Tag Archives: character: oceana washburne

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Wake up to the Fire

Author’s Note: Apparently, I am crazy. I decided to make Three Word Wednesday a part of almost all my serials today. Yeah. Not the brightest idea, but to that end, I wrote a flashback for Fire and Water because two of the words fit too well to ignore.

Today’s words: pale, naughty, and douse.

I only wanted pale and douse for this, but I made the other one work, too.

Wake up to the Fire

“Ouch. That hurts. Why do I feel like I got hit with a brick?” Enya groaned, trying to turn over, only to find she couldn’t move. Something heavy had her pinned down, and she wasn’t going anywhere. “Okay, make it a bus. I got hit by a damn bus. Get it off me.”

“I swear, the bus will move in a minute,” Cress said, and her eyes shot open, trying to figure out how she’d ended up in the middle of the street with him covering her, bodies pressed together like they’d been up to something naughty, and she had to be dreaming because she and Cress were not like that. Cress wasn’t her boyfriend, Sherwin was, and though he’d kind of hinted around that he wanted to do more, she wasn’t ready for that. They weren’t even in high school yet, not ’til the fall, but he was such a guy. They only had one thing on their minds, right?

Not Cress. He was different. The water thing made him focused on other things, not girls, not school. He was kind of obsessed with learning all he could about his element and what he could do with it. He did that all the time.

“Did you start another rainstorm? I’m soaked, and that had better not be because you… um… I don’t know, spit all over me.”

Cress grunted, rolling to the side. “Enya—”

“So the two of you are alive. I almost thought you’d both be dead after that one.”

She looked up at her brother, feeling something strange when she did, and she didn’t like it much. It wasn’t like being with Sherwin, flirting with him or letting him kiss her, but there was a kind of tug to it, like she couldn’t help being aware of everything Aidan did. “Dead?”

“You hit the car, remember? We were playing, and I almost caught you, and I swore I’d get a kiss when I did, so you tried to dodge me, but you hit the car, the mirror and… It broke, honey,” Sherwin said, and she swore she’d make sure he never called her honey again because it was wrong, but so was what he was saying. “It broke, and it was… bad.”

She sat up, looking around the street. The lawns were scorched, all the grass gone, and the car that she’d hit—damn, that belonged to the Washburnes—was a shell, something out of a war movie or one from the end of some world. She shook her head. “No. Tell me I didn’t do that. Tell me I’m not fire. I didn’t do that.”

“It’s okay,” Aidan said, putting an arm around her, but he was always a terrible liar, and she could hear the fear in his voice. She’d scared the hell out of all of them, hadn’t she? She could see it in Moira’s face, in Sherwin’s and Terra’s and everyone. Well, everyone but Cress, but then he looked more like he might pass out any second, so she didn’t think he counted.

“I could have killed someone.”

“You didn’t,” Cress said, forcing himself to sit up. He was so weak, his skin pale, and he almost fell when he stopped bracing himself against the pavement. Occie knelt next to him, and he leaned back into her, gratitude in his eyes as he tried to smile for her.

“You idiot. You almost got yourself killed.”

“No, Occie, it wasn’t like that—”

“What did you do?”

“He doused the fire, Enya. He doused you. He was the only one who could get close enough to do it, but he did,” Stone told her, and she stared at him before turning to Cress, not sure if she wanted him to deny it or not. At least he’d been able to stop her, but if he had done all that… what had it cost him? Could it have killed him, like Occie said?

“Thank you,” she said, though the words were awkward and inaccurate. She needed so much more than that to make up for what he’d had to do.

He shook his head. “It’s fine. You just weren’t ready for that. You didn’t know what was happening, and I’d have done it for one of the others if they’d needed it.”

Enya grimaced. None of the others had, though, and they wouldn’t. Well, maybe Aidan, if he was fire like she was, but Terra was already working on restoring her garden, quiet and calm. Stone could create art with what he did. Moira’s windstorms were scary, but she had them under control the whole time. Sherwin was—well, he was hot air, but he didn’t need help with his element. Occie was fine, too. The only screw up around here was Enya.

