Master and Apprentice (32 page)

“Hold on,” Tory said. “What new abilities?”

Before I could answer, Mercy emerged with Sister tucked in the crook of one arm and her shotgun in the other. “Y’all better get movin’. Fire’s comin’ fast.” She kept her eyes averted while she walked to Zephyr and settled the big coon on the mule’s back. “Ain’t gonna make town. Maybe the Holler cave down the ridge.”

“You’re seriously going to hide out in a cave?”

She whirled on me. “What the fuck else ’m I gonna do? Ain’t got a helicopter up my ass. Don’t got nobody to come fetch me. Shit.” Her eyes glossed with moisture, and she turned away. “This place’s all I got. And it’s already gone. I jus’ hope Calvin makes it out.”

I almost blurted out that Calvin was all right—more or less—but that’d be way too much explaining right now. Besides, even that would be small comfort on top of losing her whole world to Vaelyn’s insanity. And there was the trifling fact that with Ian and Tory drained, we didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping the flames either.

That left two options. Die, or stop the fire. I didn’t feel like dying, and I doubted the Ridge Neck Fire Department
was equipped to handle this. They probably still used a bucket brigade. So it’d be up to me.

Which meant we were screwed. But I still had to try.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Don’t leave yet.”

Mercy glared at me. “Why? You gonna ask God to dump a lake on that blaze?”

“Not exactly.” I faced the fire, knelt, and put both hands on the ground. Tingling warmth pulsed up my arms, shot with threads of pain. It wasn’t hurting me, though. What I felt was the pain of the mountain at the unnatural scourging. Only thing was, I wasn’t sure how to put it out. So I’d just have to wing it.

Tory cleared his throat. “Donatti, what are you doing?”

“Stopping the fire,” I said. “I think.”

“Are you nuts? You can’t—”

“Leave him be, Taregan.” Ian spoke low, but there was a hesitant note of hope in his voice.

“Y’all are pullin’ my leg.” Mercy giggled. “He some kind of Injun mojo man, right? Gonna do a little dance, bring the rain back.”

Good thing she was stoned, or she’d have blasted me by now. I tried to tune them out and concentrate on whatever the hell I thought I was doing. The border of the fire was a raw, jagged line out there eating through everything. I pushed at it, thinking maybe I could churn things up, throw some dirt on the flames. Dirt was supposed to put out fire.

Nothing happened.

Too bad I didn’t have a handy lake to dump on the thing—not that I could’ve done anything if I did. I had a suspicion that water wasn’t my thing. “Come on. It’s for your own good,” I mumbled at the ground, and shoved harder.

Nothing … and then something. The warmth under my
hands turned hot. A distant tremor, groaning and growing. The ground shook beneath me.

“What the
fuck
?” Mercy yelled over Tory’s gasp. “A goddamn earthquake? Shit, all we need’s a cloud of locusts now.”

I ignored them. The heat filled me, pulsed through my blood. Sweat broke out over every inch of my skin. An awful buzzing sound filled my head. I hoped it wasn’t Mercy’s locust comment manifesting itself.

A faint glow from the ground caught my attention. I glanced down at my hands just as Mercy let out a startled shout. Red-orange light flickered under my skin, like someone had emptied my veins and filled them with fire. I stared at them, watched the glow spread and seep through my wrists and into my arms.

At once, the sensation ramped up from hot to scorching.

I would’ve screamed if I had enough breath. They hadn’t invented a word for pain that came anywhere close to this. It was a hundred times worse than any flame curse. Fire raced through me, flooded my torso, scalded my throat. Even my toes sizzled. A hot, thick smell choked the air, bitter and sickly sweet—singed hair, charred meat, cooked blood. My stomach tried to turn, but it was burning too.

A hoarse cry rang out. It didn’t come from me. Ian dropped to one knee with a gasp. He said something, but I couldn’t even make it out, much less answer him. Apparently the soul-bind thing was giving him a taste of my stupidity. I tried to stop thinking about him.

It wasn’t hard. I had plenty of pain to occupy my thoughts.

Once the blazing light filled everything under my skin, blisters bubbled into existence on my flesh, like the stuff was a living thing forcing itself out the hard way. A huge one formed on the back of my hand and burst. Tendrils of smoke
drifted from the rupture—and the edges blackened, sparked, then formed a ring of glowing red embers that ate through the remaining skin.

