Warrior from the Shadowland (13 page)

No
response.  His jaw developed a tick.

“So,
if I somehow, magically, found another
un
broken,
not
wrong Match,
you’d -What?- throw him a bachelor party before sending him off to Phaze with
me?”

Mercury
eyes sparked.  Cross’ gaze cut back to hers so fast that Nia was surprised it
didn’t ignite the oxygen in the air.  “If I lost you, I’d topple the world
without a second thought.”  He snarled.  “But, I swear to God, any man who
tries to take you from me, I’ll kill slowly before the apocalypse even gets
started.”

“See? 
Now, that sounded kind of like a real Match.”  Nia mused.  Honestly, his
possessiveness turned her on, because she felt the same way about him.  If any
other woman came near Cross, Nia would crush the bitch with a tidal wave.

Cross
was breathing hard, apparently coming to some tough conclusions.  “I’d
literally kill anyone else who touched you.”  He repeated, almost to himself. 
“I know I would. 
Fuck.
  You really are stuck with me.”

Nia
shrugged.  “Could be worse.  At least, you’re pretty to look at.”

“Would
you be serious?  You just said yourself that we can’t Phaze.  Where the hell
does that leave you, Nia?”

“I
didn’t say that.  I said we wouldn’t be able to Phaze
properly
with you
holding back.  You need to be a full Match and trust me to do my part.  Let me
share the weight of the Shadows.”

He
leaned down so their foreheads nearly touched.  “It will.
Never.
Happen.”

She
met him glare for glare.  “Then, I guess you’ll just have to think of something
else for us to try, genius, because I’m all out of ideas.”

Cross
swore viciously.  “I already told you my idea.  We just don’t Phaze.  Ever. 
Very simple and foolproof.”

“That’s
not an idea.  That’s fear.”  Nia went for the patriotism vote.  “If we don’t
Phaze, we won’t have children.  With so few Phases left, do you think that’s
really the right choice?”

“With
so few Phases left, I think it’s the
wrong
choice to let one be
flattened by Shadow energy because she’s too damn stubborn to listen to
reason.”  He shot back.  “You’re fucking right, I’m afraid.  You could
die
,
Nia.  How can you ask me to risk that?”

She
rolled her eyes.  “No one dies from Phazing.”

“A
lot of stuff that ‘never happens,’ happens to me.”

Nia
tried, again.  “You’re talking about a celibate Phase-Match.  Do you hear how
crazy that sounds?”

“I
want
you
.”  He muttered.  “I want you alive, and safe, and around
forever.  Even if it means that I can’t touch you, I want you with me.  I don’t
care if it’s crazy.  Phazing isn’t the most important thing to me. 
You
are.  I won’t endanger you.”

Nia
blinked.

That
was… beautiful.

What
a lovely, romantic thing for such a big, stubborn warrior to say.

But,
she still wasn’t giving in.

“Cross.” 
She cleared her throat.  “I don’t want you just because of the Phazing,
either.  I wouldn’t want our relationship to be like that.  I want more.”

He
looked relieved.  “Good.”

Nia
wasn’t done.  “And if, for some reason, we
couldn’t
Phaze, I’d be okay
with that.  I’d be happy just having you as my Match.  But, that’s not what
this is.  This is you being paranoid and self-destructive.  And I’m not going
to go along with that.”

He
ran a hand through his hair.  “Look, I get that you want a kid.  Of
course
,
you’d want one.  I’m sorry.  I am.  We can get a dog or a horse or something.”

“I
don’t want a horse!  I want a baby.”  Nia waved a hand.  “And that’s not even
the point.  Look, do you really think you can resist the Phazing energy
permanently?  Unless you stay far away from me, I…”

“I’m
not staying away from you.”  The words were unequivocal.  “No.”

That
was good news, because if he tried Nia would just have to stalk him around
until he came to his senses.  That would be a bother.  “Well, how do you plan
to hold out against a biological imperative, then?”

Cross
didn’t respond to that.  Nia could see his mind working.

“Both
of us will go out of minds.”  She pressed.  “You know that.  This isn’t going
to work.  There’s no way.  My energy is already driving me nuts.”

“You
need release.  That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes,
but Phazing is more than just physical.  We’re connected, Cross.  You said that
you felt me, right?  You somehow knew that I was your Phase-Match right after
the Fall?”

