A Time To Kill (Elemental Rage Book 1)

by Jeanette Raleigh

  Claire searched through the first aid kit, pulling out a tube. She handed it to Raven who squeezed a dab onto her wound. Mindy had placed herself between Claire and Wayne, crouching to stay out of sight, as if he wouldn’t remember she was there.

  “Just wrap it a few times then we’ll cut it with the scissors,” Wayne pointed the white tape out to Claire. She cut the bandage and then a few pieces of tape.

  Raven said thank you, although Wayne knew very well that she was anxious to get away, he thought maybe the thought of dinner would keep her. Once they were done, she said, “We’d better be on our way.”

  Wayne would have protested if Claire hadn’t done it for him. She said, “But we were invited to dinner. It would be rude to leave now. And we haven’t taken care of Wayne’s bites.”

  Claire pointed out Wayne’s wounds. He hadn’t meant to involve the girls with his own care, but he realized an opportunity when he saw it. He said, “You wouldn’t want to miss the roast beef. Claire, would you like to help me? Mindy? You can help your sister cut the bandages if you’d like.”

  Mindy peeked out from behind Claire, but kept her distance. She said, “Bathroom.”

  “There are men’s and women’s bathrooms just out that door and down the hall,” Wayne held out his hand to Mindy, “I can show you the way.”

  Mindy ignored Wayne, taking Raven’s hand. Raven let Mindy hide behind her. She said, “It’s okay. I’ll take her.”

  As the door shut behind Raven and Mindy, Wayne smiled at Claire, “So I’ve figured out that Raven is Air. You’re Water. The little one is Earth?” he asked.

  Claire found a packet of antiseptic wipes in the kit and opened it for him. She gazed at him with adoring eyes, and eagerly tried to anticipate his next request. With a brilliant smile, she said, “You know I’m Water? How?”

  “Just a little gift. It’s nothing like having Water or anything,” Wayne said. He followed with, “I’m sure you’ve heard how our group lost our Time gift?”

  Claire nodded, “Yeah. Mom told us the Keeper’s were after us because you thought we stole it or something.” She tugged on the bandage and handed him the edge to wrap around the bites. “Does it hurt?”

  “Terribly. You said your Mom went missing. Your sister thought we kidnapped her?” Wayne thought he might be able to turn the conversation again to the Time gift and find out which member of the Gray family was carrying it now.

  She was an awkward little thing. Wayne could see a strong and stubborn personality underneath Claire’s eager need to please. Claire was clearly one of the Gray family with her dark hair and green eyes, but where the youngest sister had a button nose, Claire’s was straight. It was almost pathetic how eagerly she watched him, waiting for any little crumb of approval. He thought he’d give her one.

  “You’re the strongest, aren’t you?”

  Claire blushed and dipped her head, hiding a proud smile.

  He said, “I knew you were.”

  “Raven is strong, too.” Claire said.

  “I’m sure she is,” Wayne finished wrapping the bandage. He let Claire tape it together. He said, “Don’t you have another sister?”

  Claire gasped, “How did you know that?”

  Wayne tugged a strand of her hair. It was just the right thing to do. She shyly looked down, watching him under her eyelashes. He said, “Our order once guarded the Elementals. It’s a shame that such a small gift of the Universe would come between us. I bet it’s lost forever, but both sides are still wary of one another.”

  “There is no gift. Mom said the only gift she ever got from the Keepers was the necklace Dad gave her. But I guess since they killed him, they thought he gave her more.” Claire suddenly realized that she was saying things she wasn’t supposed to. She put a hand over her mouth.

  Wayne chuckled, “Its okay. You haven’t told me anything I don’t already know. My order didn’t kill your Dad, though. That was the Void. There are half a dozen groups looking for a way to travel time.” Wayne said. Claire’s tiny piece of information was priceless. He had already known Amy’s husband was a Keeper, but the necklace was something new. No Keeper had ever heard that the power could be moved from outside a person into an inanimate object. It would be just like the Elemental women to come up with a scheme that did just that. No wonder no one could find it.

