Dark Currents: Elementals, Book 1

by Mima

  “I’m going to change, clean up, then I’ll write.”

  “Aye. I’ve got to sleep. Then I’ll bring an engine down from the shop and work here with you.”

  It worked out. By the time the sun was high in the sky, Xia was typing with tense shoulders, comforted by Adam’s deep, steady breaths behind her. At first, she stopped and started, reread, and brought up thesaurus.com for more powerful, eloquent words. But she quickly realized it wasn’t working. So instead, she just started to dump it all out in a stream of consciousness. She’d type feelings, describe images, sensations, then remember something else and add in the new recollection as she went.

  By the time Adam roused at sunset, her neck ached, her ass was numb, and her stomach growling. When she heard him stir and yawn, she turned on the bench to admire him. He’d taken his clothes off to rest, and it was easy to imagine she’d traveled back in time to see a solid, hard-working fisherman propped on one arm, tousled, in the corner of the dim croft.

  “You slept soundly. I didn’t hear you have any nightmares.”

  “Aye. ’Tis the gloaming?”

  “Just beginning. No one’s called. I haven’t checked email.” She utterly refused to feel guilty for not sinking into the dreamtime. She deserved a break. Okay, maybe she didn’t actually deserve one, but she needed one.

  He rolled from the bed, turned and resettled the heavy mattress. His ass was amazing. His flexing back a work of art. With a beautiful stretch that made her wish she had a camera for Antonia, he groaned. “Good to be home.”

  As he dressed, he glanced at her where she still watched him. “Do you miss yours?”

  “My home?”

  “Aye.”

  Xia considered. Her parents had relocated several times while she was growing up. One pair of grandparents in Pennsylvania had died when she was twelve, and the other divided their time between New York City and Maine. She’d spent her twenties in Seattle, and still had an apartment there. Having both mountains and sea had been her goal, but that was before. It had been a long time since she’d passed more than a week in the city. It was merely a storage facility as she skipped across continents. “I don’t know if I have a home. Yours reminds me of summers in Maine with my father’s parents. I think those memories are more important to me than I realized.”

  Adam frowned at her while he pulled on the one-armed tee. “Everyone should have a home. You doona love Seattle?”

  “I did, for a while. It’s been too long. It’s gotten big and rich and fast. Plus, it was too close to the ocean.”

  “What of Charleston?”

  Wow, he’d read her file and knew it well. The first eight years of her life had been in Charleston, before her parents had moved. “I don’t remember it at all, outside of the sound of horseshoes and wagons on cobblestones. I’ve never had reason to be back. Even though I’ve heard that there’s still a section that’s unchanged these hundred years or more.”

  “Maybe someday you’ll have a home. ’Tis a peace. I’m going to get an engine to work on. Anne should be bringing some food on her way home from closing her shop.”

  He left, with the door open, and Xia didn’t even try to keep herself from going to the doorway to watch him. The sky was overcast now, the air very still. Because of the clouds, the gray sky tinted plum with the lingering light. The ocean was only a murmur, absolutely peaceful. The odd thought startled Xia into glancing at it. Yes, it looked peaceful as well. Deceitful bitch. The sounds of metal crashing drew her eyes to the carport and the rooms there. Movement in the shop door. She breathed in the freshness. She rolled her shoulders. Her skirt and blouse felt thin in the cooling night.

  Casually, she looked to the rise of gorse beyond the cottage. A man crouched on one knee in the tall brush. Her breath stopped. He had an object in his hand. It gleamed. An athame. A thousand thoughts spun through her brain at once. She was standing exposed in the open a day after her stupidity in Vienna. Adam was unaware. She could call and alert him, but he was unarmed. So was she. Her athame was in her luggage. The Chamber had set a watcher. Was he the watcher? An assassin? An unfriendly spy?

  Adam came out of the carport with a deep woven basket bristling with greasy metal parts. His arms bulged with its weight. She opened her mouth, trying to summon a whispering spell, when he nodded and called out, “Hail, Hamm!”