I was actually on fire. Not magical fire. Real burning-to-death flames.

Something primal hijacked my senses and flipped the
you are on fire
switch somewhere in my brain. I made a reflexive jerk and panicked when I couldn’t move. Finally I realized my hands had fused with the ground. I wrenched free, pulling clods of dirt and leaving behind moist bits of things I didn’t want to think about. Then I threw myself flat in the grass and thrashed around like an epileptic eel. Stop drop roll. Put-it-out-put-it-out-put-it-out.

I thought I was screaming, but I couldn’t be sure. It was hard to hear over the massive shaking, cracks, and pops that erupted everywhere when I started flopping.

Eventually the immediate burning stopped—either that or I’d flash-fried all my nerve endings. I rolled facedown in the dirt and went still. The only sound in the world was my own ragged breath, the only sensation a bone-deep agony that hollowed me to the core. I had no idea whether I’d succeeded. And I hurt too much to care.

A voice attempted to penetrate my ears. It almost sounded like Mercy, if someone had shoved a sock in her mouth and then kicked her in the stomach. There was a lot of cursing mixed into it. I managed to turn my head and open my mouth, with the vague idea of offering reassurance, but all that came out was a splintered groan.

Someone touched me. I recoiled, tried to say
Don’t,
and failed. My vision was a patchwork of dull red and gray. I couldn’t blink. A blotchy shape loomed in front of my throbbing eyes and hung there, shimmering like hot blacktop.

“Well done, thief.” Ian, shouting through the wrong end of an invisible megaphone. Great—now Mercy knew I was a thief. If she hadn’t gone drooling nuts watching whatever had just happened. “Very impressive. But perhaps you should refrain from attempting anything like that again. Particularly if you must drag me into it.”

I guessed that meant the fire was out. At least I hadn’t torched myself for nothing.

Ponderous scuffing sounds somewhere close. Ian hauling himself to his feet. “By the gods,” he said. “If I was not seeing this …”

Seeing what?

The instant I thought it, a ghostly image formed over the burned-out haze of my eyes. I could see what Ian saw, just like back in the cave. It still took me a minute to process what it was—the forest, or what was left of it. A wide swath of blackened, smoldering land marked the path of the fire. Torn roots buckled the ground, formed an alien landscape of ridges and craters. Charred and splintered trees stood in a few spots, but most of the area had been reduced to flattened rubble. As if some immense body had rolled around on the flames until they’d gone out.

Damn. Had I really done that?

The strain of looking through Ian’s eyes just about split my head open. I pulled back. Blackness drowned everything for a minute, and the rest of the mottled world bled back slowly around the edges. Some of the thick burnt stench dissipated and let in a breath or two of rain-scrubbed air. I still couldn’t move, but control of my eyelids mercifully returned and I blinked a few times. Scalding moisture welled in my eyes and blurred some of the patches together.

“Shit. Ian, is he alive? Are
you
?” Tory’s voice buzzed like
an electric fence. I couldn’t tell if it was my hearing, or if he was really that shaken. “How did he do that? That’s impossible. We can’t even do that.”

“He will live. But he is badly injured.” Ian almost sounded like he cared. “Perhaps the lady will allow us to take him inside.”

The lady in question didn’t respond. Maybe she’d fainted. More likely she was deciding who she wanted to shoot first. Before I could glean a clue about what was going on outside my little sensory-overloaded cocoon, a new voice cut through everything like a cold blade.

“How convenient of you all to gather in one place. Please take the human’s weapon, before she makes a foolish mistake. We don’t wish anyone to die at this moment.”

I really wanted to believe that was Calvin—but I knew damned well it wasn’t.

“D
eceiver,” Ian spat. “I knew we should not have believed you.”

“I have no more choice than you,
rayan.
”

The voice was more reluctant than the one that demanded Mercy’s surrender. So Calvin was here too. Terrific. Vaelyn must’ve found out about him and Mercy, and had probably threatened to take her out if he didn’t cooperate. I wondered what else she’d gotten out of her twin. Like maybe that fertility spell she wanted.

“Calvin.” Mercy’s whisper barely carried. “What the hell … ?”

“Keep her silent. She has no place in these negotiations.”

“Then let her go inside, Vaelyn. You don’t need her.”

“No. She stays, to keep you in your place.”

