Chapter Twenty-Four

Brae

I was going to electrocute Alessi.

In a group text, I had told both her and Kai about Cassen’s threat from that morning. Kai’s response had been entirely unhelpful.

Since this mess had started, he’d been pressuring me to keep Marley locked up until we could figure out how to separate her from the oculus. He was content with having a human battery in our basement. “Just bring her to the farmhouse and tie her to a chair. Boom. Problem solved.” I was tired of having the same argument with him. Sure, make her hate us. That’ll help her cooperate.

Alessi had been nice and sympathetic, which was extremely uncharacteristic. I should’ve known. “I’ll make up some excuse to have her come into work and I’ll watch over her. You should unwind and go to open mic night. That’s Saturday nights, right?”

I hadn’t been aware she knew I went to those. It was a side of myself that I didn’t exactly showcase to my clan. Guitar was an entirely human thing that I was addicted to and seeing as half of my clan were all older than me—having much more vivid memories of Enos and our way of music and celebration—I didn’t think they’d quite get it.

Besides, after the day I’d had, I needed something to center myself. Because what Marley had said had knocked my world out of its orbit.

Coming to Earth, I could barely control the way the planet’s unique makeup of noble gases affected me. It had driven my electrical abilities into overdrive. I’d been a walking lightning rod, ready to explode with power at any given touch. I hadn’t lived here five years without some collateral damage.

But I’d known what she’d really been asking. What was my body count?

That, I wouldn’t…couldn’t answer.

Normally I kept those thoughts and memories locked inside, buried as deep as a planet’s core, under layers and layers of molten rock and regret.

But with just a few words, she’d made them erupt. I’d spent the rest of the day trying to shove them back down. I had to keep those pieces locked inside me so they wouldn’t destroy my life too.

Maybe it should. Maybe it’s what you deserve.

I strummed the first chord, the opening song of the few I had prepared for my set. The regulars loved requesting their favorites, and they tended to be an eclectic mix that I always ended up having to look up on my Spotify later.

As I played, I tried to ignore Marley just a few feet away. Instead, I concentrated on how much I wanted to knock Alessi into next week for allowing her to come here. This had been my haven. My time to set myself straight from this morning, but seeing the source of my frustration and unsettlement had done the exact opposite. Marley had thrown me off balance again.

It was too easy to notice the makeup that brought out the blue in her eyes, or the stage lights shining on her hair that made her blond curls look like a halo around her face, or the tight jeans that accentuated her long legs—none of it helped to dispel several memories that rose to the surface from that morning.

My gaze roamed the crowd during my next song. I tried to look everywhere but her. X Ambassadors’ Unsteady was one I knew by heart and never had to look at the sheet music. But halfway through the second chorus, I stumbled.

It was the feeling of another oculus close by. Not inside the coffee shop yet, but not farther than a block away. I cursed myself for not feeling it sooner, should’ve been easy, especially since I’d felt it just this morning. Obviously, I wasn’t myself.

Cold fear churned in my stomach. Cassen was being more than bold. He was downright declaring war. Coming here in the middle of town? Amid all these humans? He wasn’t just holding my feet to the fire, he was throwing me in it.

I finished the song a whole minute before it was supposed to end and stood. There was a light smattering of confused applause as I slipped into the back hallway that led toward the restrooms and the back exit. The same hallway I’d rushed Marley down just yesterday when Cade and Tifa had been outside.

The oculus drew closer, nearly outside the coffee shop doors, thrumming in my blood like a second heartbeat. Vele, I was such a fool. How could I think that Cassen would give me even a day?

Hurried footsteps came behind me and I jerked around, sensing Alessi’s power drawing near. Her white brows pulled together in confusion and concern.

“What’s going on with you?”

“Cassen is here,” I hissed.

Her eyes widened. “I’ll get Marley out.”

“If you do that, he’ll sense the oculus retreating. I don’t have enough energy to trick him,” I said, running a shaky hand through my hair. This was one shitshow after another.

She reached for my other hand. “I’ll lend you some of mine.”

“No.” I jerked back. “You need it to watch her. I’ll think of something.”

Alessi glanced over her shoulder. “You could zap it from her.”

I squeezed the space between my eyebrows. “Alessi…”

“Come on, Brae. It’s not like you’re drinking her blood. It’s our power to begin with! I don’t necessarily want you using my friend as a battery charger, but desperate times…” She gestured wildly in the air.

