Or maybe it had something to do with the agonizing pain he’d felt when he’d pried a bullet fragment out of his own forehead.
Adam had found him on the tile floor, and he’d been ready to drag Nick to a hospital
again.
But now they were in the truck.
He didn’t trust Tyler. At all.
But what choice did he have?
Tyler’s cell phone didn’t work, either. The Guide’s car was still in front of the studio, windows blasted out. The trees along the road had been ripped out of the ground and lay across the parking lot, except for a few taller ones that lay across power lines.
The Guide was on foot, then. Good, in a way, because it would buy them some time.
Tyler had to veer around fallen trees, and every swerve made Nick clench his teeth and grip Adam’s hand. The smaller trees and branches Tyler drove straight over. That was worse. A few cars had run off the road here and there, and sirens wailed in every direction, but they kept driving. Once they got a mile away, trees were standing and they encountered more vehicles, but traffic lights were still nonfunctional.
No one was talking.
In the silence, Nick could only think of his brothers, and he was going to freak the fuck out if he kept doing that.
‘What made you come back?’ Nick finally asked, making no effort to keep the distrust from his voice.
‘Quinn,’ said Tyler. He glanced over at her, sitting curled in the passenger seat. ‘I realized you were doing it again, pushing me away to see if I’d snap back.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I was pushing you away because you were an asshole.’
‘That, then.’
And they lapsed back into silence.
Gabriel
, Nick thought. He wished his brother was with them now. He’d know what to do. He’d take charge and organize a plan. He’d figure out a way to find Michael and Chris, or at least a way to warn them.
‘They’ll be okay,’ Adam murmured. ‘We’ll find them.’
Nick looked up to find his eyes, warm and worried and intent on his. ‘You’re taking this well.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure my brain will explode with WTF any minute.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Nick said. ‘I should have —’
‘Told me?’ Adam gave a small laugh, but there wasn’t much humor behind it. ‘You can fill in the blanks later.’ He paused. ‘Well, maybe you can fill in one now. How exactly
did
you do . . . whatever?’
‘A pressure wave,’ said Nick. ‘You ever see an explosion on television, where it blows people back?’
‘Yeah?’
Nick nodded. ‘Like that. All air pressure. It didn’t stop the bullet, but it stopped it
enough
.’
Quinn twisted in her seat. ‘And that blew out the windows?’
Nick winced. ‘Honestly, we’re lucky it didn’t bring the building down on top of us.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t wreck my truck,’ said Tyler, meeting Nick’s eyes in the rearview mirror. ‘The shock wave ran me off the road.’
‘Yeah, too bad,’ Nick snapped.
‘Hey, dickhead, I’m
helping
you —’
‘Shut up,’ said Quinn. Nick shut up, but she was really glaring at Tyler. She was twisted on the seat and jabbing at him. ‘You don’t get to be nasty to him. You don’t get to say
anything
to him. Do you understand me? If you want to talk to Nick, if you want to talk to
my friend
, the first word out of your mouth better be
I
and the next words better be
am sorry
. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and drive.’
‘Don’t waste your breath,’ said Nick bitterly, though he appreciated the sentiment. ‘He’s not sorry.’
Tyler met his eyes in the rearview mirror again, and Nick expected him to snap back with something vicious, but he held the eye contact for a second, then looked away.
He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. ‘Can you do that again?’ he said. ‘The pressure wave?’
Nick hesitated, wondering if there was a trap in the question. ‘I don’t know.’ He paused and glanced down at Adam’s fingers linked with his. ‘I didn’t know I could do it in the first place. It wasn’t on purpose — sometimes power takes over when we’re in danger, and we can’t fully control it.’ His voice turned sharp and mocking. ‘Know anything about that, Tyler?’
‘You covered a lot of ground,’ Tyler said, ignoring his tone. ‘At least two miles. Could you do something smaller scale to warn your brothers somehow?’
Nick wasn’t sure. He thought of his connection to Gabriel again, tried to focus on it, to imagine what his brother was doing
right now
.
Was this a typical twin connection? Or did it have something to do with his element? Did the air
know
Gabriel, know their bond? All this time, was it just a matter of feeding power into the atmosphere?
He had no idea.
