Firelight (4 page)

“From the pride?” I demand. “They are my life! My family.” A crappy alpha didn’t change that.

Severin wouldn’t be in charge forever.

“And Cassian?” Her lip curls. “Are you prepared for him?”

I step back, not liking the emotional quiver in her voice. From the corner of my eye, I see Tamra stiffen in the doorway of her bedroom. “Cassian and I are friends,” I say. Sort of. At least we used to be.

“Right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not eight years old anymore, and he’s not ten. A part of you must know what I’ve been protecting you from. Who I’ve been protecting you from. Ever since you manifested, the pride has marked you as its own. Is it so wrong to want to claim my daughter from them? Your father tried, fought constantly with Severin. Why do you think he flew out alone that night? He was looking for a way…” She stops, her voice choking.

I listen, transfixed.

She never talks about that night. About Dad. I’m afraid she’ll stop. Afraid she won’t.

Her gaze settles on me again. Cool and resolved. And that frightens me.

Familiar heat builds inside me, burns and tightens my throat. “You make the pride sound like some fiendish cult—”

Her eyes flash. She waves an arm wildly. “They are! When are you going to understand that? When they demand I give my sixteen-year-old daughter to their precious prince so they can begin mating, they are fiends! They want you to be their broodmare, Jacinda! To populate the pride with little fire-breathers!” She’s close now. Yelling near my face. I wonder if Jabel or any of the other neighbors can hear. Wonder if Mom cares anymore.

She steps back and takes a deep breath. “We leave tonight. Start packing.”

I rush into my room and slam the door. Dramatic, but it makes me feel better. Pacing my room, I breathe in and out. Steam wafts from my nose in angry little spurts. I drag a palm down the side of my face and neck, over my warm skin.

Falling back on the bed, I release a puff of breath and stare straight ahead, seeing nothing, feeling only the heat bubbling at my core. Gradually the fire inside me cools and my eyes begin trailing over the glittery stars hanging from the ceiling on strings. Dad helped me hang them after we paint-ed the ceiling blue. He told me it would be like sleeping in the sky.

A bitter sob scalds the back of my throat. I won’t sleep in this sky ever again, and if Mom has anything to do with it, I won’t fly either.

Hours later, while the township sleeps, we creep through Nidia’s fog. The very thing that protects us, hides us from the outside world that would harm us, aids in our escape.

Once we turn off our street and move onto Main, Mom sets the car in neutral. Tamra and I push as she guides the vehicle through the town center. The school and meeting hall sit silently, watching us with darkened windows for eyes. Tires crunch over loose gravel. My calves burn as we push.

Holding my breath, I wait, listening for the alarm as we approach the green arched entrance of our township. Nidia’s little ivy-covered cottage looms ahead, a guardhouse nestled at one side of the opening. A dull light glows from the large mullioned window of her living room. Surely she will detect us. It’s her job to let nothing in—or out.

Every pride has at least one shader—a draki who shrouds the village with fog, as well as the mind of any human who should stumble within. Nidia’s fog could make a person forget his own name.

Her talent surpasses my own. The pride lives in fear of her death…the day our grounds will become exposed, visible to passing aircraft and anyone who travels deep enough into the mountains.

I hear nothing from her house. Not a sound. Not even when I let the soles of my shoes slide and grind against the gravel a little too loudly, earning a glare from Tamra.

I shrug. So maybe I want Nidia to catch us. Once we clear the arch, Mom starts the old station wagon. Before I climb in, I take a final look behind me. In the soft glow of Nidia’s living room window, a shadow stands.

The pulse at my throat skitters wildly. I inhale sharply, certain she will sound the alarm now.

The shadow moves. My eyes ache from staring so hard.

Suddenly the light vanishes from the window. I blink and shake my head, bewildered. “No,” I whisper. Why doesn’t she stop us?

“Jacinda, get in,” Tamra hisses before ducking inside the car.

Tearing my gaze away from where Nidia once stood, I think about refusing to go. I could do that.

Here. Now. Dig in my heels and refuse. They couldn’t overpower me. They wouldn’t even try.

But in the end, I’m just not that selfish. Or brave. Unsure which, I follow.

Soon we’re whisking down the mountain, rushing into the unknown. I press my palm against the window’s cool glass, hating the thought of never seeing Az again. A sob wells up in my throat. I didn’t even get to tell her good-bye.

