RUNNING AWAY INTO A PERSONAL STORM
May 24, 1983
THE REHEARSAL SPACE --- THE BREAKING POINT
A quiet mid-morning heat settled across the cracked asphalt outside the rehearsal studio, the familiar building the band had practically lived in for years. Inside, the air smelled faintly of old amps, dust, and the warm metallic hum of instruments waiting to be played.
Sidney Greene waited alone in the center of the room.
He stood with his arms loosely folded, eyes half-closed, listening to the room itself, the ghosts of their music, echoes of laughter, memories of normal rehearsals. The silver Celtic cross at his chest caught the light from the single overhead lamp, the five small stones glinting faintly: opal at the center, emerald to the west, garnet at the north, sapphire to the east, onyx to the south. The cross of his predecessor, trainer to the sixth Brotherhood as Sidney was trainer to the seventh, passed down through every generation since Guardian Brannach's time, the fourth Brotherhood, when it was first made.
It all felt fragile now. Too fragile.
The door rattled.
Ricky pushed it open, sunglasses on, shoulders tense, moving like a man expecting something to jump him.
"Morning," Sidney said gently.
Ricky lifted his hand in a half-wave, dropped a gym bag on the couch, and winced as he sat down.
Sidney's eyes lowered. He didn't miss the faint bruises along Ricky's arm. Or the way Ricky's pupils subtly pulsed cat-like in the dim light.
"You had quite a night," Sidney said quietly.
Ricky huffed. "You could say that."
"Dog trouble?"
Ricky shot him a flat look. "How'd you..."
"I just had a feeling," Sidney said simply. "And I can practically smell the fear dripping off of you."
Ricky muttered something that sounded like "Big stupid Doberman" and rubbed his face.
Sidney almost smiled, almost, but there was something sharp beneath Ricky's attempt at humor. Something rattled. Something shaken. Before Sidney could respond, the outside door opened again.
Nathan shepherded Erik and Connor inside like a weary single father with two shell-shocked children.
Sidney straightened. "Good morning."
Nathan nodded tightly. "It's afternoon."
"I apologize, Conjurer. You're correct. Good afternoon."
Erik looked embarrassed. Connor looked wrecked. Nathan looked scorched around the edges. Sidney saw all of it instantly.
"Let me guess," Sidney said, eyes moving to Erik first. "Yours was strength related."
Erik exhaled like a dying animal. "I broke my car."
Ricky snorted involuntarily. Erik glared at him. Ricky held up both hands. "Not laughing. Honest. I swear."
"Broke your car how?" Sidney asked.
"All of it," Erik mumbled. "Part by part."
Sidney blinked once. Slowly. Then looked to Connor.
Connor's skin was pale, his eyes rimmed red, hands trembling as he tried to tie his hair back and failed. He smelled faintly of whiskey and fear.
"Connor," Sidney said gently. "What happened?"
Connor's voice was barely above a whisper. "I heard... everything."
Sidney's chest tightened. "I'm so sorry."
Connor swallowed. "I couldn't make it stop."
Nathan put a steadying hand on Connor's back.
"And you?" Sidney asked Nathan.
Nathan rubbed the back of his neck. "I lit half my apartment on fire with a swear word and then the amulet sucked it all back in. Carpet's ruined. Drapes are gone."
Sidney stared at him. Then nodded once. "Reasonable."
Ricky threw his hands up. "How the hell is that reasonable?"
"Because he's still alive," Sidney said. "And everything he burned is still intact enough to clean up."
Erik sank onto a stool. Ricky paced. Connor curled into the corner of the couch, arms around himself, assuming what was becoming his normal resting pose. Sidney assessed all four of them.
Shaken. Exhausted. Barely functioning.
He opened his mouth to speak but stopped when the studio door slammed open.
Jace Elias walked in like a thunder cloud. Helmetless. Eyes shadowed. Face pale with leftover grief and fury. His leather vest hung open, the Guardian Amulet glowing faintly against his chest like a warning light. The air in the room shifted the moment he crossed the threshold.
