Stormblade 4 C24: Summer Scorcher (2)

24 - Summer Scorcher (2)

Jeff and Yasmin were asleep on the couch in the living room when I got home. The other seats were occupied by a handful of E and D-Rankers—but there were fewer than there’d been at the party last night. They were all exhausted. Even the few who were awake didn’t do more than raise a hand in greeting. I waved back, but didn’t hit the lights or shades, and didn’t wake Jeff up. It had been a long night for everyone.

I wanted to sleep, too.

The elevator rose quickly, but it felt far too slow. The last bits of adrenaline from the fighting were still burning off, leaving me with that dead-limbed, tired-but-wired feeling. I wanted sleep, but what I’d probably get was an hour or two of lying there and thinking while Ellen snored softly next to me. That’d give me time to figure out what I was going to tell her, and how I was going to explain what the core had done to her.

I didn’t have an answer to that, of course. All I had was speculation, and that wasn’t going to be enough.

When the elevator door opened, Ellen wasn’t in bed. She wasn’t asleep. She was in a bathrobe, hair bundled in a towel, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed. Black bags hung under her closed eyes. As she finished whatever she was doing, I sat across from her and waited.

Her eyes flicked open after a minute, and she grinned sheepishly. “Jessie gave me some basic tips for meditating. I couldn’t sleep, so I was trying them out. You won, right?”

I nodded. Then I shook my head. “No, we won. You bought time to regroup for a counterattack. Angelo pushed himself almost to death to drive a wedge into the monsters. And the other S-Rankers helped me get to the boss, then held off the monsters while—“

“So the news shows weren’t lying? You killed it yourself?”

“Yeah. Boss was the wrong word, though. It was an S-Rank monster, but it wasn’t like a portal boss, much less a full Paragon.” I closed my eyes, breathed in, then let it out slowly. “It felt a little incomplete, and it never had a chance.”

The silence stretched for a moment. Then Ellen stood up and walked to the window overlooking Surprise. She stared out into the old, dilapidated houses. I joined her, wrapping my arms around her waist and holding her close. Her hair smelled like shampoo under the towels. “We need a solution for this, Ellen.”

“For my core? It’s fine, Kade. Sarah and I already talked through it. All I need to do is take two or three months off from delving, and it’ll correct itself.” A shocking amount of bitterness dripped from her words. She seemed to notice, because she sucked in a breath and stiffened in my arms. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound…”

“Frustrated?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’d be frustrated, too.”

“I know.” Ellen went quiet for a minute. “That core—that power—was necessary. What it did to my aura was necessary. It’s an A-Rank unique on par with Stormbreak now. If it hadn’t cracked my core, I’d be thrilled about it. But it did. I don’t regret doing it, but I sure as hell regret the consequences.”

“The God of Thunder owes me,” I said quietly. I’ll force him to put you through the same procedure he—“

“You’ll force him?” Ellen snorted.

I nodded.

She stared at me over her shoulder. Her eyes burned for a moment; the frustration, anger, and even fear in them were almost overwhelming. Then they widened slightly, and she shivered out of my arms to look me in the eye. “You’re serious?”

“I am. There’s too much going on here for the God of Thunder not to have benefited from the way the Siege of Phoenix ended. I helped him out, and it cost me. It cost us,” I corrected. “If he wants me to keep helping him, he’ll help us fix this.”

Eugene occasionally intervened at moments like this, and I waited for the God of Thunder to open a portal, or even to talk to me. Nothing. That wasn’t surprising, but it was disappointing. After a moment, I kept going. “I’ve got you, Ellen. Don’t worry.”

She looked worried. But she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace. We stood there, looking out over Phoenix, for a long time. Then she cleared her throat. “I’m not worried, Kade. I’m with you for the long haul, remember?”

She yawned. Then I yawned. The exhaustion hit me like a club over the head, and by the time Ellen dragged me to the bed, and my head hit the pillow, I was out.

◄▼►

When I woke up, it was getting dark outside, and Ellen’s arms were wrapped around me, her head resting on my chest. I let her sleep for a long while, then slowly shifted her over to the pillow and slipped free. She made a noise that was somewhere between cute and furious as I left the bed.

“I’ll be back soon. I need to talk to Jeff, though. I gave him a core like yours,” I said.

