Chapter 15 #2
Another burst of gunfire erupted from the treeline, closer this time.
I felt the bullets tear through the air above us, felt Ben’s electromagnetic shield falter as the strain of maintaining it pushed him toward his limits.
We were running out of time. If we didn’t do something in the next few minutes, the mercenaries would overwhelm us, and everything my father had just sacrificed would be for nothing.
I looked down at him — at the man I’d spent seventeen years hating, seventeen years mourning, seventeen years trying to understand.
He’d left me. He’d missed my graduations and my heartbreaks and all the small moments that make up a life.
He’d watched from the shadows instead of standing in the light where I could see him.
But he’d also protected me. In his own broken, inadequate way, he’d done everything he could to keep me safe. And now he was bleeding out on the forest floor because he’d thrown himself in front of a bullet meant for my mother.
I’d been holding back ever since the phoenix merge, ever since I’d learned what I was capable of and what it might cost me to use that power without restraint.
The dimensional fire that lived in my blood was dangerous — I knew that, had seen what happened when I pushed too hard, had felt the way it threatened to burn away everything that made me human.
So I’d been careful. I’d rationed my abilities like a miser hoarding gold, afraid of what might happen if I truly let go.
But my father was dying. My mother was sobbing. And the men who had done this were still out there, still advancing, still threatening everyone I loved.
I stood up.
“Sidney, what are you — ” my grandmother began, but I wasn’t listening anymore.
I reached for the ley line.
Not carefully this time, not with the cautious, measured approach I’d been using since the merge.
This time, I grabbed it with both hands and pulled, drinking in the dimensional energy like a woman dying of thirst finally finding water.
It poured into me, golden and vast and ancient, the accumulated power of millennia, the fire that had burned since before the mountains were young.
The Dragon felt me do it. I sensed its attention shift, its massive consciousness turning toward the tiny speck of awareness that was me, recognizing the piece of its own fire that lived in my blood.
For one terrifying moment, I thought it might strike me down, might decide I was just another human meddling with forces beyond my understanding.
But instead, it gave me more.
The power that flooded through me was beyond anything I’d experienced before — beyond the phoenix merge, beyond the Halloween ritual, beyond every desperate channeling I’d ever attempted.
It filled every cell of my body, lit up pathways I hadn’t known existed, turned my scars from faint traces of gold into blazing lines of pure light.
I felt my feet leave the ground, felt my hair lift around my face in a corona of static electricity, felt my voice emerge as something barely human when I opened my mouth.
“Get away from my family.”
The mercenaries were still advancing, still firing, still convinced that their weapons and their training gave them the advantage. They didn’t understand what they were facing. They couldn’t.
I raised my hands, and the world bent around me.
It wasn’t electromagnetic interference this time, wasn’t the focused disruption I’d used against surveillance equipment and targeting systems. This was older and stronger, the raw force of dimensional energy expressing itself as pure kinetic impact.
A wave of pressure rolled outward from where I stood, invisible but irresistible, carrying with it the weight of ancient mountains and sleeping dragons.
The first mercenary was lifted off his feet and thrown backward into a tree trunk.
I heard the impact, heard the breath driven from his lungs, heard his weapon clatter to the ground next to his unconscious body.
The second and third went down together, caught by the edge of the wave and sent tumbling across the clearing like leaves in a hurricane.
The fourth — the one who had shot my father — tried to run, tried to disappear back into the trees, but I wasn’t feeling merciful.
I reached out with my awareness, found the thread of his bioelectric signature, and pulled.
He came flying backward through the air, his arms pinwheeling, his scream of terror cut short when I slammed him into the ground at my feet.
He lay there gasping, his rifle somewhere behind him, his eyes wide with a fear that would have satisfied me deeply if I’d had any room left for petty emotions.
“The electromagnetic weapon,” I said. My voice still didn’t sound like mine. It was too resonant, too layered, as if multiple versions of myself were speaking in harmony. “Where is it?”
He stared up at me, his mouth working soundlessly.
