Author’s Note: Trying to get Enya toward control was not an easy thing to do. Even the baby steps in the beginning were rather difficult for her to accept.


Starting Down a New Path

“Enya?”

“Sorry. I guess my mind was wandering. How much longer can we stay here? Cress and Occie aren’t back yet, but if it’s getting to be time to go—”

“Almost. Cress should be on his way. He always had decent timing with that, and we need to get to somewhere where we can regroup properly—clothes, food, showers, all of that good stuff,” Moira said, putting a hand on her arm. “Look, I don’t know if you—I don’t want to do this. It isn’t my place, but it’s going to end up making another division between all of us, and I know we can’t afford that.”

“Moira, I… There’s no way I can jump from fear of killing everyone I’ve ever cared about to being able to accept Flint’s offer just like that,” Enya told her. She let out a breath. She’d been trying to be rational about it, trying not to let the instinctive panic always win, but it wasn’t something she was comfortable with. She’d only ever destroyed things when she tried to use fire, and she didn’t know why she would ever want to do that.

“No one is expecting you to accept it easily,” Moira said, turning to look back at the others. “Maybe some of them wish you could just do it, but that doesn’t make them right.”

“If we were going to do it, we’d have to find another lake. That way Cress could have a constant source to renew his strength if he had to stop me and if he or Occie weren’t there, you or Sherwin could knock me back in the water until I came around again.”

Moira nodded. “I’d agree, but I’m surprised you were willing to give it that much consideration.”

Enya sighed. “The entire time since I’ve been back with you, all I feel is helpless. I was able to dig up a few facts on the computer, but any of you could do that, too. I could drive, but then you all can drive. You, Sherwin, Terra, Cress, and Occie, you all fought to save us back there, and there was nothing I could do. When those people were frozen, I couldn’t help them, either. I don’t like being helpless or useless. It scares me to think of using fire, and I know none of us are sure if we can trust Flint or not, even if Cress says his emotions are genuine, so I’m not… thrilled about the idea, but I don’t want to go on living in fear or always hurting people. If it really is possible that Flint could teach me to overcome that and have control… I think I should want that. I’m too confused to be sure, too upset and all over the place. So much has happened…”

“Even with Cress sitting with you a couple times, you haven’t had much of a chance to process what happened at your house the other night.”

Enya closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to be reminded of her latest kills. “I’m… I’d rather not deal with that.”

“You can’t avoid it. Bottling things up never helped anyone. If you don’t believe that, look at Cress. You know how much of a mess he is. Or Occie. You think she’s doing that well? She lost Stone, and she couldn’t even let herself grieve. Terra was all over the place, but Occie, she just shoved that down like she didn’t feel a thing.”

“She did, she had to, but Cress is her brother. She knows what emotions do to him, and she has to bottle hers, or she can’t help him. It’s a twisted cycle with them. She’s right, though. He needs to get away from all of this.”

Moira’s eyes went to the window. “The team is all he has, Enya. How easy was it for you to build a life when you were gone? Do you honestly think he could do that? He might have dozens of people who want to be around him, like leeches feeding off his ability. At least we know what we cost him and try and minimize it. Strangers wouldn’t bother. Remember all those normals at school, how they would drain him every day. Without us, he’s more vulnerable than ever. I know it’s not me, but if it was… I’d rather bleed for the ones I love than for strangers.”

Enya sighed. “He shouldn’t have to do it at all. We don’t know of any other elemental who got that part, do we?”

“No. Sometimes I think I should be able to read emotions in the air currents, but I haven’t quite gotten there. Sherwin swears that he can feel when someone wants him, but you know him.”

“Yeah.”

“Stone told Occie once that he can get some sense of what people are feeling if he’s touching the same dirt as them. He put his hand next to hers and told her she was lying about loving him. She made water come up from the ground, mud splattered his face, and she didn’t talk to him for a week after that. I don’t know that he was wrong, though.”

Enya bit her lip. “I never got anything from fire except fear.”

“No surprise.”

“No one asked for your opinion, Firebug.”

He shrugged. “I think I’d be willing to go along with this insanity just for the sake of pushing your buttons, Windy. It’s way too easy to get under your skin, isn’t it? No one’s rattled you for a long time, but I’m just the right person to do it.”

