Category Archives: Fire and Water

Enya Royston has hidden from herself and her abilities, fearing the destruction that always comes with using them.

Author’s Note: It’s always interesting introducing a new character this late into the game, but if he’d come in sooner, well…

A Less than Warm Welcome

“We’re not missing anyone,” Sherwin said, coming around the car to tug on his sister’s arm. They couldn’t afford to let this guy bait them. They had to get in the car and go before the guy’s friends got here, and they were not going to give him a chance at any of them, not when Cress wasn’t with them. Damn it, why’d he have to leave now, of all times?

Oh, right.

Sherwin already knew the answer to that one. He would have to deal with that later.

“I don’t know… Your numbers seem off to me,” the guy in the coat said, taking a quick count and nodding. “Should be eight. You’ve got five.”

“Yeah, sure. Just the right number for the proper orgy, right?” Enya said, rolling her eyes for effect as she grabbed hold of the door.

“Now, see, you… You’re what made me stop,” he said, taking a step toward her. “That feeling is almost painful, and I should have walked away, but for a moment I would have sworn…”

Moira reached out, knocking the man back with a blast of wind that had him hitting the building. He grunted, struggling to get back to his feet. Sherwin gave her a look, but then he saw Occie move closer to Enya, pulling her away from the mirror on the car. She shuddered, and again, Sherwin cursed Cress for not being there—and himself for being a part of why the other man wasn’t.

“Stay away from her,” Moira said to the rogue and then spoke to the others. “Get in the car.”

Oceana forced the keys into his hand, and Sherwin grimaced. He understood the choice—no way Enya could drive like this, Oceana needed to be free to deal with the firebug, same with Terra, and Moira was in charge, giving orders, so it was up to him to do it. He just hoped that she wouldn’t grab him for anything during it. Cress was the only one who could manage to drive and use his abilities, and that was probably because he was so used to having one of them going all the time anyway.

Didn’t explain why Sherwin almost always crashed them into something if he drove, but whatever.

“Damn it,” the firebug said, dragging himself up. “That was overkill, don’t you think?”

“Not particularly. What did you do to the water elemental?”

“Nothing. You think I’m stupid enough to go up against one of them that powerful on my own?”

“Plenty of you are,” Moira said, folding her arms over her chest. “I can smell the rain on you. I’m only going to ask one more time, and if you don’t answer me then, it’ll be a lot worse than a gust of wind.”

“Yeah, don’t make her do the tornado thing. She gets scary when she does that, and I say that as the brother who loves her dearly.”

The firebug smiled a little. “I remember those days. Look, I didn’t touch him. Yeah, there’s a water elemental I want dead, and I’ve been hunting him for a while now, tracking these freak storms to do it—he’s one of few I know who can manipulate the rain—but the one I saw first wasn’t the one I was looking for.”

Moira gave him a dark look. “There’s a reason we tend to stay close to Colorado. No one can predict the weather here. Try again.”

“Good choice.”

“Wasn’t mine.”

“Right. Makes sense that the one who could set off the rain would think of it,” the firebug said, frowning as he looked down. “Damn it, what the hell?”

“Now he’s not a problem,” Terra said, her lips curved into a slight smile that seemed more than a little psychotic to Sherwin.

Still, it wasn’t like he didn’t want to laugh to see the firebug half stuck in the ground thanks to their earth elemental. Someone must have forgotten what a girl like her could do. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.”

Moira turned back. “Why?”

“I said that was the first water elemental saw, the one that looks like your girl there. The other is the one I’ve been hunting. I would have waited to see who won that one, came in and cleaned up afterward, but one of the second one’s goons spotted me. I dealt with them, and that’s when I sensed her. Your fire. For a second there, I thought I felt my sister again, even let that distract me when I knew better, but… if that water elemental’s yours, he might be in trouble.”

“Damn it, Cress.” Moira let out a breath and motioned to the car. “We’re going.”

“You’re really going to leave me like this?”

Moira walked toward him, leaning over him. “Understand this—while I find forest fires tragic and suspect you might resort to that to free yourself, I am not about to trust you on your word alone. I’m not a fool, and I don’t take risks with my friends’ lives. You get to stay right where Terra put you, and you’d better hope that the rain doesn’t come this way.”

Sherwin grimaced, pulling his sister back. “You’re getting scary again. Maybe we have to let Cress lead. I don’t like you like this.”

Moira would have knocked him down with the wind, and he knew it. Damn. He didn’t know that Cress could lead them anymore, and he didn’t agree with a lot of what Cress had done, but Sherwin didn’t like the effect it was having on his sister, either.

Still, compared to what they could have done to the rogue, that was tame.

Author’s Note: And… a bit of aftermath and transition…

And someone new. 🙂

A Sudden Shift

“Where’s Cress?”

“He got it in his head that he had to deal with the safe-deposit box, and he left.”

Moira grimaced. Now was not the time for any of them to go off on their own, and Cress knew that better than anyone. He’d led the team for too long to be that stupid, but then she should have known that something was wrong. “That have anything to do with the sudden rainstorm that drenched us on our way back?”

Oceana nodded. She ran her hands over her arms, shaking her head before she looked to the other door. “I want to blame your brother, but it’s not all his fault. Cress just… He couldn’t watch, not that. Seeing him just then… Putting a knife in his gut would have been kinder. I should have stopped him, but he’s never wanted anyone to see him struggle, not with anything. Maybe things will be different now that he’s not in charge, but he’s used to holding everything in and not showing a bit of weakness. I had to give him space. That’s the only way I know to help him now. He’s fracturing fast, though, and I’m not sure he should be a part of going after Stone.”

“Damn it, I told Sherwin not to bother. I know he’s always kind of… circled back to her, but that’s not love. He just doesn’t know any better.”

