Dawnbreaker

Fourteen

Summer was in its last days but you wouldn’t know it in Savannah. The air was still hot and heavy with the scent of flowers and earth. It was well after midnight now and the traffic had slowed to the point of being nearly nonexistent. I was sure the bars down along the riverfront were still seeing some action. Yet I remained away from the buzz on River Street, returning to the one place I thought I wouldn’t see again tonight: my own town house. When I left Danaus, I had sworn to myself I wouldn’t return until tomorrow night; that I needed more time to relax from the battle, to think and detach myself from the naturi that was now in my grasp.

On the drive over I knew I was being drawn back to my town house for more than just my need to talk to Cynnia and to see that my companions were safe. I needed to talk to Shelly. Standing outside the front gate, I scanned the house. Danaus was in the front living room with, I assumed, Cynnia.

Pausing there, I mentally reached out along the well-trod path between my mind and Danaus’s. The more we mentally touched, the easier it became. While I wished it wasn’t so, I couldn’t deny that the ability to communicate with him this way was useful.

Is the naturi with you? I demanded suddenly in his brain.

Yes. What’s wrong? His reply was instantaneous, as if he were expecting my touch.

Nothing, I thought with a faint sigh. We’ll talk more soon.

I wasn’t particularly happy about the arrangement, but this was the best option for all those involved. I would have preferred to keep the naturi locked up in the warehouse I owned downtown, but it was inconvenient for all those involved. Danaus would be stuck there during the day guarding her, and I couldn’t guarantee his privacy. I just had to remind myself that this was an extremely temporary arrangement.

Shelly, on the other hand, was alone in the backyard. Slipping silently past the iron gate, I walked around the house to find her seated on the ground with her face in her hands.

“I hesitated,” she announced into the air before I could start to approach her. I hadn’t made a sound and yet she knew I was there.

“You choked,” I corrected, shrugging off the trick. Maybe something in the earth had told her I was coming. I entered the backyard, coming to stand several feet away from where the witch sat on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, twisting around to look up at me. Her large eyes were red-rimmed and her face was flushed from crying. My stomach twisted with guilt and regret when I looked at her. My instincts had told me she was not ready for a fight with the naturi, but I let my need for manpower override my common sense, and her presence had endangered everyone. If I was to survive the upcoming battle at Machu Picchu, I needed to be more aware of who comprised my team and less worried about the numbers. But then I wasn’t the only one there with a hard lesson to learn.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. Your hesitation and inability to handle the situation put Tristan and Knox in serious danger. They could have been killed trying to protect you when their main concern should have been saving Amanda,” I explained.

“I know. It won’t happen again,” Shelly affirmed, wiping the last of the tears from her face. She turned on the ground so she was facing me.

“I know it won’t. Your assistance is no longer needed here,” I firmly said, shoving my hands into the front pockets of my leather pants. “You’re free to go back to Charleston or wherever Danaus brought you from.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“I can’t allow you to endanger my people.”

She unfolded her legs so she could push to her feet. “But I thought you needed me to help you learn how to use earth magic. I can still help you,” she argued.

“I need to learn how to use this magic in an aggressive manner, for fighting. I don’t get the impression that you even know how to do that.”

“I do!”

“Prove it,” I growled. In the blink of an eye my hand slipped down to the knife in the sheath on my belt. With a flick my wrist the knife spiraled through the air toward her. I was careful to aim it to land a foot in front of her, but to my surprise she deftly rolled out of the way of the approaching blade and got to her feet. With a wave of her hand, three balls of fire appeared before her and shot toward me.

“Normally a nice move,” I said, raising my hand to catch each of the fireballs as they approached me. “But I’m the Fire Starter. Fire isn’t about to stop me.”

“True, but this might,” Shelly said between clenched teeth. She moved her left hand in another sweeping motion, but no fire appeared. I prepared to pitch my own ball of fire at the little witch when vines broke out of the ground and wrapped around my ankles. The plant quickly thickened so they were like ropes snaking up my legs to my knees, holding me trapped to the spot on the stone patio.

“It’s a nice start, but it still won’t hold me for long,” I said with a smirk. Fire ate at the vines, and with a little tug, I pulled free again.

Shelly gave out a little grunt of frustration and took a step back for every step I took toward her into the yard. When the fight started, I had cloaked the yard from the view of any neighbors that might decide to look out their windows. I didn’t want to waste my evening wiping the memories of my darling neighbors because they saw fireballs, or plant life, crawling across my back lawn.

