Source Fire: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 5) Page 19

  “Where’s that?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s a fae kingdom in another dimension. I can access it from places on Earth where the veil between the worlds is thin. I could take the orbs to Scotland and deliver them to Queen Elphame for safe-keeping, or Fyfa. The fact that they’d no longer be in this dimension should be enough to cut off Nero’s psychic connection with them.”

  No one responded to this immediately, we were busy masticating the idea like it was overcooked steak.

  “Shouldn’t it?” she asked, tentatively, when no one said anything.

  Ryan’s expression turned skeptical. “Are you willing to risk your life on that? This is a supernatural being. We don’t know what he’s capable of. I’d wager he’ll know where the orbs are even if we sent them to Mars, or dropped them into a bottomless pit. Also, making yourself their guardian puts you in the line of fire, literally. And fire—while it can’t hurt us—can most definitely hurt you.”

  “It’s a good idea, Georjie,” I said, but in a tone that told her I’d already dismissed it, there was no way I’d let her put herself in danger for us. If Nero could feel the orbs, like Ryan said, she probably wouldn’t make it to Edinburgh, let alone Stavarjak.

  “Even if Nero can’t trace them to a pinpoint, you just blew the plan,” Ryan continued. “The truth is, no matter what we plan here, the moment we’re asleep, Nero will root around in our minds like a pig after truffles. When he sees who you are and where you’ve gone, do you think a lousy supernatural border will be enough to stop him?”

  Ryan said this with a little too much acidity for my liking, and I shot him a look of warning. “I don’t see you coming up with any better ideas. In fact, every time one of us comes up with something, you shoot it down. You seem capable of coming up with elaborate reasons why nothing we’ve discussed so far will work, but incapable of coming up with any suggestions yourself.”

  Ryan didn’t appear in the least bit reproached by this. “That’s because no matter what we plan to do, Nero can see it in our heads. Don’t you get that? The only plan that will work is no plan at all. And, I’ll tell you something else.” He pointed a finger at the boxes. “We need to get those things out of here, keep them moving until we come up with something that might work. As long as they are moving, Nero has to work to keep track of them. It probably won’t be enough, and he’ll take them from us sometime in the next day or two anyway, but it’s a damn sight better than standing around here debating it.”

  As annoyed as I was with Ryan’s attitude, he was right. “Let’s go then. Pack a bag and let’s meet at the Land Rover in ten minutes. We can talk as we drive.”

  “Drive where?” Georjie asked.

  “That’s the point. We don’t know.” Tomio closed the orb’s boxes and swept them under his arm.

  “We’ll drop you off at the station so you can grab the first train to Blackmouth,” I told her as we left the lobby, trailing the boys up the stairs.

  Georjie whirled, eyes blazing. “I’m not going anywhere!”

  Ryan and Tomio paused, looking down over the banister.

  I didn’t back down. “This isn’t your fight, Georjie. And Ryan’s right, fire doesn’t burn us, but it will burn you. I can’t ask you to put yourself in that kind of danger.”

  “You’re not asking. I’m coming with you, and you can’t stop me. Whether you like it or not, I’m involved, Saxony. Remember the promise we made back in Saltford?”

  “The promise was that we’d come to one another if we called. You already helped us by showing us how Nero was taking idles. Thank you for that. Now it’s time to get out of danger.”

  If anything happened to Georjie, I’d be crushed. Targa would be crushed. Her family would be devastated, both the fae and the human relatives. And Lachlan would have every right to blame me, because when I asked her to do a remote viewing for us, I knew she’d never say no.

  “The promise was to help one another when we needed it,” Georjie replied, “and girl, you need help.”

  “She’s fae, right?” Ryan leaned his elbows on the banister. “Her skills so far have come in pretty handy, Cagney.”

  I glared daggers at Ryan.

  Georjie looked up. “Half-fae, and thank you, Ryan.”

  “She’s a Wise,” I told him. “She’s gentle and good, and highly flammable.”

