For all of us."
But the moment those words left her lips, dark clouds formed overhead, too fast to be natural. They were ominous clouds of the sort you'd see in movies about the apocalypse. Nick grabbed Cassie's hand, and they took a few cautious steps back, away from the ocean.
"What's happening?" Cassie asked. "Is it a tornado? Do you even get those around here?"
"I don't know what this is." Nick scanned the surrounding area for a safe shelter. "We have to get out of here. All these trees. We have to try to run to your house." They started running, but they only made it a few steps when streaks of furious lightning began flashing all around them, seemingly right at them.
"Keep running," Nick screamed. "And cover your head." Ice-cold rain poured down, pelting them like needle-pointed arrows. The sky was completely black except for the lightning, which, when it flashed, ill uminated the angry wind in the trees. The blustering sand and litter stirred up from the ground. Cassie strived to keep her eyes closed to the debris but also open enough to follow Nick's course of escape.
"We'll never make it," Cassie screamed breathlessly.
"We should try a spell, to stop it."
"No!" Nick yelled. "No magic. Keep running." One flash after the next, the lightning and thunder reminded Cassie of fireworks.
"It's them, isn't it?" Cassie cried out. "The hunters." Nick stopped running for a second, and Cassie also stopped, breathing heavily. Nick's thick neck was pulsing; his chest was heaving. "I think so," he said. "It could be a trick to get us to use our magic."
Then a lightning bolt struck a willing target - one of the many elm trees nearby. It cracked and sparked from the blow.
Cassie shielded her eyes with her hand like a visor, watching the elm shiver and smoke. "Seems like they might already know we're witches, don't you think?" Then another tree right beside that one was hit, and then another, each one closer to Cassie and Nick than the one before. Finally, a fiery bolt crashed at the ground right next to Cassie's feet. She screamed, and Nick pushed her out of the way, shielding her body with his own.
Cassie and Nick were both on the ground now, she beneath him. His broad muscular body was heavy on hers.
"Are you okay?" he asked. Rainwater dripped from his face onto hers.
"Yes," Cassie said. From beneath him she watched the trees that had been hit succumb to wild orange flames. It was the most furious fire Cassie had ever seen, with Bill owing black smoke rising up from it like a ghost.
That could have been me, Cassie thought to herself. If Nick hadn't thrown her out of the way, she would have been dead.
It was a sight to see, those once great elms darken and wither to ash so fluidly. Their rugged brown bark melted at the will of the heat, like a chocolate bar left out in the sun.
Whatever the hunters were trying to prove, they'd proven it. Clearly they were powerful, and they were willing to kill.
They weren't witches, but this kind of control over the elements looked like black magic to Cassie. What kind of witch hunters used the same tactics of evil witches?
"They're so close," Cassie said.
Nick let some of his weight off Cassie's quivering body beneath him. "And they're getting closer every minute." It seemed to Cassie like there was no escape. She and Nick could get up and keep running, but the lightning and thunder would follow their every step until it finally hit its bull 's-eye, striking them down with a ball of fire that would burn and bend their bones like the brittle branches of an old elm tree. Or they could lie right there on the ground, unmoving, clutching each other and closing their eyes to it all. They could go with it easily, rather than try to fight it.
Dying side by side with Nick was better than being shot down from the sky.
And then as if it had all been a dream, the rain suddenly came to a halt, the lightning stopped, and the sky cleared the way for the sun. The day returned, eerily and beautifully, the way for the sun. The day returned, eerily and beautifully, to the perfect color photograph it had been before. If the trees at their side hadn't still been steadily burning, clouding the air around them with bleak black smoke, Cassie would have believed she'd imagined the whole nightmarish scene.
"I guess we passed the test," Nick said, standing up and brushing off his jeans. He ran his fingers through his soaking-wet hair and then offered Cassie his broad hand to help her to her feet.
"How is that?" Cassie asked, taking Nick's hand. "By not dying?"
"It's a pretty good start." Nick put his sturdy arm around Cassie's drenched sweater. "Let's get you home." Cassie looked up into his mahogany eyes gratefully.
She'd never forget the way he'd protected her. Without a moment's hesitation, he was willing to die for her.
"I'm only going home if you're coming with me," she said.
"Well, I'm sure as heck not staying out here," Nick said playfully, trying to make light of the situation.
"Nick." Cassie refused to take another step until he looked her in the eyes and acknowledged what had just passed between them.
"What?"
"Thank you," she said.
He shook his head and looked away again. "You don't have to thank me."
"Yes, I do."
Nick started to laugh awkwardly, nervously. The kind of laugh that comes out when you're trying not to cry. Then he laugh that comes out when you're trying not to cry. Then he pulled Cassie in toward him and kissed her affectionately on the forehead, like a big brother might do. "No problem," he said.
Chapter 13
Cassie and Nick heard fire trucks in the distance as they walked toward Cassie's house. To extinguish the burning trees, Cassie figured. They sped up their pace to be safely out of the line of suspicion for arson. There was no telling what angle the hunters would take in order to destroy them.
Once they were safely shut into Cassie's house, Nick went into overdrive. "We should tell the others," he said.
"We should get them all over here right now." His clothes were soaked through from the rain, and his hair dripped down in front of his face.
"Wait," Cassie said, moving from the kitchen to the living room. "There's time for that." She retrieved two large bath towels from the linen closet and tossed one at Nick. "Dry yourself off," she said.
He laughed. "I guess we are a little wet." In one swift motion, he pulled his T-shirt over his head and wrung it out over the kitchen sink.
Cassie caught herself gaping at his muscular torso and quickly turned away. "I'm going to go change," she said, running off to her bedroom. "I'll be right back." When she returned, Nick appeared mostly dry, and his shirt was thankfully back on. But so were his shoes, and Cassie knew Nick was about to bolt.