Connor flinched so violently he hit the back of the couch. The psychic pressure of Jace's emotions hit him like a slap across the face. Erik straightened, wary. Ricky stopped pacing.
Nathan's gut tightened. An angry Jason was not an agreeable one.
Sidney turned slowly toward Jace. "Jace," he said softly. "Good. You're here."
Jace didn't answer. He didn't look at anyone. Just walked across the room, dropped onto the amp bench, and stared at the floor.
The silence was heavy. Dense. Breath-crushing.
Sidney approached cautiously. "Jace... are you..."
"Don't," Jace said quietly. The one word crackled with danger.
Sidney paused. Everyone else held their breath.
Jace slowly lifted his head. His eyes were dark. Sunken. Wounded beyond anything the others had ever seen in him.
"You want to know how I am?" he asked softly.
Nathan swallowed. "Jace..."
"No," Jace snapped. "He asked."
Sidney held up a hand. Not defensive. Just patient.
Jace's voice stayed low, but the anger simmered beneath every syllable.
"I lost her," he said. "The woman I love. Because of this damn thing."
He jabbed a finger at the glowing opal.
"And because of what you people did to us!"
"Jason," Sidney murmured, "no one did anything to you. The amulets..."
"CHOSE US?!" Jace shouted, exploding to his feet.
Connor covered his ears, wincing as the psychic shockwave rippled off Jace.
"You think I care?!" Jace screamed. "I don't want to be a Guardian. I don't want to be king of ANYTHING. I want to drum! I want my life! I want Celia BACK! If I can't have that...then I don't want to be around anymore. I'll end this shit myself if I have to!"
The words landed in the room like something physical. No one moved, no one spoke: four men who had just heard their drummer say out loud what none of them had let themselves think.
Nathan stepped forward. "Jason... brother..."
"NO!" Jace barked. "Don't 'brother' me right now. You don't know what I'm feeling!"
"Actually?" Connor rasped. "We do."
Jace whipped toward him.
"We feel everything you're feeling," Ricky said. "It's pouring off you like acid."
Jace's expression twisted.
Sidney moved closer, calm but firm.
"Jace. You are hurting. I see that. I feel that. But you cannot run from this."
"I can do whatever I want," Jace hissed icily.
"You said you don't want to be around anymore," Sidney said gently. "You said you want to end this."
Jace's face hardened. "So...what if I did?"
Ricky's breath caught. Connor froze. Erik stood so quickly his stool screeched.
Nathan whispered, "Jace..."
Sidney's voice dropped low and quiet.
"You can want that. You can scream that. You can pray for it. But it will never happen."
Jace's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"
Sidney took one breath. Then spoke the truth.
"You can't die, Jason."
The silence was absolute. Jace laughed once, a sharp, disbelieving sound.
"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"It's the truth," Sidney replied. "The Guardian Amulet will keep you alive until the day it must be passed to the next generation. You could die a thousand ways. It will bring you back. Every...single...time."
The horror of it hit all four of them at once. Connor was the one who made a sound, a small, involuntary breath, like something had knocked the air out of him.
Jace just stared at Sidney like the world had split in half.
"You're lying," he growled.
"I'm not," Sidney said, his voice hardening now, stepping closer. "Why do you think you are still alive after everything you've experienced so far? Any man who dies usually stays dead. A Guardian cannot, not until he passes the amulet to the next generation's Guardian. It is what my own father did. It is what you will do in time. But only then will your life truly be finished. You could die a thousand times in a thousand ways, Jace. You will always come back."
A raw sound tore from Jace's throat, part laugh, part sob. He shook his head quickly, as if trying to shake the truth loose. Then he stood straighter, fists clenched and walked toward Sidney until the two men were eye to eye.
"You say I can't escape this fate?" Jace whispered.
"No," Sidney said. "You can't."
