Elemental Unity

by Maddy Edwards

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” said Keegan.

  “I certainly don’t mean it that way. I happen to like trouble,” Eighellie grinned.

  “Since your future profession is assassin, I believe it,” Keegan grumbled.

  Eighellie nodded her head in assent. It was true that she never did run away from danger, but I could see that having students avoid us grated on her a bit too. It wasn’t because she was insulted, but because she didn’t want to see them afraid. She preferred fighting, and so should they.

  “It would help our cause if the Hunters identified themselves. Then we wouldn’t have to play this guessing game,” I said.

  “They’re irrelevant to us,” Keegan insisted. “They’re not going to get in our way, we’re going to get in theirs. That’s the plan. We can’t be so worried about them that we forget our mission.”

  I was silent. Although my friends had taken with gusto to the idea of finding the artifacts, I didn’t like it. I hadn’t told them about Lough confiding in me. The secrets I kept were because no part of me wanted my friends involved in danger, and the dream giver was an unknown quantity in this fight. Whatever he had been before, he had changed. Now he knew Hunters. He spoke to Hunters. He had their respect. What that meant I didn’t know. I still trusted him, but I was more careful than I had once been, and I was pretty sure that no good could come of taking my friends down that road.

  The secrecy meant that we all had the same mission but slightly different facts. If Eighellie ever found out I had kept a secret from her, she’d probably attack me herself. But all I could do was try to be careful. I was trying to keep them safe.

  “Here we are. Another semester of learning and death,” said Keegan, cracking his knuckles as he got the door open and ushered us into the Long Building.

  Before the door closed behind us a couple of voices called out. I glanced over my shoulder to see Greek trotting up to us, with Candace and a couple of other fallen angels trailing close behind.

  Greek waved and gave me a lopsided grin. “The President’s letter said to keep our friends close. I figured we’re all already friends. Right?” he asked as he strode up to us.

  Greek was powerfully built and universally respected. Even the pixies and vampires who didn’t like him recognized that he was a skilled fighter, and a leader. Most everyone on campus appreciated his beauty, too.

  Fallen angels were known to be look good-looking, but Greek was especially so. Candace had also noticed, although Greek rarely noticed her in return. She stood in the shadows but was usually by his side, often while he spoke to others, including Averett.

  “Hi Eighellie,” he said.

  She said hello in return.

  The fallen angels behind him looked at us skeptically. They would never say anything in front of Greek, but I knew they didn’t share his confidence in us.

  “Of course we’re friends. We’re at least on the same side for Cornerstone. That would be good enough for me even if I were a Hunter. I’d want to keep up appearances and win,” said Keegan.

  Candace scoffed. “I mean, I know there are Hunters here, but nobody thinks you’re one of them.”

  Keegan looked offended. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that you’re a lot of things, but devious isn’t on the list,” said Eighellie.

  For once Candace grinned at the darkness mage. “Exactly.”

  “There’s a list?” said Keegan.

  The Long Building was warm enough to be comfortable for a change. Who knew, maybe Rake had also insisted on adequate heating. The group of us walked to class together, into a room at the far end of the building where it and passed out of the field and seemed to melt into the woods. At least there were windows.

  Eighellie looked relieved when we didn’t go anywhere near her secret room. Keegan and I had made her move all the information and clues she had gathered as she tracked what might have happened to her family to another secret location, but she remained determined in her quest. I expected her first assassinations to happen when she found her family’s killers.

  Regardless of all that, she didn’t want anyone anywhere near where she used to keep the results of her research.

  Rake wasn’t in the room yet as we took our seats. There were a lot of chairs filling the room. Rake was a popular professor; anyone who could take his class would.

  As we waited we chatted quietly, but finally the first jerk showed up: Palmer, quickly followed by Beatrice, Ostelle, and Hannah.

  Palmer swaggered in quietly, but Hannah drew attention to herself. She swirled in, shoving a vampire out of her way as she did so. She was wearing a green skirt barely long enough to cover the important parts, and her belly was bare. Her slightly translucent green skin shimmered in the light. She glared at Keegan and me. “I got the letter about Hunters. Don’t let me find out that you two are among them,” she smirked.

  When Keegan simply turned away from her, a bit of the fire disappeared from her eyes. The vampire she’d shoved started toward her, but a hand reached out to stop him. Averett shook her head.

  Eighellie leaned over to me. “If anyone here is a Hunter it would be her,” she whispered.

  I nodded my head slightly. Eighellie had a point. Palmer was also high on the list of possibles, along with the Burble siblings. Hell, if Hunters could recruit the Burble siblings, that would be an entire contingent of artifact thieves all on its own. There were enough siblings for it.

  I was pretty certain that despite her dislike of us, Hannah had a crush on Keegan. She was always giggling to whoever was close when he was around, and she had been known to show up at the wrong dorm when Keegan and I were in Astra.

  I supposed that Hannah could be working on the opposite side from the tree sprite and still find him attractive. But after all the pixies had put us through, the idea that Hannah had a thing for Keegan still gave me the creeps. It was just crazy enough to be something a pixie might do.