  “Adam. All clear.” The dark shape on the hill replied.

  “Aye.”

  Adam paused to look at Xia in the doorway.

  “You could have told me,” she stormed. “I was terrified.”

  “This is heavy.”

  “Aaargh!” She whirled inside.

  He followed her, putting the basket on the opposite end of the other bench. Closing the door, he lit three oil lamps and the room glowed brightly. “That’s my little brother, Hammish. The Chamber’s watcher is wandering the outer reaches of my land. She’s a wendigo named Ay-zhe-gah-bow. They’re not messing around with us. She’s absolutely deadly. Four other selkies are stationed in an arc around the house, and there are also five in the sea guarding the cove.” He straddled the bench and began to set out his messy things. Without looking at her, he said, “Tell me you’ve saved recently.”

  She looked at the screen, thoroughly sick of thinking about the ritual. “Of course. I’m getting toward the end of the journey, but in order to move on it, I just dumped it all out. It’s a mess.”

  “Perfect. The psychologists will love that.”

  The urge to stick out her tongue at him was terrible.

  He slid her an amused glance. “Keep going, storm cloud.”

  “I’m hungry. I’ve only had water all day.”

  “Anne will come by soon.”

  “If the wendigo doesn’t carry her off.”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “What is it with you and Anne?”

  He picked a screwdriver out of the basket and set to work on some gizmo. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Adam!”

  “Keep working, Xia.”

  Grinding her teeth, she reread her last paragraph. Impossible that she’d found him beautiful a few moments before and had concern for his well-being. Typing with more force than was necessary, she worked for another hour. They both looked up when the sound of a car on the lane came over the shush of surf.

  “I’ll go.”

  This time, she breathed with deep, controlled, counted breaths through the unease and discomfort of his absence. She kept working, irritated that she was now recollecting how she’d known he’d be waiting for her, an utterly dependable, dedicated anchor. By the time he was putting the savory-smelling meal on the table, she was in a frenzy of typing.

  “I’m so close to finishing. Go ahead and eat, I want to wrap this up.” The memory of rising, the desire to sink, the feeling of being torn between the peace of Terra and the lure of her loved ones pumped through her blood. Adam had followed her, sought her out and lured her, in so many ways as he tried to urge her from the ground.

  Pausing at one point, she looked up to find him watching her. “You should write it too. What it was like to trace me. How you did that. For other anchors, to show that it’s not brute force.”

  His gaze brooded over her face. He didn’t respond, and she was too caught up. With a disgusted sigh, she went back to writing. Two hours later, she slumped over, done, and very nearly as exhausted as she’d been when she’d come back.

  “Anne is the daughter of my sister’s human lover.”

  Closing the laptop, Xia put it by her on the bench and pulled the basket of rolls close. “Huh?”

  Adam stood to get her hot stew from the stove. “She is dear to my sister, who loves him still.”

  Her brain caught up. “Wow.” Falling in love with humans was bad news for magicals. Even the most average of races, like witches, lived two hundred years or more. The more powerful, like dragons and angels, could live for millennia.

  “What race was Haki? How do you know Robert? He mus
t be very old for his human form to look like that. Why haven’t you checked your email, we need to know what’s going on.” Emerging from the navel-gazing that was her journaling, her brain began to fire again, interested in the outside world.

  “I’ll finish putting this back together, and then I’ll read over what you’ve done today. When it’s ready to go, I’ll delve into the mad world beyond my home. I admit to hermiting a bit, after the excitement of Vienna.”

  “You’ve been there before.”

  “A few times. Dire times.”

  “Well?” She unwrapped the tinfoil from the french fries and dug in.

  “Those problems are long past. We’re still here, so we won.”

  “No, my other questions.”

  “Robert knew Jesus. That’s the only clue I’ve gleaned about his age.”

  Xia paused. “I see.”

  When she was done with the french fries, he asked, “More stew?”

  “No, thanks. Did she send tea?”

  “Aye. I had the water boiled, but it’s cooled now.” He stood and turned the burner on.

