That caught my attention. “Explain that last bit. About him being a regular thief.”
Nigel grunted. “It won’t do you any good. As soon as some strong elemental gets a hold of you and realizes you know too much they’ll wipe your memory. It’s how they do things.”
My turn to grunt. “Where have you been the last six months? Hiding under a rock? Elementals are no longer the myth they once were.”
He bared his teeth at me. “And if I was under a rock?”
“You missed out on a hell of a lot of shit that went down.” I filled him in on Orion, the demons, and the major battle that had been rather close to ending the world as we knew it. The Elementals and how they’d helped out at the last battle, and most importantly, Lark and her role in everything.
His eyes never twitched, he never gasped. At the end, he nodded. “Not surprised. That was coming for a good long time. So Elementals have been outed then? Supernaturals know all about them?”
“I suppose the supernaturals who are left know about them. At least they suspect.” I realized then there was no real reason for anyone to think the Elementals were anything but amazingly powerful witches. Except for those in my closest circle who knew Lark and what she was, no one else had a clue as to what actually went down. It must have shown on my face because Nigel laughed.
“See, even now you realize they hid from the rest. So maybe you know, and can even claim them as friends, but they’re good at keeping a low profile. They don’t want you to know about them and that isn’t going to change. It’s programmed into them to stay out of sight and under the radar.”
I tightened my hold on him. “None of that matters right now. Explain to me about these thieves and how they operate.”
Nigel rolled his eyes and his big, cupped ears twitched back and forth a few times. “Every elemental family has at least two thieves. Usually they have some other job so they look normal, or they’ve been ‘banished’ so they aren’t expected to survive like Ito. Consider them the undercover cops of the Elemental world. Except they aren’t the good guys. They do the dirty work no one likes to think about. And they are rewarded for it.”
He paused and seemed to be gathering his thoughts. “They search out whatever it is their king or queen wants.”
“I thought that’s what the Enders did,” I said and from behind me, I felt Cactus nod.
Nigel sighed. “Yes, the Enders hunt down criminals, that’s true. But the thieves are hunting other things. Things that the average Elemental knows nothing about. The majority of their work circles around bringing in partlings.”
That was a new one on me.
“What the hell are partlings?” I looked over my shoulder at Cactus who shook his head, a frown creasing his face.
“Don’t look at me, I have no idea what he’s talking about.” He grunted.
Nigel barked. “Of course, you don’t. No one does. I do only because I’ve been around as long as I have. Partlings are children of children of children of elementals. Someone with a miniscule amount of elemental blood coursing through them. Not enough to manifest into something supernatural as you’d get with a breeding closer to the root of things.”
I frowned, as I ran his explanation through my head. “I’m not sure I’m following.”
Again he sighed and pointed a paw at Cactus. “Like if Cactus, here, knocked up a human girl, they’d probably give birth to a witch. Someone with extra power in the area of fire and earth. As an example. But,” he paused, “if that girl had a baby with a human, and that child then had a child with a human, the elemental blood is diluted. To the point where there is nothing but a whisper of elemental in them. Those are partlings. The blood is there, but faintly to the point that without any training, it may never show up.”
His words made sense, and yet, they still buzzed in my ears. I thought about the burns in Belinda’s bed and the matching burn on her father’s face. Could she be one of these partlings, with a connection to fire as her element?
“Okay, so partlings. Almost human, fraction of elemental blood in them, got it. Why would these thieves go after them?” I asked.
Nigel locked eyes with me. “Slaves. They can withstand whatever element their home is with some training. They are hardier than humans, and by the way, the rules don’t say much against taking them, because technically, they are still more human than Elemental. The rulers say it’s so they can train them to use their powers. It’s a loophole essentially.”
“When in reality they are nothing more than chattel,” Cactus said and then he slowly whistled. “Holy shit.”
Nigel nodded. “Right. Long-lived, hardy slaves that don’t actually exist as far as the rest of the Elemental world is concerned. If they don’t exist, then nothing wrong is being done. Right?”