Christ. Listening to the two of them talk was beyond weird. If it wasn’t for Vaelyn’s abrasiveness, I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart—she almost sounded more male than Calvin.

Ian snarled something in djinn. It sounded extremely unpleasant.

A beat passed in silence, then Vaelyn laughed. “Really,
Gahiji-an. Even if you had any power left, my children would bring you down before you could cast so much as a shadow. I am afraid you’re surrounded.
Rayan.
”

Damn it. Tory had said there were a lot of them. How many did she bring? And how many were kids? I strained to make my eyes work, but they refused to focus. The scions were probably invisible anyway, wherever they were.

“I will destroy you, snake.” Despite the fact that Ian didn’t have a shot in hell at carrying out his threat, he sounded completely assured. “Do what you wish to me, but I will end you.”

“Oh, we don’t want you anymore.” Vaelyn was practically purring. “We want him.”

Him? Why the fuck would she want Tory?

When no one reacted, Vaelyn continued. “That was quite the display, little mongoose.”

My gut tightened. And I didn’t think anything in me still had the capacity to function. She was talking about me.

“Taregan, no!”

A shotgun blast followed Ian’s warning. At the same time, Vaelyn spoke a single word. There was a second muffled explosion, peppered with metallic pops and splintering cracks. Tory cried out. I felt the thud when he hit the ground.

“We trust there will be no more interruptions,” Vaelyn said.

I had to see what was going on. And somehow, I had to get myself moving and talking fast. I almost borrowed Ian’s eyes—but he’d definitely react to the pain, and Vaelyn might be able to figure out why. It didn’t seem like a good idea to let her know about our link. So I concentrated on remembering all the stuff Calvin had told me about healing. I’d have to hope I could scrape together enough energy to even find the damned points.

Ian let out a controlled breath. “He is useless to you. If you must take someone—”

“Things have changed to your advantage, Gahiji-an. In fact, we no longer require your pretty wife—who lives still, as we’re certain our dear brother has informed you. You may have her back.”

Dirty, lying bitch. I could practically feel the kick in the guts from that one.

“Explain,” Ian croaked.

No!
The involuntary attempt to shout emerged as a thick grunt. Opening my mouth would hurt too much. Was he really going to listen to her? I closed my eyes and tried to envision the spot at the base of my throat. Somebody had to talk some sense into him before he got me killed.

There. A faint yellow pulse flickered on and off like a heartbeat. I seized it and sent everything I had through the point.
Please work.

“Perhaps you can be reasoned with.” The rough edges vanished from Vaelyn’s tone, and she sounded almost feminine. “You’ve misjudged us,
rayan.
We desire only a place for ourselves in this world. A place to rebuild our scattered clan. Surely you can understand that.”

“Lies,” Ian said. “You claimed you would rule both realms.”

Vaelyn snorted. “Our brother’s goals,” she said. “Why should we care for a realm that cast us out? We have no designs on the places and politics of the djinn. In fact, we will give Nurien to your young Bahari friend here, to face the wrath of the Council as he should have two thousand years ago.”

She sounded as reasonable as the sunrise. But I doubted she meant a damned word of it. I managed to get the healing point to a strong, steady red glow, and my vision started to improve. All the better to see how screwed we were.

Ian hadn’t responded in too long. Just when I thought I’d have to smack some sense into him—as soon as I could move
one of my arms—he came around by himself. “Do you truly think I am stupid?” Disgust layered his voice, and he spat on the ground at her feet. “You would not betray your own kin.”

“Kin! We despise that foppish, idiotic
duohl-et.
He is no more Morai than we are human.” Vaelyn practically snarled the words. “Powerful he may be here, but we are a thousand years and more beyond him. He is a parasite, a fool, and a disgrace. Once we have what we want, we will destroy the scions and send Nurien to his end. Here, or in our realm.”

Ian forced a strangled cough. No doubt he’d picked up on the same thing I did—she’d just announced her intention of killing the kids. I wondered, if they were really there, how many of them had heard. Or let themselves understand what she meant. “What, exactly, do you want?” he said.

“A child.” The words emerged on a longing sigh. “We …
I
desire a child of my own, and I have no wish to wait three more centuries. I took you, Gahiji-an, because you are fertile, though I knew you would never willingly breed with me. Now there is no need. Your scion is a better choice—he is powerful, and of this world. The child would belong as I can never hope to.”