“Don’t start talking like my brother. I’ll shove you into a brick building next time.”

He grinned, ignoring her as he turned to Enya. “How about a lesson that doesn’t involve you doing anything with your abilities? I’m just curious to see if you can manipulate something I start without breaking a mirror. You don’t have to give me an answer right away. Take as long as you need.”

She frowned. “Why do you care?”

“If you’re as powerful as I think you are, we’re going to need you to stop Aether, and I want to stop Aether.” Flint put his hands in his pockets. “I’ve got another selfish reason—I miss my sister. I miss what it was like to have her around, how it felt to be in balance… I bet you do, too.”

“I… Aidan and I never had control and I…” Enya swallowed, not wanting to start panicking, but before she could, she felt something cool wash over her, turning toward the door to see Cress walking back inside.

She smiled, hesitant, wanting to go to him and be closer to that feeling he generated, but he’d just started renewing himself. She couldn’t do that to him. Flint shoved her forward, and she stumbled, wishing she had some control to make him pay for that, but he just grinned as the hand touched her arm. She looked up at Cress, feeling stupid.

“Hi.”

He fought a smile. “Hi.”

“Did you get a good swim?”

“Not really. You okay?”

She nodded. “I am. I’m getting better, I swear. Not sure I can go controlling that monster on the other side of the glass, but I’m not panicking at the idea of trying right now, and that’s got to be an improvement, right?”

“Yeah.”

A dozen things ran through her head, things to say or do, and she couldn’t think. She didn’t want to try and sort it out around him, that would hurt him too much, so she just wrapped her arms around him and tried not to think at all. It wasn’t so hard. This felt right.

Author’s Note: Everyone has questions for Cress. Not even he has the answers, though.


In Need of Water

“So… level with me. How good are you?”

Cress looked over at the fire elemental, shrugging. “Good is a matter of definition, and in most cases, I’d say it doesn’t apply to me. I am by no means perfect. I have a greater deal of control over my element than most. I think that is the most accurate assessment of what I am.”

“Yeah, but they tell me that your parents were behind a lot of… manipulation, and that they might even have been working for Aether. What do you think they were trying to do?”

Cress pulled himself to his feet. “I don’t pretend to know what went on inside their heads. Even their emotions were usually kept from me. A few occasions were clear and sharp and still sting—like when they found out I’d broken a mirror their excitement was almost overwhelming, especially since that was the first time I knew I had any sort of… talent for that. At least… it was the first time I recognized it for what it was. I’d been terrified by what happened and my hand wouldn’t stop bleeding, but they were ready to start jumping up and down and cheering. Sickening, really, when I think about it, so I try not to. They did put on a good show for a long time. The older we got, the less they seemed like loving parents and more like dictators, and signs of it were showing outside the walls of our house. Not all of it was clear, though. Most of that comes from hindsight. That is, as they say, a bitch.”

“I should take offense to that,” Moira said, and Cress laughed. He’d never have called her that, even as tough as she was. She was not one of those women it was easy to know, even having been her neighbor and leader for years and despite his empathic gifts, but he knew that description didn’t fit.

“No, you shouldn’t.”

Her lips curved into a smile, and Sherwin frowned. “You two better not be flirting.”

Cress gave Moira a look, and she obliged, sending a gust of wind to her brother that knocked him on his butt. Sometimes, Sherwin was the biggest idiot Cress had ever known. A part of him was tempted to keep up the “flirting” with Moira just to piss him off, but Cress had never been that type of person. He couldn’t pull it off for long enough, anyway. Moira was a good friend, she supported him and shouldered a lot of the burden of leadership, but that was all they shared.

It might have been easier if Cress was interested in her that way.

“Better your parents would have had something to say about that,” the fire rogue said, and Cress frowned as he looked back at him. “Well, your sister says you’re purebred water. Can’t imagine that they’d like the idea of you taking up with air.”

“They made it quite clear that I was only supposed to be interested in someone who was water, yes. The same went for just about everyone—they expected us to stick to our element. More purebreds. Not sure why, though. They didn’t exactly explain. They just ordered.”

“And they could order you around?”

“I could have killed them. I’m not a killer.”