I mulled over Nigel’s words, comparing them to what I’d learned from Camos at the flower shop. “Do these partlings have some sort of tramp stamp? Like a birthmark?”
Nigel blinked up at me. “Shit, you already knew about them? You trying to trip me up and make me lie so you can kill me?” He squirmed his sharp nails digging into me, drawing blood.
“Fucking well, stop it!” I grabbed his front legs. “I didn’t know for sure. But I’ve been learning things, you spaz.” Nigel relaxed and I let him go. To be fair we were still squashed together by Eve’s talons, but I didn’t clutch his legs in my hands.
“You can’t blame me for being leery. Elementals are douchebags. Constantly trying to make you prove yourself to them, always trying to make you look like a liar,” he grumped.
No more words were exchanged as we flew. Cactus tried, but I ignored him. My thoughts rolled over and over. Trafficking elemental partlings, putting them into slavery. Putting familiars into slavery. It fit with what I’d found out so far, but that didn’t make me feel any better about getting Belinda home safely.
“Rylee,” Eve said, “I see a spot on a beach where we could land.”
“Do it.”
She swept downward and my legs whipped out behind me like I was in some sort of crazy carnival ride. Nigel yipped several times, high-pitched and excited. His tongue flopped out one side of his mouth and again I was reminded of Alex. I didn’t want to be reminded of my friend. Certainly not by the black-backed jackal who was obviously out for himself and nobody else. I didn’t need that in my life.
Eve paused in the air, ten or twelve feet up and let the three of us go. We tumbled out of her claws. I landed in a crouch, Nigel landed on his feet and Cactus landed sprawled to one side. He lay there long enough that I went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Cactus.”
“Mother goddess, Rylee. Something is wrong with me.” He rolled onto his back and threw an arm over his eyes.
I crouched beside him. “Listen, if you’re sick I have to leave you behind. If you’re injured I have to leave you behind. I can’t slow down.”
“I’m neither. Something is wrong inside my head. It’s like I can’t control my emotions . . . I’m not myself.” He pulled his arm from his face and the fear in his eyes was visible.
I blew out a slow breath. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing.” He sat up. “I just want you to know. So if I do something stupid. Or dangerous to you or . . . to Lark . . . promise me you won’t let me hurt her.”
I closed my eyes. What the fuck was with all these people in my life who wanted me to off them instead of taking control of themselves on their own? That’s what I wanted to say. But I was learning to hold back. Ha.
“Fuck off, Cactus. Hold your shit together so I don’t have to take your head. Got it? Find your puny balls, man up, and do the right thing.” I stood and raised an eyebrow. “Got it?”
His mouth hung open and he slowly nodded. “That was not the pep talk I was expecting.”
“I don’t do pep talks. I do ass kicking.”
Nigel snorted a laugh. “I think I might like you.”
“The feeling is not mutual,” I said, and he laug
hed.
“Oh, I wouldn’t expect it to be. You know you make me think of a Tracker I knew once. Maybe you’re related? Name was Brin.”
I’d heard the name but I was pretty sure I wasn’t related. “I know of him. Not related.”
“Hmm.” Nigel squinted his eyes at me. “You sure? I think you have his nose.”
I rolled my eyes and walked past him to where Eve stood, her feet half buried in the wet sand. “How are you? Is your wing okay? Do you need to rest?” Good grief, I sounded like a mom.
“Rylee, I’m fine. Stop fussing over me.” She shook her head side to side, sending her feathers into a spray. “I assume you have an idea of where we are going?”
“Nigel,” I called over my shoulder. “If the girl was picked up by a Salamander, we can assume he took her to the Pit?” The Pit being the home of the fire Elementals, aka Salamanders. I wasn’t sure exactly where it was. I’d never been there. But Lark had talked about it, and I suspected it wasn’t going to be a two-hour flight.
