Elemental Storm (The Eldritch Files Book 6)

by Phaedra Weldon

  Elemental Storm

  The Eldritch Files, Book Six

  Phaedra Weldon

  Caldwell Press

  Copyright © 2015 by Phaedra Weldon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Caldwell Press

  Cover Design © 2015 by Lou Harper

  Editing Kime Kirkpatrick

  Thank you for purchasing and reading Elemental Storm. It would be greatly appreciated if you could take a moment and leave an honest review of this novel within the guidelines of your favorite retailer.

  QUALITY CONTROL: If you find typos or formatting problems, please contact ph8dra@comcast.net so they may be corrected.

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  This one’s totally dedicated to the readers in every way. For those who’ve become as lost in Sam and Crwys’s world as I have.

  Just one thing as you read this ~ love endures.

  Eighteen Years Ago

  "But Mommy…it's going to hurt. Uncle Tobin said taking a measure was like taking a mortgage out on someone's soul!"

  "Sam, when has Uncle Tobin been right about anything?" Mom said as she knelt down in front of me. I was standing on the old piano bench in the living room wiping at tears on my cheeks, and Mony—she hated it when I called her that—was standing on the coffee table. We both had on just our panties and socks. We had our legs spread and our hands out by our sides. I thought we looked silly, but Mony looked sillier 'cause she kept sticking her tongue out at me and calling me a crybaby.

  "Monica," Aunt Ina said in a warning tone as she pulled a white cord taut from Monica's right outstretched middle finger, across her chest, to her left outstretched middle finger. "We have to get this right. Keep your hands still, your tongue in your mouth, and your lips zipped shut or you won't get ice cream."

  "With sprinkles?" I asked. I noticed the cord Mom used on me was white too.

  "Yes," my mom said. "But you have to hold still. And this isn't a mortgage." She eyed me. "Do you even know what a mortgage is?"

  I nodded. "It's something Daddy gets angry about. A lot. So I don't want one on my soul."

  Both of the women laughed, and I wasn't sure what was so funny?

  And Mony could never stop talking. "So why are we doing this again?"

  "We're taking your measures," Ina said as she took another measurement of Monica's waist. "They're a combination of your height and width at the time your magic started manifesting. And since you two seem to do everything together, we were hoping this would awaken Elements in both of you."

  "Elements?" I sort of knew what she was talking about, but it was easier to talk than to just stand there. That was so boring, and I wasn't as nervous if I talked.

  "Our little Elementals." Monica moved her nose up and down, and I laughed. That meant her nose itched. "You know those little guys your mom has?"

  "Oh yeah. I want a mermaid like Mom's."

  Mom smiled as she took the measurements of my waist. "Oh? What about the rest?"

  "I just want the mermaid. Oh, and I want a Unicorn."

  Monica laughed.

  Aunt Ina shook her head. "They don't come in Unicorns, Sammy."

  "They do too!" I shouted, and Mom gave me a stern look.

  "Samantha Elizabeth, you tell your aunt you're sorry for yelling. Now."

  I fought the urge to shout again, because I knew I was right. I had to be right. Unicorns were awesome and I wanted one. "Sorry. But I still think I can get one."

  "So, are these strings magic?" Monica asked as her mother finished up and gave her the scissors. She showed Monica where to cut it.

  "They can be used for magic. One day," Ina said, "when you're older and you have your contracts with your Elementals, you might want to bond with them. And these will help you do that."

  "Really?" I couldn't stop the excitement in my chest. The thought that I could bond with a Unicorn!

  "Mhmm," my mom gave me scissors and showed me where to cut too. It took two hands, but I did it! "Ina and I are going to keep these measures safe for both of you, because we don't want them getting into the wrong hands."

  "Is that bad?" I said as I got off the piano bench.

  "It can be. So you have to take good care of your measure, okay?"

  I reached for it, but she held it out of reach. "But don't I get it?"

  "Not till you're ten, okay? Just another year and then you'll be a big girl."

  I beamed up at her. "But you'll protect it for now, right Mommy? Like you protect me?"

  "Yes, my sweet baby girl. I'll always protect you."

  ONE

  Sweat ran down the center of my back as I crouched beneath the window of a house on Barracks Street. Paint that might have been light blue in its youth, but now looked more like old, dead Smurf, peeled from stressed and deeply grooved wooden slats on either side. My internal clock said early in the morning, but my rational clock said What the F are you doing out here trespassing on someone else's property when you could be home, tucked in bed, sleeping off last night's celebratory pub crawl? For answers to that question, boys and girls, and a whole lot of other wrong happening lately, stay tuned!

  The July sun pressed down on me like a hot iron against the ridiculous black cape required by all Clerics of Peace. How in the hell can the Witch's Parliament be serious with this getup? It's July. In New Orleans. That translated into ALMOST HOT AS HELL! Actual HOT AS HELL would arrive next week when August blundered in.

  Truth was the sticky, humid heat of July would feel like a winter breeze when August rolled in. Compared to some of the tepid nights I'd spent last year with every ceiling fan in my apartment spinning, every box fan humming and every air conditioning unit that wasn't frozen up stressing, this was a downright pleasant morning.

