Gold: A Bandia Novel Part 3

Austin opens his eyes. "And Juliet is the sun."

I jerk my hand away from his forehead. "You need some new lines."

He rubs his temples. "Best I can do with this vise on my skull. Does pain always feel so bad?"

"It's called pain for a reason."

Austin lifts his head, his crooked smile in place despite the obvious effort it takes him. "Says the girl with a death wish."

I back up until I'm pressed against the boulder. "Are you threatening me?" He doesn't look like he's in any condition to threaten anyone.

"Course not. I would never threaten you." Austin grunts as he pushes himself up into a sitting position.

"Oh that's right, you prefer to threaten the people I love."

"For your own good."

"I'm the only one who gets to decide what's good for me." I take a step forward, flames simmering under my skin. "You shouldn't be here."

He watches the blue flames arc between my fingers. "Right. I've made quite a mess of things, haven't I?"

"How did you get here?" The spell I used to trap him in the underworld had worked. I know it. "You shouldn't be able to cross over."

"Perhaps fate has other plans for me."

A ball of flame appears in my hand. "A fireball to the head?"

He laughs and then stops himself, rubbing his forehead. "I hope not."

The sky darkens as more clouds roll in. Everything is wrong. I am a half a world away from my parents, my friends. Blake. For what? To postpone a war that will come for me anyway? To spend my last days alone, or worse, in the company of the very G.o.d who made me kill Blake.

The fire burns hot, my blood searing my skin from the inside. Austin watches the flames dance in my hand, and I swear there is something that looks a lot like fear in his eyes. Good. He should be afraid of me. But since when is Austin afraid of anything? He may be weak, but he's still immortal.

"Go on," he says. "It's about time you acted like a bandia."

No.

I am not a killer. I may have killed Blake, but only because I tried to save him. And I brought him back. That has to count for something.

I turn and throw the fire ball as hard as I can at the water. It sails for fifty feet before it hits a wave with a bright blue blast and dies out.

Austin sighs and falls back against the rocks. "Perhaps there's hope for us yet."

I reach for the wind, gathering it with such strength that I have to wrap my arms around the boulder to keep from getting swept up in strong gust, and send it flying at Austin. He flies into the air, his back slamming against the wall of rock behind him. I keep the wind on him, pinning him there, five feet above the ground.

I have to shout to be heard. "There is no us. There will never be any us. And if you come anywhere near me or anyone I care about, I will find a way to kill you." I stop the wind as quickly as I called it, and Austin drops like a stone, landing hard on his side.

"That's my girl," he says as he rolls to his back and closes his eyes.

SEVEN.

Mick watches me maneuver my roller bag down the winding staircase. He doesn't offer to help me. "You're leaving?" "I've already booked a room over the pub in Cath." Tomorrow I'll head back to Dublin. And from there, anywhere but here.

"I'll get the car."

Mick doesn't lecture me about safety or keeping my power in check as he drives me into town. I don't know if he knows that Austin is back, but it hardly matters to me now. I just need to get out of here.

He hands me a cell phone as I step out of the car in front of the pub. "I'm the first number on speed dial."

I pocket the phone without looking at it. "Thanks, Mick."

"Mikel," he corrects. "I know there's no point arguing, but you should stay at Lorcan. The Sons will be here soon."

"The Sons are coming here?" How does he know the Sons are on their way? Did Joe contact him?

"The call of the gateway is strong. They won't be able to ignore it."

"The gateway? It's in Del Mar." It was why the Sons and bandia were all in San Diego County. But the gateway had been sealed when Austin was banished, and Austin wasn't banished anymore.

If the gateway is here, I've managed to come to the one place where the Sons are certain to be. "Do they know I'm here?"

Mick shakes his head. "Doubt it. The power will draw them. Just as it draws you."

"I'm not staying."

"We'll see." He does that thing with the corner of his mouth where he almost smiles.

