Drowning in Fire

THIRTEEN

Aya broke through the hard, cold crust of earth and rolled herself onto the windswept prairie of southern Alberta. This spot was a few hours from the U.S. border, though that sort of delineation meant little to her kind. What did matter was that the land here had been worked over so much with plow and seed that there were very few purely natural, untouched areas left for her use as travel and entry/exit points. Except for this one spot where a great tree stood twisted like an old soldier standing sentry by the gravel road.

An icy, blustery night out here, where not much lived besides crops and the few farmers who tended them. And the Airs.

Spring ran cold here, and yellowed late-March grass poked up through the remaining patches of snow around the tree. She pushed her human body into being as quickly as the painful, awkward shift allowed. She magically fashioned clothing from the grass and the nearby dead husks of corn: a soft, woven suit that conformed to her body from neck to ankles. It looked strange, she knew, but she had no human clothing of her own yet.

Someday. Soon.

She started walking west under the blue-black sky made in the hours past midnight, the moon casting shadows and the stars guiding her way. On all sides she sensed the great space of central Canada extending out. She felt the unbroken rush of wind as it crossed the land and whipped across her body, and it made her smile to herself. Made her breathe in deeply the sweet scent of fresh air. Made her revel in what she could not get Within.

She’d been here before. Two months ago the premier had summoned her, wanting her counsel, when the Chimerans had been on the verge of declaring war on the Ofarians. And then one month ago, when she’d been informed that Madeline was no longer the Airs’ mind-wiper, and that her position had been filled by her brother.

A similar summons had arrived barely an hour earlier, its urgency just as potent. She’d been sitting in her cave, human eyes closed, trying not to think about the walls closing in, when the little glowing root had pushed through a crack and unfurled the premier’s message, written on a leaf in the way she’d only told him and the Chimeran chief to contact her. My compound. As soon as possible.

Her immediate thought? Griffin. Keko.

Now she trudged through the crunchy, barren aisles of dead corn, heading toward the massive white walls that loomed in the distance. When the crops gave way to the grass of the meadows that surrounded the Air compound, she passed several wooden signs staked into the ground.

HAVE YOU REPENTED?

WALK WITH THE LORD AND YOU’LL NEVER NEED TO RUN FROM ANYTHING AGAIN.

JESUS SAVES.

The white walls were two stories tall, impenetrable except for the iron doors big enough to admit a semitruck and stamped with a giant white cross. Razor wire coiled over the top of the wall. Security cameras covered all angles of the enclosure and the surrounding meadow.

As Aya approached, one side of the iron doors opened and a woman in a parka and hat and mittens appeared. She eyed Aya’s body, tightly clad in the woven suit, unable to disguise her shock and wariness. Peering out into the cold, dark night, and then returning her stare back to Aya, she said, “You can only be . . .”

“I am.” Though the female Air was taller than her by a head, Aya proudly lifted her chin and looked the Air directly in the eye. “Aya, Daughter of Earth. The premier is expecting me.”

The Air shuffled back to admit Aya, and Aya felt the Air’s awe pass over her like the wind. Aya could not wait to blend in better, to not draw such stares.

“This way.” The female hurried ahead, snaking through a vaguely familiar set of dark alleyways between narrowly placed buildings. The whole compound was like that, she remembered, a maze packed tightly with boxy, nondescript structures meant to hold and house the largest density of air elementals.

Aya could not keep track of their path. Just when she was sure she’d seen this particular corner or doorway more than once, and that the female was steering her back out the way they came, they popped out into a small square. Ahead rose a giant, ornate church topped with the massive silver cross she’d glimpsed from the other side of the wall. The other woman pulled open the heavy wood doors of the church and the two of them entered.

The inside looked nothing like the few other churches Aya had wandered into, but the interior didn’t matter, as long as anyone flying over or trying to spy inside the compound thought this place was dedicated to a Primary religion and inhabited by isolationist zealots. Each Secondary race had its own way of hiding in plain sight, so it was rather an important thing to have been invited into another elemental world.

And this marked the third time. This excited her. She needed stronger eyes on the Airs. Aya’s growing friendship with Keko had given her hope that she’d be allowed a peek into the Chimeran culture, and she knew Griffin would openly welcome a chance to meet with her eventually, but had both those opportunities been destroyed now? What then?

“Wait in here.” The female Air directed Aya into a windowless room in the center of the false church but did not enter herself. She nodded toward a closed door on the opposite wall, set with a mottled glass window that gave the vague impression of bodies moving behind it. “He’ll let you know when he’s ready.”

She left, closing the door, and Aya heard a subsequent click. On her last visit, they hadn’t locked her in. There was no place to sit.

