Sacrifice

  Michael started to reply, but another message appeared below that one.

  I already took care of your brothers.

  Michael stared at that sentence until it burned itself into his eyeballs.

  I already took care of your brothers.

  The letters blazed and blurred until he couldn’t make sense of them anymore. To think, earlier he’d thought he’d lost everything.

  He hadn’t felt this kind of despair since his parents had been trapped in that fire.

  “I need to get out of the truck,” he said. His voice was a wisp of what it had been.

  Tyler hit the button to unlock the doors. The air was cold and still when Michael stepped out of the vehicle. He stood and inhaled, realizing that he was waiting for . . . something. A blast of wind, either too cold or too warm for the weather. Some sign of Nick’s presence or power.

  Nothing.

  It had been raining before, but the clouds had dissipated overhead, revealing a heavy white moon staring down at him.

  Had the earlier rain been a sign of Chris trying to draw power? Or just nature playing out? Michael wished he’d checked a forecast. He had no idea.

  But there was no rain now.

  And the fire continued to blaze from the home. Gabriel would have tried to stifle it, to contain it somehow and help with the rescue efforts.

  He kept seeing them in that hospital room, remembering how they hadn’t wanted to be taken away—but they’d gone. For him, because he’d asked. They’d gone with the social worker, and willingly, too.

  Hunter stood beside him, immobile. Michael couldn’t look at him. If he looked at Hunter, all he’d see was the brothers he’d lost.

  His phone chimed, and Michael almost chucked it at the ground. But he had to look. Just in case.

  Just in case what? Just in case your brothers aren’t in pieces and they magically found a cell phone?

  It was Hannah.

  Where are you?

  He didn’t answer.

  “Kill the lights on the truck,” he said to Tyler. “I want to walk the property line.”

  They all walked, clinging to the shadowed darkness beneath trees and along the fence line. Tyler might have been cautious, looking for hazards, but Michael paid no attention. He simply walked, and they followed. If the Guide confronted him, Michael was ready to fight.

  If the Guide simply shot him . . . well, right now that might be okay too.

  Another chime from his phone. Hannah again.

  My dad wants to talk to you.

  He didn’t respond. After a moment, she texted again.

  Please, Michael. Tell me where you are. Please call me.

  He kept walking. Tyler and Hunter were silent behind him. Michael found that if he kept putting one foot in front of the other, feeling the power of his element, he could go on living.

  If he stopped, he worried that he’d fall down and let the earth swallow him up.

  When they reached the edge of the property, he could see rescue workers swarming around the house. The heat from the fire warmed his cheeks, even from here. He finally turned to look at Hunter and Tyler. “Do you feel anything? Any power at all?”

  “No,” said Tyler.

  Hunter’s face was white in the moonlight, leaving his eyes hopeless and desperate. He looked at the house and then back at Michael. And then away. His voice was a cracked whisper. “Nothing.” He had to wet his lips. “I thought we’d find them. I thought maybe they’d be hiding, and they’d sense us walking. I tried to use power, to see—to see if—”

  And then his voice broke and he was crying.

  Michael grabbed him. Held him. He didn’t cry. Every motion still felt like someone else doing it.

  “I shouldn’t have come here.” Hunter pulled away and swiped his eyes on his jacket. “I shouldn’t have started this—”

  “You didn’t start this,” Michael said. He couldn’t take his eyes off the burning home. He kept seeking information from the ground, but he felt nothing. “You’re a kid, Hunter. Your dad and your uncle started this. Or maybe Calla and her followers did, when they started that rockslide. Or maybe my parents did, by forming the deal.”

  “None of them started this,” said Tyler. “This is the way it’s always been.”

  Michael looked at him. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

  “No,” said Tyler. “It shouldn’t.”

  But it was. And Michael couldn’t fix it. He felt like he’d been fighting forever.

  And now he’d failed. The past five years seemed so pointless. Just borrowed time.

  “Someone is coming this way,” said Tyler.

  Michael straightened, suddenly alert, ready to fight. He was surprised to find himself eager for it, to have a target for all this rage. For the first time, he didn’t care about setting an example for someone else. He didn’t care about what his father would have expected him to do.

  If the Guide showed his face, Michael was going to find a way to kill him.

  The man who walked through the haze and smoke with a flashlight wasn’t the Guide, though. It was Hannah’s father, the fire marshal.

  Jack flicked the flashlight over each of their faces. Michael couldn’t see his face clearly, but his voice was tired. “Hannah told me you were here. Come sit in the car. I don’t have any information yet, but—”

  “Were they here?” said Michael. “Is this the place?”

  The fire marshal didn’t even ask for clarification. He just nodded. “Yes.”

  Michael felt his face start to crumple. He hadn’t realized there’d been a shred of hope left curling in his thoughts.

  Gone now.

  Marshal Faulkner put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on.” He didn’t offer false hope. He didn’t say anything else. He just left his hand there and waited until Michael started walking.

  Every step brought them closer to the house. The bomb had done its job, and thoroughly. Most of the structure was gone, and what was left was burning. Michael kept hoping for some kind of miracle, that maybe after this step, his brothers would appear from the darkness. Or after this step, the rescue teams would declare that they hadn’t really found body parts from the explosion, that it was all a joke. Or his brothers had escaped, and they were looking for a pay phone—

  His cell phone rang.