Jace's jaw tightened. His amber-gold eyes were drilling holes in Sidney's.
"Watch me."
Jace turned, stormed across the room, shoved the door open hard enough to rattle the hinges, and disappeared outside.
The door hit the frame hard enough to shake the wall. Then silence, the kind that fills a room after something irreversible has happened.
The rest of the band sat in shocked silence. They had seen Jace angry before. But nothing like that. Nathan was already moving.
"JACE!" he shouted, bolting after him.
Outside, Jace had already gotten on his motorcycle, the engine roaring to life.
"NATE, DON'T..." Ricky yelled from inside. But Nathan was already through the door.
"Jace!" he pleaded. "Jace, STOP!"
Jace didn't look at him. He gunned the engine and sped out of the parking lot.
"PLEASE," Nathan begged. "Don't go like this! Don't leave!"
But Jace's entire world had narrowed to one thing. Escape.
He shot down the street, the motorcycle screaming, and vanished around the corner.
Nathan stood in the parking lot, chest heaving, the echo of Jace's rage still clinging to his ribs like barbed wire. With a defeated sigh, he walked back inside and shut the door.
"He's gone," Nathan said.
Ricky whispered, voice cracking, "So... now what?"
Sidney looked at each of them. Four broken young men caught in a storm far bigger than any of them deserved.
"Now?" Sidney said quietly. "We wait. We pray he comes back before the world breaks him even more."
By the time he crossed the California--Nevada border, the desert wind had dried the tear tracks on his face. He took the familiar road north toward the Paiute Reservation. Toward home.
The reservation was already slipping into dusk when the motorcycle's engine cut out on the hard-packed road. The abrupt silence afterward was almost jarring, like the desert held its breath, sensing the turmoil riding in on two wheels.
Jace swung off the bike. No helmet, no bag, no spare clothes, just the sweat-stained shirt and leather vest he'd thrown on at the house, jeans still dusty from the ride, and the trembling ache in his hands from gripping handlebars for hundreds of miles with nowhere to rest his mind. His dark sunglasses hid the pain and emotion that clouded his otherwise handsome face.
His older brother, Tobin, waited near the edge of the brush line, boots planted firm in the dirt, arms crossed in a posture that was equal parts sadness and fear. A few paces behind him stood his uncles, Marcus and Ira, older now, weathered like the land itself. They watched Jace dismount with the wary eyes of men who had seen something sacred go wrong.
Then the wave hit them.
Not wind or sound. Something else entirely, a pressure that moved through the air like a shockwave and settled into their chests like grief. Tobin's breath caught. Marcus went very still. Ira's hand moved instinctively to his own sternum, pressing flat against it as if to push back against something that had no physical form. The emotion pouring off Jace was not subtle. It was not contained. It hit all three of them at once, raw and unfiltered and enormous: rage and devastation and a despair so deep it had no bottom. The Guardian Amulet at Jace's throat pulsed faintly, amplifying every wave. Jace had always carried a natural empathy that ran deeper than most, Katherine's gift, passed down through her Aelinian blood. The amulet had taken that gift and turned it into something none of them had the language for yet.
Tobin felt his own eyes sting. And the tears were not entirely his.
"Jace," he said gently, crossing to his brother and pulling him into a tight embrace. Jace hugged back, and that was almost worse than if he hadn't. Because Tobin could feel the trembling in him. The barely contained collapse. He couldn't see past the sunglasses, but the dried tear tracks etched through the road dust on his brother's face told him everything.
"C'mon, Wanga'a," Tobin urged quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder and steering him toward the communal fire ring, the benches worn smooth from years of family evenings, the ring itself cold now but still smelling faintly of wood smoke and memory. The place where their father used to sit. The place where their mother used to laugh.
Jace sat. The others settled around him. And the projected wave of his emotion settled over all of them like weather.
Marcus broke the silence first, his voice careful. "You're not alright."
Jace let out a thin, humorless breath. "No."