  “Why don’t you want to talk about her?”

  Of course Adam didn’t pretend not to know who she meant. And he quit avoiding her curiosity. “Haki was a selkie, from New Zealand. She was Maori, my age. I married her only a dozen years after I lost Meg, whom I married when I was barely an adult and lost after a mere thirty years. She demanded we live near her family. I agreed, thinking it would be easy to do. That I could use a break from Scotland and all the fighting with the English stinking up the glens with sheep.”

  Xia’s heart sank. From that simple beginning alone, she knew this wasn’t going to be a good story to hear. He piled the dishes onto the Japanese tray again, setting it on the table to take it to wash. “I’d been there two years before I knew it wasn’t going to work. I was desperate for home. It was worse, I think, for all the ways the land there reminded me of Scotland, yet very much wasn’t. It took me three years to convince her to go home with me for a visit. Our fights were colossal. She was certain if I went I wouldn’t return. She was jealous of Meg and insisted her spirit was calling me back. She wanted a babe and I wanted to wait.”

  He settled on the bench and began to put parts together, less greasy now, little screws going round as he stared with blind eyes. “Finally, we were going to make the journey home. After our marriage in France, we’d gone to her home in our human skin, on a ship, traveling through the Middle East on camels. So this time, she wanted to go in our fur. She mapped out a long route, full of sightseeing. She was happy in Madagascar, tried to stay longer. We fought.

  “I’d never journeyed so far. We traveled with three others. As we were rounding the tip of Africa, already tired because I pushed us so hard, there was a storm. There was ice and waves and lightning. It was so cold. Too cold. And in that awful night, there was an orca. We all worked to stay together, to run from the orca. I failed. Just as I failed to be on the loch for Meg when the storm came up. I failed, again, to protect my female, and she was lost. In terror, alone. Lost.”

  Adam picked up another bitty screw and began to twist it in. Xia stared at him, heart pounding. He looked at her, eyes black pools, closed and deep. Selkies were a moderately aged race. Their nature in the capricious ocean meant their lifespans could range wildly, from two hundred to four hundred. To know that he had lived almost two hundred years with those bitter regrets for his lost loves hurt her.

  “I’m sorry, Adam.” There was nothing else she could say, even though it was stupid.

  “My people know nothing of divorce. That human concept has no place in us once we promise to be a mate. If I’d lived with Haki for another two hundred years, it would have been bad. Very bad. Very lonely. I tell myself this, when the anniversary of her death comes round every May. I let myself be grateful that our relationship was short, for it wasn’t wise. I tell myself to remember our passion, of how she helped me see again after Meg’s death.”

  “Yeah. That’s good.”

  “No, it isn’t.” His voice was very final. Xia watched him finish his project, and then he stood. “Come help with the dishes.”

  “Hello? Request and not orders, please.”

  He grunted in reply.

  Adam carried his basket and she carried the tray. The deep industrial double washbasin was not ideal for dishes. She muttered the whole time she cleaned, distracting herself from Adam being out of her sight. Adam came out from washing his hands in the bathroom, and dried.

  “Do you have to go back to your fur tonight?”

  “I’d like to.”

  The sound of the ocean was close. Xia focused on washing.

  “Will you come down to the sea with me?”

  “What, to trot along the shore like a deranged dog again?”

  “Sit on the dunes.”

  “Within reach of her?”

  “She’s not a monster waiting to snatch you up like some Scylla.”

  Xia put her soapy hands on her hips and glared at him.

  “She isn’t. She is terrifying, and beautiful, and more than her anger.”

  “Ignis is anger. Aqua is more like hate.” Licking her lip, Xia asked the rude question that had bothered her since she’d first seen him on the ferry. “How do you stand it? Being one of her people, knowing she’s such a bitch and is so deeply a part of you.”

  “She’s a harsh mistress. But you look at her with society’s eyes. She is not humanoid. She is alien, and deserves respect.”

  At first a mental image of a green bobble-headed, five-eyed dwarf with antennae popped into her head. Then, the word alien resonated beyond the caricature. Yes. That’s exactly what it was like. Other, and so beyond her brain’s ability to understand.

