Elementals 2: The Blood of the Hydra

by Michelle Madow

  Elementals 2: The Blood of the Hydra

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ELEMENTALS

  THE BLOOD OF THE HYDRA

  Book Two in the Elementals Series

  Michelle Madow

  ELEMENTALS

  THE BLOOD OF THE HYDRA

  Published by Dreamscape Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 Michelle Madow

  This book is a work of fiction. Though some actual towns, cities, and locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author. Any similarities of characters or names used within to any person past, present, or future is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author. Brief quotations may be embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  ALSO BY MICHELLE MADOW

  The Elementals Series

  The Prophecy of Shadows

  The Blood of the Hydra

  The Head of Medusa (coming June 29, 2016)

  The Transcend Time Saga

  Remembrance

  Vengeance

  Timeless

  The Secret Diamond Sisters Trilogy

  The Secret Diamond Sisters

  Diamonds in the Rough

  Diamonds are Forever

  CHAPTER ONE

  I held steady onto my bow, the arrow pointed straight at the bulls-eye. As always, my mind knew exactly what to do—the stance I should take, how to hold the weapon, and how to balance my weight. I drew the bowstring back, aimed, and let the arrow soar.

  It missed the target by a foot and embedded itself in the wall.

  “Chris!” I yelled, dropping the bow to my side and spinning around. Sure enough, Chris stood behind me, his hands raised as if to protect himself from flying arrows. “Stop using your powers on me during practice,” I told him. “That would have been a perfect shot.”

  He smirked, and a light breeze blew past my face. The next thing I knew, an arrow from my quiver floated up into the air and propelled itself straight into the bulls-eye. “There’s a perfect shot,” he said, pumping his fist up in victory.

  “We’re supposed to be practicing using weapons without our powers,” I reminded him. “Just because Darius had to go upstairs to take a call doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want.” I knew I sounded like an uptight rule follower, but I hated being upped in archery—especially since it was my area of expertise. So I took out another arrow, balanced it on the bow again, and released.

  It joined Chris’s on the bulls-eye.

  I used to think I was a natural at tennis. But that was nothing compared to how quickly I’d picked up on archery. Which, according to Kate, made sense, since Apollo was my father. He was known for his skills in archery.

  Although of course, I’d learned this all from Kate, since I’d never actually met my father. He’d left a pendant on my windowsill last month—at least I thought he’d left it, since it was a pendant of the sun, with the letter “A” carved on the back. I’d hoped that his giving it to me meant I would meet him soon. But I hadn’t heard from him since. Apparently, as a busy god, he didn’t have time for his kids. Which should have been fine, because I already had a fantastic family—my mom, step-dad, and sister. But there was a part of me that wished the situation were different. It hurt to know that your own parent didn’t care about your existence.

  But there was nothing I could do to change that. So, not wanting to dwell on it, I shook off the disappointment and held out the bow to Chris. “Want to try?” I challenged him. “Without using your power?”

  “You know I can’t use that.” He walked over to the selection of weapons laid out on the counter and picked up a knife, holding it up so it glinted under the light. “But this, I’ve been practicing with. Check it out.”

  He stepped to where I’d been standing, geared up, and threw the knife.

  It stuck to the wall, farther away from the target than my first arrow.

  “I’m getting better,” he said sheepishly. “When I first started, it kept bouncing off the wall and onto the floor.” Without moving from where he was standing, he used his power to float another knife up from the counter and shoot it at the target. This time, it landed straight in the center. “I have more control over it that way,” he said. “It’s much easier.”

  “Until you use your powers so much that you run out of energy,” I said. “You know what Darius told us. We can train and learn how to use weapons the normal way. We have to save our energy to use our powers when we really need them.”

  “I know, I know.” Chris sighed, exasperated, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. I knew why he was frustrated—we’d been practicing for hours every day after school since our fight with the harpy, but Chris hadn’t picked up on using weapons as fast as the rest of us. He was falling behind, and it was getting more obvious every day.

  “You just need to practice,” I told him. “Your powers help you more with using weapons than any of the rest of ours do, but if you keep using them as a crutch, you’re never going to get better.”

  He raised his hands up again, and the arrows and knives jiggled themselves out of the wall and floated back to us. The arrows settled themselves back inside my quiver, and the knives landed straight back in his hands.

  “Our powers do come in handy, though,” he said with a wink, throwing one of the knives in the air and catching it at the hilt. “Less clean up time.”