  Something brushed against my ankle, which of course made me jump just a bit, thinking I'd stepped in an ant bed, or a snake crawled out from under the house, or worse, a spider was crawling up my leg. It wasn't any of those things; it was the transparent image of Dharma's Water feeler. I had feelers too, made up of the four Elements that I could send out to sense things far away. But this was a new development I'd noticed in Dharma's power since she and Ivan returned from the land of the missing. I knew she used her Water Element like a sixth sense, but this was some serious Elemental control I'd only ever seen Arden Vervain perform.

  With the touch came the question in my mind, Do you see anything?

  I kicked the tiny tidal wave back as my own Undine appeared and did a loop in the air with joy. I asked her politely to retreat so the heat wouldn't evaporate her. She did as I asked, and honestly, I had no idea if the heat would do that to her or not. I just didn't want to keep up with more than one Elemental, and for this job I'd chosen my Sylph, an Air Elemental.

  As a Hive, we're supposed to work together. Hives were usually made up of four Witches, each of them possessing an Elemental to correspond to the four Elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. I knew the rules regarding Clerics—that every Cleric had to have at least one Dianic Gift, powers not associated with the Elements. For example: Psychometry, Telekinesis, Divination, etc. Apparently, in the land of the Clerics, a Gift was also an Elemental.

 
Of course, that realization got me thinking about my own magic. I was considered an Elemental Witch because I have all four Elements represented by Elementals. Around four months ago I managed to acquire the fifth Element of Spirit. So that made five. The culmination of all of my Elementals made it possible for me to control, without going insane, the not-so-popular magic ability called Arcane Magic, which was by definition, Demon Magic.

  I didn't have any Dianic Gifts. Not one of them. At first I thought Tracking was one, and I had it because my mother had it. But Arden corrected me pretty fast on that one, explaining that Tracking was a result of my ability with Spirit.

  And it's not that I wanted more magic. Sweet Lord and Lady, it was coming out of my pores on good days. So by their own rules, I shouldn't be a Cleric. No Dianic. Unfortunately they were bending the rules to keep me under their collective noses.

  Sam?

  Dharma was back in my ear again as her Water feeler ticked my calf and I refocused on the tiny wave moving over my sandal. The Water Witch sounded worried, so I summoned my Air Elemental. He appeared as an odd wavering of the air in front of me. Some might call it heat off of the pavement, but I could see every detail of him. He was the largest of my Elementals, now standing just an inch taller than me, with broad shoulders that made a nice V to his hips. On most days, that's where his physical appearance stopped, like today, and tapered away into invisibility.

  He knelt beside me and smiled as I asked him to slip inside the room I was loitering outside of and tell me what he could see.

  He vanished, and within seconds I received clear, if not wavy, images of three guys, all possibly in their mid-twenties, sitting in a circle in the middle of the room. There wasn't much in the way of furniture, and what there was had been pushed back against the wall.

  In the center of the little trio were a few familiar accoutrements. A brazier for charcoal briquettes, used for burning loose incense. A metal cup that looked like they bought it out of one of those airplane magazines. The sides were decorated with grapes and leaves with a dragon as a base. I assumed it contained water or wine. There were three red taper candles burning in equally tacky grape, leave, and dragon holders, and a thick black candle sat on the floor, unlit.

  What caught my attention was the unadorned knife one of them pointed in the air. There wasn't any flash of magic, or even a spark of color around it, but something about it seemed wrong. A beat later I realized I was getting that feeling from my Sylph. Something about that knife made him uncomfortable.

  I asked him to check out the rest of the house before I relayed what I saw to Dharma. She could give Emily Pearson, the Earth Witch member of this Hive, the information. The new Grand High Master, Martin Cosgrove, insisted I be the leader of this Hive even though it was a job I didn't want. Arden had done her best training me how to be a leader up to the point that I tuned her out. What was the use if every thing I said, every decision I made, or every opinion I had was ignored, challenged, and ridiculed by Emily? No one could make another person mind or obey if they already hated the person in charge. And Emily hated me. I hadn't noticed it when I first started this stupid job, but after four months of this, I started seeing what everyone else saw.

  The Earth Witch really, truly, disliked me and fought me on everything. Not always out in the open either. I'd found falsified reports given to Cosgrove on past assignments. And recently, Cosgrove's new personal assistant, Ethel Delacroix, scolded me for requisitioning items and not running the approval through her. My signature had been forged on something called John Domingo's ring. What was that? And who in the hell knew about this kind of stuff? I finally went to Cosgrove and showed him and let him know real quick, if she didn't leave me alone, I wasn't responsible for whatever lily pad she ended up sitting on.

  So in order to just get past this last job so we could get this done and I could go home, I'd volunteered myself to go sneaking around this house in the mid-morning sun in a stupid black cape.

  I looked like the Hamburglar.

  Emily says to get back. She's going to go in.