  The door opened. Raven and Mindy were back. Wayne deftly switched the conversation, “Would you girls want to stay the night? We have guest rooms.”

  Raven answered before Claire could beg, “No, thank you. We need to get back.”

  He would have said something more, but Mindy tugged on Raven’s hand. She cupped a hand over Raven’s ear and whispered something.

  With a nod, Raven told Wayne, “We need to leave by six o’clock.”

  During dinner Wayne overheard Raven whisper to Claire that Bertha had called while they were in the bathroom. Bertha was stuck in Denver for at least another week. Someone had tried to break into her sister’s house and she couldn’t leave until her cousin arrived. Raven hissed, “She told me to get out of here. Now. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

  Claire whispered back, “This is the safest place we could be, especially considering the vampires. Did you tell her about Jade?”

  Raven’s eyes met Wayne’s. They exchanged a long and unyielding stare, neither willing to turn away. Wayne refused to let her think he could hear them. She just shook her head quickly and whispered back, “No way. She’d flip and come right away even though things aren’t settled there. We leave after dinner.”

  Wayne ushered the girls into the kitchen. He got exactly what he needed from Claire.

  ~~ Mindy ~~

  Mindy hated Wayne, detested the little chapel, and wanted to leave as soon as she could. The only problem was that Raven and Claire wanted to stay and eat. She shrank away from the priests. She wanted to kick Wayne, but that would mean touching him, and she wasn’t about to do that.

  She didn’t know how to say how urgent their job there was. Raven kept the bottle hidden in her pocket. Claire fawned over Wayne. It was just another thing Mindy didn’t understand.

  Mindy wouldn’t come near the dinner table until Wayne and Jack were out of the way. They liked to be conveniently close, pull out a chair and then put a hand on Claire’s shoulder or pet her head as if she were a dog. He wasn’t as much like that with Raven, but he still bumped into her once when they were both reaching for the potatoes.

  They called her over, but she shook her head. Wayne figured it out. When he realized that she wouldn’t eat unless he and Jack were gone, he waved Jack away and they retreated to the kitchen.

  Claire was furious. She scolded Mindy while she slapped potatoes on the plate for her, “Why can’t you learn to interact with people? You do realize that you’re going to be completely alone someday.”

  Mindy climbed onto her chair and ate her potatoes and beef with a wary eye on the door. Being alone didn’t sound too bad. She didn’t even listen to most of what Claire said. Sometimes a thought crossed her mind, something that needed attention, but the potatoes tasted good, and the priests were staying in the kitchen where they belonged.

  Claire grabbed the pitcher of ice water at the edge of the table and poured a glass. Mindy remembered. She said, “Pure water.”

  In no mood to make nice, Claire grabbed Mindy’s glass, dumped it halfway and shoved it back in front of her, “I like those guys. We might never see them again.”

  Mindy knew she shouldn’t say ‘good’ at the thought of never seeing them again so she just nodded. She had to keep water in her thoughts. Water was next. It was important.

  “Water,” Mindy said again.

  Claire slapped a hand to her forehead, “I just gave you water. Raven, I’m going to kill her. I seriously can’t help myself.”

  It was a poor choice of words. Claire had said it a million times before, but she’d never almost killed her little sister before either. Blanching, she said, “I didn’t mean it.
I’m sorry.”

  Raven said, “Just finish eating and let’s get out of here. Mindy, we’ll figure out the water later, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Wayne overheard Raven and Claire talking. Mindy knew it.

  Mindy hoped they would have later. The priests in the next room were whispering about her, about her and Claire and Raven. Earth said they wanted to keep the girls.

  Mindy didn’t want to be kept.

  Chapter 13

  ~~ Jade ~~

  Jade floated above her body feeling a strange sense of peace. She decided she must be dead. The floating thing was exactly what all of the near-death experiencers talked about. She could see her body below. At least the vampire hadn’t attacked anyone else. Watching her own body stumble through the woods struck Jade as ridiculous. The sun would be up soon. The forest was becoming lighter and lighter.

  Surely there must be a way to get back in there and take control.

