A Matter of Fate (39 page)

“She does date a lot,” Karl tells me.

“I mean,” Iolani continues, “how fabulous is a Connection? You’re guaranteed to always be loved, always be accepted. It’ll never break, so heartbreak is totally avoidable. Who wouldn’t want one of those?”

“Some people who have Connections never find each other. It does happen sometimes,” Karl offers.

“If I had a Connection,” she orates, holding out a finger, “I would never rest until I found him. I would move heaven and earth to be with the person I was meant for.” She sighs again. “Karl here is so lucky. He and Moira had their little doorway and never had to work at finding each other. Bastards.”

“Go ahead and send some of that bitterness Chloe’s way,” Karl grins. “She and Jonah did the whole dream thing, too.”

“Seriously?” Iolani asks, eyes wide. Then she looks me up and down. “Bee-yatch.”

Should I be flattered or insulted? “Er . . . thanks?”

“Tell me you two have already merged together, and I may puke,” she says bitterly.

“Uh . . . okay?”

Karl jerks forward. “What?”

“Is this bad?” I ask, confused, because I’m pretty sure there’s no way such a thing could be bad. In fact, it’s pretty awesome, if I may say so myself, and something I really look forward to doing with Jonah when we’re alone.

“Was it good?” Iolani asks, practically salivating over this bit of gossip. “I hear it’s amazing. Better than sex—well, almost, I suppose. I hear that if it happens at the same time you’re having sex, then it’s mind blowing, but in a good way, not like what we were talking about earlier, and man . . . with Jonah? It’s got to be—”

“When was this?” Karl booms, cutting her off.

“Dude, calm down,” Iolani laughs. “Like you have a leg to stand on, what with you and Moira getting caught doing nookie all over Guard Headquarters.”

“ARE YOU SAYING THEY’RE HAVING SEX, TOO?” he roars as he stands up.

“Whoa,” I say nervously. “No one is talking about sex. At least, I’m not talking about it. She said
you
are having sex—”

“I’M MARRIED AND OLDER THAN YOU.”

“Yeah, by like three years!”

Karl’s eyes are bugging out so far I worry they might hit me when they explode. But then, after grinding his teeth for a good five seconds and balling his fists up over and over, he takes a deep breath and sits back down. “Leave it to Jonah to go and do that right away.”

“Hel-
lo
,” Iolani says. “If it’d been me, I’d have done it two seconds after finding my Connection. And according to Moira—”

“We’re not talking about me and Moira,” Karl snaps, and then Iolani and I laugh, because he plays the role of angry protector so well.

Jonah appears in the doorway, still sleepy and utterly adorable with rumpled hair. “What’s all the yelling about?”

Iolani grins slyly. “Yes, Karl. What were you yelling about?”

He mutters something under his breath and stands back up, pointing a finger at Jonah. “You’re lucky I like you so much.”

Jonah blinks. “Huh?”

Karl looks back down at me and Iolani and then back to Jonah. “I’m going to go call my wife now.” And then he exits the room swiftly, prompting me and Iolani to burst into laughter once more, and Jonah to watch his friend retreat in confusion.

>Lizzie, Alex, and Meg show up later that night, along with Kellan, who appears completely at ease with being in the same room as me and Jonah. I am not at ease, though. I am grossly uncomfortable to the point my palms sweat at the same time my mouth goes dry. It always amazes me when that happens—it’s like all the moisture in my mouth leeches out through my palms.

I listen to Lizzie’s recollections of what happened back home before they came here—how, admittedly, she and Meg both flew off the handle and how they’d freaked out when Kellan left them at Graham’s house so he could go look for Cora. Graham is still in California, worried sick about Lizzie, making her wonder how she can get around the whole “Don’t tell” rule so he can come to Annar, too. She ends up calling him twice during our conversation.

Bored, Alex flips through television channels while Meg squeals at every other stop, declaring her love of each show and lamenting each time he skips past her choices. “I love these two,” Lizzie says quietly, “but they are driving me bonkers. Thank gods I had Kellan to talk to for part of the day, when he wasn’t off doing Guard stuff.”

I slide my eyes over to where Kellan and Jonah are talking with Karl and Iolani. They seem completely comfortable around each other, as if nothing has happened at all over the last few months.