“Cress, if you hadn’t been here…”

“One of the parents would have intervened. Or you’d have come through the panic. Don’t look at me like that. You don’t need me. You can do it yourself. This was just a one-time thing,” he said, letting Occie help him to his feet. “I think I need a nap. Or a bath. Why do I want a bath?”

“Because you’re water, you goofball.”

“Oh. Yeah. That. No, I want a nap. No more water. I hate water…”

“You’re tired and talking crazy. Come on,” Occie said, shaking her head as she and Stone herded her brother inside their house.

“You okay to walk?” Aidan asked, and Enya nodded, accepting his help to get up, leaning on him as she stood. Her clothes were soaked, but she was alive, they all were, and she knew that if Cress hadn’t been there, that might not be true.

“I don’t want to be fire.”

“It won’t always be like this.”

She gave her brother a glare before turning to go to their house. What did he know about it, anyway? He hadn’t done what she just did. He hadn’t almost killed everyone and destroyed their homes. He didn’t get to talk about things he didn’t know.

She was a monster. Just look at what she’d done.

More

Author’s Note: This scene made me want to write a whole series of stories where the team worked as some kind of detective unit, tracking down rogue elementals or something. That’s not the story I’m writing, not yet, but maybe I will someday.

The Flooded Aftermath

“Oh, hell, that can not be good,” Sherwin said, leaning over the steering wheel and looking at the sky. He pulled to a stop and shut off the engine, pocketing the keys as he reached for the door, shaking his head again. “Did you you see that sky?”

“I’m a bit more worried by the street, Sherwin,” Moira said, and he looked at the torrent coming out of the drains and up from the manhole. The whole thing was a mess, an unnatural one, and to Oceana, it was almost painful. She imagined that Terra could feel it, too, the way the water had warped the landscape, but Oceana didn’t know if the water had that much pain or if that agony belonged to her brother.

“Occie?”

“He’s… I don’t know. I can’t get a read on him. The water is all over the place, and it’s interfering with anything I might have gotten.”

“Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.” Oceana almost had the sense that he was gone, but he had better not be gone. She closed her eyes, searching trying to get a sense of her brother, sort through all the confusion in the water. Things hadn’t been this bad since she and Cress worked disaster relief after a hurricane. She’d never let him near that sort of work again. Selfish, she knew, but he’d been so wiped by drying out the water and the emotions of the victims that she thought it might kill him.

She opened her door and stepped out into the street, needing a better connection to the water. Where was her brother? She could see his handiwork, and if she went through it piece by piece, she’d be able to tell what he’d done and what was the work of the other water elemental, working like forensics to pick it apart, to analyze the water’s manipulation for its source, but she didn’t have time for that now.

She knelt down and touched the water running over the pavement. “He flooded the engine of their car. That thing wouldn’t have gone anywhere. The water is so polluted…”

“Anything else?”

“You know, this is not easy or pleasant. I might not have to physically eat or taste what’s running through the water, but I am aware of each pollutant. Consider it like a really overwhelming smell,” Oceana said, knowing that Sherwin would appreciate that even if Terra didn’t, though she should understand with all that people did to the ground around her.

This was how the water spoke to her, not like what the others got, but like a puzzle to pick apart the pieces and somehow reorganize them into a picture that made sense. Only it was a stupid photomosiac, and who the hell was that kind of a masochist?

She shook her head as she moved forward.

“Wouldn’t Cress have walked away after disabling their car? Headed back toward us?” Enya asked, giving the clouds above them a nervous glance. Moira grabbed her, moving her away from the car and all of its mirrors, away from the store fronts and their glass. Enya sighed, and Sherwin gave her the keys to the car. She tried to force a smile, but it didn’t quite work.

“I don’t know why he didn’t. I’m still… This spot is colder than the others. The elemental tried to stop him, to freeze him. Here. Oh, hell, Cress.”

“What?”

“He flooded the street and flipped the car.”

“On his own?”