  Michael choked on his breath and grabbed for it. He didn’t recognize the number.

  Please. Please please please—

  A girl’s voice spoke across a poor connection. “Michael?”

  He didn’t recognize the voice, but she sounded young. His thoughts were too jumbled to make sense of this. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Calla Dean.”

  He stopped walking. He pressed the phone more tightly against his ear. “Calla?”

  “Yeah.” She coughed. “I need you to get here.”

  Her plea was surreal enough that it chiseled through his panic and despair. “You what?”

  “I need you to get here. They had me trapped, but I got free.” She coughed again. A burst of static came across the line. “I don’t know how long—”

  “Wait—you what? Who had you trapped? What are you—”

  “I’m by the water. At the abandoned park at the end of Fort Smallwood. There’s an old storage shed—” More coughing, then silence.

  “Calla? Calla?”

  Hunter and Tyler and the fire marshal were staring at him, but he didn’t care. Michael pressed a hand over his other ear. “Calla? Are you there? You’re at the abandoned park? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m here. I need you to come. I knocked one of them unconscious, but it won’t be long—”

  “You knocked who unconscious? Calla, I don’t understand.”

  “One of the Guides, Michael. They’re in town. There’s one here, but he’s unconscious. I need you to come here.”

  “Okay,” he said, breathless. “Okay, I’ll get there.”

  “Hurry,” she said. “Before the other one gets back.” br />
  CHAPTER 28

  Michael had been sure the fire marshal would stop him from leaving. Too many recent interactions had ended with him in handcuffs.

  But he’d turned on his heel and walked away, and no one had stopped him. Tyler and Hunter had hurried after.

  Michael knew the old park well. A few acres of land made a narrow peninsula, with a beach on one side and a rundown pier on the other. He’d played there as a child, when the playground had been in good repair and the swing chains had still had all their seats. Now, there were nicer parks in more accessible parts of the county, and this one seemed to have been forgotten. None of the streetlights in the parking lot worked, leaving the entire place bathed in moonlight.

  When he got out of Tyler’s truck and put his feet on the pavement, power swelled up to greet him.

  A lot of power. Enough to make him hesitate. The Guide had hidden before, and pretty effectively. This was a deliberate display.

  “Do you feel that?” he said to Hunter.

  “Yes.” Hunter’s gun was already in his hands. He looked focused now that they had a task, as if he’d compartmentalized all the horror of the past few hours.

  “Do you think it’s a trap?” said Tyler.

  Michael hadn’t considered that. “Maybe you two should stay here.”

  Tyler snorted. “Fuck that. I don’t work that way, Merrick.”

  “We’re safer together,” said Hunter. “Not . . ” He hesitated, as if unsure he wanted to finish that sentence. He swallowed. “Not apart.”

  They’d be safest with all five elements represented. That’s what Hunter wasn’t saying.

  They didn’t have all the elements anymore.

  He couldn’t start thinking about any of it or he’d never be able to move again. He needed to do something, to act.

  “Come on,” Michael said. “The storage shed is by the old playing fields.”

  As they crept across the park, Michael kept his focus on the earth, feeling for signs of anyone nearby, whether friend or enemy. Trees here were few and far between, and the moon cast a silver glow on the baseball diamond and the two soccer fields. A storage shed sat between them. At one point, it had been a bright, sunny yellow, but now it looked gray in the moonlight, and some of the wood from the sides had broken and fallen off.

  Silence hung over everything, broken only by the water hitting the rocky breakers on the east side of the peninsula.

  They stopped as a unit.

  Hunter kept his voice low. “Are you sure this is where she said she was hiding?”

  “Yeah.” Michael hesitated. Maybe his sense of self-preservation had kicked in since the numbness at the bombed house had worn off, but he didn’t want to walk into a bullet if he could help it.

  “I’ll stay back here,” said Tyler. He cocked his gun and aimed at the shed. “Cover you both.”

  Michael nodded and moved forward, asking the ground for silence. He and Hunter circled the shed, looking for any sign of movement. Tyler followed, going wide to keep them in his line of sight.

  On the far side of the shed, Michael stopped short. “Jesus,” he whispered.

  Calla was on the ground. Her clothes were torn and filthy and streaked with blood. Her skin was mottled with bruises. Blood stained her lips and trailed out of her mouth, dripping onto the ground.

  Behind her was a man—what was left of one, anyway. He’d been burned beyond recognition. Clearly dead. Michael could smell the charred flesh.

  Hunter knelt beside Calla. He reached out and touched two fingers to her throat. “She’s alive. Barely.”

  Michael took a knee beside him. Her blood had touched the earth, and he tried to send power into her. “Calla.” He touched her face and her head moved limply. “Calla.”

  “We should get her back to the car,” said Hunter. “She needs a hospital.”

  Michael nodded and bent to lift her.

  Calla’s eyes opened halfway. “Michael Merrick.” She coughed, and more blood wet her lips. “You came.”

  “I did.”