  I resolved to ignore her as I usually did and hoped that Keegan would too.

  “Morning, class,” said Rake, striding in. He was all decked out in black leather as if he was ready to ride away at a moment’s notice to fight evil, or search to the ends of the earth for buried artifacts.

  He didn’t need to do that, though, since word had it that all of the important artifacts were close by.

  “Morning,” we chorused back.

  “From the sign-up list, I know that there’s a full class today. I’ll try not to let my popularity go to my head,” he said with a grin.

  Rake was an excellent professor. Although he was the foremost artifact hunter in the world, he didn’t take himself too seriously. He was a huge vampire; everybody knew he was deadly, but he could make an easy-going joke and set you at ease.

  Given that the vampires’ loyalties were so divided, he was also hard to place in one category, even at a time when the paranormals were mostly dividing into different factions that hated each other. I wondered if anyone really knew how loyal he was to a certain purple-eyed werewolf. Outside my sister’s small circle of classmates and friends, I didn’t think anybody knew how he had felt about Sip, or what she had meant to him and what her loss had done to him.

  I could tell, though. Without her presence hovering in the air, and with gossip about the purple-eyed president no longer swirling around us, sharper edges had formed around the large vampire’s exterior.

  He now had a colder stare, which might be why he spent so much time with Lisabelle, visiting her castle in the black sea of darkness. They had both lost someone. Someone irreplaceable. Someone they loved.

  “I’ve decided it’s high time to stop coddling you all,” Rake began. Silence fell as he continued. “To that end I want to be very clear that this class is going to be hard. We’re going to have weekly tests. I expect all of you to understand exactly what a murderous artifact is by the end of it. I’ve been given a couple of guidelines by the administration and I intend to follow them.

 
“You’re going to learn a lot this semester: about the dangers, and about what can happen when artifacts fall into the wrong hands. Five artifacts helped us win the Nocturn War. Five more could start another war and decimate us all. This is something you must understand if you’re going to graduate from this university with a complete education.

  “The Power Five was thought to be lost, but now we know all about those five artifacts. We know that their power was thought to be gone because we no longer had elementals in the world. Turns out two elementals were hidden away, safe and ready to save us all.

  “The younger of the two is right here in class today. Just because he has employed the Power before doesn’t mean he’s the only one who understands the concept of murderous artifacts. I believe many of you here today understand all too well. I believe even Hunters who are hiding among us understand. Especially them. Although it pains me to teach them anything, maybe over the course of the semester we can discuss the right choices to be made with such power. And the wrong ones.

  “I can only hope. For all our sakes.”

  Averett raised her hand. Rake frowned at her but nodded. She said, “Last semester it was pretty clear that the professors here were trying to distract us from what was going on in the paranormal world. We were given all kinds of busywork to do, homework we really didn’t need to be doing and that wouldn’t help us in the future. I know, it sounds like any old college. But still. Now the administration’s policy has completely changed? What about Cornerstone?”

  “I didn’t say anything about the administration’s policy,” said Rake. “I don’t speak for them and they certainly do not speak for me. I am going to conduct this class in whatever way I see fit, which I was just explaining to you. I expect you all to cultivate preparedness. I will not waste your time. I hope that you do not waste your own time either. In this day and age there altogether too many distractions, including petty fighting. I hope that in this classroom we can avoid all of that.”

  He was clearly making a veiled reference to the fact that there were Hunters among us and that we had therefore grown suspicious of each other.

  “As to Cornerstone, I have nothing to do it. Last I heard there were to be four Cornerstone events this semester, one each to represent earth, air, fire, and water. Personally I think that’s not really the best idea, given that there may be an elemental among us now. However, nobody is asking me.”

  A murmur went up around the room. The fact that elemental magic had been performed last semester was not exactly a secret, but it wasn’t exactly talked about, either. If any of the students hadn’t been thinking about it before, well, now they were. Several of my classmates twisted around to look at me, but I maintained a neutral expression.

  “Now, if we could get down to business, we have a lot to cover today,” said Rake.

  Chapter Ten

  We had two more classes before lunch. Professor Zervos’s class was as absurd as usual, but I did notice the similarity between his teaching and Rake’s. In Death-Defying and Deadly Webs of Curses he was trying to show us how dangerous darkness could be. Given that he was a vampire who possessed a bit of darkness magic, you wouldn’t have thought he’d be so eager to highlight it for us.

  On the contrary, he seemed to want nothing more than he wanted that. He talked on and on about how all darkness was connected. Even if Lisabelle appeared to be her own entity, he said, that was not the case. She wasn’t on an island by herself despite her best efforts; all other creatures that possessed darkness were tied to her.

  What he was trying to say in that long ramble I wasn’t certain. There were more vampires in the class than I was used to seeing, so maybe it was all aimed at them. Averett was again there, and so was Beatrice the transfer. Unlike in the last class, Averett asked no questions.

  After that hour of fun-filled talk of murder and mayhem we had a class with Professor Penny that was even worse. Penny spoke slowly and moved even more slowly. Very little got done in his class, but even so, I admired what he was trying to teach.

