"Let go of me!"
His grip encircled my wrist.
I dangled in midair as the smokestack disappeared. I must have jumped, but I didn't remember doing it, and he had a hold of me now as I blindly bucked, my eyes squeezed shut against the brightness of the yellow sun. I twisted like a wild cat caught in his unyielding clutches. "Let me go!"
"Little one!"
My resistance left me instantly, and I was yanked up into Micah's embrace.
"Micah?" My eyes opened under my soaked hair. In his other hand he held a staff, outstretched as far as he could manage to keep it away from me. His focusing rod. A weapon made solid from his aura. Electricity orbited a blue-hot sphere mounted on the far end.
"Micah," I croaked again and threw my arms around his neck.
Oh Micah, my lion, my Micah.
I clung to him, coughing as I choked on my own relief. He twisted his wrist to release the focusing rod back to his aura, its solidness shattering apart like cooling sparks in the rain. With both hands free now, he hugged me fiercely, a rumble going through him like thunder. His focusing rod had been bright on one end—but it was blue light. I had seen yellow. I knew I'd seen yellow sunshine. But Micah was here.
"Aurora, what in the world—" he managed to get out before a great rumbling sound drowned out the rest of his words.
Trembling from the ground rose up to us in the sky. Everything was overcome in a moment of utter destruction, a shattering of bricks and mortar meeting concrete, a giant dust cloud rising. The entire valley shuddered from one end to the other, quaking as if a massive hand had descended to take hold and shake it.
The quiet that followed was almost as astonishing. Dark, wet, roaring silence, like the valley had gone into shock. Most of the orange halogens flickered out. Eventually, the fire siren in the valley's downtown section sounded to pierce that shocked silence, its cries like the building wails of a startled infant. His hold on me loosened, and I brought my head up alongside his to search the lightning flashes.
"Oh no," I whispered. That could not have just happened. But it had. Tears of frustration welled in my eyes.
"The hillside took the full blow, well to the right of our houses," he told me, looking around. "The fence and the main road have been crushed where they came down, but everything can be rebuilt."
"They came down?"
"They," he echoed softly, and he stretched out a hand.
A pulse of elemental will surged through him, and in the prolonged lightning flash that followed, I saw that both of the golden smokestacks were gone.
"The one you were on clipped the other when it went down. Like dominoes, really, they couldn't have fallen any more perfectly."
"Did Ai find you?" I asked, a spike of worry going through me for the wind devvi amid the sickening shock of the current moment. Justix had threatened him; and Eelios was still out there.
Micah nodded. "He told me you were back here clinging for your life. Aurora, how did you manage to get from where I dropped you off at the dance to the middle of the oil refinery?"
Letting out a choked hiccup, I leaned my head against his wet shoulder, trying to process his question. My mind wasn't working again. They had fallen. Both golden smokestacks, they were really gone. "The umbrae hunted me at school, and—" I needed to remember to breathe. "And Alex kept me away from them."
Micah frowned at the mention of the other's name. "Where is the water devvi now?"
"I don't know where he is," I mumbled miserably.
He shifted. I felt his gaze wander over me in the near dark. I couldn't see my aura anymore; perhaps Micah's comforting presence kept the visible glow at bay. I didn't know. I really was going to have to gain control over it. Maybe I really am going to have to take up meditation?
Still studying me, he finally asked, "Where is your dress?"
Oh, yeah, I had almost forgotten. Weary and out of sorts, I pulled my fingers through his soaked, curling hair while my thoughts touched upon Alex's power spindled in my core. "Folded on a rock," I answered him, "down by the creek. It's...a long story. We'll talk about it later, okay?" I touched the side of his face, wanting to smooth away his puzzled frown.
Inhaling in realization, I squeezed his shoulder with a more immediate concern. Two huge landmarks in the valley had just fallen. For what good reason? This was dangerous to our devvi secrecy, wasn't it? "What reason are the humans going to come up with that will legitimize why the smokestacks fell?"
"It's storming, Aurora. And badly. I'm sure after they review this evening's Doppler radar, they'll come up with a good explanation." My guardian's honey smooth voice went low in warning as he shifted his hold on me. He turned us and stared into the distance. "We have to put some space between us and here."
"Micah?" I said in alarm when a shiver of nature-related awareness went through him.
Blinking once, my now pupil-less eyes gazed across the valley to take in what only Doppler or devvi could detect in complete darkness. Twin funnel clouds.
I gripped Micah as we watched two great, smoky arms reaching from the heavens. They stretched toward the valley's eastern wall, their wide reach brushing treetops.
"Not nearly strong enough to touch down on land," he commented. "Though we shouldn't let our guard down."
Because powerful things were born of such weather. Aura-hungry things, I recalled with a ripple of anxiety pulsing through me.
"The storm-heavy sky is expectant with life. Where the two winds meet, see there?" He pointed, directing my focus to where the twin funnels rubbed. "The spark, Aurora. Can you see it?"
"Yes."
"There in that atmospheric fissure, Nature's womb opens." And give birth she did, first with a spark, and then a high-pitched cry that pierced us both through. An infinitely colored beast, a graceful, twisting radiance, arched out of the fissure between the winds. Its skin was scaly diamonds, frictional light flashing between hundreds of spindly legs lining both sides of its serpentine body. She was breathtaking, this newly realized umbra.
She was as endless as a freight train. Honestly, I searched, and hadn't yet spotted the end. With a serpent's head to match its serpent's body, her neck was thickly maned with what appeared to be sea anemone, finger-like appendages drifting bonelessly, rising, falling with a gentle motion as the beast wove around the now dissipating funnel clouds. Micah had been right about the fledgling tornadoes never fully forming.