Blood trickled from his nose and ears, the burst capillaries evidence of the force I’d exerted to bring him down.
Behind me, I could feel my family watching — my mother still pressing her hands against my father’s wound, Ben on his knees with exhaustion, Emily and Priya frozen in the act of providing first aid.
“I asked you a question.”
“B-back at the vehicles,” the mercenary stammered. “Command unit, in the back. It’s — it’s too big to carry, they had to — ”
I released him and let him slump to the wet ground, where he lay moaning.
The power was still singing through me, demanding more, demanding that I ride this wave of fire to its natural conclusion and burn away everything that threatened the people I loved.
It would be so easy. Gregory’s mercenaries, his drilling equipment, his entire operation — I could feel it all through my connection to the ley line, could sense exactly where to strike to make it all stop.
But somewhere beneath the fire, I was still Sidney Lowell, still the woman who had chosen to offer Sonya Rosenthal a chance at redemption instead of the vengeance she deserved. I was still the guardian who had sworn to protect, not destroy.
I let the power go.
It drained out of me in a rush, leaving me hollow and shaking, my knees buckling as the normal laws of physics reasserted themselves.
Ben caught me before I could hit the ground, his arms wrapping around me with a strength that seemed impossible given how depleted he’d been moments before.
His scars were blazing silver-blue against my gold, our bioelectric fields tangling together in a feedback loop that steadied us both.
“Sidney.” His voice was raw with concern. “Sidney, are you okay?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question.
The display of power had cost me something — I could feel it, a hollow space inside where the fire had burned too bright — but I was alive, and my family was alive, and the mercenaries were scattered across the clearing in various states of unconsciousness.
“My dad,” I said instead of answering. “Is he — ”
“Emily and Priya are working on him.” Ben helped me stumble toward the rocky outcrop where the others had taken shelter. “They’ve slowed the bleeding, but he needs real medical attention. Soon.”
I knelt beside my father, ignoring the way my legs threatened to give out beneath me. His eyes were closed now, his breathing shallow, but his hand found mine when I took it, his grip surprisingly strong for a man who’d lost so much blood.
“That was…impressive.” His voice was thin, but I heard the smile in it. “Didn’t know you had that in you, Sid.”
“Neither did I.” I squeezed his fingers, felt the coolness of his skin, the irregular rhythm of his pulse beneath the surface. “Just hold on, okay? We’re going to get you out of here.”
“Been holding on for seventeen years.” He coughed, and a fleck of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth — not a good sign, not good at all. “Waiting for…for the right moment to come back.”
“Dad — ”
“I know I did it wrong.” His dark eyes opened, finding mine with an intensity that made me ache for him. “Left when I should have stayed. Watched from the shadows when I should have been in the light. Made excuses…for cowardice.”
“You weren’t a coward.” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them, before I could examine whether I actually believed them. “You were trying to protect us.”
“I was protecting myself.” His voice was fading, his grip on my hand weakening. “From having to watch you face things I couldn’t fight. From feeling helpless. That’s not…that’s not the same thing.”
I thought about all the years of anger, all the nights I’d lain awake wondering why my father didn’t love me enough to stay.
All those canceled checks in my grandmother’s files, the surveillance network he’d built, the way he’d engineered Ben’s arrival in Silver Hollow to give me the ally he couldn’t be himself.
And now he’d taken a bullet for my mother, making that sacrifice without hesitation when the moment demanded it.
“I forgive you.”
The words surprised me as much as they seemed to surprise him. His eyes widened slightly, and for a moment I saw something break in his expression — a wall coming down, a defense he’d maintained for so long that he’d probably forgotten it was there.
“Sidney….”
“I forgive you,” I said again, and this time the words felt solid, felt real, felt like something I actually meant.
“For leaving. For the silence. For all of it. You made mistakes, but you also spent seventeen years trying to make up for them in the only way you knew how. And tonight, you saved my mother’s life.
” I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead, tasting salt and rain and the metallic edge of blood. “That has to count for something.”