  Penny too in his own way wanted to ensure that if students were ever caught out by ourselves we could fight well enough to have a chance of finding our way home. He was also our Cornerstone advisor, and he made a reference to the game at the end of class. “Now, if you haven’t already heard, I’ll be meeting with my Cornerstone group tonight. I am looking forward to seeing you this evening. There’s a lot to be done with Cornerstone this semester.”

  I exchanged looks with Keegan. We were in a group with Eighellie, Greek, Candace, Hannah, and Averett. I hadn’t been looking forward to Cornerstone this semester any more than last, and hearing that we were slated to do four Cornerstones with earth, air, fire, and water hadn’t exactly settled my nerves, especially after an elemental had shown his or her face on campus. Well, not exactly. We hadn’t seen the face, or we would have known what it was. As it stood I had no idea. Elemental magic had attacked the school at homecoming. Whether there was another elemental out there remained to be seen, but the implications for Charlotte and me were deadly.

  Still, I was glad to hear that our team would be meeting that night.

  The rest of the day passed quickly. Lunch was a quiet affair. On the surface there was chatter and laughter, but underneath the surface, anxiety was clearly bubbling.

  “Are you ready for the Cornerstone meeting tonight?” Greek asked, falling into step with me as I walked back to my dorm. I had precious little time to change and put my school things down before we were expected to meet with Professor Penny.

  “I guess so. We don’t really know much about it. I wonder if it will be one of the four elements,” I said.

  Greek shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter. We didn’t do as well as we could have last semester. If we want to get good grades, we have to change that,” he said.

  “We were overwhelmed. I don’t really think all of us on the team are as bloodthirsty as some of the others,” I said.

  “No one is as bloodthirsty as Palmer on the Hellcats,” he said.

  “What did you make of the letter from the president?” I asked.

  The fallen angel grimaced. “I want to say too much. Not here. It isn’t as if we all trusted each other before, but still, I think it adds an element of danger to campus that wasn’t there previously. It isn’t good.”

  Greek was always polite. He had said what I had thought in a very polite way. What I thought was that Dobrov’s letter had added an element of murder. Students were going to fight this semester. Some might even die. The Hunters were too great a threat for that not to happen somewhere along the way.

  “We just have to stick together,” Greek said, nodding. “That’s what I keep telling my family and any other fallen angels I talk to. We can’t go against each other.”

  “You say that the fallen angels didn’t come to my sister’s wedding party. You’ve avoided the elementals at every turn,” I said.

  Greek cleared his throat. “I see a few weeks away have made you more direct. Or is that the threat of Hunters? We all know you’d be one of their primary targets.”

  “They wouldn’t dare attack me here,” I said.

  Greek walked alongside me silently for another few moments. Right before we reached our meeting place, he turned to look at me. “I would have gone to your sister’s wedding party,” he said, “or whatever we were invited to by the Duke. Unfortunately it wasn’t up to me.”

  He paused and glanced around, then continued. “Someday it might be, though, if I play my cards right, if I do what I’m supposed to. If I’m cast out of the leadership before then I won’t be able to change anything. The fact that you and I are friends will be nothing. I do hope that someday it will mean something. I realize that being the only elemental here is hard for you. I realize that nobody wants to be your friend. I’m not complaining, but I have a different problem. I’m only allowed one kind of friend: fallen angel. The trouble with that is that there’s an endless variety of paranormals, and we’re all diff
erent. We all have good points and bad. To that end I wish to have many different friends. That’s why I wrote you letters over the summer. I wanted to stay in touch with my friends.”

  “We will remain friends,” I said. “I trust that someday things will be different. Whether we’re able to make them so ourselves, or it will be up to someone else, I’m not certain.”

  Greek nodded his head. “All we can do is try. And do our homework.”

  “Spoken like a true suck-up,” I said.

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Candace asked.

  We turned to look at the pretty fallen angel walking up to us, but she in turn barely looked at me. Her eyebrows were raised at the other fallen angel.

  “Ricky made a joke. I don’t think you’d understand,” said Greek, quickly ducking his head and disappearing inside.

  Candace watched him go. I wasn’t certain, but I thought there might be tears in her eyes. Then she turned and glared at me. “Don’t you dare get him in trouble. He shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “He can do what he wants. He makes his own decisions. Besides, who would find out that he was talking to me unless you told?” I asked. Before she could answer, I followed Greek inside.

  I knew perfectly well that Candace wouldn’t tell anyone we had talked. She liked Greek too much to tell on him. Whether she intended to make my life harder I didn’t know or care. I was tired of the fallen angels being so self-righteous.

  Professor Penny was sitting behind his desk as usual, looking exactly as he had earlier in the day. That is, his coat needed a good washing and his hair a good combing. We were all reasonably certain that neither of those things was ever going to happen.

  He glanced up at us as we filed in silently. “Good evening to all of you. I’m excited to start the semester off quickly. I know that it upset some of you last semester that we didn’t have time for Cornerstone. Hopefully we can change that now,” he said.