Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 1, After the Fall (32 page)

I was tempted to go along with his idea.  But then I thought about Tony and Tim and all my other friends.  I didn't like the feeling that I was in a little bubble with Ben and all of them were standing outside it.  That just didn't seem right to me.

"Sorry, dude.  As tempting as it is to say it's you and me against the world, it's just not going to work.  I can't cut my friends out like that."

"I'm not asking you to do that."

"Then explain better, because that's what it sounds like to me."

"I just want you to trust me."

"You sat with Samantha at lunch."  My response sounded petty and pitiful to my own ears, but it was out before I could stop it.

"So?  You didn't want to sit there.  What was I supposed to do?  Eat alone for the rest of my life?"

"Yes!  Or come sit with me!  Why her, of all people?"

He looked at me like I was nuts.  "What is it with you and her anyway?  Why is it such a big deal that she and I are friends?"

"Shit, I don't know.  Go ahead and be her friend.  Eat every meal with her.  I don't care."  I couldn't figure out what my problem was.  He wasn't my boyfriend.  I had no claim on him.

"I won't.  Never again.  I can see it upsets you, and I don't want that."

Now I felt like a total jerk.  Samantha was going to get rejected because I was a jealous dode.  "Never mind I said anything.  Really.  Eat with her.  She needs friends."

"We all need friends," he said softly.  "At least we have that, right?"  He reached down and laced his fingers in mine.

It made my heart skip a beat.  It was nice to think of a powerful guy like him declaring his friendship for me.  This felt more real than the romance stuff had.

"Yeah.  We do.  So long as you don't piss me off."

He laughed, squeezing my hand once before letting it go.  "Okay, fine.  I'll work on that.  But for now, please just one more time, tell me about the dragons."

I let go of my anger and tried to just talk to him as if he were a normal person.  "The dragons in your tapestry told me to drink that green crap, and when I did they talked to me.  And kind of came alive.  They told me they are needed again, or something to that effect."

"Did they mention portals, by any chance?"

"Yes, they did.  What do you know about them?"

"Not a lot.  But the fae around this table know everything there is to know.  Shall we share what you've learned with them?"

"What do you think?"  I trusted his judgment right now, especially since he hadn't laughed at me for hallucinating about dragons coming off the wall.

"I think we should.  Maléna is chomping at the bit to get you thrown off this council.  We need to show them you have value to everyone."

"Are you serious?" I was all offended now.  "She's got serious balls if she thinks she can decide whether I stay or go."

"My thoughts exactly."  He nodded at the wall.  "Are you going to be ready to face her when we get out of here?  The challenge is going to have to start after the meeting.  She's going to demand it.

"I'm ready."

"We never had time to put together our plan to fight her off," he said, worriedly.

"A demon told me to steal her wind from her and then it'd be easy."

"Since when are you friends with demons?"

"Since never.  But apparently they have secrets to share, and I'm not ashamed to take advantage of that."

Ben looked at me sideways as he got ready to drop his fire wall.  "Just be sure it's you that's taking advantage and not the demon."

The wall dropped and we found ourselves faced with not just Maléna, but several other fae, all of them poised, ready for a fight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE WALLS TO THE MEETING room fell away, and we were all transported to a grassy clearing somewhere outside the compound.

"What the hell?" I asked, looking around me in confusion, immediately noticing I had never been here before.  I wondered how far from home we were.

"Now!" yelled Maléna, lifting her arms and bringing up huge gusts of wind to batter us.

Leaves and dead flowers flew up into our faces, dirt stinging my eyes and making it hard to see.  A yellow smoke blew over into our noses.  I pinched my lips closed to keep from breathing it in, but I couldn't stop inhaling through my nostrils.  I caught a faint whiff of sulfur before my nose got totally stuffed up.

"Grab her wind, Ben!" I yelled when the yellow junk had dissipated from the air a bit.