Oceana nodded, aware of how much that would have cost him to do solo. “The car hit here, scraped along the ground. You can see it. By then, they were struggling over who got to control that water. I can’t tell beyond that. It’s too convoluted, too contaminated. The water can’t tell me any more than that.”

“It’s something, at least.”

“Not enough.” Oceana ran her hands over her arms. “I don’t see where their car ended up or my brother, do you?”

“No.”

“If one or both of them is gone, why is the water still churning like this?” Enya asked. She winced. “I suppose I seem like an idiot—”

“This is unusual. Most of the time if the elemental is gone or incapacitated, the stuff stops. It’s why if we didn’t have our abilities and we worked for an organization like Aether, we’d carry tranquilizers. We’d knock out the elementals, not kill them.”

“I did try and suggest that to the ones that came to my house, but they weren’t exactly in the mood to listen. All they wanted was your location, and that I didn’t know. Cress never told me. He left me a way to contact you if I needed help, but that was it.”

Sherwin shook his head. “I still can’t believe he did that. If it were me—”

“Don’t start,” Moira told him. “Enya, are you—is he back already?”

“I don’t know. He might be. Might be more resourceful than we gave him credit for.”

“Damn it.”

Oceana turned. “Where is he? Point him out if you can. Or one of you pinpoint him for me. If he’s got a device that tracks storms, I want to see it. Even if it is just a phone app.”

“You think we can track them that way?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Moira closed her eyes for a moment, and then she grinned as she lifted a hand and waved the air forward until it deposited the man in the coat on the ground in front of them. “You are persistent.”

“You’re dangerous.”

“Thank you.”

He looked over at the water. “They made a mess of this place. What happened to the locals?”

“Oh, hell,” Oceana said, grabbing Moira’s arm. “Hot air, as much as you and Sherwin can generate, as fast as possible. That bastard—he froze them. All of 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: 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 I thought about not sharing this, I’m not sure it’s staying in the story, and its subject matter is a bit off-putting, and I don’t know why Cress and Oceana’s parents turned out the way they did. They were supposed to be different.

Right now, I’ve got it stuck after Cress passes out in the car, not a bad place for a flashback, but I’m not sure I’ll leave it there.

Anyway, this seemed to go a long way toward explaining why Cress was the way he was and did what he did.

Trouble in the House of Water

“We need to talk.”

“I’m meeting Hannah in a few minutes, so it had better be quick,” Cress said, ignoring his mother as he started toward his room. The blast of cold hit him first, and he stopped against his will. Damn it, he hated when she did this. He felt as helpless as he had when that rogue had him, and he still had nightmares about that guy coming back even though his parents said he was not a threat.

Not a threat. Funny way of saying “dead,” wasn’t it?

Nothing was ever as direct as it should be around here. If he wanted answers, he had to find them for himself, and when he got them, he didn’t like them.

“You will stay as long as you need to stay.”

“Okay, I know I didn’t do anything that I should be in trouble for,” Cress began, using everything he had to force the freeze off, letting it dissipate instead of going back on his mother or his father. “Why are you ganging up on me? This isn’t about my grades. They’re fine. I’m going to graduate on schedule, and I haven’t done anything crazy with the water at school. Well… I did, but that was just to filter out the nastiness. I swear that’s it. No major crisis.”

“Stop trying to use your abilities to calm us.”

“I… You know I can’t control that.” He was doing it for himself, anyway. They had him worried now, and he didn’t like the feeling he got from them. “What is it? I’m going to be late meeting Hannah, and I don’t—”

“You’re not going to see her again.”

“What?” He frowned. “Look, if this is one of those too young conversations, should only be dating if I intend to make a real commitment, I don’t need it. I figure our lives are short enough for me to get married right after high school. Hannah and I have even talked about it a little.”

“You cannot marry a normal.”

Cress looked at each of his parents in turn. “You’re kidding, right? It has to happen all the time. Not all of us are purebreds, that would just be… wrong.”

“A normal will never understand you, never balance you. You will be forced apart by your abilities.”

He shook his head. “Hannah knows what I can do. Everyone at that school does. They still talk about what I did to the bullies in the bathroom. It’s not an issue.”