Oceana shrugged. “I think he wants to, but this is not the time for it. We all cope with the weirdness that is our lives in different ways. He went for dating whenever he could regardless of what the inevitable outcome would be—us leaving—whereas you and most of the rest of us just decided that was off-limits.”

Moira looked at her. “Yeah, and if you think that I was ever under any illusions about you and Stone, you’re a fool. Where do you hide the ring, anyway?”

Oceana said nothing, turning away to gather her things. Moira shook her head, not feeling like cleaning up another of her brother’s messes, but they had to get on the move, fast. She didn’t have time to ignore it or let him try and muddle through fixing it. She knocked on the door, keeping the rap short and precise. “Enya?”

“Coming.”

The door opened a few seconds later, and Enya forced a smile. “I want to thank you for trying to head your brother off.”

“Apparently, putting him into a wall wasn’t enough.”

“Oh, he had to try, one last time, I suppose,” Enya said, pulling at her shirt. “Next time we stop, we’re arranging a wardrobe change, right? I’m not even sure where this came from. Everything I had must have gotten burned, so this is… yours?”

“Oceana’s. She’s the closest to your size, and even then, it doesn’t fit. We’ll take care of that next time. Promise.”

Enya nodded. “Probably a good idea. I bet we’re all getting a bit ripe since the only ones who managed to spend any time in the bath were the guppies.”

“Hey! I am not a guppy, and if Chess were here, he’d douse you for that,” Occie said, shaking her head. “We got everything we need? The laptop and everything’s here, Terra’s already back in the car, and I told Sherwin to get in already.”

“You did? I didn’t hear any yelling.”

“Sherwin doesn’t need anyone to yell, remember?”

Enya bit her lip. She closed her eyes for a moment. “I… I feel kind of strange at the moment, and I’m not sure I know what to… I was going to blame it on what Sherwin did, but I haven’t felt like this since… Since the last time I saw Aidan before the fire. It’s not quite the same, but that’s the closest I can get to pinning it down.”

Moira stiffened. “That’s usually the way one of us feels when we sense a rogue that’s close—real close. Damn, if this guy is working with the agency, they found us already. In the car, quick.”

“You said that Cress was gone.”

“He got stubborn about the safe-deposit box.”

“Can you handle a fire rogue on your own?”

Occie shifted the bundle in her arms. “I doubt I could douse him like Cress can, but I’m not on my own. I have the rest of you to help if we need it, but hopefully all we have to do is drive away and be done with it.”

“It’s never that simple with us,” Moira said, opening the door with a gust of wind, letting Occie go in front of her and then Enya. She would have given the unstable one the thankless task of driving again, but having the other firebug nearby seemed to have upset her, and it would be better if she wasn’t behind the wheel.

“Nice touch with the wind.”

She turned, watching the lighter flick open and shut in the man’s hand, over and over. He didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. She wasn’t surprised. A lot of the rogues attuned to fire carried one, covering up their own abilities and exaggerating pyromaniac stereotypes, just like he was with the dark clothes and the unkempt appearance. “What’s it to you?”

“Been a long time since I ran into anyone like you,” he said, closing the lighter and putting it in his jacket pocket. He shoved his hands in afterward, giving her a smile. “You wouldn’t happen to be missing a water elemental, would you?”

Author’s Note: Sherwin had to try.

Not Love

“Hey, sleepyheads.”

Cress grunted, walking over to his sister’s side, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She looked up at him with a slight smile. The water twins were together again, and that was for the best. They were closer than any of the other pairs, and Enya now wondered if it had more to do with what they’d been through growing up instead of what they’d always assumed it was—the twin thing.

She closed her eyes. Times like this, she found herself missing Aidan more than ever. She would never stop being jealous of the others. Even Terra. Stone was still alive, and they’d find him, and this would be them in a few days, back to the teasing and easy smiles and comfort of the company no matter what fight they might have had or what crisis might have happened.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t have to look to know it wasn’t Cress. “You okay?”

“Fine. I slept good, feel a lot better…”

“That’s good,” Sherwin said, coming around to make sure she saw his smile. “You got a minute? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

Enya frowned. “I don’t know. Do we have a minute, Occie?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Moira slept later than she wanted, and she and Terra aren’t back from the banks. When they get here, we’ll have to be on the move, but we all agreed that we have to give up our current vehicle for a new one, so we’re waiting unless they call and tell us to meet them somewhere. So, don’t go far, but you should have time to talk.”

Cress put a hand to his head. “I didn’t give Moira the key to the safe-deposit box.”

“That can wait.”

“I don’t think so.”

Sherwin grimaced as they started arguing about it, trying to get Enya to leave the room. She didn’t want to hear the argument, but she didn’t feel like being alone with Sherwin, either. “Here is good. Say what you need to say. It’s not like they’ll hear us.”

“So, Moira put me into the wall last night and told me that I didn’t stand a chance so I shouldn’t bother, but I need to ask you something.”

“Um, I’m not sure what you mean, but—”

“Us, Enya. I know I’m an idiot most of the time, and I know I screwed it up real bad in the past, but I never… There’s been quite a few women come and go over the years, but other than Moira, no one’s really stuck around or made me want to come back, not like… you.”

She blinked. “Sherwin, I…”

“Is there someone else? Someone from back in your other life?”

Damn. She’d never so much as called her boss, not that she could have, but Helen probably thought she was dead and was mourning her or something, and that wasn’t fair. “There was no one there, but this really isn’t the place for this. Or the time. We have to get Stone back, and we need to worry about that and the agency and—”

Sherwin took hold of her face, pressing his lips to hers, and she’d figured this was coming, but it still managed to overwhelm her. She pushed at his chest, trying to make him stop, hating herself for how weak she still was to this. Sherwin had a talent for this and far too much experience, picked up from all the women he’d dated over the years, and she heard herself moan. She cursed.