  She focused her efforts on the back of her head, thinking that if she could just crawl back into her mind, she could expel the beast. Thought became action, and Jade found herself cowering under a twilight morning. The beast’s hunger now belonged to her. The beast’s fear owned her.

  Morning would break soon, and that would be the death of her. Even sharing her body with a raging animal did not make Jade suicidal. She loved life in all of its variety and splendor—watching the chickadees flit from bush to bush, the deer roaming across the fields, swimming, playing basketball, singing songs with Raven and Claire when they drove to town to go clothes shopping.

  She tore her way into a hole under a giant fallen and decaying cedar. With subtle amusement, Jade realized that there were bugs in the dirt, that her hands touched spider webs, but the beast was frightened, and Jade’s squeamish emotions had hardened into something else. After the hole was dug, she dragged thick and heavy pine branches to make a cover.

  Even with the sliver of dawn on the horizon, Jade’s eyes ached. She feared that they were on fire, that she would turn to dust and miss everything. Hurrying into her hole, she crawled in, curling up and dragging the pine boughs to cover the entrance. It was a tight fit with all manner of creepy-crawlies in the wood and soil surrounding her, but Jade’s sole focus was the sun.

  The sun terrified the beast and by extension Jade. In all of the stories, vampires longed for the sun, but Jade now knew the truth. Her vampire self hated the light, detested the heat, and enjoyed the cool shadows and darkness. She could feel, even underground, the power of the sun, the inferno that waited if she changed her mind and came out to get some fresh air.

  Jade didn’t think about her life or about what it meant that she was a vampire. The beast was too hungry, too powerful. She didn’t think much of anything, only how hungry she felt, and how everything smelled so different.

  ~~ Amy ~~

  Amy, matron of the Gray family, awoke in a queen-sized bed in an elegant room. The painting across from the bed was of a Victorian house and a garden in the Impressionist style with colors that blended and melted into one another. Her mouth felt like someone made her swallow a fistful of salt.

  She pushed the covers aside. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn during the kidnapping. That gave her some sense of relief. She couldn’t abide the thought of a stranger dressing her. She found her shoes on the floor beside the bed with socks tucked inside. The action was oddly thoughtful.

  The room was decorated in peach and gold with lamps and tables that reminded Amy of a hotel suite. The lights hanging on the wall were in gold sconces that could have been antiques from an earlier time, but for the light bulbs.

  Investigating the room from top to bottom, Amy searched for some clue about where she had been taken. There were no scribble pads with the hotel’s name emblazoned across the top and no phone, but there were windows and curtains. Amy pulled the curtain back to find woods in the distance. Otherwise, she seemed to be on some estate. There was a lovely fountain in a perfectly manicured rose garden, and a single unpaved road that curled through the trees winding across the front of the mansion as if the landowner provided valet parking.

  The estate was secluded.

  Amy listened at the door for a long moment, trying to hear if someone waited on the other side. She didn’t dare talk to Air yet. Some Keepers were sensitive to such things. Others could trap an element, a brutally painful thing to the Elemental who cared for that element. When she didn’t hear anything, she pushed the door open. She could only use the Elements for the smaller tasks.

  Every board on the floor seemed to creak. The floor was polished wood, burnished to a gleam. It was empty except for a few elegant paintings with their purple and pink flowers in fields of green and gold. A door opened behind her. Amy spun on her heel.

  There was no one there.

  The door was open. It hadn’t been. Amy was certain that she was not alone, but the hall was completely empty. She stepped toward the open door, and thought of the stories Lawrence had told her. The Keepers all had their own gifts from the Universe. Some were the grim reapers, ferrying dead souls from this life to the next. Others saw the future or the past. It was said that at least two or three Keepers in a generation could go completely invisible.

  Amy thought she had just found a Keeper that could.

  Amy closed her eyes, asking if it was safe for an Element to join her. It was Fire who answered, not Amy’s closest Element. She had always been a little afraid of Fire. She was a capricious being with the capacity to do great harm in a very short amount of time. Still, Fire showed her the heat of the man moving toward her now. He crept up on her with each step carefully placed on the creaky floor.

