Authors: Mia Marshall
“Where is your water, Aidan?” he asked quietly.
I turned to the pond, but even through the red haze of my anger I knew what I was going to see. That ball of water I’d held so easily through my discomfort and my fear vanished under the force of my anger, the droplets reclaimed by the pond.
“Would it not have been easier to just tell me this?” I glared at him. “Or would that not have been as much fun? You’ve been manipulating me for years, haven’t you? You arranged for Sera and me to be roommates. I always wondered why a fire would choose to live in Tahoe, but you wanted your daughters to meet, didn’t you?” He shrugged. “And you knew all along. Every time you met us both for dinner, when I sat in your hotel room with the others, you knew, and you didn’t say a word until it suited you?”
“Aidan, I did what I thought was best. Please, calm down. Too much anger isn’t good for you.”
“What, now you’re going to play the good father, concerned about my mental well-being? A bit late for that, don’t you think?” I could hear the unhinged note in my voice, and a tiny part of my brain whispered that I needed to stop, to pull back, but that voice was too quiet, and the anger felt too good. “How long have you known what I was? Instead of telling me, you’ve played games and conducted tests. You let me be close friends with a murdering sociopath who arranged for your other daughter’s arrest.”
That hit a nerve. “Sera is safe.” He spoke through gritted teeth, trying to keep his own anger from flaring. “You are safe. Brian knew his life depended on your safety. Neither of you were ever in real danger, and I would have interfered instantly if that had changed.”
“And what about the people that died? Or my friends who were always at risk from Brian? What about Mac, Vivian, Simon?”
“They could never take precedence over my own daughters’ needs. I understand why you doubt me. But what I did, it was all to protect you. To protect your mind. You are my daughter.”
“And they are my friends.” I recognized the absolute truth of the statement even as I spoke. They were the best thing that had happened to me since my self-imposed exile, the reason I had chosen to rejoin the world. Josiah might want to keep Brian alive to protect my future sanity, but without those friends, it would only have taken a few more years before I didn’t have much sanity worth protecting, dual magic or not. Josiah’s utter disregard for their lives cut through all the noise in my head, leaving me with a perfect, white rage.
And it was perfect. The rage was untouched by any fear or doubt. I knew only that Josiah’s choices had led to Chris’s murder, and he dared to stand there and try to justify it. He’d hurt me, hurt my friends. He needed to be hurt in return. It was that simple.
I did not care that he was my father, or that his dubious moral code might appear acceptable to an old one. I felt everything in me with the potential to care shift to the side. The vaguely misanthropic woman with a weakness for country ballads, the one who once sat on her porch each evening to greet the sunset with a glass of bourbon in hand, the one who dreamed of returning to her friends, learning their quirks and secrets, of maybe kissing Mac again, she disappeared completely. I was nothing but rage, and I did not hesitate to use it.
“Aidan!” The word sounded muffled, as though spoken through a thick pane of glass. I stared at the speaker. Josiah stood surrounded by flames, the grass providing perfect kindling. He made no effort to put it out, all of his attention focused on me. “You have to stop this. Aidan, you have to stop.” I stared at him curiously, wondering why I would ever want to stop. Everything was so clear. It all made sense. Isn’t that all anyone ever wanted, such perfect clarity? “Please. You don’t have to accept me, but you can’t hate me. For yourself, you have to let go of the anger.”
What he was asking was ridiculous. The anger was so useful, so freeing. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I could feel the rage losing its iron grip on my soul. For myself, he’d said. I tried to remember who that was. This pure manifestation of rage seemed to belong to someone else, and she threatened to consume everything she touched. It was powerful, so powerful, but finally too much to maintain. I let her go, leaving me shaking and weak, but myself again.
I reached out a questioning hand toward the flames I had started, but a quick head shake from Josiah caused me to pull it back. He easily extinguished the fire, leaving only a burnt circle and a few frayed edges on his clothes to indicate anything had happened.