“It’s a nice effort, but you don’t have it in you to attack a person with the skills you have,” I commented, stopping when we were both in the center of the yard. “You have to be willing to kill the creature that is trying to kill you. Not everyone has that instinct.”

“You’re wrong,” she sneered.

I hadn’t a chance to react. Vines burst out of the ground, wrapping around both my arms and legs in the blink of an eye. My entire body was lifted up and my back was slammed into the trunk of the nearest tree. Stars exploded before my eyes and my vision briefly swam, destroying my ability to concentrate. Before I could conjure the thought to burn the vines, I felt a sharp point pressing against my chest just over my heart. I looked down to find a fifth vine shaped like a sharpened staff and pointed directly at my heart. A wrong word from me, a flinch, and Shelly would have me staked.

“Admit it,” she shouted in an angry voice. “I’ve got you.”

Instead of conceding like a sane person would, I started to laugh. My head fell back and hit the trunk of the tree behind me as laughter poured from my throat. “Yes, you’ve got me! Why couldn’t you have done this sooner?”

“They attacked with animals! Helpless animals. It wasn’t their fault they were attacking us.”

“So your answer is to let them kill us?”

“I believe that you should find another way besides killing when it comes to fighting your enemy. Isn’t there another way?”

“No, there isn’t,” said a sad voice from the house. We both looked up to find Cynnia standing in the open doorway and Danaus on the patio with a long knife in his hand. “Mira is right in that there is no other way to deal with my kind. Aurora believes that the only way to save the earth is through the total extermination of all nightwalkers and humans,” she continued, closing the door behind her as she came to stand on the patio beside Danaus.

“What are you doing out here?” I snapped, ignoring the fact that I was still held completely defenseless and in absolutely no shape to start shouting orders.

“She said that she felt someone using a great deal of earth magic out here,” Danaus replied before Cynnia could speak up. “I thought it might be a good idea to check it out.”

“Shelly, put me down.”

“Can I stay?”

Instead of answering, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the vines wrapped around my arms and legs as well as the one that still pressed against my chest. I didn’t like being in this position. I wasn’t sure what Cynnia was capable of, but there was the potential that a single thought from her and I was dead. The vines immediately went up in flames around me, but neither my clothes nor my skin were singed.

Dusting off the last of the debris, I looked over at the earth witch who stood clasping both of her hands before her. She had the power I needed in someone who could handle themselves with the naturi, but she seemed to lack the killer instinct of Danaus or the nightwalkers that surrounded me. There was a time in my life when I wouldn’t have seen that as a bad thing, but in my world as it stood now, it was positively fatal. If she wasn’t willing to kill a creature whose only goal was to kill her, she was undoubtedly going to end up dead, and it would be on my shoulders.

Yet, if she knew what was at a stake and still wanted to stay, I could only hope that she would learn to take care of herself before it was too late. There was only so much protection I could offer her.

“Mira?” Shelly pressed softly.

“You protect when I tell you to protect and kill when I tell you to kill. Endanger another one of my people and I’ll kill you myself,” I threatened. It was the closest she was going to get to an acquiescence out of me.

Walking back toward the house, I paused at the edge of the patio and stared at the naturi.

“I heard stories about you,” she volunteered when she realized that I was staring expectantly at her, waiting to hear whatever thoughts were churning away in her brain. “I thought you were a myth, a scary tale my sister Nyx made up to frighten me. I never expected you to be real.”

“Nyx? How many sisters do you have?” I demanded, irritated. I wasn’t exactly pleased to discover that I was a bedtime story for the naturi.

“Two. Aurora and Nyx.”

“And Nerian was your brother,” I said in a low voice that seemed to crawl across the distance separating us.

“Yes,” she replied with a frown marring her young face. “Nerian was the one that hurt you. He’s the reason that you hate us all so much.” My gaze automatically swung up to Danaus, but Cynnia spoke before I could utter the accusation that rested on the tip of my tongue. “No one told me. I can hear it every time you say his name. I’ve only known one other person to speak with such hatred.”

“Who?”

“Aurora, when she’s talking about you.”

I smiled at the young naturi, my eyes undoubtedly bright with my contained laughter. The queen of the naturi not only knew who I was, but she hated me. It was a pleasantly uplifting thought.

“What am I to do with you?” I said aloud, though I was mostly talking to myself.

“Set me free,” Cynnia suggested, raising her chained wrists. The sight of the iron bindings reminded me that while she was a naturi, she had also been a prisoner of her own kind. While I wouldn’t call this an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of situation, it did mean that she might be willing to provide me with some interesting information in an effort to prolong her own life.

