so-called gifts. 
 

The reply seemed to satisfy Mortis. He released my chin. “A pity for him. He had no idea what he had.”
 

“What does that mean? What did you do to me?”
 

The questions were more like demands, and probably the reason Turve stomped toward me again. Mortis held up his hand, not sparing him a glance. Once Turve halted, he lowered his hand.
 

“I have given you a gift, but I did not know how it would respond to you. So many other experiments have failed, yet you are my first success. A vast improvement from others like them.”
 

He jutted his chin behind me, in the direction of Declan and the girl. I turned. Declan was scowling, but the girl was still weak. She lolled her head to the side, dark hair swaying off her tanned face–
 

My heart jumped. “Piper!”
 

Hearing her name, my best friend tilted her head to follow my voice. More of her hair fell away, showing me the dark bruise on her left cheek and the blood running from her split lip. A haze covered her eyes, but Piper still recognized me.
 

“Ava?”
 

Her horrified expression mirrored my own. 
 

I balled my fists and whirled on Mortis. “
Bastard
,” I seethed. “What did you do her?!”
 

Mortis didn’t blink or show any emotion he might have felt at my outburst. He reached for his belt and plucked out a knife. 
 

The same crystal one that scarred me. 
 

“The same thing I did to you.” He put the knife back in his belt. My eyes were glued to it until he spoke again. “Only she has not yet found her tether. We have tried to assign her one, but she proved difficult, and needed to be taught obedience.”
 

I shuddered, knowing exactly what kind of “lessons” Mortis was capable of. 
 

“It was a shame your body had not recovered before the Precips launched an attack upon us. I was forced to leave you on that rooftop. I fully intended to return to you and make you my charge, but it seems a lesser warrior has taken that honor.”
 

Mortis’s eyes darkened to voids as he referred to Hadrian, but the flicker of emotion disappeared as quickly as it came. 
 

“And so I was forced to tether myself to a weaker experiment.”
 

There was a yelp of pain behind me. I spun, seeing that Declan had thrown Piper onto the ground and was marching toward me with clenched fists.
 

“I’ve done everything you asked!” Declan bellowed. “I found Piper, I told you which safe house Ava would run to, I lured that Stormkind here so you could see what she could do–”
 

“And she has done far more than you ever could.” Mortis extended his arm and swept it across the expanse of snow continuing to cover the ice. 
 

“All of this, drawn from a single tether.” Mortis lowered his hand and looked at Declan. “How do you intend to impress me?”
 

Declan snarled, “By eliminating competition.”
 

His cold dark eyes flashed and he swung his fist at my chest. The punch didn’t connect with me, but the wind he gathered did. It hit with wrecking ball force, literally picking me off the ground and hurling me past Mortis and Turve. I barked out a cry of pain when I struck the rough, icy mud.
 

“A trick we have seen before,” Ferno rasped. His arms were folded across his chest, and he looked even less impressed than Mortis.
 

Declan shot him a murderous glare. “Fine. How about this?”
 

I tensed, seeing an unnatural glow begin in the whites of his eyes, blotting out the vengeful blue. Whatever he was going to do to me would be worse than the supercharged shoving he seemed to prefer. I moved to get up as he drew back his arms, but I was too slow–
 

A slender form knocked into Declan’s legs and caught him off balance. Piper.
 

They landed in a heap and she scrambled to get on top of him. Turve barked a laugh. Ferno shook his head. Mortis just watched. 
 

Piper managed to straddle Declan. She’d taken a self-defense course over the summer, and she knew how to protect herself.
 

It just wasn’t enough.
 

Piper struck Declan twice before he grabbed her wrist and punched back. His fist collided with Piper’s chin, knocking her off him. Declan rolled and pinned her onto the ground. He slammed another punch into her face to daze her, then stood up. Drawing his hands back again, Declan threw whatever he’d intended for me at my best friend.
 

Even from where I lay, I could feel the pressure in the air as it was crushed onto Piper’s injured form. Eighty mile per hour winds could break her bones. When she started to scream, I knew that’s what was starting to happen.
 

Forgetting all my aches and exhaustion, I rolled onto my knees. Since the wind Declan was using was so strong, I was able to target it and use it for my own powers. I pulled it away from Piper and shoved it at Declan. He launched back, carried by snowy, blizzard strength winds. He landed hard, but quickly rolled to his feet and fixed me with a look that promised pain and death. It took the last of my energy, until I felt a cool tug at my heart. 
 

The tether’s pull seemed like a sign for me to use it. I just wished I knew how. It wasn’t like I could use the tether alone…
 

Unless I could.
 

