Master of Elements

by Sonya Bateman

  Master of Elements

  Gavyn Donatti: Book 3

  Sonya Bateman

  Thank you for picking up Master of Elements. Please join my mailing list to be notified via email when new books are available.

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  Copyright © 2018 by Sonya Bateman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Shayne Rutherford, Wicked Good Book Covers

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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  Books in the Gavyn Donatti series

  Available now from Amazon

  MASTER OF NONE

  MASTER AND APPRENTICE

  MASTER OF ELEMENTS

  Books in The DeathSpeaker Codex series

  Available now from Amazon and Kindle Unlimited

  WRONG SIDE OF HELL

  FIELDS OF BLOOD

  REALM OF MIRRORS

  RETURN OF THE HUNTERS

  CITY OF SECRETS

  PRISON OF HORRORS

  THE SCROLLS OF GIDEON

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  More books by Sonya Bateman

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Breaking into a warehouse full of valuable goods ready to be swiped was hardly a novel experience for me. Doing it to stop a theft, on the other hand, was.

  Ever since I woke up the earth’s magic, it seemed like every moron with an ounce of mage potential had decided to become a petty criminal. They’d accidently find out they could float, or turn invisible, or break rocks with their minds, and they’d take it as a sign that their lives should now be dedicated to stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down.

  So far, none of them had actually been any good at it. But I still felt responsible, because I’d been the one to activate their slumbering powers of mediocrity. That was why Jazz, Ian and I were at a warehouse on the east side of town, waiting for Robbie “Guts” Morrison to bungle his latest attempt at the big time, instead of at home enjoying movie night. And believe me, I was going to give him an earful about that when we caught him.

  Nobody screwed with movie night, damn it.

  Guts had been nothing more than a pickpocket and a nuisance until about a year ago, when he’d somehow successfully managed to rob a bank. Probably no one had been more surprised about that than Guts himself, who’d set off the alarm in the middle of banking hours and still managed to evade the police. He may not even have known how he did it at the time — but I did, as soon as I heard about it. I’d sure as hell been surprised the first time I realized I could go invisible, and it took someone else pointing it out before I knew I was doing it.

  I’d been keeping an eye on Guts, who’d given himself that nickname despite being one of the most cowardly criminals I knew, ever since the robbery. He’d only gotten away with about five hundred bucks, and he hadn’t tried anything major since.

  According to my sources, which were Lark and Tory, Guts Morrison had decided to enter the wonderful world of arms dealing. He planned to hit this warehouse tonight, which had been rented out by a gun show doing a three-day run at the local fairground, and then sell the stolen weapons to anyone with a wad of cash to spare.

  I could forgive him the botched bank robbery, since no one got hurt and he hadn’t tried that again, but this wasn’t happening.

  Jazz and I were behind a stack of crates with a line of sight to the back entrance, and Ian was at the other end of the warehouse watching the front doors. This place had windows too, but they were small and too high to reach without a ladder, and I hadn’t heard anything that suggested Guts could fly. I did know that he was packing, and that had caused a very brief argument with Jazz about whether or not she was coming along on this little errand. Though I didn’t exactly enjoy being shot, I could survive a fatal gunshot or ten, thanks to my soul bind with Ian. She lacked that magical insurance policy, which put her at much higher risk.

  But she could see invisible people — and djinn — which was something Ian and I couldn’t do. Plus, she was Jazz. So obviously she’d won that fight. At least Cyrus had been happy to stay home and hang out with ‘Aunt Akila’ until we got back for our delayed movie night, and I was glad he was still too young to ask what these urgent trips his dad took with ‘Uncle Ian’ were all about.

  It was coming, though. One of these days, Cy would find out what we were up to in the dead of night — and he’d want to come along. The idea absolutely terrified me.

  Jazz had gotten her enhanced vision purely through earth magic, when I activated a force that had been dormant for centuries. Akila said it was because of her eyes — one liquid brown, one pale green. Apparently having two different colored eyes was a common thing for mages. But the ability to see the invisible was pretty much all Jazz got out of the deal.

  Cyrus, on the other hand, was a scion like me. Part human, part djinn, and several generations removed from Ian, who’d originated the bloodline. My son had the same potential power I did. Possibly more, if you believed the theory that every generation of descendants was stronger than the last.

  But he’d just turned seven. I did not want him out fighting criminals and evil djinn. Not yet, hopefully not ever.

  I didn’t look forward to the day when he’d ask if he could.

  I scanned the rows of containers in the dim light of the warehouse’s security lamps, trying to push down my anxiety. “See anything yet?” I whispered, giving Jazz’s hand a light squeeze. She couldn’t go invisible, but she’d stay unseen as long as she was in contact with me, and I could see her just fine. We were both surrounded by a weird, shimmering aura that she found slightly creepy, but I rarely noticed anymore — unless it was supposed to be there when it wasn’t. That usually meant I was in trouble.

