Source Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 5)

  Source Fire

  Arcturus Academy, Book 5

  A.L. Knorr

  Edited by

  Nicola Aquino

  Edited by

  Victoria Knorr

  Copyright © 2021 by Intellectually Promiscuous Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  I. Tundra

  1. Idle Talk

  2. Crash Course

  3. With Orb in Hand

  4. Traveling

  5. Tomio’s Request

  6. Inside the Arctic Circle

  7. Blast Site

  II. Mesopotamia

  8. A Remote View

  9. Mystery Delivery

  10. It is wherever they are

  11. Absolution

  12. Besieged

  13. Confronted

  III. The Eighth Fire

  14. Caught

  15. The Best Plan is No Plan

  16. Trail of Trilliums

  17. Fire-Fight

  18. The White God

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by A.L. Knorr

  Come a little closer, my dear…

  Prologue

  Targa’s glossy black hair streamed out behind her as she sprinted for the ocean. She wasn’t running for the pure joy of it, that was painfully apparent, she was running to get away from something. Her bare soles flashed white in the dim luster of a stormy but moonlit sky. I floated along behind her, bodiless, a distant observer.

  The girl could run.

  No...siren. The siren could run.

  She was alone, but the feeling of some sinister presence was not far behind her. Her breathing was fast but steady, her gait smooth and confident. There was something in one of her fists, but the way her arms pumped made it difficult to see. Whatever it was, she held it so tightly her knuckles were white.

  She leapt tussocks, dodged saplings and tangled shrubs, even launched over a fence, clearing it as easily as a trained showjumper would.

  The sea was not far; I could hear it now. I could hear it the way Targa could hear it, like a million voices singing her home. The sighing of the surf was angel’s music to our ears. She would make it to the safety of the ocean, that was clear. She was unbeatable; a storm wrapped in pearlescent skin, with jeweled eyes and liquid grace. She was magnificent.

  As she approached the chalk cliff, she glanced behind her—eyes wide and skimming the landscape. She faced the sea. It was a long drop to the ocean, even for a siren, but it was less dangerous than the threat behind her. She faced the water, her perfect forehead marred with worry lines, and leapt, fist tightly curled.

  A bright red lance of fire appeared like a gash along her arm, then another on the back of her leg. She screamed in agony, spasming in mid-air. It looked like she were made of cinders, burning through her skin from the inside out. As she arched toward the waves, another bright fissure of light appeared, this one across her back. It burned away her clothing like the fabric was made of dry, woven grass.

  With a hiss and a sizzle, her entire body was consumed, breaking apart into ashes to be whisked away on the wind. The dust of my friend lifted and swirled, gently flying, before congealing into the shape of a bird. A dove, made of embers and smoke.

  It flapped toward the moon.

  A strangled cry reached my ears. My eyes were open but unseeing, my neck and forehead lined with a slick layer of sweat. Panic sank its claws into my heart. I lurched from my bed, groping for my phone. My heart refused to slow. All I could see was the shape of that dove, trailing ash dust and sparks as it flapped into the sky.

  Hands quaking, I found my phone in the front pocket of my bag and fumbled for Targa’s number. I didn’t check the time, it didn’t matter. I had to hear her voice, know she was alright. The dream was too vivid to bear.

  Putting the phone on speaker, I set it down as it rang; too jittery and sweaty to hold it. I was too wrung out and freaked to even get back in bed, so I paced back and forth on my area rug, mentally begging Targa to answer.

  “Saxony?” She answered with the voice of someone who’d recently been deeply asleep.

  The sound of her siren tone released a thousand white birds from the brittle cupboard of my heart, setting it to pounding with relief and joy.

  “Targa.” I smiled and brushed away the tears leaking from my eyes. “You’re okay.”

  She gave a tired huff. “I’m fine, or I was. It’s too early for me to be up. What time is it?” There were noises on the other end of the phone, the rustling of fabric, possibly the sound of slippers sliding over a floor.

  “I have no idea.” I grinned through the moisture rimming my eyes. “I’m so sorry to wake you, but I had to.”

  “I think the question is, are you okay? Good grief, Saxony. It’s five-thirty. That makes it four-thirty there. What are you doing up?” She sounded fully awake now, though she might have stubbed her toe on something; there was a thump and a muttered curse.

  “I had a nightmare, you were in it. I thought maybe… I thought maybe you were in trouble.” I was beginning to feel idiotic now I knew she was fine, and that I’d woken her for nothing more than a dream.

  “I hate those.” She kept her voice low, and seemed unbothered now that she was awake. “Give me a second. I don’t want to wake Antoni. He slept through the buzzing, thankfully. But I think he could sleep through a stampede of buffalo coming right through our room.”

  I laughed, picturing her slinking from their suite in the Novak manor, probably barefoot and possibly naked. There was some rustling and the click of a door before she came back on the line, yawning.

