Lead Demon

Times of Turbulence

“You killed her, didn’t you?” he rasped. “You killed her, and now you’ve damned all of us.”

He spat on the ground.

“You’re no better than a f*****g Howl.”

He walked out, and all light went with him.

There, in the darkness, Seven began to wonder if it would have been better if he’d died.

It was sometime past midnight. The troop was assembled and the orders had been given. Seven was back on the roof of the motel, most of the troop stationed to the city or field beyond. Christal’s body had been...removed. He didn’t ask where, or by whom. No one told him. No one told him anything.

Especially not the two Hunters he’d been stationed with.

Devon and Dreya stood farther back. They’d been there when he arrived, and when he tried to introduce himself, they stared at him like he was speaking a different language. He shrunk under Dreya’s hawk-like glare and didn’t try speaking to them again.

The rain pounded down harder now, but he barely felt it. It was a perk of being attuned to Water, though it didn’t necessarily make up for the emotional backlash. You took what you could get. Like Seven, the cold and the rain didn’t seem to bother the newcomers. He looked back to them. They stood on opposite sides of the roof, both open to Air as they scanned the sky.

Neither of the twins spoke as they stood there, waiting. Minutes churned to hours. The night deepened. His nerves sharpened to daggers with every drop of rain. He wasn’t just waiting. He was waiting to die.

No. He was waiting for something else to go horribly wrong.

He stiffened when Dreya walked up next to him. She stood by his shoulder, staring out at the abandoned town. She was almost a head shorter than him, though she seemed much taller.

“You say that Water used you,” she said. Her voice was soft, barely carrying over the rain, but it was perfectly enunciated.

He nodded.

“That should not be possible,” she continued.

“I know.”

She didn’t say anything for a while, so he took that as his opportunity.

“Why are you here?”

“Because you need us.”

It was not the response he expected. She had to be lying—they were clearly here because of him, to take him away. They were just guarding him to ensure he didn’t escape.

“Then why just the three of you? If you’re here to stop the army, why didn’t they send more?”

She laughed. It was high, and childish, and completely belied her serious demeanor.

“We are more than enough, Seven,” she said. “Besides, the Prophets did not send us here to save your army. They sent us to save you.”

He couldn’t speak. The fear in his chest prevented it. The Prophets were a group of mages dedicated to understanding the fifth and elusive Sphere of Maya—the one Sphere you couldn’t attune to by choice. It had to choose you. No one had seen the Prophets, no one knew how to contact them, but many battles were won or prevented by their guidance. Seven didn’t know how anyone learned what the Prophets decreed. He’d never wanted to ask.

The future wasn’t something he wanted to know too much about.

“You are being noticed,” Dreya whispered. She reached out and touched his neck. Right where Tomás had gripped his throat before. “That is a very dangerous thing.”

Fire blossomed on the horizon, a red stain on night’s canvas. He didn’t have a chance to speak.

“That is the first line,” Dreya said. In this new light, her damp hair glinted rose. “The army is near.”

Seven closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He’d spent the last week waiting for the executioner’s ax to fall, and here it was, at last.

Dreya walked back to her brother, who stood with his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes narrowed. The red on the horizon seeped closer, the whole town illuminated in its ghostly light. Seven could sense the magic even from here. Somewhere out there, the necromancers were pulling out their big guns and spurring their undead army with fire and fear. Seven counted the seconds in his head, like counting the space between lightning and thunder. He counted the seconds until death arrived.

Deep in the pit of his sSebastianch, the Sphere of Water simmered. It knew battle was coming, and it was excited.

Flames leaped higher, burning through the fields and stretching to the clouds above. The wall of flame burned white-hot, speeding toward the city in a ravenous wave. Years ago, magic had turned the tides of war. It was no longer the most powerful who walked away from battle, but the quickest. He prayed his comrades in the field had shielded themselves. He prayed that he would get out of here alive, that Water wouldn’t destroy him.

The fire splashed closer, only a mile away. Its roar chilled his bones, and its heat threatened to melt him.

And then, behind him, the twins began to sing.

The sound sent chills up his spine, and he turned and glanced at them, the fire momentarily forgotten. The twins stood there, heads tilted back and hands outstretched. Three Spheres blazed in them like ghostly lights—the slow blue of Water in their sSebastianchs, the fierce red of Fire in their chests and the swirling vortex of pale blue and yellow Air in their throats. Everyone had all five Spheres, but you had to be attuned to them individually to use them, and each consecutive attuning was more difficult. Most mages could only handle one Sphere. Two at most. To split your concentration to three Spheres was nearly impossible. To be so powerfully trained in them...it made what Seven’s Sphere did that afternoon feel small in comparison.

It also explained their appearance. Overuse of Air would account for Dreya’s paleness. But Devon...he must have primarily been a Fire mage.

Air flared in the twins’ throats and lightning crackled across the sky, a pulse of blue light that shattered in a dome above them, spiderwebbing down to the earth. Seven looked to the field just in time to see the necromancer’s fire billow closer, only seconds away. He winced.

Fire hit the invisible shield, burned across it with all the power of hell before flaring out into nothing. He blinked hard, tried to get the sear of fire from his eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw the army.

They swarmed across the land, a black tide that screamed and howled like demons. More fires roared around them, but none broke past the twins’ shield. Yet.

Jarrett had commanded him to stay back; he hadn’t commanded him to stay out of the fight.

Since he couldn’t trust Water, Seven opened to Earth.

Power surged in his pelvis, pulling down through the concrete of the high rise, rooting him to the soil. He could sense the flesh of every creature for a mile, could taste their decaying feet on the earth as they ran. The Howls were hungry. Their empty, ulcerated sSebastianchs burned with his; their need for flesh brought bile to his throat. It sickened him, but the power of Earth kept him rooted.

It would always keep him rooted.

Then, against his bidding, Water flared to life, and his head swam as the traitorous Sphere pulled him under.