“Why were you manacled and spellbound by your own kind?” I demanded.

“They called me a traitor. Said I wanted to betray our kind to the humans and the nightwalkers,” she reluctantly admitted. She dropped her gaze down to her hands, where her long fingers fiddled with the iron chain connecting the two wrist irons.

“Is it true?” Danaus asked before I could.

“No! It’s not like that!” she cried, her head snapping up again to look at him and me.

“What is it? How did you get here if you were trapped in the other world?”

“Aurora discovered during the past few years that the walls between our worlds were growing thin and weak. Some of our magic weavers could create a temporary hole in the barrier. We could send one or two people through, but we weren’t sure they were actually arriving here,” she explained.

“So you came alone?”

“No, there was another,” Cynnia said. She wandered over to a chair and plopped down into the thick cushion. “She was a spell weaver, a powerful one. I trusted her. I thought she was going to find a way to help me, but it was all a lie. She dumped me with those naturi you found me with. She told them to kill me.”

“But they didn’t,” Danaus prodded when she seemed to pause.

Cynnia shook her head slowly. “They were afraid to, I think. I am sister to the queen, after all.”

“So they decided to leave the job to me,” I said, folding my arms over my chest. “It’s an interesting theory, but it only explains how you got here. Now what about why you’re here?”

“I think Aurora is wrong,” she whispered, as if afraid one of her own kind was listening in.

“About what?”

“This war.”

“I don’t believe you,” I snarled, taking a step closer to her.

“Mira—” Shelly started, but I held up my hand, halting the comment in her throat.

“It’s too convenient. A naturi that wants to end this war winds up in the hands of the nightwalker that can potentially destroy their hopes of freedom,” I said. “It’s a trap.”

“Are you sure?” Danaus asked, surprising me.

“She gets close because I believe her tale of woe, and she kills me,” I argued, turning my attention to the hunter, who was now standing beside me.

“It can’t be a trap because their plan has already failed,” Cynnia said. “You were supposed to kill me back on the island when you rescued your friend.”

“There’s still time,” I reminded her, which only made her smile at me.

“Yes, but if you kill me, I can’t help you.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Other than the fact that I believe there is a better way to end this war than killing everyone?” she asked, arching one thin eyebrow at me. “I think that my sister is trying to kill me.”

“And I’m to be your protector?” I asked, my voice jumping in shock.

“Of course, you’re the Fire Starter. She can’t beat you.”

I looked over at Danaus, who seemed to be struggling to keep a straight face, not that I could blame him. It all sounded pretty ridiculous, but it was all I had to go on for now.

Frowning, I was suddenly unsure of what to do with the naturi. I didn’t believe her, but there was this nagging question in the back of my mind. What if? What if it was the truth, and I had the power to destroy the naturi nation with this young naturi and her idealistic hopes for something other than war?

“If I’m going to help you, I’m going to need your cooperation,” I said slowly.

“I’m not going to help you kill my kind. I’m not a traitor.”

I smiled and took a step toward her. “We can avoid killing them if we can avoid them completely. How many naturi are in my city?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, lifting her wrists. The iron manacles were blocking her ability to sense her own kind.

“They’re not coming off, and you’re becoming less valuable to me by the minute.”

Cynnia released a heavy sigh before she stepped around me and walked into the yard. Sitting on the ground, she pulled off her worn brown boots and placed her bare feet in the grass. Her green eyes fell shut as her smooth brow furrowed in concentration.

“There aren’t any close by,” she murmured after a minute. “Not for a great distance—in the west and to the deep, deep south, across an ocean.”

“Danaus?” I prompted, turning to the hunter in hopes of getting some confirmation.

“My reach isn’t as strong as hers,” he hedged, his deep voice close to a low growl.

Yet, before he finished talking, I felt him reach out with his powers, sending the warm wave of energy crashing through me. The touch was soothing, easing away some of the tension humming through my taut frame.

“There are no naturi within the immediate area,” he said at last.

“So what do you hope I will be able to do for you?” I asked Cynnia, standing over her as she continued to sit in the grass. “Let me guess. You want me to allow the door to open so I can kill your sister.” It was a story I had already heard before from another set of naturi, as well as from Macaire, one of the three Elders on the Coven.

“No! Absolutely not!” Cynnia awkwardly pushed back to her feet and took a step closer to me. “I want the door to stay shut. If she is forced to stay in her own realm, then she can’t wage a war here.”

