Turning Tides (29 page)

Despite what Josiah was, she loved him, and her father was dead. Our father was dead, and one man was responsible.

That was when I finally lost my mind.

Chapter 27

The fire shot through me
, taking over my entire body. Arms, legs, hands and feet filled with heavy strands of magic. It slid into my throat and climbed the back of my neck, creeping like a spider across my skull. It filled every cell, every pore with unrepentant rage.

I’d given in before. I’d accepted the fire’s embrace, its absolute knowledge that what I did was right. Those times, there’d been a quiet voice I chose to ignore. The voice insisted that I couldn’t give in. It told me to fight the fire’s ravenous ways.

Now, the voice was silent. It was just me and the fire. This time, I wanted to be consumed.

“If you want to live, you should leave now.” My voice sounded foreign, flat and hard. “This house is going to burn.”

I sent a burst of flames toward the curtains. In a room full of waters, it was extinguished immediately.

I hissed, the sound more animal than human. “Do not interfere.”

My aunts stood. I saw fear on their faces, but still they faced me. “Aidan, you can’t win.” Georgina searched my face, believing her niece still hid just below the surface.

Tina nodded. “Think of the books. You like books. They’d all burn.”

Marie chimed in. “Or be ruined by water. This isn’t like you.”

I stared at them until their brave faces crumbled, until they no longer trusted themselves, let alone me.

They were wrong. This was exactly like me. This monster had been inside me all along, waiting for an excuse to escape its bindings.

I cast flames throughout the room. The carpet, the desk, the shelves of books. Books were replaceable. Josiah was not.

One after another, each fire was doused. I set more, and more, and all were extinguished by the waters in the room. Marie grabbed Tina’s hand, and Tina grabbed Georgina, pooling their magic together. Three fulls working in tandem were unimaginably strong. Behind me, my mother and Grams also worked together.

Everyone in the room was fighting me.

Everyone except Sera.

I clutched her hand, my fingernails digging into her skin until they drew blood. She was no more gentle. Our magic combined, crackling and sizzling and unbearably angry. Something needed to be destroyed.

Someone needed to die.

The room was full of people. I knew this. My mother and my grandmother and my aunts watched my every move. Lana stared between us with wide eyes, making strange squeaking noises. Michael and Deborah glared, and any hope I might have clung to that I would receive a fair trial vanished.

If I released the fire, my life was over. They wouldn’t allow me to live long enough to see morning.

Together, Sera and I set the room ablaze. If it was made of wood or fabric or paper, we torched it, and every time the flames were put out by the waters. We were outnumbered.

I looked at Sera, my fire sister. We didn’t need to speak.

I tugged the hand Sera wasn’t holding, trying to free it from someone else’s grip. There was no give. Growling, I sent fire toward the stubborn flesh and was rewarded with a low curse.

“I’m still not letting go.”

I paused. The voice was familiar. The hand was, too. I was forgetting something, something worth remembering. I scrambled after it for a moment, but it scampered away, unwilling to be caught. Not yet.

Instead, I sent heat toward David, igniting his clothes even as I tapped into my water side. It came eagerly, craving the man’s execution as much as the fire did.

Even as I knew the perfect clarity that only came when my magic worked together, darkness slipped over my mind. The shadow threatened to consume me, and part of me welcomed it.

I fought the elementals who were determined to put out the flames. They sent water to him, and I hauled it away, one wave after another. They’d overpower me eventually, but first David would burn.

He screamed, and I smiled to hear it. I laughed as he collapsed to the ground, using the damp carpets to smother the flames.

The fool thought he might get to live.

I stopped fighting the waters, instead taking the fire and sending it through his skin. He coughed, trying to expel the intruder.

“Why did you do it?” I built the heat, raising his temperature.

Sweat broke across his brow and his cheeks grew flushed. More heat, and more, until he was writhing in pain, struggling to find words.

“I told you. He killed my mother.” He gasped the words, and the pained face he turned to me was clear of deception.

That should mean something. Josiah hadn’t been a good man, and he’d probably earned his death. In all likelihood, he’d deserved it several centuries ago.