  Scanning the room for a weapon, it was Fire who offered herself. Fire, the Element who had killed her husband. Amy swallowed hard, reaching for the Element she least trusted. Amy shrunk from Fire’s need to consume. An image of the invisible man flaming flickered in her mind, smoke curling from his hair, and Fire’s vicious need for Amy to allow it, to encourage it, to guide it.

  Amy had something else in mind. She sent Fire to the sole of the man’s shoes, holding the Element back.

  Through Fire’s vision, Amy watched as the man leapt back with a startled gurgle, hopping on his feet. When that didn’t work, he stepped on the heel of his shoe to pull it off. The shoe was smoldering, a small curl of smoke rising from the Nike swirl. Amy cut Fire off, hard.

  Fire raged in Amy’s mind, a temper tantrum worthy of an Element, but Amy refused to budge. She’d only asked for a slight warming of the man’s feet. If the shoe was hot enough to smoke, he’d sustained burns she hadn’t meant to inflict on him.

  “I’m sorry,” Amy said.

  “You can see me?” The veil suddenly dropped. Amy’s mouth dropped open. “Tony?”

  He was the best man at her wedding, her husband’s closest friend. She couldn’t even begin to process the shock and betrayal at his presence at her kidnapping. Tony pulled off the second shoe, “Is this how…uh…?”

  Tony stopped talking.

  It was probably a good thing.

  Both Fire and Amy wanted to turn him into a column of flame and a pile of ash before he even finished that sentence. Through sheer strength of will, Amy held Fire back. She needed to sit down but there was nowhere in the hall to sit. She stared at Tony in shock, “You think I killed Lawrence? It was your goons, his own people who killed him.”

  “We’re peaceful. We didn’t do it.” Tony put his hand under her arm, as if realizing she was barely standing on her own strength, “The tranquilizer can have some after effects.”

  “Peaceful. So you think kidnapping is the act of a peaceful group? Or do you justify everything because I’m your so-called enemy?” Amy wanted to tear her arm away from Tony, but there was a perverse relief in his presence. He would know the real truth. He would know why they killed her husband. He would know why they kidnapped her.

  “We didn’t start this fight, Amy. You weren’t injured, which is more than
I can say for others who have tangled with Elementals. I still have blisters on my feet to prove it.” Tony led Amy down the hall and a flight of stairs. He had left his shoes behind and was padding along in his socks. His fingers tightened as they approached the landing.

  Tony sounded defensive.

  Well, he should. Amy thought.

  “You betrayed me. You were my husband’s best friend. I thought they had killed you, too, and yet here you are,” Amy tore her arm out of his grasp. She decided she’d rather stumble to the ground then take help from Tony. At first his grip felt warm and welcome, but she felt the anger in his words, the justification for his own evil actions.

  “Lawrence died in a fire, and you just proved yourself more than capable of having done it,” Tony broke, raw emotion blending with a tough bitterness.

  “He was the love of my life. What do you think happened? He was stabbed while two of my daughters watched. The Death Keepers thought I had their precious gift and made their move, and it cost me Lawrence. That’s on you. You and them,” Amy spit out the words. It was a relief after hiding for so long to have a place to vent her pain, her anger. Fire licked along her arms, seeking its own outlet, but Amy ignored it. Fire needed a strong hand. She wouldn’t give in.

  “My people wouldn’t...maybe his attackers belonged to the Void,” Tony said.

  He sounded so thoughtful and puzzled that Amy broke into hysterical laughter that turned into sobs. “He’s gone, and I’m hunted. My daughters are in danger. I’m telling you a Death Keeper killed him.”

  There was a pause. Tony said, “They want the gift. Just return it and then the Void will have a new focus, and so will we.”

  The tears running down Amy’s cheeks were for her daughters, all of them. Tony reminded her of Lawrence, and her husband’s death replayed in her mind, but it was for her babies that she cried, for the loss of their innocence and the burden that they must carry. She lied then, because it was the only thing that she could do to protect her own, “I don’t have the gift. I never did.”