My room over the pub is tiny, with barely room for a twin bed and small night stand. Apparently, it's the height of luxury in Cath, because it has its own bathroom, although the shower consists of nothing more than a handheld sprayer next to the sink and a drain in the floor. I wrap a threadbare blanket around my shoulders and curl up in the corner of the bed, flipping through the train schedule on the phone Mick left me. In the morning, I'll take a taxi to the station in Tralee and catch a train to Dublin. By this time tomorrow, I'll be in London. Or Paris. Tuscany. Maybe Berlin.

Anywhere but here.

Some sick part of me wants to stay. My twisted heart clings to a small tendril of hope, an undeniable spark of longing at the thought of the Sons coming here.

Blake.

I stomp on the thought and crush it into a billion microscopic shards. I will rip this little wish to shreds until there is absolutely nothing left. Screw infinite smallness. My heart is a vacuum, as dark and empty as a black hole. As lethal. I can't afford to indulge a stupid crush on a boy who doesn't even want me.

Not after what happened.

The explosions of blue flame at Mallory's party seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, bright flashes of heat and fire. The back windows near the living room shattered. Acrid smoke choked my breaths as people ran in every direction at once. I tried to stop it, but it was like the fire had a mind of its own, arcing and shooting back at me in rebellion.

Water.

I could feel water. I sent water at the flames in large waves. It was too little, too late. The fire simply danced away, evading my efforts to tame it.

Blake appeared next to me in a flash of silver. He grabbed my hand and spun me toward him. "What did you do?"

"It's not me." Panic laced my words, but I believed what I said. The fire wasn't mine. I couldn't control it.

"Like h.e.l.l," Blake said. Silver sparks lit up his green eyes. I'd seen Blake in his demiG.o.d form before, his perfect body clad in a swath of plaid fabric and illuminated in silver light that seemed to come from within, but his face was harder than I'd ever seen it. There was nothing beautiful about the pure hatred in his expression. "I saw you with my sister."

I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could say anything, another flash of silver flared on my right.

I needed to move.

I ran past Blake just as Jonah appeared right where I had been standing, his jeweled knife drawn. There would be no pretense of peace now. Jonah or Rush or Levi or one of the other Sons would kill me.

Blake ran after me, grabbing my elbow and pulling me up. "This way." He turned the opposite direction from the people making their way toward the back gate, and guided me toward the burning house. "Can you clear a path through the flames?"

I could if they were mine, but this fire was beyond me. "I can't control it."

"We'll have to take our chances." Blake ran straight into the burning house.

I followed without hesitation.

The heat of the blaze was stronger inside. Flames devoured an exterior wall and a couch in the corner. The hallway filled with dark smoke. I pulled my cardigan over my head, covering my mouth and nose with it.

Blake held tight to my wrist as he dragged me down the hallway, toward a large window that would take us out to the street. He stopped as a burst of flame came through the wall a few feet in front of us. Blake spun me around and pulled me back the way we came. We didn't get far. Blue flames had already filled in behind us. We were surrounded by fire.

I tried not to breathe, but my lungs fought me, the instinct stronger than my will. I sucked in smoke until I could do nothing but choke and cough into my sweater.

Water.

I had to focus. I closed my eyes and concentrated on water running through my veins, becoming one with it. The wall of water I conjured was the largest I'd ever made, and I sent it at the flames in front of us.

It wasn't enough. The flames directly in front of us sputtered and died, only to be replaced by another wave of fire that rolled in to take its place.

I tried wind, whipping the air around us in an attempt to keep the fire and smoke at bay. It kept the fire from getting closer, but it also fed the flames, making them higher, stronger, hotter.

Blake's arms came around me as the heat and smoke became unbearable.

"Go," I rasped, pointing to the window. Blake had the power to disappear and reappear anywhere within his line of sight. He could transport himself to safety.

He kissed me instead.

I sputtered and choked against him, pus.h.i.+ng at his chest. He needed to get out of here. A flash of silver lit behind my eyes, and then the air around us turned cold and damp. I opened my eyes to find us floating in gray mist. I s.h.i.+vered against the cold, and Blake's arms held me tighter. He was still in his demiG.o.d form, but he was no longer lit up with starlight.