A burst of raised voices, all male, maybe three in number, made her jump, her head swiveling in the direction of the mottled glass door. The voices ramped up to overlapping shouts, their words indistinct but the anger very, very clear. Something crashed to the ground, followed by a heavy thump against a wall. More crashes, more shouts, then the door flew open.

A male Air stomped out, and not just any Air. Him. The one with the curly hair and pale blue eyes. The one she saw last time she’d been called here. The one Nem had mentioned.

Inside the office, the premier and Aaron stood in the middle of a disaster. A bookcase had been overturned and something glass lay in shards on the wood floor.

“Go do your penance, Jase,” the premier growled.

The curly-haired Air halted in the center of the room, his back to the door. Fists balled at his sides, he closed his eyes and snarled back, “The name’s Jason now.”

“Ha. Changing your damn name doesn’t absolve you. You still owe me. You still need to pay for her.”

Jase—Jason’s—eyes opened, the intense stare spearing straight ahead, straight through Aya, even though she stood not three feet away.

“Fuck you.” Razors laced his whisper. Aya felt them slice across her human skin.

“Reno,” said the premier, his cowboy boots crunching on glass as he went to the door and gripped its edge. “Get it done.” The door slammed with such force the entire wall vibrated.

Jason drew a deep breath, his chest rattling as it expanded and collapsed. Then he blinked at Aya, shook his head, blinked again. “Who the hell are you?”

An earthquake of odd sensations shook Aya’s body and mind as she stood under Jason’s powerful scrutiny, anger flushing his skin and a terrible loss clouding his eyes. She did not understand what she was feeling, how to parse the peaks and valleys of the effects of such direct attention.

“We’ve met before,” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “No, we haven’t.”

She shook her head as a strange heat crept up from her chest, traveling the length of her neck to settle in her cheeks. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Last time I was here I merely . . . saw you.”

Last time he’d been standing, dead-eyed, just behind the premier, looking like he’d been sentenced to prison. That was when he’d taken over for Madeline, so perhaps that’s exactly what had happened. Aya had never realized before that the Airs used their mind-wipers as a form of punishment.

Jason inched closer, and though most people were larger than her, right then he seemed impossibly tall, as wide as a mountain. His gaze traveled over her face and hair, the corners of his mouth turned down. “Who are you?”

Clearing her throat, she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I am Aya, Daughter of Earth, here to see the premier on Senatus matters.”

“I see.” He nodded, the back of his teeth making a terrible grinding noise. “You don’t look how I thought you would.”

“What do you mean? What were you expecting?”

He let out a hollow laugh. His eyes made a general sweep of her body. Different than how Nem had looked at her, however. Jason’s study was critical and detached. Still, standing there wrapped in the suit of woven grass that suddenly felt too constrictive, a new kind of warmth spread out to her extremities. Never one to cower, though, confident in her decision to evolve, she stared back.

“A Child of Earth?” he finally said with a faint snort. “Dreadlocks. Hairy legs. Bells on your wrists and ankles.”

None of that made sense to her and she made a mental note to look it up.

“But you’re none of that. Are you?” As his voice turned distant, his wandering gaze settled on her hair—still not entirely human, she knew, with its color, or lack thereof, and the way it tended to move on its own—growing, curling, wrapping around her neck and body.

With another sudden jerk and shake of his head, he threw off whatever ghosts clung to his thoughts and leaned closer. Filling her vision with his face.

“Don’t worry, Senatus,” he spit, “I’ll do what you fucking want me to.”

Aya opened her mouth—to ask what he meant or to defend herself or to deny she had anything to do with whatever it was the premier wanted of him—but Jason kept talking, his tone spiraling into the same ugly one he’d used on the premier.

“I’ll do it,” he said, “but you tell him that after this one, I’m done. This is the last mind I fuck with.” Swerving around her with the force of a gale, Jason lunged for the exterior door, rattling the knob so hard Aya thought he might rip it off. “Nancy.” He pounded on the wood. “Let me the fuck out.”

Aya only stood there, knowing she could not reveal herself to this man. Knowing she could not tell him that she was just as abhorred by the Senatus practice of mind scrambling as he was.

Jason glared at her and she had to clamp her lips shut to keep from begging him to give her time. To hold on until Griffin succeeded and the two of them could start to steer Senatus thinking and practices in different, better directions.

Nancy, the Air who’d met her at the gate, unlocked the door and Jason fled the waiting room so fast Aya wondered if he’d used his magic to ride the wind. In his wake, she stared at the space he’d once consumed, still able to see his shape. Still able to sense the force of his emotion. Evolution had brought that to her, that blessing and that curse of being finely in tune with what others—Primary or Secondary—felt. And there was no doubt over what she’d just experienced.

