Magic Children

Chapter 48 Lyons Colorado - Arthur

I wake up with an aching in my head.  A dull aching. In my very, very, empty mind.

"You did not," I mutter, without opening my eyes.

"Don't think at me like that. I made a unilateral decision," Vali says, he's mostly cradling me in his arms.

"You have to be shitting me," I say, rolling out of them to sit up, spitting out blood.

"You were passing out," Brigit, and the other girls are sitting on some. Rubble? Why is there still fire? Why did I not pass out for the entire fire portion of this experience?

"You were dying. I wasn't going to be able to kill him in time before you died, so I made a completely selfish decision to save your life, and let him go," Vali says, helping me stand up.

"That was not a good decision," I say, wiping blood from my face.

"Yeah, well, it's over now," Vali says, as I stare around.

"Where did he go?" I ask.

"He warped or---vanished into the flames," Aurora says, she's hugging her two girls.

"I don't like you," Eris says to me.

"I don't like you either," I say, spitting out blood.

"So we let him go. It was that or let you die and probably not even succeed in killing him," Vali says.

"So what--- you knocked me out and let him torch the entire state?" I ask, staring off at the smoke.

"No---no----don't look at me like that Arthur---I did put up a force field----" Vali says, knowing damn well I'm scanning half the continent for damage. "I saved the west coast."

"You saved PART of the west coast and me???!!!" I cry, "That was not---not a good trade."

"It was to me," he growls.

"Why would he burn all that?" Brigit asks.

"What---what do you mean just the west coast---this goes all the way to east coast?" Aurora asks.

"Yep---just America though he kept to the boarders moderately okay," I say, tipping my head back to stare at the smokey sky as the world burns around us.

"What? Why?" Brigit asks, upset.

"He's drunk on it---the more flame, the more burning, the more power he has. And the more power he has, the farther he can warp himself. He wanted to get away. I'm going to guess he's in Europe after that," I say, frowning. I haven't found him yet. Give me time. I will. I'll always find him.

"So, he didn't make the conscious decision to burn up all of America?" Aurora asks, a little hopefully.

"No he---he did, well he's thought about doing it in the past," I say, looking down and realizing Baby is sealed on my leg.

"Don't DIE," she says, kissing my shoe.

"I'll try little one," I say, picking her up to give her a squeeze. She snuggles against my mostly ashen shirt before I set her down and she runs back to her sisters, who are staring around, eyes dilated from shock.

"So, now we go find him, with a better plan," Vali says, reasonably, rubbing blood from his own face. 

"Oh, I don't think we'll have to go find him," I say, looking at Aurora, "What was the last thing he said to you?"

"Okay to be clear---I was telling him to get out of here and that we'd run away someplace and the subtext of that was that we didn't burn people up," Aurora says, really quickly.

"And?" I ask, not caring.

"He said to trust him like he had a plan, but this doesn't feel like a plan," she says.

"Oh, this is a plan, I've spent enough time in his head to know, this is what he thinks is a plan," I say.

"What so he's coming back for you?" Vali asks, "Did you tell him about the kid? Plural kids? Because I implied that he had a child here he might not want to torch and he did not specifically act like he believed me."

"Yes, I did, that was in the context of trying to tell him to just leave," Aurora sighs.

"Damn, he's coming back then, for you and the kids---but he only knows about one so far as I'm aware," I say, rubbing my face with a hand that's in retrospect dirtier than my face.

"Come back to do what?" Brigit asks.

"Take us away?" Eris says, she was reading his mind. She hasn't found him since he warped though, "Somewhere they won't lock us up?"

"Well, now that half the US population is dead nobody's locking us up," Vali, who is not good at math, mutters.

"Okay, so we wait for him. And some people are alive so let's try not to look like the perpetrators," I say, looking at the child who can set things on fire thanks to the 88 seconds she spent with her daddy.

"Where do you think he is?" Aurora asks.

"I don't know---SOMEONE," glaring at Vali, "Knocked me out while I was trying to completely brain damage him, so I don't know. I'm not in his head anymore. So we have no idea what he's thinking."