On the way back to camp, her exhausted legs were the only thing distracting her from the riot of emotions inside her. Roar heard a shrill whistle break through the trees, followed by the low, vibrating sound of a horn. Locke cursed loudly behind her, and she could no longer pretend he wasn’t there. She spun around, and his eyes met hers.
He reached out to grab her, and she swung her arm away before he could make contact.
“Storm coming. We have to get back.”
They ran through the trees, gnarled branches scraping at her arms. When she emerged into open air, her head whipped backward so fast she would likely be sore tomorrow. But the sky was … fine. A little dull for this soon after sunrise, and a smattering of clouds hung above them, but they didn’t appear dark, nor did Roar see any sign of rotation or skyfire. She spun around, searching for what the hunters called storms of tide. There was none of the fog Locke had quizzed her on. No dust storm or strong winds that she could detect. There was nothing at all.
Locke skidded to a stop behind her, and she turned to see the same confusion cross his face. But when the horn blew a second time, he took off toward camp again. They’d run far enough down the bending river that the crew was nowhere in sight. And it became clear within moments that the relentless, punishing pace Locke set in their workouts wasn’t even him at full speed. He’d been taking it easy on her, and now he was pushing himself so hard that Roar couldn’t keep up, not even when she urged her limbs to their limits. She chased after him, her lungs threatening to rebel and collapse.
When they rounded a bend and the camp came into sight, everyone was in motion. They’d already packed up. Ransom and Sly worked to calm the panicking horses. Duke and Bait were in the Rock, the top of the carriage still open as they fiddled with different instruments. Jinx was pacing, apparently waiting for them, and she ran to meet them halfway. Roar knew she should be afraid. She was about to face a storm for the very first time, but her earlier anger blocked out the fear.
The crystal tucked beneath Roar’s tunic went from warm to blisteringly hot. She sucked in a breath and tugged it up by the leather strap to keep it off her skin.
“What is it?” Locke asked Jinx as they covered the last of the distance to camp.
“No clue,” Jinx said. “We were all eating breakfast when the instruments went haywire. Temperature dropped so fast Bait thought the gauge was broken. Pressure is all over the place, rising and falling like nothing I’ve ever seen. The storm crystal is measuring at the hottest level. Whatever is coming, it’s packed with magic.”
They pulled to a halt and Locke nodded, his expression blank as the sky. “Roar, in the Rock. Now.”
“What? But there’s nothing even happening. I can—”
“I said now.”
She fisted her hands until her nails bit painfully into her palms.
“I can handle this. I know—”
He gripped both of her arms, pulling until Roar was on her tiptoes. “This is not a discussion. You get in there, or we drop you off the next time we’re near a town. Your choice.”
She batted his hands away, rage bubbling up so fast in her chest that she nearly attacked him. She wanted to … with a ferocity she had never felt, not even back in the water. Roar was not a violent person. Or perhaps she hadn’t been before. Before she’d left her whole life behind, abandoned her mother, and thrown herself on the mercy of this brutal world for the slimmest chance that something might change.
She looked at Locke, felt his fingers pinching her arms, and rage replaced her lungs. She screamed something halfway between words and a wail. Locke’s face went slack with surprise, and only his quick reflexes saved him from the claw of her fingernails. He cursed, and his arms banded around her middle, locking her elbows against her waist. Roar kicked and yelled and dug her fingers into his forearms. He picked her up, burying his head in her neck to protect his face. She wrenched her body in different directions as he barked out commands.
“RANSOM! JINX! SLY! It’s on you. Spread out. I don’t know what’s coming, but be ready! Be quick! Be smart!”
Then he hauled her, hissing like a wildcat, toward the Rock. She clawed and punched and kicked, and when her foot connected hard with his knee, he went down. She broke free, and for a moment her mind was filled only with thoughts of destruction—of crushing and dismantling Locke and everything that surrounded her. This rage … it was bottomless. A vast, empty nothing that would suck up every shred of happiness in her, bleed her dry until nothing was left but hurt and the desire to hurt in return. Punish, it whispered. Punish them all.
Locke stood to challenge her once more, and over his shoulder Roar saw the sky yawn night into the day, black pouring from blue like blood from a wound. A slim, spinning funnel reached for the ground, and she swore the dust from the earth leaped up to meet it. It punched downward, fast and fierce, and touched down less than two hundred paces in the direction Locke and she had come from. It landed near the tree line, ripping up roots that had probably spent centuries burrowing into the earth, as if they were little better than the weak, worn stitching on her clothes.
Roar’s heart was beating so fast, and between the rage and fear, she felt like she might split in two. Her body jerked and twisted with a desperation that she didn’t understand.
Locke cursed. “Everyone—anchors now!”
One by one, the storm hunters lifted what looked like small crossbows attached to their hips, shooting iron arrows into the earth with long ropes uncoiling from a leather pouch on their harnesses. Something thunked next to her, and she saw similar arrows being shot from each corner of the Rock, securing it to the earth.