“Are you back?” he asked. I nodded. He collapsed onto a clean patch of grass, as if the effort of standing had finally proven too much. “And that, my dear Aidan, is why your mother told no one—not her family, not me, and not even you—that I was your father. Because our race can only coexist with humans if we control ourselves, and dual magics all lose control in the end. If the old ones knew what you were, you would be dead.”
I would be dead. The old ones would want me dead. That one thought circled again and again, even as we returned to the porch. I moved to my bench, seeking normalcy and comfort. It was futile. I suspected normalcy and comfort had taken an extended vacation.
As usual, Josiah seemed incapable of stillness for any length of time. He sat, he stood, he leaned against the post or sprawled across the stairs. He wasn’t nervous. He simply had to move. I closed my eyes to block the sight of his unbridled energy. Perhaps that fire trait had passed me by. Incapacitating rage? Check. Desire to exercise? Hell, no.
Josiah continued to speak, to instruct me, though I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to hear his voice again. “I heard about dual magics only in the quietest of whispers. They result from unions between two pure elementals, which is extremely rare. So few of the old ones wander far enough from our homes to meet others of our kind. This was particularly true before modern transportation. Such couplings still happened, of course. In Hawaii, there were always fires and waters, for instance, and I’m certain they mated. But as you know, the less humanity we possess, the less fruitful our mating. It was rare for a child to arise from the union.”
“But some did.”
“Yes, some did, and the stories are still whispered, warnings to those of pure blood, that we might never have mixed children of our own.”
“What did the other hybrids do to warrant these warnings?”
“You have seen Brian. Imagine that on a grand scale. Tens or even hundreds of powerful elementals with a questionable grasp on sanity. Their psyches split into two distinct parts. If you continue to access both your magics, the same will likely happen to you. I am sure you have asked yourself how you never noticed what Brian became. You wouldn’t have, because the man you saw every day was your friend. He was the same man, though heavily influenced by the desires and wants of the other half. Two magics create two halves of a person, one of which seems to exist entirely without a conscience. Obviously, I don’t fully understand it, myself. If I did, we wouldn’t need Brian.”
“What happened to the early hybrids?” Maybe if I kept asking questions, I could delay thinking about my future as a fractured, remorseless abomination—and definitely delay thinking about Brian. Josiah’s reasoning was calculated and maybe even understandable, but it was still too horrible to contemplate.
“They were exterminated. One after the other, they were hunted by the originals and eliminated, and the old ones promised the same fate to all future mixed children. Any such offspring would be killed upon birth, and the parent incarcerated for a century. The fact that your mother chose to bear you, rather than end the pregnancy, speaks to how very much she wanted you. Try not to be too angry with her.”
“Why would you even, you know, with her, if this was the possible outcome?”
He shrugged. “I’d been with centuries of women and had never fathered a child. I’m still shocked that Sera appeared only a few years after you did. At the time, conception seemed unlikely. And truly, that bikini was something to behold.” I glared, and he laughed. “She did everything to keep you hidden, to create an environment unlikely to cause you stress or rile your anger. She must have been horrified when you chose to attend the university.”
She had been, and her antipathy toward both Sera and Tahoe suddenly made sense.
“But I’m not the only one. Trent Pond was allowed to live.”
“Trent Pond has very wealthy parents who have bought the silence of every employee at their son’s facility. It is likely none of them even realize the immensity of the secret they are keeping. When I learned of your birth, I began a search for mixed children, hoping to find any indication that stability was a possible outcome. There is Trent, of course. I have heard rumors of one living somewhere in the southwest desert, and another on the Prince’s Islands of Istanbul. It seems likely there are others, but none I have found. I only uncovered Brian by following adoption records. Really, it’s a good thing I bothered to investigate all of your and Sera’s friends, or we might never have known about him at all.”
I decided the privacy argument could wait for another day. “Why does Brian know about me?”