I wonder if I ought to go over there, too. I want to, because I want to be in the loop. But I also don’t want to highlight my awkwardness for all to see—or rather, feel. I wish I could control my emotions as easily as they do, that I could pretend everything is peachy and manage to do what’s needed without obsessing over the smallest details. But I can’t. So I stay where I am, sitting with my equally clueless Cousin, watching our two even more clueless Cousins squabble about what to watch on TV. This goes on for at least twenty more minutes before Zthane comes crashing through the door.

Everyone stops talking as he surveys the room. His eyes settle on me. “Lilywhite. Good. Still here.”

It’s Raul’s turn to burst into the room. “They’re five minutes out,” he yells, charging to the windows.

“Who’s five minutes out?” Karl demands.

Zthane joins Raul at the windows. “Annar’s boundaries have finally been breached, my friend. The Elders are here, and they’re on the warpath!”

Chaos breaks out in the room. Meg goes hysterical. Lizzie is shaking in her boots. Everyone begins yelling, even Alex—everyone but me. There are a thousand questions floating above us, but the only answer that really matters is that the Elders are here, and it’s believed they are specifically here for
me
.

This declaration from Zthane has Jonah by my side in a split second. “Come with me,” he says, and while everyone else is arguing, I’m taken down the hallway into a windowless room. Within two seconds, the Cousins run in, all three exhibiting terror in different stages. Finally, Kellan saunters in, locking the door behind him.

“Meg,” he says gently, “I’m sorry to have to do this again.” And the next thing I know, Alex barely catches her as she slumps to the ground. Kellan gives Lizzie a meaningful look, but she holds out her hands.

“I’m okay this time. I swear. I can keep it in.”

He looks doubtful, but leaves her alone.

“Will the lock hold?” I ask no one in particular.

“No,” Jonah says. “But it’d be a small roadblock that could give us a few seconds to counter-attack.”

Feeling utterly useless and helpless, I ask, “What can I do?”

“Nothing,” he says. “Right now, I just need you to focus on making sure our friends stay safe and comfortable. Trust me and Kellan to take care of the logistics for everything else.”

I am not a damsel in distress. It goes against me in so many ways to just sit back. “What logistics?”

He says quietly in my ear, “Do you trust me to deal with this? To keep you safe?”

He plays dirty. “You know I do.”

“Jonah,” Kellan says calmly. “They’re here.”

Jonah’s head cocks to the side. “There are . . . fifteen, maybe?”

Kellan nods. “Fifteen severely pissed off Elders. Good times ahead, don’t you think?”

The screaming begins, the same awful keening that accompanied the other two times I’d been chased by these things. It’s almost deafening, and clearly too much for Lizzie. She hysterically babbles about the end of the world while nearly pulling her hair out. My own nerves go raw.

Since Jonah is closer, he’s the one to calm Lizzie down. She sinks down next to where Alex is holding Meg. “Alex?” Kellan calls out from across the room. “You okay there?”

“Somebody has to watch over the girls,” Alex murmurs, his face a weird green shade that might indicate he’s on the verge of puking. I take a gigantic step backwards from where he’s propping up both girls.

The sound of winds whipping feverishly rises up outside, howling in fury as the building rocks. My ears pop from the pressure. Both Jonah and Kellan are silent, listening from their respective places on opposite sides of the room. “Do you think the building will hold?” I yell at Jonah.

He yells back, “I’m not sure,” but I’m pretty sure the answer is a resounding
no.
The Elders were able to attack cars with little to no difficulty. What would stop them from attacking a building?

I lean against the same wall Jonah is against and I have my answer. Each time the building rocks, it’s because something is hitting it from outside.

I turn to Jonah, to tell him my fears, but he’s looking at his brother. His forehead is furrowed when he shakes his head very, very softly.

My eyes track across the room to Kellan, who is rolling his own eyes. He leans his head back against the door and nods. I switch my focus back to Jonah, who is also leaning his head against the door, nodding as well.

They are communicating. Wordlessly. How in the worlds . . . .?

Before I can ask about this, the building is rocked hard by another blast. Jonah grabs me to keep me on my feet. The screaming reaches such a fevered pitch that my ears ring painfully. And then the ground groans and rumbles in wide, rippling waves. All of the pictures in the room jump off the walls, shattering down around us. Jonah has to steady me again as I nearly slip on pieces of glass while finding my footing.

