Watch Me Burn: The December People, Book Two (29 page)

“Do you sense her?” Patrick asked. “Evangeline?”

Xavier stopped and listened for something, or
felt
for something. “Yeah, I do.” He whispered the words with reverence, like a prayer.

“Good. Then, she’s alive, right? We’ll find her.”

Xavier nodded. “I think she’s alive, but…I don’t know. Something’s not right.”

Patrick didn’t want to hear what wasn’t right. He could guess well enough. He hoped Evangeline frightened her captors and much as she frightened him. But he knew if she could have overpowered them with magic, she would have already come home.

They both froze. They heard footsteps crunching the dry leaves on the ground. Patrick knew if they could sense the summer wizards, then it worked both ways. They couldn’t hide from each other for long.

“Xavier, I’ll distract them,” Patrick said. “You stay hidden, and then keep looking.”

“What? No.”

“You’re a winter wizard. They might try to hurt you. I have a better chance.”

“Dammit, Patrick,” Xavier whispered, while Patrick headed straight towards the footsteps.

The summer wizards caught sight of Patrick emerging from the trees and aimed guns at him. With as much as Patrick had recently learned about “good” wizards, he had not expected the guns. At closer inspection, the guns looked like hunting rifles, meant for deer and not people, but still deadly.

Patrick put his hands up. “I’m unarmed,” he said.

The two boys looked close to his age, although the taller one might be older. They looked similar. They both had bronze-colored hair and yellowish-green eyes. Their skin glowed, subtle enough that someone could mistake it for no more than good health and time spent in the sun, but Patrick knew better.

“Who are you?” the younger boy demanded.

By the look in their eyes, they didn’t recognize him. That nagged at Patrick. He wanted to know if they had set the fire. His rage needed somewhere to go, but he wanted to know for sure. He wanted revenge. He didn’t know how he would get it, especially since they had the guns. And unlike him, they knew how to practice magic. But he needed to know.

Of course, they could not recognize him and still be the arsonists. Summer wizards wouldn’t care about their names and faces. Dark wizards should burn.

“Oh, my God,” whispered the older boy. He looked at Patrick with so much awe and fear that Patrick had the instinct to look behind him to see who he really looked at. “Luke, stay back.”

“What?” asked Luke.

The older boy lunged toward Patrick. But when he came close, he lowered his gun and surprised Patrick by reaching out and grabbing his arm. Patrick didn’t have a chance to resist. The touch gave him a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach, and not just because it was a strange thing to do. But he dropped his arm after a second or two.

“God, no…” he said.

Luke had moved closer, but still had his gun aimed at Patrick’s head. “Nathan, what is it? Is he…another one?”

“It’s not possible. It couldn’t be…but I think so.”

“I’m another what?” Patrick asked.

“Why are you here?” Nathan asked. He asked the question with complete incredulity, as if Patrick walking out of the woods was as unlikely and strange as if the tooth fairy popped out in front of them.

“For the same reason you are, I assume. I’m looking for my little sister.”

They glanced at each other. “You mean, Evangeline Vandergraff is your sister?” asked Nathan.

“How did you know that? How do you know her name?”

“It was on the news, bro,” Luke said. “Calm down.”

“What’s your name?” Nathan asked.

“Patrick Vandergraff.”

“But Evangeline is not
really
your sister, right?” Nathan said. “Not by blood.”

“Uh, yeah, she’s
really
my sister. We have different mothers, but the same father. It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“Vandergraff had two of them?” Nathan said. “What are the chances?”

“Two of
what
?” Patrick asked, his voice dripping with venom and impatience.

“You
sure
you have the same father?” Luke asked. He didn’t snicker, but he might as well have. The implication dripped all over his tone.

Of all the ways this interaction could go, he didn’t know how the hell they had gotten here.

“Yeah, I’m sure, asshole. You better watch what you say about my mother.”

Luke laughed. “Right, because winter wizards never cheat.”

“That’s right, they don’t.” Patrick didn’t know why he said it—something so untrue, but he couldn’t abide these random strangers insulting his family out of nowhere.

“Well,” Luke said, “He may be only half dark, but can lie as well as the rest of him. At least, he knows how to lie to himself.”

What the fuck was the matter with this guy?

