The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (20 page)

Marius swung at her again in slow
motion, a wide swing that Haven easily deflected away from her
body. She turned as his arm swept past her.

“
Ah-ah,” he
scolded.

She looked down to see the fingers of
his other hand barely touching the side of her ribcage.

“
Bye-bye lung,” he said,
grinning.

Haven pushed his hand away and
replanted her feet. Marius looked down at them and
frowned.

“
Wider stance,” he
said.

She spread her feet farther
apart.

“
No pigeon-toe,” he said.
“Line them up the same way. Good. Now move that one back a few
inches. Very good. This way you don’t lose balance when I do
this
.”

He kicked out his leg and hooked his
foot behind one of her ankles. He yanked back, taking her leg with
him, but Haven hopped forward on her other foot and managed to stay
standing.

Marius laughed. “Very good! Still much
to learn, but I think you will be good student, yes? It will be
many weeks before you are ready to fight a real opponent, but a few
hours a day and you will be better than Marius, I
think.”

She sighed and crossed her
arms.

“
Oh, don’t look so sad,”
he said. “Tomorrow, we get back your brother and everything is okay
again.”

“
It won’t
ever
be okay again,” she
said with more venom than she had intended. “My parents are
dead
. They’re not ever
coming back!”

Haven turned and wiped away the tears
running down her cheeks—tears that had fallen more often as the
hours wore on.

“
Oh, my,” said Marius. He
walked over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I did not mean that
you should forget them. I did not mean that at all.”

She sniffed. “My home is gone. Burned
to the ground. Even if I get Noah back, there’s nowhere to
go.”

“
You stay here!” he said
quickly. “You both stay here. We have food, water, gymnasium.” He
gestured grandly to the empty room in which they stood and Haven
smiled. “All the things growing girl and boy need.
Okay?”

Haven could think of a hundred other
places she would rather stay than a damp underground shelter, but
until she knew that Noah was one-hundred percent safe, she didn’t
see any other option.

She nodded and Marius clapped his
hands together loudly.

“
Excellent!” he said. “But
training not over yet. Best to teach you something you will
definitely use tomorrow. Now is time for the fun stuff.”

He twirled his finger to indicate that
she should turn to face him. She did so and moved one foot in front
of the other as he had shown her.

“
More of that later,” said
Marius. “For now, relax. Hands by side. Good. Close your
eyes.”

She raised one eyebrow and looked at
him.

“
Trust me,” he
said.

She closed her eyes and waited for his
instructions.

“
Listen carefully,” he
said. “There is a light inside of you. It burns brighter than
anything else in this world.” He spoke softly and his voice circled
around her. “It is your soul—it is everything you are and also much
more. It is life, it is energy, and you feel it growing stronger
within you.”

In her mind’s eye, Haven saw a vast
nothingness. A dim blue light sparked to life in the distance and
grew stronger as it approached.

“
You can hold this energy
inside of you,” said Marius, “but not forever. You must guide it as
it grows. You must shape it for its true purpose. Otherwise it will
fade, and you will lose it forever. Control it, keep it close. Once
it is strong enough, release it slowly…carefully.”

The blue light in the darkness
expanded until it was a small star in Haven’s imagination. It
turned slowly and its surface shifted like blue lava—swirling and
bubbling with immense power. Strands like solar flares arced from
the expanding ball and snapped in half, sending strings of blue
plasma spinning into the blackness.

Heat traveled down her spine and
spread across her entire body. It pushed through her blood and
muscle tissue until it ran along the surface of her skin as if she
stood under a waterfall of boiling water. It didn’t hurt her—even
when the heat intensified—but she could still feel its
presence.

Haven heard Marius step away and she
opened her eyes.

Electric blue light cascaded over her
vision like the flicking flames of a violent fire. Marius stood
twenty feet away, on the other side of the room.

“
Close your eyes!” he
shouted.

She did, but something was wrong. The
energy that had been building within her shifted to the side like a
heavy weight and slipped off her body. She opened her eyes as a
blue stream of burning plasma shot from her left arm and hit the
wall just above Marius’s head. He shouted and dove out of the way
as the stream seared into the wall.

Haven screamed and stepped backward.
She raised her left arm and the blue stream scraped up the wall to
the ceiling, leaving behind a blackened streak on the
metal.

“
What do I do?!” she
shouted.

The energy was already dissipating.
The stream shooting out of her arm faded like a dying flashlight
beam until it disappeared. Haven dropped to her knees, sweaty and
exhausted. She gulped down air as if she had almost
drowned.

Marius ran over and knelt beside her.
He gripped her shoulders firmly and supported her when she started
to shake all over.

“
It’s okay,” he said. He
lowered her to a sitting position and smoothed down her hair, which
was sticking out in every direction. He looked up at the long strip
of blackened metal on the wall and ceiling. “That was…that was
good, for first time. Practice makes perfect, yes?”

“
I lost it,” said Haven,
still breathing heavily. “I felt it but then I lost it.”

“
Happens to everyone,”
said Marius. “Still happens to me if I am distracted. What did you
see?”

She thought for a moment. “A blue
light in the darkness, like a star. It grew brighter and brighter
and came close enough that I could see every detail.”

