The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (24 page)

Reece looked at Colton as he lay on
the ground. “I thought you said that Colton was the only one who
could hold her power.”

“
Don’t be afraid,” said
Bernam, growling with impatience.

Reece opened his mouth to say
something else but Bernam pulled him down to kneel in front of the
old woman.

“
Put your hand here,” said
Bernam. He placed Reece’s open palm at the top of the woman’s
ribcage. He rested his own hand on top of Reece’s. “You will feel
it moving into your hand and into your body. Don’t fight it. As
soon as you sense the movement, you will be able to control the
flow.”

Blue light shimmered over the woman’s
skin and her back arched up violently.

“
Don’t let go,” said
Bernam loudly.

The old woman twisted under their
combined grip. The blue light pooled on her chest and flowed
visibly over Reece’s skin. Bernam pulled his hand away and shook it
as if he had just touched a hot stove.

“
Good,” he said. The blue
light flowed faster up Reece’s arm and sank down into his skin.
“Very good.”

The woman screamed loudly and her body
went limp. Her head rested back against the grass and she lay
still.

Reece pulled his hand away and looked
at it, rubbing his fingers together thoughtfully. “Wow,” he
said.

Bernam smiled and stood. “Well done,
Reece. You have secured your rightful place among us. We need to
get you back to the center right away.”

A thin trail of blue light ran up
Reece’s body from his feet to the top of his head, then exploded
like a small firecracker in the air.

“
What was that?!” he
said.

Bernam put his hand on Reece’s back
and guided him away from the old woman. “We’ll talk about it on the
way,” he said.

Colton turned his head as they walked
away. At an intersection two streets away, the plane idled to a
stop and the door opened downward to become a set of
stairs.

Reece turned back to look at Colton as
he stepped into the plane, but Bernam firmly turned him around and
ushered him inside.

Shelly appeared in the doorway. She
hugged herself as she looked at Colton lying in the middle of the
street. Even at that distance, Colton thought he saw tears on her
cheeks. Alistair reached down and grabbed the railing on the
stairs. With a smug grin in Colton’s direction, he pulled the door
closed.

The plane rolled down the street and
the engines whined loudly until the wheels lifted off the ground.
Colton watched, still unable to move, as the plane banked in the
air and flew back in the direction of the black
building.

The deep emptiness inside of him was a
constant pressure; a weight on every one of his bones that pressed
down and stopped just short of snapping them in half. He was
reminded of the weeks after his mother abandoned him and his
father; it was a pain he had hoped to never feel again.

He reached out with his mind for the
energy in the world around him. Shelly had taught him how to absorb
ambient energy and he had gotten so proficient at it that he did it
without thinking. He groped for anything—starlight or even the
faint heat in the asphalt on which he lay—but he was
powerless.

There was nothing.

Colton rolled onto his side, fighting
to keep his eyes open as a wave of darkness covered his
vision.

The old woman lay at the edge of the
road, eyes closed. Her chest rose ever-so-slightly with the shallow
breaths of one who was nearly dead. The young girl in the grass had
not moved once since Bernam had pushed her there.

A loud crash came from the house with
the hole in its roof. A man yelled from within as something heavy
scraped against the floor. Wood creaked slowly just before another
loud crash.

The front door exploded outward and
chunks of wood peppered the grass in front of the house. The man
Alistair had called Marius stood in the doorway supporting the
white-haired woman. She was awake, but barely. Blood from a deep
cut on her head ran down one side of her face and covered her
shirt.

Colton rested his head against the
street as his vision dimmed to black and he lost
consciousness.

30

T
he biggest hill in the Grove was on the far side of the grid
of trees. Haven hadn’t walked past the last line of trees when she
first visited the large, grassy field and so she hadn’t noticed
that the other side of the hill sloped down to a small
pond.

The pond was shaped like a teardrop,
with one end large and bulbous and the other tapering at an angle
to a rounded point.

At the bottom of the teardrop, at the
edge of the still water, rested a lone willow tree.

Its knurled roots twisted out from the
base of its crooked trunk and dipped into the water. Whip-like
branches sprouted from the top of the trunk like a sad crown,
cascading outward and down to brush the ground like a hundred
gentle fingertips. Light green leaves covered the branches and
stood in pleasing contrast to the light brown of the
bark.

The trunk angled out over the pond so
that one-half of the branches lightly brushed the surface of the
water. Small blue lights floated over the pond, perfectly reflected
in its mirrored surface like brilliant fireflies.

Haven stood atop the hill, looking
down at the tree.

Elena rested against its trunk,
propped up by Marius after he carried her in from the dome. He sat
next to her, head cast down, eyes closed, a heavy frown on his
sooty face.

Behind Haven, in the grid of trees,
Dormer took his hand from Corva’s shoulder and helped her to sit
up. The tree from which he had been drawing energy shed a third of
its leaves and a small dark spot spread over its bark.

Part of Corva’s face was still covered
in blood. She rotated her arm and pressed down on her shoulder,
grimacing as she moved. She nodded at Dormer and he helped her to
stand. He looked over at Haven.

Marius had nearly killed Dormer when
everyone had returned to The Dome. They had been standing down by
the small pond and Dormer had said something—Haven couldn’t hear
him because she had just walked to the top of the hill—and Marius
had turned on him in a blind rage. Part of Dormer’s shirt was
burned away from where Marius had lifted him from the ground and
lit him on fire. Dormer had quickly reached his maximum storage
limit and his body was shedding heat faster than he could absorb it
after only a few seconds of contact.