"You should've come sooner," Ira murmured, pressing a hand briefly to his own temple as another wave rolled off Jace and through him. "You look like death."
The words stabbed harder than Ira intended. Because they were true. Because Jace had died. In more ways than one.
Tobin placed a hand on his shoulder carefully, as if touching a man made of cracked glass. "Tell me."
So Jace told them. Not the whole truth, since he didn't have words for empathy tearing him apart or the crushing pressure of destiny, but enough.
Enough to make Tobin pale. Enough to make Marcus bow his head. Enough to make Ira whisper a prayer into the wind.
And through all of it, the grief and rage kept coming off Jace in waves, uncontrolled, unfiltered, hitting each of them again and again until Marcus's jaw was tight and Ira had gone quiet, trying not to be undone, and Tobin was gripping the edge of the bench with both hands just to stay steady.
"You're the Guardian," Marcus said at last. "We have always known who you would become someday. Katherine told us and the entire tribal council before she passed, with the blessing of Seamus Greene."
Jace seemed to wince slightly. The words hit him like a punch to the ribs.
"Seamus Greene..." His voice rasped out before he could steady it. "So, you all knew..."
The shift hit them like a physical thing. Not grief this time. Something colder. Sharper. The betrayal drove straight through everything that had come before it and hit all three of them so hard that Tobin actually recoiled on the bench. Marcus's hand went flat against the ground as if he needed the earth to stay upright. Ira made no sound, but his face went grey.
No sorrow washed over them now. This was accusation, deep, wordless, and absolute, and it carried the full weight of everything Jace had lost pressing down on their chests like stone.
Tobin nodded, his voice barely holding.
"We did. And we couldn't say anything about it. She thought it would harm you to know too soon."
Jace shook his head sharply, blinking hard to keep the burning behind his eyes from spilling over.
"You should have told me," Jace said quietly.
"You were a kid," Marcus said. "You weren't ready."
"I'm not ready now," Jace said, his voice cracking at the edges. "I came here because I thought... maybe you'd tell me to walk away. That it wasn't real. That I could avoid becoming...this!"
Ira's face broke, soft and sad and helpless.
"Oh Jace...power like that doesn't let go. But neither do the people who love you. Your family, your tribe."
Jace pulled his gaze away. The desert blurred for a heartbeat. He swallowed hard, forcing himself back into his father's old stoic armor. It didn't fit anymore.
Tobin leaned closer. "Stay, brother. Tonight, at least. Let us help you."
"I can't," Jace said, voice cracking. "I can't stay here like this. I don't even recognize myself."
Tobin grabbed his arm. "Jace...please!"
"Don't." He jerked free, guilt flickering in Tobin's eyes.
"You think we haven't seen men break before?" Ira challenged, and even as he said it another wave of Jace's despair rolled through him and he had to steady himself. "Your father broke down at times. You think it was easy for MY little brother to realize his youngest son was going to be so powerful? It caused him great pain to think you would soon have such a burden to carry."
The tears rimmed Jace's eyes again, sharp, hot, humiliating. But they did not fall. He would not let them.
Marcus stood and stepped closer, his voice low and urgent. "Jace. Come inside with me. Your Aunt Maeva is here. Sit with us, let us talk this through..."
"I have to go."
"Jason..."
He was already on his feet. Already moving. And the moment he stood, the wave that came off him changed entirely. It was no longer grief or rage or betrayal in separate currents. It collapsed into one thing, dense, concentrated, crushing, and it hit all three men at the same moment like a wall. Marcus reached for him and felt his own legs go heavy. Ira rose from the bench and stopped, one hand braced against the wood, the weight of it pressing down on him like something with mass. Tobin fought through it the hardest, three steps, maybe four, pushing against the invisible force the way a man walks into a gale, before it drove him back.
He was already at the bike before any of them could reach him.