“It is. You’re too young to see it now, but you would understand later. Still, you don’t have time to wait for later. You will not marry a normal. You have to marry an elemental.”

He leaned back against the wall, unable to believe this. “What about all that talk about us being free to do incredible things? That we had talents and should use them? I told you I didn’t want this damn water thing, and now you’re going to tell me because of something I didn’t even want in the first place, I have to give up everything I want and planned on?”

“You’ll get over this normal girl.”

“Right. So now I get to pick between Moira, Terra, and Enya?” He didn’t understand that. He’d always been a bit too close to one of them, and his parents hadn’t liked that, either. “I think you know who I’d pick, but you hate her, so why would you—”

“You are marrying a girl attuned to water. It is already arranged. We’re taking you to meet her tomorrow.”

Cress stared at them. “No. You can’t do this—you can’t make me do this. I won’t. I’m not going with you, and I’m not marrying anyone. Or getting engaged. I don’t even want to meet that girl. I have a girlfriend. Hannah loves me and I—”

“You will not see her again.”

He looked behind him to see the door frozen shut, and he knew all the windows were as well. He wouldn’t be getting out of there any time soon. He still wasn’t very good with frozen things. For some reason, that still eluded him. He’d used up what control he had over that getting himself free, and it would be hours before he could manage a window, and a door was out of the question.

“Go to your room and do your homework. We’ll be gone all weekend.”

Cress nodded, walking down to his door, shutting it behind him with relief. He didn’t understand. Sometimes his parents were the best in the world, and other times, he couldn’t help thinking that the rest of it was an act, that they were somehow faking the love and care so that they could get him and Occie to do what they wanted.

“I guess we’re lucky it would be too inbred for them to do that to us. You know, pair you and me up and create the next generation.”

“Occie, please, I don’t want to think about that. I might hurl all over you.”

She nodded, lying back on his bed. She was quiet while he dumped his bag on the floor and kicked it, unwilling to take his books out and do what they’d ordered him to do. He looked back at her when she spoke. “I assume they have someone for me to meet there.”

“Run. Go elope with Stone while you still have the chance. I’ll be here; I can distract them.”

“Funny. We’re seventeen, remember? Even if I loved him like he says he loves me, we couldn’t do that. We’re still too young to marry without our parents’ consent, and you know Mom and Dad won’t give it.”

“Yeah.”

“You have to go find Enya. I swear she was about to kill herself at school today.”

“What?”

Oceana sat up, rising and coming over to his side. “You may have held her for a week after her family died, and you kept her calm, but even you can’t take away the guilt. Everyone says she set that fire on purpose and killed her whole family. The school can’t stop whispering about it. I think Terra sees her as a monster, and I’m not sure she’s alone in that. Even Sherwin’s avoiding her, and you know him.”

Cress grimaced. “Even if she was the one who started it, she didn’t do it to hurt anyone. She can’t control it. She’s never been able to.”

“Yeah. Go tell her that again. She’ll listen to you. I’ll defrost the window and cover for you. Just don’t let them catch you.”

He sighed. “Enya needs to get out of here. This is going to destroy her.”

“As long as our parents are in charge, that won’t happen.”

“Then maybe they shouldn’t be in charge.”

Occie shook her head. “Don’t. You and I both know you could overcome them if you wanted to, you’ve got more talent and more control, but don’t you dare give in to that darkness. You’re not a killer, Cress. I don’t care how easy it would be for you to use the water and free us all from them, how tempting it might be with this trip they’ve got planned. Don’t.”

“I’d better go see Enya.”

“Yeah,” Occie said, touching a hand to the window and pulling away the ice. “Try not to be out too late. You miss this trip, and they’ll kill you.”

“The sad part is, that last part’s not an exaggeration.”

Author’s Note: Action sequences have never been my strong suit. I did try, and I doubt that I did much justice to the kinds of things they can do with the elements, but here goes…

Elemental Defense

“I think I can make out four cars, and they’re blocking the road. At least Cress always insists on us driving an SUV even if the gas mileage sucks,” Terra said, frowning as she let the curtain fall back into place. “I can barricade them, but with this much water around us and the kind of vehicles they have, it won’t last for long.”

