A Radiant Sky

18

The first drops of rain began to spatter against the windshield as I sped down the road—so fast it felt like we were flying above it. Light, at first, then heavier, harder. In seconds, the rain outside was torrential. I had seen it before. I knew what was coming.

A hard rain began to pelt the asphalt, immediately soaking me. Rain ran down my hair in rivulets, into my eyes and mouth. The ground beneath my feet felt wet and spongy, and when I looked down, I saw that I was on the bank of the river.

I could hear my friends’ cries for help, still echoing in my mind from the vision, and I pressed my foot even harder on the gas.

As I drove us to Cassie’s house, I kept my focus on the sky above, willing the rain back, the clouds to dissipate. But it wouldn’t, they didn’t. I was fighting against some strong powers of the dark. Likely it was more than one Rebel, working in unison to destroy my friends and defeat me.

The entrance to the woods wasn’t far from Cassie’s backyard, and this was where everyone parked when we had parties out there. Sure enough, Dan’s car was in the driveway.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit.” I threw the car into park, and jumped out. The rain immediately soaked through my T-shirt and made the black of my jeans even blacker. I pushed my soaking-wet hair out of my face with one hand as I ran in the direction of the woods and held the other to the sky, channeling my dark, elemental powers through my fingertips. I might not be able to stop the storm entirely, but with any luck, I could keep the flooding at bay.

“Skye!” Raven called, hurrying after me. “What’s going on?”

“It’s an attack!” I yelled back. “A flash flood!”

We ran down the hill to the woods. The rain beat down in huge, wet gulps, and the ground beneath us was slippery and saturated with water that continued to rise. I slipped several times before Raven grabbed my hand.

“Like this!” she cried. In the darkness I caught a flash of silver and saw that she’d extended her wings. I let mine loose as well, and we took flight. But even that was difficult with the torrential rain. It beat against our feathers and pushed us back toward the ground. This was no ordinary rainstorm. It was powerful. Otherworldly. The water was so thick that I could hardly breathe. I swallowed mouthfuls of it. It ran down my face and into my eyes, blurring the dark woods. Trees rose up around me on all sides like lines on a map you’re trying to follow in the dark.

“Cassie!” Dan’s voice rang out through the trees. “Hold on to that branch!”

“This way!” I motioned for Raven to follow me as I traced the sound of Dan’s voice.

“Dan!” Cassie cried, her own voice piercing the night. “I can’t reach it!”

I stumbled as I landed on the bank of the creek, slipping through the mud, swimming, basically, with Raven right behind me. The water in the creek was rising, fast and furious, and a spot of red stood out amid the rushing tide. Thank god for Cassie’s hair.

“Cassie!” I screamed. I couldn’t lose my best friend again. I couldn’t be the reason for it a second time. “Hang on!” You’re not going to die. You’re not going to die.

I kicked off from the ground again, swooping down, the rain beating hard against my wings, soaking them. I let the silver wash through me and summoned my own powers of the dark, the heat, the fire I knew was within me. A ball of light radiated from my body, enveloping my wings and Raven’s, keeping us dry.

“Skye!” Dan’s voice rang out in the night. “Over here!” I sent another orb of fire out in front of me, and it lit a path straight to Dan, where it hovered around us, illuminating the churning waters of the river below.

“What happened?” I cried, expanding the protective bubble so that it included Dan. “Where is she?”

He struggled to catch his breath. “A branch snapped from that tree and knocked her in!” Before I could say another word, he dove into the rising waters of the creek, surfaced, and looked wildly around for Cassie. She’d disappeared.

“Cassie!” he yelled. The water rose over his head in waves and he beat it back.

“Hold on!” I cried. “Stay still!” I focused all of my energy on the river in front of me. Come on, I pushed myself. You can do it. I had never tried to work so many different powers at the same time before, and the strain of it pulled at my mind and body. I could feel myself ripping apart.

Then, some last reserve of power surged up in me, pushing me onward, and the water where I was focusing my energy began to recede. As if a great wind was blowing on it, it curled back, and I spotted Cassie lying on the floor of the riverbed. Her red hair fanned out around her like a mermaid’s.

“There!”

Dan ran down the path through the water and kneeled beside her.

“Bring her back to us,” I struggled to say. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

Gently, he picked Cassie up, her arms and legs dangling. “Hang on, babes,” he panted as he stumbled to shore. Her red hair stuck to her neck, and it didn’t look like she was breathing.