Hadrian’s power relied only on the tether. I might not be able to combine it with the energy in the air and create a massive blizzard, but I knew exactly what it felt like inside of me. Maybe I could use it as a smaller way of attacking, like Hadrian had. No harm in trying. Hopefully Hadrian wouldn’t mind, and if he did... Oh well.
 

Declan shot his fist out, but not at me. His knuckles pointed at the building behind me. The massive brick structure that wasn’t ready for the ruthless amount of wind that ripped off pieces of the desecrated roof. 
 

Dozens of bricks the size of my torso shot down at me. I grabbed the tether and pulled as much strength from it as I could. It felt like a muscle being stretched taut, strained to the point of tearing. Yet I knew it was strong. I knew it would hold. 
 

The tether’s sudden charge was an electric shot straight to my heart, a welcome pulse that cooled the burning pains under my skin. It filled me in an instant, and then I dropped to one knee and slammed my hands against the frozen mud. The ice lurched as power rippled past my palms toward my boots. I felt its chill and heard it creak when it curled over me. The ice shielded me, a trick I stole from Hadrian. But this was on a much,
much
larger scale.
 

The bricks torn from the school pounded against the shield, each strike causing the ice to crack. I focused on the tether, drawing more power from it. I had no idea how much I could take until it was useless or I passed out, so I resolved not to think about it right now. I thickened the ice wall, stretched it taller and wider. Finally, I heard the last of the pounding.
 

From the corner of my eye, I watched the ice curve like a wave fifteen feet on either side of me. The tips of the wave jutted out in hundreds of sharp spikes, a fierce warning to Declan. I turned my head toward him.
 

Declan’s jaw was slack, shock on his face as the white glow in his eyes faded. Beyond him, Ferno and Turve watched me with wide eyes, their expressions only a little less restrained than Declan’s.
 

Mortis didn’t react the same way they did. Instead, he smiled.
 

“It appears you have been bested, Declan,” Mortis goaded. He glanced at the bully he was tethered to. “Again.”
 

Declan snapped, but not at Mortis. He charged straight for me.
 

I could feel my energy draining. Either the power from the tether didn’t last very long, or I was more exhausted than I thought. I worked to draw more ice around me, to block me from Declan completely. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all I could think of.
 

And it didn’t work at all.
 

Declan shoved his fists toward the ice wall. A torrent of powerful hurricane winds slammed against my shelter, shattering it under his knuckles
. I shrieked and covered my face from the shards. Declan grabbed one of my outstretched arms and pulled me out from under the protective wave. He swung me around and buried his fist in my stomach. Air flew out of my lungs in a painful rush. I barely managed a gasp before he hit me again. Declan roared like a beast and pushed me onto the ground.
 

Stars exploded when my head struck the hardened muck. I couldn’t see clearly, but my body was completely awake to the pain. To the fingers that snared my throat and squeezed, the palms the pushed my trachea toward the back of my throat.
 

I could taste the air. Recognize the taste on my tongue. But it didn’t go any further. It didn’t sate the fire burning in my lungs. It didn’t stop the pounding in my head. I slapped at Declan’s face, but it only made him squeeze harder.
 

Not knowing what else to do, I dug my fingers into his wrists until my nails broke his skin. He didn’t register the pain. The tether shuddered against my heart, the last vestiges of power shooting through my veins and out of my hands. Frost covered my fingertips and sank into his skin–
 

Energy whipped into me, as if a torrent of wind had crushed through my skin. I lost the cold sensation of the ice. It was smothered by a new, wild sensation that rushed up and down my veins like a Ferrari on the Autobahn. It was like physical adrenaline, yet more. It was chaos beneath my flesh.
 

An agonized croak drifted past my lips, and I wanted all the sensations to stop, I just wanted it
out
–
 

Declan was thrown from me. An unseen force swooped under his chest and picked him up like a ragdoll. I didn’t know where he went, or how he’d been thrown– if
I
had thrown him– and I didn’t care. I rolled onto my side, coughed, groaned, gasped, whimpered. I couldn’t fight anymore. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
 

“Impressive,” I heard Mortis say. “It seems you don’t need to absorb a Guardian’s power to wield it–”
 

A clash of steel cut him off. Surprised shouts and furious cries rang through the air. Wind whipped violently. Mud shifted and rose from the ground. Rain poured from the clouds. Ice creaked nearby.
 

I groaned. “No more rain. No more cold.”
 

I felt someone kneel down beside me. I curled into myself, jumping when a hand found my shoulder and carefully rolled me onto my back. I opened my eyes, meeting the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen.
 

“Took you long enough,” I mumbled.
 

Hadrian set his lips in a firm line and slipped his hands under my shoulders and the back of my knees. He lifted me as gently as he could, but the motion still caused my head to loll to the side and see what was happening.