Distracted, she didn’t notice Locke coming until he picked her up and hurled her over his shoulder. The fury pushed back to the forefront of her mind, swallowing up her panic, and she beat at his back as he climbed the ladder on the side of the Rock. He pitched her none too gently inside. Jumping in after her, he slammed the hatch at the top shut. For a moment, Roar was disoriented by the chaos inside the vehicle. Dials spun and something else rang with a shrill squeal. There were maps piled precariously on a small table in the center, and Duke sat in a chair bolted to the floor near the front, where most of the tools and apparatuses appeared to be. Another seat was placed near the back by a huge metal basin like the cauldron of some fairytale witch. Beneath her was a glass floor that revealed metal pipes and gears that sat motionless. The space felt too small, and she readied herself to fight harder, scream louder; but before she managed, a hard body slammed into hers, forcing her down on the floor. That set her screaming again, and the sound echoed painfully in her ears.
Roar fought, but Locke’s body lay fully atop hers, taller and broader and heavier. Her teeth found the round, muscled mass of Locke’s shoulder, and she bit down, screaming into the thick leather vest he wore. He grunted at the attack, but made no other sound.
“Calm your mind,” Locke growled.
Over Locke’s shoulder, her eyes fixed on the twister through the domed glass at the front of the Rock. She thought it had been terrifying before, but now it was as dark as she imagined death to be, filled to the brim with debris, like a gaping maw, shoveling itself full enough to burst. And the more that thing ate, the blacker her anger became, until she snapped her teeth at Locke like she was an animal instead of the Princess of Pavan.
This was … not right. This was not her. And even though she told herself to stop, even though she could feel tears tracking down her face and shame filling her belly, nothing changed.
She was a monster. And monsters had to be contained.
Roar took one last look at the looming twister, saw Ransom’s bulky body and bald head moving toward it, and she knew that she was endangering everyone by distracting Locke.
“Knock me out,” she said through gritted teeth.
“What?” Locke panted, winded by the sheer force it took to keep her in check.
“They need you,” she growled. “Knock. Me. Out.”
He stared at her, brown eyes wide and intense. His long hair had escaped its tie and hung in chunks between them. He hesitated, and without any conscious thought, Roar reared upward, trying to head butt him. He was quick, but she still caught him in the chin. Pain reverberated from her forehead, and his chin split, dripping blood between them. She cried out, even as she took advantage of his momentary distraction to work one hand free. She reached for his hair, the long waves that she’d admired more often than she cared to admit. She gripped it without care and yanked hard. He hissed, but his only retaliation was to try and capture her hand once more. Then after another particularly hard pull on his hair, Duke came into sight over them.
Roar had a brief moment to sigh in relief before he swung a long, skinny glass bottle down and smashed it against her head.
Then she surrendered to the black. Where there was no rage. No fear. No twister.
There was nothing at all, but peace.
* * *
Blood ran from a cut near Roar’s hairline, and her fierce expression went blank with unconsciousness. Locke swung around, gripping the front of Duke’s shirt and dragging the old man up onto his toes.
“Why did you do that?” he growled.
“Because someone had to. I’ve never seen someone react to a storm like that, but I know she would have only hurt herself trying to hurt you.” Even in the face of Locke’s wrath, the old man was stoic and calm. “And you’re the torque specialist. They need you out there.”
Locke wanted to argue, but the winds howled like bloodthirsty hounds, and the Rock shook forcefully even with the anchors down.
“Fine,” he growled. “Help me move her.” Together they carried Roar to the back of the Rock, and Locke found a towel to cushion her head. He hesitated a moment longer, but one glance outside the glass told him there was no time to wait. Duke pulled the lever that lowered a metal shade over the glass dome at the front of the Rock, blocking their view. Locke opened the sliding door at the bottom of the Rock, grabbed a bag of the enchanted jars they used to capture magic, and dropped into the narrow space between the Rock and the earth. He plucked the horn he carried from the pouch on his left hip and blew it hard to signal the hunters to retreat.
He knew his crew well enough to know that they had been focused on weakening the twister, not dissipating it. They would have been using opposing winds to slow the rotation. Jinx would be using her abilities as an earth witch to strengthen the surrounding trees so that the twister did not gain any more deadly debris.
They could have dismantled that twister fairly quickly, but they could not siphon off raw magic unless they got to the storm’s heart.
Jinx rolled into the space beneath the Rock, panting heavily, and Ransom squeezed under a moment after her. Sly was so silent that he didn’t realize she was already there, her short form tucked beneath the Rock horizontally above his head, until she said, “One minute out. I tried to slow the winds, but the moment I broke away to come here, they flared back to top speed.”
“It’s brutal, this one,” Ransom said. “Not that big, but the magic is potent. Even mesmerized me for half a second at the beginning.”
Locke cursed. Ransom had some of the strongest mental guards of any of them. It didn’t bode well that the twister had gotten through his defenses.