“I
felt you.”  He agreed, warily.  “I didn’t know who you were exactly, but I felt
you out there someplace.”

That
actually distracted her for a beat.  “You knew that you had a Match, but you
didn’t know I was me?”  She translated.

He
squinted.  “Yeah, I guess so.”

Nia
suddenly felt a lot better.  “Then, you didn’t
deliberately
abandon me
for two years?”  She just wanted to make absolutely sure before she forgave
him.

“Do
I look like an idiot?  Of course, it wasn’t deliberate!  I would have gladly
traded centuries off my life to find you sooner.  What the hell do you think?” 
He scraped a hand through his hair.  “Shit, I can’t believe we’re on this topic
again.  Do you own a mirror, for God’s sake?  What kind of dumbass
wouldn’t
give anything to have you?”

Nia
was so touched by his annoyance that she leaned up to press her lips against
his.  She felt Cross hiss in a breath as the Phazing sparked between them.  Passion
took over like a wildfire.  Apparently forgetting every single thing he’d just
said, Cross grabbed her closer, his mouth devouring hers.

Nia
kissed him back, mentally cheering her victory.

Best
debate
ever
.

It was not
crime that she had done; it was elemental justice.

Arthur
B. Reeve- “The Dream Doctor”

“I
don’t think Nia’s coming for us.”  Tharsis muttered.  He leaned up against the
wall of his cell and sighed.  “We’ll just have to do our time for the next
seven to ten years, I guess.  Then, pray that the parole board is merciful. 
I’ll need to get some cigarettes to trade with the other prisoners, though. 
And I’ll probably have to sell you to gang members.”  He looked over at Ty and
shrugged.  “Nothing personal, but I saw
Oz
.  It’s every man for himself
here in the big house.”

Ty
glared at him through the Plexiglas partition separating them.  “You should be
nicer to me.  Which of us is more likely to come-up with a viable escape plan,
at this point?”

“Hey,
I also saw
The Shawshank Redemption
.  All I need is a Rita Hayworth
poster and a couple of decades and I’m on my way to Baja.”  Tharsis waggled his
eyebrows.  “Or we could do a
Prison Break
and get all tattooed.  How
cool would you look with some tats, huh?  Think about it:  Queen Tritone, Badass
Despot.”

Ty
felt her mouth twitch.  “I’ll consider it.  If I ever see daylight again, I’ll
probably want to commemorate ‘the first day of the rest of my life’ with some
kind of tribal marking, anyway.  Would a rose or a koi fish look more regal
tattooed on my hip?”

Tharsis
chuckled.  “No, do ‘Hello Kitty.’”  He nodded towards her hat.  “A permanent,
trademarked memorial to our B and E prowess.”

The
two of them had been passing the time teasing each other for the past
half-hour.  There wasn’t anything else to do in the Mayport Beach jail and it
certainly beat focusing on what might happen if the Reprisal or Parald found
out where they were.

Ordinarily,
getting thrown in jail would have been annoying, but not really anything to
worry about.  Elementals could’ve manipulated the metal bars of any ordinary
cage in a dozen different ways.  If there had been spaces between jail bars,
Tharsis could’ve used Water powers to pry them apart with a little effort.

Unfortunately,
the holding cells at the Mayport Beach jail were made of state of the art,
bulletproof, Plexiglas, for some reason.  No Elemental could manipulate
Plexiglas or any type of plastic.  Tharsis had argued that they’d prefer to be
in “real” jail, like they’d seen on TV, but Police Chief Sullivan Pryce remained
unmoved.

Ty
made a face and looked out one of the small, circular cut-outs that studded the
Plexiglas walls, allowing the prisoners to breathe.  They had a toilet and a
cot in the cell.  All their Constitutional rights were taken care of, according
to Sullivan, so they could just suffer through whatever aesthetic problems they
had with their cage and shut-up.  He really was a very hard man to reason with.

“I
wish I’d found the name before the Air House attacked.”  She murmured for the
sixtieth time.  No matter how Tharsis tried to distract her, Ty’s mind always
went back to her failure at the hospital.  One would think that she’d be used
to failure by now, but it still stung.  She’d been so close and Parald’s Phases
had wrecked everything.  Ty wasn’t sure why that was a surprise, either.  Her
ex-Match delighted in ruining her life whenever he could.

Bastard.

She
shook her head, trying to clear the image of his face from her memories.  Ty
didn’t like to think about Parald.

