Queen of the Magnetland (The Elemental Phases Book 5) (36 page)

Here’s
a preview of the next book in the Elemental Phases’ series:

Magic
of the Wood House

Prologue

I have, I
know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence,

but something
whispers to me.

Major Sullivan
Ballou- in a letter to his wife, one week before his death at The First Battle
of Bull Run

When
the death toll reached a thousand, the Fire House stopped counting the bodies.

The
exact number was both too insignificant and too horrible to matter.  Just
saying a thousand dead seemed so easy; so clean, and neat, and meaningless. 
Until you had to pile the corpses in pyres and watch them burn.  Until you saw
the empty, ruined lives that each person left behind.  Then, the number became
so vast that no one wanted to contemplate its stark reality.

At
the end of the world, there just didn’t seem much point in keeping a running
tally of the casualties.

Anyone
well enough to function blocked out the morbid desire to add up the total
number of victims that they dragged to the courtyard of the Fire Palace.  Like
they struggled to ignore the shrunken faces of their friends and relatives, as
they stacked the bodies together.  Like they turned and tried not to see the
flames eating away at the corpses, once the fires were lit.  Like they
attempted to block out the smell of burning flesh, and hair, and clothes, as
they went to gather more decaying fuel for the terrible conflagrations.

The
pyres became tangible representations of how the Phases’ old lives were being
destroyed right in front of their eyes.  It was something that no one wanted to
process.  In shock and consumed with grief, most people pulled themselves into
whatever sort of psychological cocoon they could fashion.  They looked around
with vacant gazes and uncomprehending expressions, even as they went about
their grisly tasks.

On
the fifth day of the Fall, no one was ready to face the new reality that stared
them in the face.

Or
almost no one.

Teja,
of the Fire and Cold Houses watched the bright light of fires burning against
the summer sky, but she didn’t feel their heat.  All around here, there was
nothing but cold and darkness.  A future without a future.  To her mind, anyone
paying attention already knew that the Fall meant the death of everything.  Not
just of the Fire House or the Elementals.  But,
everything
.

Teja
was a pragmatist.  Some said cynic.  Some said bitch.  No matter the word,
she’d always seen through the bullshit and directly into the heart of the world
around her.  And right now, with that futureless future barreling down on her,
she saw that her best path led straight down into the pavement.

Suicide.

It
was such a stark word.

But,
Teja was paying attention and all she saw a total absence of hope.

If
the Elemental Phases went extinct, they took the rest of the universe down with
them.  It was a mathematical fact.  The various Houses supported all the
interconnected processes of nature.  Everything depended on them, because they
controlled
everything, from Water to Time to Wood.  Each member of the House held a bit of
the whole, and each House relied on the others.  The Heat House needed the Fire
House’s element to produce warmer temperatures.  The Fire House needed the Air
House to feed their flames.  The Air House needed the Weather House to generate
the conditions for wind.  And so on, in an endless circle of life and death.

The
Elementals kept nature in balance and the gears of the universe running
smoothly.  But, if too many Phases died, their House would fall.  And if too
many Houses fell, then they pulled the rest of the Phases down with them.  Like
an avalanche, the resulting disaster would speed up and grow bigger as it raced
downhill.  The world would topple.

Teja
didn’t see a way out of it, now.  She sat at the edge of the Fire Palace’s wide
Gothic roof and stared at the blazes far below with emotionless hazel eyes. 
They’d passed the point of no return.  The world was closer to the end than it
was to the beginning.  Much, much closer.

And
one invisible microbe was the catalyst of oblivion.

The
Fall:  A disease poised to end the universe.

It
had been released by Parald, of the Air House as revenge against the Council of
All Houses.  And, more specifically, against Tritone, of the Water House for
refusing to be his queen.  But, Parald’s vengeance had spun out of his
control.  The plague had a mind of its own and it wouldn’t be satisfied until
it destroyed…
everything
.

Teja’s
feet dangled off into infinity as she scrolled through her grandfather’s iPod. 
She stopped when she reached the “recently played” section and pushed the
button to make AC/DC’s
This House is on Fire
blare over the headphones. 
“Recently played” was such a subjective term.  What did it really mean?  To the
iPod, “recent” mean the songs that Oberon had listened to over the last week or
so.  But, to anyone who’d survived the Fall, anything that had happened just a
few days before already seemed like someone else’s life.

Ancient
history.

Some
people continued to cling to hope.  Teja had heard their whispers and coughs as
they prayed for salvation, night and day.  If they could just survive this,
then maybe… Maybe… Maybe they could pull the rest of the world through.  Maybe
the universe wouldn’t end.  Maybe Gaia or God or whoever was watching over them
would have mercy.

Teja
knew better.

In
order to have children, Elementals needed Phase-Matches.  The one person that
they could combine their energy with, and love, and connect to on --well-- an
elemental
level.  Two parts of a symbolic whole.  The Fall had already wiped out so many
Phases that Teja doubted one in ten survived.  There was no way they could find
enough Matches, now.  No way they could have children or recreate a viable
population.

And
the Fall hadn’t stopped, yet.  More and more died every hour.  Every minute. 
With the odds stacked so high against them, it was impossible for the Phases to
bounce back.

On
the iPod, The Bloodhound Gang started screaming
The Roof is on Fire
.

Teja
barely noticed.

It
was all over for the Elementals.  They were extinct in every way that mattered. 
Some Phases, like Teja, and her cousin Djinn and his family, seemed to be
immune from the plague.  No one knew why.  Few cared to know.  Caring about
anything was beyond most people, now.  In the end, it wouldn’t matter.