‘Open the windows,’ he said.
Tyler pushed the button, and wind streamed through the truck’s cab. Nick listened to the air, threading his power among the currents.
Danger
, the wind whispered.
No kidding,
he thought back. But then he paid more attention, focusing on the source of that danger. The clouds overhead were shifting, darkening in the south, promising a storm sometime in the future.
A storm. Rain.
Chris.
But Nick didn’t sense Chris’s power in the storm. Feeding energy into the wind might get them nowhere.
Tyler came to a stop sign at the end of Magothy Beach Road. ‘Still going to your house?’ he said.
‘Wait,’ said Nick. ‘Just wait.’
They were half a mile from the house now. The air here was calmer: the storm was a few miles off yet.
Gabriel
, he thought, sending power into the sky.
For an instant, nothing.
Then he felt it, his brother’s presence, like a blazing beacon in his mind.
‘Fire,’ said Tyler.
‘Where?’ asked Quinn. Nick didn’t sense it, either — but then again, he wasn’t a Fire Elemental.
And then he felt it, the reason danger rode the wind. It had nothing to do with the storm in the east.
And everything to do with the smoke to the west.
Quinn spent each moment vacillating between wanting to kill Tyler and wanting to hug him.
‘Stay in the truck,’ he snapped, when he parked alongside the woods. She could smell the smoke now, a primal scent that warned her to stay away.
But she glared at Tyler and climbed out anyway.
‘Stay in the truck,’ Nick agreed. But he wasn’t focused on her. He was focused on the woods. She wondered how much he could sense, whether Gabriel was in immediate danger. ‘This guy isn’t messing around. You
saw
that.’
‘He didn’t shoot me in the dance studio,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you tell me that they don’t kill normal people?’
‘They kill anyone,’ said Tyler, ‘if it leads to the greater good. He didn’t kill you in the dance studio because you weren’t a threat.’
‘Well, I’m not exactly a
threat
now —’
A gun fired in the woods, and Nick and Tyler both jerked her down and against the truck. Adam crouched beside them.
‘I am not helpless!’ she snapped. But her heartbeat was in her ears, blocking other sounds.
Nick was practically breathless. Too pale. He’d healed his head wound, but she wondered how much damage he’d really taken. ‘Can you get to the house?’ he said. ‘Everyone’s number is on the wall. Call Michael. Tell him — tell him —’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said.
‘Damn it, Quinn, I can’t help them all! I need — I want —’ Another gunshot. Everyone froze.
The wind kicked up, a sudden gust that lifted her hair. The air temperature dropped ten degrees. Nick went paler, if that was possible. ‘He’s hurt. He’s hurt. He’s —’
Another shot.
‘Go,’ said Tyler. ‘If you can get to a phone, call nine-one-one.’
‘We’ll go,’ said Adam. ‘Come on, Quinn.’
Then he grabbed her hand and dragged her, not leaving any room for argument.
The woods blazed with fire, consuming dead leaves and trees and
anything it could find to burn. Nick moved beside Tyler, hating that his mortal enemy was going to be at his side when he found his brother’s body.
Stop thinking like that.
But he couldn’t sense Gabriel now. The flames were too thick, and smoke clouded the sky, blocking what sunlight crept through.
More fire was good, right?
Or did it mean that Gabriel had lost all control, and the fire was raging of its own accord?
Nick stumbled and lost his footing.
Tyler caught his arm and hauled him to his feet.
Nick struggled and wrenched his arm away from him. His head still wasn’t ready for this much movement, and he hit the ground anyway, landing in burning leaves.
‘Fine,’ said Tyler. He took a step closer to Nick and the fire moved away from him, leaving Nick alone, too. ‘Do it your way. Face this guy while you can barely stand up.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Nick, despising that he wasn’t even strong enough to find his brother on his own. ‘I don’t want your help.’
Gabriel. Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel. Where are you?
‘He’s not dead,’ said Tyler.
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do.’ Tyler reached down and scooped up a handful of fire, letting it burn from nothing, a rolling ball of flame suspended over his palm.
Nick stared. He’d seen Gabriel do this hundreds of times. It was unsettling to see the same show of power from Tyler.