“He learned it from me, I’m afraid. He’s the only one, I promise. Before I knew what he would become, I thought you might learn from each other. I had not realized the extent to which he would fixate on you. Well, fixate on your womb.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. While he is drawn to your other charms, he didn’t become obsessed until he learned that you are a dual magic. He believes only you will ever understand him, and he is partly motivated by the thought of fathering the most powerful elemental the world has ever known. He imagines a full blood with fire, earth, water, and ice magic. He is right. It would be a devastating creature, though completely insane.”
He suddenly stopped moving and sat quietly for a very long time, carefully choosing his next words, even as I pictured the dreadful future Brian had planned. “I do not want that to be your fate. It is easy to look at you and see a tool, a potentially lethal elemental that few could stand against. However, the cost would be your sanity. There is no evidence of a single dual magic ever escaping that cost. Your mother went to great lengths to keep you from any situation in which you accessed your fire magic, but it’s simply not possible to isolate a full half of your genetic makeup. You have never been a complete water, have you?”
I thought about my impulsiveness, my occasionally prickly personality, all the qualities I had chalked up to my human side. I remembered times when the gas stove burnt just a little too hot, when I had needed an extra scarf to face the cold day, when I felt lust instead of desire or joy instead of happiness. There had always been a tiny spark inside me, one that amplified everything I was, and my rage was turning the spark into a flame. What it would destroy in its wake was unknown.
“Regardless, you can’t rejoin the others now. You are already too unpredictable and potentially dangerous and have been for years. I would have separated you immediately after the warehouse fire, if I’d been able to find you. You have figured out by now that it was your rage that caused the fires to spiral completely out of control and kill those people, yes? We have to control that rage, manage it—at the very least, we must learn from it. I have created a place for you and Brian in Hawaii. The warm location will weaken his powers, certainly, and you can both be closely observed. We will find a way for you to avoid the others’ fate, Aidan. I will not allow you to suffer.”
I sat next to him in silence. Somehow, the world still seemed normal. Gravity continued to hold me to the earth. The wind still rustled the leaves in the trees, and the birds still sang to each other. I was still able to pull water to me and find comfort in its gentle power. And yet, the world I now viewed was not the one I had seen this morning when I awoke, and so wholly different from the one I had greeted from the porch the day Sera found me as to be almost unrecognizable.
“Did you give Sera my address?” I asked, remembering the way she’d simply shown up out of the blue. He’d had his hand in everything else; I couldn’t imagine he hadn’t manipulated this, as well.
He shook his head. “She found you on her own a while ago. Or your friend Vivian did, I suspect. Sera protected your privacy, though. Even when I asked for your address, she refused to tell me.”
There was more to say. Questions lingered, and there remained too many unexplained events and murky motives for me to simply accept this man at his word. Before I could ask anything more, the sound of squealing tires cut through the air. I leapt up to see Brian careen down the driveway at top speed. He stomped the brakes at the last minute, sending showers of gravel spinning out from the tires. He left the engine running as he threw himself from the car and ran toward us. “They’re here!” he shouted, panicked. “They just pulled into town. She should never have gotten here so quickly, especially not in that piece of shit Bronco.”
I hid a smile. Obviously, Brian had never driven with Sera on a road trip.
“Go,” Josiah said, pointing to Brian’s car. “I’ll handle them.”
Brian’s jaw clenched. “Aidan comes with me.”
It couldn’t be possible. He couldn’t be considering leaving me alone with Brian. And yet, I clearly saw Josiah weigh his options. No matter what Brian was, he still wanted him alive. He wanted a living dual magic guinea pig, even one who had already taken a hard tumble off Sanity Ridge. Finally, Josiah nodded, and I saw the very moment his own brand of pragmatism claimed the victory. “Fine. I’ll intercept them and stall long enough for you to clear out. I will meet you both in Bend. Aidan, don’t struggle. You have to know neither of us would ever hurt you.”