“You didn’t leave, either.”

“And let Occie or any of the others deal with it without me? None of us were old enough to be without a legal guardian, and since everyone else’s parents were conveniently dead, ours had custody of everyone. Considering what they wanted to do to Enya, leaving was out of the question.” Cress rubbed the back of his neck. “If I had more resources at the time, I might have tried to get us all organized to leave, but we’d been fractured badly after Enya’s family died. Some of us were… scared of what she could do and wouldn’t have gone with her—and she was one who could not have been left behind. There were a few other rifts, too, though that was the main one.”

“Other rifts?”

“Stone and I had a huge fight, Terra wouldn’t speak to me because I’d hurt him, and it even got to be a bit of a division between him and Cress. It…” Occie shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“Right.”

Occie rolled her eyes. “If you must know, Mr. Nosy, Stone was in love with me. Always had been. He wanted to be involved with me, too. I… He was—It wasn’t possible, and I let him know that in no uncertain terms. Terra didn’t forgive me for that for a long time.”

Terra looked down at her hands. “One thing you never said in that whole tirade was that your parents had gone and betrothed you to someone else.”

“It wasn’t like I was going to marry the man my parents picked out for me. Ever. I didn’t need to mention that part.”

The firebug looked around at them. “Okay, since clearly no one’s going to go into the other division, I’m going for the elephant in the room… what did your parents want done to Enya?”

“She was never supposed to have survived that fire,” Cress said. “They were not interested in another generation of purebred fire elementals, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know.”

“You don’t.”

The words were almost an accusation, and Cress wanted to hurt the other man for his apparent perception. He’d grasped the concept that Sherwin still couldn’t seem to get—bastard—and understood. He knew exactly how things were.

“No. I don’t. Now if you excuse me, I have to go find some water and drown myself in it for a while. I suppose I’m stuck with the rain…”

“Not such a good idea. They can track that. I have.”

Cress grimaced. He turned to Moira. “Where are we? Anything nearby? It doesn’t have to be a lake. A river, a stream…”

“Give us a minute to find you something.”

“Guppy.”

Cress shook his head. “So help me, Enya, if you call me a fish again—”

“You promise to prove you’re not again?”

He frowned, not sure why she’d bring that memory of any of them up, and shook his head. “Just remember that I was always good at putting out your fires and ruining your day. I’m going to walk around and see if I feel anything outside.”

“I’ll come with you,” Occie said, coming to his side. He saw the worry in her eyes, wishing he could take it away, wishing Stone had listened to him when he told him to go and take her with him. She took his hand, and he forced a smile for her. “You know you shouldn’t even be on your feet after yesterday.”

“I’m fine. Or I will be once I’ve dunked myself in water for a while.”

“Liar.”

Author’s Note: Since the last installment, Disquiet, might have been seen before, I went ahead and posted two for this one today.


Mornings and Possible Pranks

“No.”

Funny how that word was simple and yet so complicated, with so many different emotions behind it at any given time. Cress would know what they were even without the tone of voice, but no one knew when they were coming from him. Maybe Occie, but that was hard to say. Terra did not know. She never knew much of anything. She’d always had her head in the sand, Stone would say, and she wanted him to do it. All of this would be so much easier if he were here.

“You planning on waking him any time soon?” The fire rogue said as he watched Cress tossing in his sleep. “You said you wouldn’t discuss anything else while he was asleep, that he was the one that knew the most about what his parents had done to you and their connection to Aether, that we should all try and get some rest. I didn’t figure any of us would, but I’d swear I haven’t slept that good since before Maggie died. Since you don’t trust me and I’m not sure what to make of you, that… It’s…”

“We were all in the same room as Cress,” Enya said. “You’d be amazed how you feel after spending time around him. Another night without a nightmare. I should be happy about that, but… I’m going to end up killing him someday.”