  On her own? My Sylph wasn't back yet, so heading back to the gang at the Mystery Machine wasn't an option. Tell her I wouldn't recommend going in alone. They're up to something, but I can't make out what. I'm not even sure it's real magic.

  There was a pause, and I called out to my Sylph. I could feel him inside, standing in the doorway of the room, watching these three wannabe…somethings…do their little ritual. But when I called him to come back, I felt something I'd never come across before with my Elementals.

  Resistance.

  Elementals weren't servants in any fashion. Witches don't command them like familiars. They're more like companions. Partners in magic. A symbiotic relationship develops from the first time an Elemental introduces themselves to their chosen Witch. Imagine my delight when I had four of them show up. Every time they work their special magic, it pulls from our energy, but the give and take makes us, and them, stronger. They start out as fairly small creatures, and the more we work with them, the larger they become. Dharma's Undine was as big as she was.

  Until my adventure in Faerie a few months back, when my Sylph's maturation hastened because of need, my largest Elemental had been my Salamander, my Fire Elemental. I think that's because he represents my fiery personality. Though I'd never seen his full form, and the largest he ever appeared to me was as big as my hand, I felt him when he was there. And he felt…big. But now, as I said before, my Sylph was a bit bigger than me.

  My Sylph's power grew when I called upon him to help me calm down a Dragon. My Dragon, to be precise. My Sylph had grown to the size of a full-grown man and whisked me into the air so I could be face to face with my boyfriend…fiancé…in his feral, raw form. His true form.

  I know. A Witch and a Dragon. More accurately, a Dragon and a Unicorn, but that's a whole other can of worms. I was more concerned with the fact that my Sylph didn't want to leave the house and come to me.

  I nudged him again, but all I got from him was a laser-focused view of that knife. What was it that he could sense and I couldn't? So I did something I was told not to do. I pushed up, grabbed the edge of the sill, and peered in through the open window. Once I saw the three boys for myself, I accessed something I was specifically told not to access.

  You there?

  -Yes.-

  My Arcane.

  What's wrong with that knife?

  -It is a powerful relic…though relic is too old a word. Its origin is much younger than at first glance, but the power behind it. Ah…that is why the Sylph is fascinated.-

  It wasn't often the Arcane spoke to me like this. Mostly because after Dionysus was defeated and everything sort of calmed down, there didn't seem to be much need to poke the snake. And the Arcane seemed pretty happy being back with me and not locked up inside of Crwys's head anymore.

  Yeah, long story. Oh and the Dragon is Detective Crwys Holliard. My fiancé.

  He'd asked me to marry him, and I said yes, because I never wanted to be parted from him again. Ever.

  Emily says she doesn't care what you think.

  I rubbed my face in frustration, which just succeeded in smearing sweat all over it, so I used part of the robe to wipe my face dry. Idiot. And just because I knew this wasn't going to end well, I remained at the window and called out to my Sylph again. This time with more force. And again, he didn't come back to me. Any suggestion of rejoining the group now was out of the question. I was like someone with their arm stuck in the door—I wasn't going anywhere.

  -Your Earth Cleric is not too bright.-

  I wouldn't say she wasn't bright, but I would say she was a bit self-possessed. Narcissistic. I moved to the left of the window and caught sight of my Sylph. He was really just standing in a doorway, staring at the three boys as they chanted something. I didn't feel any power. Hell, I didn't feel anything, except anxiety when I couldn't get my Air Elemental to return.

  I heard and felt the vibration of a door banging op
en in the house. A few seconds later, Emily walked through a different door, next to the one where my Sylph stood. Emily had her hood up, and I felt her cast the spell to cap all magic—not that there was any real magic happening here. Luckily, now that I was a Cleric, I had the counter spell so it wouldn't affect me.

  "You are ordered by the High Council of the Magical Parliament to cease and desist all correspondence with all things magical and Arcane!"

  I blinked at that. Seriously? Was the Arcane mention a jab at me? It was pretty well known that Emily didn't like the fact that I wielded Arcane and the Parliament allowed it! She'd been one of the Clerics to warlock me back around Yule with the excuse that I had Arcane Magic and that was against the Witch's law.

  That had been so much bullshit, but I didn't know the truth at the time. Elemental Witches were the only children of the God Mother capable of wielding Arcane Power without going crackers. To this day, I didn't think Emily knew the truth, so she never quite got over the fact that I was using Arcane, so to speak, and she was pretty damn determined to get me kicked out of the Cleric Hive.

  You can tell I'm not worried, right? Please! Kick me out! The only reason I was doing this was because I owed the Parliament for a seriously courageous favor they did for me. If not for them, I'd be sitting in jail, accused of murdering the woman who raised me.

  But hey! If one of the other Clerics couldn't handle me, it wasn't my fault, right?

  The boys didn't move. In fact, they were all looking up at the raised dagger now. No colors, no phantasmagoric Demon appeared, and not even a whiff of rotting raw chicken, which was the smell of Arcane Magic. No, these guys were pretty much either stoned and lucked up on a spell, which caught the Cleric Hive's attention, thus bringing us here, or we were at the wrong house.

  Except for this knife that had my Sylph enthralled.