  I was playing down Georjie’s skill set. She could also split a gorge through the earth in seconds, vanish into the pedolith and travel through it like a ghost. She could pop up somewhere miles away. She could make a tidal wave out of soil, and probably throw full-grown oaks like javelins, but I didn’t want to say anything that might encourage her to stay. I wanted my friend out of danger, and in spite of Ryan’s complaint that he was the most at risk, I disagreed. Ryan was only at risk of losing his idle, which one could argue he didn’t deserve to keep anyway. Georjie was at risk of getting burnt to cinders. Putting her into this battle was like putting a wolf on the front lines of a medieval war. Sure, he might cause some damage initially, but he’d be cut down by an arrow or a lance or a horse’s hoof before the battle was over. His weapons were fierce but outmatched, and as powerful as Georjie’s fae magic might be, she wasn’t a soldier. She’d never had combat training, she was waif thin, and when she used magic, she shone so brightly that she might as well paint a target on both cheeks. I didn’t want Nero to know she existed, let alone set eyes on her.

  Georjie glowered. “Would you leave me, if the tables were reversed?”

  In a battle between fae? I didn’t know what that might look like, but of course I would never leave Georjie if she was in trouble. My inability to respond screamed more loudly than my vocal chords could have.

  “Exactly.” She smiled, turned, and tromped her way up the stairs. “So, I’m not going anywhere until we’ve put this mad dog down. Now let’s move. If what Ryan says is true, then we need to be on the road to nowhere, as fast as possible.”

  As we threw our backpacks and duffels into the back of Basil’s Land Rover, the sound of something heavy falling from a height and crashing to the ground from around the far side of the fire-gym reached us.

  Georjie, who had her head stuck inside the open boot, extricated herself in one smooth, startled movement. She looked toward the fire-gym, although damage wasn’t visible on the exterior. “What was that?”

  “Nero,” replied Tomio as he slid into the driver’s seat. “He wrecked the gym. It’s falling apart.”

  Ryan took the passenger’s side.

  I locked Arcturus Academy—hopefully not for the last time—with the keys Basil had given me, and put them into a zippered pocket inside my bag for safe-keeping, before sliding in behind Tomio. I took a look at the academy, with all its windows and blinds closed and its front doors shut and locked. It looked like it was going to take a long nap. Pushing away questions about Basil’s future, I turned to Georjie as she slid into the backseat across from me.

  “I thought the gym was fireproof.” She closed the door and pulled the seatbelt over herself.

  “Against garden-variety fire, yes.” Tomio turned the engine on and the Land Rover’s powerful motor began to hum. “Not so much against alchemy.”

  “Not to interrupt, but…” I tapped Ryan’s shoulder and he tilted his head toward me. “Where’s the ghost steel?”

  Ryan seemed to have an awe and attachment to the steel that made him want to carry it around all the time, so I’d let him take care of it. It wasn’t like I wanted to touch it anyway—the thing gave me the heebie-jeebies.

  “In my packsack,” he said. “Why?”

  I settled back. “Just wondering.”

  The most important articles to all of magedom right now sat with a trio of teenagers and one Wise: two orbs, a ghost-steel blade, and Nico’s journal. And this quartet had no older magi on which to rely… and no plan.

  I wondered if we should deliver the orbs to Ms. Shepherd, but she and her ilk had even less of a defense against Nero than we did. I thought of Sh
ereen and Davazlar, and wondered how they were coping without their fire.

  Tomio drove the Land Rover up the winding driveway and paused at the top, wondering which way to turn. No one volunteered a suggestion. He decided and turned left.

  “So, what is alchemy, exactly?” Georjie asked, directing her question to Ryan.

  While Ryan explained the art of incorporating chemicals with fire, and the differences between idle colors and chemical colors, I watched the English countryside whiz by and contemplated our predicament, itemizing what I thought I knew about the force we were up against.