His hands found the grips. His leg swung over. Muscle memory doing what his mind couldn't. They knew. They all knew. And they had let him walk into it blind. The engine roared to life beneath him, and it was the only sound that made sense anymore.
Behind him, Marcus shouted, "DON'T WALK OUT ON YOUR DESTINY!"
Ira's voice followed. "Jason! Stop!"
And then Tobin's voice cracked, raw, breaking. "WANGA'A... PLEASE!"
Jace revved the engine. He didn't turn around. Couldn't. If he looked back, he'd shatter.
The motorcycle tore off into the deepening dusk, its red taillight shrinking against the endless desert. And three men stood helplessly in the settling dark, watching someone they loved vanish into the storm, still feeling the echo of his grief in their own chests long after the sound of the engine had faded.
"Call Sidney," Marcus said to Tobin, his voice unsteady. "I have a very bad feeling Jace is losing himself in all of this."
"He's lost everything," Tobin told him evenly, "and now he might also feel he's lost us."
"He hasn't," Ira replied.
Marcus sighed heavily. "Go...call the band. Now, Tobin."
The desert night pressed close around him as Jace sped north, the motorcycle's engine screaming against the empty highway. He hadn't stopped since he'd left Nevada. Hours had passed. He hadn't eaten. Hadn't slept. His throat was raw from wind. His eyes burned from exhaustion, but they refused to close. He'd only stopped once, and that was to fill the bike with fuel.
"WANGA'A... PLEASE!"
His mind... refused everything. Every mile took him farther from Tobin's voice still breaking in his ears. Every gust of wind felt like the desert trying to scrape the truth out of his skin. His mother's secret. His father's grief. His tribe knowing the burden he didn't. It churned inside him like a storm with no center.
The bike vibrated beneath him, a living thing, steady, loyal, the last piece of his life untouched by prophecy. He gripped the handlebars harder until his hands ached.
"Just shut up," he muttered to his own thoughts. "Shut up. Shut up."
They didn't. They multiplied.
You're not ready. You're not worthy. You're breaking everyone who loves you. You will never be enough for this. You're trapped. You cannot die...
His breathing hitched. He tasted salt: tears he refused to shed. The highway stretched endless and silver under the moonlight. No cars, no towns, no witnesses, just him and the ache inside him that felt like a bottomless pit.
Something inside him snapped.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He didn't reason. He simply... let go.
Jace stood up on the foot pegs, boots wobbling on the vibrating frame. The wind slammed into him, cold and powerful, nearly throwing him backward. The bike sped on, the engine howling like a wounded animal.
He released the handlebars.
For a fraction of a second, the bike held its line.
Then Jace pushed off.
The world became a blur of speed and desert and starless sky.
The impact hit him like a freight train.
He hit the pavement shoulder-first with a sickening crunch, bones snapping instantly. His head slammed against the asphalt, vision exploding in white-hot sparks. He tumbled, rolled, skidded, skin tearing, ribs breaking, breath punched out of him in useless gasps.
He was aware, distantly, of the motorcycle fishtailing without him, wobbling violently, then tipping and skidding in a spray of sparks across the dark road until it ground to a scraping halt.
But the pain swallowed everything else. His spine twisted wrong. His legs were bent at unnatural angles. He felt something wet pooling under him: blood, a lot of it.
Every breath was a knife.
He tried to inhale and his lungs refused. The world narrowed. Darkened. Collapsed. The amulet at his throat flared, blinding, searing, furious.
And then...Nothing.
He came back with a violent gasp, body arching off the pavement as if dragged upward by invisible hands.
His scream ripped the silence open. Air flooded his lungs like fire. Every nerve lit up at once, overwhelming, electric, agonizing. The amulet blazed against his chest and then the healing came, and it was not gentle. Broken bones ground back into alignment one by one, a deep internal crunch that radiated outward through muscle and tendon with each correction. His ribs knit with a pressure that felt like being crushed from the inside. Where the road had torn his skin open, the flesh burned as it sealed, a fierce, stinging heat, like fire drawing closed over a wound from within. He felt every inch of it. Every last repair. The amulet did not spare him the sensation of being rebuilt.