“Well, that’s still there, at least.”

“Sherwin, don’t. That’s just physical, and this always was a bad idea. You’re the wind, you can’t be tied down, and I don’t want to be caught up in another cycle of you thinking you want to be. It might have been fun for a while, but it never lasts.”

“It’s been a long time, Enya. I’ve grown up since then.”

She shook her head. Her stomach was all twisted up, and her mind was a mess. She couldn’t think. “I would like to believe that, but that still doesn’t mean I’m interested in doing this again. I won’t. When we get Stone back—I’m going home. This was never my life, and it won’t be now.”

“You think I couldn’t try and settle down? I’d do it for the right person, and I can’t help thinking that’s you,” he said, putting his hand on her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her skin.

She winced. “No, I’m not. I never was. You could use me as an excuse not to settle with any of the other women you met, and that might even have let you fool yourself into thinking you loved me, but you don’t. I’m not that person.”

“I swear I could change your mind if you’d give me a chance.”

She shivered, remembering the kiss, aware that her body was eager to give him that chance, but her head knew a lot better, and her heart wasn’t in it. “No.”

“If you were back home and I showed up at your door?”

“Sherwin—”

He kissed her again, and she tried to hold onto her willpower. She didn’t want this. Well, no, a part of her did, a part of her had always been weak to him, and if he’d asked her for this back before she left, she’d have said yes. She’d been ready to elope with him before the fire, but that fire changed everything. She’d lost her family… and Sherwin hadn’t been there for her at all.

She pushed him back. “Don’t. This isn’t happening.”

Sherwin put a hand over hers. “Not even if you have time to think about it, time for me to prove that I mean everything I’m saying?”

“You don’t,” she told him, pulling herself free and walking back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She hated this. Why did he have to do this? Why was she so weak? She didn’t love him, he’d hurt her too much for that, and she didn’t need to go back to fooling herself. That was never love. Hormones, attraction, but not love.

Love scared her. She only killed the things she loved, and she wouldn’t love anything ever again.

Author’s Note: It’s funny how moments can shift from intense and dramatic to funny and back again. It’s always such a balancing act…

Still Waters

Enya knew she hadn’t slept that good in over twelve years. She couldn’t deny that. She also knew why she’d been able to get that kind of rest. He was still asleep on the other side of the room, still needing time to recuperate from supporting her all through the night. She shook her head. Cress shouldn’t have to do this all the time, but then they all had some kind of drawback to what they were, didn’t they? She couldn’t control any of it, he couldn’t shut off his empathic abilities, and the others had their problems, too. Sherwin couldn’t stop being full of hot air, Moira was too cold most of the time, Oceana was stuck with the things her brother couldn’t do, Terra was half-insane, and Stone…

Well, he was the one who’d really lost in this scenario, hadn’t he?

“Stop thinking so loud.”

“You’re not telepathic.”

“All right. Stop feeling so strongly,” Cress said, groaning as he rolled over. She shouldn’t find it so amusing to see his annoyance, but she did. “I thought we were leaving early. That sun seems rather… bright.”

“Maybe they ditched us.”

“I can see them leaving me after all I’ve done, but what did you do that would make them abandon you? You’re pretty much innocent in all this.”

Innocent wasn’t a word she’d use to describe herself. Ever. Even if he wanted to believe that she wasn’t the one who started the fire and his parents had let it burn, had let it kill, that wouldn’t change. “Some of them still hate me for not being here.”

“I asked you to go. Let them hate me.”

“You determined to be a martyr? You gave me what you thought I wanted,” she told him, and he frowned. She shouldn’t have said that. She had been happy, sort of, other than missing him and the others. She’d been safe and didn’t have to fear the mirrors. She could have had everything a normal person did, and he’d given that to her. She now got to see the cost.

Cress ran a hand through his hair. “It’s… Never mind. I think I have been… I don’t think I’ve ever had this much failure staring me in the face before.”

“Even though Moira’s in charge now, no one wanted it before, and you did what you could. No one can do more than that, and you didn’t know then what you do now.”

He shook his head. “Twelve years is a long time to waste.”

“You don’t know that it was a waste.”

He rose. “We’d better join the others. They were generous, letting us sleep, but this is a bit much. We should have been on the move by now.”

“You just can’t quit, can you? You’re still trying to lead.”

“It’s a habit now.”

She stood, touching his arm. “Why did you do it?”

“Become the leader when I didn’t want to be? We’ve already talked about that, and I can’t say I have any new reasons or good ones, but I gave you what I had. If you’re asking about why I asked you to leave, I… I thought you knew that already.”

She did, though sometimes she wanted to ask him if there was more to his decision than he was saying. She didn’t know how to feel about that, so she never did ask. She swallowed. “Why didn’t you tell us about your parents?”

He looked down at his feet and then back at her. “I might have had more control over some of my abilities than my parents did, but they still had their holds over me… They could use me as a conduit, or they could freeze me when I asked questions they didn’t like or if I wouldn’t listen to them. I could be stuck there for hours unless I managed to overcome it—I’m better at it now than I was—or Occie set me free. Even though they told me he wasn’t a threat, I used to think he’d come back and finish what he’d started, and I had a very vivid imagination for what that would be like for all that it never happened. I could have gotten out of it if I’d killed them, but I couldn’t. No, I wouldn’t. I could have.”

“And if you told us, we’d end up fighting and killing your parents.”

“Possibly.”

“And we all thought that your parents were great.”

“That, too.”

She sighed, putting her hand on his cheek. “You have so many issues, all that stuff locked up in your head and your heart. You have a lot bottled up, don’t you? You know, I’m tempted to make a terrible pun now, about still waters running deep…”

He grimaced. “Please stop there.”

She grinned, making no promises before she left the room.