It was ridiculous that he should say that, that he could even think it. I’d been hurt again and again, by both of them, and knew I would continue to be. Josiah utterly ignored my astonished glare. A moment later, he was in his car, peeling out of the drive. I was alone again with Brian.
Chapter 24
“Let’s go.” He was already moving toward his car. “We’ll come back for your stuff in a few days.”
I walked slowly behind him. My overwhelmed brain had approximately ten seconds to formulate an appropriate plan. If I climbed meekly into the car with him, I would be physically safe, but I would sacrifice any opportunity for the others to find me. If I let the others find me, I risked hurting them if—or when—I decided sanity was overrated.
The way I figured it, I had three choices. I could trust my father, a man whose identity I’d only known for an hour. Sure, he was offering a fabulous tropical vacation, but it was conditional on inviting a murderous former friend along as my plus one. I could trust myself and assume that I’d magically learn control when the time came. Or I could do something truly crazy and trust my friends to learn what I was and decide for their own damn selves whether I was too great a liability.
Maybe it was selfish. Maybe I should leave them safely behind and follow Josiah in his search for answers. Maybe I should accept that my life was no longer in my control.
And maybe I should paint myself in pink and gold stripes and run away to join the circus, because any option that involved overlooking what Brian had done was no option worth considering.
“I’m not going.” Still twenty feet from the car, I planted my feet and stood perfectly still, an immoveable statue of defiance.
He turned to me, his face a mix of exasperation and panic, one sane reaction sparring with an uncontrolled one. “Aidan, we do not have time. Get in the car.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“You heard Josiah. No one will hurt you.” He pasted a smile on his face, one with no charm. I saw a grimace composed of stiff lips and shark’s teeth.
“It’s too late for that.”
“This is not the time.” The words erupted in a hiss. He took several long strides to me and tightly grasped my upper arm. “Just trust me, damn it.”
“You killed your own girlfriend before. Why should I possibly think you won’t do it again?”
He rolled his eyes, as if I’d inquired about why he hadn’t done the dishes or had arrived home late the night before. “That was different. She wasn’t you. As long as she was around, you wouldn’t see me as anything but a friend.”
“And what, a breakup would have been too messy?”
His eyes narrowed. “I told you. She wasn’t you. It didn’t matter what happened to her. Now get in the car, Aidan.”
I shook my head. An instant later, I felt the cold fingers of ice curl around my throat, the sensation disconcertingly familiar. I gasped in one long breath, buying myself precious seconds. In another minute, I would be unconscious and vulnerable once again. Rage stirred deep within, and for once I welcomed it. I gave in to it willingly. I stoked it, feeding it with my doubts and fears until I felt the warmth simmer. I raised one hand to my throat and easily burned the manacles that threatened to steal my air. Cold, melted water dribbled down my back and chest. I was free.
Perhaps I should never have accessed that magic again. I knew so little about how it worked, how it would gnaw away at my sanity over time. I only knew that I had kindled something by the pond, and it was hungry and eager. If the cost of my freedom was a tiny bit of my mind, right now it seemed like a fair trade.
Plus, the look on Brian’s face was more than worth it. “Looks like you need to find some new tricks,” I suggested.
His face rebuilt itself before my eyes. The mouth tightened, his nostrils pinched shut, and his brows sharpened into an unforgiving angle. “Stop fighting me,” he grunted. Unable to control me through ice, he opted for a more physical solution, wrapping both arms around me and dragging me toward the car.
Brian was strong, but his strength came from the gym. It was trained for repetitions along a limited range of movement rather than genuine usefulness. I had none of his strength, but I was fast enough, and I was angry. I touched one of his hands and heard the skin sizzle. He yelped, and his grip loosened for a mere second, but that was enough. I twisted and spun, ducking under his arms and immediately darting several feet to the side before his brain informed his muscles where to find me. By that point, I was dancing backwards toward the porch, staying well out of his reach.
