A Matter of Heart (7 page)

Flames entwine through the
water. Harou must be a Tide, and he must not be too far back. Nivideta, too. A
quick glance behind shows two Elders, all black and nebulous, distorted beyond
form, at the most, ten feet back.

And they are gaining.

“Kellan! Behind us!”

Impossible at it seems, his
hand tightens around mine. “Already on it!” And then the screaming behind me
intensifies, sounds of agonizing pain.

Kellan is attacking them.

I refuse to be a victim.
There are three Guard somewhere behind me, fighting to keep me safe. One of my
Connections is here, too, and I absolutely will not allow anything to happen to
him. I rip the trees down from around us, shredding the forest as I throw
everything I can at the shape-shifting beings.

But it’s no good. The Elders
are flames at our heels within minutes as we crash through the woods. My legs
are cut, a series of vicious slashes from bushes and fallen trees seeking
revenge for the havoc I wreaked behind us. “Chloe?” Kellan yells. “Know that
I’m sorry about this.”

Like a whip, he yanks and
then hurls me into a series of bushes nearby. I land hard, my knees bruising
instantly while bubbling red.
What just happened?

I find Kellan twenty feet
away, his feet still, hands out, face determined. The two Elders are squealing,
twisting up high in the air and then flattening, like towels whose water is
wrung out. He thought to take them on himself? Oh, hells no. I scrabble
forward, ready to build some kind of hole like the one I’d helped construct
last year that now houses Elders below the streets of Annar, but new hands grab
hold of me and jerk me to my feet.

Harou. The Tide.

I’m running once more,
although this time, not willingly and not with the person I want to be with. I
order him to let me go, but he ignores me. It takes a few tries, but I
eventually rip free of his grip. Unlike my Connection’s, it’s not ironclad.

Harou tries to reclaim me,
but I dart out of his reach. “Lilywhite!” he hollers, but I’m already off. “I
have to get you to safety!”

Screw that. Screw him. I’m
going back to find Kellan, and then—and only then—will I concede to find any
so-called safety, if such a thing can truly exist in these woods.

The screaming intensifies,
and I know I’m close. And then, there he is, standing over two Elders squirming
on the ground. Within seconds, I’ve dropped an entire slab of concrete on top
of them. “Let’s go,” I order, grabbing his hand. We’re off.

“Won’t hold.” His grip is a
vise once more. Weird as it sounds, I feel a thousand times safer with his hand
in mine than I would with a hundred Guard shielding me.

He’s right, though. The two Elders
are already back on our heels, raging bloody murder. Kellan and I run, and run,
and my breath is fragile and ready to expire, and part of me wants to just lie
down and give in. But then I remember who’s with me, and the thought of a
single hair on his head being harmed causes a bomb to go off behind us.

“A cave,” he yells. And
there one is, thank the gods, miracle of miracles, a hundred feet before us.
“Get ready to collapse the entrance,” he adds.

I love that he has
confidence in me to get the job done. “On it!” I stumble, but Kellan manages to
keep me going.

Fifty feet.

Thirty feet.

Twenty feet.

“Get ready,” he reminds me.

I tighten my hand against
his. “I
know
.”

We plunge into the darkness,
and I do exactly as he asks.

As the last rocks crumble
into place, all light ceases to exist. I can still hear the screaming outside,
though. It’s frenzied to the point of hysteria.

“Do you think they can get
through this?” I’m shaking all over, and I can’t figure out if it’s from
straight-up fear or the sub-Arctic temperatures of the cave. We’ve gone from
sweltering to freezing in a matter of moments.

I quickly create a pair of
coats and shove one in Kellan’s general direction.

“I don’t know.” I can’t see
Kellan’s face to tell if he’s lying to me or not, but he sounds calm. “Can you
make it so they can’t get through?”

The wall in front of us is
rocked again. Chunks of debris rain down against me, but I gather my fragile
courage and push myself forward. I stick a hand out and lay it against the cool
stone, willing the walls to become impervious to anything other than a
Creator’s touch. Relief for our assured safety, as sweet as it is, disappears
as terror reclaims me.

I wait for my eyes to adjust
to the dark, but it just doesn’t happen as fast as I’d like. I stumble
backwards right into Kellan. His hands momentarily settle on my shoulders to
orientate me before dropping away. “Did you get a look around before I shut out
the lights?”

“Uh, no. I was a little busy
just trying to get you away from those things.” He pauses. “It’s a good idea,
though, having a look around.”

“Don’t leave,” escapes from
my mouth before I can stop the words.

“I need to scout our
location and see if there are any exits available to us. Conversely, it’d be
nice to know if there’s a secondary way for the Elders to get in, don’t you
think?”

It suddenly occurs to me
that I have the perfect solution. Why didn’t I think about it sooner? I close
my eyes (not that it matters in this black), reach out and grab a piece of
Kellan’s shirt, and will time to freeze, like I did last year when the Elders
attacked Annar.

When I open my eyes, it’s
still dark. But it’s
quiet
. My heart leaps into my throat. I did it!

Only, no. The screaming
begins again. Okay . . .?

I try it again.
Everything
just stop, go silent, go still, let us escape
, I will everything around me.
But the silence only lasts seconds before becoming a din once more.

“Chloe, I need to have a
look around,” Kellan tells me.

Why didn’t it work? “It
didn’t work!” I yell to him.