  “That sounds like a stress dream,” she said, making more noise in the background. “I’m just putting the kettle on; I’m starting my mornings with herbal tea these days. Do you want to tell me about the dream?”

  I blinked. Targa started her mornings with herbal tea? She’d always been a java girl. “What kind of tea?”

  “Um, hang on, I’ll read the box. Antoni picked it up for me, I don’t even know what it’s called.” A few seconds passed, then she burst out laughing.

  “What?” I was already smiling, though I didn’t know the joke.

  “Well, if I read you the label, the cat will be out of the bag, and it’s a bit early for that.”

  My spine went flagpole straight, my eyes stretched wide. “Targa—”

  “Yeah. It’s early,” she said, sounding like she was still smiling, which was great for my nerves (a whole new batch of them that had nothing to do with the dream had just sprung up). “I’m pregnant. We were going to wait until the end of the first trimester to tell anyone, you know, the way humans do, just in case anything goes wrong. But I don’t think these babies are about to close up shop and call it quits on us, they feel strong.”

  “They?” I felt dazed.

  “Yeah, twins, just like mom had. Isn’t that crazy? And she’s right, sirens can feel it the moment it happens. Not the fertilization, but the implantation. Antoni and I were out for dinner at this little place we like in old-town, and”—she made a popping sound with her lips—“there they were, making themselves nice and cozy in the wall of my uterus. To be fair, I didn’t know it was twins at first, that came a month later.”

  I half-sat, half-fell onto my bed, landing hard enough that the
frame creaked.

  Targa was my age, not even out of her teens yet. For most human girls, this was too early to be having babies, but not for a siren.

  “Congratulations,” I managed to say, after I wrapped my mind around the fact that my friend was going to be a mother. “That’s… I’m… so happy for you.”

  The kettle whistled and a moment later I heard water being poured as she replied. “Antoni is still in shock, but he’s happy. Mom and Jozef are over the moon, of course. Mornings have been a bit rough for me. Mom had no sickness at all, so I’m hoping it passes quickly. It’s not nice.”

  I didn’t know much about pregnancy, but I thought morning sickness began around the six-week mark. “Wait, how far along are you?”

  “Six and a half weeks. I’m so excited, it’s the perfect excuse to spend less time at the office and more time at home, or in the sea.”

  Targa and I chatted until the sun made hints that it was coming. I yawned. Targa was fine, the dream seemed like a distant memory, and my eyes were burning. It was still early, I could catch another few hours of sleep. Ms. Shepherd and Mehmet wouldn’t arrive until after nine.

  When she heard me yawn, Targa yawned too. “I could easily go back to bed.”

  “Same.”

  “We never talked about your dream,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No. It doesn’t matter. I can hardly remember it anymore.” I lay against my pillows.

  “If you’re sure—”

  “I’m sure. Hey, does Georjie know?”

  “No, we haven’t told anyone, other than Mom and Jozef. I was planning to conference you and Georjie and tell you at the same time. Don’t say anything; I’ll call her myself. She’ll be so excited. These babies will have the world’s most incredible aunts.”

  I laughed. “You can say that again.”

  We said goodbye, I slid my phone onto the night table near my bed and was unconscious in seconds.

  Part I

  Tundra

  1

  Idle Talk

  No one was smiling.

  Wind lashed rain at Chaplin Manor, making the chimney whistle, and the fire swell and crackle.

  Ryan, leaning against the radiator under one of the lobby’s huge diamond-pane windows, glowered at the floor, his face pinched and pale. Tomio sat on the front edge of an overstuffed chair, his elbows on his knees as he looked into the fire with a frozen, sightless stare. Basil paced in front of the fireplace with his hands behind his back, adjusting his glasses every few minutes when they slid down the bridge of his nose. Mehmet—who was short and broad in the flesh, with lively eyes—sat on a couch with his laptop open on his knees, utterly absorbed by the screen. Ms. Shepherd stood behind Mehmet, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. She had developed a rash on the side of her neck, but I knew it was from her nervous tic.

  Now that I’d met the woman in person, she was much less intimidating. Over our video conferences she’d seemed stoic and in control. In person, she seemed nervous and uncertain. Or maybe that was because the situation had deteriorated since Naples. Another fire had gone out. Tomio and I had assumed she was a mage, but we were mistaken about that as well. Ms. Shepherd wasn’t even supernatural; she was ex-military with competencies in logistics and operations.

  “So, the new data point proves it, the question is, what can we do about it?” Basil sent a piercing look toward Ryan and the rest of us followed his gaze. Ryan had more first-hand knowledge of Nero’s shenanigans than anyone else, yet he’d been cryptic and evasive about what he knew.

  The collective of agencies had added a new metric to their data gathering after Ryan suggested they track the colors of the snuffed mages’ idle fires. The agency had resisted. Idle fire was a thing of childhood, they claimed, something whimsical and cute—certainly nothing to consider in this matter—just a passing phase in the youth of all magi, like losing baby teeth. The collective (under Ms. Shepherd’s leadership) argued that with the limited resources they had, they’d be better off adding more relevant data points, like ethnicity, since there was a correlation, even if it wasn’t consistent.