If Elena’s soft voice had not stopped
Marius, there would have been nothing left of Dormer but a smoking
pile of ashes.

He dropped his gaze and turned to walk
away, pushing through the swinging doors that led back to the dome
and disappearing around the corner.

Corva walked slowly to the top of the
hill and looked down at the pond.

“
Are you okay?” asked
Haven.

Corva nodded. “Been better. Been
worse. Broke my collarbone and dislocated my shoulder. Dormer
patched me up enough to get moving. What about you?”

“
I’m alright,” said
Haven.

Corva raised a skeptical
eyebrow.

“
Well, I’m a little dizzy
and every other minute I feel like I have to puke.”

“
How’s your
head?”

Haven touched the bump behind her
right ear where her head hit the ground. It stung but it would be
fine. The biggest problem was the emptiness she felt inside. After
the man called Bernam had dug into that one boy’s chest and then
cast him aside, Haven felt numb all the way to her core. It was an
alien feeling, as if her soul had been pulled out of her
body.

She was still herself, but she felt
distant—unattached.

“
I guess Marius is really
mad at Dormer,” said Haven.

“
That’s an
understatement.”

“
Does he think Elena would
be okay if Dormer had come with us?”

“
Probably—but it wasn’t
just any old Con out there, it was Bernam.”

“
The Void.”

Corva nodded. “And Alistair is no
slouch, either. Add the twins into the mix and I doubt having
Dormer with us would have made any difference.”

The doors to the Grove swung open and
the young boy, Micah, hurried inside. It was obvious he had been
asleep—his short hair was matted on one side and his clothes were
wrinkled and twisted. He pulled on a pair of reading glasses as he
ran up the hill, passed Haven and Corva, and ran down the other
side.

He fell to his knees at Elena’s side.
She smiled at him weakly as he picked up one of her hands and held
it between both of his.

“
They seem very close,”
said Haven.

“
He’s an orphan. His
adoptive parents were…” She paused as she struggled to find the
right words. “They were not kind. Shortly after they remanded him
back into state custody, another child in his orphanage started a
fire and the building burned to the ground. Micah was the only
survivor.”

“
So he’s not a Source or a
Con?”

“
Not that we know. Elena
was never able to have children of her own, so she took him
in.”

“
He’s very quiet,” said
Haven. She watched as Micah held Elena’s hand to his cheek. He
closed his eyes and his tears fell onto her skin.

“
He was born mute,” said
Corva.

Down by the pond, Micah gently laid
Elena’s hand in her lap and walked away. He sat in the grass on the
other side of the pond with his back to the tree and his shoulders
shuddered as he cried. Elena closed her eyes and rested her head
against the trunk of the tree.

“
What did Bernam do to
her?” asked Haven.

“
He took her power,” said
Corva.

“
You can
do
that?”

“
Voids can. They are
strong enough to tap into the deepest recesses of one’s very
existence, if they so desire. They can scrape out abilities and
give them to others.”

“
Why did he take
Elena’s?”

Corva shook her head. “I don’t know.
You can’t have more than one power inside you for long or else you
go crazy.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I mean it drives you
insane. Taking in another power does not make you stronger. The
abilities are separate from each other—individual entities that
cannot mix, like oil and water. You can store another’s
essence—their ability—for a very short period of time, but you must
quickly release the energy to avoid any lasting damage.”

“
So, Bernam can’t become a
hybrid just by taking a Source’s ability?”

“
Exactly,” said Corva.
“Even
he
must
know that, which makes it harder to understand why he would drain
her power in the first place.”

“
But Elena will get
better, right? Dormer can heal her.”

“
No. We can’t live without
our abilities. They are a part of us, and without them we wither.
If you are young and strong, you might be able to last a short
while, but if you are sick, or weak, or…”

“
Or old,” said
Haven.

Corva nodded. “Yes.” She gently
squeezed Haven’s shoulder and smiled. “I think she would want to
speak with you.”

Haven swallowed nervously and nodded.
“Okay,” she whispered.

They walked down the hill to the tree.
Haven pushed aside several ropey branches and sat on the grass next
to Elena. Corva sat next to Marius and put her arm over his
shoulders as he leaned against her and closed his eyes.

Haven looked into the pond. The smooth
surface of the water reflected the distant lights on the ceiling
and would have been as flat as a mirror if not for the protruding
ends of several large, algae-covered stones that dotted the length
of the pond. The water was uniformly shallow and crystal clear.
Small, translucent fish darted between long blades of rooted grass.
The green, bladed stalks stood suspended in the water as if they
had been drifting back and forth in a strong current and had
suddenly been frozen in mid-wave.

One of the small blue
lights in the air drifted over to Haven and floated a few inches in
front of her face. At first it moved in a slow circle, a thin line
of wispy blue light trailing behind. The little light moved faster
and faster until the trailing light became a glowing ring floating
in the air. Suddenly the light stopped moving and, with a
small
pop
,
exploded like a tiny firework that shot little sparks into the
middle of the fading ring.

Haven smiled and Elena opened her
eyes.

“
I thought you might like
that,” she said weakly.

“
It was beautiful,” said
Haven.

“
What do you think of our
little pond?”

“
It’s lovely.”

“
This tree is over five
hundred years old. It was moved here after the Old Home was
destroyed. That’s where our kind lived long ago. That’s what we
called it.” She closed her eyes and a faint smile crossed her lips.
“Yes, I remember. There were so many of us! Hundreds and hundreds.
So many…”