  Then the door opened, and I turned to see who it was. My heart jumped at the sight of Blake strolling into the room. In his all-black training outfit, he looked like he had years of experience on Chris, who wore ragged sweats and a t-shirt. And his warm eyes were focused straight on me, which as always, took my breath away.

  But even though he’d
broken up with Danielle soon after our fight with the harpy, he was still off-limits. Because the five of us—me, Blake, Danielle, Chris, and Kate—were a team. We had to learn to work together. And dating Danielle’s boyfriend right after Blake had broken up with her would put a huge rift in that team. So I’d been trying to keep my distance from him. But that was difficult when the group of us trained together every day, so I was just doing my best to make sure I never ended up alone with him. Because if I were alone with him, I had a feeling that he might try to kiss me again, like he had when we were alone together in the cave. And if he did kiss me again, I didn’t think I would be able to resist.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be no power hour?” he asked, coming over to join us.

  I reached for an arrow, strung it in the bow, and released it straight into the bulls-eye.

  “No powers.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder and smiled at him. “That was all natural talent.”

  “Except I’m pretty sure I just saw some arrows and knives flying—out of the wall and towards both of you,” he said. “And as far as I’m aware, the wall doesn’t have much of an aim.”

  “Guilty as charged,” Chris said, holding both knives in the air. With his bright eyes and boyish grin, he looked more like he was preparing for a cooking challenge than for battling ancient mythological monsters.

  “So you came in here to get us in trouble?” I asked Blake, unable to keep the flirtatious tone from my voice. After all, I didn’t want him to think I actually thought he would tell. I knew him better than that.

  “Nope.” He smirked and pulled his lighter out of his pocket. “Since you were over here breaking the rules, I figured I would join. Have you ever shot a flaming arrow?”

  “No.” I smiled at where this was going. “But I think now would be a great time to try.”

  “I thought you might say that.” He walked closer until he was standing only a foot away from me, his eyes locked on mine the entire time. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—all I could do was focus on him as he flicked on the lighter, picked up an arrow, and dipped it into the flame.

  I worried that the flame might go out—after all, I doubted the arrows were meant to be lit on fire—but it held strong. Blake was getting better with his power every day.

  “Here.” He held the flaming arrow out to me. “Try it now.”

  I reached for it, my fingers accidentally brushing against his. Heat traveled up my arms and to my cheeks, and I moved my gaze away from his to focus on the target, hoping he hadn’t noticed the effect he had on me.

  Willing myself not to look back over at him, I steadied my stance, lifted the bow to eye-level, and strung the arrow as usual. The flame danced before my eyes, and the heat emanated onto my face, reminding me that this was anything but normal. This was magic.

  But despite the distraction of the fire, and of Blake’s eyes on me, I needed to focus. So I pulled back on the bowstring, aimed, and released, sending the arrow straight to the target. It wasn’t a bulls-eye, but it was close.

  “Let’s try again,” Blake said, taking a few steps back. “How far away is that target?”

  “About sixty feet.” I kept my eyes on it, watching as the flames on the arrow died out.

  “Which is much farther than I can aim with my fireballs,” he said. “My aim’s good for about ten to twenty feet, and I’m nowhere near as good with shooting weapons as you are. We might not always be standing next to each other in a fight, but the way I see it, we can still work together. We just need to practice. Are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  He flicked the lighter on again, balancing another ball of fire in his hand. He looked so dangerous when he did that, and I couldn’t ignore the thrill it sent up my spine. “String the bow, and I’ll show you,” he said.

  I did as he said, keeping the arrow pointed straight at the target. “Now what?” I asked.

  “Don’t flinch.”

  He threw the fireball at the tip of the arrow, which burst into flame, causing me to jump. “Hey!” I yelled at him. “You could have warned me.”

  “I did.” He laughed. “I told you not to flinch.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I shook it off, corrected my stance, and pulled back on the bowstring, sending the arrow straight towards the bulls-eye.

  “Again,” Blake instructed, and I drew another arrow. This time, when he threw the flame, I knew to expect it. Once the arrow was ablaze, I released it to the target, and grabbed another, and then another. It was like my body was working on super speed, and the rush was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I didn’t want to stop. So we kept going—Blake lighting up the arrow and me shooting—until all of the arrows were gone from the quiver and embedded in the target.

  “Wow,” I said, catching my breath as I admired the arrows still on fire. The blaze grew taller, and then it exploded, engulfing the target completely.