“It’s only Karl,” he tells me, as if this makes things less terrifying. Like strong earthquakes are so much better than buildings being attacked. Then Jonah looks back at his brother and nods. “Can you make us something? Some kind of screen which would let us see and hear what’s going on outside?” he yells, coming up right to my ear.

Grateful that I’ve finally been asked to do something, even if it’s to make a glorified security camera, I get straight to work. I construct a massive screen out of the plaster on a now pictureless wall, stretching from one side of the room to the other. I don’t bother with volume controls or an on/off button—I simply will the screen to show me what I need and make whatever sound there is loud enough to be heard over the screaming. Large as life, we get a front-row view of what’s going on beyond the walls. The streets below are chaos, with people running every direction. There are three thin twisters in the vicinity, striking out toward the black shape-shifters throwing themselves at the building.

Zthane is hard at work casting lightning bolts down at the Elders, but they streak in and out of the twisters and bolts, deftly avoiding any strikes. “Karl!” the Goblin yells, his voice echoing off the winds, “I want that hole bigger!”

Karl is bent to one knee nearby in front of a thick crack running through the street. His fist slams into the pavement fast and hard, making the ground roll so strongly people all around him fall, hands over their heads. The crack widens, groaning so loudly it almost overcomes the screaming.

Raul steps into view, angling his twisters towards the Elders. Zthane shouts, “Again, Karl! It’s got to be deeper,” shoving two more bolts simultaneously toward the shapes. Karl hammers his fist down again, widening the crack significantly. Most of the people scramble to get away, leaving only the Guard left standing their ground.

The black shapes shift direction and zero in on Karl. We watch helplessly as they attack him. And, just like with Jonah months before, one twists itself into a whip and lashes out at Karl’s arm. The crunch of bones is sickeningly loud even over the din outside. When Karl roars and falls over, Kellan grabs the doorknob.

“Not yet!” Jonah barks.

Now that Karl is down and his fist useless, the Elders turn toward Zthane. Two Blazes are running nearby, shooting fireballs at them, but they are no match for the agile shape shifters. They whiz in and out of the explosions, dart clean by the lightning strikes, and hurl themselves directly at the Goblin. He doesn’t run, though—he keeps reaching up and pulling down more lightning. Benches are destroyed, trees are exploding, and yet nothing seems to connect with the Elders.

“I slowed them down before!” I yell at Jonah. “I should be out there!”

But he grabs my arm to stop me from running to the door. “You are not leaving this room unless absolutely necessary, Chloe! They are out there protecting
you
right now! Don’t make it more difficult on them!”

I turn back to the screen just in time to see an Elder strike Zthane from behind. He flies forward, slamming his head against a light post.

It’s Alex’s turn to become hysterical. He’s raving about how we’re screwed, how there’s no way the Elders won’t make it into the building if they keep taking down some of the strongest Guard we have. But Jonah and Kellan are so focused on watching what’s going on outside, they don’t bother sedating him.

Zthane staggers briefly to his feet, just long enough to drop another round of bolts. Then he slumps back to the ground, bleeding profusely from a gash on his forehead. Kellan turns to Jonah, eyes wide. He no longer looks calm—in fact, he’s vibrating in anger. Jonah is the same, hands gripping in and out of fists.

Raul races over to Zthane, screaming his name. The Blazes are trying their best to bomb the Elders, but the shifters are still moving too fast to pin down. Raul’s tornadoes are barely faring better; with his attention diverted, they’re doing more damage to the buildings across the street.

A Tide comes into view, wrenching a tunnel of water out of the crack Karl had been working on. He angles the sharp geyser directly at the Elders, but as with everything else, they evade easily.

Then an Electric tries his hand, ripping currents from all of the lampposts nearby, exploding the glass shells on top. Crackling bits of blue electricity race directly into the shape shifters—finally, something strong enough that momentarily causes retreat. But just as I’m about to breathe a sigh of relief, a stray Elder appears from behind and slams the Electric to the ground.

Alex’s ravings finally come to Kellan’s attention. He barely flicks his hand toward my Cousin, but it’s enough to silence him.