“So Aurora will be stuck in her world and you’ll be stuck here,” I said, raising one eyebrow at her.

“Assuming that you let me live.”

“Not likely,” Danaus interjected before I could speak.

A smile haunted my lips as I wandered back into the yard and sat down in the grass not far from where Cynnia had sat only moments ago. I threaded my fingers through the cool grass, an interesting thought rolling around in my head. I could feel Danaus’s censure before I even spoke my first word. The plan definitely had a few flaws to it.

“You’ve charged me with a difficult task,” I drawled. “Not only must I stop Rowe and his plan to free your sister and the naturi horde, but I must also protect you from Rowe and Aurora because you have some grand idea of bringing a peaceful end to this fight. I’m the Fire Starter, not a god. You’re expecting the impossible.”

“Can’t you raise an army?”

“An army will be raised to defeat Rowe. They will not do anything to protect your hide.”

“Then what? What do you want from me?” she cried, extending both her hands to me, palms out and open. “I’m offering you a chance for peace. Why are you fighting me?”

“I’m not. I’m being realistic. I’ve fought Rowe twice now and barely survived both encounters. I need an edge.”

Cynnia took a step backward, the chains on her manacles jangling slightly as she raised one delicate hand to her throat. Her wide green eyes never wavered from my face. “What do you want?”

“Teach me how to use earth magic,” I said with a grin.

The naturi gave a soft little laugh and dropped her hands back down to dangle before her. “That’s impossible. Nightwalkers can’t use earth magic.”

I rose bonelessly to my feet, standing only a couple feet away from her. With a thought, a ball of fire blossomed between us. It slowly circled around Cynnia then came back to loop around me, forming a perfect figure eight—drawing us together. “I shouldn’t be able to manipulate fire, but I can. I can lock the naturi away in a separate world. And just a few weeks ago I discovered that the well of energy from the earth can push itself into me like lightning through a conduit.” I stepped closer, so the fireball now circled around us, keeping the others at a distance. “I heard the great earth mother roaring in my head, angry and powerful.”

Cynnia tried to step back, but the ball of flames circling around us kept her close. She stared up at me, her mouth forming a perfect O.

“I can access the power of the earth when I am at one of the swells, but I have no control over it. If I don’t learn to control this soon, I’m going to kill everyone around me, regardless of whether we are on the same side or not.”

“And controlling it will give you the edge you’re looking for to defeat Rowe?” Cynnia softly asked, a frown marring her sweet young face.

“Rowe wants Aurora free. He will do whatever it takes to see that accomplished. From what I’ve seen, he’s already mastered blood magic to find a means to his end. I have no doubt that he will kill everyone that stands in his way—human, nightwalker, and naturi alike.”

“He’s weaving blood magic?” Cynnia gasped, mindlessly taking a step backward. I roughly grabbed her arm and jerked her forward to keep her from getting burned by the fire that continued to circle us. She didn’t seem to notice. “That’s forbidden.”

“I’m willing to guess that he’s desperate and doesn’t really care what is forbidden at this point.”

“But if I’m to teach you earth magic, you’ll have to remove these,” she said, raising her manacles to me yet again.

I simply chuckled and shook my head. “Nice try. No, you’ll be instructing me through the lovely Shelly here,” I said, motioning toward the earth witch hovering on the edge of the patio, watching the entire conversation. “She was hired to help me with a little earth magic, and now we’re both going to get a crash course in how to use earth magic, naturi style. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll kill you.”

Cynnia glanced over at Shelly, who flashed her a somewhat sheepish grin while wagging her fingers at the naturi. There was nothing intimidating about Shelly, which was disheartening because I needed her to be an intimidating figure right now. Instead she came off looking like that sweet college roommate everyone loves.

“I—I don’t know,” Cynnia stammered, her gaze shifting from Shelly to me to the ground.

“You’ve got some time to think about it. We fly to Peru in two nights. We begin lessons before we leave or I kill you in Cuzco.”

I turned my attention to Shelly, who was staring at me with a stunned look on her face. She had just realized that my plan not only included her after her major screw-up on the island, but that she was now traveling to Peru to help me with the naturi. I wasn’t pleased with the plan so far, but I hoped to keep her as far from the fighting as I could. I needed a tutor, and Cynnia and Shelly would just have to do.

With a wave of my hand, the fire that had been circling Cynnia and me disappeared. “Shelly, take Cynnia inside and put her back in the sleep spell. You are not to wake her until either Danaus or I say so.”