I got a flash of the feeling of Marley’s hands on my cheeks as she’d demanded I heal myself. For whatever reason, I hated doing it. And I wasn’t ready to ask myself why.

So, no, I wasn’t that desperate. Yet.

“I’ll figure something else out.”

At just that moment, Marley appeared at the end of the hall, her gaze shooting from Alessi to me and then back to Alessi. “What’s going on?”

I considered telling her the truth, but I dismissed it quickly. If she knew Cassen was here it might solidify her belief that we were only beings that could do nothing but fight and destroy.

Maybe we were.

Not to mention the feel of her terrified heartbeat was not something I wanted to repeat twice in one day. Or ever again for that matter.

“Nothing,” I said, brushing past her and forcing a smile. “Stay with Alessi, okay?”

Her brow furrowed and she started to follow me, but I nodded to Alessi and she grabbed Marley by the wrist, stopping her. I kept moving, crossing into the back kitchen, where I’d been on more than one occasion to make my own drink, and stopped at the locked power box wherein lay the shop’s breakers.

I thought of all the people working tonight and sent them a silent apology before I punched the box dead-on. The metal dented under my knuckles, and I tore off the little door hanging by its hinges. Then I pulled out the enelia crystal from my pocket—what was once my oculus vessel—wound its chain between my fingers, and pressed my palm against the power box.

The electricity rose to my call immediately.

Billions of electrons flowed into my skin, and I redirected them into the crystal. Thankfully, the current was easier to manipulate because it wasn’t alive like the oculus. The lights overhead flickered, and the air conditioner shut off. At the last moment, I siphoned some for myself. In case I had to fight Cassen and survive.

Electricity wouldn’t take the place of my oculus, but I hoped it would be misleading enough. Back at the park, it would’ve been easy for Cassen to have noticed the energy within Marley, because there was nothing else around. But now I had an entire building’s worth of volts. The deception wouldn’t, couldn’t, last long, but it was better than nothing.

I drained the last bit of dregs, sucking it into my skin, and sighed with relief as the familiar electrical current sizzled through my blood.

The building fell into darkness. From the kitchen I could hear gasping and scraping of chairs as customers shuffled around in the sudden blackout.

White electricity danced over my hand and between my fingers, then looped around my wrist before settling into my skin. My body hummed with the buzz moving through my blood at an impossible speed. It fueled my abilities just barely, but it would be enough. It had to be enough.

I looped the enelia crystal, full with the electricity of Jensen’s Coffee, around my neck and headed back into the semidarkness. Immediately I noticed Cassen’s silver hair in the gloom. Naturally, he was the only one who hadn’t moved in the dark chaos. He thrived in it.

Without a glance in his direction, I brushed past him, through the front door, and into the parking lot. He fell into step behind me, as other customers began pouring outside too, into the yellow glow of the streetlamps. I felt Marley and Alessi close, among the crowd, their energy signatures unique to me, and hopefully to no one else. I just had to pray that the trick with the power box had caused enough electrical surges in the air to counteract the presence of my oculus.

Plus, Cassen had developed a grudge against me. Once he set his sights on my back, I was willing to bet he’d see nothing else. My quick walk turned into a jog down the side street, heading into the patch of darkness, away from the lights of the university’s Garden District. Then, the moment I passed into the shadows, my jog went to a sprint. Wind buffeted under my feet and hands as I summoned the warm air to rise and the cool air to move in, and in two steps, I was running on nothing.

I shot up into the dark sky, just a dark speck in a cloudy night. The wind rippled down my clothes and through my hair and as freaked as I was, I still felt that thrill of being in the sky again. Glancing down, I caught sight of Cassen standing in the middle of the dark street, staring up at me.

Why was he still down there? Did he think I was running? Did he sense the oculus behind him where Marley was?

Then I blinked, and he was gone.

A violent gust cut through me, nearly taking me down into a barrel roll. But I quickly threw my own gust, meeting it force by force. The two air pressures collided and threatened to knock me out of the sky.

When the gales calmed, Cassen floated just a few meters away, protected by a miniature wind tunnel that continuously swirled around him. His silver hair and beard glowed against the dark cloud cover.

How in the hell had he gotten up here so damn fast?

“This is getting embarrassing at this point,” Cassen said, his grin stretching wide. “Give me the oculus, Brae.”

I clutched the pendant in my fist. A painful memory tugged at the recesses of my mind and I tried to fight it off before it swallowed me whole. My father and mother standing back, beaming with pride as the elder of our clan knelt and looped the crystal pendant around my neck.