Mom clenches the steering wheel, staring intently out the windshield at the little-traveled road.

She’s nodding. Nodding as if every bob of her head increases her determination to do this.

“A fresh start. Just us girls,” she proclaims in an overly cheerful voice. “Long overdue, right?”

“Right,” Tamra agrees from the back.

I glance over my shoulder at her. As twins, we’ve always shared a connection, a sense of the other’s thoughts and feelings. But right now I can’t read past my own fear.

Tamra smiles, staring out the window as if she sees something in all that black night. At least she’s finally getting her wish. Wherever we’re going, she’ll be the normal one. And I’ll be the one struggling to fit in a world not made for me.

I belong with the pride. Maybe I even belong with Cassian. Even if it breaks Tamra’s heart, maybe it’s right. He’s right. I don’t know. I only know that I can’t live without flight. Without sky and moist, breathing earth. I could never willingly surrender my ability to manifest. I’m not my mother.

How can I fit in among humans? I’ll become like Tamra, a defunct draki. Only worse. Because I would remember what being a draki felt like.

I once saw a show about an amputee who lost his leg and still feels it. He actually wakes up at night to scratch his leg as if it’s still there, attached to him. They call it a phantom limb.

I would be like that. A phantom draki, tormented with the memory of what I once was.

Firelight

5

Air struggles up my throat and past my lips as Mom talks with our new landlady. Even with the air conditioner working at full blast, the air is thin, dry, and empty. I imagine this is how it feels for someone with asthma, this constant fight for breath. As if you can’t ever fill your lungs with enough air. I glare at Mom. Of all the places in the world to relocate, she had to choose a desert. I’m certain she’s a sadist.

We follow the waddling Mrs. Hennessey out the back door of her house, instantly plunging back in-to the arid heat. It sucks at my skin, pulls the moisture from my body like a great vacuum, and makes me feel weak. Only two days in Chaparral, and the desert is taking its toll. Just like Mom knew it would.

“A pool!” Tamra exclaims.

“It’s not for your use,” Mrs. Hennessey injects.

Tamra’s frown is only momentary. Nothing can dent her optimism. A new town, new world. A new life within her grasp.

I fall behind Mom and Tamra. Each lift of my foot requires enormous energy.

Mrs. Hennessey stops at the pool’s curled lip. She motions behind us toward the fence. “You can come and go through the back gate.”

Mom nods, bouncing against her leg the rolled-up newspaper where she’d found the ad for this rental.

The keys jingle in Mrs. Hennessey’s hand. She unlocks the door to the pool house and hands the keys to Mom. “Next month’s rent is due on the first.” Her rheumy gaze skitters over me and Tamra.

“I like it quiet,” she says.

I leave Mom to give assurances and enter the house. Tamra follows. I stare at the dismal living room that smells faintly of mold and chlorine. If possible my heart sinks even lower.

“Not bad,” Tamra announces.

I give her a look. “You’d say that no matter what.”

“Well, it’s only temporary.” She shrugs. “We’ll have our own house soon.”

In her dreams. Shaking my head, I check out the other rooms, wondering how she thinks that’s going to happen. Mom counted change to pay for dinner last night.

The front door shuts. I dig my hands into my pockets, rubbing the lint in the corners between my fingers as I move back into the living room. Mom props her hands on her hips and surveys the house—us—with what seems like genuine satisfaction. Only I can’t believe that. How can she be so happy when I’m so…not?

“Well, girls. Welcome home.”

Home. The word echoes hollowly through me.

It’s evening. I sit at the edge of the pool, dipping my feet in. Even the water is warm. I tilt my face, hoping for wind, missing the mist, the mountains, cool, wet air.

The door behind me opens and shuts. Mom lowers down beside me and stares ahead. I follow her stare. The only thing to see is the backside of Mrs. Hennessey’s house.

“Maybe we can get her to change her mind about the pool after we’ve been here awhile,” Mom says. “It would be nice to swim this summer.”

I guess this is her way of trying to cheer me up, but the only words I hear are after we’ve been here awhile.

“Why?” I snap, swishing my legs faster. “You could have chosen a thousand other locations. Why this place?”