Author’s Note: A different voice this time, but an important one who’s been very quiet so far, with good reason, of course.

The Earth Stirs

A part of him figured he was dead, and he’d never felt anything quite like the weight crushing his chest at the moment, but if he were dead, would he feel pain? He supposed they might all end up in hell—he doubted any religious people would see what they did with the elements as natural or anything—or maybe on the other side of the barrier. That could be it. He could have gone on the other side of the barrier. That could be why he wasn’t dead when he swore he must have been.

He couldn’t move, and for the first time in more years than he wanted to think about, he couldn’t feel the earth, either.

Could that be what it was like to be on the other side? Was that why he didn’t feel right? Something had gone wrong, real wrong, if he’d ended up on the other side. He didn’t think the gaps were that wide, but then again, all it took was one broken mirror to control an element, and the elements were supposed to be some of the most powerful things on the planet.

He tried to remember their old conversations, pinpoint what they did know of the land on the other side of the barrier, but nothing came to him. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Those words were familiar enough, repeating far too often in any discussion of what they were and what they could do.

He heard something rattle, and when he got his head to turn, he saw the IV stand next to him, the line hanging down and curving up to where it connected to his arm. Damn. He should have known. He wasn’t on the other side at all. This was the agency’s doing, wasn’t it?

They’d had to sedate rogues before, ones they’d stopped with the elements only to have them start fighting again as soon as they recovered. Worst one was a fire elemental that decided the summer was a perfect time to set brush fires all through the state and laugh as the firefighters were unable to contain them. He kept trying to kill them as soon as he got enough energy, and they didn’t have a choice. Cress had lulled the bastard to sleep a few times, but that wasn’t enough to hold him, and Cress was at a breaking point when Moira had intervened with the drugs. No one asked her where she got them from, but it worked.

Stone should have remembered that, figured that was what had been done to him, but he was slow on the uptake at the moment. He’d blame it on the bullets. He knew he’d gotten hit at least once, enough to figure it was as good as over. Bullets and drugs. That was it. No wonder he couldn’t think or move.

If he could move…

Did they know enough about him to know he was earth? Did they know enough make sure that it was more than the drugs keeping him from the earth? If he could get near a window or touch the walls or floor, their little prison would never hold him. He was nowhere near Cress’ league—he would have flooded the room and broken out in the time it took Stone to figure out what was going on—but he knew how to manipulate things, and anything that had a bit of dirt or a connection to the ground was enough. Some things he could do with only line of sight.

If he got out of this bed, he was as good as out of here.

“I see we are going to have to increase your medication. What part of your connection allows you to overcome that, I wonder? With me, all it takes is a quick flush. Nothing stays in my system that I don’t want.”

Stone grimaced. That sounded like a water elemental, and he knew that Cress could do that—he and Occie always seemed to skip the hangovers everyone got stuck with—and that time the pollen had gotten the rest of them, a nice biological weapon manipulated by a rogue earth elemental, Cress just kind of shrugged it off and then took out the rogue on his own.

“Well, no matter. You’re going to remain our guest for a while yet. I have a very special task for you, and you have to stay put or you won’t recover.”

“Won’t… help… you.”

“Such gratitude. My people saved your life. Yours abandoned you.”

Stone shook his head. That was not how Cress worked. He was too damn loyal for that. Even if the team would have fallen apart then—he knew his sister well enough to know she would have gone to pieces after he went down and Occie would have been struggling even with her amazing control over her emotions—Cress would not have abandoned him.

“Was dead.”

“True, but perhaps they should have made sure there was no bringing you back from that first.”

Short of Cress suddenly developing the ability to manipulate lightning, too, Stone didn’t see how they could have. Maybe Moira and Sherwin could have forced air into his lungs, but that wouldn’t have meant he’d ever have started breathing on his own again.

Stone saw the man reaching for the IV, and he tried to pull his arm free, but his body was still too sluggish. He couldn’t stop him or get the damn needle out. Something about that bastard was familiar, though. Stone didn’t know how, couldn’t remember, but he did know that man.

He’d have to figure it out the next time he was conscious.

Author’s Note: Now that that part’s settled, they can do a bit of work as a team. Sort of.

The Team is Family… Almost

“Here,” Enya said, turning the screen so that everyone could see it. Sherwin leaned over her shoulder, trying to get a good look. She shifted her head, bumping Cress, who rose and started pacing the back of the room. She gave him a look before she went on. “This is a list of all the properties owned by Aether Industries. They’re marked on this map here, but what bothers me is them having so many clustered right in the middle of the city. I just don’t see them as places where they’d hide someone like us. There’d be too much of a risk of them using their element to try and escape or just draw attention to the place.”

Moira nodded. “Unless the surrounding neighborhoods were full of vacant buildings or industrial buildings that don’t see a lot of use.”

Terra frowned. “There aren’t any weird rumors involving any of those properties, are there?”

“No.”

“Dig deeper. What about those… What are they called…?” Cress rubbed at his forehead. “Holding companies. Yeah, one of them. Why couldn’t they have a place under one of those names?”

Enya sighed. She rubbed at the back of her neck. “Maybe. I need a break. Too much time staring at those screens, and my head starts to ache.”

“I can fix that for you,” Sherwin told her, moving her hands out of the way to work his magic on her sore muscles. He’d gotten pretty good at this over the years, and even Moira would let him do it for her on occasion. Of course, he preferred women that weren’t related to him, but he still shared a deep bond with his sister. He helped her out when he could.

“I’m going to go take a bath,” Cress said. “If you find something, let me know.”

Sherwin would have teased the other man about the whole bath thing, but that had stopped being funny years ago. Cress was water. He was drained. He needed a bath. The fact that he was admitting it was more worrisome than anything else.

“Damn. I wanted one of those.”