  Before I knew what was happening, a stream of water flew towards the target, extinguishing the fire.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Danielle’s voice echoed through the practice chamber, her stilettos clacking as she came inside. “Trying to burn down our training center?”

  “We were practicing a new technique.” I lowered my bow and shrugged. “We must have gotten carried away.”

  “You could say that.” Danielle coughed, fanning the smoke out of her face. A breeze blew through the air—courtesy of Chris—who sent the smoke out of the window near the ceiling of the basement.

  “Think of it this way,” Blake said, pointing his thumb at the now-destroyed target. “If that were a monster’s head, it would be dead right now.”

  Kate burst in from the shooting room, gun in hand. Strength-wise, she was the weakest of the five of us, so a gun had quickly become her weapon of choice. It had taken her a while to warm up to using such an intense weapon, but now she held onto it so naturally that it could have been an extra appendage.

  “I smelled smoke,” she said, her mouth dropping open when she saw the destroyed target. She looked at each of us, as if trying to figure out who was guilty. “What happened in here?”

  We caught her up on what we’d done, Blake and I alternating on telling different parts of the story. Despite the destruction, I still felt the rush from the shooting, and the excitement echoed in my voice. Because Blake was right—we’d created an awesome way to blow something up from afar.

  I also got an extra thrill out of fighting with Blake.

  “I guess I can see how it could be useful someday,” Kate finally said. “But there’s no water in here,” she added, turning to Danielle. “If there’s no water, how did you put out the fire?”

  “There’s water in the air.” Danielle held her hands out, as if it should be obvious. “I condensed it into liquid and used it to put out the fire.” She looked over at Blake and smiled, although it seemed strained. “You aren’t the only ones who have been practicing with your powers.”

  “Except this is supposed to be no power hour,” Kate reminded us, holding up her gun. “Remember what happened with the harpy? We used all our energy killing her. We were lucky that there was that portal from the cave to the playground, but what if that hadn’t been there? We would have been stuck in that cave, with no food, for who knows how long. We need to get better at using weapons, so we only use our powers when we absolutely need them.”

  “They were doing it first.” Danielle huffed and glared at us. “When I saw the target explode, I figured I would do something useful by putting out the fire.”

  “I actually wasn’t using my power,” I said, holding up the bow. “I was practicing archery.”

  “You weren’t using your power because your power can’t help you defend yourself.” Danielle sneered.

  “Whoa there.” Blake held his arms out and stepped between the two of us. “No need to get nasty.”

  “I was just saying it like it is.” Danielle shrugged, her eyes flashing with hurt. “And you have no right to tell me what
to do. You lost that privilege when you dumped me.”

  I looked back and forth between the two of them, reminded again about why Blake and I couldn’t be together. Danielle clearly wasn’t over him.

  There was also so much more I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. Because Danielle had no idea about what I could really do. She and the others only knew about my power to heal. (Which is quite useful in battle, seeing as it’s the power that can save us all.) But none of them knew about the other side of my power—the ability to kill with a touch. It was how I’d killed the harpy. I’d called on black energy, touched the harpy, and sent the energy into its body, killing it instantly.

  They all thought that the harpy had died because I’d staked it with a stalagmite. And they could never know the truth. Because using black energy… it was illegal. If anyone found out about what I could do, I could have my powers stripped. Or worse.

  I shivered at the thought, and wrapped my arms around myself. My ability to kill terrified me. I didn’t want to know what the Head Elders might do to me if they found out about the true extent of my abilities. Which was why I had to keep it secret from everyone—even from the other Elementals. I hated the thought of them being scared of me too. Or worse—turning me in.

  “We should clean up,” I said, changing the subject. “And I guess we’ll be needing a new target. That one is pretty…”

  “Cooked?” Blake smirked, finishing my sentence. “Fried?”

  “Yeah.” I laughed. “Exactly.”

  Our eyes met, making my heart jump, and I couldn’t help but smile at him. But I quickly looked away. After all, I didn’t want to give him—or Danielle—the wrong idea.

  “I’ll help you clean up, but I won’t be the one explaining this to Darius,” Kate said. “That’s up to one of you—since you’re the ones who made this mess.”

  We didn’t have time to debate who would be telling him that we’d destroyed yet another piece of training equipment, because he came running into the practice room, swinging the door open with so much force that it banged against the wall. His eyes were wide, his hair mussed up, and his glasses crooked on the tip of his nose. I tightened my grip around my bow, bracing myself for whatever news was coming.