She could have picked anywhere to live. A small town nestled in cool misty hills or mountains. But no, she chose Chaparral, a sprawling city smack in the middle of a desert, ninety miles outside Ve-gas. No cooling condensation to nourish my body. No mists or fogs for cover. No easily accessible hills or mountains. No arable earth. No escape. It’s just cruel.

She inhales. “I thought it might make it easier for you—”

I snort. “Nothing is easy about this.”

“Well, it will make the choice for you.” She reaches out and brushes the hair off my shoulder.

“Nothing like a barren environment to kill off a draki quickly. I should know.”

I cut her a glance. “What do you mean?”

She sucks in a deep breath. “I lived here during my tour.”

I pull back and stare at her. Lots of draki take a tour to gain exposure to the outside world. For a short time anyway. A year, maybe two. But never to someplace hot and dry. Never in a desert. A draki needs to know how to fake being human for survival. Occasionally, rarely, a draki chooses to remain in the human world.

“I thought you went to Oregon. You and Jabel took your tours together and shared an apartment there.”

Mom nods. “I started my tour with Jabel, but after a few months I decided…” Here she pauses for breath. “I decided I didn’t want to go back to the pride.”

I straighten. “How come I never knew this?”

Her lips twist. “Clearly, I came back. I didn’t need everyone to know that it took a bit of arm-twisting.”

Then I get it. I understand who did the arm-twisting. “Dad,” I say.

Her smile softens. “He never toured, you know. There wasn’t any point. He never wanted to be anything but draki.” Her lips wobble and she touches my cheek. “You’re a lot like him.” Sighing, she drops her hand. “Anyway, he visited me once a month in Oregon…and every time he tried to persuade me to come home with him.” Her smile grows bleak. “He made it very difficult.”

She looks me squarely in the face. “I wanted to get away from the pride, Jacinda. Even then. It was never for me, but your dad didn’t make it easy. So I ran. I came here.”

“Here?”

“I figured your dad wouldn’t find me here.”

I rub one of my arms. My skin already feels dry and chalky. “I should think not.”

“Almost at once my draki began to wither. Even when I broke down and risked flight a few times, it wasn’t easy to manifest. It was working. I was on my way to becoming human.”

“But you went back.”

“I finally faced reality. I wanted to give up the pride, but I missed your father. He couldn’t live without being a draki, and I couldn’t live without him.”

I stare out at the water’s surface, still and dead without the faintest ripple of wind, and try to imagine loving someone that much. So much that you would give up all you ever wanted for yourself.

Mom did that.

Couldn’t I make a sacrifice for those I loved? For Mom and Tamra? I’d already lost Dad. Did I really want to lose them, too?

The hunter, Will, flashes in my mind just then. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because he let me go. He didn’t even know me, but he let me go…even though he was trained to do the opposite. He fought what doubtlessly came naturally to him. Hunting and destroying my kind. If he could break from his world, then I could break from mine. I could be that strong.

Mom’s voice rolls over me. “I know it’s hard to accept right now. That’s why I chose this town. The desert will take care of things for you. Eventually.”

Eventually. I only have to wait until my draki is dead. Will I be glad then? Will I thank Mom one day like she seems to think?

She squeezes my knee. “Come inside. I want to go over some things with you and your sister before we enroll you in school.”

My chest clenches at this, but I stand, thinking about all Mom has given up for me, all she’s lost.

And Tamra. She’s never had anything of her own. Maybe it’s finally time. Time for both of them.

“Jacinda Jones, come up here to the front and introduce yourself.”

My stomach twists at these words. It’s third period, which means it’s the third time I’ve had to do this.

I slide out from my desk, stepping over backpacks as I move to the front of the room to stand beside Mrs. Schulz. Thirty pairs of eyes fasten on me.

Mom enrolled us last Friday. She insisted it was time. That attending high school is the first step to assimilating. The first step to normal. Tamra is thrilled, unafraid, ready for this.

All last night, awake in my bed, sick to my stomach, I thought about today. I thought about the pride and all I was giving up. So what if daylight flight was forbidden? At least I could fly. The rules I chafed against with the pride suddenly pale beside this new reality. I’m not even sure why I resisted Cassian so much anymore. Was it only for Tamra? Or was there something within me other than loyalty to my sister that opposed being with him?