Fan the Flame Read online

  September Thomas

  Fan the Flame

  The Elemental Gods Book Two

  Copyright © 2020 by September Thomas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  Editing by Fiona McLaren

  Cover art by Natasha MacKenzie

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  To David,

  For seeing the beauty in the mystical

  With blind eyes open wide

  I’m seeing it

  I feel a rise inside me

  It’s untouchable

  Like breathing fire in me

  It’s unforgettable

  Godsmack

  Books by September Thomas

  The Elemental Gods

  Walk on Water

  Fan the Flame

  Chapter 1

  “Give me your passion, give me that fire. I know it’s in there somewhere!”

  The bullwhip of thorns snapped at my chest, but I smoothly blocked it with my rapier. The vines twined around the blade instead, the ice stained red in the setting sun, as Rose ripped it from my hands. She reared back to strike again, a viper crouching in the grass, but I was already in motion, the world swinging upside down, my hand balancing my full weight as I cartwheeled. My arm shot out, a newly-created dagger arrowing from my palm past the flutter that was her translucent wings.

  Her whip coiled around my ankle. I allowed it to pull me up and in as the pixie nimbly dodged my follow-up attack. My back bowed, my teeth bared in a snarl, as I arched over the pixie, a spray of tiny arrows fanning from my hands. She cursed as three lodged deep in her shoulders, the whip unwinding from my leg as she swiped at the trickle of blood on her cheek, an injury inflicted by a fourth.

  “Give me more, Zara, yeah? Make me burn.”

  I couldn’t do that.

  My ankles screamed when I hit the ground, but I brushed the pain aside, arms thrust wide, sweeping high, palms flat as they molded a smooth pane of protective, glassy ice. Poison barbs hit it and tumbled uselessly to the ground. The pixie blurred as the wall liquified, waterfalling to the earth. I barely felt the spray as I splashed through it, charging at her again, twin katanas of ice raised and angled.

  Green skin flashed as she parried my thrusts with elegant flicks of her whip. I released the blades again, shifting into a smooth slide-tackle that wiped her off her feet. A rumble of laughter tumbled from her as she fell, shoulders curling as she hit the ground and rolled. Her wings caught the wind and she flipped to her feet as I tossed her favorite weapon into the shade of a pine tree.

  Her chest heaved, straining against the dozens of leather straps that crisscrossed her chest in a blend of beauty and armor. I braced, fingers curled, knees bent, knowing what was coming. She shook her head, sweat spraying from the ends of the dozens of braids hanging from one side of her scalp, then reached to free the double-edged blade strapped to her back.

  “Is that all you got?” she crowed. “Where’s your imagination? Or did you cut that out of you like you did everything else that made you interesting?”

  Passion. Imagination.

  Words I’d once spoken with reverence; words that had once driven my entire existence.

  Words I wished I could burn along with the rest of my past.

  The katanas in my palms melted away. I wished for the familiar tingles of adrenaline and challenge to curl like smoke in my chest, to fill me like wildfire. Instead, I found a layer of ice seven feet deep and equally numb.

  “You want imagination?” I asked, barely hearing my own words.

  Her lip curled. She spun her weapon, the bluish-gray metal blurring. “Hit me.”

  So I did.

  Torrents of water from four directions smacked into her. The blast should have sent her flying, but it was everywhere, all around her, engulfing her in a bubble of frothy liquid. Inky eyes burned with frustration as she floated here, one hand braced against the icy rim, but I held firm, barely blinking as she twitched. One minute passed, then two. Panic replaced her frustration as she thrashed, smacking the wall again and again. Tiny bubbles spilled from her parted lips. From this angle, the double rows of her shark teeth were visible.

  Only when she went lax did I release my grip.

  Rose smacked the ground in a crumple of limbs and leather, sputtering as she sucked in bellyfuls of air. The suffocating layer of ice beneath my skin barely trembled at the sight of her misery, of her intensity. Rather than linger on the emotion, I approached.

  “You elf,” she wheezed. I held out a hand which she smacked away and rolled to her back. “You really were gonna kill me, yeah?”

  “I considered it.” I crossed my arms as I hovered over her. “But if you had died, that would have made holding my victory over your head for the rest of your life difficult, if not impossible.”

  Her midnight eyes flicked between my aquamarine ones, her brain ticking a million miles a second. The shaved half of her emerald scalp was already starting to dry. When I wondered if I’d actually gone too far, a brilliant smile split her face. She laughed, the sound as smooth and rich as aged whiskey. Her palm smacked the grass.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were heartless,” she finally worked out between gales. “But since you’ve got a heart of a pixie, that would be a mite bit hypocritical.”

  We looked nothing alike, acted nothing alike, yet Rose had declared me her sister-at-heart less than twenty-four hours after crushing the forces of our shared enemy at the lake. The Order, a religion once sworn to protect me and three other teenage Gods of unfathomable power, did nothing but try to kill us.

