by Cora Carmack
Locke nodded and said, “Good luck. Fast feet, novie. If you get killed, I’m going to be unhappy.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Bait gave a quick salute, then slid the door closed. A moment later, they heard the top hatch open, and Bait hit the ground running, on the far side of the Rock. There was a crescendo of noise in the cyclone’s scream, and the wind picked up, the earth trembling in response. It had taken the bait all right.
Storms were fierce, and while they displayed intelligent behavior on occasion—lashing out when threatened, zeroing in on threats, even chasing prey—they didn’t have the senses that humans had. Locke had always imagined they were more like bats, who used sound to map the world around them, only storms used wind or rain or whatever tools they had at their disposal. And when Bait took off, Stormheart in hand, filling it with his magic, the twister could not tell the difference between Bait and an actual thunderstorm, but it rushed toward him to investigate.
Locke looked at his team, finding three clear and focused sets of eyes. They were ready. He waited until the first wall of the twister was close enough that the ground buckled and jerked beneath their backs. “Ready,” he said, tensing his muscles in preparation to move. The Rock lurched when the wall hit, and debris battered at the sides. They covered their eyes to keep them free of dirt. After a few agonizing moments of deafening sound, the wall passed, settling them into temporary stillness.
“Now,” he barked, and each hunter had rolled out from beneath the Rock into the relative safety of the eye.
Hovering just above their heads was the heart of the twister. Rotating in a miniature version of the real thing, a funnel pulsed with glowing black light—like dense smoke lit from within. Because there was no wind in the eye, it couldn’t sense them, at least not if they were careful. And at the moment, he knew it was focused on the other storm it sensed in the vicinity—whether it thought the other storm was friend or foe, he didn’t know or care as long it stayed distracted. Jinx stepped up first, lifting the jar she had enchanted to draw in magic. As an earth witch, her enchantments were the strongest he’d ever seen, thanks to her natural connection to nature, of which storms were a part. When he had first joined Duke’s crew, they’d had a fire witch. Hers had been good enough to keep the magic in the jar once they’d skimmed some of the excess energy swirling around the storm’s heart. But with Jinx’s enchantment, all she had to do was get the jar close and a smoky tendril of magic peeled away from the small spinning funnel and floated down into the jar, creating an even smaller funnel of its own. A cork formed from nowhere, stoppering the jar and sealing it shut. That was another added bonus of Jinx’s earth magic. Jinx blew them a cocky kiss and rolled beneath the Rock and out of sight. As Sly stepped up toward the heart, the eye began to move past the Rock, cutting off their simplest escape route. But it was no matter. They hadn’t all planned to get out that way. And Jinx could continue her efforts to weaken the storm on the outside.
The enchantment on the jar called forth another tendril for Sly’s jar, and once more a cork appeared, completing the job. But when Ransom stepped up to fill the third jar, the sound from outside the eye pitched higher, and the twister dug in harder to the earth, turning up mounds of soil below them. The storm stilled and the funnel narrowed around them. Sly narrowly missed getting caught up in the enclosing wall of wind and debris.
“Out of time,” Locke yelled. They would have to settle for only two jars.
Almost as if in response to Locke’s call, the storm began moving again, but this time the winds shifted and it began tracking back toward the Rock. He cursed and gestured a hand at Ransom and Sly for them to attack. Sly didn’t have a twister affinity, but her wind Stormheart lent her some influence over the wind rotating around them, and she tried to slow it down.
Ransom and Locke fixated on the storm itself, each simultaneously pulling their twister Stormhearts from their belts. The magic flared to life, filling up Locke’s chest with energy; it sharpened his eyesight, allowing him to see and feel the entirety of the rotating column around him. The twister glowed a sickly greenish black, and he focused on the wall of wind next to him, shifting quickly on his feet to remain inside the eye even as the storm moved. His feet sped to a run as the twister picked up speed, and he knew they had to take this thing down now. He took a deep breath and, with a scream, he threw out his hands, sending out every bit of magic in him, amplified by the Stormheart he held. It slammed into the wall ahead of him, slicing it open and forming another wall of translucent light. The howling winds slammed into that wall, and the shape of the tornado warped, trying to continue spinning despite the disturbance.
