Elemental (27 page)

Did I want that? Was I really ready to
sacrifice myself?

Yes. Yes, I was.

Someone’s hands clamped onto my back and
started forcing my skin to separate over my left wing. Pain ripped
through, cutting and burning as it went. I clenched my jaw and
tried in vain to hold back the tears as they spilled down my
cheeks. Those same hands dug into the pocket of flesh and grabbed
hold of my wing, prying it out against its will.

My knees buckled under the agony and I
screamed. The burning had been nothing compared to this. This was
excruciating, mind-numbing pain. My guards held me still, though I
flailed to rip my arms away from them. Instinct warred against my
resolve. My body didn’t care what my mind had decided—it needed to
protect my wings, my lifeblood.

This couldn’t be right. If Manoo was so
good, why did he have to torture me to death?

“Shh…” A velvet voice whispered in my ear.
It wasn’t Manoo, but it was a voice I knew well. Malik. My eyes
widened as I choked on a gasp. “Hello, Ella.”

Malik was here?
How
was he here? And
why wasn’t he stopping this?

“Malik,” I muttered through my whimpers.
“Help.”

His thumb traced circles on my wing. “Meir
sends his love.”

Meir? No, Meir was dead. The Soltakian
soldier had said he was dead. “No.”

“Yes.” His hot breath scorched my ear. “Did
you really think I didn’t care? That I helped you out of the
goodness of my heart?” He shook his head. “I was just waiting for
the perfect opportunity.”

Malik not care? No. Malik was my friend. I
couldn’t think through the pain. Malik was making no sense.

Something sharp dug into the base of my wing
and started slicing. Pain like ice shot up my spine, paralyzing me,
and I screamed. I tried to fight against the hold on my arm to get
them off me, to make it stop. I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want
this. The guards’ hands constricted.

Malik chuckled with his lips pressed against
my ear. “That’s what Meir sounded like last night after I found
him.”

Again with Meir.

I shook my head. It was impossible. Meir had
died yesterday afternoon.

“After I convinced Cailen to help me leave
the Soltakian’s pathetic excuse for a bunker, I found my father’s
‘dear friend’—the betrayer—nearly crushed under that transport in
Co’ladesh, and barely alive,” he continued. “I pulled him out,
helped him regain consciousness… and then I tortured him.” He
chuckled. “The two of you were so trusting, so naïve. How easily
you believed my little tale about honor. Didn’t you know you’d
destroyed me the moment you came onto my ship? Screw honor!” he
hissed. “You’re just a worthless little girl. But you know that,
don’t you, kiddo?” He chuckled his maniacal little laugh again. “I
knew I’d won you over completely the moment I used that precious
term of endearment. You just want to be loved. Well, now you get to
know betrayal. You get to let it crush you.” He paused. “And you
get to die knowing Meir will join you very soon.” I could hear the
smile in his words.

Burning shards ripped down my throat as I
struggled to swallow. Meir had been alive and Malik had
tortured
him? He’d used us; betrayed us all along. He
might’ve been the one to tell Manoo where I’d been hiding. I’d been
wrong about him.
Everyone
had been wrong! Red spotted my
vision—not the red points of light, not yet.

This red was rage.

“He kept calling for you, too. I’d left him
alive when I came here, but I’m sure Soltak has some predators in
need of a good meal.”

“No.” My voice was dead, but everything in
me was alive. “No!” I roared and smiled as those red, blue, and
green points of light blotted out my vision.

I’d never seen so many points of light
before. Every person in the crowd below me and on the platform with
me transformed into multi-colored orbs. I saw how the blue lights
pooled where their lungs should be, how the red lights skittered
across their bodies as blood rushed through their veins, and even
the green lights—the ones I’d never controlled before—made up the
great mass of their insides. In the distance—so far away I allowed
myself a moment of shock I could see it at all—past the millions of
spectators I saw a great ball of red lights, compacted and
churning.

I turned on my guards and expanded the green
lights in their bodies. Chunks of flesh and blood exploded as water
swelled and rushed out, pouring over the platform. The white-robed
men at the side of the platform started to back away, but I twisted
the blue lights at them and ripped their bodies apart.