  The pixie had played a key role in getting me into the position to defeat the general of their armed forces along with a chunk of his army. She now claimed her spot was at my side as an unofficial bodyguard. At only sixteen, she already commanded her own brigade of pixies originating from a commune tucked deep in Australia’s Northern Territory.

  The pixie banged the sides of her hands together, fingers curling in a sign I recognized as an all-clear. The half dozen, war-mongering, killing-machines she lovingly called her sisters slipped from the shadows into the grove. They, too, wore leather and clasped an eclectic array of weapons—everything from butterfly swords and poison barbs to hand-guns and weighty crossbows.

  “Your defenses are perfect,” Rose said, unashamed and unapologetic in her defeat. “There’s not much more I can teach you. Even your grasp on water is incredibly advanced, yeah?”

  She fished a hunk of willow bark the size of a box of gum from her back pocket. Before taking a seat at her side, I snapped my fingers, drying the lake-water from our skin and clothing. Her shoulders slumped when she bit down on the bark, absorbing its powerful healing effects. I would offer to heal her, a key secondary trait of my water magic, but she’d only refuse.

  Pixies respected scars.

  Pain only makes you stronger, she’d chanted at me more times than I could remember. Use emotion to your advantage, was another one she threw in my face at least three times a day. Judging by the angle of her left eyebrow, she was thinking it right now. I shrugged and draped my arms over my raised knees, my hands hanging limply.

  �
��Not today,” I cautioned. “Leave it alone.”

  She sucked hard on the bark one last time before tucking it away. Her tone was bland as she scrubbed at the cut on her face. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “But you really need to break out your fire.”

  I closed my eyes against the dusky light, grinding my teeth. I refused to touch the magic granted to me four weeks ago, the magic represented on the outside curve of my arm as the black outline of a flickering flame. It lined up perfectly beside the matching, cresting wave with which I’d been born.

  That wasn’t to say I wasn’t fully aware of the heat and smoke of the fire magic prowling my veins like a hungry tiger. As tempting as it was to tap into that power, I also remembered how I’d acquired the magic by nearly dying at the hands of the man who led the Order himself. Geoffrey was yet another person who should have been on my side, yet resolutely was not.

  I repressed a shiver. The one time I’d tried to use that magic after the battle by the lake, I’d nearly burned a cabin to the ground. Fire magic was prickly, unpredictable, and wild. I preferred the easy give and take of the water I’d come to master.

  I adjusted again, ignoring the stiff muscles and twinges of pain that never seemed to fully heal. “I’m not discussing this with you.”

  “You’re not discussing it with anyone.” Rose toyed with one of her braids.

  “And that’s my call.” I winced at the snap in my tone. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.” She swatted at my arm. “But you also need to know it’s difficult to watch. You’re a shadow of—”

  The cry of a hawk pierced the skies, thankfully cutting off the end of that sentence. The six-foot wingspan of the majestic bird was black against the purple of dusk. It released another shriek, wings pulling in for a dive. Rose and I were used to the display, but the other pixies clustered, silver glinting between their hands in the casual exchange of bets.

  The arrow that was the bird of prey gained speed, its body growing larger as it angled for the clearing among the greenery of oaks and pines. Its breast brushed a branch, shaking the leaves as it speared the foliage. When it appeared it would crash land, its wings flared wide. It morphed and the shadow of a human touched the ground. Undaunted, the boy tossed back his shoulder-length hair and snatched up a bag strapped to his ankle. More silver exchanged hands as the pixies muttered, their long, dragonfly wings fluttering in the breeze.

  “Nearly brained yourself that time, yeah? Maybe next time don’t cut it so close,” Rose called, pulling me to my feet with her. Standing, she was about a foot shorter than my five-and-a-half feet.

  “I had complete command of the situation,” the God of Air retorted in his usual arrogant way as he cinched the ties at his waist. He left his feet and chest bare. “The Thunderbird beat some measure of control into my poor, fragmented body.”

  Rose circled him, sniffing like a dog. “It appears you’re in one piece.”

  “Little do you know.” Joseph slid his glasses up his nose, blinking owlishly behind the thick lenses. “One more day of training and It might have done me in. No one will be more thankful than me to finally board Ryder’s likely ill-acquired airplane.”

  Rose chuckled as she snatched up her whip from the shadows. “As long as it gets us to Egypt in one piece, I’ll be happy,” she said, winding its length around her hips.

  “Speaking of Egypt,” Joseph trailed off as he surveyed the clearing, full lips quirking when he spotted me, “there she is, our First and almighty savior. How blessed we are to stand in her brilliance.” I shot him a glare as he crossed the grove in three quick steps. He pulled my stiff body against his in a hug that was less a greeting and more a check of the day’s bruises. He smelled like sunshine and sweat. When he assured himself I was, in fact, in one piece, he batted me away.

  “Never have I been so ready to leave these woods,” Joseph proclaimed with a heavy sigh. I shook my head and snagged my long braid of silvery hair, pulling it over my shoulder to run the tufted end across my collarbone. I was used to his stilted and overly formal speech. He’d grown up around books, with very little human interaction. “Thank the stars you finally felt the bond of our long-lost sibling. I wasn’t jesting about the bird breaking me down.”