“Would you rather go first, Occie? I’ll let you.”

She shook her head. “No, go ahead. I’ll take my turn after you do. You may as well go to bed when you’re done. We’ll be leaving early tomorrow, right, Moira?”

“Yes.”

Cress nodded, ducking out of the room. Sherwin shook his head, leaning down to Enya’s ear. “So, did that help?”

“Um,” she said, frowning. She moved away from the computer. “I think I might actually have a migraine. I’ll just go ahead and lie down, pick up on the search in the morning. Excuse me.”

“Enya.”

She stopped, turning back to Moira. “Problem?”

“No, just… a thought. We haven’t discussed rooming arrangements yet, so I thought I’d suggest that you share with Oceana and Cress. Normally, they get a room to themselves so that he gets as much of a chance to renew when he’s sleeping, but with your nightmares… a little less rest for him might be an acceptable trade-off for you not waking the whole neighborhood.”

She grimaced. “Yeah. It probably is. As long as Occie and Cress are okay with that.”

“I’m good. Fair warning, though, he snores.”

Enya laughed. “It’s not that bad. I’ve fallen asleep on him a few times, and unless he got twice as loud as he used to be, I’ll survive.”

“Good,” Moira said. She turned the laptop toward herself, putting her fingers on the keys. “It’s been a while, but I will see what I can do with this.”

Terra rose. “I’m going to turn in if you don’t mind.”

“No, go ahead. Get some rest.”

Sherwin watched them all go, shaking his head. He turned to his sister. “Don’t start turning into Cress now. You get to sleep, too. You’re not allowed to start pushing yourself too far and not sleeping and all of that crap.”

She looked up from the computer. “I won’t.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have half the problems that Cress does, and I don’t… Oh, never mind.”

“What?”

Moira let out a breath. “You know I love you, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then please understand when I tell you that you’re an idiot,” she said with as gentle of a smile as Moira ever gave, putting a hand over his. “To make a terrible pun, I have to tell you that you need to stop chasing after the wind.”

“We need to get you a guy.”

She shoved him back, knocking him into the wall. “I take it back. I don’t love you.”

Author’s Note: I admit, Occie’s accusation made me very uncomfortable.

Wild Accusations

Cress jerked away from her, staring at her in disbelief. He didn’t know how his sister, of all people, could think he was capable of that. He was a monster in many ways, and he’d ruined all of their lives, but he didn’t do that.

“No. Cress never did that. We might not have been there when your parents died, none of us saw it happen, but that doesn’t mean that it was him,” Enya said, putting her hand on his arm. He looked down at it, unable to lift his eyes from her fingers, the smooth lines of her hand. “It was probably that bastard we went up against earlier, but we don’t have any way of knowing that.”

“Or it was some of our parents. The only ones we put in the ground before then were Enya’s, so why the hell not one of ours?” Moira shook her head. “None of us know how the Landons died, and there was no retrieving the bodies of my parents from the bottom of that mountain. Not by anything we knew how to do or were capable of at the time. Sherwin and I tried, but we couldn’t even see the car. Who’s to say any of our parents were really ‘dead’ when we thought they were?”

“Oh, this just gets more and more twisted.”

Cress moved over to the window. He couldn’t think right now. He had to admit, when his parents had told him that Enya should die, he’d wanted to kill them. He’d wanted to make their deaths long, slow, and painful, but he’d never been that good at defying them. He kept the peace, didn’t rock the boat, that was what he did. If there was something that would cause a division, he kept it to himself. He didn’t go looking for fights. He just wanted to find a way to give them all a chance, and he’d thought that he could do it by sending Enya away and working with the others to stop the rogues. They’d had almost a full year without any interference from them, and he’d discussing parting ways with them when the “agents” showed up and forced them back on the run.

He had wanted something simple, but they couldn’t have simple, could they?

“Cress, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that or doubted you, but I thought, if they’d threatened someone you loved—and you love all of us—that you might have thought you had no choice. You’d do anything for us, right or wrong, and you have, but not that.”

He didn’t look away from the window. “Leave me alone, Occie. Please.”

“For now. I just… I can’t leave it like this forever.”

He turned back and touched her face. “Our bond is way too strong for it ever to get broken. Bruised and stretched near that point, but we’ve always come back from it in the past, no matter what one of us said or did.”

“I never accused you of murder before.”

“True, but you had a lot to say about me playing favorites, and that made me plenty angry. I just need some time.”

She nodded, stepping back and returning to the others. He put a hand on the glass and watched the rain start to fall. His mood made controlling that impossible, and he didn’t feel like stopping it even if he should.

“Guilt will destroy you. Remember telling me that?”

He shook his head. “Enya, I just made my sister leave. Why would I want you here?”

“Oh, I know you don’t want me here. I just know you need someone to push you at the moment, and I was always the best at that. Occie was right about one thing—your parents did a real number on you. When they died, I bet you were relieved and hated yourself for it.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It was like getting a gift in some sense, and yet at the same time, it scared the hell out of me because I knew what was coming. They’d want me to lead, and I knew how terrible I’d be at it, and I knew that my ‘best’ would never be good enough. I wanted to run and abandon everyone. Maybe I should have.”

“Don’t say that. You know you’ve held them all together for years now.”

“But did we ever need to be together? All I knew about rogues was from my parents. Who’s to say they’d ever have been a threat if we’d all decided to go our separate ways and lead normal lives? Well, as normal as we freaks can get. You didn’t have any problems until I made the agency cross your path.”

“We’d have settled close enough to each other where it might still have happened. This is family, Cress. All of us. We’ve all been family, even if I wasn’t a part of it for a while. All I wanted you to tell me about when you called was how everyone was, and I could see your smile when you’d tell me about their antics. You know you never shared any of the bad times? You always made me smile, let me share in those good times… You’d talk right until I fell asleep. I looked forward to those calls, even if they sometimes meant a nightmare after you were off the line.”