“Fine. Be quick, though.” She rolled over and crossed her arms under the sheet.

I nodded. “I will be.”

But first, I needed a shower. We’d have to change the bedsheets, too; I was still wearing most of my battle gear—pants, socks, and undershirt—and it had been through hell—first the centipedes, then the monsters both inside and outside of the city. I stripped down, stared at the laundry basket, then tossed the shredded, ichor and oil-stained clothes in the trash instead. I was an A-Ranker, and one of the perks of the rank was not having to worry about destroying a set of clothes here and there.

Jeff was going to be a stickier problem than Ellen. In a lot of ways, the core was the worst possible thing I could have given him. If it did what Ellen’s did, it’d be a taste of power he’d never be able to have. Worse, I didn’t think he’d be willing to sit back and wait while his teammates—both the four of us and his low-rank teams—put themselves in danger. So, as the cold water poured down on me and I scrubbed centipede guts off my arms and legs, I thought about how to handle it.

Then, when I was finished, I pulled on a T-shirt and pants and headed for the gym.

If Jeff was awake, and he wasn’t with Yasmin, he’d be there. And if he was with Yasmin, I didn’t want to interrupt. Either way, I needed a light workout.

He sat on a bench, staring up at a weight bar with close to seven hundred pounds on it. As I closed in, he sat up, haunted eyes locked on me. “Raul’s dead.”

I nodded. “He is. How are you holding up?”

“Shittily.”

“I bet.”

After a minute, Jeff kept talking. “I know why you’re here, Kade. It’s about the core. I don’t want to talk about it yet, though.”

“Okay.” This wasn’t how the conversation had gone in my head, in the shower. The AC unit hummed in the quiet gym, and I waited.

“You didn’t know Raul that well, did you?”

I shook my head. “He was always pretty quiet. Kept to himself most of the time.”

“He did. I need to talk to his people, figure out when his service is going to be, and get him set up at the Fallen Delvers Memorial. But I don’t want to,” Jeff said. His fists were balled. “Jessie was in here earlier. She said she’d do it—that she was Raul’s guild leader, and she could take care of all the logistics of it. But she’s got her own problems, and she couldn’t help but vent about them. The last thing she needs is more work, Kade.”

“Understood. Do you need me to do it?”

“No. I’ll do it. I just need time, and there’s no time.”

“There’s plenty of time now. The siege is over, the tournament’s done, and I doubt the GC’s got a next move planned,” I said. “Take your time. The whole city’s going to be chaos for a few days while the GC teams re-clear Mesa and start lifting curfews.”

“I know.” Jeff went quiet. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the core. “You should take this back. I don’t want it.”

“I can’t use it.”

“Then give it to the GC or something,” Jeff said. His eyes were wide; they looked scared. I’d only seen Jeff scared when his friends were in trouble. “This isn’t what you think it is, Kade. I’m not afraid of what the core will do to me. I’m afraid of what it’ll do to everyone else after I use it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That core’s got consequences. I saw what Ellen’s did to her. She showed up here with a GC healer. Her core broke.”

“Cracked. Not broke, just cracked.”

Jeff rolled his eyes. “Same thing, just a little delayed. This one won’t break my core. I don’t know what it’ll do, but it won’t be that gentle.”

“So what do we do with it?” I asked. “It was given to me for you, by a God of Thunder-class Paragon. It’s not like I can just give it to someone else. It’s yours.”

“I don’t want it.” Jeff took a deep breath. “Take it, see if one of your Paragons can explain what it does and how to use it safely, and then maybe I’ll take it back. But right now, it feels too empty. It’s hungry, and it wants to feed on us. And Kade? Don’t rush it. I’m in no hurry to use that thing.”

“Okay.” I grabbed a towel and wrapped the freezing, void-grey core up, then tucked the whole package under my arm. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Two things.” Jeff lay back down on the bench. “First, keep your schedule open for the next week or two. We all need to be at Raul’s service. And second, spot me on these lifts.”

I grinned. “Can do.”

◄▼►

By the time Jeff was done with his workout, I had two more people to talk to. The first on the list was Sophia, but that conversation would have to wait. She was back at the GC building with her therapist. It was a better result than I’d expected; she’d been moving like a robot the last time I’d seen her, and if she needed the time to get herself back together and work through Raul’s death, that was totally fine with me. The Desert Wind Guild had the time now.

