Exhale (4 page)

Gavin clenched his teeth. “
Who
sent you?”

“Ellie.”

Shit.

He let go and stepped back. After Gavin accepted the offer to lead the Sentinels, one of council members—Ellie—said they’d arranged for some kind of training. Surely this wasn’t the teacher? Gavin studied the man from head to toe, and found him to be a whole lot of nothing special. Just a graying, young-guy-wannabe wearing board shorts and a Billabong tee shirt.

Except if Ellie had him running errands for her, he must be a Sentinel. Was this the best they could do for a trainer? Gavin huffed. What a fucking joke.

“What am I supposed to do with the bike?” He glanced at the Harley, and the lump in his throat grew. Yileen loved that motorcycle. Treated it like royalty.

“It’s a gift, man. They said he wanted you to have it. So there it is.” The geezer tossed over a ring holding two keys. Gavin caught it.

He tried to distract himself from the tingly burn building in his nose by staring into his hand at the keys. Didn’t work. “So, he’s really dead then?”

The man straightened his rumpled shirt and moved past him, down the step, and into the yard.

Gavin spun around. “Where are you going?” There was only the Harley in the drive. Was the guy planning to walk home?

“You look like a man who needs some time alone.”

Gavin dragged the back of a hand across his nose. “Hold on, mate. Why don’t you come in and have a beer. Being alone is the last thing I need right now.”

The bloke got to Gavin’s car and admired it for a long moment, circling it, sticking his head inside. With a long, appreciative whistle, he pushed the door shut. “A 1970 Holden HT Monaro, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not.”

The man walked back up the remainder of the drive. “I’m Jack Weaver.”

Gavin stared at him a few seconds and reached out to shake. When their hands touched, a warm bolt shot through him, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the day Yileen had hugged him goodbye for good. Maybe there was more to the Big Lebowski than met the eye. “Gavin Cassidy.”

“You mentioned beer.”

“Yeah.”

Jack followed him through the front door, into the kitchen, and tossed his empty bottle in the bin. He checked out the lounge room while Gavin grabbed a couple of coldies from the fridge. Jack sat on the lounge and rifled through some guitar magazines from the coffee table. “So you’re a musician, huh? This you?” He flashed a high gloss picture taken during an interview Gavin had done a while back.

Gavin handed him a beer and nodded. “Yeah, I play—”

With a loud smack, Jack tossed the magazine aside and looked up at him, steely gray eyes flashing. “Yileen give you any instructions before he…moved on?”

Wincing at the abrupt and painful change in topic, Gavin sat in a chair, kicked off his combat boots, and propped his feet on the table. “If you ever met Yileen, you know he wasn’t one to give a straight answer about anything. All he said was I’m supposed to ‘bring song back to the Dreaming.’ Whatever the hell that means.”

As Jack settled against the cushions, his shirt wrinkled so only the ‘bong’ of the ‘Billabong’ logo showed. How appropriate. He crossed an ankle over the bare knee poking out of his shorts and stretched the arm with the beer attached to it over the back of the lounge. “What do you think it means?”

Gavin frowned. This bloke wasn’t going to pull the same Master Yoda, work-it-out-yourself shit Yileen had, was he? He tipped his bottle up and sucked down some liquid gold. “I have no idea.”

“You said you were a musician.”

“So?”

Jack leaned across the table and pointed at him with the hand holding the beer. “How do you make music?”

Gavin shrugged. “I don’t know. I grab a guitar and start playing.”

Jack’s mouth eased into a crooked grin. “You’re thinking like a Wyldling—a human. Take it to the next level. How would a
Sentinel
make music?”

Gavin stomped his feet to the floor. What was this, a refresher course on Making Elements Work for You? “I guess I’d call on Fire for creativity to write it and Water to build emotion when I played it.”

“Bingo.”

“What’s that got to do with the Dreaming?”

“Come on, man, you’re smart enough to figure it out. You got a major Fyre problem here in Australia. Those Elementals killed a hundred people in their dreams last week. They might be in hiding for now, but sure as shit, they’ll be back. And soon.”

“I’m supposed to put out Fire with Water. I get that, but my music isn’t going to solve the world’s problems.”

