The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (38 page)

A young woman appeared at the hole in
the ceiling. Her eyes burned with brilliant, dark blue energy. The
lightning was coming from her. The strands emanated from a spot
between her shoulder blades and arced out in all directions like
the long legs of an electric spider. The lightning supported her
weight as she lowered herself down to the dome room
floor.

Colton immediately thought of Haven,
but then he realized that Haven’s blue energy was lighter in
color—more like the sky on a perfect day and less like a dark blue
neon sign.

The young woman’s feet softly touched
the floor and the arcs of lightning slowly retreated from the walls
and disappeared into her back. She stood proudly in the center of
the dome room, waiting.

Colton took a step forward and her
head snapped around to face him. The blue energy faded from her
eyes as she fixed him with a cold stare. Her straight, shiny black
hair went down to the middle of her back. She was dressed in
tight-fitting, black leather pants and a black leather jacket over
a loose white shirt.

“
You don’t belong here,”
said Colton. He walked toward her, not really knowing how to make
her leave without the use of his ability.

“
That’s not a good idea,”
said Dormer from the second floor.

Before Colton could stop, a long arc
of lightning erupted from the woman’s back and slammed into his
chest like a scorpion’s stinger, pinning him down to the ground.
The energy burned into him as if someone were holding a taser to
his chest. He convulsed and his fists clenched so tightly he
thought the bones in his fingers would snap.

Colton tried to absorb some of the
energy, but it was pointless—he either had no control over his
ability or his ability had been completely taken from him, just as
Corva said.

The blue light vanished from his
vision and he lay on the floor, gasping for air. He slowly uncurled
his hands and sat up, glaring with malice at the intruder. She
returned his stare without emotion, then tilted up her head to
address everyone in the Dome.

“
My name is Kamiko
Masura,” she said with a slight Japanese accent, “and you are all
my prisoners.”

5

O
’Hare International Airport in Chicago looked like a giant
alien crab from above, with eight of the concourses laid out like
legs from a fat body which housed all of the parking.

Haven tightened a strap on her
backpack as she walked down one of the long legs—Concourse G—on the
way to the terminal where her plane would take her back to Montana
and back to Colton. She hadn’t realized how much she missed him
until she had time to calm down after the incident in downtown
Chicago. Seeing Lee brought back a flood of painful memories that
she had tried hard to forget over the last few months.

The airport was busy. The long
corridor of Concourse G that led to Haven’s terminal was packed
with people of all shapes and sizes, wearing everything from
tuxedos to pajamas. A woman bumped into Haven as she ran past,
mumbling a quick apology but more worried about the row of five
kids she was towing behind, each one shorter than the next and each
one grasping their siblings’ hands as they hurried to keep
up.

Haven moved to the side of the wide
hallway and walked next to the wall. It seemed as if no one was
paying attention to her unless they almost ran her over, but she
still felt like a beacon of weirdness in a sea of normality. Her
powerful ability wasn’t visible to anyone just by looking at her,
yet she felt so different that it was hard to forget she looked
just like everyone else—like the normal teenage girl who would be
celebrating her eighteenth birthday tomorrow.

If the Dome had a telephone, she would
have called Noah to see how he was doing. Haven felt guilty about
leaving him even though she knew he was safer with Colton and the
others than he would have been with her. There was also the gnawing
guilt that she had broken the promise she made to Elena right
before the old woman’s passing—the promise to watch over those with
abilities and to keep them safe. The only way for Haven to allay
the feelings of guilt was to convince herself that going after Lee
had been the right thing to do in order to stop him from hurting
anyone else.

Marius, Corva, and Dormer could look
after the others, at least until she got back. Besides, Haven
wasn’t nearly as strong as Elena told her she would become. She had
said that the Phoenix energy would leave Elena and pass on to Haven
if she was the next in line to receive it—and if she was “worthy”,
whatever that meant.

Apparently, she was not.

There was no change in the year since
Elena’s death. It wasn’t easy for Haven to live her life every day
knowing that she could suddenly die without warning if the Phoenix
power decided she was next. Elena had glossed over that aspect of
the transformation—the fact that the next Phoenix had to die in
order to receive its power. What terrified Haven the most was the
idea that, even if it killed her, the Phoenix energy could pass her
over if it found she was the wrong person for the job after
all.

The only explanation Haven could think
of was that there was someone else out in the world with blue fire
like hers—another young woman who was somehow more worthy to
receive the gift. It didn’t bother Haven as much as it seemed to
bother Dormer. For her, nothing had changed. She never had the
Phoenix energy in the first place, so it didn’t really matter if it
never came to her at all. For some reason, the idea of the energy
passing to someone besides Haven troubled Dormer deeply. He would
occasionally ask her if she noticed anything different about her
ability, and when she told him no, he would go off alone for hours,
pacing and sulking in his workshop.

Haven had spent months digging up all
the information she could on the Phoenix and Void energies—the two
most powerful manifestations of Source and Conduit abilities. The
lack of scientific explanation maddened her to no end. There were
no books on the subject because no one wanted to risk the
information falling into the wrong hands. Every bit of lore
regarding Haven’s own kind was restricted to little more than
campfire stories, passed verbally from one person to the
next.

As far as she could tell from her
limited investigations, most Sources and Cons believed that the
Phoenix and Void energies resided firmly in either one of two
categories: spiritual or natural.