With the energy I had left, I raised my hands to the sky and beat back the rain. It felt like hours, days—but it was only seconds, I think, before the rain began to let up, and before I knew it, the downpour had been sucked back into the clouds. They rumbled discontentedly above us. A threat that they could burst open again at any moment.

And then through the trees, I saw something move. It was human-shaped, I was sure of it. With hair and eyes so dark, I knew in an instant who it was.

“Asher?” I whispered. My heart pounded, and not just from the effort it had taken to fight the Rebellion’s powers. What was he doing here? First the fire—and now, this? I couldn’t believe that Astaroth was right—once a Rebel, always a Rebel—but then, I didn’t know what else could be going on.

I blinked, and the trees were still again. There was nothing there.

“Skye?” Dan nudged me. “Are you okay? Can you make it?”

“Yes,” I said hoarsely. Dark spots swam into my vision, and I knew I was only barely hanging on, myself. I tried to cast a ball of fire to keep Cassie warm. It was small and weak—but it floated around her head, drying her pale and goose-bumped skin.

Dan quickly leaned over her, pumping her stomach and giving her mouth-to-mouth.

“Stop,” I said faintly. “Let me.”

I put both hands over my best friend’s heart. “I couldn’t save you last time, Cass,” I said. “But I can now.” And I let the silver powers I had left flow through my fingertips, into her blood. For the briefest of seconds, she glowed.

Then she coughed up a lungful of water and opened her eyes. I pulled my hands away and fell back, exhausted to the point of tears.

“Skye?” She wheezed. “Did you save me?”

“We all did.” I tried to smile. “It was a group effort.”

“Babes?” she said, her eyes searching for Dan. He smoothed her hair back and kissed her. He couldn’t say anything—I think because he was crying.

Cassie noticed Raven standing behind him.

“You!” She choked, struggling to sit up. “Did you do this?”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t Raven. She’s one of us now, remember?”

“Like hell!” Cassie’s eyes rolled deliriously. Her face was flushed with fever and effort. “She tried to do it again! We can’t trust her, Skye. None of us can. She’s a total traitor!”

“I—I didn’t.” Raven looked shocked—and almost sad. “I wouldn’t. Skye, you know that, right? Cassie? I’m on your side now.”

“She knows,” I said, trying to calm her. “I know, too. Cassie doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“It was so nice out,” Cassie panted. “Dan took me down to the river, to practice for prom.”

“Practice for prom?” I looked to Dan for an explanation.

“Yeah,” Dan said sheepishly. “I felt like Cassie didn’t think I was taking prom seriously. I wanted to do something nice for her—you know, since it might be our last dance and all.” He took a breath and looked at her. She nodded and squeezed his hand. “I had the idea that we could do the dance from Dirty Dancing. You know, the one where he lifts her up?”

I was starting to catch on. “They practice in the lake,” I said.

“So that if he drops her,” Cassie explained, “there’s a nice watery cushion. It was warm out, so we came down to the river.” She beamed at him. “He thinks of everything.”

“Yeah, but then it started to rain.”

“It was flooding before we knew it,” Cassie added. “It had to be angelic, there’s just no way—” She looked fiercely at Raven.

“Cassie,” I said, “it wasn’t Raven. Or the Order. It was the Rebellion. Just like the fire.”

She looked at me, then glanced in Raven’s direction.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

Raven nodded uncomfortably. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice soft. “What I did to you back then was horrible. It was unforgiveable. You have every right to hate me.” Cassie’s eyes welled with tears.

“I don’t hate you,” she said. “I just don’t understand you.”

We were all exhausted as we trudged through the mud back to Cassie’s house. I asked Raven to drive us over to my place. In Cassie’s weakened state, there was no way I was letting her and Dan sleep at home tonight. I needed them under my roof, where I could keep everyone safe.

I had to find Ian’s father soon. I knew it was only once I reunited the three most powerful Rogues that the fourth would finally be revealed to me. Secretly, I was hoping it was anyone but Earth. I felt a fierce need to protect her, and the idea of bringing her into this made me feel sick.

But she had known about the flood. Maybe not how or why, but somehow she knew. Especially after today, I had a feeling it was her destiny.

That night, I sat on the floor in the hall outside my room, my knees pulled up to my chest.

People I love are being attacked. My friends keep almost dying.