"Micah, that's a—?"
"A Sky Devil, yes."
"Why is it fading in color?"
"Do you remember what I told you about this sort of creature being short-lived?"
Yes. It was losing life, actually dying seconds after exiting the womb. "We're safe over here?"
Drifting backward, he had moved us to the western slope of the valley, where we were transfixed upon the mesmerizing movement of the devil. Even though the beast possessed no wings, gravity did not seem to faze it. The darned thing was swan diving in slow motion. It needed no wings to fly, just like him. Air was its water. The sky was its sea.
"Ahh, Micah..." My stomach tensed when, with a great cry, the devil took an abrupt turn in our direction. "It's coming our way!"
"I can see that."
He jerked me underneath him as I hollered "Go, go, go!" and with a burst of speed we were one with the winds, the forest a dark rush below.
"What the hell?" My guardian shouted, sparing a glance over his shoulder. "The valley's ambiance wasn't enough to keep it from spotting you. It's giving chase. Shit."
"Tell me about it. This has been happening to me all evening." The serpent devil was a beam of light racing after us, its great head a comet with an endless tail. How do you outrun a freaking comet?
"The umbrae that trapped you before this...?" His eyes widened in realization.
"Chased me because they sensed my aura. Cheddar, even I can see it." Again. I moved up on Micah's body so I could stare with my transformed eyes over his shoulder, taking in my glimmering life force as it stretched out to make a brilliant path for the devil to follow.
"The dress caused this." His face went grim next to mine.
"That's why I took it off."
"I am so sorry, Aurora. I didn't know the fabric would... I didn't know."
"Micah, this really isn't your fault! I'll fill in you on the details later. Besides, the fabric itself doesn't even matter, because look at me. I'm wearing nothing that would enhance my aura. I'm practically naked, and yet even I can see it."
"Yeah." He seemed to push his angst aside to give my barely-clothed body an appreciative once over. "You look hella-sexy, all soaked down in silk, a brilliant wet fire. Touchable flame..."
My fingers curled in his wild hair when he nuzzled my neck to make me momentarily forget we were flying for our lives.
"Micah, I think it's losing ground."
"But it isn't breaking apart," he noted bleakly.
My life force trailing out behind us was a soft, shimmering glow dissipating around its sea anemone-lined head.
"I don't know if it is going to break apart. I think it's feeding off your aura," he said, and then he let out a determined growl. "I'm not going to let it get you, Aurora. I'll die first."
I hugged his shoulders tightly when he drove ahead with a fresh burst of speed. I trusted him to take care of me. But I couldn't bear it if you died.
Above us, the storm clouds had finally thinned. Below, the hills rolled on, dark with endless trees until they eventually gave away to a flat, winding expanse between two immense hills—a river. He adjusted his flight pattern to follow it. Moments later, we flew over a high, concrete bridge connecting the two hillsides with a roadway of quickly streaming lights from cars and semi-trucks. He swooped over the bridge, diving and leveling off to fly close to the water. With another burst of speed, the bridge was gone.
That was Interstate 80. The highway by which we entered this valley two months ago. When I hadn't yet known my lion, I thought with a growl building deep in my throat. My anxiety at the current situation was suddenly gone. I won't lose him. That determination flooded up through me, quickly rising so Alex's spindled power became buoyant in my core, unraveling, readying.
The Sky Devil was a pinprick of light in the distance behind us after Micah's latest burst of speed. With the interstate well behind us, we were now approaching a much lower bridge, one made of blue steel framework. He pulled up from the water, his speed slowing.
"What are we doing?" Panic filled me when he steered left for a bright spotlight. It lit the edge of a cliff on the riverbank.
His feet hit rock with a few soft, running slaps, and then I was sitting on the ground. There was a sign posted beside an American flag that read: "George Washington stood here."
Ah crap. We had landed on a historical landmark. "Where are you going?"
Putting his phone away, Micah walked toward the rock's edge while I sat there, panicking. He'd texted someone?
"I contacted Alexander to come get you. Aurora, this creature isn't giving up. I'm going to face it head on. Buy some time while the water devvi gets you out of here."
"Micah, no!" My surroundings blurred, and I wasn't sitting on the ground anymore. I was in front of him, gripping him by the elbows. "No Micah. Stay here with me. Don't leave. If you do, you won't come back."
He paused to gaze down at me, his eyes a little too wide. "I'll always come back for you."
"You're giving me to Alex. You don't think you're coming back!"
"I am," he lied, the sourness of it tearing my heart open.
"You aren't." I threw myself at him and pressed my lips to his.
Gasping for air, he kissed me back. I put my arms around his neck when I tasted tears, and I knew they weren't mine because I had already decided. He was the one saying goodbye. I wasn't. The air around us crackled with the leaking power of his high emotions. It was becoming difficult to move against, but that wouldn't stop me. My decision was made.
Our lips parted, a visible spark jumping between us. "I'm not going to let you do this," I told him in resolution.
I forced his lips back to mine again with a firmly placed hand to the back of his head. Then I connected to the power stored there. I pulled on it with all my might.
Every last drop of it. I would siphon every last bit of energy out of him. I would fill myself until I cracked and split apart. If only I could take it all, he would have no power. Then he could not fight. Then he would not die.
He went stiff in my arms; he could not get away. I had him. He was mine. His power was mine. I drained every last drop. I took, and I spindled. I will not lose you!
The cry of the Sky Devil filled my ears, and I prayed there was enough time. I prayed I could hold it all, that my storehouse ran deep. I had to be fathomless if I wanted to save him. Please, let me be fathomless...
With his resistance finally shattered, he slumped inmy arms, and my vision blurred from gray to black.
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