I looked over at him, expecting him to be surrounded by protective flames, but he was standing still, his arms locked down at his sides.  There wasn't a single lick of fire anywhere near him.

"What are you doing?!" I yelled, freaking out that I was the only one with elements in the fight.

"I can't!" he yelled.  "There's some kind of spell at work here!"

I tried to see through the mix of grit and crap flying through the air.  There were vague shapes in front of us, figures with robes on, but I couldn't tell who they were or what they were doing.

"You still have your Earth element!" he yelled, looking over at me.  His head seemed to be the only thing that was able to move.

I looked down at my cloak and saw the colors hadn't left it.  I tested my connection and found Earth more than willing to do what I wanted.  I pulled more of it up into me and threw some of it up around Ben, too.  I encountered a resistance, though, when I tried to use it to heal him of the spell.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.  My nose was tickling, and I really needed to sneeze.  My words were coming out sounding like I had a head cold.

"What?" he asked, a look of panic on his face.

"There's something ... in you.  I can't get the Green in there to help you out."

"Just focus on shielding me!  You need to use your other element to hold them off until this spell has worked itself out of my system!"

"Hold them off, my ass!" I yelled with my stuffed up nose.  "They're pissing me off, now.  I'm not just going to let them get away with this bullshit."  I didn't know why the spell hadn't worked on me, but I wasn't going to wait around and give them time to get a second shot at it.  I stepped over and grabbed Ben's hand.  "Hold on to me for luck."

He gripped my hand firmly at his side.  "You can do this, Jayne.  Just focus on putting the energy out at them ... concentrate.  Keep it out of your eyes."

I drew even more of the Earth power into me, the Green pulsing as it flowed, almost like the heartbeat of a massive creature.

I thought of Water, rippling in the lake and present invisibly as humidity in the air around us, picturing it gathering all the droplets together to form a liquid body that I could mold into a form and use as a weapon.  I channeled it into churning walls of blue, rising up gradually as standing waves to our right and left.  My hair crackled with the static being created in the overly dry air around us.

I put the shield up stronger for Ben using just a small bit of the Green power.

He squeezed my hand and I took that as gratitude.

"Where are they?" I asked.  "I can't see shit out in that storm."  My chest was thrumming with the threads of power that trembled there, woven together yet separate and distinct.  I had to focus on each one so I wouldn't lose control of the massive power structures around us.

"You need to pull Wind away," he said.  "Without it, they have only spells; and your shield should stop them from hitting us."

"I have no idea how to do that!"

"Dammit!" he yelled, clearly frustrated with being taken out of the game.  "I'd know how to do it if I had control of Wind.  I hate being locked out of my link."

"Just tell me how you'd do it, and maybe it'll work with Earth or Water."

"It's hard to explain.  But if I were to describe it, I'd say it's like opening up your arms and pretending you have wings, catching the wind and reining it in with them."

I looked at him sideways.  "I've never seen you put out your arms or having any imaginary wings."

"I do it in my mind.  Visualization is the key."

I closed my eyes, not questioning him for a second because the desperation in his voice told me he wasn't messing around.  I pictured myself lifting my arms and beautiful, huge white wings like Chase's coming out from behind me to pull in the element that was battling against me now.  I could almost feel the imaginary feathers ruffling, fighting against the strength of the element working to snap them into pieces, but slowly winning the battle and then moving the flow however I wished it to go.

"Jayne!" said Ben excitedly.  "You're controlling Wind!  I can't believe it, but you're actually controlling my element!"

I dropped his hand in my excitement over his enthusiasm, and the wind that had started to die down kicked up again full force.

"Take my hand again!" he urged.  "I think you're channeling it through me."

I did as he instructed, again working on my visualization, but this time doing it with my eyes open.  It was harder, but soon the results began to show.  The wind seemed to almost pause, as if waiting for my order.

"Push it back.  Make it leave us."

"How?!" I yelled, panicked at the idea of controlling three elements now.  I could feel my eyes burning with the effort.