Marius was nodding. “Yes,
yes,” he said. “Good. For me, I imagine it building up in my hands
until I can no longer keep it inside. It is different for everyone,
but the important thing is that you find something that works.
Eventually you will be able to skip the seeing and jump right to
the zapping.” He looked back at the black scar on the wall, then
down at his own hands. “Maybe next time I try your method. Maybe I
get something a little stronger! But listen to me. The goal is
to
control
the
energy—to not let go all at once. This way it is not all gone in
five seconds and then the bad guys get you.”

Haven sat up straighter and took a
deep breath. “Why are you fighting?” she asked. “With Bernam and
the others.”

Marius frowned. “There is always
fighting. There is always someone who wants more power, and who
will take it from others. And always there are people willing to
help that person. It is a terrible truth, but one that we all must
face.” He shook his head sadly.

Haven smiled and pushed his shoulder.
“I think I need some water.”

He slapped his forehead. “Of course
you do! How stupid of me.” He stood and helped her to her feet.
“Very thirsty work. But don’t worry, is worth it. Everybody has
limits, but with more training you will not believe what you can
do.”

Haven followed Marius to the door. She
looked down at her hands, then gently rubbed her forearms. Her skin
was cool, and there was no sign that fire or any other kind of
destructive energy had been flowing over her body. A shiver ran
down her spine when she thought about the power that had been
available to her a few moments earlier.

It felt like she had tapped into a
nuclear generator and was pulling unlimited power from its core,
weaving it together into a giant sphere of energy. Up until the
moment she had lost control, Haven felt as if she could have blown
up a building.

As she followed Marius out of the
training room and into the dome, she had a hard time convincing
herself that having that kind of power was a good thing.

26

E
lena was waiting for them just outside the room.

“
How did she do?” she
asked Marius.

“
Very good,” he said. “One
day she will be stronger than you, I think.”

Marius’s praise made Haven blush. “I
lost control,” she admitted.

“
We all do, from time to
time,” said Elena. She glanced over at Marius, who was trying to
make a motion with his hands without Haven seeing him. He pointed
to his own shoulder-blades and then fanned out his fingers and
traced the outline of invisible wings. Then he nodded at Haven and
Elena looked at her, one eyebrow rising higher on her wrinkled
forehead. “Is that right?” she said.

“
What?” said
Haven.

“
You have
wings.”

“
No, I—” Haven stopped and
thought for a moment. “Well, in the cafeteria, yeah…sort of. Not
really wings, though, just
shaped
like wings.”

“
Oh my,” said Elena
softly.

“
What are you talking
about?” said Haven, hesitant accusation in her voice.

Marius coughed politely. “Time for
food,” he said. “Marius is hungry.” He smiled at Haven and hurried
away, disappearing down the hallway that led to the
dormitories.

“
Let’s sit down, Haven,”
said Elena.

The older woman led her to the center
of the massive domed room. A ring of short chairs surrounded a
small, circular rock pit that Haven had not seen before.
Softball-sized grey rocks were piled in a small mound in the center
of the pit. Haven chose a seat. Elena sat next to her and waved an
open palm in the direction of the rock pit. Blue flames ignited on
the stones and danced brilliantly in the darkness. Light flickered
across their faces and warmed Haven’s skin.

“
It’s an issue of
balance,” said Elena at last. She stared into the flames,
unblinking.

“
What kind of balance?”
asked Haven.

“
The
Balance. Nature. The world. Everything. It is my belief that
our kind came into existence to repair an imbalance in the fabric
of reality. Something shifted too far in the wrong direction and we
represent nature’s attempt to solve the problem.”

“
The Sources and Conduits,
you mean.”

Elena nodded. “You already know that
I’m called a Phoenix. The man named Bernam is a Void—the strongest
of his kind. We are here to balance the forces that have been given
to us, to guide the others down the proper path so that the power
does not shift too far to one side. However, one cannot exist
without the other. Bernam and myself—we are linked in that way, but
in that way alone.”

“
He’s not your
counterpart?”

Elena shook her head. “He lost his
true partner long ago, as did I.” Her eyes glossed over as she
remembered. She shook her head again and sighed.

“
What happens if one of
you dies?” asked Haven.

“
That is what we need to
talk about. My power is fading, Haven. It has been weakening
gradually over the last several months. My guess would be that it
started around the same time that you first noticed you were
different.”

Haven looked into the blue flames that
danced over the rocks. A long strand of fire flicked out from the
pit and snapped in the air like a whip.

“
You think I’m a Phoenix,”
she said.

“
I think so, yes. But
nothing is certain. There could be others like you in the
world—ones with other shades of blue fire that have the potential
to become a Phoenix. You and I manifest our excess energy in a very
specific way—a way that, until now, I thought was completely unique
to myself.”

“
The wings,” said
Haven.

Elena nodded.

“
What are
they?”

“
I can’t say for sure,”
said Elena. “They don’t always appear when I am expending energy. I
have only noticed their presence on rare occasions when I was
attempting to channel more power than I should have—perhaps
half-a-dozen times in my entire life. They are beautiful, but I
think they might not serve much purpose beyond that.”

“
Have you ever seen them
on anyone else?”

Elena shook her head.

“
So wait,” said Haven. “If
you’re getting weaker, does that mean that
I’m
killing you?”

Elena laughed—an old, slow laugh full
of humor and wisdom. “No, Haven. This would be happening with or
without you. It is the way of things.”

Haven sat back in her seat. “How did
it happen with you?” she asked.