Dallas laughed. “You’re a quick study. I just wanted to say to be careful. Succubi and Elementals do not mix well. We have far too much power. It’s addictive to them. They can become drunk with power after draining an Elemental. It may seem innocent at first, but it can be overpowering.”
“Has it happened before?”
“Yeah. My aunt was taken by a succubi who couldn’t control his desire for her power. He loved her too, at first, and she loved him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s why I need you to be careful, Elke.”
I nodded. “I’m not sure I can be with someone who can control me. That’s why I was keeping my distance from him.”
“I see,” he said. “Is that why he left the academy?”
“I think so, but he didn’t tell me. I found out today.”
“What else did you want to talk to me about?” I asked, suddenly changing the subject.
“I thought I would talk to you about my family. They may come up in your studies.”
“Okay.”
“We come from a long line of elementals, powerful ones. As I said earlier, the spirit element is not always present, but in our family, it usually is. You see, our family has had three Queens in our history.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh you haven’t been told yet, okay,” he said. “Our Queen is elected, not born into the role. Well, technically, you are born into. It’s based on an Oracle’s vision and whoever is most powerful. I’m sure they will go into it more in your classes.”
“So our family is an elite one?”
“Yeah, in a way. Our last name is famous among elementals, let’s put it that way. It’ll open doors for you if you want to use it, but I’m not going to force that on you.”
“Dallas…”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have another family?”
He sighed, rubbing a hand up and down his face. “I was waiting for you to ask that.”
“So you do.”
“Yes, I do. I have two sons and a daughter.”
“Wow, I bet they don’t know about me.”
He chuckled. “My sons do, but I don’t see my other daughter much.”
“What about your wife?”
“We hadn’t really been on good terms before this so it doesn’t worry me what she thinks. My sons want to meet you, and are very excited to have a sister.”
“What about your other daughter.”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with our family.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a long story, but shortly after my first marriage failed, I met a woman and she became pregnant. She told me immediately and I offered to marry her or to protect her but she refused. It was only when my daughter was born that I found out who her family was.”
“Your life is like a movie,” I said, trying to hide a smile.
“Tell me about it, kid.”
“So her family was rich?”
“Yep, just like mine only she wasn’t an elemental.”
“Okay.”
“I should get going, it’s almost your supepr time.”
I nodded and we headed back to the academy. I saw his car parked in the visitor spot, looking very out of place next to the teacher’s cars.
“It must be great to come back here and show off that car.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t attend this school. I was educated at Willows Shadow Academy in Denmark.”
“There’s more than this academy?”
“Yep. Willows is a little more exclusive.”
“Oh right, your family would have sent you to a good one.”
“This one is great too, it has a great reputation. Willows isn’t a nice place to be.”
I had no idea what he meant by that but I was sure I’d found out one day.
“It was nice to see you, kid.”
“Dallas,” I called out before he got in the car. “This may seem like an odd request or whatever but would it be okay—”
“Name it.”
“Would it be okay if I could have a hug?”
He closed the distance quickly and pulled me into his arms in a tight hug. I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him back. We stayed that way for a while before he pulled away. “Why don’t you come to my house for Christmas this year?”
“Really? Wouldn’t your wife be upset?”
“She won’t be there. She goes away with her friends. My sons want to meet their sister. It’ll be a great time for you to learn more about our holiday seasons.”
“Yeah…sure.”
“You can invite Ianthe too.”
“I don’t think so.”
He sighed, probably exhausted and thinking ti was just a female drama we’re both going through.
“I know you think she did the wrong thing, and maybe she did but she only did it because she thought it would be better for you. She was scared, and alone, and didn’t know what to do. Give her a break.”
“I’ll try.”
“Oh,” he said as he got into his car and wound down his window. “What was the name of this other boy you like?”
“Luther.”
“As in the fallen angel?”
I nodded, smiling. He always made me smile.
“You are more like your mother than you can imagine.”
He didn’t wait for me to ask why before he reversed and drove away. What could he have possibly meant by that?
Luther
I heard her footsteps on the stairs in the tower and felt a smile creep up over my face. I knew she couldn’t keep away. I got off my window sill and waited for her to make herself known. When she climbed the final step and looked over at me, my smile fell. She was angry.
“What’s wrong?”
“How old are you?” she asked me, her hands on her hips.
“Uh why?”
“Just answer me.”
“I’m a little older than you, but not by much. Why do you ask?”
“So you haven’t been at this school when I my mother was here?”
I bit back the laughter. She wasn’t in the mood, and it was odd to see her so upset. She’d not been this upset with me before.
“No, of course not.”
She relaxed a little and sat down on my bed. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Why don’t you start with why you just interrogated me?”