  No one was more adept at using fire and alchemy than Nero, that was apparent. If he could track the orbs as well as Ryan thought he could, that meant he knew that we were running away from the academy. It appeared that he could attempt to coax information from our minds while we were sleeping, but perhaps only one at a time, since I’d had the experience before Ryan, and Ryan had it while Tomio and I were… busy. Had the fact that he’d now absorbed the green idle given him additional skill in this area? He’d also performed a glamour on my mind, making me see Janet turn into ashes. He’d also glamoured Tomio at one point. Did the glamours work the same way as the sleep-stalking? He could only do it to one of us at a time? Could he do it from a distance? Was there a way to protect one’s mind against these assaults?

  When my mind had worn out those questions, it gnawed on others, like why Nero was doing this in the first place. I could see the attraction to becoming the most powerful mage our kind had ever seen. I had a competitive streak and loved to rank high in skills class, but I had no desire to wipe out my competition completely. That would be no fun. There had to be more to it.

  Basil’s story of how Nero became a mage revealed someone who was willing to hurt others to get what he wanted, willing to deceive and manipulate. So, this was more of the same, perhaps his early success fostered a desire to take more and more, no matter who or what stood in his path. In a way, this was a genocide. Even if magi didn’t die directly from what Nero was doing, he was still destroying an entire species systematically, and he was almost through. It was similar among naturals. A small number of individuals, in this case one, could ruin everything for many when they became tyrants. That was how empires fell. Everything has a cycle, and perhaps it was time for the magi to end.

  Tomio, Ryan and Georjie talked for a time, then fell silent and Tomio put on the radio. That was fine. I stewed in my mental juices, feeling like Nero was following us in his mind’s eye, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

  When Tomio gasped and swerved violently off the road for no apparent reason, Georjie and I screamed. Ryan cursed and grabbed the handle over his door as the Land Rover swayed and came to a screeching halt in a ditch filled with shrubs.

  For a second, we just sat there, panting, Tomio the loudest of all.

  “What the hell?” Ryan lashed the words at Tomio, who lifted his hands away from the wheel in a gesture of defense.

  “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it, didn’t you see—” but he cut himself off, shoulders stiffening as though taking a blow.

  “See what?” I squeezed his shoulder, my heart beginning to slow. Georjie and I exchanged an uneasy look.

  “A big animal, huge, like a moose or something, it ran into the road right in front of us. It was on fire.”

  “A moose? In England?” Georjie mouthed.

  “It wasn’t real.”

  Tomio nodded and put his hand over mine where it sat on his shoulder. “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I got that now.”

  “You could have killed us,” Ryan seethed, unbuckling his seatbelt. “My turn to drive.”

  Tomio got out from behind the wheel and walked around to the other side. As he was about to slide in, Georjie asked him through the gap between the seat and his door. “Do you want to sit back here?”

  Tomio immediately reversed himself. “Yeah, that would be great. Thanks, Georjie.”

  “No problem.”

  They switched seats, and Ryan put us back on the road, announcing that we’d need a gas station in another fifty kilometers or so.

  No one said anything after that, not until Ryan made the Evoque lurch across the road as he gaped at nothing, out of the driver’s side window. With viperlike speed, he hit the panic lights and pulled the vehicle off to the side. Someone’s horn blared as they whipped around us. Tires screeched.

  Tomio couldn’t resist shooting Ryan a self-satisfied look. “You almost killed us.”

  Ryan bent forward and put his forehead on the steering wheel, ignoring Tomio’s barb, hopefully because he knew he deserved it. No one asked him what he saw, and he didn’t volunteer it.

  Ryan eventually lifted his head. “Georjie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How about you drive from now on?”

  “I’ve never driven on the left-hand side of the road bef—”

  Our collective expressions could have wilted a palm tree.

  She undid her seatbelt. “Absolutely Ryan, I’d be happy to.”

  Forty minutes later, and without further incident, Georjie steered the Land Rover into a gas station.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Georjie was at the edge of the parking lot, her cell phone glued to her ear. Ryan leaned against the Rover, cheek bulging with food. Tomio deposited the squeegee into its holder, grabbed something from the front seat, and tossed it to me. It was an egg salad sandwich in a triangular plastic box.

