I’m still not sure how I’m going to handle the whole violencemakes-me-vomit thing, but if I’m ever supposed to take down Raiden, I’m going to have to start standing up and fighting.
“What are you doing?” Gus asks as I dive and touch down in the middle of the desert. “Is this where we’re going?”
I don’t answer, calling one Easterly, one Northerly, and one Southerly to my side and coiling them around each other to make a wind spike. It’s different from the way Audra taught me, but over the last few weeks I’ve learned they’re stronger this way. One of each wind.
I reach out my hands and call the Westerly I’m missing.
“So you can control the fourth wind,” Gus says, staring at the draft as it swirls around my waist.
“You thought I couldn’t?”
“I’d been starting to wonder.”
I roll my eyes and weave the Westerly around the wind spike, ordering the drafts to converge.
The gusts spin to a blur, twisting out of my grasp and hovering above my head as a crack splits down the center. Gus covers his head like he expects the spike to explode. But the dull outer shell simply rolls away, leaving a gleaming deep-blue spike with sharp points at each end and a glinting sheen.
“Whoa,” Gus breathes as he reaches slowly toward it. “Can I?”
I nod and he hesitates a second before he curls his fingers around it. “Crap it’s like . . . solid.”
I can’t help laughing. “That’s the power of four.”
“I guess.” He slices it through the air a few times before he turns to me. “You realize I’m never giving this back, right?”
“Oh really?”
I whisper, “Come,” in Westerly and the spike launches out of his hand and floats straight into mine.
“You were saying?”
Gus blinks. “Okay, wow. That’s pretty damn impressive.”
“I’m glad you think so, because I’m going with you to the Gales. I’m tired of being fussed over and shuttled around like I’m some delicate little flower they have to shelter.”
“No one thinks you’re a flower, Vane. We’ve all smelled you after training.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not going to hide in the sand anymore either— and you can try and talk me out of it, but we both know that’s a waste of time. So let’s just skip that part and go get your dad.”
He still doesn’t look convinced, so I offer the one thing I know will win him over. “I’ll make you your own special wind spike. You won’t be able to command it, but I’ll keep track of it for you.”
I hurtle the spike into a cactus and the thorny plant explodes, showering us with slimy cactus goo.
“It didn’t unravel,” Gus mumbles, pointing at the wind spike lying in a puddle of greenish slime.
I call the spike back to me and hand it to him.
He stares at it for a few seconds before he slips it through the strap of his windslicer scabbard. I weave another spike for myself, wishing I’d worn a belt with my shorts. I guess this is why the Gales keep wanting me to wear a guardian uniform.
“Okay,” I say, ripping a hole in my pocket and slipping the spike through. “Armed and ready. Now let’s go find Feng.”
Gus nods and tangles himself in a group of nearby Easterlies. “This time you follow me.”
He leads me into the mountains, over a forest of spiky, gnarled Joshua trees.
I keep searching for a change in the winds or a storm in the distance. But everything stays bright and clear and normal.
Until Gus spots a smear of red on the ground.
He takes us down to an area I remember hiking in with my family. A garden of weird green, tubey plants that look kinda like what would happen if palm trees and cacti hooked up and had a bunch of bristly babies. I’m careful to avoid the white thorns that almost seem to reach for me as we make our way to the red-stained cactus.
“It’s his blood,” Gus says quietly as he reaches up and touches a broken stem. “This must be where he grabbed the piece he sent me.”
“But I don’t hear his echo in the air,” I remind him as he turns away to wipe his eyes. “So he’s still alive.”
Gus nods, sucking in a breath. “We should find the Gales. Os chased the Stormers southeast.”
I can hear the nearby drafts whispering the same thing—and the wind isn’t supposed to lie. And yet . . .
There’s one draft singing a completely different song.
I call the Westerly to my side, letting it fill the air with its warning about a hostage heading north into a valley of death. And when I listen to the other winds again I realize there’s no melody to their song. They whisper the words with no life or energy.
“I think the Stormers did something to the winds,” I say, doublechecking the Westerly to make sure I’m not going crazy. “This Westerly says Feng was taken to Death Valley.”
Gus turns his palms northward, concentrating so hard that a deep line forms between his brows. “I can’t find his trace that way. Can you?”