"Watch it, Jayne.  You're losing focus.  You have three channels now, keep them separate.

"Okayokayokay," I chanted, taking deep breaths through my mouth since my nose was completely blocked now, trying to keep out the deafening sounds and crazy swirling tree parts that would have surely knocked us on our asses if the shield hadn't been there to protect us. 
Don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up.

The wind gradually died down under my constant litany of cussing chants.  They helped me stay focused and centered, when I knew that it could be so easy for me to lose myself into one of those elements.  Working three was nothing like working two.  They fought to override one another while also stretching and yearning to combine, in a way that made them seem almost human or fae.

"That's it.  Keep doing that."

Figures came into focus as the maelstrom dissipated.  Maléna stood in front of a group of fae, one of them Leck who was just behind her and to her right.  If I were a betting fae, I'd say they were all witches, save him.

"That motherfucker," I said, anger burning my face.  I probably would have sounded more threatening if my nose hadn't been so stuffed up.

"Do you have a cold?" asked Ben.

"I think I must have an allergy to something out here.  I was fine in the meeting."

"What is he doing out here?" Ben asked, apparently seeing Leck for the first time.

"Good question.  Whenever I have a severe pain in my ass he seems to be standing around.

Maléna screeched over her shoulder at one of her cohorts.  "Work your spell, witch!"

The witch I didn't recognize, but who I knew wasn't on the council yelled back, "I already have!"

"Well, why is he controlling Wind then?"

"He's not," said Leck, staring me down.  "She is."

Maléna's head whipped over in my direction.  "That's impossible.  She doesn't control Wind."

"Apparently, today she does," he said, clearly unhappy at the idea.

The walls of water had gone down in size as I'd put my attention into controlling the wind around us.  I let them stay at that height, remaining as a threat to the ones they surrounded.  I could see two of the four witches looking at them nervously.

"Do something!" Maléna hissed at them.

"We have done everything we can," said one of them, taking a few steps back.  "You said you could deliver our spells, but you have failed."

Maléna gestured to Ben.  "As you can see, I have not failed to deliver your spells.  He is incapacitated."

"Well
she
isn't.  We're leaving," the witch nearest Maléna said, backing away, too.  Then the witch turned to look at me.  "We would like to leave now.  We ask that you permit us through your water shield."

I looked at her incredulously.  "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

The witch got a nervous expression on her face, but straightened her shoulders and tried to look tough.  "You have no quarrel with us as we have none with you.  We were under orders from the silver elf."

"Traitor!" yelled Maléna.

"Don't worry about it, Maléna.  I'm not buying her bullshit anyway."  I looked at the witch again, making sure my gaze skimmed over all of them before stopping on her.  "Orders to hurt me or Ben should have been ignored.  Now you pay the price."

I could feel something tickling my back.  A quick look over my shoulder revealed nothing, so I closed my eyes, focusing on the three elements I was commanding.

"No!" someone screamed.

"Easy, Jayne, not too much," came Ben's steadying voice.

And then I felt the fire.  The one that warmed me but did not burn.

CHAPTER THIRTY

SCREAMS RENT THE AIR.  I refused to open my eyes, all of my concentration taken by controlling the four elements that rushed into and out of every part of me.  Ben was trying to pull his hand out of my grasp, but I held on tighter, using the Green to bind us together.

"I'm not ready to let you go yet, Ben."

"Jayne, it's too much!  You cannot use all four elements!  It will destroy you!"

I ignored his warnings.  The power was seething, neither good nor evil, just pure everything.  I saw them coming together in one awesome ball of color and light.  The reds and oranges of Fire tangled in with the silver and black of Wind, the blues and greens making varying shades of turquoise as Earth and Water danced together.  Strands of each wound around the other making a kaleidoscope of rainbows and shattered, splintered lights sparking out in every direction.  My vision was completely obscured by the show.

I pictured the water washing away the witches who'd conspired to end Ben and me.