Tempest Unleashed (32 page)

I could feel the energy building, feel the power gathering inside of me. I tried to deflect it, threw my arms out wide and sent wind skittering across the surface of the water in a last-ditch attempt to keep from unleashing all the pent-up fury and horror inside of me.

It didn’t work.

“Go!” I told my father and Moku. “Get to the house.”

“You need to come with us!” my father shouted, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “This storm can kill you.”

“It’s my storm,” I shouted, backing down the now-abandoned beach. “It won’t touch me!”

“Tempest!” my dad called as he made a last grab for me and failed, his fingers sliding harmlessly off my elbow.

“Get Moku inside!” I shouted to him, trusting he would do as I asked.

I didn’t know where I was running to, exactly, knew only that I was trying to get away from all the prying eyes and lingering tourists who obviously didn’t know enough to get in out of the rain.

I stopped running about a mile and a half down the beach, at the edge of a sheltered alcove that had been completely cleared out. This was it. I needed to get a grip on the terrible power and rage that would consume me if I let it. Already I felt it churning inside, racing through my blood, lighting me up like a gaudy Christmas display.

Had I learned nothing, then? Had all those months, trying to learn control, just been marking time?

The wind started picking up, blowing hard enough to get the water churning and to send sand flying in all directions. It was okay, I told myself, trying to get back some semblance of control. Moku was fine. Tiamat hadn’t been able to hurt him as she’d wanted to, hadn’t been able to get him to come to her.

But she had tried. She had tried to hurt him, tried to control him, tried to take him. Everything I had done, everything I had given up, had been for nothing. Tiamat was still a threat to my family and I hadn’t been there to protect them.

Hailana had promised me months ago that Tiamat would have no use for my brothers. That, supposedly, neither Rio nor Moku possessed the kind of power I had and therefore wouldn’t be of any interest to Tiamat. Obviously that wasn’t the case. Of course, that was probably why Hailana had lied. Because she’d known there was no way I could possibly build a life under the ocean if my family wasn’t safe.

Just the thought had the power sizzling through my every cell. The wind circled me, whipped around, until I was almost consumed by the energy of it. And by the electricity that flowed into me like it had that time in the ocean, turning me into some kind of semi-conductor.

Feeling like I would be ripped apart at any second, not knowing what else to do, I threw my arms up and sent the current crashing outward. It scorched my fingertips as it exploded from me, rending the sky in half as lightning bolt after lightning bolt slammed into the earth. And still it wasn’t enough. Still I could feel the power swelling, building, until I was all but consumed by it. I didn’t know how to channel this much energy, this much electricity. It made those moments when I’d fought Tiamat’s henchmen seem like nothing, made the storm where I’d nearly killed Kona seem like child’s play.

Standing here on the beach, wind ripping past me, water roiling and churning around me, lightning blistering the earth as thunder boomed overhead, I thought this must be what it felt like to stand in the eye of a category-five hurricane. Grasping desperately for sanity in a world gone crazy around you.

Closing my eyes, I tried to focus, tried to find a way to harness the energy, to bring it all back inside me, but by then it was too huge, too powerful. So instead, I fought to channel it, to send it blasting into the sand, into the earth.

My first attempt knocked me off my feet, threw me five yards back into the rocky walls of the cave. I hit hard enough to knock the breath right out of me, and for long, helpless seconds I just sat there with aching lungs, trying to figure out why the world was going fuzzy around me.

If I passed out, would everything stop? Or would my body just take over? Because at the rate I was going, I would spawn a tsunami—or at least a cyclone. Not willing to take the chance, I forced myself to my feet. Stumbled closer to the water.

“Tempest! Tempest, no!” The words reached me as if from a long distance, and I almost ignored them. Would have ignored them if I hadn’t seen Mark running across the sand toward me.

“Stop!” I screamed, throwing a hand out. The power behind the movement stopped him in his tracks and then slammed him to the ground, as the lightning continued to strike around him. It was like the nightmare with Kona all over again, when he had come to help me and I had accidentally struck him with lightning. That time, the ocean had healed him, but Mark wasn’t selkie. If he came too close, I could kill him.