  She smirked at me. “I would’ve told you if I did,” she said. “In case you don’t remember, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

  “Oh, believe me, I remember.” I tugged her hand a little closer and grinned. “Right now I’m remembering that job in Poughkeepsie,” I said. “We could do that again, you know. Don’t even have to slip into a back room this time.”

  She giggled and slapped gently at me. “Not in a million years, Houdini. I still don’t trust this invisibility thing. Not to mention we’re kind of on a stakeout here.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said with mock disappointment, though I was smiling. She called me Gavyn when things were normal, and Donatti or ‘you bastard’ when she was pissed. But usually when she pulled out the old Houdini nickname, it meant we didn’t have to go to sleep right away at bedtime.

  Suddenly, movi
e night was looking even better in spite of Guts screwing things up.

  I’d just shifted to stare at the back door again when a crackling, shivery noise came from somewhere inside the warehouse. It sounded like the tumble of stonework that followed an explosion blowing through a concrete vault wall. But there hadn’t been any explosion.

  “What the hell was that?” Jazz whispered sharply.

  “I don’t know, but I — we’d better find out,” I corrected myself fast. Not just because Jazz would be insulted if I suggested she stay out of it, but also because there was no way I’d leave her alone and visible. I didn’t think the sound could have been our wannabe gun-runner coming in from the opposite side of the warehouse, since Ian would’ve blasted the shit out of the front entrance if the doors had so much as twitched.

  But I did know that cowards like Guts were far more likely to shoot people if a job went sideways, and I wasn’t going to let Jazz become a target.

  We headed for the middle of the place, where the noise had been. There was a wide main aisle running front-to-back along the center of the warehouse, with rows of industrial steel storage racks loaded down with sealed shipping containers lining the twenty-foot high walls. When we stepped into the aisle, I spotted it right away. A gaping, crumbling hole in the cement floor, tunneled up from beneath.

  That was something I could’ve done easily with earth magic. But there was no way Guts should’ve been able to pull that off.

  “You see anything?” I murmured to Jazz, trying to keep the worry out of my voice. Invisibility didn’t let you walk through walls or carve through a few tons of dirt and cement. Either Guts had somehow gotten his hands on invisible and completely silent heavy machinery — which was impossible — or he had a few extra abilities I didn’t know about.

  Jazz shook her head, very slightly. “Just Ian,” she whispered back. “Straight ahead, thirty feet back from the … hole.”

  It wasn’t hard to tell the sight of that punched-out tunnel had severely rattled her cage. Jazz could handle stunt-level getaway driving without breaking a sweat, but magic always made her nervous up close. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, hoping my own whisper conveyed a little more confidence than I felt. “Keep looking, okay? He has to be here somewhere.”

  She started to nod, and then froze. “There,” she hissed. “Headed straight for the hole from the side, carrying a case. Nine o’clock.”

  “Got it. Whatever happens, do not let go of me.” I didn’t check to see if she’d agreed before I drew a hand back. “Ela rey’ahn!” I shouted, gesturing toward where I hoped the unseen man was.

  The wind spell gusted down the corridor, and I heard a garbled shout and a clatter as a steel briefcase fell on the floor from nowhere.

  “I got him, right?” I said.

  “Uh, yes. But he didn’t stay down …” Jazz whispered.

  “Ela na’ar!” I heard Ian call from the other end of the warehouse, and a ball of flame hurtled out from nowhere. Okay, so Ian wasn’t going to fuck around with this guy. I actually felt a little bad for Guts as the fireball hit a patch of air and spread into a vague, screaming man-shape that blundered away, back into the rows of shelves.

  There was a clicking, clattering sound, and a tornado of dirt spun itself out of the hole in the floor, headed in the direction Guts had run. The screaming stopped shortly after that, leaving an eerie calm and the smell of burnt crook in its wake.

  He’d apparently managed to put himself out, though. How the hell did he have that much control over earth magic? It shouldn’t have been possible.

  “Did you see that, Ian?” I called as I led Jazz up the corridor toward him. Wouldn’t drop the invisibility yet, but there was no sense keeping up the pretense that we weren’t here. I was pretty sure that Guts, dumb as he was, must’ve figured out he wasn’t alone in the building by now.

  “Yes,” Ian replied in an irritated tone. He was maybe ten feet away, judging from the sound. “I seem to recall you saying this human could only become invisible.”

  “Yeah, well, apparently I was misinformed.”

  “I can’t see him,” Jazz said. “Gavyn—”

  “Who the hell are you clowns?” a medium-pitched male voice called from the shadowy sidelines. “Doesn’t matter. You won’t live long enough to tell anyone about me.”