I watched as the two walked across the patio, a new thought beginning to gnaw at the back of my brain when I caught a glimpse of Cynnia’s solemn profile.

“Wait!” I called out, stopping Cynnia at the door. “Your sister, Nyx. Is she here as well?”

“Nyx? I…I don’t think so,” she slowly replied. She paused, nibbling on her lower lip in thought before she spoke again. “I arrived here with only the spell weaver. Nyx and Aurora didn’t know anything about my coming here. Do you think she’s come for me?”

“Would she side with you or Aurora?” Danaus inquired, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets.

“Aurora,” she whispered. “My sister Nyx is the defender of our people. She would follow Aurora to the ends of the earth to protect my people and do what is best for them.”

“Does she look like you?”

“Why? Have you seen her?” Cynnia demanded, coming back down a stair toward me.

“How can I have seen her if I don’t know what she looks like? I want to know in case we meet up with her in Peru.”

Cynnia paused, a frown playing on her lips. She finally sighed and walked back toward the door into the house. “No, she doesn’t look much like me, and nothing like Aurora. Tall and thin like a willow, with perfect white skin and midnight black hair. Her eyes are slate gray like the color of storm clouds.”

“And is she of the wind clan? Like you?”

“How did you know I was—”

“Your coloring and build. It was also a guess.”

“Yes, we’re both from the wind clan. Aurora is of the light and Nerian was from the animal clan,” Cynnia tightly said, finally becoming irritated by my invasive questions. “Anything else?”

“How is it possible that four siblings were born of three different clans?” Danaus demanded. “Did you all have different parents?”

“No!” Cynnia gasped, her lovely features twisting momentarily in anger. “My father was of the earth clan and my mother was of the light clan. Which clan we are born into is not determined by our parentage. It’s determined by the need of the earth. If mother earth is in need of more wind clan members, then the next children born will be of the wind clan and so on.”

“That will do. Sweet dreams,” I taunted.

Danaus and I stood in silence outside that house as we listened to Shelly and Cynnia moving to one of the bedrooms on the second floor. I kept my focus tightly on Shelly, my mind a shadow in her thoughts, which were racing a mile a minute as she reviewed everything that had happened to her that evening. Since I couldn’t sense the naturi, this was the safest way for me to keep an eye on Cynnia while Shelly cast the spell. At the same time, I knew that Danaus was focused on Cynnia, making sure the naturi didn’t try to pull a fast one.

“Is taking either of them that good of an idea?” Danaus asked after Shelly had completed her spell, knocking Cynnia safely out for a while.

“We’ll try to keep them both in the city, out of the Sacred Valley. Shelly might be able to teach me a few things before the sacrifice. At this point, any new knowledge will help me when it comes to dealing with the power swell at Machu Picchu.”

“And the naturi?”

“Bait for Rowe.”

“You think she’s going to actually teach you anything?” he asked, shoving one hand through his shoulder-length hair, pushing it out of his face. His brilliant blue eyes reflected some of the light coming from inside the house, reminding me of the first night we met. I had not expected our association to last this long.

“Not really. Even if she does want peace for her people, she’s not going to risk making a stronger enemy for them to face.”

Danaus dropped his hand back to his side and stared up at the stars for a moment. The night was nearly done. I needed to get back to the safety of my home. As it was, I was exhausted and the blood lust was gnawing at my insides like the fires of hell.

“Do you believe her?” Danaus asked, pushing aside my thoughts of blood and sleep.

“About wanting peace?”

The hunter gave a soft grunt that I took for a yes.

“It doesn’t matter whether I believe her or not. Our plan is set for when we arrive at the sacrifice at Machu Picchu in a few nights. We stop Rowe. We stop the sacrifice. We finally reform the seal. Thoughts of peace and war—we don’t have the luxury of debating such things. We have to stop Rowe.”

“I agree, but you didn’t answer my question. Do you believe her?” he repeated.

It was my turn to stare up at the stars that were winking out above me as daylight approached. Dawn was coming. Did I believe Cynnia?

“No, I don’t,” I murmured.

But the problem wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. It was that for the first time in my life I truly wished I could believe that the naturi was telling the truth. I wished she did want peace and was seeking a way for naturi and nightwalkers to coexist on this planet without the constant fighting. I wished it were a possibility. But it wasn’t. Not so long as creatures like Aurora and Rowe existed. Not so long as I existed would there ever be peace between the nightwalkers and the naturi.