“My father came to visit me. He said I was just like her after I told her I liked you.”
“You told your dad you liked me?” I asked, surprised. I thought for sure she would keep me a secret. I wasn’t exactly someone you took home to meet the parents.
“Yes.”
“Okay, so why would you think I went to school with your mother.”
“It was just a thought. She was a little bit of a slut.”
I smirked. “Yeah, that’s not a crime, Elke.”
She rolled her eyes. “I guess I got jealous.”
I sat next to her and hugged her. “You don’t need to be jealous, Elk. Trust me. You are not like any woman I’ve ever met before.”
She leaned into me, and although I’d just bared my soul to her, I knew it was probably a bad idea to get too seriously invested in a relationship with her. I couldn’t promise her forever. I had a responsibility that I couldn’t get out of, although I had put it off for a while, I knew the day was coming when I would have to return.
“Have you ever heard of spirit element?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty rare, why?”
“My father has it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s a Shadows, right?” I said. She pushed back onto the bed and laid down.
“Yep.”
“So are you. Have you heard strange voices or seen people who are suddenly there and then not?” I asked her.
“No. I can’t even figure out how to use fire or earth elements.”
I stood up and moved from the bed a little. I was about to do something that I swore
I would never do in front of another student but Elke was different.
“Don’t stress. I’m about to show you something and I want you to not freak out.”
She sat up a little, resting on her elbows as I unfurled my wings. Her eyes moved from my face to my wings, an awe in them but made me feel proud. I’d never liked my wings before, it was what made me different to everyone else here.
“I’ve seen your wings before, Luther.”
I pushed out the fire from within me. They lit my feathers up and burned. It didn’t hurt me, but it was from my home. Hellfire was to intimidate people, before I sent them to Hell.
“Are you in pain?” she asked, coming closer.
“No, hellfire doesn’t hurt me. But, you can use it, channel the fire into your power. Once you learn how to use fire, you won’t need to be scared by it.”
Elke got off the bed and circled me, looking at the yellow-gold flames that encased me. She looked up into my eyes when she came back in front of me.
“Your eyes are so beautiful. It’s like there are flames in them.”
“It doesn’t scare you?” I asked.
“No, not even how your voice gets deeper while you have flames shooting out from your wings.”
I was falling for this girl. It was going to make leaving her a hell of a lot harder when I would need to. But what if I didn’t need to? What if I chose her and not Hell.
“Okay so how do I use it?”
“Like you do with the rain. Don’t touch it, but use your powers, your elements to channel it. Throw it across the room.”
She nodded and closed her eyes. I felt her trying to pull the fire from me, but it wasn’t working. She was getting frustrated, which made the pull a little more intense but all it did was make smoke come from her hands.
She was close, but she needed some kind of push. I was going to hate myself for what I was about to do but she needed it.
“I should have known this wouldn’t work, your powers aren’t strong enough.”
She looked up at me, hurt. She’d been trying so hard to get a handle on her powers, harder than most in this school. It was killing me that she was hurt by me but I wanted her to be protected.
I started to let the hellfire diminish from my wings, and she noticed.
“You’re not strong enough. We’ll try when you’ve studied more.”
Her eyes changed to a shimmery white and her hands produced a dark smoke as the pull from her powers grabbed fire from my wings and swung it around the room until she aimed it at me. I dodged it as she pulled more fire from me. Her rage was scarier than I could have imagined. I pulled the fire away tucked my wings back, as she threw another fireball at me.
“Elke,” I said, softly. “Stop. Calm yourself. You did it.”
She looked away from me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her eyes were still cloudy, and I could see her expression was cold. Had I pushed her too far?
Her arms began to shake and she held her palms to her forehead, closing her eyes. She screamed out in pain.
I knew what a vision looked like, I’d seen many Oracles go through it but this looked a little more intense than normal.
“Elke,” I braced myself for her to throw something else at me as I approached but she crumpled over in pain. I eased her onto the bed where she crawled into the foetal position and shook. “Breathe through the pain.”
I hoped she could hear me, but judging by the amount of sweat that was pouring off her, I knew she was in trouble. Do I get a teacher up here alerting them to the fact she’d been sneaking here every night?
Just as I was about to go down stairs to do that, the shaking stopped and she stopped screaming. Elke was almost calm as she looked up at me with her beautiful brown eyes.
I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just have a bit of a headache. What was that?”
“A vision. Your Oracle side must have been activated by your rage. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”
She looked pale, almost like she was going to throw up. I helped her up to go to the window for fresh air. It took her a moment, before she turned to me.
“I saw a lot of images all shooting through my mind. How can Oracles make sense of anything?”
“It was your first time, Elk. They won’t make sense immediately. You need to learn to push past the pain and to look into each image. You’ll find clues in each vision that will help you.”