“Good assumption.” He stretched his front legs out in the sand as if doing a yoga pose, a perfect downward dog. “Not that you’d be able to get her out. The slaves are always kept well away from the rest of the population and only in service once they are fully trained to keep their mouths shut. Sometimes takes years before they are allowed out of the training rooms. Assuming they survive the training that is.”
“And how do you know all this?” Cactus asked. Good question, one I was curious about myself.
Nigel grinned at him, a strange pulling back of his lips that made me think he was a bit bonkers. “I told you, I’ve been around a long, long time. You don’t live as long as me without learning a few things you aren’t supposed to.”
So we needed to get to the Pit, find a way into the slave quarters, grab Belinda and get the hell out without any of the fire elementals noticing. Because if Ito was any indication, things would get ugly as soon as anyone realized what I was up to.
“Cactus, you’re going to the Pit, right?”
“Yeah. Mother goddess,” he muttered, “I know where this is going. Rylee, I don’t think Lark would want me to help you.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped. “And you know it.”
He shook his head, then slowly nodded. “You’re right. See, this is what I’m talking about.” He tapped his skull. “Something is manipulating me. I’ve not been myself since we left Tian Shan.”
Damn, he was right. He wasn’t the man I’d known while I’d been in hiding. Not at all. Like someone else had taken up residence in his head. “Okay. I’m going to keep you on track. At least until we get the kid out of the Pit.”
Nigel snorted. “You aren’t really going to the Pit. Are you? Tell me you aren’t that stupid.”
Eve stomped a clawed foot at him and he yelped and jumped away. “Don’t you talk about her like that or I’ll eat you for breakfast, you mangy mutt. She isn’t stupid. She saved the world while you hid under your rock.”
He bared his teeth at her. “Try that again, you oversized chicken, and I’ll tear you a new asshole.”
This was getting out of hand. I stepped between them. “Stop it. Both of you. Eve. We are going to take Cactus with us, and he’s going to help us get into the Pit and find Belinda. Nigel here is going his own way.”
“What? Why?” he barked.
“Seriously?” I stared at him, and slowly shook my head. “You don’t like us, we don’t like you. I think that’s enough of a reason to part ways.”
He shrugged his thin shoulders. “Yeah, but you might need me. And I could help.”
“I doubt that.”
His eyes grew serious. “Do you know that a familiar of an elemental is rarely heard by anyone who is not an elemental?”
“Yup.” I moved to Eve’s side and motioned for her to hold out her wing so I could check it over. I ran my fingers through the tips still there and she winced. “Still tender?”
She nodded. “Getting better.”
Nigel pushed his way between us. “Then did it never occur to you that the reason you can hear me might be because you need my help?” He was at my feet, sitting calmly as if he were a well-behaved dog. I looked down at him. He was anything but a dog, but he was no Alex either.
“I don’t need a familiar,” I said, and even I heard the pain in my voice. Fuck.
“Ah. You lost one?” He nodded. “Then I understand that perhaps better than most. I’ve lost three charges. Each one I cared for nearly a thousand years.”
“Like I said,” I ran my fingers through Eve’s feathers again, “I don’t need a familiar, or a sidekick, or a new dog.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw his large ears perk up. “Was it a canine then? Like me?”
Eve squawked. “Nothing like you. He was loyal and kind, and sweet.” She choked on the words and pin pricks of tears teased at the edges of my eyes.
Nigel said nothing, though there was an understanding in his eyes I didn’t want to see.
Cactus cleared his throat. “If Eve is up to it, we should go. We have to cross the Pacific.”
“Ocean?” she squawked.
Shit. That was a hell of a lot farther than I was thinking. “Like the whole thing?”
“Yes. The Pit is in the ring of fire. The Island of Japan is what the humans call it.”
Fuck it all to hell and back. “Eve, we’ll hopscotch. We can stop in Hawaii and then fly from there. Doable?”
“Yes. I’d go the whole stretch, but not with carrying three of you.”
“Nigel isn’t . . .” I looked up to see him already sitting on Eve’s back. He grinned at me.