He was also my father, the only one I had, and in his way he’d loved me.

Though David’s words were steeped in memories of a child’s unspeakable pain, they left me cold. I was someone’s child, too.

It was a bitter irony that the hotter my fire burned, the more I felt like ice, hard and immovable. I could destroy this entire room, and I would not care.

Instead, I took the fire and wrapped it around David’s heart, around his lungs and windpipe and spine, and I let it burn. Hotter and hotter, until he was screaming and begging for mercy. I felt the tentative touch of a water, hoping to heal him, and I expelled that magic without hesitation. I would not allow the damage to be repaired.

Someone sobbed, and when her hand slid from mine, I knew it was Sera. She’d had enough.

I didn’t think I could ever have enough. The fire, so long contained, would never be silent again. It would never fit back into its little box, never allow me the comfort of pretending I was just another water.

I’d accessed it too many times. My body was not the same one Sera found on that porch in Oregon months ago. This one was marked by my own magic, scorched and scarred from the inside out.

Lana knelt at David’s side, her cries wild as only the screams of grief can be. I think she looked at me once, possibly even spoke to me.

I think many people spoke to me. Somewhere, underneath the rage and the certainty and the perfect knowledge that I was never coming back, there were familiar voices.

I ignored them all, and I watched David burn.

It only took seconds for the magic to incinerate the organs he needed to live. Seconds for a man to cease to exist.

Seconds for me to become a murderer.

I’d killed before, with Sera. It had been an accident, and I spent ten years punishing myself. I’d killed once after that in self-defense. Just a day earlier, I’d caused Rachel’s death.

This was different. This time, I’d chosen to kill. I’d
wanted
to watch him die.

The voices continued to hammer at me, demanding I release the fire. I knew what would happen if I let it. I would return to myself. Forever altered, but in some way the Aidan I’d known my whole life.

If I let go of the fire, I would feel again. Grief and guilt and rage and more pain than one soul could bear.

I could never let go of the fire again.

Someone else needed to burn, and the fire turned to Lydia. Whatever her motivation, whatever her original plan, she was the reason we were all here. It didn’t matter that she never could have foreseen this outcome. She’d wanted Josiah dead, and now he was.

“Any last words?” A collective gasp filled the room, and I replied with a cruel smile. “She’s already condemned. Let’s end this now.”

Lydia said nothing. She fixed calm eyes on me and waited. With a shrug, I withdrew my magic from David and sent it towards her.

At once, I met a block. Sera’s magic surrounded Lydia in a protective barrier.

I called on the water, letting it boost the fire’s power, and sliced through her magic.

“Goddamn it, Aidan, stop.” Sera almost never raised her voice, but she was screaming now. She stood in front of me, her face tilted toward me until she was only an inch or two away. “It won’t bring him back. You have to stop. Aidan, please. I can’t lose both of you.” Her voice hitched.

But no one could stop me. No one in this room was strong enough. I felt my aunts’ magic push at me and I waved it off with no more effort than I would a bug. Grams and Deborah and my mother stretched their hands toward each other, trying to combine the full-blooded magic of three old ones, but they wouldn’t be on time. Already, my magic threaded through Lydia, easing through her veins and arteries. I might make her death quick, just to see how that differed from David’s slow torture.

Around me, everyone screamed. They called my name and pulled on my arms, fighting for my attention. It was all just noise, and it meant nothing.

The power was so intense I felt myself growing again, rising from the ground until my feet no longer had to touch the floor.

I blinked, confused. I wasn’t touching the floor. My feet were, in fact, about two feet above the ground, and my view of Lydia had been replaced by a close-up shot of a green t-shirt.

“No. Put me down,” I cried. More power than anyone on the island, and I was reduced to a petulant whine as Mac hauled me from the room, unceremoniously tossed over his shoulder.

I couldn’t see ahead of us, but one voice drew us forward, toward the study rather than the front door. “This way. Through here, quickly,” said Simon, standing back and allowing everyone into the passageway, then closing the door behind us before the council had even exited the library.

I had a vague impression of a bookcase turned at an odd angle, a dark hallway, whispers and footfalls around me as Sera and Miriam followed Simon’s lead, and then we burst into the kitchen pantry.