“What didn’t work?”

I’m too embarrassed to admit
it to him. Me, the mighty Creator, who can’t even freeze time like she did
before she even Ascended. Is it because I’m upset? My Magic can be a bit wonky
when I’m not thinking straight, but . . .

“I’m going to lead you over
to one of the walls,” Kellan is saying. “You can wait there.”

“The Elders,” I begin, but
I’m already en route thanks to his hand on my arm.

“Cannot get in from where we
just came. You made sure of that.”

If only I could’ve frozen
them like before. Why didn’t it work?

Once against the wall, I
slide down into a sitting position. He crouches down next to me. “I’m going to
go now, okay?”

Before he has the chance to
protest, I hand over a flashlight I’ve just whipped up. He flips it on.
“Thanks.”

And then he leaves, heading
towards a tunnel now visible in the path of the flashlight. I watch the light
until it fades and I’m once more immersed in darkness. It’s unbearable, so I
make myself a lantern, one large enough to spill light in a wide circle. And
yet, the darkness encroaches far too close for my comfort. I try freezing time
over and over, but as before, my efforts only last seconds before reverting
back to the hell I’ve found myself in.

The screaming outside,
nearly deafening, grates on my nerves like a blunted saw. I dig in my pocket
for my cell phone and then remember it’s in the bag I left behind. I make
myself one, but as Fate would have it, there’s no cell service available in
this cave.

I
have never felt so alone in my entire life. Or as helpless.

I’m slouched against the
hard, bumpy wall, my neck craned to the side at an unnatural angle. The pain is
enough to wake me up.

I don’t remember falling
asleep.

But when I rub my neck,
massaging the tight tendons, I feel Kellan’s presence nearby. He’s sitting a
couple feet down the wall from me, arms wrapped around propped up knees.

“How long have you been
back?” I have to yell, as the Elders are still at it outside. How I slept
through the continued ruckus amazes me.

He clicks his flashlight on
and off over and over, despite the light from my lantern. “Awhile now.”

A loud thud sounds against
the wall I reinforced, rattling the cave. I jump, even though I know they can’t
get in. “How long do you think we’ve been here?”

Click-click. Click-click
. “A
couple of hours. Maybe longer. I don’t have a watch, so . . .”

“The others. Do you think
they’re okay?” I shiver, remembering what we went through out there, even
though it feels more like something I’d watched on TV rather than lived
through.

Click-click
.
“Yeah, I do.” But he sounds doubtful.

Images of Earle’s limp body
flash through my mind. He has to be okay. They all do. “Earle, too? We didn’t
have a Shaman with us. He’s been hurt.”

“He’ll be okay. Nividita and
Harou are pretty resourceful.”

I try not to immediately go
to the worst-case scenarios, but it’s pretty tough. “Did you find a way out?”

The flashlight drops to the
ground so Kellan can rub his eyes. “There’s another tunnel, but it’s pretty
small.”

Still! That’s great news!
“I’ll blast it,” I offer, ready to stand up and get to work, but he holds up a
hand.

“Not a good idea. What if it
triggers a cave-in?”

Is he serious? “I’ll make us
steel umbrellas.”

“No. You need to save your
strength. Just in case.”

Huh? “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” he stresses,
meeting my eyes, “we have no food. There’s only a little water—I found a
trickle about two hundred feet down the tunnel, but it’s nothing to write home
about. How long do you think your craft will work in such conditions?”

My mouth opens and then
snaps shut. If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, it’s yet another thing I
can be pissed at my parents for not telling me about.

He’s right
,
Caleb says, his first words to me since entering the cave
. If you’re
dehydrated or starving, you won’t be able to use your Magic. Best to listen to him.

This is ridiculous, though.
“My craft will be fine because we’ll be on our way out of here!”

“And if they’re waiting for
us on the other side? What then?” He shakes his head. “Not worth the risk.
We’ll wait for a team to extract us.”

Suddenly, it’s like
everything crashes down on me. I’m in a cave, trapped, and the rest of the team
may be dead, and Kellan has ignored me for eight months, and my parents never
told me jack about being a Magical, and I’m still cold and my cuts sting, and
I’m still useless as always, so I unleash at the only person I can. I nearly
snarl, “I’m sorry you had to get stuck in here with me.”

Okay, yes. That was
incredibly petty and completely off-topic. But it had to be said. I mean,
eight
months
.

He’s quiet for a couple of
beats, which is ironically like nails on a chalkboard. “It’s part of the gig,
C. But don’t worry. I won’t let them get you, even if they figure a way in.”

Part of the GIG? Being with
me, his fricking
Connection
, is PART OF THE GIG? I don’t even know what
to say to him, I’m so pissed off.

And hurt. I chuck a small
rock from nearby as hard as I can, imagining it’s his head. Thanks to the
Elders, though, I can’t even hear it hit the ground.

“Why are you so angry all of
a sudden?” And the kicker is, he actually has the audacity to sound bewildered.

I pick up another rock and
lob it towards him, glaring as fiercely as I can. He doesn’t bother dodging it
because, even in anger, I aim it just a couple of inches away from his knees.
And this only pisses me off more, knowing that
he
knows I wouldn’t hit
him.

Maybe I ought to bean him
just to prove a point. Leave a nice bruise on his leg, which will probably fade
faster than the one he just delivered to my heart.