Kelly Gay: The Hour of Dust and Ashes

Bryn darted between cars, sliding over the hood of one, tumbling and popping right back up and racing for the mansion, hair dirty, blood caking her front, torn skirt flying out behind her.

She bounded up the wide front stairs, shoving people asideht=oke through the line, and disappeared into the house.

I was right behind her, mimicking every step, screaming for people to move out the way. I called out my law enforcement status, leaping over potted plants, adrenaline driving me closer and closer.

I made it through the open double doors right after her and leapt.

Gotcha!

We went down in the packed foyer. People screamed. Glasses broke. The floor cleared as we tumbled down the hall, sliding into the ballroom, taking out two waiters and two trays full of champagne.

“Charlie, stop! Aaron! Help me!” Bryn screamed and cried so loud, I almost loosened my hold on her. “Get these cuffs off me, please! Aaron!”

Before we even came to a stop, her foot connected with my gut and she got free. I grabbed her ankle, tripping her up. She yelled. I yelled back. And to anyone watching, it probably seemed like the catfight of the century with two wild women caked with blood, dust, sand, and sweat.

I crawled over her, finally getting a hand on the side of her face and shoving her down and holding her there, breathing heavily.

“Mom?!”

I glanced up, dazed. “Emma?” I blew a strand of matted hair from my eyes and used my bicep to wipe the sweat from my forehead. She wore a cute knee-length sequined dress and her hand rested on Brim’s back. A sudden sob of relief burst from my mouth. My shoulders slumped. The portal had dumped him where he wanted to be. With Em.

Bryn used the distraction, rolling out from under me, twisting her body as she sat up, slid behind me, and draped her linked arms over my head, putting me in a headlock and choking with her forearm.

Emma screamed.

The pressure widened my eyes. My windpipe closed. I threw out my hand to stop Emma from helping. If she hurt Bryn or Bryn hurt her, neither one would forgive herself.

“BRYN MADIGAN!!!!” The booming voice radiated through the ballroom. The massive chandelier shook, the crystals tinkling together like rain in the ensuing silence.

Bryn eased up, but only slightly. I could feel her head turn in the direction of the familiar, powerful voice.

Aaron strode across the ballroom floor, his emerald eyes burning with intensity. His dark Celtic looks bordered on barbaric, his face frightening and stark. Gone was the scholar and in his place was a pissed-off warlock who had had enough .

I pulled at Bryn’s arm, flailing with my feet, trying to catch my heels on the floor to push back against her, needing desperately to breathe, but my heels kept slipping.

“I’m the one you really want to fight,” he said, taunting her in a deep, challenging tone. “I’m the one who hasn’t forgiven you for killing me. I’m the one who holds back, who might … not … love you anymore.”

“STOP IT!” she shrieked so loudly, her voice broke, the words forced from a place so raw and broken.

I knew what he was doing: pulling her out, making her agry, making her strong enough to fight against Solomon’s hold. But even I wanted him to stop. She was hurt enough.

Her hold lessened. Her entire body trembled. “I came back here for you!” she cried and I could hear the rejection and the heartbreak Aaron’s words had caused her.

“Fight, Bryn,” I rasped, tears falling for her. “Please fight …”

“Oh crap,” a feminine voice I didn’t recognize rang out over the ballroom. “Did the party start without me?”

A slim female sauntered into my line of sight, stopping at my feet and staring down at me with a pout. Her face was tiny like her sisters’. She was dressed in a black mini, black leather thigh-high boots, and a tight tank that bared her midriff. A small, dangling belly button ring of a bejeweled flame flashed in the light. Her hair was long and wavy and the most intense red I’d ever seen. Her slanted eyes were framed by long lashes beneath yellow irises flecked with copper. A light splattering of freckles crossed her nose.

The last sylph. And her timing couldn’t have been worse.

“You ready to receive my gift, Charlie Madigan?” Aaron and Rex stepped forward, but the fire sylph turned on them, eyeing them both boldly. “I suggest you take a step back, fellas. It’s about to get very hot in here.”

She turned to me, cocked her hip, and tilted her head.

“Let them take her,” I forced out, nodding toward Aaron and Rex. My hands were wrapped around Bryn’s arm as she choked me. Her strength had waned and I could feel her surrender as she shook uncontrollably, still in a battle of wills with Solomon. The sylph snapped her fingers.

Aaron stepped forward and placed an amulet over Bryn’s head. She stiffened, her eyes went wide, and she screamed at him in a piercing string of curses. I ducked down, out of her hold, gasping.

Once Aaron and Rex drug Bryn away, I started sweating.

“Name’s Melki. Do you accept my gift?”

“Yes.” I flicked a glance to Emma. “It’s okay.”

Melki followed my gaze. “That your kid?” she asked without taking her eyes off Emma. “Nice dress.”

“Thank you,” Emma responded politely. “And if you hurt my mom”—her tone went flat, completely devoid of emotion—“I will kill you.” Her big brown eyes stayed on the sylph, harder than I’d ever seen. My chest grew tight with emotion.

Melki chuckled. “Kid’s got a little fire in her.”

She turned her attention back to me and lost the smile.

I tensed as energy built around her. The temperature increased. Her hand lifted, palm up. A flame burst from the skin. Her irises glowed fire. Her hand went higher, making a swirling motion with her wrist, which her body followed, turning her into a spinning flame212;one that shot toward me before I could even blink.

It hit me square in the chest, tunneling into my body and burning a path straight to my heart. My back hit the floor. A gasp froze on my lips as the familiar pain/shock of a sudden burn seared a path through every limb, every vein, blood vessel, cell … My eyes stayed open but my vision was lost to a glaze of orange fuzz.

Accept my gift.

I’d become my beating heart. I could see it as though I stared outside of myself. Pumping. Contracting. Expanding. A muscle that frantically worked, that burned, fueled by fear and pain, causing it to speed up at a wild, dizzying rate.

The muscle burst.

There was nothing but silence. No heartbeat. No pain. Nothing.

Water. Air. Earth. Fire. They exist in their purest forms inside of you.

I saw into the dead husk of my body where four tiny lights began to shine.

They are the very essence of Earth, the gifts of this world, and together they create power, that which cannot be seen, but exists all around you. The true power of this world. Nwyvre. The Hidden Element.

As Melki spoke in my subconscious, I watched as the lights came together from different parts of my body and met in my brain, bursting into a rainbow of color, intensifying until a ball of white glowed in my head directly behind the center of my forehead.

Now you see. Open your mind, Charlie Madigan, and see the truth.

I sat up, pulled like a puppet on a string, and opened my eyes. No. That wasn’t quite accurate. My eyes didn’t physically open, yet I saw the ballroom through the white glow in my mind. My vision was filtered through this hidden eye and everything was ringed in white, ringed with the truth.

I searched the wall, finding Bryn as she stood wrapped in Aaron’s hold. Poor Bryn. Inside of her was a haze, the gray shadow of a man—a seething, angry soul lashing out against the barrier of Aaron’s amulet.