No one paused. The kitchen door was wrenched open and we tumbled out into the night, fleeing down the rocky path, the shortcut giving us a vital head start on those who would chase us.

I beat my fists against Mac’s back, pummeling the kidneys. His stride never broke as he carried me away from Grams’ house, running along the eastern shore. He was carrying me away from the people I could hurt.

I disliked that plan. “Take me back,” I cried. No one answered me.

Rain poured down, soaking both of us within seconds of stepping outside.

“Stop them!” Deborah’s voice cut through the night. We were downwind, and every word reached us clearly.

I raised my head to find Sera, Simon, and Miriam right behind us, and nearly a hundred feet further back, everyone who’d been in the library was now spilling from Grams’ front door. They didn’t yet have our speed, and their steps were unstable, as if they were still deciding whether they should risk their own lives in pursuit or just watch me go.

Deborah felt no such uncertainty. “She is a dual magic. She is too dangerous to live.” She clasped Lydia’s cheeks between her hands and stared into her eyes. “If you can stop her, no one will ever hear what you did on this island.”

At those words, Lydia found her feet and began the chase.

Mac didn’t turn, but he picked up speed, legs pounding against the ground with each step.

The fire slammed back into my body as he built the distance between me and Lydia, carrying us beyond the limits of my power. As long as he ran, I couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Lydia continued to chase us, seeming determined to put herself back in harm’s way, but with every step Mac pulled away from her.

The sound changed. No longer did his feet crunch against rocky paths. A solid thud greeted each step as he landed on the wooden pier.

“Stairs?” He yelled behind him.

“No time.” Simon didn’t pause. One second he was running on two legs, the next he was on four and leaping for the seaplane’s door. He shifted back mid-air, his human hand catching on the handle and drawing it downwards, opening the door in a single movement.

Sera stepped onto one of the floats and pulled herself up with Simon’s help. A second later, Mac lifted me toward them. They yanked me inside the plane, but as soon as they released my arms I turned, determined to leap out and run for Lydia. This wasn’t over. It wouldn’t be over until one of us was dead.

“Oh, hell no.” Sera hauled me backwards, dropping me into a chair. I struggled to free myself, and she forced me to still, sitting on my legs to keep me in place. “Do not think I won’t knock you unconscious if I have to, Ade. How much longer?”

Miriam required an assist from Mac to make it inside, but she hustled to the cockpit the minute she was clear of the door. “Just need the keys.”

Simon cursed and flew out the door in feline form. He sailed over Mac, who was effortlessly pulling himself into the plane.

“I’ve got her.” Mac took the seat behind mine and wrapped his arms around me, pinning me in place.

Sera paced to the door, peering into the night. Clouds covered the moon and stars, and thick sheets of rain made it impossible to see more than ten feet ahead. Simon blended into the night so thoroughly we didn’t see him until he came barreling out of the darkness, jaw wrapped around a pair of jeans. He was instantly back in human form, pulling a set of keys from the front pocket and chucking them to Miriam. “Go. We don’t have much time.”

He’d barely finished the sentence before the propeller whirred to life.

“How close is she?” Sera asked.

Simon didn’t have a chance to answer before fingers wrapped around Sera’s ankle. She kicked, hard, but the hand didn’t loosen its grip.

Lydia’s head appeared in the doorway. I grinned.

“We have a stowaway,” I murmured, the fire roaring to life.

“Miriam,” Mac called, urgency filling every syllable.

“Get us the hell out of here,” Sera said, still struggling to free herself from Lydia’s determined grip.

We were fighting to escape. Lydia was fighting for her life. Few things evened the playing field like desperation.

“Doing what I can,” Miriam gritted. “The Air Force didn’t train me on fucking seaplanes.”

We pulled away from the pier, heading toward open water, and still Lydia refused to release her hold. “She’s going to pull Sera out.” I spoke to no one in particular. “She can’t do that.”

Once again, I stretched the fire out, reaching for Lydia. Sera’s magic was already on the woman’s hand, and I added my power to hers, burning Lydia until she screamed and released Sera’s ankle.