  Her eyes rolled, and she blinked as if trying to focus. “And Hunter Garrity. How funny.” She started laughing. More blood came up.

  “Why is that funny?” said Hunter.

  “She’s out of her mind,” said Michael. “Let’s get her to the truck.”

  “I’m perfectly lucid,” she said. “Is he dead?”

  Michael glanced at the charred corpse. “Yeah. I thought you said he was unconscious.”

  “He was.” Her head lolled as he shifted her into his arms. “You weren’t fast enough. He woke up.”

  “And you did that to him?”

  “You would have done the same,” she said. Her voice gained strength. “I wasn’t going to give him the chance to trap me again. He’s not the one who really deserves it, though.”

  “How many more are there?” said Hunter.

  “There were three. I thought they were just going to kill me, but it turns out they were pretty mad at me for causing the accident.”

  “What accident?” said Michael. They were never going to get any information from her like this. And she was responsible for so much, he was tempted to leave her dying beside the shed.

  “He kept crushing me with rocks,” said Calla. “Over and over again. Then healing me in fire. Said it was poetic justice. Do you understand what that felt like?”

  Tyler joined them as they stepped onto the path back to the parking lot. “There were three?” He nodded toward the charred body. “That’s one. The fire marshal killed the other. So there’s one left?”

  “Just one. Hunter knows. He remembers.”

  Hunter made a disgusted noise. “What the hell are you talking about? I remember that you’re a psychopath who doesn’t mind killing people. I remember how you conned us all into starting a war we wanted no part of. I remember how you said you started a rockslide to kill my dad and my uncle—”

  “Yeah, that.” She coughed and it took her a while to catch her breath again. “And let me tell you,” she said—but then she broke off to catch her breath.

  “Let me tell you what?” said Michael.

  She drew a long breath., “Jay took that rockslide really personally.”

  Hunter stopped in the middle of the path. “What did she just say?”

  Calla giggled, but it launched a new round of violent coughing. “This—this is why it’s—why it’s funny—”

  Hunter jerked her out of Michael’s arms. She stumbled against him and could barely hold herself up. He shook her. “Talk, Calla. What did you just say?”

  “I said—”

  A gun fired. Calla’s head snapped sideways and blood was spattered all over Hunter’s face and shirt.

  Hunter yelled and dropped her.

  She was dead. Just like that, she was dead.

  “Put down your weapons,” said a male voice. “Now.”

  Michael turned, lifting his hands as he did so. A man stood at the junction where the trail split off to the parking lot. In the moonlight, Michael could see him clearly, but it didn’t matter. He could have been any man off the street, maybe late thirties, with lighter hair and dark clothing.

  And a gun. Something large, like a rifle—with a red laser sight.

  He’d snuck up on them. Even with the man this close, Michael couldn’t feel any threat through the ground. He couldn’t feel anything at all.

  Hunter’s breathing was shaky, and his eyes were wide. “It’s okay,” he called. He put his gun on the ground and put his hands up. He didn’t sound frightened or angry now. He sounded . . . awed and a little determined. “It’s okay.”

  “It is not okay,” hissed Tyler. “We’re fucked.” His gun didn’t leave his hand.

  That red laser sight centered on his chest. “Put the gun down. Now. Three. Two—”

  “All right!” Tyler dropped the gun and put his hands up.

  “It’s okay!” Hunter yelled again, a little more desperately. “It’s me! You don’t have to shoot
them.”

  “I know who you are, Hunter.” The man didn’t lower the weapon.

  Michael was replaying the last words between Hunter and Calla.

  I know you started a rockslide to kill my dad and my uncle.

  Yeah. And Jay took that really personally.

  Michael remembered the man he’d caught sight of during the restaurant bombing, the victims’ photos where he’d caught the edge of a man’s face, with a flash of sandy blond hair.

  Just like Hunter’s.

  They’d spent so much time talking about his father’s experiences that Michael almost felt like they should have considered this a possibility.

  How would you consider this a possibility? Dead people don’t come back.

  “It’s your father,” said Michael. “Isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Hunter. “It’s my uncle.”

  He looked like a kid greeting a parent after a long business trip. His voice was full of eager longing, so at odds with the specks of blood on his face.

  And the fact that his uncle was still pointing a gun in their direction.

  “I hate to break it to you,” said Tyler, “but this dude doesn’t seem to care who you are.”

  “Quiet,” said the man. He walked toward them, his gun still pointed in their direction.

  Hunter stared at him, his eyes widening with each step the man took. “How are you . . . ?” His breath caught. “My dad—is he—?”

  “Still dead.” No emotion in that voice.

  “But—but I went to your funeral. I saw you—in the casket—they buried you—”

  “Yes, they did. It took me a while to get out, and longer to piece together our records. You and your mother were long gone. All our old files were gone.” He stopped about ten feet away. “I honestly didn’t expect this much trouble once I got here.” He glanced between Michael and Tyler. “Or this many Elementals in town. You’ve created quite a little community, haven’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” said Tyler.

  The Guide shot him in the shoulder. Tyler went down yelling.

  “Stop!” Hunter surged forward. “Stop! I said you don’t need—”