Elemental Hunger (39 page)

I regained my feet, flames pouring from my hands. “Don’t you dare take my power again.”

I took two steps forward, vaguely aware that Hanai had said my name.

Alex tipped her head back, and laughed. The sound fueled my rage. She signaled, and someone behind her threw something.

Adam launched a funnel of air, sending the Elemental cancellers far to the right. “Nice try. We know as many tricks as you.”

Alex cocked her head, a coy smile tugging at her lips. “Do you?”

“Yeah—” A strange, choking sound came from Adam’s throat. He crashed to his knees, his hands clutching his chest.

“Stop it!” Hysteria entered my voice, though I tried to keep my emotions in check. I’d only taken one step when the cool whisper of metal touched the back of my neck.

It wasn’t a knife, but worse. The fire inside iced over and fled into the Element-cancelling metal. “No,” I croaked.

Alex ran her fingers through my hair, causing me to flinch away from the chill of her hands. “You and I have much in common, Gabriella.”

I glanced up, expecting to see hatred in every line of her face. I didn’t find it. More like fascination.

“No,” Hanai answered for me. “She is not like you.”

Alex turned her calculating gaze on him. “Oh? And how would you know, Unmanifested?”

Hanai’s mouth curled. “I am not Unmanifested.”

“Oh?” Alex said again.

“
I’m
just like you,” Hanai continued. “
You
and
I
are the same.”

Alex looked at him like she was entertaining a mental patient. “What?”

“We’re both Spiritual Elementals.”

The mood around
me lightened. Everything turned spongy and soft, like maybe I could lie down and indulge in a long nap. And when I woke, the world would be right. Spring would blossom with pinks and yellows and greens. My Council would be together. We’d be standing on a tall tower in a grand city on the edge of the ocean.

Alex screamed, shattering the blissful images in my head.

“You—stop it—” Her breath came in gasps, and her eyes sparked with hatred. “I am the Spiritual Elemental. Me!”

“You are not as special as you think.” Hanai clenched his fists, his body tense from shoulders to feet.

Holy hot blazes. Alex is a Spiritual Elemental.
Hanai had said he didn’t know the full range of his powers, but they could obviously do more than control emotions—like borrow Elements from others.

Alex flew at Hanai, her fingers splayed, clawing at his throat. The air crackled with her emotion. Lightning struck with fury. Rain pelted the earth, each drop angrier than the last.

Hanai stumbled and fell with the Supremist on top of him. My emotions—along with Alex’s—raged inside. Her anger mingled with mine, twisting until I couldn’t distinguish her fury from mine. I flung the unsecured cancellers away and stood, fire flowing from my fingertips.

My situation: Adam lay bound with cancellers, blood oozing from his nose. He squinted into the storm. His skin shone with a waxy sheen as hail pummeled down.

At least I knew he hadn’t lied to me, but that knowledge did little to ease the storm escalating inside.

“Alex.” I spoke, but the sound didn’t carry through the weather. Then, just as fast as the skies had cried, they stopped. Blue sky broke through—along with the sound of Hanai’s laughter.

Such happy, carefree laughter. It didn’t erase the tornado inside. If anything, it coiled faster, tighter, stronger. Because I’d never heard Hanai laugh like that.

He shoved Alex off him, still laughing as if they were frolicking in a grassy meadow instead of fighting in the midst of a hailstorm.

“Leave him alone!” I commanded. She didn’t. She pulled on the warmth of the earth, encircling him in a ring of fire so tight the icon of flames danced in his eyes.

“Gabby, don’t,” he said, his voice filled with pain. I couldn’t tell if it was emotional or physical. Probably both.

“Let him go,” I said to Alex. “And release those cancellers from Adam.”

Alex turned and focused on me, her eyes narrow slits of hostility. “I do not take orders from children.”

“They are my Councilmembers. You will leave them alone.”

Alex laughed, high and cruel. “You have no Councilmembers.”

I strode up to her and punched her with a flaming fist. “Yes. I do. Release them.”

Alex stumbled back, but not a single sentry came to her aid. They stood there with vacant eyes and open mouths, like they weren’t sure what was happening. I barely had time to think
Hanai must be controlling them
before I realized one thing: I’d just punched the Supremist. Fury mixed with fear inside my stomach. Where were Davison’s sentries? He’d said he had legions stationed here.

“You have no Councilmembers,” Alex sneered again. “No friends. Jarvis is dead. And you killed your sentry friend in the Outcast settlement.” A cruel smile snaked across her face.

Patches.
My heart fractured a little more at the realization that the fire I had thrown had injured him.

Her grin broadened. Inside, my fury bloomed. “Release my Airmaster,” I growled. “And I believe you have my Earthmover and Watermaiden imprisoned in Tarpulin.”

Instead of responding, Alex stretched her hand toward me and gripped an invisible rope, twisting her fist and pulling it toward her.

My sight abandoned me. Sounds clamored around me, but the sun was blotted out. I felt a hole widen in my soul, felt my fire flee toward the opening, felt myself moving forward against my will. Alex’s cruel laughter mocked me in the darkness.

A blast of steam punched me, causing me to fall to my knees. A flaming hand gripped my hair and jerked my head back. The smell of burning hair choked me.

“You’re as stupid as Jarvis,” Alex hissed. “He resisted too. If you give in, it hurts less. Or so I’m told.”

Wet streaks coated my cheeks. The sky bled, coating the backs of my eyelids with fire and blood. My soul leaked out. My own Element was killing me, the flames consuming me from the inside out. Everything felt hot and dry and scratchy.
This is what death feels like
, I thought.