I started backing away, trying to get as far down the beach as possible. Anything to give Mark a chance to get away. Only he wasn’t trying to move back—he was scrambling toward me. And even though the wind was so strong that he’d lose his footing every few steps, he was gaining ground, refusing to give up.

“Mark, no!” I screamed again, but I don’t know if he heard me or if my warning was lost in the wind that whirled and roared around us.

Terrified, desperate, I turned away, flung my hands toward the ocean, and unleashed everything I had. Energy exploded out of me, shot straight into the water in an outpouring of power that went on and on and on. I could feel Mark struggling through the wind behind me, trying to reach me, but I couldn’t turn around. If I lost focus now, even for a moment, we’d be finished.

Because while the lightning and thunder were dying down a little more with each second that I continued to blast my power into the water, another problem was developing—the waves. They were growing larger and choppier, hitting the beach faster and higher than they ever had before. I tried to pull back, to temper the energy I was leveling into the water, but it was too little, too late.

A few hundred feet out, a huge wall of water was starting to build, each of the waves flowing into it, adding to it, even as it moved closer to shore.
I’m doing this
, I thought in horror, as I watched the swell seethe and grow.

“Holy shit!” Mark said, staring up at what had to be a forty-foot wall of water. “Tempest, we need to get out of here. Now!”

“This is my fault,” I told him.

“It’s just a freak storm.” He tried to grab on, to pull me to his version of safety, but the second he touched me he was knocked straight off his feet. He didn’t fly all the way to the cave, like I had, but he hit the ground several feet away. I wanted to run to him, to check and make sure I hadn’t just electrocuted him.

But the wave was growing even higher, and I had the feeling if I so much as moved, it was going to come crashing down, not just on Mark and me but on our whole neighborhood.

I kept my hands raised, the power funneling straight into the ocean—into the giant tsunami that loomed above us—but I closed my eyes, breathed deep. Tried to clear my mind and center myself the way Kona and Jared and even Sabyn had taught me. It was harder than it had ever been, with not only one of the guys I loved in the line of fire, but also my entire family.

I would not do this to them. I would not hurt one more person that I loved. Not like this, not with the powers that my mother gave me. Cecily had controlled the rampaging energy inside of herself. I could—I would—do the same.

Doing anything else would make me just like Tiamat.

As I calmed myself down—narrowed my attention, controlled my emotions—I became aware of more than my sense of betrayal. More than the rage and the terror, more even than the seductive frenzy of the magic that burned inside of me.

The wind was hot against my face, the sand cool on my toes. I glanced down as I tried to gather enough strength to end this, and saw, at my feet, a piece of sea glass. The same color as the seething heart of the Pacific but no bigger than the average oyster shell, it looked like so many of the pieces on the top shelf of my mother’s cave that it gave me pause. Splintered, for one second, the concentration I had worked so hard not to let falter.

The ocean rumbled, roiled, heavy splashes of water dropping down on Mark and me from the wave I was barely holding back. It brought me around. Then I was reaching down, scooping up the piece of glass and holding it tightly in the palm of my hand. Years of being tossed and tumbled through the ocean had dulled the edges so that I didn’t slice my hand open, but it was still sharp enough to hurt. I barely noticed.

Instead, I was remembering those times in the cave when I had seen my mother’s memories and had wondered how she’d managed to trap them inside the glass and pearls. Something told me this was it. This outburst of power that was almost uncontrollable.

I glanced over at Mark, who was watching me with a combination of awe and fear, and told myself there was no way I was going to mess this up. He’d stuck with me through everything and I would not let him pay for that with his life.

Throwing the glass up in the air as high as I could, I aimed every ounce of magic, of power, I had straight at it. Electricity blasted into the glass, suspending it in mid-air and lighting it up from the inside until the entire world around us was a bright, glowing blue. The sea glass hovered there, a large crack appearing down the center of it, but it didn’t shatter. Instead, it absorbed every ounce of energy I poured in.