“At the risk of setting you off again, I still think I could help. If waterboy over there gets back on his feet, maybe you could consider some training. Between me and him, we could probably get you past the worst of it.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Terra frowned. Maybe it was worth it, worth risking, but she didn’t know that Enya would ever accept that. She’d lost so much before, and Terra didn’t know that she’d want to use her abilities if she’d caused Stone’s death. In a way, she had, but not by what she’d done with her element. He’d moved to help her, and the agents had fired. She hadn’t gotten up a wall to stop the bullets, and he had been too distracted…

He was alive. She had to hold onto that. She could make up for her mistake once they had him back. She put a hand to her head. She shouldn’t have a second chance, and she didn’t deserve it. Not that she wanted her brother dead, but that wasn’t something that usually got “do-overs.” She shouldn’t have made any mistakes. She couldn’t afford to do that, couldn’t afford to lose anyone or give the agency a chance at them.

Cress grunted, and Terra looked over at him, watching him drag himself up so that he could lean against the wall. “Why does it always feel like I’ve got the worst hangover ever?”

“You know, even with the shirt, I wouldn’t have figured you for someone who drank a lot.”

Cress smiled. “What, you never celebrated anything in your life? We all turned twenty-one around the same time, and it was our first ‘legal’ drink that turned into… a few too many and some things done with the elements that should never be done again.”

Sherwin laughed. “Oh, some of them need to be done again.”

Moira shook her head. “The hell with that. That’s the one and only time I let you talk me into trying to cover up with the wind.”

“The guys reneged, too. Don’t forget that.”

“I didn’t,” Sherwin said. “I wasn’t a coward like someone I might mention.”

Cress rolled his eyes. “Do have any idea how hard it was to talk a very drunk Stone out of killing you for even thinking of looking at his sister or mine naked? I don’t think anything good came out of you trying talk us all into streaking that night.”

“Besides, it was cold.”

“Like Sherwin would have cared. He generates plenty of hot air.”

“You weren’t even there, Enya.”

Flint looked at them. “You’re all playing a prank on me, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Author’s Note: Time for some of Flint’s thoughts.


The Outsider’s Thoughts

Go with them? They were all suicidal as hell, and Flint wasn’t that stupid, not most of the time. True, he’d never seen anyone do what their water elemental could do, and that one had stood toe-to-toe against that bastard who killed Maggie and survived—more than once—but that didn’t mean that they would live through this.

Then again… They were the best shot he had at avenging his sister or making any kind of dent in the man’s organization. Hell, just the one would have been enough. Flint’s eyes went back to Washburne, asleep in his sister’s arms. When he first ran into them, the woman was the unquestioned leader, but then when Washburne got back to them, they seemed to share that role, and Flint understood that. They all said that the water was the most powerful one of their lot.

Hell, probably out of hundreds of lots. No one else Flint had run into over the years could pull off the kind of stuff he did, but then there was the woman.

Enya. Little fire. She could be just as talented, if she was willing to try for control. She had to be. Flint had faced off against plenty of fire elementals, and even though Maggie had always been more talented than him, he could counter everything she did to where it was a stalemate. The fact that Enya had killed what, three other fire elementals? All at once? No, she had a power the likes of which had to rival the water elemental’s. She just feared it more than he did.

If, though, he was able to work on moods and Flint could get her to work with him on control, they’d have more than a match for anything the head of Aether threw at them.

“I might be interested, but I’ve been tracking this bastard for a long time now. It’s not going to be simple, and you’re going to need a lot more than him,” Flint said, pointing to Washburne. “He’s good, but he’s not enough, not even with most of you to back him up.”

“What, you want to start recruiting all the rogues in the world against him?”

Weatherly snorted. “Yeah, ’cause that’s a good idea. We spent the better part of the last twelve years pissing them off when we made it so they stopped messing with the normals.”

“You never do anything to normals?”

“We have a few tricks we play, but we’re not killers. We don’t screw with normals just because we can. Sometimes Sherwin and I do a ‘magic’ show and some ‘levitation,’ but most of the time we leave that alone. Terra and Stone could make impressive carvings. Stone was better at it.”

“Don’t say was. He’s not dead.”

Flint frowned, wondering why that had come from the other water elemental and not the earth one. Of course, the earth one was still kind of… out of it. Flint knew how that went. His first month or so after Maggie’s death was a complete blur, a fog he didn’t want to remember.

“No bottling pure artisan water or anything?”

“We could have made a fortune doing that, I suppose, and a few times during a natural disaster, Cress and I helped purify the drinking water for people, but it can be taxing, and since he runs on a low battery in the first place—the empathic thing never shuts off—I refused to let him do it.”