  Over the past four weeks, we’d thrived in relative peace. By all accounts, the Order had gone back to whatever it was it normally did following the battle that resulted in the deaths of two men who ran it. We hadn’t heard so much as heard a whisper of retaliation. That had given Joseph and me time to train as I worked to figure out where the Gods of Earth and Fire might be hiding. As the First of Four, it was my birthright to track them down and bring them to heel. For some reason, according to archaic rules crafted by ancient fey and their Gods thousands of years ago, the four of us were needed to stop an impending apocalypse.

  However, no matter how much I’d poured over the stupid, foldable map one of the pixies had snitched from Finn, the kelpie tasked with making sure my decisions didn’t get too reckless, I couldn’t sense my remaining two counterparts. That had changed last week when a thin, golden thread flared in Egypt. Joseph had wasted no time telling me that’s where we would likely find the God of Earth since the Lost City was apparently located somewhere in its vast deserts.

  My pulse fluttered at the thought of leaving this secluded peace in northern Wisconsin, of venturing into the world of uncertainty once more. This was the closest I’d felt to safety since I’d learned that magic wasn’t only a buzz word on a television show. I wasn’t sure I was ready to release its reins, yet.

  “We should probably get back to the village,” I said, bypassing everything I wanted to say, everything I knew he wanted me to say. Joseph’s face fell, and I swallowed, tucking away the whisper of guilt. “I bet our goodbye party will start soon. I know you hate being late.” Like quicksilver, his grin returned, and I swatted his arm before he could hook it around my shoulders.

  “You know me too well.” He hooked his thumbs in his pockets as he wandered over to the girls. “Besides, I’m starving.”

  The pixies chorused their agreement as they gathered their things, their dark skin turning their bodies to little more than shadows against the night. Stars twinkled overhead as they ambled in a cluster toward the edge of the grove.

  When she realized I wasn’t following, Rose stopped. “Come on, yeah? You did well today. Might as well celebrate a little before everything changes.” Her Australian accent was thicker tonight as if she were truly ready to let loose and exchange her weapons and armor for liquor and dresses.

  “I won’t be long.” I flicked my thumb over my shoulder at the lake. “I need a minute to myself.” The pixie ran her hands over the twist of vines and thorns at her waist, caught between her dedication to my safety and her desire to take a night off.

  “I promise, I’ll be right behind you. I’ll even start a fire if I need help,” I joked. Her brow furrowed, but, after another pass of her hands, her head dipped.

  “Five minutes,” she warned. “Any longer and I’m coming back for you.”

  I offered a silent salute, then turned to the water so I wouldn’t have to see her leave. In the dark, it was difficult to make out much in the reflection of the glassy surface. It reminded me of a different body of fresh water, one where I’d first learned to embrace myself and my magic. Except this time, I could feel the heartbeats of fish rippling against the current and the subtle drag of weeds across the muddy bottom.

  I waited, still as stone, listening to the bugs trill and chirp, until I couldn’t sense the presence of my friends any longer. For the first time in weeks, I was alone. My fingers laced together and I swayed on my feet, my pulse thudding faster as the enormity of what was happening finally sank in. The sweat froze on my skin.

  I was going to dive right back into the insanity that was my destiny. I was going out into the broad, cruel world and see what awaited me there. Despite our p
recautions, I was a God, and I would be recognized. I was one of the four beings who brought magic back to the world, after all. And once I was out in the open, the Order would be forced to recognize my presence—likely by attacking again. And that was merely the recognition of one organization.

  Then there was the entire world to think about.

  The survival of humans and fey alike was on my shoulders.

  Mine.

  For the first time, I acknowledged I was afraid of what might happen, afraid of who I might become along the way. I feared that I might not have the answers, that my abilities might not be enough.

  The sheet of numbness coating my soul cracked against the wild, incessant pounding of my terror, of my self-doubt, of my deepest insecurities. My hands trembled as I stared down at the water. I clenched them tight, but that only made my arms shake. My jaw ached around my clenched teeth.

  I didn’t want to face the Order again, didn’t want to become the “savior” that so many people needed me to be. I was just a seventeen-year-old girl caught up in a whole lot of crazy.

  Heat flared in my belly, chased by a fistful of ice, and that first crack in my soul splintered, smaller fractures radiating across the surface. With each fracture, came a fresh memory, a foreign emotion restrained for far too long. The swamp of it threatened to suck me under as it thrashed and boiled inside of me. My fire magic leaped at the chaos, the red strangling the blue of water.

  I remembered Geoffrey’s outstretched hands, the flash of dragonfire bursting from his palms. I shuddered, recalling the agony of my skin igniting, smelling my burning hair and flesh. The bitterness of wanting to die had been so consuming it seemed incredible I hadn’t succumbed.

  Another fracture, another inferno—this one also caused by the Order and its helicopter whirring over my childhood house, dropping ignition fluid on the roof. My parents had been trapped inside.

  The cracks spread quickly now, a torrent of memories racing along with them.