Locke heard Ransom bellow behind him, and the walls of the twister shuddered again. Wind breached the eye as the circular rotation broke apart. For a moment, there was no rhyme or reason to the movement of the wind around them. It was everywhere, moving in every direction, and dust filled his vision. Something hard lanced his shoulder, and he was thrown sideways. He fell to one knee and planted a hand on the earth to keep himself from sprawling completely. Before he could force himself to stand again, the terrible roaring noise faded away and the winds dissipated, curling back to the gray sky above them.
To die at the hands of a storm gives one the chance to live again in the skies.
—The Church of the Sacred Souls: Salvation and Second Life
13
Roar came awake gradually to the sound of the hunters shuffling around her. She recognized their voices, the tight, worried whispers that carried despite their stealth.
“And I thought I had a temper,” Jinx said. “My emotional outbursts are mild compared to that.”
“Your last emotional outburst ended with a blade entirely too close to my special bits,” Ransom answered. “I wouldn’t call that mild by any means.”
“Funny. I wouldn’t call your bits special.”
Ransom huffed in annoyance while Jinx laughed with glee. But the friendly teasing was cut through by a quiet, stern voice that Roar barely recognized she had heard it so little.
Sly. The quiet, stealthy girl who spent more time watching than participating in the group’s conversations. “She is not to be trusted. She lies.”
“About what? How do you know?” Locke barked, joining the conversation for the first time. The voice came from right above Roar, and she realized that the warmth cradling her head was not a pillow but Locke’s lap.
“I—” Sly began, and then stopped. “I cannot pinpoint exactly what—”
“So you don’t know at all. Yet you would call her a liar.”
“I’m saying that maybe you should be resting rather than guarding the girl who attacked you. Rabid as a diseased dog.”
It took Roar effort to fight off a flinch at those words. She kept her lids low and her breath even, and tried not to feel the crush against her heart as Sly spoke truths that she wished were lies.
Sly continued: “She says little of her life in Pavan. Little about her life period. She flits around like a brave little butterfly with a broken wing, and you all rushed to accept her. She’s supposed to be a poor girl from the streets, but she came with her own horse. Her own supplies. She knew the man who sold three Stormhearts to Duke as if they were nothing more than trinkets. And yet, she pretends she knows nothing about our world. Had never seen eternal embers or storm charms or anything. I can tell you nothing more than that and the feeling in my gut. This girl is not who she seems.”
“Her reaction was … extreme,” Bait said, his voice tentative. “What if it happens again? Should we tie her up to be safe?”
“We’re not tying her up,” Locke growled.
Duke’s calm but stern voice cut in. “Be still, Locke, or you’ll damage yourself worse than you already are.”
“I’ll be still when you promise not to treat her like a prisoner.”
There was a tense silence before Duke spoke in a measured tone. “Locke, I know you are fond of her, but we must be cautious—”
“Did
you see her face? Before you smashed a bottle into her head? Did you see the way she cried between screams? I guarantee you, whatever was happening was causing far more pain to her than it was to me. For skies sake, she was the one to suggest knocking her out. And yet you all think her, what? A military spy? She could have called for a raid on the market, and we would all be rotting our lives away in the dungeons of Pavan. A thief? There are easier ways to make coin than out here, unprotected and in constant danger. Perhaps she does not tell us about herself because she trusts as easily as you do, Sly.”
Roar wondered if he would defend her so fiercely if he knew exactly what secrets she was hiding. The hunters had made plain their disdain for Stormlings and the oppression inherent in their way of life. Locke, in particular, seemed to grow especially tense when talk turned to them.