Malik threw back his hood and glared at me
head-on, challenging me. The night erupted into screams as those in
the city realized what was happening. I didn’t even know where
Manoo was, but no one held my wing anymore—it dangled along my
back, limp—so I assumed he’d run away. I would find him, though.
First, I had to deal with Malik.

“Where is Meir?”

He smirked his annoying little smirk.

I pushed at the blue lights and lifted Malik
off the ground. Knowing that would never be enough to scare him, I
expanded the lights in his lungs, pushing the bursting point.
“Where?”

Malik faltered then and I watched with
satisfaction and a touch of sorrow as all his pride crumbled. His
cheeks puffed out and reddened as the strain in his lungs grew. I
could only imagine the agony he was feeling at that moment. He blew
out, desperately trying to empty what I just filled back in. He
gulped and pushed his sweaty hair away from his face. “The
mountains,” he gasped. “Outside Co’ladesh. Between the two great
peaks, alongside the river.”

“How close to death was he when you left
him?”

“Very.”

Very
. I needed to hurry while I still
had a chance. But I wasn’t going anywhere until Meir’s suffering
had been avenged.

I took one last look into Malik’s deep,
black eyes—eyes I’d once cared for—and mourned his utter betrayal
as I pushed at the blue lights, watching as he flew high into the
air toward the city. I then joined the red lights in his veins,
letting his insides smolder and burn through him until his body hit
the ground.

I twisted my head around, looking for my
next victim, the one who was most to blame. The one who would pay
for everything he’d stripped from me—Malik, Meir, my freedom. The
one who would finally know what it was like to beg for death.

Manoo.

He stood just a few steps away from me with
the bowl of flames in his hands and a smile on his face.

“You can’t win.” He seemed so confident, so
sure of his victory, but I knew something he didn’t. Something El
had known all along. And something I had just begun to grasp.

I laughed and took a step toward him. “Do
you want to know what the funny thing is?”

Manoo scowled at me.

“Ranen told me how to beat you days ago and
I just realized it now.” I laughed again, enjoying Manoo’s
frustration. “He said Fire was drawn to those who craved
destruction.”

Manoo’s eyes darted to the bowl of flames,
and then back to me. Understanding dawned in his eyes. I’d felt him
pushing at the flames, trying to control them, but they didn’t obey
his orders.

They obeyed mine.

“Isn’t it appropriate then that El would
appoint a Destructor to defeat you?” I released my right wing and
spread both wings out to the sides, feeling the healing tingle
where the knife had sliced into me and the oil had burned my skin.
“I’m the only one who Fire would ever choose to obey over you.”

Manoo growled and threw the bowl away, but I
didn’t care. I didn’t need his little bowl, not when there was
something far greater in my line of sight. The huge bright ball of
compacted and churning red lights on the other side of Kalhandthar
submitted to my orders.

Somehow, instinct told me I needed to draw
the points of light to each other as tightly as they would
go—compress them until there was nowhere else for them to go but
out.

So I did.

And that’s when it exploded.

The god stuck in a man’s feeble body ripped
at his silver cloak and roared. He charged at me with his hands
curled into claws, reaching for my throat. I slammed him down with
a wall of air and trapped him on the marble slab meant for my
sacrifice.

The black sky burned away as waves of fire
rolled across the planet. I couldn’t see or hear the millions of
people below us anymore. They were probably already dead. I knew I
had only seconds before the planet was consumed. So I committed to
memory Manoo’s face twisted in agony and terror, and then flapped
my wings with only one place in mind.

Lights swirled around me for just a moment
before an intense, scorching heat slammed into my body. I was stuck
in the nowhere-land between two places even as the chaos going on
in Kalhandthar tried to pull me back. Some unseen force yanked at
my wings, dragging them—and me with them—away from where I wanted
to be, away from Meir. I flapped on, forcing the transport to
happen though my wings felt like they were moving through heavy
mud.