Jason hated her.

• • •

How much time passed before the door to the premier’s office opened, Aya couldn’t say. The hole in her gut had eaten much of her present awareness. Her mind was spinning away, thinking about the human who would suffer so terribly at Jason’s will because they probably inadvertently saw something they shouldn’t have. Hating how, yet again, all she could do was stand here and watch it happen.

Was that what this was about? This midnight summons? Did the premier want to see her about Jason or a new threat coming out of Reno?

“Aya.” The premier’s voice hadn’t lost its snarl.

She turned, giving him a slight inclination of her head and noticing with consternation how his icy eyes pierced her. “Premier.”

Aaron stepped out of the office, beckoning her inside. Too late she remembered how human skin was susceptible to sharp edges. She stepped on a small shard of broken glass and hissed. A sliver of red leaked out from her sole.

The premier didn’t notice. In fact, he stood in front of his desk, arms crossed, hair dented by the cowboy hat now lying upside down in a corner. Staring.

“I know a lot more about you now,” he said, his voice chilly, “don’t I?”

She swept a long look around his office, glancing pointedly at the ceiling where the huge Christian cross sat atop the false church. “And I you.”

He didn’t seem to hear her, or if he did, he chose to ignore her. “How you move about under the earth. How you can change your shape. Quite unusual. Quite fascinating. It’s why you always insisted the Senatus meet outside. In the dark. In remote places.”

There’d been reasons why the Children had kept their true nature and their history secret since the dawn of man: to avoid reactions like this one.

So this was what the summons was about, to confront her about the Children. Maybe to use her indiscretion—done in heat and haste—against her like Nem had done. Worry started to worm its way into her consciousness. Worry that the Father would learn what she’d done, and worry that the premier would feel threatened and cut her loose from the Senatus when she was so close to finally putting her plan into motion.

“Yes, that’s why,” she replied, because it would be disadvantageous to admit otherwise, or to give him any further information.

“But what I don’t get”—he rubbed his forehead in a way that even she knew to be exaggerated—“is why the fuck you would go against your own directive.”

Give away nothing. “Why do you think I did that?”

His hand came away from his face, one finger stabbing into the air between them. “Why make such a grand, dramatic entrance the other night, put massive demands on the Senatus, outline your own terms, and then blow everything to pieces?”

A strange, buzzing sensation filled her head, making her feel dizzy and nauseous. “I think you need to explain yourself.”

“I need to explain?” He was shouting now. “There is one thing the Senatus is about, and that’s solidarity. Consensus. You know this. And yet you rise up out of the ground and declare the Earth in danger if Keko so much as breathes on this Fire Source. You cut a deal to allow us to go after her and hopefully keep the peace with the Chimerans. You know you’ll have a chance at her if Griffin fails. And you attack her anyway.”

Dread and rage twisted through her, but she drew herself up as tall as the diminutive body would allow. “I did no such thing.”

The premier shook his head in disbelief and turned to rest both palms on the edge of his desk. “Trust is a tenuous thing, Aya. Especially among Secondaries.”

All this human emotion warred inside her—fear and anger, concern and confusion—and she didn’t know how to keep them separate. Or even if she should. “You forget. The Children of Earth are the ones who approached the Airs and the Chimerans to begin the Senatus many centuries ago. We are invested in its success and don’t want to compromise it. Now tell me what happened.”

He inhaled long and slow through his nose as he regarded her. “Got a call from Griffin a couple hours ago. Pissed off as all hell. Said a Child of Earth attacked them when they were nowhere near the Source. Something about a tree coming to life.”

“Keko. Is she—”

“Alive.”

Aya held in the massive sigh she desperately wanted to release.

The premier pushed off the desk. “Griffin wants assurances he’ll have his chance. Then you can have yours. As you originally agreed.”

She raised her voice, indignant. “Absolutely. I gave no other orders to contradict what was said around the bonfire. I’ve kept my word.”

The premier eyed her hard. “Then which one of you diggers didn’t?”

She was just starting to get a hold on the concept of Aboveground insults, but she was pretty sure the premier had just handed her one. There was no time to dwell on it now. Fix the problem in Hawaii first, or else smoothing over a little name-calling would be the least of her issues.

There were two possibilities behind the attack on Griffin and Keko. The Father, who could have given an order to another Child of Earth behind her back. Or Nem, guardian of the Source, who’d been so clearly angry with her on the Aran Islands.

The Father wasn’t that crafty.

She had to find Nem. Fast.