A long silence followed. Too long for Roar to keep calm, and finally she gave up the pretense of sleep and opened her eyes. She looked in the direction Sly’s voice had come from, planning to gauge if she knew Roar was awake, but all she saw was the small girl’s back as she walked away toward the horses.
That pulled Roar abruptly into awareness, and she tried to sit up. “Honey!” Pain shattered through her head, as if she’d been hit all over again. Then Locke pulled her back into the cradle of his lap and laid a newly wetted rag against her head. The water was cool and helped clear her mind.
“Your horse is fine. Bait rounded them all up,” he said above her, and she tilted her head back to find him shirtless and bloodied as Duke worked to wrap a wound in his shoulder.
“What happened back there, Roar?” Locke asked.
She blanched and her mouth went dry. Of course, the only reason he would be here, taking care of her, was because he wanted answers. Well, she had none.
She shot up, ignoring the stinging pain in her head, and turned the attention back to him. “What happened to you?” Her voice was a barely there rasp.
Locke answered, “Nothing,” as Ransom said, “The fool got skewered by a tree branch.”
Locke glared at his friend. “I did not get skewered.”
“Pierced, impaled, punctured, spiked, stabbed—should I go on?” Jinx asked.
“Penetrated,” Bait said. “You forgot penetrated.”
They all laughed, and even Locke rolled his eyes. As if there weren’t a hole in the man’s shoulder that was already beginning to bleed through the bandages Duke wound over it.
All the hunters were covered in dirt, and some had darker stains that were likely blood. But everyone was alive and uninjured, at least in comparison to Locke. The land, though … it looked as if it had been gutted and all its entrails poured out.
“How are you all so calm?” Her heart was thundering as hard now as it had been when the twister manifested.
“This is what we do,” Locke answered grimly. “If only one of us gets hurt, it’s a good day.” He lightly touched her forehead. “Though I suppose two of us got hurt today.”
She jerked away, unable to hold back the rush of violent memories any longer. She closed her eyes as she thought about how she’d felt, what she’d done. “What—what happened to me?”
“We need you to explain that to us,” Duke said, his old eyes alight with suspicion that cut like a razor’s edge. She had been so grateful when he kept her Taraanese words secret. If she had known he understood, she never would have been so candid about Locke, about how she was glad he was being so irritable with her because it made it easier to ignore how handsome he was and the way her lungs didn’t seem to work right whenever he drew too near. Now Duke looked at her like she was dangerous, like he regretted having her here.
Roar shrank away, and her eyes found Locke. His hair had been tied back again, safely out of reach of her hands. Bruises littered his chest and shoulders, and she wasn’t sure if they were from the storm or her. She flushed hot with shame and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m not without a temper and my mouth has gotten me into more trouble than I care to admit, but never … I’ve never felt anything like that. Earlier, before we arrived at camp, I had been upset. But then out of nowhere there was so much rage, and it pushed out every other thought and feeling. It was like … I wasn’t me.”
Locke looked up at Duke, then back down at Roar. “And are you you now?”
“I don’t feel … wrong. Not like I did then. Do you think the storm mesmerized me?”
Duke frowned, running a hand down his beard. “I’ve never heard of anybody experiencing added emotions while mesmerized. Usually, it’s the opposite. The storm’s thrall drains away fear and all other emotions. One feels almost blank. But I suppose it’s a possibility this came from the storm’s magic. An evolution of their ability to attack. We likely know more about storms than anyone else in all of Caelira, but even we have barely scratched the surface of all there is to know.”
She thought back to the night Cassius had faced the skyfire storm in Pavan, the only other time she’d been near a storm instead of locked away in the shelters. It hadn’t been as strong then, but she’d felt a surge of emotion then too. Not rage, but … “I might have felt something like this with another storm. I had thought it was just the situation I was in, that my own emotions were high because of stress. But during the skyfire storm that hit Pavan before we left, I felt overcome with jealousy, not quite as all consuming as the twister but … similarly out of control.”