The second was Jessie.

I found her on her computer, in the guild building’s kitchen. A bowl of soggy, abandoned cereal sat next to her, and her eyes flicked back and forth as she read something off the screen. She was perched on a barstool, and when I walked up behind her, her head was almost as high as mine. She hunched over the screen, then looked at me, forcing her face to clear.

“Whatcha working on, Jess?” I asked.

“Hey, big hero,” she said, grinning. I winced as she punched my shoulder playfully. “Been a busy thirty hours or so for you, huh?”

“Yeah, sure. Seriously, though. What’s got you in a mood?”

“You should take the day off. All of this will be here tomorrow,” Jessie said quickly, shutting her laptop. “It’s just politics, anyway. No big deal.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow.

She stared at me for a handful of seconds, then rolled her eyes. “Okay. Fine. You want it, here it is. The GC wants accountability. From both of us.”

“Both of us?”

“Yep. They want you in front of cameras as a hero. ‘The Unbroken Storm.’ ‘The man who saved Phoenix.’ ‘The tourney champion.’ You name it, it’s all Kade, Kade, Kade.” Jessie sounded less annoyed about it than I expected. That in and of itself was concerning. “And they want to put my feet on the coals.”

“Where’d you learn that old expression?” I asked.

“A book,” Jessie said.

“You read?”

“Online, yes. Shut up and listen. I made a deal with the Crone. Phoenix is going to be a participant in the Ghostmarket for a few years. No big deal. And in return, the Crone pulled a few massive strings like the puppeteer she is.”

“What did you do?”

“The Crone used a little bit of pressure to cut the Carlsbad Portal off from the Paragon sponsoring it, then a little more pressure to convince the portal’s boss to back off. It cost her a little bit of power, but I convinced her that it’d be a good investment, and that Earth—and Phoenix, in particular—had value in her market. The condition for her assistance was our entry into the Ghostmarket as a buyer and seller.” Jessie took a deep breath. “See, no big deal. All I did was save the city.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Jessie, sure. You’re the big hero.”

“Glad you saw the light, Kade,” Jessie snarked. “Anyway, the GC isn’t thrilled about a fifteen-year-old girl making agreements for the whole of Phoenix. Go figure, right? No one trusts me to make good choices. They want me to report exactly what I promised, exactly who I promised it to, and so on. It’s going to be a nightmare, especially because the Crone insists on me making introductions. She’s sending an ambassador over in the next couple of days.”

“Who?” I asked. I already knew the answer.

“Mind Maiden Enolda. The Crone can’t come into our world herself, but that marionette woman isn’t quite as destabilizing.”

I groaned. Enolda was the worst possible ambassador for the GC to meet. I had no idea how that’d go, but it wouldn’t go well. “Okay. What are our options? How long can we delay?”

“A day or two? The GC’s got a lot going on right now, and it’ll take them at least that long to get the city stable. But once that happens, it’s showtime.”

“Right. You’re playing a dangerous game, Jessie. I trust you, but I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do,” Jessie said. She stood up and hobbled over to me, then hugged me. I returned it. “But so are you. We’re in this mess together. Take care of me, and I’ll take care of you, just like we promised Dad.”

I nodded. “Just like that.”

“Great. Now, get your butt back to Ellen.”

“How do you know that’s my next stop?” I asked, eyes widening.

“Because she texted me twenty minutes ago, asking if I’d seen you. Tone’s hard to read over text message, but she sounded like she was running out of patience.”

“Dammit. Thanks, Jessie,” I muttered. Then I headed for the elevator.

Ellen was waiting for me. She was awake, but we retreated to the bed anyway. I had a lot to think about—and a lot of stress ahead of me. Her core. Jeff’s refusal to use his. Raul’s memorial. The ‘you’re a hero now’ meeting with the GC, and Jessie’s much less comfortable one. Mind Maiden Enolda. None of that was going to be easy.

But in the moment, there was only one thing on my mind, and it was the same thing Ellen was thinking. And it wasn’t portals, monsters, or the Governing Council. It was just her and me, and the suite I called home.