Earth/Sky (Earth/Sky Trilogy) (37 page)

Makala was coming down the corridor
. “Leave the girl enough to make my breakfast.”

In the moment he was distracted,
I leaped from the sofa, over his legs and the anemoi to land hard on the floor. The crack leading out to the grass was right there beyond the empty recliners, and that grass was all I could see. I darted between the chairs, kicking the sketchpad away, and grabbed the pole of one of the solar lamps. The anemoi darted in front of me to block the crack in the rock wall. Clobbering it with the end of the lamp, I dispersed it into shreds of wind. It would only take moments to reform, but I wasn’t going to wait moments for that to happen.

Miles from anywhere.
That was all right. It wasn’t miles I had to travel.

I burst out into the shock of daylight.
It was mid-morning and warm, the sun flushing away the cool of the caves from my skin. Hills stretched to the east, to the north and south, but it was west I wanted. I dropped the pole and darted through the tall grass to round the cliff. The anemoi were below my cave, waiting for me to jump. They weren’t beneath the cliffs anywhere else so they might not catch me in time. The rocks and those thundering waves would do the rest.

My whole life
didn’t flash before my eyes as I bore down on the edge, running faster than I ever had in my life. But I saw my parents, smiling and relaxed on the deck of their cruise ship, and my Grandpa Jack rustling through a chip bag to avoid the green ones. I saw my friends at both schools sitting around the tables at lunch, laughing and shouting. I saw Jaden, who was truly Zakia, bending down to help a lost little girl home. I saw Cadmon floating to me in the fairy rings, Drina and Taurin in a comfortable embrace, Kishi’s dazzling speed up to the sky. And I saw Adriel, flying beside me and whispering for me to go faster, go
faster
, to jump and die and be free.

I belonged to myself, not Japheem, and I was bringing my
life to a close.

Just as I reached the edge of the cliffs, the ocean a beautiful
yet tempestuous blue sweep to the horizon, I was jerked to a halt. Japheem spun me around roughly and wrapped his hand around my throat. His music picked apart my body and his wings were hideous in the light. “How dare you run? How dare you run from me? Did I tell you to run? Did I?” He shook me. I tried to force air into my lungs, and pried fruitlessly at his fingers to loosen his grip.

“I did not tell you to run!
I did not tell you that it was time to die! I make these decisions, Jessa Bright,
I
make them for you now. You
have
no more decisions. You have no choices. You are dead! And since you want to die, I am going to keep you forever. Forever until you are white and bent and your body decides to die on its own. But until then, you serve me with every breath and you
do not run
!” He shook me. Then his grip loosened a little and I gobbled in air. Bringing his face close to mine, he whispered, “Tell me. Do you want to die?”

The answer was
no, that I wanted to live and serve him until I was elderly. But the words caught in my throat. He would see the truth in my soul should I give voice to those lies, so I screamed, “Yes! I’d rather die than live with you!”

“Maybe you should, yes!
Yes! Maybe the anemoi should rip you to pieces on the way down!” His fist tightened and he lifted me off the ground. My feet dangled over the edge. The waves crashed to the cliffs in a deafening blow.

There was so much I
had never gotten to do in this life. Yet there was so much I
had
. I would rather live only to seventeen years old and have flown with an angel,
my
angel, than die at one hundred having never done so. A short life with magic was better than a long life without any. My eyes bulged as I stared at Japheem’s twisted face and ugly eyes. I thrashed for air and white spots appeared in my vision. The waves grew louder, and it was the blood roaring in my ears. My lungs cried out for air, but I could get none to them with his fist digging so hard into my flesh. No matter how I clawed and scratched at his arm, he refused to let go.

Japheem was laughing and screaming at the same time
, the sound wild over the uninhabited lands. I blinked and saw more of those spots. Some had color. They were coming from behind him, gold and sapphire, emerald and silver and ruby. Japheem’s wings were beating slowly, blotting them from sight when they curled in and revealing them when his wings pushed out. The white spots were drifting down but the others were racing . . . racing over all of those hills in our direction . . .

