by Kat Adams
“Dining hall closes in ten minutes,” someone called from the back.
I wanted to take advantage of the nice weather while we had it. The rain would settle in and turn the island cold and gray soon enough. “Let’s get out of here and go somewhere we can really talk.”
Clay was the first to stand and stretched his hands high above his head, showing off his impressive and mouthwatering abs. “As long as we stay on campus.”
I wouldn’t make that mistake again, especially now that the Council had invoked the prophecy. I had a target on my back and shitty luck whenever I left Clearwater’s protective grounds. “The ruins?”
We all fell silent and exchanged uneasy looks. We still hadn’t been back there as a group since the attack where we thought we’d lost Rob. I regarded him and waited. It was his call.
He nodded and joined Clay, reaching out to help me to my feet. “What are we waiting for?”
13
“Who wants to start?” I asked once we were inside the dilapitated structure. Clay and Leo sat on a giant stone, taking turns picking at the moss growing on it. Bryan leaned against a wall, his arms crossed. Rob and I stood near the entrance, taking turns checking our surroundings to make sure no one else joined us and overheard something they shouldn’t.
I debated waking the phytoplankton growing on the stone walls just to give us a warm aqua glow, but I knew how much they hated to be disturbed. Unless we had a maniacal dark elemental about to kill us, there was no need to disrupt their peaceful existence.
“How about we talk about that cut on your hand.” Bryan nodded at my palm. I curled my fingers, covering it. I didn’t want to talk about the cut. I wanted them to talk to me about what happened on the extraction.
“I meant who wants to talk about today.”
“I vote we talk about your fandler.” Clay continued to pick at the moss growing on the stone.
“I don’t want to talk about Spencer.”
“I don’t want to talk about the extraction,” he countered in a harsh tone. “I just want to forget it ever happened.” He went back to picking at the moss.
The awkward silence took over as I jumped my gaze from guy to guy. Clay with his slumped shoulders and vacant expression. He, like Rob, hadn’t changed out of his extraction uniform. In fact, none of them had. Bryan used his foot to push a rock around the dirt floor, keeping his head down. They didn’t want to talk about it, it seemed, and I didn’t want to force them. But Rob had broken down in my arms, he’d been so upset. I turned to him. “How about you?”
“We were at the kid’s house.” He rubbed the back of his neck. I joined Bryan to hold up the wall and give him space. Rob stared at the ground, looking so utterly lost, it hurt my heart. “The dad was pleading for us to not take him.”
Bryan reached over and took my hand when I inhaled sharply as memories of my own extraction came flooding back. My dad didn’t even say good-bye, he was that eager to let me go.
But hey, who’s bitter? It wasn’t like he’d been gunning for parent of the year prior to that awesome moment.
“The mom…just stood there.” Clay’s expression twisted as he struggled with the recount of what happened. “While her husband cried and begged us not to break up their family, she just stood there.”
At least she was there.
“Did she say anything?” I braced myself for the same six words that had destroyed my world.
“Don’t freak out.” Rob kept his focus on me as he took a step, his hands up. “She said we knew this day would come.”
I pushed off the wall as my heart hammered in my chest. Everything grew a little colder, a little darker. Those were the same six words my dad had said over and over, like that was some sort of justification for my mom disappearing. “What did you just say?”
He took another step toward me. “Don’t freak out,” he repeated.
“You do know telling someone not to freak out has the exact opposite effect, right?”
The guys all knew what those six words meant to me. It could be a coincidence, but something deep in my soul ate away at that reasoning. Those were very specific words. I couldn’t breathe and wanted to teleport out and hide until I made sense of the turmoil now spiraling inside me. Since my teleporting skills relied on my air element actually listening to me, I dismissed that thought and danced from foot to foot as I eyed the entrance. I’d have to make a break for it the Nelem way. Why I had the sudden and overwhelming urge to escape, I had no idea. I only knew I had to get away from them.
“Katy?” Bryan stepped toward me from the opposite side of Rob. “You okay?”
Clay and Leo both stood and closed in. Shit. They were surrounding me. I inched closer to the opening and eyed it again. Almost there.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Rob hooked me around the waist and pulled me into his arms. “This is why we didn’t want to tell you.”
I tried to push out of his embrace. “Why? Because my dad used those same fucking words when my mom disappeared?”
Clay joined the hug, followed by Bryan, and finally Leo. Just as it had when they’d extracted me, the group hug worked. I drew in several breaths as the calming effect took over, relaxing me.
“Because we didn’t want to upset you,” Rob clarified.
The clarity hit me hard. Here I was, making this about me when this needed to be about them. God, I was a selfish bitch. I nodded and wiggled out of their joint embrace. “I’m sorry. When memories of that day take over, I tend to lose my shit.”
“Let’s talk about something else.” Bryan eyed my hand.
“No,” I snapped and hid it behind my back. “I want to know what happened. How’d the kid die?” They all flinched on the last word, and I felt like crap saying it. I softened my tone. “Please tell me.”
“I sensed fire in him,” Rob went on. “But…”
“It was different,” Clay explained. “I felt it too.”
I bounced my gaze between them. “Different how?”