“Whether you like it or not, I’m coming with you. I may be an asshole, but I’m good at keeping people alive. For some reason, I think I should keep you alive. Be grateful.”
“I don’t need your help . . . anymore,” I amended.
Cactus put a hand on my shoulder. “I hate to say it, but he’s probably right. He might be good to bring along. A familiar is trained, wired even, to keep people alive. We’re walking into a place that is designed to fry you to a cinder. Even if you weren’t a daywalking vampire.”
Damn it. I didn’t want someone trying to take Alex’s place. But I wasn’t so fucking foolish to think I couldn’t use help. I’d learned that the hard way. There were times I couldn’t do it all on my own, and trying only got people I loved hurt.
I swung up onto Eve’s back and Nigel crouched in front of me. I tapped him on the head. “One wrong move and you’re going overboard in the middle of the ocean.”
He grinned up at me. “By the end of this, you won’t want me to leave.”
I snorted. “I doubt that, mutt.”
CHAPTER 9
THE BRIGHT BLUE ocean whipped by below us. Eve pushed hard, sparing nothing to get us to Hawaii in record time. As we drew close to the islands, night fell and the blue ocean turned to black pin pricks with the reflection from the stars. Beautiful and hauntingly lonely all wrapped in one image.
I pointed to one of the smaller, less inhabited islands where there seemed to be very few lights. “There. We’ll break until morning.” Which was only a few hours away, but Eve like the rest of my crew was good at resting up fast. Thank the gods for supernatural abilities.
She dove which pushed Nigel into my belly. He turned his head up so his nose was pressed into my chin. “You need to feed. I can smell it on you, the hunger is going to overtake you soon if you don’t do something about it.”
My jaw ticked, and I wanted to yell at him to keep himself out of my business. But he was right. The second he said feed my fangs began to ache. I could find a donor, something I needed to get used to. I cringed.
Eve landed and the three of us slid off. I started away before she’d even settled her wings. “I’ll be back.”
“There’s an easier solution,” Cactus said. “You could draw from me.”
My feet slowed and I turned to face him. “Why?”
“Because you’r
e right. Lark would want me to help you. And I want to help, too. Even if she . . . look, either way, I’m offering you blood. You want it or do you want to find some wayward human?” He folded his arms and didn’t look away from me. This was a bit more of the Cactus I remembered. At the edge of my mind, I tried to grasp the thought that whispered through. Cactus was acting almost as if someone was encouraging every bad trait he had while suppressing the good ones. Was that even possible? Or had he always been an asshole and had just stopped trying to hide it?
“Thank you,” I said.
Eve lay in the sand and tucked her head under one wing. “A fire would be nice.”
Cactus’s lips twitched. “Subtle.”
She fluffed her feathers. “No point in being subtle. I want a fire. You can start one so why would you not?”
Nigel laughed and pointed at me with his long nose. “She sounds like you.”
I stood back as Cactus did as Eve asked and started a fire. He drew several stones from the earth, bringing them up through the sand with what looked like ease before he gathered wood and lit it up with a snap of his fingers. The sound of the ocean lapping at the shore twenty feet away gave me some comfort, the sound like white noise in my brain. At least we were close enough I could go for a swim if Cactus lost his mind and tried to light me on fire. The thought stuttered. Why the fuck would I even think that? Was I that distrusting or were my instincts trying to tell me something? I almost hoped it was just a trust issue.
Once the fire was going good, Cactus sat back from the edge of it, facing me. “Rylee?”
Gods, this felt like a first date, so damn intimate to take blood and it’s why I’d avoided it. Even with the TSA agent, that had been far too intense, but at least there had been no preplanning, no come sit with me and let me wrap my arms around you as I orgasm as you bite me. I couldn’t do it. Not with Cactus. I shook my head. “No, you stay here and watch over things. I’ll be back.”
I shucked off my jacket and tossed it at him. He caught it, a frown on his face. “Rylee, it’s not that big of a deal.”
RYLEE (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 1) Page 10