The Ripper
saw something in my face, or a reflection in my eyes. He turned with a ball of muddy archus appearing in his palm just as the brilliant gold and sapphire lights raced out in front of the others. And then he dropped me.

Chapter Sixteen: The Battle

I fell from the cliffs, looking up helplessly to Japheem’s back. Time slowed down, so that every second drew out to infinity. Anemoi raced up past me to Japheem in the grass. Fire burst out and then the blue and gold lights exploded through it and shot downwards after me. I couldn’t even scream for them.

A tremendous boom rattled through the cliff
s, rocks and dust shaking loose from the sides. Hands burst out from those sapphire and golden balls of light to catch my own. Suddenly there was a floor beneath my feet, only a few meters above the rocks where I had been about to dash myself to pieces.

“Hey, kiddo,” Kishi said casually.
One of the Kreelings’ guns was holstered to her waist. “Fancy meeting you here.”

I was
held aloft between them, the scream I hadn’t been able to voice tearing from my throat. Adriel’s face was hard as he pulled me closer to him, Kishi letting go of my hand so he could embrace me. Droplets from the waves splashed on my legs.

“You caught me,” I whispered.

“I will always catch you,” Adriel said, his wings blazing from the sunlight while beating in a steady rhythm.

“But how?
How did you know to come here?” I asked.

“We traced the signal from my keys.
That black fob on it, remember? We have those in case Cadmon hides them. It sends out a relay to our computers. They aren’t good for very long-range, so we’ve been sweeping south mile-by-mile to try to pick it up. Zakia saw that Ripper girl taking you in this direction, and the stolen car she drove to the high school was from a city not far from here.”

“Hate to break up the reunion, guys, but we’ve got anemoi,” Kishi said.
A sword of fire came to her hand. I drew away from Adriel to look upwards in fear. The cliffs shook as fire blasted over the edge, illuminating briefly the shapes of four anemoi stalking through the air to us. Another growled behind Adriel.

“Up!” I yelled, although we were already starting in that direction.
The anemoi coming from overhead lunged, two blown apart by Kishi’s sword and the others pouncing for us but missing. Another sword burned in Adriel’s hand.

At the top of the
cliffs was a scene of total chaos. The grass had disintegrated in the fires to scorched earth beneath. People were everywhere, all four of the Kreeling hunters and the rest of the Graystones, the Rippers and even Zakia. Silea took aim with a gun and those strange golden links called atah’pay blasted out to ensnare Zofia. Makala shrieked like a banshee and in retaliation threw fire at Silea, who was whisked away by a streak of silver. Barasho was charging Drina and their swords clashed with a spray of fiery sparks.

Throwing fire indiscriminately, Japheem whirled around to see us in the air.
Then he yelled, “Anemoi! Kill her! Kill her now!” They gathered in a pack around him, five and then six of the anemoi, and they ran off the cliffs. Kishi shouted for Adriel to fly me away. She was gone in a streak of blue, and we were racing over the ocean with the wolves in pursuit.

After the horrid jangling music of the last days, to hear those perfect chords resounding in my body was bliss.
I had been saved, and everything was going to be all right. The ocean was gorgeous beneath us, the sweep of blue going out to the horizon. Wind teased along its surface and brought it into sharp ridges, which sank down as quickly as they formed. I lulled to hear the music and Adriel said, “Jessa, stay awake!”

I
wanted to surrender to it, yet I forced my eyes back open. We were in terrible danger. He snapped me closer to him at a loud snarl. An anemoi was sprinting through the air close by. Rolling us over, Adriel lashed out with his sword. The wolf wheeled outward to avoid being struck, and I screamed, “Adriel!” A second wolf was barreling straight down from the heavens.