“Like when I shook hands with your fandler. It didn’t seem real, like the element was out of place.”
Leo and I exchanged glances.
Rob went on. “It was angry. I thought that was just because it was fire, you know? Fire tends to be pretty antsy and unstable anyway, so I ignored my instinct that something was off. I should have listened to my element. It was trying to warn me that something wasn’t right.”
“What happened?”
“He screamed.” Bryan closed his eyes as his expression pinched in painful memory, no doubt of the time he’d heard another kid’s screams when his grandfather had taken him to a summit of dark elementals. They’d tortured the poor Nelem just for sport.
“Right before he burst into flames.” Rob lowered his head. “He… He was gone before I could call the fire from him.” His shoulders fell. “I failed at the one job I had.”
Bryan spoke up. “No way, bro. Don’t you dare do that. You weren’t the one who did this.”
“I didn’t stop it,” he countered, his tone thick with emotion.
“Did you try?” I asked as a theory began to form in my brain. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t anything I wanted to believe could happen. But it was the only thing that made sense. When hurt flashed in Rob’s expression, darkening it, I hurried to explain. “I mean, did you call fire and it maybe ignored you?”
He held my gaze for several seconds before nodding. “How’d you know that?”
“The same thing has been happening to me with my air element.” I looked to Leo.
He nodded to pick up the explanation. “I think Spencer is a leecher.”
The guys all stilled, blinking at him until the news sank in. It was Clay who shook his head. “They’ve been extinct for years. The last known leecher died during the plague at the turn of the century.”
“Last known leecher,” I pointed out. “What if there were more in hiding? The Council was gathering them up and destroying their powers. What if Spencer’s family fled to the UK,
hid out there for the next couple hundred years or so, and emerged via this powerful quad? What if his entire family are leechers?”
Bryan sided with Clay—shockingly enough—with a shake of his head. “He’s got to be something else. Something more. Leechers are easy to identify, even easier to capture. They’re weak. Spencer isn’t.”
Rob ground out a curse. “Then what the hell is going on? First Spencer stealing elements, now our own primaries are betraying us?”
“Out of balance,” I muttered, recalling what Cressida had said. The shock of my epiphany had me panting to process it all. I glanced around, fully expecting the original elemental to appear. When she didn’t, I nodded, accepting it. I’d have to be the one to explain. Hopefully I had it right. Then again, it was a pretty terrifying theory, so I really hoped I had it wrong.
“Cressida told me things were out of balance, but she didn’t know why. I think I do.” They all watched me, waiting. I had their undivided attention. I paced the length of the ruins as I worked the theory through. As I explained, I purposely avoided Bryan’s gaze, knowing what this news would do to him, considering his family’s history. “What if the dark side is trying to increase its numbers by creating elementals?”
Leo stiffened. “How? You either have the power to control the elements or you don’t.”
“The same way the leechers used to steal elements. Magic. The worst kind of magic. What if the dark elementals have figured out how to reverse the powers the leechers had?”
“You mean push an element into someone instead of steal it?”
I nodded. “What if they’re turning Nelems into elementals? Into dark elementals?”
We all exchanged glances as we let that sink in.
Bryan eventually tilted his head back and forth. “That would explain why Rob couldn’t control the fire. It was being forced into the kid.”
Rob darted his attention between us. “Are you saying even if I had gotten to him on time, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the element from killing him?”
“That also explains how Professor Layden is getting some of the primaries wrong in the new students. They aren’t natural elementals.” I left out the part that I could feel their primary from a distance even if the professor couldn’t when she touched them. I was already unique enough. I didn’t need to add another abnormal log to the weird fire. “She even mentioned something in class yesterday about how dark magic upsets the balance.”
“That’s right,” Bryan agreed. “Yin and yang.”
I nodded and continued to explain for Rob and Clay since they weren’t in the class. “You’ve got regular elementals who are good, then you’ve got dark elementals who are bad. Evil. You have to have one to have the other. She said magic was the same way. You have good magic like the locator spell she showed us in class. Then there’s dark magic, the kind she’s teaching us how to defend ourselves against. What if the kid was under the influence of dark magic? What if the fire burning inside him didn’t want to be there and found the only way it could to escape?”
“If that’s really what’s going on here, we need to tell the Council.”
Rob scoffed. “Yin and yang? Good and evil? Spells? I call bullshit. Layden is just pushing the Council’s agenda in that dumb class. Arts & Crafts? Give me a break. Who wants to learn how to make a quilt?”
I glared at him. “It’s short for Dark Arts & Witchcraft.”
He snapped his mouth shut and swung his rounded gaze to Bryan. We all did. He nodded and sank against the wall once again. “Layden is teaching a class on how to defend against dark arts and witchcraft.”
“And you’re in this class? Un-fucking-believable.” Rob ran his fingers through his short hair and held both hands behind his head as he walked in circles. He stopped abruptly. “Could the Council be any more obvious? They already hate your family and are just waiting for you to step out of line. You being in a class like that will only end badly. Why the hell would she do this to you?”