He touched her cheek. “Sending you away was hard. I didn’t want to do it, but I wanted you to have a chance.”

“You would have let me stay if I’d wanted to, if I refused to go.”

“Yes. I… I wouldn’t have forced you to go. I might have threatened to order you to, but you’d have defied me and stayed, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop you.”

“I miss looking at the clouds with you.”

He winced. That was one of his stupider tricks. “I haven’t done that in years.”

“You haven’t done anything for yourself in years. Admit it.”

He shook his head. She didn’t understand. He was a selfish bastard, and he’d stolen plenty of moments for himself. He’d made excuses to take them, and he would have gone on doing it if the “agency” hadn’t intervened. “Trust me, I did. I just have simpler pleasures than most.”

She shook her head. “When we get Stone back, I want you to do something you really want. To travel somewhere you really want to go or rekindle things with Hannah or something…”

He grimaced. “No to the last one. Maybe the first one, but only if we do enough damage to their organization that we’ll all be safe.”

“Deal.”

Author’s Note: The more I wanted Cress’ reasons to make sense, the more convoluted they and his past became, and I finally hit a point where I decided I didn’t want to know.

Further Sins of the Parents

“Cress, please tell me you’re wrong about that.”

He shook his head. “I wish I could, Enya, but as I was trying to fight that storm, I realized that when I made it rain that night, when Oceana was flooding the house from the water main… Someone was fighting against us. I haven’t felt that kind of pushback in a long time—we don’t get a lot of rogue water elementals—but today I felt the same thing.”

“Oh, hell, I did, too, but I never wanted to believe, even as two-faced as they were with everyone outside of the house, that they were that evil,” Occie said, biting her lip. “I always wanted to think they were just… Just harsher with us because we were their own, that they had impossible expectations—especially when it came to Cress—but they were worse than I ever imagined.”

Cress held out a hand, and Occie took it, sitting down next to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped an arm around her. He closed his eyes, and no one spoke for a while, letting them have their moment.

Enya shivered. She didn’t want to think about this. She wanted to ignore his words, and she wanted to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about or that he was just crazy or something. “I always wondered why no one went for my parents or my brother, why I was the only one pulled out of there.”

“Cress told me to continue with the water, and he got you out, but he was too exhausted to go back, and you were so hysterical that if he hadn’t calmed you the whole thing could have started again.”

He lowered his head. “If I’d known they were hindering us and not helping, I would have gone back. I would have risked it. I could have gotten Enya calm after it was over, but I thought… I thought they were helping. I don’t know why I trusted them.”

“Everything they’d done before was always about elementals. They never once gave us any reason to think they had some weird water supremacy going on or anything, not even when they were talking arranged marriages.”

“Dad told me that we seek our counterpoints as marriage mates. We all had that in our heads, that like sought out like. We never really thought they were doing it to for any other reason. At least, I didn’t. I just assumed that was why your parents were trying to push that on you.”

“I guess. And the marriage thing was after Enya’s family was gone, anyway. I think part of that was them wanting me to stop having anything to do with Hannah, though if they’d been patient, it wasn’t that much longer before it was over, so they kind of jumped the gun there.”

“Yeah, but not by much. They had to know that their control over all of us was slipping. If they were going to get you to do what they wanted, they had a very narrow window of time left to do it.”

“They couldn’t have forced either of us to get married. We would never have agreed, and if they’d pushed me far enough, I could have made sure they weren’t an issue.”

Sherwin shuddered. “Are you saying you actually contemplated killing them?”

Cress looked at him. “What, just because I’m calm on the outside I never get angry? Never feel threatened enough to kill? I do. I have. I always envied how Enya could turn away from what she could do and not get drawn in by any of the ‘cool’ parts of what we could do. That was never cowardice, turning away from our kind of power. That was the kind of strength I never had. I keep wondering if half the reason I became what I was when that mirror broke was because of what that man said to me about water. I know a lot of the reason why I made sure I had control and tried more and more things with it was because I never wanted to be where he had me. That was cowardice. I was so afraid that I turned myself into a monster. On purpose.”

“Cress—”

“I convinced myself you were safer far from us, and I didn’t… I thought I was right. You convinced yourself I was, in the end, to get through it, but you weren’t the monster, Enya. I was. Occie told me I needed to be the one to go, and when she did… I finally understood what I’d asked of you, what I’d done to you, and it wasn’t right. Nothing I’ve ever done was right—”

“No.” Enya shook her head. “I didn’t have to break a mirror in more than twelve years. I missed everyone, but I didn’t have to live in fear of hurting any of you.”

“Is that really worth what you went through? You didn’t want to go, and some of them hated you for something that wasn’t your idea in the first place, and it wasn’t enough of a protection. The agency or whatever they are went after you because of me.”

She crossed over to him. “You gave me a life. I doubt that was in your parents’ plans, and I know you never got what you wanted. What happened to all your plans with Hannah? I know she wasn’t right for you, but you wanted something a whole lot simpler than this, didn’t you?”

He let out a breath. “There were things my parents said about the rogues that had me worried. I didn’t figure there were too many to deal with, and before the agency got involved, I… It looked like it was just about finished. It had already taken a lot longer than I thought it would, but the only people who could stop the rogues were people like us. Of course, if I had known the truth and not what my parents fed me, if I’d known that we were all being manipulated…”

“How much of their plans did you throw out when you took over?”

“Almost all of them. I held onto the money. That was one of few things I took from them. I had to build so much on my own, and I knew I was doing the wrong thing, but I didn’t know what else to do. They had a list of other elementals, ‘friendlies,’ that I was supposed to help everyone pair up with, and I was supposed to keep us all on Eden Drive and… I was supposed to let the fire burn itself out…”

Enya stared at him. “They thought you’d actually let me die the next time I broke a mirror? Or is that referring to not breeding me with another fire elemental?”