  “Thanks.” My stomach gurgled. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s pizza, but had been too distracted to notice how hungry I was. I’d also had no sleep since the fight with Nero. None of us had. My eyes felt dry.

  Georjie finished her call and joined us. She didn’t look interested in the sandwich Ryan offered, but peeled back the lid and ate it without complaint. I wondered what the food was like in Stavarjak. Better than gas station sandwiches, I’d wager.

  “Who was that?” I asked as she chewed. “Lachlan?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you tell him what’s going on.”

  She see-sawed a hand.

  I left her to eat and joined the boys who were talking quietly in front of the vehicle. They saw me coming and clammed up.

  “Don’t stop on my account, lads.” I tossed my sandwich wrapper in the nearest bin. “What’s on your mind?”

  Tomio said, “We’re wondering if it was a mistake to leave the academy. At least there we could face Nero on familiar territory.”

  “Running isn’t going to get us anywhere but lost,” Ryan added.

  Irritated, I offered Ryan my best glare. “We knew that when we left. We ran because you told us that the best way to keep the orbs away from him is to keep them moving.”

  Ryan nodded and looked away.

  “This is what it looks like to have no plan,” Tomio said with a shrug. “But we can’t run forever.”

  No, he was definitely right about that. “So, what do you want to do, then? Go back?”

  It doesn’t matter where you go.

  I froze as the words blossomed in my mind like an unwelcome weed in a bed of flowers. It lifted the fuzz on the back of my neck.

  Ryan was about to say something when Tomio put a hand out to stop him, his gaze narrowed on my face. “Saxony?”

  I can chase you all day, without moving an inch.

  Ryan caught on that I was experiencing something. “What are you seeing?”

  “Not seeing.” I had an involuntary shiver. “Hearing.”

  It’s better to toss the orbs overboard and carry on your merry way. I won’t pursue you. Just leave them sitting in the grass near the road. No one has to get hurt.

  Tomio and Ryan waited, on edge. Georjie came over, catching on faster than the boys had that I was now the focus of Nero’s psychic attentions.

  “Saxony?” she whispered, and took me by the shoulders.

  I squeezed my eyes closed to block out my friends’ faces, narrowing in on the voice.

  What
will it mean if you absorb the Source Fire? I asked, wondering if I could send thoughts back.

  There was nothing at first, but his answer finally came. What do you think? All the life that sprang from it will be mine. This, you cannot stop. It’s useless to try. You know this. You’re only dragging out the inevitable.

  My eyes flew open. What did that mean? All the life that sprang from it will be mine?

  “Let’s drive,” I told my friends. “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  We scrambled into the vehicle like we were being pursued by a pack of zombies. Georjie hit the brakes at the highway. “Which way?”

  We had driven too far to be back at the academy by nightfall, we still had no plan, and I wasn’t prepared to dump the orbs just because Nero said fighting was useless. Not yet.

  “We passed a campground, maybe two hours ago. Let’s go there,” I suggested. It was the first thing that popped into my head, and gave us a destination.

  It was good enough for Georjie, and the boys didn’t protest—they were probably feeling even more shaken than I was, given that I hadn’t relayed Nero’s message to them yet.

  Georjie hit the gas and the Evoque began to eat up miles again, as I told them what Nero had whispered into my brain.

  16

  Trail of Trilliums

  The campground was quaint and inviting, exceeding my expectations for what a rustic getaway might offer the weary traveler. We were fortunate that it was mid-week and had plenty of vacancies. I would have been happy with a tent, as long as we got out of the Evoque, which was getting smaller by the minute, and eventually got a decent meal.

  It was sleep that terrified us the most, the magi anyway. Georjie could sleep all she wanted.

  With the unknown hanging over us, and with furtive and watchful glances—we must have looked like fugitives to the proprietor—we checked in. We acquired two keys and followed the hand painted signs leading to our respective cabins.