“I’m not going with you. Leave without me or wait for the others to arrive. I am sure they’ll be as understanding about all the people you killed as Josiah was.” The words were intended to be a taunt, but I felt the sting as much as Brian did. I knew that Josiah was an old one, capable of teaching graduate level courses on moral relativism, but even the most flexible ethics had to cringe at the thought of ignoring Brian’s actions.
The thought fed my anger, but I paid for the momentary distraction. I didn’t notice Brian raising the earth behind me. I tripped and fell backwards onto the stairs, limbs splayed at an awkward angle. Thick wooden splinters stabbed my palm, and my ankle twisted sharply. I gasped at the unexpected pain. Wincing, I picked myself up and scrambled awkwardly backwards toward the door, staring at his enraged face the entire time. He did not walk toward me. He stalked, eyes alert for any movement, anything that could be used as a weapon. I was his prey, and all other thoughts had fled his mind. He was no longer considering the others’ imminent arrival or making plans to woo me. His only intent was to possess me.
I stood and hit the door at a run, feeling my ankle scream with each step. Slamming it behind me, I heard an angry grunt. His arm was halfway through the door, and the heavy wood had closed on his bicep, but he didn’t withdraw. I slammed it again, and again, hearing the grotesque thud of wood crushing soft flesh. Finally, with an oath, he slid his arm through the narrow gap, leaving me free to close and lock the door. I ran into the kitchen and locked the second door before he could enter.
Loud rasps filled my ears. It took several terror-filled seconds to realize they were my own desperate breaths. I focused on slowing my breathing, reaching for any peace I could find. I waited for a sound, for the tread of feet turning the corner on the porch or the shattering glass of a window breaking, any indication of his next move. There was nothing.
One room at a time, I limped slowly through the downstairs, peering around curtains to look outside, both hoping and fearing to see him. The kitchen was clear, as was the living room that faced the front yard. I eased my way toward the back of the house, to the dining room I never used. The first window revealed only an empty garden. Twitching back the curtain that covered the second window, I saw absolutely nothing. No light streamed through, no view of the yard. A single earthworm wiggled against the glass, and I dropped the curtain in horror.
Even as I raced for the front door, I knew it was too late. I heard his feet stepping confidently down the stairs, dragging the dirt from his improvised elevator through my house. My hands grasped the deadbolt and turned. He was so close. The door swung inward and I launched myself outside, seeking distance, only to crash at full speed into the immoveable sheet of ice that covered my front door. Shocked, I fell to the floor, wincing at the pain.
“There’s one on the kitchen door, too, in case you were thinking of wasting more time.”
I placed one hand surreptitiously behind me and channeled heat. It was too much ice and would take long minutes to melt, but I had to try.
“You know I’m not going to leave with you.” I tried to distract him from my efforts. The small smile that danced at the corners of his mouth suggested he knew exactly what I was doing, but he played along regardless.
“Am I so bad as all that, Aidan?”
“You killed people.” He turned a mildly confused expression on me, one that suggested my case wasn’t especially compelling. “You killed people I knew. You killed Christopher.”
He scoffed. “You hadn’t seen or even written him in years. Don’t pretend like you care that much.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t remember. After Sera, he was my closest friend.” Do not bait the crazy. Do not bait the crazy. “Closer than you ever were.” Oops.
He offered me a frozen smile that matched the frost in his eyes. “Of course, you’re right. You and Sera were very close to him, weren’t you? You loved him.”
Confused by his sudden about face, I said nothing.
“Yes, you both thought good old Chris was wonderful. He was the reason she came to find you. He was the reason you returned to Tahoe after all this time. Not for us, no. Not for me. For your friend that you loved even in death.” He took the final steps down the stairs and crouched until he was in front of me, and I needed to tilt my head slightly to look into his eyes. “Josiah did say that was the best way to draw you out of hiding, to convince Sera to finally give up your address—better even than killing your exes. I thought it was too risky, but he was right. Here you are. Perhaps that’s why he was willing to forgive me when I connected the murders to Sera. After all, it was his idea to start killing her boyfriends.” He sat back on his heels and grinned at me. “Who’s your daddy, Aidan Brook?”