“I don’t know.”

She put a hand on his face. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why burden you with that? They were gone; it would only have hurt you.”

“Cress, we all needed to know.”

“Stop it. Just leave him alone,” Occie said, pulling her brother into her arms. She ran her fingers through his hair. “They screwed with your head good, didn’t they? Oh, Cress, I begged you not to, but you did it anyway, didn’t you? There were no rogues that day, were there?”

Author’s Note: So, now, a few things come out, things Cress did, things others did, and some aren’t a big surprise.

Many Revelations

“Cress still out?”

Terra didn’t know why Moira bothered asking, though of anyone, his sister had a better read on his condition. She knew what was real and what wasn’t—when he was lying about pushing too far and when he was okay. He’d been lying more and more lately, and they all knew it.

Oceana nodded. “He’s never been very good at dealing with frozen things, and maybe that has something to do with what that bastard did to him when they first met, but it took a lot out of him to do what he did, and he didn’t have much to work with in the first place.”

Moira let out a breath. “We’ll let him rest for as long as we can, but we have to get on the move again. We need to wipe the accounts our parents had and get a new vehicle. We can’t have anything they can trace.”

Enya looked at the laptop. Terra didn’t remember her grabbing it, but then she’d been distracted at the time. Enya would have thought of it. “We’ve got the information on the company. If we trace their holdings, we’ll probably find where Stone is. Or get an idea of where to look. Once we’re closer, Terra should be able to find him.”

Terra wasn’t half as confident as the others were. She’d messed this up good.

“Agreed, but the trouble is getting moving before they catch up to us. The banks are closed, so we can’t go after the money, and any time we do, they’ll pounce on it. I’m not sure I want to know how our parents got it, and I don’t want to use it if what I suspect is true, but we have to have something to rebuild with if we’re going to go after Stone.”

Sherwin frowned. “What do you mean, what you suspect? Spit it out, Occie.”

“I think that money was what they ‘earned’ by making us. A bunch of purebred elementals.”

“That’s sick.”

Terra pulled at her hair, twisting it around in her fingers. She didn’t like that concept any more than the others did, and a part of her wanted to spread mud all over Cress for suggesting it in the first place. He hated that. “Why would they do that? Why would anyone want to—and why would you assume that’s what our parents did?”

“Because they planned to marry Cress off to a girl who was water, too.”

Sherwin turned to Enya, staring at her. “What? Since when?”

“When he was dating Hannah,” Occie said. “They said it had to end, that he had to marry an elemental—and not just any elemental. It had to be someone attuned to water. They were still making the final arrangements when they died, so it never happened.”

“Damn. For a minute there, I thought we were about to find out that he’d been married all this time—wait, were you? What about you? Did they do the same thing to you? Is that why you and Stone were never… official?”

Occie glared at him. “Sherwin, you don’t know the first thing about love or about how the world works. You think you can have fun and enjoy your flings and it doesn’t matter who you date, or how often or if you ever see them again when we’ve moved on, but it doesn’t work that way. Cress understood. He said none of us would have a real relationship until it was over, and he didn’t know if it ever would be.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause Cress knows a lot about love. Hannah? Sure. That was true love.”

“You are so blind,” Moira said, shaking her head at her brother. “We need to focus on Stone, on getting him back. In the process, I figure we’ll do enough damage to this agency that we’ll take it down or render it less of a threat, at least. Maybe then we can take back our lives. If some of us choose to settle, that’s their choice and no judgments will be made. Cress always said living and working as a team was supposed to be temporary.”

“Only we’re still doing it over a decade later.” Sherwin glanced toward Enya. “Well, most of us, at least.”

“You have something to say to me, Sherwin? Something about how I ‘abandoned’ you, maybe? Or is this a criticism of Cress’ leadership?”

Terra did not want to see this descend into one of those fights. Most of the time, they had them behind his back—when he’d gone to visit Enya or something like that—and he didn’t know how many times they’d argued over his decisions, but in the end, they always went back to listening to him. Sometimes she wondered if he was hoping for them to take the responsibility away from him, but he was too loyal to step down unless they told him to, probably figuring that if Moira wasn’t stepping forward to take control that no one wanted it. “Not again. Just stop. We don’t have time to have this debate again. It’s already settled. Moira’s in charge now.”

“Yeah, but is that too little, too late?”

Oceana stiffened. “Cress did his best. He always did. Even if he made a mistake or a dozen of them, he’s human. We all are. He was trying. He always had our interests in mind, tried to do right by all of us. He did his best.”

“My best?” Cress demanded, sitting up and putting a hand to his head. “Sending Enya away and leaving Stone for dead? How can you say I did my best?”

“You… sent Enya away?” Sherwin stared at him and then turned to her, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you tell us he told you to go? Why did you let him put it all on you? They hated you for it, and all this time it was his fault?”

“He didn’t force me to go. He asked. I chose to go.”

“Enya, he let us all hate you. He never said a word about asking you to go.”

“He didn’t have to,” Moira said, and Sherwin stared at his sister. She shrugged. “He said enough about why she should go to convince me that he had been the one to ask her to go and for me to know that he was still struggling with having sent her away. He was constantly telling us why she shouldn’t be with us. Who the hell do you think he was trying to convince? Us or himself?”

Oceana nodded. “If there were hard feelings about Enya going, it wasn’t because she’d abandoned us. In case you’d forgotten, only a few weeks before that you were all walking on eggshells thinking she’d start another fire that would kill us all. You were scared of her, admit it.”

No one did. No one would.