Protect it at all costs, Vehega.

I hadn’t. I’d failed them. It had slipped from my grasp so easily.

“We’ve been through this, Cassen,” I called over the winds raging around us, my voice almost lost. I couldn’t control sound waves like he could. “I’m not going to help you. This is their world. Our new home. We have to keep it safe.”

Cassen’s grin vanished and an earnest expression took over his face. He reached out toward me, his hand like a peace offering. “What about our safety, Brae? We won’t be able to hide in the clouds much longer. Nitrogen poisoning has already taken a few of us. Meanwhile our children are growing more powerful in their abilities, with more chances of discovery. It’s only a matter of time before the humans find us and murder us, or worse, experiment on us. Once I have all the oculi, I’ll fuse them to restore the oculus to its original form. Don’t you see, Brae, we could have Enos back! Here. On Earth.”

“And the humans?” I shouted. “They can’t survive in our storms, Cassen.” God, I thought of the destruction of hurricanes, monsoons, derechos, sandstorms, blizzards—all ripping across their planet. Tearing up buildings, bringing down power, flooding. Millions of lives would be lost. Billions.

“What about them? It’s…what do the humans call it…natural selection.” The look Cassen gave me wasn’t evil. It was merely indifferent. He cared about Enos and our people, and only them. There was a little voice inside my head that sounded like my teacher’s, that whispered he was right. I was supposed to protect and preserve Enos. Devote every thought and action to our survival and only ours.

But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“No, Cassen, that was the old Enos way,” I shouted over the winds. “This bullshit about only the strong survive. All life is important. Even humans.”

“Agree to disagree, I suppose,” Cassen said with a great exhale. “But we don’t have to fight. I like you. You might not share my and the other clan leaders’ views, but there are so few of us left. I don’t want to see another one of us dead. We can simply join forces. And if you want, I’ll even let you hold on to the oculus as long as you like. Just pledge allegiance to me. Disintegrate our clans and we can become one people.” His gaze turned sad, so real and true that my heart seemed to bleed right alongside his. “Isn’t that what destroyed Enos in the end?”

I swallowed hard as the crystal edges dug into the sides of my palm.

As much as I wanted to rage at him for even daring to bring up the destruction of our planet—as if he understood what had really happened in those final days…his words possessed a seed of truth.

Our eyes locked as the winds churned all around us, beating our skin and whipping our clothes. His gaze narrowed and I caught the movement just milliseconds before it happened. A slice of wind, fast and pressurized enough to cut through my skin, came from behind. I dodged to the side, sending out a blast of electricity that collided with the other electrons in the air. Steam fizzled, all water vapor dispersing and evaporating with the hot charges.

But it was the distraction Cassen had been looking for. He rushed me, his large hands grabbing my wrists to limit my movements. He kicked an updraft, and into the clouds we went. Water vapor grew thicker, and ice crystals formed on our skin in the cold wetness. The energy under our skin surged, battling for purchase, but it was easy to tell I was outmatched.

I shouldn’t have been so outmatched. How had Cassen become so strong? Holding onto him was like holding two oculi in either hand. His silver gaze was concentrated on the glowing crystal on my chest. Its mediocre power was nothing compared to the real thing, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything else. He wasn’t listening to its call. Only demanding it.

Gritting my teeth, I commanded the collected electricity to explode from my touch. Lightning ripped through my body, veining into the clouds and illuminating the dark sky. Thunder boomed all around us in that same moment. Cassen jerked, the charges scorching his skin with easily seven hundred thousand volts. His white teeth bared as he took in the electrical charges and grappled for the crystal. In the next moment, he broke the chain around my neck.

So I held on, pressing my palm against his chest and performing the one move only the holder of the lightning oculus could do.

I set his blood to boil.

Sending lightning directly through the bloodstream was an incredibly difficult thing to do. Electrons wanted to go anywhere and everywhere. They wanted to meet with other charges and set off chain reactions, dispersing the damage all over the body. But that would only stun Cassen. I needed to do more.

Could I kill him? I wasn’t sure. Was I willing to? I was even less sure.

Cassen’s body contorted as he screamed and screamed. Steam poured off his skin—his face, arms, and hands—melting the ice crystals within the cloud to heavy rain droplets. As rain soaked our clothes and hair, I drew back, and with one punch, full of thunder and powered by wind…I sent him to the far reaches of the horizon.