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“And if it does?” Giden asked.
“Acceptable losses. Winning the war is far more important than worrying about minor collateral damage.” The man peered at the dam, his tone becoming less formal as he drew back to spear Gideon with a quizzical look. “May I ask you a question, Gideon, from one leader to another?”
“I have a feeling you’ll ask anyway.”
Torrin shrugged, nonchalant, before pinning him with a penetrating stare. “Why do you choose to associate with those lower beings? Vampires, and werewolves, and demons: creatures of the night? Do you not believe you have sullied yourself with their baser natures?”
Gideon scoffed outright. “You condemn entire races based on fiction. None of them are inherently evil, Torrin, just as humans are not.”
“Spoken like a true politician. Given our dealings with Lucy, we’ve determined that your breed is of the earth—a natural phenomenon indwelled within all of us that surfaces should the need arise.” A pause to catch Gideon’s eye. “As such, you will never see us use violence against your people—with the exception of tonight, should any of yourfriendsdeign to cross that line.”
The pointed reference wasn’t lost on Rukia, as the water iced around her hands, deep in the water. Bristling, her mind raced and kept coming to the same conclusion every time: she couldn’t save Gideon without endangering everyone downstream.
“Am I supposed to say thank you?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.” A raise of his eyebrows before he shrugged his shoulders and leveled a haughty glare at the Elemental in front of him. “No, Gideon, I have no quarrel with your people. The only quarrel I have is with you.”
The sound of suppressed gunfire broke the silence as Rukia’s heart leapt into her throat. Gideon’s right hand clasped over his abdomen as a startled sound of pain escaped through his lips. Rukia, unable to do anything but witness the devastation taking place in front of her, felt the ice cracking below the surface of the water.
Hundreds of feet away, the dam groaned with an ominous sound, but it didn’t collapse—Gideon’s work was holding, and Rukia needed to continue ensuring that the water wouldn’t compromise it.
“Did you think I could forgive Victor’s murder, Gideon?” Torrin’s harsh tones lashed out of him, the anger rising behind his sneer. “Or did you think I’d simply forgotten? No,friend, when I promise vengeance, I deliver.”
Gideon’s hand had clamped around the gunshot wound in his abdomen, his breath sawing in and out of him as he braced his other hand on the rock before him. TheCitizens’leader walked in an ominously slow circle around him. “Don’t you think pain humanizes us, Gideon? That the suffering you experience now brings you closer to the mortals who rule the planet you so clearly love?”
When Gideon made no effort to respond, Torrin’s knee connected savagely with his jaw, the momentum of it throwing him backward and splaying the Elemental on his back.
Outrage bled through Rukia as she caught sight of the garish hole that’d swiftly bled crimson red over the fabric of his tuxedo. Even as Gideon’s hand braced once again around the injury, he continued to drag air into his lungs.
He sluggishly swiveled his head toward the plant life that grew liberally over the walls of the canyon. Reacting instantly, the greenery surged toward him with the promise of healing.
But Torrin didn’t miss it. Instead, the human merely arched an eyebrow and headed toward Gideon’s outstretched hand. In a flash, he’d placed a booted heel over the Elemental’s wrist and fired a single bullet into his hand.
A cry of anguish escaped from Gideon’s lips as the greenery stopped its sprawl over the ground. Rukia’s agonized cry was all she could do as she fought to hold the waters back from the dam, unable to help the leader of her nation and one of her oldest friends.
Somewhere, she heard Jeremiah’s sob echo against the rockface, the pure sorrow of it unimaginable.
Tears streaming down her face, Rukia could only watch as Torrin rounded Gideon once more as the Elemental writhed weakly on the ground below him. With a look of disgust, Torrin kicked his hand away from the original wound that marred his gut, the blood now freely flowing into the gathering pool around him.
Hatred seated deep behind his gaze, Torrin dropped a knee into Gideon’s core as the weight of him came to rest on the stricken man. The earth Elemental jolted at the shock but made no sound—or perhaps he couldn’t.
“A life for a life, Gideon.”
The butt of Torrin’s gun rested on Gideon’s chest a second before it fired point blank.
Gideon stopped moving.
A scream of rage tore out of Rukia’s throat as Jeremiah’s howl answered her. Torrin, however, took no notice as he stood. As if to add insult to injury, the toe of his boot lifted Gideon’s face from the ground and let it fall back unencumbered.
“Good riddance.”
Torrin pivoted on his heel and withdrew, escaping the same way he arrived: without a trace.
Pushing aside the deep-seated need to go to Gideon, Rukia refocused on the dam, willing the water to remain within the basin. Ice solidified against the concrete, ensuring that what Gideon had done would hold. It had to.
Rukia was on her feet in an instant, but Isaiah didn’t follow, veering off to where Jeremiah had been. She ran toward Gideon, but before she reached his side, Isaiah and Jeremiah appeared—a teleport.
She was on her knees beside Gideon seconds later. “We have to go back—Isaiah, we have to get him back to Paracel! To Rona!”