“And he takes orders from you?”

“Cress might be more powerful than most of us, but he also took his responsibility for our safety seriously. He had a few decisions we disagreed with over the years, but on the whole, he did right by us. As much as he could, at least.”

“Except, of course, that we could probably have settled down years ago and might not have gotten noticed by Aether. Oh, and Enya wouldn’t have been exiled for twelve years.”

“Sherwin—”

“Actually, if he kept you together, he probably saved all of your lives,” Flint told them, getting plenty of frowns. “Aether seems to be finding more and more ‘rogues.’ That bastard is out to control all of us. Some of us he wants dead, some he apparently takes, and some he keeps hunting. Maggie and I were good enough to evade the troops for a while before he started coming after us. If we’d had a team, we might have held out longer. The fact that this water elemental crossed paths with yours when yours was still a kid means he’s known about him for a long time, and if he knew about him, there’s a good chance he knew about the rest of you. If you’d gone your separate ways, Aether could have picked you off one by one—or two by two. Same principle.”

“Or we were just the shield that kept him from getting to Cress all this time,” the earth elemental said, her eyes closed. “Not that Cress would have known that. His parents told him the bastard was dead.”

“They lie to spare his feelings?”

Oceana laughed, a sick sort of bitter half-strangled noise. “You’ve got to be kidding. How Cress felt never meant a thing to them. They didn’t do anything about the kids bullying him at school because they were waiting for him to break a mirror and free his abilities. Even before he did that, he knew when it would rain or snow, could always tell. Greedy bastards. They let him get hurt so that he’d feel like he needed what he could do with the water. They set us all up from the beginning, but he got the worst of it.”

“Damn,” Flint said. “You actually think your parents were working with Aether, don’t you?”

Author’s Note: Sometimes I wonder if the questions my characters ask stem from my own lack of understanding of the world they live in. That might be it.


Unpleasant Questions and Further Doubts

“You’re going to claim my brother’s not human? That we’re not human?” Oceana asked, frowning. She looked down at Cress. She’d never understood why he was the way he was, and every time she failed to do something he did with ease, she thought he must have gotten the better part of the uterus, that if her mother could have, she’d have passed more ability on to Cress on purpose, but thinking he wasn’t from this side of the barrier—No, she’d never thought that before.

Then again, she’d always assumed they were twins, and she wasn’t from the other side of the barrier. She was rather ordinary. She didn’t know that what they could do and had always done for each other would be possible if they weren’t brother and sister. She had never worked with a water elemental other than her brother, and the same thing applied to all the other siblings.

If Enya could have worked with Flint, that might give them a better idea if that was possible—No. Oceana looked too much like Cress not to be related.

“I don’t know about you.”

“They’re twins, Flint. If he’s not from this side, she’s not, either.” Moira shook her head. “I don’t know that I buy that. I know that Cress’ talents have always surpassed the rest of ours, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not from this side. As far as we know, the barrier has never been thin enough to support that, though it seems to be more fragile now than it was when we were kids, probably because of that bastard who’s after us.”

“Now him I could see being from the other side of the barrier,” Sherwin muttered as he set Enya down on the far side of the room. “I don’t see how he can be that powerful if he isn’t.”

“Stone once said maybe it was because when Cress broke his first mirror, it cut him. He still has the scar, doesn’t he?”

Oceana nodded, lifting the hand that kept that mark, shaking her head. Stone had told her that, too, but she didn’t know that she believed it any more than Terra did. “I suppose there’s a possibility that had something to do with it. We don’t know enough about how the barrier works or what we can do to know if that matters at all.”

Flint sat down, leaning back in his chair. “It might. The other side could have gotten a taste of his blood, and it could have gotten inside him—”

“Exactly what do you think the other side is? An all consuming darkness? Evil?”

“I don’t know what’s over there. Maybe it’s as simple as a parallel universe. It’s us with different choices made in our lives.”

Sherwin shook his head. “I don’t see how making other choices gives us the ability to manipulate an element.”

“We’re all like Superman. We have advanced powers because none of us belong here,” Terra said, and she still sounded crazy, but at the same time, she didn’t.