Around me, the wind died down, the thunder and lightning stopped altogether, and slowly, so slowly that at first I thought I was imagining it, the wave began to break down. Drop by drop, inch by inch, it began to melt back into the simmering sea.

And still I kept the power flowing straight into the glass, draining myself of magic and emotion and power. Burning myself out in an effort to stop the destruction that still hovered at the tips of my fingers.

I’m not sure how long I stood there, pouring everything I had into that tiny piece of glass. Long enough for exhaustion to replace energy and frustration to replace fear. But in the end, it was worth it. The wave dissipated. The storm died into nothingness. Soon the only reminder of my loss of control was the destruction left in the wake of the storm and the cracked piece of sea glass that dropped harmlessly at my feet.

I bent down to pick it up, but it was burning hot. I wanted to leave the sea glass there, to bury it deep in the sand and pretend the last hour had never happened, but doing so was impossible. I’d sent every drop of power I had into that thing—who knew what kind of memories it would show the next person to handle it?

Ignoring the blister that was rising on my hand from the heat, I held the glass for one second, two, then used whatever strength I had left to launch it as far into the ocean as I possibly could. It soared for long moments before sinking below the still surging waves.

“What was that?” Mark staggered up to me, looking like he’d just run the longest marathon in history—and come in last.

“You knew I was different,” I answered.

“Different, yes. Able to light up a major metropolitan area under your own power, no.” He smiled to show he was joking, but I could see the truth.

I let him pull me into his arms, spent a few minutes drawing comfort from him in a way I never had been able to when I was completely human. But he felt so good. So strong and safe with his heavily muscled arms wrapped around me that I never wanted to leave.

I couldn’t stay here forever, though, much as I wanted to. Not when Tiamat was a threat to everyone and everything I cared about—here on land and in the ocean. There was something deep inside me again, pushing me to hurry. Telling me that something awful was about to happen.

At the same time, though, I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving here. Not now, when I had just found Mark and my family again. Not now, when I had so much to say to my friends and to Rio, who could barely stand the sight of me.

Still, the sense of urgency grew with each second I was on land, until my skin was once again so sensitive that I could barely stand the feel of Mark’s calloused hands resting on my shoulders. Tiamat was up to something. But what was it? What use did she have for my brother?

Unless … unless Hailana had been right all along, and she hadn’t needed Moku. Not really. What she’d needed was Kona and me out of the way for a few days so that she could run unchecked through the ocean, doing whatever she wanted. She would still have to fight Sabyn and Hailana, would still have to fight Kona’s family, but without the two of us she would have a much better shot at wreaking havoc on our clans.

In those moments, everything clicked into place and I knew.

“I have to go,” I told him.

“What? Now?” He reached for me.

I pulled away from Mark. For one long moment he looked devastated. And then his face closed up and he stepped back, letting me know he was as hurt by my leaving as Kona had been a few days earlier by my choosing to stay.

“Will I see you again?” Mark asked stiltedly. “Or is this it?”

“I want to say yes, of course you’ll see me again.”

“But?”

“But this thing I have to do … I don’t know. I promise you, though, if there’s any way for me to come back, I’ll do it.”

Fear for me replaced the hurt on his face. “What are you doing, Tempest? Where are you going?”

I shook my head, then kissed him with all the aching wishes and could-bes that stretched between us. “Tell my dad—” I cleared my throat, tried again. “Tell my dad and my brothers that I’ll miss them.”

The idea of leaving my family here, vulnerable to anything that Tiamat wanted to do to them, killed me. But leaving her out there, knowing she could strike at any time, made it so much worse.

This, what she’d done to Moku, was her calling card, her call to action, and I would not disappoint her. Not now. She’d already killed my mother. She’d nearly killed my brother. There was no way I was letting this go, no way I was leaving her free to attack everyone else I cared about.

I gave Mark one last hug, then ran for the water. When I got there, I turned to find him staring at me, anguish and anger at war on his face. “I love you,” I told him. “I swear, if I can find a way out of this, I’ll be back.”