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered. It was a reflex answer that sounded weak even to my ears. Based on what Josiah Blais had already revealed, that level of manipulation was entirely credible.
Brian shrugged and stood. “You don’t have to believe me. Just ask yourself which scenario is more likely: that Josiah is keeping me around to observe the effects of dual magic on a person’s psyche to save his precious daughter’s mind—a daughter he previously ignored, mind you—or that, after observing us for years, he gathered us both to him in order to control two of the most powerful elementals in the world?”
I felt it heat up again, starting all the way down in my toes. The rage crept upward, through my legs, warming everything it touched. “I will not be controlled.”
“Of course not. But you know he will try. But you and me, we would be equals, always equals.” He stated this so simply, as if it were an undeniable fact, and he had never bound or drugged me, never attempted to control me in any way. It strengthened the anger I still felt at his betrayal, his lies and treachery. I let the rage reach higher still, felt it curling around my hips and waist. My vision narrowed, until all I saw was the vile, murderous sadist standing before me.
“We will never be equals, Brian.” I stood easily, the pain from earlier rendered insignificant by the flames now coursing throughout my body, obliterating everything that was not pure, focused rage.
I knew the moment he saw the transformation cross my face. The relaxed cockiness of his posture vanished into the tense readiness of prey, and worry scarred his ice blue eyes. “Aidan, stop. Listen to me. I love you.”
It was a pure, simple declaration, and he thought he meant every word. “You love my power. Here, give it a closer look.” Without any further warning, I engulfed the staircase in flames. They licked greedily upwards, devouring carpets and wallpaper.
I distantly heard him screaming at me, his face red and sweating and his words accusatory. Curiously, I looked at him, at his panicked eyes. “This is for arranging to have Sera arrested.” I brought the flames steadily closer to his body. He had nowhere to run. My power was everywhere. “And this is for tricking me at the campsite.” I created a semi-circle around Brian. I saw his efforts to control his panic, and that was all the warning I needed. When the earth slipped through the window and eased its way down the stairs, extinguishing the flames it met along the way, I only laughed and increased the blaze, bringing the flames high enough to lick the ceiling.
“This is for killing innocent men.” The semi-circle closed, locking Brian within its greedy jaws. “This is for killing shifters because you consider them nothing but animals.” I brought the circle’s flames higher and drew the tips together, creating an inescapable tent of fire. My last glimpse of his face was that of a desperate man, his own anger fled in the face of mine. He simply looked like Brian, my friend, pleading for mercy. I heard him begging, his smooth words and his magic useless against the anger that fueled my punishment. I had known and loved him for years, and his sobs meant nothing to me. I was judge, jury, and executioner, and I would not be moved.
“This is for Christopher.” My voice was calm, the way a snake is calm even as it slowly squeezes its prey to death. The ice on the door had long since melted, and I stepped through the doorway. I widened the circle of fire, sending it through the house, closing off every escape route.
Through the rage, memories fought for my attention. My home the first day I ever saw it, when I knew it would be my bastion of peace. The years in which I had loved being half-human, because it provided an escape from the elemental world. The time I did not know or care about my father’s identity, happy to think of him as an anonymous human. The life I’d thought I would live, lost and confused and a little bit broken at times, but always sane. As each memory crossed my mind, I identified it as exactly that, a memory, something from my past that would never be true again.
I whispered my final words. “This is for me.” I stepped off the porch and turned for one last look at my house before I stretched the fire to every last wall and window. It burned, oh, it burned, and all I could do was stand and watch. When I felt something snap inside of me, I let it go, and dark laughter crawled its way out of my mouth. I laughed at the horror and the fear and the way I might never be okay again. I laughed until I was nothing but the laugh that slowly consumed me and replaced the white hot rage.
That was how they found me. Standing in front of my burning shell of a house, cackling like a madwoman.