I knew where we were, in the place that hovered between life and magic, where the Sons went when they disappeared before changing forms or transporting themselves. I had been to the spirit realm before. We'd come here together once, when we bonded.

I inhaled the damp air in large gulps. Blake held me against him until I stopped coughing. I curled my arms around his neck, clinging to him. Afraid to let go.

"How did we get here?"

"I'll bring us back to the front porch just outside the window," Blake said into my neck, ignoring my question. "That's the best I can do. You won't have much time. They'll be looking for you. Joe's car is parked near the intersection about four houses down. Hide in the backseat until Joe can meet you."

I listened to his instructions, not missing the hardness in his tone. We barely got out of the fire alive, and we were nowhere near safe. He'd just kissed me, but when I looked into his eyes all I saw was anger.

"It wasn't me."

His hands tightened on my arms. "Don't."

"But-"

"Don't lie to me now." His laugh was harsh. "Or was it all a lie?"

"What? Of course not. You can't believe that." I could see in his face that he did. He believed that I could burn down his house and attack his family. He believed that I could pretend to care about him as a way to get close to the Sons. "Your sister and I had a fight. The fire was there before I could stop it."

"She's human."

"Your sister can be pretty annoying." My attempt at a joke fell flat. Blake dropped his hands to his side. My arms still hung around his neck, but they felt awkward, heavy.

I didn't need Blake to tell me that my calling fire against a girl who was no threat was a bad, bad sign. However close I'd come to starting a fight with one of the Sons, I'd never lost it like that with a human before. I'd never lost control of my elements.

But I had sent my fire into the pool. I didn't attack the house.

Blake stiffened beneath my arms, and I finally let my hands fall to my sides too. I didn't need the bond to know that he didn't trust me.

"So you decided to burn down the whole d.a.m.n place and everyone in it?"

"No."

"What's wrong with you, Brianna? Did you want to kill them all?"

And there it was. Right out in the open. He didn't even pretend to trust me.

"I wouldn't do that," I whispered, though part of me wondered. The truth was I didn't know what happened.

"You just did."

My anger drove me forward, pus.h.i.+ng him hard in the chest. "You spent the last three months letting me be ridiculed and ostracized by your so-called friends, while you deliberately kept me at a distance." It's not until I said the words that I realized how true they were. I was willing to risk bonding again. Blake wasn't. "And I'm the one that can't be trusted?"

Blake lifted his broadsword between us, the cold steel pressed against the skin covering my heart. "Looks that way." He didn't make a cut. He didn't need to. The distrust in Blake's eyes did the cutting for him. He leaned closer, glaring at me. "a.s.suming you can make it to Joe's car, he'll get you out. Then you better hope that you never see my face again. You might've fooled me once, but I know exactly what kind of monster you are. If anyone back there is dead, I'll find you, and you'll wish like h.e.l.l that I let you burn in that fire."

I was already burning. Each word choked the air from my lungs and seared my heart, branding it with a black mark that would leave a permanent scar. "I love you."

I thought that loving him was enough. That we would find a way to be together. But I had been so, so wrong. Blake didn't even want to try anymore. If he ever did.

"Don't." His voice is soft, but his eyes are hard.

"You felt it." We shared each other's emotions when our souls were bonded. There'd been a moment, before I killed him and broke the bond, when we had both felt love. I didn't imagine it.

"I felt a lot of things. That doesn't make them real." He stepped closer, wrapping his arms around me. There was no tenderness in the way he held me. His arms tightened.

"How did you get me out of the fire?" I asked again.

"Like this." He lowered his head to mine and kissed me. Hard.

We weren't bonded anymore, but I could feel his anger just the same. It was there in the way his lips crushed mine with a force that rocked me backwards. When my mouth opened against the a.s.sault, his tongue thrust inside and I swore I felt his anger mix with sharp desire, the one constant that he couldn't deny.