He rolled us back over and jerked to the left.
The wolves came together and charged after us, one of them baying breathily and an answering howl coming from the distance. When I looked back to the cliffs, they were gone. All there was in any direction was the blue of the water, and a thick gray cover of clouds above. The farther we went out over the ocean, the darker the gray was becoming. We were traveling at a great speed, even if I couldn’t feel the extent of it. The anemoi were still catching up. The one in the lead ran beneath us, Adriel’s sword swiping out to lop its head from its body.

The waves had been angry at the cliffs, and out here they were
raging. He flew us up several meters since waves were rolling in higher and higher crests, with drops of rain falling down from the clouds. A streak of dark smoke shot past and I pointed to it. Adriel said, “I need both of my hands! Hold onto my waist!”

Fighting the lull of the music to stay cognizant, I wrapped my arm around his waist
and pushed two of my fingers through his belt loop. His feathers curled over my skin as his wings beat quickly. He threw out a ball of brilliant fire to that stream of dark smoke, which slammed through a wave to avoid it. The fire turned the wave to steam. For a moment, the dark smoke flickered into Japheem’s dirty yellow wings. Then he disappeared.

Anemoi
dodged the roiling waves. There were four of them now, baying and snarling, one coming apart in the smack of a wave and reforming on the other side. The seconds it took for that to happen moved it from the lead of the pack to the back.

The rain changed from falling to pelting,
rapping hard on our bodies. Adriel dipped lower and weaved around the waves to let them disperse the anemoi temporarily and get more space between us. I squinted ahead for Japheem. It was hard to see anything among the towering waves and sheets of rain coming down. No dirty yellow or streaks of smoke, only the grays and blues of a sea at storm. Water splattered on our faces, Adriel skimming low and then shooting up a towering wave so the anemoi would strike it.

Dark fire shot straight for us when we crested the wave.
Behind it was Japheem, a streak of smoke headed our way. He was flanked by anemoi, both of them bowing out to surround us. Still Adriel climbed,
had
to climb, because racing behind Japheem was a mountainous wave. This was no storm swell but a freak wave that would have toppled a ship. Adriel split apart the anemoi closing in from the left with archus fire and we raced up frantically to not be crushed by that wave bearing down. The second anemoi, which hadn’t been running as fast, was nipped under and torn apart.

We burst above the
top of the wave, all three of us, and Japheem struck out so hard with his sword that it knocked us back when it clashed against Adriel’s. The water roared and churned beneath us, Japheem screaming, “She is mine! She bears my mark! You did not claim her so I did!”

“She belongs to herself, not to either of us!” Adriel shouted.
Fire burst from Japheem’s hand. Soft feathers curled over my arm as we spun down to escape. But we couldn’t stay down here with the waves reaching up everywhere, and hungry to pull us in. Japheem spun down after us, and then he moved to the side to avoid archus fire that had rushed down from the sky.

“Take
her!” Adriel said. I was pulled away from him. Kishi jerked us up out of the waves. We spun and spun to elude the muddy fire shrieking up to catch us, and then we crashed through the cloud layer with the sounds of clashing swords ringing in my ears.

“We can’t leave him
down there!” I said hysterically.

It was so eerily quiet and peaceful up here, with the sun shining down blithely on the
upper surface of the clouds. Kishi’s wings were dazzling as she held us above them. “He will fight better if he’s not worrying about you.”

Something growled.

We looked down to the clouds, where many anemoi were forming. Gasping, I said, “Go!”

Kishi flew
us away so fast that I couldn’t control myself from falling into that peaceful state with the celestial chords. The music was so much louder with her than Adriel, and I knew why Cadmon wished her to carry him. Each strum pulsed deeply in my soul, pushing away the fear of leaving Adriel behind with Japheem. No matter how I struggled to keep that acuteness in the forefront of my mind, the music pushed it aside. He was going to be fine, everything was going to be fine, and the music was calling me home.

Anemoi were all around us
, snapping and leaping. A streak of blood appeared on Kishi’s arm from a claw. Even that failed to fully rouse me, and I was only partially aware when we stopped going parallel to the clouds. Kishi climbed vertically up to the heavens.