“You really don’t know the answer to that?” Leo jumped to Bryan’s defense, going up against Rob, which shocked us all. It definitely shocked me. Our master of the obvious rarely created waves or went up against the leader of our group. As opposites, they butted heads, sure. But this was something else, something more.
Leo Jackson was taking a stand. I’d applaud if it wouldn’t ruin the mood.
Rob narrowed his glare, nailing the water elemental with pinpoint precision. “What did you just say?”
He brought up his hands. “I’m not trying to start anything.”
“Then shut your piehole.”
“Cool it,” I ordered Rob before nodding at Leo. “Go on.”
“Professor Layden has Bryan in the class as proof to the Council he’s not dark.” When we all exchanged baffled glances, he went on. “Think about it. The Council has pretty much already labeled him dark because he’s a Gunderson. Nothing he can say or do will change that. They’ve already made up their collective mind. So Layden—instead of going along with them—is doing this to prove them wrong.”
“I’m still not following,” I admitted.
“Think about it.”
“I’m trying.” And now, I’m annoyed.
“If a Gunderson is around all that magic and darkness she’s teaching us how to defend against and doesn’t give in to it, how could they possibly continue to label him as dark?” He said it so abruptly, so matter-of-factly, that air whistled out of my lungs at the revelation. How did I not put that together? Thank God my water elemental stated the obvious even when the rest of us didn’t see it.
“Wait,” Clay jumped in. “Instead of you guys having a relief class, like shop with Rob and me, you all are stuck in a defense class? That’s bullshit. We’re all supposed to get a relief class.”
“And once again, you’ve completely missed the point.” Bryan shot him a look.
“Maybe you should elaborate, Einstein.” He growled his insult, repeating what Bryan had called him during our last sparring match. Was that seriously only a week ago? Time flew when you were under the gun. Was that the saying? It was if you asked my mom.
“Professor Layden pretty much said fuck you to the Council and with a class they themselves approved.”
She’d done the same when she teleported out of the room this morning. Leo wasn’t the only elemental taking a stand.
Clay elbowed Leo. “Nice observation, dude. Even I didn’t pick up on it.”
“Maybe there are still some things your giant brain doesn’t get.”
He laughed. “Clearly. Man, I can’t believe Layden would go against the Council like that. I think I love her.”
“Hey. What am I? Chopped liver?” I opened my arms wide and laughed when he pulled me into his arms and attacked my neck. I slapped and screamed playfully. When the impact angered my cut, I winced. He immediately stilled and took my hand, examining the wound. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he argued. “Guys, take a look at this.” They closed in, making me even more uncomfortable. A coldness built within me. I couldn’t stop it. Instead of my embarrassment heating me, it cooled my core.
“Get back,” I demanded as the coldness continued to build, the warmth of their nearness overwhelming. They all stared at my hand as I bared my teeth, fighting the cold clawing at me to surface.
“It looks infected,” Rob stated.
“It looks gross,” Clay added.
“It looks like it hurts.” Leo leaned in.
“Katy?” Bryan asked. “Are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t okay. It was too much. The cold took over, controlling my thoughts, my movement. I threw my arms out to my sides, using air to send them all flying away from me, not wanting any of them touching me. Everything around me went dark. I was cold, so cold, as fury raged inside me. One thought stayed front and center—conquer.
I lifted into the air and glared at the futile beings. They were no match for me. I could kill them all in one fell swoop and not br
eak a sweat.
“Stand and face me,” I rasped, the sound deep, distant, dark. It wasn’t my voice, wasn’t what I really wanted, yet I couldn’t stop it. The drive to hurt them, to make them feel real pain, overwhelmed me. I’d take great pleasure in torturing them.
“Babe?” The water elemental approached first. “Are you okay?”
“You do not even challenge my power. I am the supreme elemental. I will rule our world.” Purple flames erupted around me. I curled my fingers into a fist as I focused on the soothing heat finally warming me, the way it consumed me and controlled me. I then smiled as I sent the heat to him. Water elementals didn’t fare well against fire, especially when it was on the inside. The blond man widened his blue gaze right before he slapped at his skin.
He then turned to the dark one. “Rob? Help. She’s using a forbidden call! I—I can’t…” he hollered out as the fire ignited his skin.
The dark one rushed to him and grabbed his shoulders, stealing my fire. Well, fine. I focused on him, sending water to freeze the cells in his body. He grew rigid and fell back, stiff as a board. The water elemental was in no shape to help him, not with his core so warm.
“Pathetic.” I tilted my head at the other two. “Which one of you is next?”
“Montana, what’s—” was all the air elemental got out before I sent a large square stone at him. Alas, he teleported out before it crushed him.
The coldness inside me grew, consuming me completely. It felt foreign, wrong, but I couldn’t stop it. “It’s between you and me, earth elemental.”
“What are you?”
It wasn’t what are you doing. It was “What are you?” The question cut into my determination to bring as much pain to him as I possibly could. I dropped a few feet as the coldness holding me hostage faltered.
“Fight it,” he ordered as he walked toward me. I wanted to fight him, not the darkness. Yet, something deep inside implored me. Fight it, Katy. Fight the cold.
“I don’t know how,” I whimpered, clenching my teeth, battling the cold with everything I had.