Ever.

If
she found the Quintessence she could make up for so much that she’d done
wrong.  It couldn’t rewind time.  At least, she didn’t
think
that It
could.  Ty knew that Nia wanted it to undo the Fall, but Ty wasn’t so sure that
was possible.  Still, maybe it could
somehow
fix things.  Restore at
least part of what Parald had destroyed.

Ty
had first started looking into human medical journals and hospital databases
out of some kind of survivor’s guilt.  She’d wanted to know why she’d survived
the Fall when so many others had died.  When the Elemental libraries had turned
up nothing, she’d looked to the humans’ knowledge for answers.  Ty had a theory
that there was a connection between the humans’ immunity to the Fall and why
some Elementals didn’t contract it.  A statistically improbable number Phases
had survived in family groupings.  The immunity had to be genetic.  Following
that logic, Ty was working on the idea that some kind of human gene had
protected a handful of Elementals.

Of
course, it was heresy to even suggest that Elemental bloodlines might be soiled
with human DNA, but Ty knew she was onto something.

It
was a working hypothesis.  Her pet project.  Her only way to repent.

What
she’d
never
expected to find in her digging was evidence of the Divine. 
Reports of critically sick children mysteriously healed.  Of disaster victims
saved against all medical odds.  Of elderly patients feeling young again.

Miracles.

Ty
wasn’t certain why the scattered tales had caught her attention.  They really
were just isolated news stories and hospital gossip circulating among the
humans.  Except, the more Ty stared at the words and images on her computer
screen, the more certain she’d been that all the separate snippets and rumors
were connected.  Pieces of a larger whole.

Again
and again, the same pattern would appear.  For months, Ty researched every odd
story that popped up.  Every supposedly miraculous cure that was reported, she
double-checked and analyzed.  She’d thought it was part of her ongoing mental
breakdown.  Some sort of wish fulfillment fantasy, where she was searching for
a chance to miraculously alleviate the sickness and decayed horror inside her
own mind.

But,
it wasn’t.

She’d
discovered something even better.

For
countless nights, Ty stared into the blue glow of her laptop, her bedroom door
bolted tight against the oppressive darkness of her own thoughts.  Until one
night, she’d realized that she wasn’t crazy.  There was a connection to all the
stories.  A reason beyond her delusions.

Something
magical and so simple she wasn’t sure how she’d missed it.

Blood.

All
the verified cases of healing traced back to a blood transfusion.  And the
blood from the transfusions came from Mayport Beach, Florida.  When she finally
put the puzzle together, Ty had sat frozen at her computer until the
screensaver feature kicked in and went to endlessly shifting fields of black
and white daisies.  She’d found scientific evidence of the Quintessence.  It
was real and she knew where to look for it.

For
the first time since her ninety-third birthday, Ty had felt a fissure of hope
about the future.  The Quintessence could potentially solve so many problems
for the Elementals.  For Ty.  Finding it had become her obsession.

“Ty,
we’ll find the name of the Quintessence.”  Tharsis soothed for the sixtieth
time.  “Don’t worry about it.  We have time.”

Except
they didn’t and everyone knew it.  The Elementals were dying out and taking the
rest of universe down with them.

And
it was all Ty’s fault.

They
had to discover who had donated that blood.

She
took her hat off and ran a hand through her short, red curls.  “What about
Nia?”  She asked, focusing on the other topic preying on her mind.  “Do you
think Uriel’s right and Cross is her Match?”

Tharsis
considered that for a beat and then nodded.  “Yeah.  I do.  The guy was acting
just like a male Phase acts around his Match.  And he sure got Nia outta that
lab in a hurry when the cops busted us.”

“I’m
not sure how Cross did that.  Or where the Air House Phases’ bodies went.”  Ty
adjusted her glasses and lifted a shoulder.  “I mean, I get a good feeling from
him, but I worry about Nia being alone with him for so long.  Matches aren’t
always right.”  Ty actually hated the very idea of Matches.  They tried to
steal freewill and trap you to someone forever.  Even if he was horrible.

Tharsis
stared at her through the plastic.  “Not every man’s like Parald, sweetheart.” 
He said, softly.

Ty
winced and focused on the stitching at the brim of her baseball cap.  “I know. 
But some
are
.”