“Oh, hell,” Oceana put a hand to her mouth and tried not to gag. She had better not vomit right now, and she would not wake Cress. “If that’s the reason why they wanted to marry us off to other elementals…”

“Thanks, Occie. That’s really a thought I wanted to have.”

She smiled at Sherwin, but her heart wasn’t in pushing that further. She enjoyed tormenting him, but today she couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for it.

“We don’t know that it was anything to do with that. The mirror breaking doesn’t make sense if we’re all from the other side anyway.” Moira tapped her fingers on the table. “I do have to wonder just how much Aether Industries knows about elementals and the other side of the barrier.”

“We can get as much information as they’ve got when we go after Stone.”

Flint blinked. “You’re planning on taking this back to the source? After what you’ve already been through with this guy?”

“You want him dead, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know that even a full team could accomplish that, and you don’t have it. You’re missing an earth, your fire is… well, useless, and one of your waters is out of commission as well.”
“Cress heals fast, we’ve worked without Enya for twelve years, and even without Stone, we can do plenty of damage.”

“Moira, I think you might have missed part of his point.”

She looked at Sherwin. “Did I?”

“He wants to come with us. Don’t you, Flint?”


Author’s Note: Finally managed to get the name in there. 🙂


Names and Puns

“I think that was everyone,” Moira said, rubbing her neck and hoping they’d managed to find everyone in the town that the water elemental had frozen. The locals were starting to stir, and a lot of suspicion would fall on them as soon as the denizens were over the shock. “We need to get a move on.”

Occie blinked, and Sherwin took hold of her arm, propping her up. She gave him a bit of a smile, too exhausted to do more. Moira had never seen her like this, not even after the hurricane, but she knew that this couldn’t happen again. “Not without Cress, and we still don’t know where he is.”

Sherwin nodded. “We also need to make a decision about what to do with… him.”

The rogue grimaced. “Thanks. A lot. I mean, I know I can’t stand against all of you, but I do have a name and a right to go where I please.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We still haven’t figured out what you’re doing here or if you’ve been a part of any of this. You come warning us that Cress was in trouble, but what did you gain from it? Were you working with them?”

The firebug glared at her. “I might not be one of you, might be what you call a rogue, but I’ve got a conscience. I may want the other one dead, but I know I can’t accomplish that alone. Your water elemental might be able to, but I know I’m not that powerful. I’ve got limits. Besides, he killed my sister, and she was the stronger of the two of us.”

Moira let out a breath. “I’ve never seen anyone as strong as that bastard is. Cress probably comes the closest to him, but even he’s got limits.”

The rogue nodded. “He’s something else. Only other one I’ve seen who can mess with the rain. Managed to put out my lighter. Quite the trick. He’s not… I don’t know… related to the other bastard, is he? Because if he is—”

“Our parents were both water. I believe our grandparents were, too. We may be as much as fourth or fifth generation purebred water. Of course, he’s better at controlling it than I am. He’s not—” Oceana broke off, turning around. Had she more energy, she would have run toward the figure at the end of the street. Instead, she smiled, relief giving her more stamina. “Not dead, thank goodness.”

“Let’s get going,” Sherwin said. “We can grab him at the end of the road.”

Terra shook her head. “We haven’t decided what to do with him, remember?”

“Damn it, the name is Flint,” the rogue said, grimacing as he did. “Flint Astin, actually.”

Moira found herself smiling, shaking her head. She wasn’t the only one. He frowned, looking around at them. “Okay, that’s not usually the reaction the name gets. They like to laugh when they hear I’ve got a name that matches up with my element.”

“This is one of those moments where I get to say join the club,” Terra said, laughing. He continued to frown, and she just grinned wider. “I’m Terra Landon. Moira and Sherwin Weatherly. Enya Royston. Oceana Washburne and you’ve met her brother Cress.”

Flint shook his head. “Nice to know I’m not the only one who got cursed like that. Maggie, she had a normal name, nothing to do with her element, and she loved to rub it in my face that I got one that might as well have been a pun.”

“Thought you people knew when to run. Why are we standing around chatting?” Cress asked, and Sherwin moved from supporting Occie to her brother. Cress managed a smile, but Moira didn’t like the look of him, not at the moment.