  But Ryan insisted, and when Ryan was proven right, Ms. Shepherd had looked appropriately sheepish and the agency had gone quiet. Idles came in seven colors, like a rainbow. Five had now been snuffed out: orange had been first, last December; yellow in March; red and pink in early July—although we didn’t understand how Nero had managed that only three days apart; and now a fifth one, only two weeks later.

  No one openly discussed the fact that Ryan’s father had been a member of the pink group, and was even now speechless in his grief. The pink group had also included my friend Jade, the Academy’s professor of Fire Science, Tyson Hupelo, the beloved Dr. Price and her daughter Cecily, not to mention many others.

  Ryan rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “The quenching that happened yesterday,” he blinked at Mehmet through a bloodshot gaze, “Do we know which color that was?”

  Mehmet looked up, eyes as red as Ryan’s, but from straining at his computer screen. “Yes, it was indigo.”

  Silence coalesced again over the lobby.

  In the heavy pause, Tomio moved from the chair to sit beside me on the couch. He took my hand and tucked it inside his own with a squeeze. His thigh pressed alongside mine, solid, reassuring.

  There hadn’t been time for Tomio and me to think, let alone talk, about our blossoming feelings, or the passionate kiss we’d shared outside the Mount Vesuvius observatory. My throat went dry with desire every time I relived that moment: his lips against mine, urgent, with an edge of desperation. We’d been painfully aware that there was a chance Tomio and Ryan might run into Nero in the subterranean lair. There had been more raw honesty and vulnerability in that kiss than in any other kiss, conversation or glance I’d ever shared with anyone before it. He’d laid it all bare, saying everything without saying a word, his body calling to mine with all the bright clarity of a ship’s bell. There was nothing I wanted more than to be alone with Tomio, listen to him, touch him, kiss him, pretend this whole ghastly nightmare wasn’t happening.

  But the threat Nero posed to the remaining magi loomed like a hurricane gathering on the horizon. Janet was missing, and Gage lay in a hospital bed in the quiet wing of a Neapolitan hospital. Comatose.

  Angelica had promised she’d call the moment anything changed, but so far, all we’d received were texts with Gage’s vitals and the haunting words: no change yet. There was always a tiny bit of good news (I suspected Angelica made extra effort to wheedle some small bit of encouragement from Dr. Burr or one of the medical staff); if there was no improved measurement to share then Angelica would add something subjective, like: I think his breathing seems deeper today, more robust.

  I appreciated her effort to keep our spirits up but every time my phone lit with a notification that Angelica had texted, my heart picked up speed. I longed for the call or text containing only two simple words: He’s awake.

  Instead, the same message came on repeat.

  We’d arrived at the academy three days ago, on July 21st. England rarely got summer thunderstorms like the one we had right now, but this was Dover. It was unpredictable, temperamental, and also somehow remarkably in tune with how everyone under the academy’s roof was feeling right now.

  With all the intel we had, there was one piece of vital information that we desperately needed in order to mobilize: where Nero was going to strike next.

  We also didn’t know exactly what he was doing to snuff the fires, but the actual mechanics of it seemed less important than stopping him.

  “Think back.”

  Ms. Shepherd’s voice broke through the fragile webbing of my thoughts. For a second, I thought she’d been addressing me, but she was looking at Ryan.

  “There must be something you noticed, something you remember from your interactions with Nero that will give us a clue as to where he’ll go next.” She fiddled with the teal scarf at her neck and did t
he hard rub underneath it. The woman needed restraints.

  Ryan’s jaw flexed with impatience. He looked harassed. “Nero acts immediately on new information, he doesn’t store it for later or sit on it. If he hasn’t revealed the next location for himself then how can I know it? And if he’s only figured it out now, then you’d have better luck scanning your network for flight bookings under one of his aliases, or combing security footage. Just because I’ve spent time with him doesn’t mean—” Ryan’s expression snagged like a fish caught on a hook. He took on the faraway look of someone deeply lost in a revelatory new thought.

  The rest of us exchanged nervous glances and waited.

  “What? What is it?” Basil asked.

  Ryan looked like a newly enlightened sage. “Just, let me think for a second.”

  Tomio and I, holding our collective breath on the couch, let out long simultaneous groans as Ryan moved away from the window and headed for the stairs leading to Basil’s office. He settled into pacing in front of the antique telephone booth.

  “I think we’ve lost him,” Mehmet muttered matter-of-factly, sounding unbothered as he went back to his laptop.

  “I need a drink.” Basil moved away from the fireplace. “Anyone want anything?”

  Mehmet’s head snapped up. “I would murder for an old fashioned.”

  The headmaster raised his brows.

  “Right. Magi. There’ll be no alcohol under this roof.” Mehmet gave Basil a bright, comically exaggerated smile. “I’ll have water.”