Jace collapsed back onto the road, shuddering uncontrollably.
He lay there for long, slow seconds, trembling. The bruises remained, deep and dark and aching, blooming across his shoulder, his ribs, his hip where the asphalt had caught him hardest. The blood that had pooled and dried stayed where it had settled, tacky against his skin and what was left of his shirt. The amulet had sealed the wounds. It had not erased the evidence of them.
His hands curled weakly into fists.
"Damn it..." he rasped, voice wrecked. "Why won't you let me go?"
The amulet pulsed once, as if it was trying to answer his question somehow.
Jace turned his head toward where the bike had fallen. It was a dark shape a few dozen yards down the highway, tipped over, scraped up, one turn signal shattered, the muffler dented, paint gouged raw. Cosmetic damage, nothing more. It would still run. It would still carry him north. But it looked as battered as he felt.
Slowly, so slowly, he forced himself onto elbows that shook beneath him. His muscles seized. His breath hitched. He crawled toward the bike, inch by miserable inch, dragging himself over asphalt that chewed at what was left of his shirt.
It took a long time. Long enough for him to question why he was even doing it. Long enough for him to contemplate a second attempt right there. Long enough for him to understand if he tried again, it wouldn't be with the motorcycle. He wouldn't destroy the last thing that felt like his.
He'd find another way.
When he finally reached the bike, he grabbed the handlebars with shaking hands and pulled himself upright. His legs nearly buckled. He steadied himself against the frame.
He didn't cry. He didn't scream again. He just breathed, raw, ragged, alive against his will.
After several minutes, he swung a leg over the seat. His entire body protested, every bruise announcing itself, the sealed skin along his arms and shoulder still burning faintly with the ghost of the healing. He emitted a strangled cry of pain as he settled onto the seat. Once the worst of it subsided, Jace thumbed the ignition.
The motorcycle coughed, shuddered, then rumbled to life with a wounded growl. The headlight flickered once before holding steady, carving a narrow path through the darkness, a thin line of light against the endless night.
He sat there breathing hard, hands trembling around the grips. Every part of him hurt. Every part of him wanted to collapse. The amulet's burn still pulsed under his collarbone, like it was anchoring him to the world against his will.
He stared down the empty road.
He should turn back. He knew it. Some small, sane part of him whispered it.
Go home. Turn around. Tobin's waiting. Your Tribe is waiting. They'll take you in. They'll help you.
But the louder voice, the one that drowned out everything, said something else entirely.
You don't belong anywhere now. Not with them. Not with the band. Not with the Guardian's destiny. Not even in your own skin.
The desert wind rolled across the asphalt, warm and indifferent.
Jace wiped the drying blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. The smear left a red streak across his skin, but his expression barely changed. No tears fell. Not one.
He eased the bike back onto the road, the frame rattling slightly from the fall. The handlebars vibrated under his grip, the bent mirror catching his reflection in the dark.
He didn't recognize the man staring back.
With a hollow breath, he rolled his shoulders, steadied his grip, and whispered into the wind, "Fine. I'll keep going."
The engine growled in answer. He twisted the throttle. The bike lurched forward, tire skidding briefly before catching traction. The desert sped past him again, swallowing his wake.
He didn't look back at the patch of pavement where he'd died. He didn't look at the blood stains fading behind him in the dark. He didn't look at the stars. He just rode. North. Away from Nevada. Away from the only people who would have fought for and with him. Away from everything familiar and safe. Away from the aching truth of who he was meant to be.
The amulet pulsed once, a faint, stubborn heartbeat. Jace ignored it. He opened the throttle wider. The engine screamed. The wind roared in his ears. And the road took him deeper into the night, toward a fate he didn't want and a violence he didn't see coming.
Toward Canada. He knew no one there.
"I can't die...but I can disappear."