When
she stopped, I came back to myself. My stomach clenched at how high we had gotten. Kishi’s wings beat slowly to hold us in place. Inspecting her bloody arm, she said, “Let them try to chase us without the air to form their bodies.”

“How am I breathing
then?” I asked.

“Because you’
re holding onto an angel.”

“Your arm . . .”

“Hardly a scratch.” She motioned to the gun at her waist. “We need to get these Rippers into bindings. They can’t call the anemoi to them once inside.”

“It looks so peaceful,” I said about the world beneath us.
Clouds curled over the green and golden land in white wisps, with a deeper bank of gray over the ocean.

“That’s how it always looks to an angel.
Almost always,” Kishi said. “Well, do you want to hang out here, or take down some Rippers? I’ll fly if you shoot.”

“I’ve never shot a gun before,” I said, although I was eager to do this.

“It’s easy. Take aim and pull the trigger. The safety is off.” The floor beneath us tilted, and we spun back to earth in a sapphire streak. The chords pulled me away until we burst out over the Santa Cruz cliffs and she slowed.

One figure enveloped in links was lying across the scorched
earth. Collan was over the side, clinging to crumbling handholds. A streak of ruby passed by and pulled him back to the top. Zakia had been thrown over the side entirely, and was struggling to cling to a rock in the waves. I pointed him out to Kishi, who looked down and hesitated. Then I said, “Don’t you dare tell me that he doesn’t have a soul! Get him!”

We shot down as a wave crashed over and tore him from the rock.
Swept away helplessly to the cliffs, he flailed for another rock that was just out of his grasp. His fingers scratched along its surface and I reached out to catch his wrist. We shot up the cliffs too fast for us to even speak to one another. I released him upon the black earth and slid the gun from the holster.

Silea wasn’t
anywhere to be seen, and Radeo was lying on the grass farther away and clutching his left leg. Collan and Evanyi were taking cover within the crack to the cave, since the firefight between the Graystones and two of the Rippers was out of control. Barasho was in the middle of the blackened space with fire wheeling crazily from his palms as Taurin threw his own. Zakia threw himself down to not be burned.

Makala punched Drina, who reeled away and fell to one knee.
We shot over there, Makala raising her sword high. She brought it down, intending to sever one of those emerald wings. A streak of silver raced between us and for the briefest moment, I saw Cadmon’s face alight with outrage. He flew right into Makala’s side and the two of them went spinning away. Drina rose to her feet, screaming, “
Cadmon!
”

Kishi changed course to pursue that wheeling tangle of silver and dingy green.
It came to rest upon a hillside with Makala on top, her wings pulling back to reveal her straddling that little form. Her sword was held beneath his chin. He kicked and struggled while we raced over, Makala laughing in his face to see him flail. All I could think was we were not going to reach them in time, and that Cadmon was going to be decapitated. Behind us, Drina was still screaming his name.

“Fire!” Kishi shouted.
I took aim at Makala’s back and pulled the trigger. The Ripper lurched away and sent fire to us. The bullet struck Cadmon and sprayed links all over his body, encasing him in the gold of the atah’pay bindings. Kishi yanked us to the side to avoid the archus.

“Go back!
Go back so I can release him!” I exclaimed.

“We can’t!” Kishi
cried. Makala was on our tail, cutting her arm through the air and sending out an arc of fire.

Sunlight glinted off something in the grass, and then a bloody Silea rose from it with a gun cocked to her shoulder.
She fired and Makala dropped from the sky. Her body was covered in the gold links by the time she hit the ground with a tremendous thud.

“Makala!”
Anemoi took shape everywhere around Barasho. The Kreelings in the cave ran out and threw blades to disperse them. Barasho ran for the bundled body. His wings burst into view to speed him there, and muddy fire lanced out with every slash of his hand through the air.

Zakia collided with him.
Silea shot again but missed, the links splashing harmlessly upon the cliffs. She cracked open her gun to reload fast. Radeo scrabbled in the grass around him, searching for his own weapon. I saw the gun from my height where he could not, and it was far beyond where he was seeking it.