Oceana sighed. She looked at Enya. “I never hated you for leaving. I understood that. I hated the fact that you could go when Cress needed to go just as much as you did if not more. Between leading us and the constant emotional drain that we all were, he was killing himself. Yeah, I wanted to hate you for it but not because you took off and left. I always knew he’d told you to go. I knew before he made up his mind about it that he was going to ask you to go, and I was the one who stayed with him after he did it. I knew what it cost him to ask. If people made assumptions about it, that was their own ignorance talking. He never once claimed you’d come up with the idea yourself.”

“I never once said otherwise, either.”

“Well, as I said, for some of us, you didn’t have to,” Moira told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I want to ask you a lot more about the stuff your parents did. You up to it?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose I should do it even if I don’t want to. I need to sort out what of our past was real and what they let us think was real. I’m pretty sure that at least the two of them were manipulating us all along. I don’t know if the others had any part in it. I actually don’t think Enya’s parents did.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because mine let them die, and if they were allies, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Author’s Note: Working with Cress in the past is interesting. I figured I should share this, even out of order, because he asks a few questions that lead to his later choice, and that is a big part of who he is and his relationship with Enya and the others.

Edit: This isn’t quite so out of order now. It was written to follow “Trouble in the House of Water,” and so now it does connect to more of the story.

Comfort in the Clouds

“Why do you always find me?”

“I’m the best there ever was at hide-and-seek,” Cress said, and Enya gave him a look as he sat down next to her. She would never admit how much she wanted to see him, how she’d been tempted to go by his house and stay there. Even outside his room would have been fine. She thought it was kind of pathetic, but he had that effect on her, so soothing and relaxing, and she thought she’d scared Occie earlier—she’d scared herself—so this was just what she needed.

She’d turn into him and take more of it if she could.

She wanted to hurt Sherwin. She’d seen him with Moira after their parents had died, and he’d held her and comforted her, and he’d held onto other girls at school in the past, too. He had listened and hugged and been good to them. She’d lost everything and her “boyfriend” couldn’t hardly look at her.

“Am I a monster?”

“No.”

She’d almost forgotten Cress was there, and that was weird, but then he wasn’t very talkative all of a sudden. “What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because even if the fire was your fault, you didn’t want them dead.”

Even if. He said that like he didn’t think it was. He had never blamed her for it, even though he’d almost gotten killed putting it out and keeping her sane afterward. She didn’t understand him. “Yeah, like that makes a difference.”

“It does. There might be a thin line there, but with the abilities we have, we could do terrible things if we wanted, and the difference is wanting to. We could embrace the darkness and be monsters, all of us. It would be too easy to do. You know, the human body is seventy percent water, right? If I messed with that just a little…”

“You wouldn’t, though. You’re too good for that, and you don’t hate anyone enough.”

“Not true.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be with Hannah right now? I thought you had plans.”

“I’m not supposed to see her. She’s a normal.”

Enya snorted. “Like being one of us is something anyone would want if they could have it. Sure, I can play with fire. Trouble is, everyone gets burned afterward—to a crisp. They’re all dead. If I could give it up, if I didn’t have to have this—”

“Would you? Would you be normal if you could?”

She frowned. “Why are you asking me that?”

“I… I don’t know. I just think normals are a lot freer than we are. We might have some abilities, but you’re right. Who would want them? Water’s not that great. I’ve had ‘groupies’ following me, getting their depressant fix off what I can do, since I first broke that mirror.” He lifted his hand, tracing his fingers over the faint scar that marked where the mirror had gouged him, a scar that none of the others had. They hadn’t been marked when the glass shattered, but he had.

Did the fact that his blood had spilled when it happened make it so he had more control? Was that why he was more talented than the rest of them?

She took his hand, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. “Water is a huge part of what you are, Cress.”

“Yeah, but fire’s not a part of who you are. Not in the same way.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “I think you, if you got away from here, you could be almost… normal. You’d never have to be fire again. Would… would you like that?”

She nodded, leaning into him. “Anything to keep the monster away. I’m so scared of what happens the next time the mirror breaks. What if I kill one of you?”

“Make it my parents. We’ll all be better off.”

“That is so not funny.”

He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I… I just fought with them, and they’re being so unreasonable, and I swear they… They’re talking arranged marriages. They’ve got a girl who’s water that I’m supposed to… well…”

“That’s not right. I mean, Hannah might not be the right person for you, but you should still be able to have a choice in the matter.”

He frowned. “What’s wrong with Hannah?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Enya shrugged. She figured it would be weird if she wrapped an arm around him, but she wanted to get more of the feeling he didn’t even mean to give off. Yeah, she could see why people were addicted to this. She closed her eyes and almost laughed when she caught the scent of fresh rain even though it had been dry for the better part of a month. “Hannah’s a spoiled brat. She always gets what she wants, and right now it’s you because she wants the most popular guy in school. She’ll ditch you when she gets a chance, and she’s not good enough for you.”

He grunted. “Hannah’s different with me.”

“Sure. Tell yourself that. If she breaks it off, don’t come crying to me.”

“You know, for all that I’m attuned to water, I can’t remember crying once in my entire life.”

“That’s okay. I’ve cried enough for both of us.”

He sat back, putting his head on his arm and looking up at the clouds. She hesitated, but he patted the ground next to him, and she settled in, wondering if he’d start rearranging the clouds into shapes again. She loved that game, but he hadn’t done it in forever, and she didn’t know why.

“You’re going to be in trouble when you go home, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Cress—”

“Does that look like a rabbit to you?”

“No—wait, yes. It does now,” she said, smiling and allowing herself to be distracted as he started to contort other shapes in the clouds, knowing she should send him home so that he didn’t get in trouble but unable to tell him to go. She’d keep him here with her, always, drain him until there was nothing left, and the worst part was that he’d let her do it.

Just a few minutes more. She’d get up and go—if she didn’t fall asleep first.