Those who believed them to be
spiritual imagined the Phoenix presence as a being of pure light,
constantly shedding its energy into the world. The Void was a
creature of absolute darkness, drawing life from others to sustain
its own existence. Not everyone believed those descriptions were
completely accurate, but Haven found they more or less summed up
that school of thought.

The other side of the
argument was maintained by those who believed the energies to be
naturally occurring—byproducts of evolution or flukes in the
system, manifested organically for any number of reasons. Corva had
a particularly interesting theory. She believed the Phoenix and
Void energies were natural events and only occurred if certain
criteria were met, much like the formation of a hurricane. If just
one necessary requirement for the energies was slightly off—just as
if the opposing winds that formed a hurricane were not quite the
right temperatures, elevation, or strength—they were absent
completely. There were periods in history where neither Void nor
Phoenix seemed to be present. Yet
if
the perfect host environment
existed, one of the two energies would bloom.

Haven liked that idea the best, even
though she could find no evidence to support it. There was no
explanation about what kind of criteria must be present in order
for the Phoenix or Void energy to take root. Also unexplained was
the fact that the Void energy could be transferred and the Phoenix
energy could not. Once Bernam had stripped Elena of her gift, he
could not inherit her powerful ability, no matter how hard he
tried. Whatever laws governed the Phoenix energy, it was clear they
didn’t allow for any kind of forced manipulation.

Yet Alistair had successfully stolen
the Void ability from Bernam. The energy had not abandoned him
after it was forcefully taken. Haven thought it spoke to the dark
nature of the Void energy that it could be taken by one stronger
than its host.

She and Corva had talked about it for
hours, discussing the possibilities as they stayed up late into the
night, giggling like crazy after the conversation shifted to Colton
and Marius.

Haven smiled as she
remembered.

Concourse G ended in a cul-de-sac of
boarding terminals. It was much quieter in that part of the
airport. Haven used her last three dollars to buy a pathetically
small bag of gummy bears and found an empty seat against the wall
of her terminal. She put her backpack in the seat to her left and
looked around. The digital screen over one of the kiosks said the
plane had landed and would be ready for boarding soon. She crossed
her legs and ate the gummy bears—first biting off the head of each,
then eating the rest—one at a time while she waited for the
attendant to announce the call for boarding.

It hit her that she didn’t like being
out in the so-called real world. She missed the Grove with its
perfect rows of ancient trees, both alive and dead. The dead ones
were a sign they had once been used to give life to someone like
her—someone on the verge of death. Haven missed the loud meals in
the meeting area in the middle of the dome room around the fire
pit. She missed chasing her brother Noah and his friend Micah
around the training room. Around her, in real world, no one was
connected, even though technology told them otherwise. They used
their phones and their computers as an excuse to keep people at
distance even though they pretended the devices brought everyone
closer together.

Haven bit the head off another gummy
bear and stopped. A man was staring at her from across the
terminal. He had been looking her way for a while—which wasn’t too
unheard of, even though she hadn’t been able to properly clean up
after her little romp through the city chasing after Lee—but
instead of the casual glances everyone gave each other at an
airport, he stared directly at her.

He sat at the terminal to the left of
hers, in front of the large windows that looked out over the
tarmac. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, had short-cropped red
hair, fair skin, a black trench-coat, and no luggage. The sharp
points of what was probably a much larger tattoo showed above his
coat collar all around his neck like some kind of spiked necklace.
He smiled at Haven and she looked away.

Another man was staring at her from
the terminal to the right. He was farther away but Haven could tell
he was also young, with strong features and dark hair. He casually
leaned back against the wall next to a row of seats with his arms
crossed and one ankle resting on the other, looking right at
Haven.

“
Hi,” said a voice to her
left.

Haven jumped and turned. The man with
the red hair was sitting next to her with her backpack in his lap.
His approach had been completely silent. She ripped her bag away
and held on to it tightly but didn’t stand up. Instead she let a
small flicker of blue flame show in her eyes.

The man smiled easily, revealing small
lines in his skin near the outside corners of his eyes which showed
it was something he did often. “Atta girl,” he said with a Scottish
accent. “I heard you had some spirit. Don’t worry, I’m not here to
hurt you. My name’s Bastian.” He wasn’t offended when Haven didn’t
offer her own name.

“
What about him?” she
said, nodding toward the man standing against the wall.

“
He won’t hurt you either.
But you see that guy over there?”

Haven followed his pointing finger to
a thin, older man wearing sunglasses, seated two rows away with his
back to them.

“
So?”

“
You don’t recognize
him?”

“
Should I?”

Bastian smiled again. “This is fun,
isn’t it? Question for question. You should know him, ay,
considering he’s working for Alistair.”

Haven looked at Bastian. She studied
his face, confused. “Alistair’s dead,” she said softly.

“
No,” he said. “He most
definitely is not.”

6

“
B
ut—but how is that possible?” asked Haven. “I brought a whole
building down on his head!”

“
You and your friends did
a number on him last year, no doubt about that. But he’s not what
he used to be, in the worst kind of way. My problem is that nobody
knows where he is.”

“
Are you here for me, or
him?” asked Haven, nodding toward the thin man.

Bastian smiled. “We started out
looking for him. You’re just a wee bonus.”

“
You know what I
am?”

“
I think I can recognize
my own kind,” he said. He winked and a small flicker of pale yellow
flame flashed across his eyes. Movement from the thin man two rows
over caught his attention and Bastian looked over. The man shifted
in his seat, crossed his legs, and opened a newspaper to the
business page.