The lights stopped swirling around me. There
was nothing but heavy, deep black, a black that made all darkness
I’d ever known before seem like staring straight into the sun. This
blackness pulled at me, nearly ripping my wings away from my
struggling body.

I couldn’t breathe. The force had sucked
away all the air from around me, from my lungs themselves.

With my jaw and fists clenched, I forced my
wings to move and kept Meir in the forefront of my mind. I
would
get to him.

Off in the distance, like at the end of a
very long tunnel, I saw a faint glimmer of light. I reached for it
and flapped harder. The force behind me weakened as I moved forward
and transporting became easier. With a few more flaps, my wings
seared in intense pain, but they moved. That was all I could ask
for at that point.

My muscles felt like they were about to
burst and my lungs burned for the air that was still beyond their
reach. I flapped one more time and warm sunlight beat down on me. I
was in the middle of a forest, next to a gurgling brook.

My body fell to the soft, squishy ground. I
tried to pull in the sweet, cool air and gasped. It was as though
my lungs had forgotten how to work. I could only wheeze and sputter
through bare wisps of air—not nearly enough.

Meir. I needed to get to Meir. But I
couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. My body refused to move or
even think about doing anything but getting oxygen.

There was no way to tell how long I’d been
out. When I’d transported in, I could’ve sworn I’d felt the sun on
my bare skin, but when I woke it was dark. That could mean hours…
or days.

Thunder punched through the sky. I rolled
over and looked through the trees at the twinkling stars. One of
those worlds was gone—I could feel it. I’d destroyed more than just
a planet and its sun. I’d ripped a hole into the fabric of space.
That must’ve been the force that had sucked me out of my transport
and nearly killed me. I didn’t know how I could be so certain, but
I felt the truth of it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Light flashed and rippled across the
atmosphere and another blast of thunder punched the air. The light
fizzled out, leaving only the twinkling stars to take its
place.

Wait—something was off.

I sat up and groaned as my sore, burning
muscles rebelled. There was a clearing a few dozen feet away from
me. I stumbled over to it, keeping my eyes toward the sky.

There were no clouds. How could there be a
thunderstorm with no clouds?

Light and sound rippled through the sky
again, only this time I was paying attention. This wasn’t a storm
with random flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. Each flash
of light came at a perfect interval.

I waited for it to happen again, knowing
just where to look. At the center of the flash of light, some kind
of ship broke through the atmosphere. It wasn’t a Mamood ship. Even
from this distance I could tell. I was pretty sure it wasn’t
Soltakian, either. From what I’d seen of their speeders, they liked
their machines sleek and streamlined. These ships were bloated and
curved, like curtains in a windstorm. That’s when I remembered
Lastrini saying something about the Mosandarians coming.

I closed my eyes and sank to the ground.
Would the Soltakians know the war was over now that Kalhandthar was
destroyed? Would the Mamood soldiers stop killing? Too many people
had died already. Soltakians, Mamood, Meir.

Meir.

How had I forgotten about Meir?

I whipped around in search of him, digging
through the thick carpet of dead leaves and brush. Would Malik have
hidden his body? If he had, it could be hours before I found
him.

The light continued to flash in the sky
above me, helping in my search. When the light didn’t shine, the
green glow of Soltak’s moon shone hazily on the ground. Still, it
wasn’t enough.

“Meir!”

The only thing that answered was the soft,
bubbling sound of water running past rocks.

The river!

I ran to the sound, letting my gaze scan
from one side to the other. A dark lump barely stood out, but I
knew instantly it was Meir.

As I made my first step to him, a black haze
as thick as tar descended over me, blocking out everything except
Meir. Warmth rushed to my head as the world spun. The flashing
light was gone. The moon, gone. I looked around for
something—trees, the river, anything—but there was only the blanket
of pure darkness, so much worse than anything
Sho’ful
had
had to offer.

Only the darkness… and Meir.

I went to him and gagged at what I saw. Half
his face had been ripped clean off, and his guts spilled out around
him with flies buzzing and laying eggs in the graying flesh.