“Do it,” Moira ordered. She sounded a lot more confident than she felt. Damn Cress for always making this look easy. She had thought she was ready for it, but now she wasn’t sure. “We’ll deal with them breaking out of it after it happens. There’s still a few things we can do on the road if we have to. Enya, you’re still driving. Sherwin, we’re going to need an air shield.”

“Done,” he said, looking at the storm. “We have any idea if there’s more than a water elemental out there? That is one hell of a storm.”

“Thank you.”

Moira turned around, swallowing as she did. Rogues had stopped scaring them years ago, but this one was worse than most. That one had terrorized Cress when he was younger, had sent an army after them, kept sending them. That man had Stone, didn’t he?

Still, the most unsettling part of the whole thing was that he didn’t seem afraid to come up against all of them, that he thought he could take them all on. What made him so damn confident?

“Go,” Cress whispered, his voice strained and almost impossible to hear. “I can’t hold off what he’s doing forever. Get in the car.”

The rogue’s lips curved into a smile. “Yes, you have learned, haven’t you? Still, even you know you have limits.”

“Oh, hell, no wonder it’s so damn cold in here. He’s trying to freeze us.”

“Get in the car,” Moira told her brother, shoving him toward the door. He had to keep up the air shield in case any of the others had been outside of the barricade Terra had created, and the longer they stayed, the more of a chance they gave Cress to falter. He didn’t have the strength to hold off a water elemental that powerful for long.

“One thing you overlooked,” Occie said, her voice cold. She put her hand on her brother and closed her eyes, funneling her energy into his. The ice spread over the man across the room, turning him into an ice sculpture. “My brother’s not the only one who can handle water.”

Cress managed a smile before he stumbled, held up by his sister and Enya. “That won’t hold him for long.”

“It bought us time. Come on,” Moira said, taking hold of him so that Enya could get to the car first. She needed to be behind the wheel. “Drive down to the road. Terra will do her best to even it out for us.”

“Is it me or is that storm getting worse?”

“Just because he’s frozen doesn’t mean he can’t think,” Cress said. “Occie, can you do anything about that?”

“I might be able to shift it out of our path so that Enya can see better. You just rest. You should have grabbed me sooner—none of us would have allowed you to sacrifice yourself even if you blame yourself for us leaving Stone behind and who knows what else.”

Moira pulled herself into the passenger seat, having a bad feeling about what she’d have to do to keep the other cars from reaching them. The barricade wasn’t going to hold for much longer. She’d seen part of it crumbling even as Enya drove away.

Too much water. The whole place would go to mud soon enough. Even if Stone was here, they couldn’t have held off the mudslide for long. She felt Sherwin’s hand on her shoulder even as the car bumped them all, lurching back onto the pavement. She looked back at him and then the road.

The first SUV was closing in on them. Great. “That was fast.”

“Sorry. I was fighting against what that rogue was doing, and the barricade wasn’t good enough—”

“I’m not blaming you,” Moira said, closing her eyes and letting her abilities mingle with Sherwin’s, gusting the air up under one of the other vehicles and knocking it on its side, taking it out of commission. She leaned back against her chair. “Okay, not sure I have another of those in me.”

“Me, either,” Sherwin grunted. “I hate doing that. It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have the memories.”

Unless they had that memory on purpose. Moira shifted in her seat, looking at Cress. How much more was there to his theory? What else hadn’t he told them about what his parents had done or given him? Was there more to him sending Enya away than Moira had thought? She’d always had her suspicions, but she’d just assumed that Cress was playing favorites. Maybe it was more than that.

Terra slumped back against her seat. “I didn’t want to break the road, but those potholes might not be enough to stop them.”

Enya looked in the rear view mirror. “You call those potholes?”

Terra grinned. “I do.”

Moira laughed. Sometimes, this could almost pass for fun. “Keep driving ’til we’re out of the storm, Enya. We’ll know we’re safe to make a plan after that.”