“You want to hear something true?” Patrick asked. “I don’t know about the cheating and lying, but yeah, my family is
dangerous
. And we stick together. I don’t know what you plan on doing with those little toys you got in your stocking from Santa, but if you hurt me, or if you have or will hurt anyone else in my family, you will invoke a wrath you can’t even imagine.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nathan said. “
Listen to me.
” His voice pulled at him like gravity. “Nothing we have said or nothing you have said up to this point matters at all. Don’t let it distract you. The only important thing is what I am about to say right now—
you need to leave this place now and do not come back
. You are in serious danger here.”

Patrick thought he might catapult out of the forest. He backed up automatically.

Patrick heard a stick crack behind him.
Xavier, no. No. No.
He pleaded with him in his mind.
Let me handle it. Don’t make it worse.

Patrick turned and didn’t see anyone.

“I knew someone was out here with you,” Luke said. “I can sense them. Who is it? One of your supposed siblings? If they’re going to be cowards and stay in the shadows, maybe we should give them a little incentive.
Burn
them out.”

The word
burn
made Patrick’s mouth dry up. Arsonists or not, that worked as an admission of guilt. He felt magic building in him, sliding up his spine. But he didn’t know what to do with it. However, things happened so fast, he didn’t have much chance.

“Luke, don’t you dare,” Nathan said.

“Oh, are you afraid it’s your girlfriend? I’d love to meet her,” Luke said.

“I swear, if you…”

Nathan didn’t get a chance to finish his threat. Luke dropped his gun on the ground, as if it was nothing more than a ridiculous plaything. Luke had this look his in eyes—pain—as if he himself burned from the inside out. Then with a flash, Luke thrust the burning outward. Patrick felt an intense thirst. And his skin felt so dry that it might flake right off. The heat came with a sense of impending doom. As if it would never rain again. It meant drought. Famine. Death. Apocalypse. A sense of burning so deep it could cover the whole world.

Luke released this feeling from inside himself. As much as Patrick despised Luke, he would never think of summer wizards the same way again. Winter might be dark and cold, but man, summer was a nasty bitch too.

Patrick feared to open his eyes. He felt certain his eyeballs would dry up and turn to glass, but he felt his arms and found that they weren’t on fire. To some extent, it had to all be in his head. He opened his eyes, and saw that although the impending doom might be in his head, the fire was very real.

The dry, drought-ridden land around them began to smoke. Then, piles of leaves and branches erupted into flames all around him, as if the air itself had ignited them.

“Why don’t you come on out now, you frigid bitch?” Luke said.

Patrick heard Xavier cough and wheeze from not far away. As he feared, he hadn’t run, and now he would burn. Patrick picked up the gun Luke had discarded and pointed it at him. Nathan pointed his gun back at Patrick.

“Don’t even think about it,” Nathan said.

Luke didn’t care about the stand-off. He headed toward the coughing, with that same pain in his eyes as if he prepared to release another blast.

The radiant heat in the air made the guns crack and sizzle. Patrick knew the gun would fire on its own or explode in his hands, so he dropped it. The same thing must have happened to Nathan because he dropped his too.

Patrick turned to tackle Luke. This might cause him to spontaneously combust, but he had to do something. If the heat felt horrible to Patrick, a September, it had to be agonizing for Xavier. Besides, Luke could cause a full-on wildfire. The dry trees lapped up the flames eagerly. It was possible none of them would make it out alive.

But Patrick didn’t have the chance to grab Luke. He heard this cracking, splitting sound, as if the air itself had cleaved in two. Xavier had come out of the forest to face Luke…or at least, Patrick assumed it was Xavier. Whatever Luke did to project the light, Xavier did the same thing to project his darkness. The darkness obscured his features. Against the blaring heat, he appeared as a black hole shaped like a boy. Patrick couldn’t say what felt worse, the heat coming off Luke or the absence coming off Xavier. “Absence” was the only word for it. More than cold. More than darkness. You could experience cold and darkness. This was oblivion, the absence of all experience, of all vision, and sound, and feeling. If Luke could set the world on fire, Xavier could erase it from existence.

Darkness had lurked close to him his whole life, and people he loved had done terrible things, but he had never seen the darkness so clearly, so raw. The black hole that
was
his brother was not just dark, it could be evil itself. Or, fear itself.