He opened the bag he’d brought with him and handed a jar to each of the three hunters. Then he rapped on the metal shell of the Rock above him and the sliding door opened, revealing a grinning Bait.
“We ready?” the teen asked, the Stormheart from his thunderstorm affinity already in his hand.
Locke nodded and said, “Good luck. Fast feet, novie. If you get killed, I’m going to be unhappy.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Bait gave a quick salute, then slid the door closed. A moment later, they heard the top hatch open, and Bait hit the ground running, on the far side of the Rock. There was a crescendo of noise in the cyclone’s scream, and the wind picked up, the earth trembling in response. It had taken the bait all right.
Storms were fierce, and while they displayed intelligent behavior on occasion—lashing out when threatened, zeroing in on threats, even chasing prey—they didn’t have the senses that humans had. Locke had always imagined they were more like bats, who used sound to map the world around them, only storms used wind or rain or whatever tools they had at their disposal. And when Bait took off, Stormheart in hand, filling it with his magic, the twister could not tell the difference between Bait and an actual thunderstorm, but it rushed toward him to investigate.
Locke looked at his team, finding three clear and focused sets of eyes. They were ready. He waited until the first wall of the twister was close enough that the ground buckled and jerked beneath their backs. “Ready,” he said, tensing his muscles in preparation to move. The Rock lurched when the wall hit, and debris battered at the sides. They covered their eyes to keep them free of dirt. After a few agonizing moments of deafening sound, the wall passed, settling them into temporary stillness.
“Now,” he barked, and each hunter had rolled out from beneath the Rock into the relative safety of the eye.
Hovering just above their heads was the heart of the twister. Rotating in a miniature version of the real thing, a funnel pulsed with glowing black light—like dense smoke lit from within. Because there was no wind in the eye, it couldn’t sense them, at least not if they were careful. And at the moment, he knew it was focused on the other storm it sensed in the vicinity—whether it thought the other storm was friend or foe, he didn’t know or care as long it stayed distracted. Jinx stepped up first, lifting the jar she had enchanted to draw in magic. As an earth witch, her enchantments were the strongest he’d ever seen, thanks to her natural connection to nature, of which storms were a part. When he had first joined Duke’s crew, they’d had a fire witch. Hers had been good enough to keep the magic in the jar once they’d skimmed some of the excess energy swirling around the storm’s heart. But with Jinx’s enchantment, all she had to do was get the jar close and a smoky tendril of magic peeled away from the small spinning funnel and floated down into the jar, creating an even smaller funnel of its own. A cork formed from nowhere, stoppering the jar and sealing it shut. That was another added bonus of Jinx’s earth magic. Jinx blew them a cocky kiss and rolled beneath the Rock and out of sight. As Sly stepped up toward the heart, the eye began to move past the Rock, cutting off their simplest escape route. But it was no matter. They hadn’t all planned to get out that way. And Jinx could continue her efforts to weaken the storm on the outside.
The enchantment on the jar called forth another tendril for Sly’s jar, and once more a cork appeared, completing the job. But when Ransom stepped up to fill the third jar, the sound from outside the eye pitched higher, and the twister dug in harder to the earth, turning up mounds of soil below them. The storm stilled and the funnel narrowed around them. Sly narrowly missed getting caught up in the enclosing wall of wind and debris.
“Out of time,” Locke yelled. They would have to settle for only two jars.
Almost as if in response to Locke’s call, the storm began moving again, but this time the winds shifted and it began tracking back toward the Rock. He cursed and gestured a hand at Ransom and Sly for them to attack. Sly didn’t have a twister affinity, but her wind Stormheart lent her some influence over the wind rotating around them, and she tried to slow it down.
Ransom and Locke fixated on the storm itself, each simultaneously pulling their twister Stormhearts from their belts. The magic flared to life, filling up Locke’s chest with energy; it sharpened his eyesight, allowing him to see and feel the entirety of the rotating column around him. The twister glowed a sickly greenish black, and he focused on the wall of wind next to him, shifting quickly on his feet to remain inside the eye even as the storm moved. His feet sped to a run as the twister picked up speed, and he knew they had to take this thing down now. He took a deep breath and, with a scream, he threw out his hands, sending out every bit of magic in him, amplified by the Stormheart he held. It slammed into the wall ahead of him, slicing it open and forming another wall of translucent light. The howling winds slammed into that wall, and the shape of the tornado warped, trying to continue spinning despite the disturbance.
Locke heard Ransom bellow behind him, and the walls of the twister shuddered again. Wind breached the eye as the circular rotation broke apart. For a moment, there was no rhyme or reason to the movement of the wind around them. It was everywhere, moving in every direction, and dust filled his vision. Something hard lanced his shoulder, and he was thrown sideways. He fell to one knee and planted a hand on the earth to keep himself from sprawling completely. Before he could force himself to stand again, the terrible roaring noise faded away and the winds dissipated, curling back to the gray sky above them.