  Another rumble filled the air, and a widening crack raced through the cement floor, headed straight for us.

  Ian cursed in djinn, popped into view, and pointed up. “Quickly,” he said as he started to rise, and then vanished again.

  Fuck. Ian and I were both terrible at flying — but he was right. At the moment, it was the best move we had. “Sorry about this, babe,” I murmured as I wrapped an arm around Jazz’s waist. “Hold on tight.”

  She locked her arms around me without question, gasping and burying her head in my chest as I jumped straight up and kept going. My wobbly, uncertain ascent carried us a good ten feet above the floor, and when I looked down, the cement was falling apart in random chunks. Swells of dirt pushed up through the jagged cracks, arching and grabbing like filthy ocean waves before they dragged themselves back down.

  The son of a bitch was trying to bury us alive.

  “Where are you?” Guts’ unseen voice bellowed as the rumbling grew louder and the waves of dirt pulsed faster. “Come on and die already. I haven’t got all day.”

  “You can stop him, thief,” Ian whispered from somewhere a few feet away. “You know how.”

  Yeah, I did. If I was touching the ground, I’d be able to sense where he was and immobilize him. Of course, Ian also could’ve stopped him in several ways. His first choice probably would’ve been turning into a big-ass wolf and savaging the two-bit bastard to death, since the only way the djinn could kill humans was while they were in animal form. Luckily, I’d walked him down somewhat from the whole ‘bathing in the blood of my enemies’ thing and managed to convince him that human criminals, even wannabe mages, should be locked up instead of murdered.

  So I’d handle this douchebag. But I wasn’t leaving Jazz unprotected.

  “He’s right,” I said softly to Jazz. “You have to stay here with Ian, okay?”

  She shivered slightly without looking up. “Fine. But if you get yourself killed, I’m gonna kill you.” A tiny laugh left her as she raised her head to look at me. “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know I’ll be okay,” I said. After the soul bind thing, as far as we could tell, I’d become attached to Ian’s tether and was just as basically immortal as him. But I was only pretty sure about that, and Jazz didn’t exactly like me testing that particular slim margin of uncertainty.

  Still, earth mage or not, this was only Robbie Morrison. Who didn’t have any guts, no matter how many nicknames he tried to give himself.

  “Okay,” Jazz said without much conviction. “Just be careful.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  She looked up a little further and turned her head slowly. “He’s at your two, about five feet back.”

  As I drifted that way, Guts’ voice filled the warehouse in a hideous sing-song. “I hear you!” he cackled, just before five or six dirt geysers erupted from the ruins of the floor.

  One of them blasted me and Jazz. The impact felt like a pile driver, and I turned to take the brunt of it against my back as I struggled to escape sideways. I managed to push away just before the dirt fountain rammed the ceiling and sprayed everywhere — but by then I’d lost my happy thoughts, and I was falling.

  “Ian!” I shouted as I dropped the invisibility, knowing I had about a zero chance of pulling out of this dive. I was going to hit ground — but I wouldn’t let Jazz. “Take her!”

  “There you are!” Guts bellowed the instant I popped into sight.

  But just then I felt arms grab Jazz, and watched her disappear. I managed a single sigh of relief before I fell the rest of the way and landed like a boulder on the jagged ground.

  I drew the invisibility back on ri
ght away. But that didn’t stop Guts from taking a shot at me. I heard the bullet a split second before pain lanced my shin, and gritted my teeth to keep from screaming as I rolled clear from the place he was aiming.

  Unfortunately, my blood marked the spot. And no matter where I stood, it would stay visible.

  I had to hurry.

  “Don’t I know you?” Guts’ disembodied voice said almost conversationally as I focused on the ground, on finding the spot where he stood. I sensed it quickly, a low pulse of magic about fifteen feet back, somewhere behind the second row of shelving. “Yeah, I do know you. Donatti, right?” he said. “What the hell’s your problem, man? You trying to nab my score, or what? I know you’re a thief, too.”

  “Retired thief,” I said through gritted teeth. My leg burned where the little prick shot me, but I couldn’t take the time to heal it just yet. “You know, Guts, you should try retirement too. It’d be a lot healthier for you than trying to cross me.”

  Guts laughed. “Retire? You’ve seen what I can do,” he said. “Why the hell would I retire, when there’s so much loot just waiting for me to steal? This little cache is just for starters. Hell, I’m not just going to steal all the gold in Fort Knox — I’m gonna take the whole damned building.”

  There. I pinpointed his general location and stared at it, even though I couldn’t see anything but shadows. “Hey, Guts,” I called out. “Did you ever have one of those nightmares where something scary is coming after you, but you’re completely frozen in place and you can’t move an inch?”