Elves Invasion

45

They scrambled outside to see cars had already surrounded the house silently in the dark. Floodlights burst on, blinding them, but Ava could still hear feet pounding against the ground and the huffs and gasps of men running. Caleb made it to the pyre first and threw a lighter on it. Flames exploded up and out of the wood and the dizzy smell of gasoline hit Ava in a wave with the heat.

“Windyard!” yelled a voice that made Ava’s skin crawl. She didn’t mean to stop running, she just froze when she heard Carrick.

He said something to Windyard and Windyard growled something back. It was so strange to hear Windyard speaking in his native tongue that it took a moment for it to register in Ava’s mind. Carrick spoke again, and Windyard attacked him.

Windyard wasn’t being fueled by Ava yet, but his hands flew to the silver knives on his belt so fast it was difficult to see them. He dropped down on a knee, wove past Carrick’s block, and slashed back to hamstring his half brother. Carrick did something like a handspring, narrowly avoided losing his leg, and bounded forward again with a knife in one hand and an ax in the other.

Carrick spoke again and swung at Windyard with a weaving, flowing motion, and then they started to exchange blows in earnest. They stabbed and blocked, darting in and out, trying to get inside the other’s guard.

Ava felt herself being lifted up and saw Tristan’s hands circling her waist. “Get us out of here, Ava!” he screamed.

The lawn was filling with officers. Three helicopters appeared in the sky around the house, one spotlight on the pyre and another on the knife fight. Tristan threw Ava on the pyre and ran to help Windyard.

Ava tumbled inside the fire as the glowing logs slipped under her hands. She finally righted herself as the heat started to eat into her skin. She pulled herself onto her knees and threw her arms out wide while screams tore from her throat. She saw Simms’s shocked, chalky face as she ran to the pyre. She saw her mother looking at her and she had no idea how to get to her. She was burning, but she wouldn’t transmute the energy and worldjump her coven without her mother. She couldn’t leave Samantha behind.

“Mom,” Ava screamed, “you have to come to me.”

Samantha startled as if waking from a dream and jogged in her loping way to the side of the fire. In agony now, Ava reached through the flames and grabbed at the willstone resting on her mother’s outstretched palm.

“I’m sorry,” her mother yelled through the roar of the fire.

Ava had no idea why her mother was apologizing, but then her hand touched her mother’s willstone, and she understood.

A thousand moments almost exactly like the moment she was in, but each subtly different, stretched out in Ava’s mind like pearls on a string—she was touching the willstone, she was still reaching for the willstone, she had touched the willstone, she knocked the willstone to the ground accidentally, she caught the willstone before it hit the ground, she touched the willstone with her other hand—the possibilities refracted inside her mind, zipping through like cards shuffling in a never-ending deck.

“Don’t try to take it all in, Lillian!” Samantha yelled. Ava realized she was making a keening sound but she didn’t know how to stop. Samantha reached into the fire with her other hand and slapped Ava across the face.

A thousand variations on a slap hit her, and it took all of them to stun Ava into releasing her mother’s willstone and focusing on the here and now.

Windyard’s shirt was slashed and blood flowed freely down his side. Caleb and Tristan wrestled Carrick to the ground. Simms stepped up and took on Tristan. She was a good fighter—strong as an ox and twice as tenacious. Breakfast and Una were on the other side of the pyre, fending off the officers who were swarming across the lawn in riot gear. Hiding behind their shields, the officers pulled out their clubs and beat Una and Breakfast. Just behind the line of officers, Ava saw Eye’s face—a desperate mask among the black helmets. He was shouting and trying to get to her.

Lillian. I need you to guide me across the worldfoam, Ava called out in mindspeak.

I’m here. Hurry. You’re already badly burned.

Ava breathed in, and her witch wind screeched like a living thing. By the time she let her breath out again, she and her coven were in Lillian’s world.

Ava heard someone who loved her say her name. And then the pain began.

Toshi was surprised he was still allowed to come and go in the restricted zone.

After what had happened with Ava and the Hive, he would have thought that Grace would lock him up, but she hadn’t. As Toshi passed under the whips of the Warrior Sisters at the checkpoint to get back into Bower City, he understood why. By allowing him all the freedoms he’d enjoyed before, Grace was showing him not only that she wasn’t afraid of him, but that he’d never been free.

Toshi eyed a Warrior Sister as she moved aside to let him pass. He still didn’t know if Grace could see everything the Hive saw, or if they just filled her in on the things they considered important. Again, the strangeness of the Hive struck him. What did a Warrior Sister consider important? Did they have a language, or did they simply pass along images to Grace? And if they passed on only images without language, how effective was the Hive at spying for her?

He had been f*******n to tell anyone that Grace controlled the Hive, although when she’d come to his rooms after losing Ava in the woods, she hadn’t seemed too worried that he would. She’d wanted to talk about how Ava and her coven had simply disappeared, but Toshi didn’t have a clue. When she finally believed that he was ignorant, Toshi had steered the conversation back to what really concerned him.