Locke asked Duke, “Is she a sensitive?”
Sensitive was code for those who could feel storms when they approached. Which was every Stormling with abilities, and a few without who had traces of diluted Stormling blood in their ancestry. But most sensitives described the sensation as a tingle of unease or dread. A restlessness that pricked at their sense of self-preservation. This had been far more than a tingle.
Duke shrugged, rubbing at his mustache. “Maybe. But the manifestation is still highly unusual.”
The group fell quiet. Her head felt like it was about to cleave open, but she forced her eyes to meet Locke’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So very sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it, princess.”
She would worry about it. Knowing her, she would worry herself sick over it. “I attacked you. Attacked, assaulted, mauled, beat—whatever word you want to use.”
“Mauled,” Bait murmured to Jinx behind them. “Good word choice.”
Roar continued: “If I had had the chance, I think I would have hurt you much worse. Whether I wanted to or not.” She buried her head in her hands.
“But you didn’t hurt me. I’m tough enough to take a little brawling with a girl half my size.”
His hand smoothed over her shoulder, and she recoiled. He was the last person who should be comforting her. The soft, concerned sound of his voice grated over her nerves, and she wished he would yell. That he would be angry and aggressive like always. “I bit you,” she hissed.
Locke held out a hand to Ransom, who helped him to his feet now that Duke had finished binding his wound. He used his uninjured arm to brush off dirt and dust from his bare torso while he casually tossed out, “Not the first time I’ve been bitten by a pretty girl.”
Jinx snorted, and Ransom groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Really?” the big man said. “That’s what you’re going with here?”
Locke bent at the knee, squatting in Roar’s line of vision. “You didn’t hurt me. Besides, you’re in much worse shape than me.”
“You were speared through the shoulder.”
He shrugged, unsettling his bandages for the moment. “I wasn’t the unconscious one.”
“What if it happens again? What if I am filled with rage when you all are sleeping or focused on something else?”
“We’ll be cautious. If you feel any emotion that isn’t your own, let one of us know. And—” He looked at Duke again, frowning. “Perhaps we hunt only smaller storms until we know more.”
“No!” Roar leaped to her feet
, head still spinning. “Please. Don’t shut me out. I’m here. I want to do this. I need to do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I do. Because I left behind everything to do this, and if I fail … I cannot fail.”
His expression softened, and again she wanted to shake him until he was as angry as he should be. As angry as she was with herself.
“You won’t fail. But hunters who want to stay alive must be as prepared as they can possibly be. And for that, we need time to figure this out.”
Duke added, “The first rule of hunting is knowing your limits—when to fight, when to run, and when to be cautious. We’ll camp here for a few more days so that the two of you can recover. Perhaps the rest of us can make hunting runs nearer to Sorrow’s Maw and begin bulking up our supplies.”
Locke began to protest, but a firm look from Duke cut him off. “You’re no good to us if you don’t heal properly. Ransom, set up his tent. If he won’t lie down, make him.”
* * *
The others did have to force Locke to rest. In fact, they had to force him back into his tent several times that day while remaking the camp. Roar thought her tent looked a little sturdier this time, though still somewhat jumbled. She would get better. She had to.
Hour by hour, the others began to unwind from their adrenaline-filled morning, but she could not seem to do the same. Roar was consumed with doubt and shame, but these feelings she knew were all her own.
She thought physical activity might calm her mind, so she busied herself with clearing the debris left by the twister, piling up broken tree branches on the sides of the road to clear a path. There were gouges in the earth where the storm had torn up the soil, and even with the debris removed, the road would be rocky.
When there was no more she could do, she made her way back to the Rock, studying the outside for damage, of which there was remarkably little. Dents and dings certainly, but with the way that twister had looked she would have thought it could tear anything apart. As she stood marveling, Duke ambled over to stand behind her.