Alex had her hand in my hair, and suddenly the tip of one finger pressed against my scalp. I seized the fire—the heat she had stolen from the earth. It filled me like a much-needed breath after a long time underwater.

Still on my knees, I kicked off my shoes. I wiggled my toes, burying them deep in the cold dirt. Heat exploded out when I called it upward.

My vision blazed to life. Unfamiliar fire exploded from both hands, and Alex stumbled away from me. I shot flames toward her. She dropped to the ground to avoid the blast, and the group of sentries behind her took the brunt of it. Their screams entered my awareness, but my fire was not my own anymore.

The new heat, and pressure, and lava raged inside, consuming me. A dam broke, letting the fire gush out and over and everywhere. Encouraged by the smoke, I smoothly walked forward and pulled Alex to her feet. She whimpered, a pathetic sound that brought a sneer to my lips.

“Davison will never let you live,” she said. Though I knew she’d spoken out of desperation, I still hesitated. “He needs to regain control,” she continued. “He wants to rule the Territories. He’ll use whoever he has to, and dispose of anyone who gets in his way. Me. You. Anyone.”

Whether it was true or not, I didn’t care. Her words only served to fuel my anger. I slapped her, hard, across the face. To her credit, she didn’t cry out. She cradled her cheek, the blood mixing with the smoke in a crimson river of ash. That wasn’t a pleasant sight—and the smell made my stomach lurch.

The wind curled around me, wrapping me in rage. “Let Hanai and Adam go.”

“Adam is a silly boy who only does what serves him best,” Alex spat. “Remember that, Gabriella. He doesn’t love you. He abandoned me at the most crucial time. He’ll abandon you too.”

A cold fury built in my chest, adding more emotions to the fire already seething inside. I drew back to slap Alex again, but she caught my wrist.

Big mistake. For both of us.

I absorbed her body heat. She crumpled to the ground, her mouth opening in a soft “oh!” of surprise.

“Gabby! Don’t!” Hanai’s voice carried on the wind, a mere fragment of thought. I saw him running toward me, but he was moving so slow, so slow.

I couldn’t contain the new thermal energy I’d taken from Alex. It had to be released. I screamed, the sound tearing my throat and rending the air.

The fire took with it all the frustration, the betrayal, the agony. The loneliness. Flames surged and frothed and singed. Spurts of blazing plasma coated the nearby trees, scorching them black.

I tried to stop it, tried to hold in the agony, the unbearable heat. But it was not mine, and it did not obey. I wept through it all. The atmosphere joined me, releasing fat droplets of rain that didn’t quench my fire. Sparks rained too, falling from the sky where I continued to send my pain. Every blast, every inferno, every tear helped rid my body of the agony I couldn’t endure.

When it finally ended, I stood alone. The wind had died. The pelting rain swallowed the moans and wails of those dying around me until they turned silent.

I knelt in the middle of the smoking wilderness, my eyes fixated on the one person I needed most.

His navy Council robes were covered in soot, completely soaked by the unrelenting rain.

His eyes were closed. His mouth gaped open. He bled. He burned.

Hanai was dead.

The full moon
shone behind a veil of clouds. I stood in the shadows of a pine forest, watching the world burn. Someone stepped next to me. I didn’t look away from the crimson glow on the horizon.

“Gabriella, you must let go,” a man said, sounding like Chief Tavar. He couldn’t be here, hundreds of miles from the Outcast settlement.

I didn’t answer, unable to entertain my hallucinations. I held a firm grip on emptiness, and I didn’t know how to let go. I had no teachers, no friends, no home. Yet the pangs of loneliness didn’t stir in my heart.

Maybe I didn’t have a heart anymore.

The sharp snap of water on crackling flames dulled my senses. I was burning but I didn’t care. It didn’t hurt.

In fact, I felt nothing. And see, feeling nothing at all was worse than feeling too much.

“Let go,” Chief Tavar said again, but I couldn’t even blink. I stared at Hanai, wishing he would move. Surely he would get up any minute, that playful glint in his eye telling me my soul was revealing too much.

He didn’t.

His death hurt so, so much. The emptiness expanded inside my chest. A stabbing pain started behind my neck, eating its way into my head and down my shoulders.

The air became too thick to breathe. I gasped now, sucking huge lungfuls of air that couldn’t quench my need for oxygen. The emptiness, the useless emptiness, spread, infiltrating all my limbs. Black spots pressed into my vision. They crowded my view of Hanai, and I wiped a smoking hand across my eyes.

Struggling for breath, saturated with rain and with the engulfing nothingness filling my entire body, I stood up.

Alex lay crumpled on the burnt ground next to me. She didn’t move, except for the panting rise and fall of her chest. Her robes held only a slight singe, but blood crawled from her nose and mouth. Her survival didn’t seem fair.

I raised my hand, ready to smother her in willing flames. I couldn’t. Feeling nothing at all had ruined everything. The void had swallowed my rage.

Bodies littered the ground. Adam lay where he’d fallen earlier, his clothing layered with ash, but not a lick of fire had touched him.

The vehicle sat on the ground, fans silent, fierce scorch marks along the windowed roof.

A sudden, wild thought drove me forward. I stumbled toward Hanai, tripping over the man next to him. I’d heard him chant; I could heal him.

His body still felt warm. I pulled him into the vehicle, out of the rain. With his head in my lap, I chanted. He’d held his hands in a specific place, but I didn’t know where to put mine. So I stroked his hair while I murmured the words of his native language.