“Matches
can be a good thing.”  Tharsis insisted.  “Look at my parents.  Look at
your
parents.  They loved each other right to the end.  Parald…”

Ty
cut Tharsis off with a shudder.  “I don’t want to talk about him.”

There
was a sudden surge of power so strong it blew out one of the overhead lights.

Tharsis
straightened to his full height.  “Oh, shit.  Ty, get down.”  He moved closer
to the plastic wall separating them, instinctively seeking to protect her.

Ty
ignored her cousin’s warning.  She got up from the cot she’d been sitting on,
so she could meet the danger on her feet.  Her doctor called it a heightened
fight-or-flight response, but Ty couldn’t really do either in her plastic cell.

Energy
crackled as a single Phase appeared in the room with them.

Dread
pooled in Ty’s stomach when she saw it wasn’t Job.  Aside from Job and Cross,
there were very few Elementals powerful enough to jump into the human realm
alone.

And
this one was the worst of the lot.

Gion,
of the Air House.

Parald’s
second-in-command.

Ty’s
pulse skyrocketed at the sight of him.  She felt the lightheaded, slightly
dizzy sensation that she always got before a panic attack.  Her breathing
increased, her palms went damp and vertigo swirled at the edges of her vision.
For some reason, Gion was one of the biggest triggers for her disease.

Or
maybe the reason was just that he was mean and scary on the level of some
nightmarish high school bully mixed with an unstoppable slasher movie
supervillain.

Just
the sound of his name set off Ty’s anxiety.  She’d been raised to be a queen,
though.  None of the exponentially increasing panic showed on her face as Gion
stepped closer to her.  Ty had never lost it in public and she especially
didn’t want to reveal her instability to
him
.

He’d
eat her alive.

Gion
glided around the edge of her Plexiglas cell, like a shark circling a diver in
a cage.  “This is interesting, Tritone.  I always expect surprises with you,
but this…”  He rapped a fist against the plastic and smirked.  “Well, it’s a
terrarium, isn’t it?”

Gion
was fascinating in the way of cobras.  From a strictly academic standpoint, it
was possible to see the deadly grace and striking beauty of him.  But, you sure
as hell didn’t want to get real close out in the wild.

Like
most members of the Air House, Gion had icy blue eyes that constantly reflected
displeasure with everything around him.  But, instead of the Hitler Youth,
blond and wholesome haircuts that Parald and most of the other Air Phases
shared, Gion’s shoulder length mane was the color of dark licorice.  Tall and
aristocratic, the streak at his temple had the yellowish brilliance of twenty-four
karat gold.

“I
can’t believe you’re still wearing that fucking cape, Guy.”  Tharsis put-in,
scornfully.  He took in Gion’s solid black uniform and high gloss leather
boots, and snorted.  “Dude, seriously.  You look ridiculous.  You don’t come to
the human realm dressed like that unless it’s Halloween or a Star Wars
convention.”

“Sadly,
not all of us have your impeccable fashion sense, Tharsis.”  Gion spared Thar’s
Armani and Converse sneaker combo a quick dismissive glance and then focused on
Ty, again.  “As I imagine that soon you’ll both be resplendent in prison
jumpsuits, I doubt you’ll be able to keep your spots on the best dressed lists
this season, either.”  He leaned closer to the door of Ty’s cell and lowered
his voice to a commiserating tone.  “The neon orange will do
nothing
for
that lovely red hair of yours, either.”

Ty
didn’t respond to that.  She wanted Gion to think that she just wasn’t giving
him the satisfaction.  But, in reality, she knew that if she tried to answer
him, her voice would stutter and give away her nervousness.  If that happened,
her whole façade would crack and she’d start screaming like a lunatic.

 She
didn’t do well with stressful situations.  In fact, Ty was so bad at them, that
Nia and Tharsis had been taking her to a psychiatrist in an effort to help cure
her.  Even Job had okayed that idea.  There wasn’t a lot of mental health care
in the Elemental realm, so they had to try human methods.

Ty
couldn’t tell her very solicitous human doctor
everything
that had
happened, obviously.  But, she’d revealed enough that he’d diagnosed her with
some kind of posttraumatic stress disorder and given her an anti-anxiety drug
to take.  Human medicine wasn’t very useful for Phases, but the prescription
was Ty’s safety net now and she took her dosage religiously.  The debilitating
panic wasn’t a lot better, but at least swallowing the pills made it seem like
she was accomplishing something.