Jack’s head bobbed back and forth. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Gavin swallowed hard. “Look, mate, there’s been a mistake. Ellie said they were sending someone to train me, but I don’t think—”

“You ever hear of a terrorist named Joseph Ridley?”

“Is this a trick question?”

Jack waited silently for his answer.

“No, I’ve never heard of Joseph Ridley. Why?”

“Because of me.”

Gavin stared at him. This bloke couldn’t follow a straight line of thought if his balls were fish-hooked to it.

“You haven’t heard of him because I put his ass in the ground before he had a chance to blow up the U.S. Capitol Building, the Supreme Court Building, and the White House back in ‘64.” Pride beamed from Jack’s eyes as he thumped his chest. “Ridley was a racist nut case and a high ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan who set out to make Congress, the Supreme Court, and President Lyndon B. Johnson pay for ‘crimes committed against humanity.’ Needless to say, he wasn’t fond of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Today’s psychoanalysts would’ve had a field day labeling him—a sociopath with anti-social, narcissistic traits. A real cocksucker. But to a Sentinel, all these little ‘diagnoses’ add up to one thing: Fyre Elemental. With a white-hooded army of Fyres behind him.”

Jack leaned forward, wide-eyed. “Ridley and his cronies set up an underground network that went even deeper and darker than the Klan to spread hatred, fear, and panic in Wyldlings. They fed off the Fire their hate crimes produced. They would have gained control over the entire country if they’d succeeded in their plot to take out all three branches of American government.” He shook his head. “Man, the bombs were in place and ready blow. I led the Librus team that put Ridley and his merry band of morons down.”

“How come I’ve never heard anything about this?”

“Nobody has. And if you’d never met me, you’d have lived the rest of your life in ignorant bliss. We couldn’t leak a story like that. It would have accomplished the Fyres’ goal. We don’t call ‘em terrorists for nothing.” Jack straightened. “There are a dozen other stories I could tell along the same lines, but you don’t have time for that.

“My point is, you’re the new leader of the Sentinels in Oz. You gotta know what you’re up against. I have the background and experience to arm you with everything you’ll need to destroy the Fyres and kick them out of the Dreaming for good.”

How many other violent episodes in human history had Elemental hands fed with the flames of violence? And how many other Sentinels had intervened to keep the Balance?

Gavin had some big fucking shoes to fill.

Jack stood and looked him over. “We’re gonna have to get you Balanced. A little too much Fire burning inside, but the rest of you’s good.”

Turning his bottle up for the first time, he finished the entire thing in five great gulps, went to the kitchen to drop the empty in the bin, and headed to the door. The knob twisted with a creak. “Your lessons start tomorrow. I’ll meet you here after band rehearsal.”

Jack stepped into the night, and the screen door swung closed behind him.

The Harley in the drive gleamed at Gavin through the darkness.

So, a man who’d helped bring down one of the most dangerous terrorist regimes in the world had come to train him.

Fucking. A.

* * * *

After Zoe went to bed, Iri Rangi sat cross-legged on the cold tile floor of his new room and folded his mind into itself until it became a breath of Air. He sent the whisper of his consciousness to the hidden door into the Dreaming—the portal Scarlet and the other Fyres coveted as their ticket to unlimited Wyldling Fire.

The door hadn’t helped them win the last battle against the Sentinels. Or shift the Elemental Balance in favor of the Fyres. If Iri’s consciousness had a mouth, it would have smiled.

His misty form slunk up to the red-eyed guardians keeping vigil at the massive titanium box. Brilliant red sigils emblazoned the metallic white sides, marking the portal as property of the Fyre Elementals.

One of the guards curled his lip and bared his teeth. Despite his fear, Iri did not cower. He loathed the Fyres’ unpredictability and disorganization. But he respected their strength and what it could do to him should their whims change suddenly, as they were wont to do.

Fire eclipsed Air, and nothing would ever change that.

But how he wished Erthes guarded the door instead.

One of the Fyres swept a blazing orange hand in a wide arc and grazed Iri’s consciousness. Though barely a touch, the excruciating burn scattered his organized, well-trained thoughts for a moment. The Fyre cackled, his cruel face twisting as Iri scrambled to pull his mental pieces back together.

“Open,” the guard shouted at the portal. A tall gash tore through the thin Veil like paper. Iri floated through the hole, and it closed behind him. He relaxed his grip on his mental molecules, allowed his consciousness to separate into many pieces, and wafted across the Dreaming in search of Zoe.