  Adam laid his dried dish on the tray to carry back to the house. “Other elements do not experience the blending of creatures that she does. Terra and Aer have creatures move through their realms, but Aqua’s creatures belong to her. To be in water is to function at survival mode, every minute. It is a beautiful immediacy. There is only now.”

  “It seems like her sole goal in life is to destroy.”

  “No. That is not her goal. Her goal is to simply be. She understands only herself, and the desire to spread and grow is a biological one all creatures have. I am fully in agreement my mistress needs to be kept asleep. Never mind about coming down to sit with me. You don’t have to.”

  Immediately, she wanted to. “I want to touch you. If I come down there. I want to pet you.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m no lapdog, either.”

  “You’re a beautiful, powerful selkie, and you’re very touchable in any form.”

  His shoulders eased. Ah, to soothe the male ego. “I’ll think about it.”

  They both waved to Hammish on the way back down the path from the carport with the clean dishes.

  In the croft, he read her mental explosion. She was surprised at how shy she felt. The room was quiet as he learned of her most grueling and intimate thoughts. She opened up her email via her cell phone, since there wasn’t anything else she could do to avoid it. Her sister had written a long, emotional email about their parents, and the last time she’d gotten crazy after Xia’s ghosting with Aqua, and how she was tired of being powerless, and felt judged as a slacker by Xia in her zealous military career. Xia’s head was throbbing by the time she finished it. If only her sister knew just what a fuck-up Xia was. She dreamed of never having to share the humiliation of Vienna with her sister. Knew it was impossible Tony wouldn’t hear about the new world order Xia had announced. Dreaded that discussion with an intensity that pinched her ribs.

  Skipping a reply to that one, she read Markos’s email summarizing in more detail the plan he and Adam had put together. It was very calming to see it laid out so logically, with action steps, due dates, and lists of responsibility. This might happen. She might get out of this with her life mostly intact. Her career was still up in the air.

  To her sur
prise, Robert wrote her, to tell her to please work quickly and to use Adam’s Chamber protocol to send her email when she was ready.

  An old friend wrote her. She hadn’t spoken to Peter in years. It was surreal to write him with a bouncy, blithe summation of her recent jobs and current placement.

  Scotland is beautiful. My rampart is hot. Trying to stay above water. ;)

  After her email, she surfed for a while, aimlessly shopping and researching the horn of Africa and New Zealand, which she’d never been to. Australia was nice, though. At one point, looking at luxury resorts in Fiji, she found herself humming Johnny Cash. “I went down, down, down and the flames went higher…” Frowning, she went back to researching lamia. How Ignis would capture Aqua in Aer wasn’t her problem.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Finally, late in the night, Adam finished. He had several comments for her, and they talked through clarifying some passages. She hadn’t reread it and it was amazing to her how poetic certain parts were.

  After that chore was over, he checked his email and sent her little memoir off with supersecret Chamber encoding. The only thing of import was that Robert was coming to see them tomorrow. Xia swallowed her dread.

  When they finally walked down to the ocean, hand in hand, it was on the morning side of night. The ocean’s horizon was still black, but plum filled the sky behind them over the land. Adam stripped his clothes and shoes on the cold stones, and she waited by them while he summoned his skin. When it rose to his primal call, gooseflesh erupted down her arms. Magic was so beautiful. She needed to have more patience for Tony.

  Adam turned and called to her. “Xia.”

  Picking up her sneakered foot, Xia stepped forward. She went to him, heart thudding as the waves sloshed so near. If she tripped… But Adam’s fascination was stronger than her fear tonight.

  Finally, she stood an arm’s length from him, breathing hard. “Hi.”

  He lifted the soaked skin in his arms, presenting it to her. “Touch me.”

  Her spine crawled. She’d wanted to pet him when he was a seal, all adorable round head and long whiskers. This was like looking at a carcass. It was wrong, empty, but waiting, watching. Everything about it said, Touch me not.