Joining hands, they broke out of the huddle. Stella stood tall and strong. The smug look on her face made Cym think she’d won whatever argument they’d been having.
Sterling stepped away from their aunt and Helen, his face uncertain. “I don’t think this is a good idea. This is exactly the sort of thing that will bring their attention down on us. Mother told us to be careful!”
With a scornful glance at Sterling, Stella joined hands with Helen and threw her right hand toward the sky. She barked out a sharp, unintelligible sound and reached her left hand out to point toward the buildings behind the cemetery on Cym’s side.
Cym really needed to get his spellcasting shit together before he and Fourteen were turned to toast. What was Cym missing? Maybe he had to think really hard about wanting it to happen. He tried again and felt a roiling of something pink in his chest, but nothing happened.
Perhaps pointing wasn’t enough—in a lot of the fantasy books he’d read, there had been several components to casting. What were they again?
He bit his lip as he worked to remember. Focus seemed important. Precision too. He was pretty damn focused right now, and he thought he had the hand gesture down, so what else did he need?
There was a violent clap of thunder, and the building behind him came down with a deafening screech. Dust billowed everywhere and bricks and chunks of gods-knew-what began pelting him. He tried to throw himself over Fourteen to shelter him, but he rolled away from Cym as soon as he touched him.
“Don’t… touch… me,” Fourteen slurred and scrambled backward until he was stopped by a broken headstone.
Stung, Cym crawled away as far as he dared. “S… sorry. The building exploded, and now there’s stuff falling. Bad stuff.” He gestured toward the debris raining down around them with one hand while trying to protect his face with the other.
Fourteen stayed conscious, but he didn’t look good. If Cym didn’t know any better, he’d say the man was drunk. Fourteen leaned against the broken stone, pressed his cheek against it, and gazed at his hand like he’d never seen it before. When a brick bounced off his shoulder, he didn’t even react.
Cym had to get them out of here. He focused as hard as he could on making his family go away and made the hand gesture. The roiling feeling rose up again, and it felt pinker than it had before, but his attackers remained untouched.
“I’m going to enjoy playing with your champion, Boy. I wonder how long I can get him to scream for me?” Helen’s little girl voice was at odds with her words, and a chill went down Cym’s spine. “He looks durable. I’ll bet I can make him last a few weeks before I break him.”
Rage swept through his body, and Cym’s hands moved on their own as a giant pink fireball of emotion bloomed inside him, radiating outward from his chest. He felt hollowed out by its passage, and when he looked down, he was surprised to see his hoodie was unscathed.
A trailing scream caught his attention, and he looked up to see a gaping hole had replaced half the cemetery and the entire street behind it.
Cym’s family was nowhere to be seen. He blinked dumbly at the results of his work.
“Please tell me you missed my SUV.” Fourteen’s expressionless voice startled Cym, causing him to jerk his body around to face the man. Fourteen got to his feet slowly, but he looked more lucid than he had a moment ago.
Cym’s mouth worked as he tried to find his voice again, and he eventually managed to squeak out, “That part of the street survived,” as he pointed toward their parking spot.
Fourteen grunted. “Do you have your bag?”
Cym pointed to his shoulder straps and nodded.
“Let’s go.” Fourteen motioned for Cym to go first.
Skirting around the hole he’d made, Cym peeked inside, expecting to see ancient and possibly not-so-ancient dead bodies. However, there was nothing but a seemingly endless, dirt-lined abyss.
The ground shook under his feet, and he backed away as the edge started caving in.
“I don’t think the hole is done growing.” Cym reached for Fourteen’s hand to urge him to run, but he dodged Cym’s grasp. He understood Cym’s intent, though, and managed to keep pace with him back to the SUV.
They both looked back at the cemetery to see the rest of it crumble and vanish into the hole Cym had made. Fourteen unlocked the car with his key fob as they ran toward it. “Get in.”
“Are you okay to drive?”
“Do you know how to drive?”
Cym shook his head.
“Then it doesn’t matter if I am or not. Get in the car.” Fourteen’s tone was even, but his words were clipped.
Cym chose not to push the matter and got in on the passenger side. At the moment, haste was more important than establishing good boundaries.
The ground in front of them continued to give way at an alarming rate, and Cym wasn’t sure if they were going to make it. Fourteen threw the SUV into reverse the second Cym’s butt hit the seat and took the bumper off the car parked behind them. As they took off backward down the road, Cym had a clear view of the bumperless car falling into the hole he’d created.
When Cym noticed a light on inside one of the buildings they sped by, he realized how badly things had gone wrong.
“Stop the car!”
“Negative.” If anything, Fourteen drove faster.
“There are people in there, we have to go back right now.” Cym could hear the hysteria in his voice.
“There were probably people in the building your family blew up too, but we aren’t going back for them either.” Having gained several yards between them and the hole, Fourteen made a terrifying three-point turn and continued driving in the same direction, only forward this time.
“But they’re innocent bystanders, and it’s my fault they got hurt.” Cym dug his fingernails into his arms as the realization sank in. “What if someone got killed?”
“You didn’t make your family blow up that building, Cym. That’s on them. You were just trying to survive.” Sirens filled the air as a rescue vehicle raced toward the scene. “Let the authorities take care of it. Right now, our job is getting somewhere safe. Your family is probably sending more people here right now”
“What about the hole I made?” Cym tugged on his backpack, trying to get it off, but he only managed to get it tangled with the seatbelt he’d forgotten to put on. Would Fourteen let him borrow a knife to cut the seatbelt loose? He glanced at the shiny, well-kept interior of the SUV and decided not to ask.
“From what I observed, the hole stopped growing by the time it reached the buildings. People were inconvenienced, not hurt.”
Cym frowned at Fourteen’s callused response and continued the fight to separate his backpack from the seatbelt. Eventually, he had to remove the plastic buckle on his pack to set it free and cursed when he bent a fingernail backward trying to put it back on again.