“I don’t think I can keep doing that. The pain is excruciating.”
“It gets easier.”
“How would you know?” she spat back at me.
“Because the first time hellfire filled my wings I was in agony, my wings were scorched. I had to learn how to control it, just like you need to learn how to control the pain, and how to ease it so you can look into each image flitting through your mind.”
“I better go,” she said, pushing off the window and heading for the staircase. “I have a lot of homework and I think I need to go to sleep.”
“Do you want me to walk you back?”
“No,” she said a little too quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, k?”
I nodded but she had already disappeared down the stairs. I wish I could make it better for her, take the pain away, or even take the pain inside of me. I would gladly do that for her.
All I could do for now was to wait for her to reach out to me for help.
Elke
I closed my door after running here from Luther’s. I didn’t want him to follow me, even though I knew he would give me the space I needed, I didn’t want to admit to him what I had seen. My head still pounded from the pain, so I grabbed my painkillers and tossed two down my throat and sat on my bed.
Palmer’s face had been front and centre. Did this mean Palmer was going to do something? But how? I’d been told he was imprisoned until a trial could be brought forward before the Queen. I didn’t see what he was doing, but he kept looking at me like he knew I was there. Like I was helping him.
It scared me.
I didn’t want to tell Luther because I knew he would tell the teachers and I’d probably be put in prison as well. I didn’t know enough about this world to go away.
∞∞∞
Weeks later
“Come to town with me,” Luther said, breaking my trail of thought. I was half way through a huge book on the history of Oracles in the library and in desperate need of fresh air. For the last couple of weeks, I had been in this library trying to catch up to everyone else’s knowledge base. It sucked that I didn’t know half of what everyone else did. “I need to grab some supplies and you could use the break.”
I closed the book and looked up at the clock. Jesus. Was it that time already?
“Yeah, sure.”
Things had been strange since that night I’d had my vision. Luther was giving me space, and not asking me about it but I knew he was desperate to know what I’d seen.
He helped me up from the chair and led me out of the library and down the front steps. I imagined we would have a car but there was none to be seen.
“Are we walking there?” I asked. I heard the whoosh of his wings unfurling behind me. Turning around, I saw his brilliant black wings jutting out from his back proudly.
“No, I thought we’d fly.”
He pulled me up into his arms and took off. I closed my eyes and let the warm air assault me. It was a nice and sunny day, which was different to what the weather had been like in recent weeks. Luther flew us above the minimal clouds in the sky and landed on a rooftop. He let me down and I looked down at the street below. It was packed full of people, going about their day as if nothing was to be feared.
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand and leading me down the fire escape to the street.
Luther took me through stores I’d never heard of before, and I looked through the confectionery section of an old style lolly store. Luther was stocking up for a long time by the looks of his basket.
He looked so natural right now, the weight wasn’t on his shoulders like it usually was when we were at school. He grabbed the bags I had in my hand and paid for them at the cashier.
We left the store with way too many bags. We could have pulled off acting like adults if we didn’t have three bags full of junk food in our arms. “How are we going to get these back to the school?”
“You’ll need to hold onto them as I fly.”
“And how will I hold on to you?”
“I got you, babe.”
It was the first time he called me babe and I had to say I liked it. I saw a shop ahead selling jackets. I was in desperate need of a good jacket thanks to England’s stupid weather.
“Hey, I’ll be right back, I doubt you want to come into that shop with me. I just need to grab a jacket real quick.”
“Sure, I’ll wait here.”
I headed inside to grab whatever I could to combat the cold.
Luther
I waited by the shop doors for Elke to be done. Leaving school grounds without permission wasn’t really something I should be doing given everything going on with Palmer but I knew she needed a break. She’d been working herself to the bone to try and get everything figured out.
“Luther.”
I turned at the sound of my mother’s voice. She stood in front of me, her blood red dress entirely too skimpy for a day in London.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I’ve come to speak with my baby boy.”
“Well I have nothing to say.”
“You will need to come home soon, Luther.”
“And one day I might think about it.”
“Your little girlfriend will not survive eternity, and you know it. It will be a heartbreak you don’t need.”
Surprised that she knew about Elke, but it really shouldn’t surprise me she would keep an eye on me. She never really broke those cords between a mother and child. It didn’t help that I was her only child, whereas my father’s other wives all had multiple children each. Yet I was the one poised to take over.
“That’s my decision.”
“Luther…”
She made a move to push my hair behind my ear. I pulled away from her. She was not going to lure me into her trap like she did with everyone else. That’s how my father became trapped with her. I was not as weak as he was…although when it came to Elke, I was.
All Hallows' Eve (Ravensbane Academy Book 1) Page 9
