But I’m not afraid.
I know I should be. My life is literally hanging on a gust of wind that Audra’s somehow controlling—and she’s clearly some sort of witch or goddess or other impossible creature.
I don’t care.
It feels right up in the dark sky. Natural. Like scratching an itch I didn’t feel until the burning relief rushes through me. Up high, with the wind whipping around me and Audra’s warmth mingling with mine, everything else washes away.
I close my eyes and listen to the wind—and I don’t hear the thundering, whipping sound I expect. I hear the ancient language that belongs to the wind and the wind alone. It whispers of the places it’s been.
Of change.
Of power.
Of freedom.
I want to listen forever. And that’s when I know.
I’m not human.
I have no idea what I am, or what I’m supposed to do with that revelation. But it doesn’t stop it from being true.
A lurch in my stomach rips me back to reality and I open my eyes. We’re falling, fast and hard. I can’t be sure—but I have a feeling the girly scream comes from me.
“Hit the ground running,” Audra shouts in my ear as the dark earth races toward us.
Right. ’Cause moving my feet will stop me from turning into a Vane-splat.
But my options are limited, so when she shoves me away from her and whispers, “Release,” at the same second the wind cocoon unravels, I follow her lead, pumping my legs as my toes graze the hard earth.
I laugh as we both run across the rocky ground as fast as our feet will carry us.
I’m not dead. In fact, I’ve never felt more alive.
I force my legs to a stop and take in the scenery. We’re high in the foothills, with the lights of the desert cities twinkling in the distance and the freeway snaking below. Stark, pointed poles shoot out of the ground in neat rows, with tri-pointed blades spinning at the top.
Windmills.
The San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm.
I’ve driven through it on my rare escapes from this suffocating valley, but I’ve never walked among the enormous turbines. The night rings with the sound of their massive blades slicing the air as the wind shoves against them. Red lights at the top of each tower glow like evil eyes. I let my vision go out of focus as the windmills spin round and round.
Footsteps crunch behind me, reminding me I’m not alone.
“So what am I?” I ask without turning around. I’m afraid to look at her when she says the words that will change my life forever.
“We’re sylphs.”
“Sylphs?” That isn’t the answer I expected. I mean, if I have to be a mythical creature, it could at least be one I’ve heard of. “What the hell is a sylph?”
“That’s what humans call an air elemental.”
“An air elemental?”
“Are you going to keep repeating everything I say as a question?”
I spin to face her. “Uh . . . I’ll stop when you say something that actually makes sense.”
“How’s this? You’re a Windwalker. We control the wind. We’re part of the wind.”
“We’re part of the wind?”
She grits her teeth and I realize I repeated her again. I don’t care. “How can we be part of the wind?”
“The same way humans are part of the earth. When they die, they turn back to dust.”
“So—what?—when we die, we go back to being wind?”
A shadow passes across her face, even in the dim moonlight. “Yes.”
I shake my head, ready to tell her how ridiculous that sounds. But a memory knocks the words out of me: two tangled forms—a little bit like bodies, but mostly they’re just hollow, twisted masses. I don’t remember seeing them in person, but when I was ten I finally got brave enough to Google the grainy photos, hoping it would spark a few repressed memories.
“That’s what happened to my parents—why their bodies were unrecognizable when they found them, isn’t it?” I whisper.
She looks away. “Yes. It can be a slow process sometimes, but eventually there’s nothing left but air.”
So my real parents weren’t human either.
It makes sense—if I’m a sylph, they had to be too.
Would’ve been nice if they’d clued me in on that one. Hey, son—heads up, you’re a Windwalker. Though, maybe they did and I just don’t remember.
I swallow and force my lips to ask the question that’s plagued me for the last ten years. Now that the answer’s finally in my reach, I’m a little afraid to hear it. “What happened to my parents that day, in the storm?”
Audra takes a slow, deep breath before she speaks. “They were murdered.”
Murdered.
The word feels cold and foreign. I always thought their deaths were a fluke.
My hands clench into fists. “By who?”
Her voice is ice when she answers. “His name is Raiden.”
I memorize the name of the man who killed my family. Almost killed me. “Why did he kill them?”