I knew in my heart that this was what I was born to do. But putting my friends in so much danger wasn’t something I’d signed on for. Sure, they promised to stick by me and fight. They were my best friends. No, more than that—they were my family, and had been since I was five. I had been there for Cassie when Kim Mancuso called her tomato-head in middle school, and I had personally hand-delivered the Ben and Jerry’s Kitchen Sink ice cream when her first boyfriend, Patrick, broke up with her because he wasn’t ready to be “tied down.” Cassie would expect nothing less than to be there for me, too—whatever I needed.

I leaned back against the wall and sighed. I wished that there was someone who could tell me what I should do, but every time I tried to think of what Cassie or Ian or Aunt Jo would say, they told me this was one I had to figure out for myself.

Cassie and Dan were talking in my room in low tones, their voices floating out into the hall. I tried to give them privacy by saying I had a headache and needed to be by myself for a while. But I could hear them anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “I’m just so worried about you. You’re Skye’s best friend in the whole world, her Achilles heel. You’re an easy target for them. She’d do anything for you, Cass.”

I felt my heart twist. Cassie whimpered, softly.

“Come here, babes,” he said. “I love you. Life was totally sucky until you fell for me, don’t you even know that?”

“It was?” She sniffled. “I never knew that. I thought we all had a pretty good life.”

“Maybe you did.” He laughed. “But dude, I was in love with my best friend. And I couldn’t say or do anything about it. And I had to watch you frolicking around, swooning over other boys—”

“I didn’t frolic—”

“And talking about how foxy they all were. And damn, Cass, you looked so hot up there onstage—”

“I did?”

“And it was like the whole universe was laughing at me, like, dream on, buddy, she’s so far out of your orbit you need a space shuttle to get to her. . . .”

“Babes?” she said. “Dan?”

“Yeah?”

“I only said those things to make you jealous. I didn’t think there was any way you were going to go out with a ditz like me. You’re so smart. You could have any girl—”

He snorted. “Right.”

“No, let me finish. Any girl in the math club, or the science club, or the comp sci club, or—”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” He laughed. “Come here.” There was some rustling as bodies were maneuvered. “You’re not a ditz.”

“I know.” She sighed.

“You’re a crazy talented musician.”

“I know.”

“Okay, maybe you act like a ditz sometimes.”

“Dan!”

“But you know what? You make me laugh. And you make me take myself less seriously. And I need that. And that’s why I love you.”

I heard a soft sound, almost like laughter.

“I’m so lucky.” No, not laughter. Cassie was crying. “I’ve almost died twice. I have you for a boyfriend. Skye hasn’t ditched me yet. One of these days, my luck is going to run out.”

“Well, if it does, it won’t be in the form of me dumping you,” said Dan. “Because I’m going to love you even after your luck runs out. You’ll be the most loved unlucky girl in the world.” I heard more rustling, and Cassie laughing through her tears. “You know, even if the world ends on prom night, I wouldn’t want to take anyone else as my date for the last dance of my life.”

“Shhh,” Cassie whispered. “Stop talking.”

And then it was quiet, except for the sound of them kissing. I got up and wandered down the hall to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

Raven was on her way out, carrying a towel. We paused in the doorway, facing each other.

“Oh,” she said. “Look, about before, what Cassie said . . .”

“She didn’t mean it. She was delirious.”

Raven paused and looked at me, as if trying to decide whether to say something or not.

“You know I would never hurt you, right?” she said finally. Her voice was defiant, but I knew she was masking hurt. I reached out and hugged her tight. “Ah—ow—hey—what are you—”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I whispered fiercely in her ear. “I trust you with my life.”

Raven broke away and straightened the T-shirt and pajama pants I’d lent her. She looked at me sideways.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said. “I don’t do hugs.”

I shook my head and smiled, locking the bathroom door behind me, and flung the window open. The rain had stopped, and the night was damp, angry, vengeful. The Rebellion hadn’t gotten what they were after, this time. But it didn’t mean they were going to stop.

Cassie and Dan’s conversation had filled me with an ache I’d been suppressing for so long. A deep, gaping chasm stretched open inside of me. And suddenly, I started crying.

I gazed out the window, staring at the wild mountains beyond. Moonlight struggled to push through the dense thicket of clouds that still churned restlessly above.

“Asher,” I whispered. “Where are you? Tell me you’re not a part of this. Please, just tell me you’re working on a way to end this whole thing.”

But there was no answer. Not from the moonlight. Not from the stars. Not from the shadows of the mountains, luminous against the night.

And not from Asher.