“Waiting for you, for one thing. What happened?”

“To make a long story kind of short… we argued, I got mad, and when he wasn’t inclined to let me leave, I retaliated. His was worse, and I couldn’t counter the freeze on everyone, so I decided to take the civilians out of the equation. Storms make nice wild goose chases, don’t you think?” Cress stumbled, and Occie went to hold up his other side. “Tired. Going to be very incoherent soon.”

“I know. I’m surprised you’re on your feet. Or almost on your feet.”

He shrugged. “May have passed out for a while. Can’t remember.”

“Let’s get you in the car.”

“One… more… thing. Emotions… seem… genuine.”

Moira nodded. She didn’t know that they could afford to leave Flint behind, not now. “All right. Everyone in the car. We need to get moving. Cress bought us a bit of time, but not much.”

“You letting me go? No trapping me in the ground this time?”

“No, Flint. You don’t get to go free. We’re going to keep an eye on you for a while. You can either get in the car or get dragged after us by the wind. Choice is yours.”

Author’s Note: Enya’s starting to see and feel her limitations.


Two Fires

“If you promise not to hurt me again, I can help. So can she.”

Enya shook her head, backing away from the rogue. She knew he didn’t—wouldn’t—understand and she would not do it. She would not let that monster out. She didn’t want to be useless, but she was not breaking any mirrors.

“Wait. The water. The reason it’s still moving…”

Oceana nodded, knowing what Enya was getting at. “Cress did it to help keep them from dying. It’s not much, but by keeping it going around their feet, he’d set something against the freeze, and since the temperature of the water is higher than the ice, it would have set part of them free, at least.”

“I have a feeling he’s unconscious somewhere after all that. Between their panic and all he did against the rogue, he’d have bled himself completely dry.”

“Lady, nothing’s dry at the moment.”

Moira stepped over the firebug, not quite clearing the step and kicking him in the stomach, but Enya figured that was deliberate. “It will be.”

Sherwin joined her, putting his hand on her arm as the wind stirred around them, shaking the outside of the buildings and rattling around. Oceana put a hand to the water, and it started to reverse itself, going back underground. Enya saw Terra close her eyes, and she could feel the ground under her them warming.

Enya was useless. She hated this.

“We still need to get inside each building, make sure that we get everyone unfrozen.”

Moira’s eyes opened. She nodded, troubled. “You’d be best at it, Occie, but if you take them all, you’ll be too drained to find or help your brother.”

“I can help. I’m really not sure why you’re not,” the firebug said, giving Enya a look before dragging himself up. He frowned again before going into the first shop. Enya swallowed, forcing herself to go after him. If he did something to the locals, she didn’t know that she could stop him, but Occie needed to help the others, so did Sherwin and Moira and Terra. Everyone could do something but Enya. She just had to hope that maybe she’d have better control over the rogue’s fires than her own.

She doubted that.

He walked up to the first local, frozen over the counter of the coffee shop, and put a hand on her, melting away the ice. Enya’s stomach twisted with envy. She wanted to hate him. That kind of control was something she would love to have, since she didn’t have any choice about being fire.

“Can I ask you something?”

“About why I’m just watching and not helping?”

“Sure. Let’s cut right to it, shall we?” He gave the woman he’d unfrozen a smile, jumping over the counter to help the employee at the espresso machine. “Why aren’t you doing this? Never got the hang of a little extra heat?”

“The version of extra heat I supply is almost always fatal.”

“Makes sense that you’d stick close to someone that good with water, then.”

“Makes more sense not to use it at all.”

The rogue laughed. “Sure. Like that was ever an option for any of us. We just had to work on it. Without my sister, I might have burned everything I touched, but we managed to work it out.”

“Lucky you. I killed my brother.”

The rogue froze. “Damn. You must be the strongest I’ve ever met. Never knew a fire that could overcome another fire. It’s always a stalemate unless water gets involved and settles things for us.”

She shrugged. She didn’t know how to react to that. She didn’t want anyone telling her she was powerful. She didn’t want power. She wanted safety. She wanted to be someone who could help, not someone who killed. She would much rather never break a mirror again, even if she was so damn useless around here that she felt like she should leave.

“Come on. There are more buildings to check.”


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.