‘Fire likes him,’ said Tyler. ‘It likes me, too. He’s still alive out here. He’s just hiding.’ He glanced up at Nick. ‘If I can follow the flames to find him, so can the Guide. He’s being smart. Not using his power. Letting the smoke cover him.’
It was covering him and Tyler, too, and Nick could keep the smoke dense around them. But Gabriel was hurt — the air or their twin connection or
whatever
had told Nick that much.
In a flash, Nick realized that all this panic he was feeling wasn’t just his own. Fear bled through the smoke, riding the very air to find Nick’s senses.
I’ll find you
, he thought.
I’ll save you.
He remembered playing hide-and-seek with James, and Nick threw power to the wind, opening his senses fully.
Seek.
In his mind, he saw the land as a grid, the atmosphere stretching around him in a circle, locating people like flashing pinpoints on a map. Him and Tyler. Quinn and Adam, running like hell.
The Guide, a flare of power so bright that Nick wondered how the guy had snuck up on them at the dance studio.
And Gabriel, a fading light. Not far. Maybe fifty feet straight ahead.
Nick’s temper flared and the air responded, shifting, moving the smoke. Wind whipped through the trees, bringing debris and flaming sparks to sting his skin.
‘This way,’ he said to Tyler, and started walking.
Tyler caught his arm. ‘He has a gun.’
More wind, blowing harder. It ruffled Nick’s hair and fed him power, sending smoke spiraling. ‘He shot my brother.’ Then he jerked free.
Nick kept his mind focused on the Guide, letting his wind swoop and whirl, remembering his demonstration for Quinn, the way he’d surrounded her with leaves.
This time, he did it with fire.
He did it carefully, the way he’d done for Quinn, slowly at first, enough power that it wouldn’t be noticed right away. But then he sent it spiraling high enough to block forward motion, sending it faster and faster, until he could
see
it, a near tornado of fire, trapping the Guide inside. At the same time, he drew oxygen into the flames from the inside, choking the man where he stood. Tyler helped, feeding power to the fire, until it was a spinning web of energy and destruction.
For an instant, Nick felt a rush of victory. He’d close this knot, collapse the flames. The Guide might not die, but he’d lose consciousness.
Then he could die from other things.
But then power flared back at him. The tornado began to expand. Nick’s tight cone of power loosened, like a skein of yarn being shaken free.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Tyler. Nick could feel his struggle to keep the fire where it needed to be — but the air pressure was too strong.
In that instant, Nick knew what was happening. The Guide was gathering power, building the same thing Nick had done in the dance studio: a blast of air pressure that would radiate outward.
This blast would flatten the woods. It would knock out Nick and Tyler, and possibly kill Gabriel, all in one wave of power.
Worse, the outside of this pressure wave would be a wall of fire. Nick had compared the dance studio to a bomb going off — this really
would
be like a bomb going off. From the strength behind the force, this would be enough to level the neighborhood.
Reverse it.
Nick’s element kicked in before he’d completed the thought, using every ounce of power he had to collapse the air pressure around the Guide. It pulled the spiraling flames in toward his quarry, and he felt the Guide fighting it, scrambling to send power outward.
Nick wasn’t going to be strong enough. The fire glowed brighter, fed by the oxygen in the air. The circling flames accelerated, ready to pull free of his control.
His knees landed in the underbrush as he struggled. His eyes clenched closed. He begged his element for the upper hand, feeling as though he grasped for nothing more than empty fistfuls of air. The spiral loosened further.
He was going to lose it.
Tyler grabbed his forearms, and his hands were full of burning pain.
Nick gasped, and his eyes snapped open.
‘Do it,’ Tyler said. ‘Do it, Nick. You think of every goddamn thing I’ve ever done to you, and you
make this happen
.’
Nick thought of it. He couldn’t
not
think of it, the way Tyler’s fingers burned into his skin.
Tyler’s voice grew louder. ‘You think of how much you hate me. You think of how I know you’re the weakest, most pathetic Merrick.’
Nick gritted his teeth. Tyler’s hands were scalding hot, but the pain didn’t steal Nick’s clarity, it enhanced his focus. Nick swallowed. He gained an inch with the air. Lightning cracked among the spinning flames.