Nathan touched Patrick’s arm, and Patrick turned, ready to swing. But something in Nathan’s sad eyes stopped him.

“We have to go,” Nathan said. “Now.”

“You don’t understand.” He gestured toward the demonic figure. “That’s my little brother.”

“Yeah, and the fireball is mine. It doesn’t matter. Like I said. It’s all distractions. It’s all part of the spell. The magic wants us to stay…or
you
to stay. But their fight is not important. The only important thing is getting you out of here.”

“How could you say that? You’re okay with leaving our brothers to kill each other.”

Nathan didn’t answer. He grabbed Patrick’s face so he could look at him in the eyes. “
You’re leaving this place. Now
.”

Patrick felt a lurch in his abdomen, like the steep fall on a roller coaster. And then he ran, with Nathan on his heels. Running was so easy. Too easy. He wanted to think he ran because of Nathan’s magical command, but that felt more like a shove to get him started. He wanted to run. He wanted to get as far away from the emptiness that was Xavier. That shell of a boy who had disguised all of that darkness. That darkness that slept feet away from him. He wanted to go back to the place where he thought that dark wizards couldn’t be that bad. They were people after all. Humans. His family.

Before he knew it, Patrick had his hands on his knees on the side of the road. He coughed until his throat and lungs burned. The flames hadn’t moved too close yet, but the sky had turned from gray to black. A wildfire had erupted. In the drought conditions, the fire could decimate hundreds of acres in no time. And Xavier was in there. And somewhere, Evangeline was too.

Tears streamed down his face but he didn’t know if they came from the smoke or were just tears. Emmy came to this forest with Evangeline and came home without her. Now, Patrick would come home without Xavier, just as he had feared.

“I hate you,” Patrick wheezed toward Nathan. “You’ll regret this.”

Nathan kneeled near him, also wheezing. By the supplicant way he kneeled on the cracked earth, Patrick thought he already regretted it.

“There was nothing we could have done anyway.”

“Fuck you, you coward.”

He didn’t know if he spoke to Nathan or to himself.

“They probably won’t hurt each other, you know. They’re too oppositional. Their magic will cancel each other out. They’re all flash and smoke anyway. Sure, their magic is dangerous. But it’s nothing compared to what you can do.”

“What? I’m barely a wizard.”

“You don’t know what you are, do you?”

Patrick didn’t say anything. He had put together the pieces and come to a conclusion, but it seemed ridiculous. If he said it out loud, Nathan would laugh at him.

But Nathan said it for him. “You’re the equinox. A
perfect
equinox wizard, standing directly at the sunset on the autumnal equinox. Extremely rare. Extremely powerful. A master of both light and dark in equal measure.”

It seemed absurd, but it had to be true. In any case, an issue for a different time. The wildfire beat out all magical concerns. Humans burn. Wizards burn. Everything burns. Everything dies. Magic or not.

Patrick tried to run back in for Xavier, but his legs wouldn’t move.

“I don’t think so,” Nathan said.

Patrick didn’t understand how Nathan could call Patrick extremely powerful and then subdue him a minute later. He had never felt so useless. He couldn’t stop Jude from raping Samantha. He couldn’t stop Evangeline from being kidnapped. Now, he couldn’t save Xavier. If he was an equinox wizard, then that made it worse. He had no excuse. He had the power he needed, but too cowardly or too stupid to use it.

Nathan lunged toward Patrick and grabbed his face again and this time Patrick shut his eyes tight.

“That’s not going to do anything,” Nathan said. “You’re going to get in your car and drive home, right now.”

Patrick felt the pull again. He pulled his keys out his pocket.

Nathan released his grip and spoke to him in a more normal fashion. “As powerful as you are, I can tell you have no idea what you’re doing. But I do. I’ll go back. I’ll bring them
both
out.”

Patrick nodded. He wanted to trust him. He had to trust him, because this was the moment. He hoped he could resist Nathan’s command for long enough for it to wear off. He put one hand on his pocket and felt the bizarre warmth there. Julie’s bracelet. He couldn’t say why, but at the last minute, he had the overwhelming instinct to take it with him. And now, he would bring it to her.