He caught a phrase of Zoe’s unique whale song, and pulled his mind back into one vaporous entity. Focusing on the dream ocean, he pushed himself through the dead, stagnant air. His molecules tingled like a shiver up a spine. Though what the Fyres had done to the Air in the Dreaming saddened him, this place was not his concern. He only cared about Whetu. Once she was safe, he would help his Aer brethren take back what they had lost to the Fyres.

Zoe swam in the dream sea with no discernible direction. She studied the horizon, dove under the waves, then looked around some more. She must have been searching for whales.

Or Gavin Cassidy.

Iri divided his consciousness in two, keeping one half focused on Zoe and the other on alert for Sentinels or Fyres. He swept his airy particles beside her ear like a soft breeze. With a whisper, he tricked her mind into believing he was a whale swimming beside her.

Gavin would be harder to fool. His Dreamsense would be on the lookout for inconsistencies in the Dreaming.

Iri sharpened his mind with the Air he’d collected earlier from Randy Heller, targeted a vulnerable spot in Zoe’s forebrain, and began digging.

Tell me what you’ve seen, Zoe Morgan. What news from the whales?

She cocked her head to the side and focused on his imaginary whale form. “Do I know you?”

He hit a wall of rock inside her consciousness.
I’m a friend. What of the Wæters?

He pressed the nose of his mental drill deeper. Frowning, she touched a finger to her temple and rubbed. “I think they still need me. I don’t know why.”

A disturbance in the Dreaming’s Air shifted his other self’s attention above and left. Gavin, appearing as a falcon, flapped his wings and made a lazy circle overhead.

Interesting.

Iri’s whale body swam away.

Zoe followed. “Where are you going?”

To find the Archelemental
. Perhaps his lie would bring truth from her lips.

“You know who it is?” Her eyes widened, then she shook her head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

He dug deeper into her brain, shuffled through surface thoughts of Gavin—a kiss, shock, longing—to uncover worry and uncertainty directed at the whales. Puzzle pieces flipped. Unpredictable patterns arose. Iri closed his eyes and ordered the data he collected into different containers within his mind. Zoe’s emotional attachments to Gavin went into a blue bin. Conversations with whales fell into a yellow one, latent sexual desires in red, and stoic perseverance for her job in green.

Despite Scarlet’s demand to keep her apprised of Zoe’s relationship with Gavin, he pushed the blue and red bins out of sight. Didn’t need the distractions. The sooner he got to the meat of the matter with the Wæter Archelemental candidate, the sooner he’d get his daughter back.

The new Archelemental will need your help, Zoe.

Her brows squeezed together and jaw muscles worked hard beneath the skin. She covered her ears. “I don’t want to be involved in this anymore. I just want my life back. The dreams were supposed to stop after—”

Her mind blanked like curtains swinging shut. She turned away and dove into an oncoming wave.

Gavin cawed above, long and low.

Iri concentrated on the bird and strengthened his will with another sip of Air from within.
Go back to your bed. Remember none of this.

The bird glided for five seconds, then flapped his wings and continued on course, following the swimming Zoe across the ocean.

Iri tapped more Air from his mental stores and fortified his consciousness with the Element it craved. He tightened his focus.

“Go home, Gavin Cassidy.” Though he hated speaking, saying the words aloud gave them the force necessary to knock down the Sentinel’s mental defenses. “Zoe is safe within the Dreaming. No harm will come to her here.”

Gavin maintained his bearings for a few more seconds. Then he slowed, swerved left, and disappeared over the red-lit horizon.

No more time to waste. Iri faced Zoe, who was treading water beside his imaginary whale body.
You will tell me everything you know about the humpbacks in Hervey Bay and their connection to the Wæters. If you refuse, Fyres will murder each and every whale in the region. Do you understand, Zoe Morgan?

A sharp intake of breath preceded the bow of her head. Shoulders sagging, she said, “I understand.”

Good.
His daughter’s life depended on her.

Chapter Four

“So, you’re leaving for New Zealand tomorrow.” Zoe smothered her grin with a white polyester napkin, then laid it across her lap. God, she couldn’t wait to be rid of Randy. “Kaikoura, you said?”