The
lucky ones had gone first.  The so-called survivors were postponing the
inevitable by hanging on.  They just got to watch the universe struggle through
its death throes.  Teja read the plain truth in the twisting flames of the
funeral pyres.  But, what did it matter, at this point?  What really mattered,
at all?

Her
grandfather was dead.

The
Fall took him and all Teja could do was watch it happen.  Without Oberon, every
single reason for
anything
was gone.  It had been carried away in the
ashes of his funeral pyre and left nothing behind for Teja but a cold, dark
future without a future.

All
she felt was empty.

Her
emotions had been frozen out of her.

That
was… good, though.  She didn’t
want
to experience more pain and loss. 
Teja didn’t want to feel anything, ever again.  The ice inside of her was a
relief and she was afraid of what might happen if it melted away.

Fire
and Rain
came through her headphones.  It was a nice song, slow
and sad; completely unlike her larger than life, type-A personality
grandfather.  It wasn’t that Oberon loved James Taylor, but every song on his
iPod had the word “fire” in it somewhere.  Oberon, the murdered King of the
Fire House, had weird ideas, sometimes.

The
world could never be right, again.  Not with him gone from it.

Oberon
had been her hero.  Most Elementals saw the Fire House as a bunch of loud,
aggressive lunatics.  Usually, they were unfavorably compared to the human
mafia.  The Fire Phases liked to have their own way and were completely fine
with cheating if that’s what it took to win.  They could be impulsive,
oblivious, and somehow incredibly stubborn, all at the same time.  They had
zero regard for the feelings of others and senses of humor that edged towards
demonic.

And
Oberon had been the worst of the lot.  An egotistical, irreverent, “might makes
right,” video game playing, eye rolling rebel.  He was the champion of every
underdog and the gadfly at every Council meeting.  Every day, he did something
crazy that made Teja want to pull her hair out by the roots.  Oberon drove her
nuts with his insane ideas and disregard for the rules.  He had a booming laugh
and a zest for life that no one else could even come close to matching.

He
made Teja proud to be his granddaughter.

And
she’d let him down.  She done everything she could think of and it still hadn’t
been enough to save him from the Fall.  What could possibly matter to her after
that?

James
Taylor gave way to the Ink Spots declaring
I Don’t Want to Set the World on
Fire
.

Job,
of the Earth House, High Seat of the Council and the oldest Elemental left
alive, wanted to rebuild.  He had some half-assed plan to re-form Council and
rally the remaining Phases.  Teja had promised to help him do it.  He’d
pressured her and she’d relented, because she just didn’t have the energy to
argue with him.  Even though she could no longer feel it, Teja knew she had a
great deal of respect and love for the Earth King.  Job was a good leader and
an even better man.

But,
he’d always been an idealist.  Job couldn’t face the truth, yet.

Not
like Teja could.

The
icy void situated inside of her chest grew bigger all the time.  She’d promised
not to kill herself.  She’d looked right at Job and
promised
him.  She’d
promised her grandfather, too.  When he lay in his bed, dying of a disease that
no one had even heard of three days before.  She’d
promised
Oberon that
she’d help Djinn rule the Fire House.  That she’d clean up her cousin’s messes
and ensure their family’s legacy wasn’t broken with Djinn’s nutty schemes.

But,
at the end of the world, what did it really matter if she went back on her
word?

The
song switched again.  Billy Joel proclaimed
We Didn’t Start the Fire
.

The
rest of her family would get over Teja leaving them behind.  They could just
toss her in one of the pyres and move on.  Teja didn’t have a Match or
children, but Djinn did.  He had Pele and the kids.  He’d recover.  So would
their adopted cousin Hope.  Djinn would take care of her.  He was the Fire
King, now.  He could run the Fire House and their family would be okay.

Maybe
.

She
ignored that skeptical thought because she just didn’t have the energy to
follow her doubts to their logical conclusion.

Teja
was so tired.

It
was difficult for a Phase to commit suicide.  Or
complete
suicide or
whatever politically correct phrase the humans had for blowing their own brains
out.  All day, Teja had been trying to figure out how she could do it
effectively.  She was a perfectionist and she didn’t want to screw-up her last
job.

Elementals
were hardy folk, though.  Susceptibility to mysterious plagues aside, they
didn’t die easily.  The gun-to-the-head thing wouldn’t work on Teja, because
bullets were harmless to Phases.  Slitting her wrists and putting her head in
an oven were out, too.  Hanging
might
do the trick, but it would take a
while.

There
just weren’t a lot of foolproof options.

Nothing
killed a Phase faster than decapitation.  That would be the ideal way to go. 
If only she had a guillotine, she’d be all set.  Years before, the Shadow House
had built one, but then Job outlawed them after an unauthorized execution.  So,
unless she jumped into the human realm and visited a French Revolution museum,
“off with her head” didn’t seem real feasible.

Teja
frowned.  Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. 
Could
she find a working
guillotine at a museum?  It was possible.  But, the idiotic humans probably
removed the blades from the exhibits.  They wouldn’t want some frigging tourist
to climb in and Marie Antoinette himself while posing for a goofy vacation
photo.

Damn
stupid humans.

St.
Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)
came on the iPod, but
Teja didn’t even hear it.

Basically,
Teja figured her easiest choices were leaping off of a tall building, and
hoping for the worse to happen, or finding a poison that worked on Elementals. 
Poison had a nice Classical ring to it.  Cleopatra, Socrates, and Teja, of the
Fire and Cold Houses… All dead by self-inflicted poison.