Whatever It Takes - A Standalone Second Chance Bad Boy Romance (Bad Boys After Dark Book 8)

by Gabi Moore

  Dion turned to walk away but then changed his mind. “You still haven‘t told us the nature of my uncle,” he said to Edward.

  “You uncle did not make it across the abyss. To master the fifth element you must conquer the dweller of the abyss and he failed to do that. As a result, the abyss now controls him. It thinks to control this world it needs an agent. It’s convinced your uncle that he can have what he needs if it allows the abyss to open the gate and let everything contained inside it across. Should such a thing happen, it will be the end of all life on earth. We can’t let that happen. You can’t allow that to happen. So you see, the quest you undertake is much larger than you first thought. Yes, you can free your parents, but it’s going to be much worse for the human race if you don’t stop your uncle on the way. That’s why you can’t give up.”

  “So the only way to defeat my uncle is to obtain the fifth elemental power.”

  “Yes. As I have said, if you possess it, he won’t be able to stand up against you. And keep in mind there are things inside that tower which will drive normal people mad just to look at them. Your uncle can call upon them if he needs to do it. But right now you need to worry about finding the Water Grandmaster. And the best way to do it is consider why these charming young ladies are here.”

  Edward took a few steps forward and shook his head as he starred at the swim team parading around the inside of the store. “I was born much too soon.” And then he vanished again.

  “We didn’t get a whole lot of help from him,” Sean said.

  “He gave me some information about my uncle. At least now I understand the reason for this quest better than I did before.”

  Dion returned to the map he carried. He unfolded and tried to locate the store where the Grandmaster was located. For some reason it was not as easy as he expected on the map. He looked at it for a bit longer after he placed it on the nearest table, which the mall provided near a few intersections for the shoppers.

  This was far worse than he’d expected when he entered the mall a few days ago. Now he’d discovered the reason his parents were trapped inside the clock tower was an uncle he only met yesterday. And he had to get them out in spite of his uncle’s frauds.

  Dion roughed his black hair as he tried to figure out what to do next. Lilly sat down next to him and tried to give him comfort. Soon, Emily and Sean were both sitting down at the table.

  The map was confusing. The Grandmaster should be visible on the water part of the mall. Everything about this section suggested water. It was painted blue from the main entrance to the firewall between the sections. He’d seen the ghoul cleaners at work here and they bowed as he went by. The ghouls were not in their element in this part of the mall, and they knew it. Their actions were completely different from the way they behaved in the ‘earth’ part of the mall.

  Lilly didn’t know what to think about the words spoken by Edward. If it was true, Dion could be in greater danger than she assumed he already was. She felt close to him, but became a little bit worried on the inside. What was it that made her feel so close to him? Both days she had gone home and felt a little bit crazy when she imagined him. She’d looked at the pop star posters on the wall and they felt part of another world. Even college in the fall seemed to be part of a different lifetime. She knew Dion needed her help to find his parents, but she did not feel up to the job of saving the world if what Edward told her was true. Edward hadn’t lied to them yet and she couldn’t imagine why he would start now.

  She turned and watched Dion concentrate on the map and try to find the Water Grandmaster on it. It seemed such a silly title for someone who could manipulate the forces of nature. And what did Edward know about the story Dion told them yesterday? How did he know about the elementals that turned on Dion when he was young? The man knew so many things and yet he was barely human. Lilly couldn’t figure out if he was a ghost or not. Ghosts didn’t show up in tracksuits and carry cigars. At least none of the ones she knew about.

  Meanwhile, Sean was doing his best to try to reconcile what he felt for Emily with everything else in his life. He’d managed to slip out of the house in the early morning after leaving his mother a note. He planned to check in with her soon enough to let her know he was okay.

  In some ways Sean was glad she was asleep so that he didn’t have to answer questions about what he did the night before. Mom would eventually find out what he’d been up to and then she would go from there to whom he’d been with and eventually find out about Emily. And then she would find some way to show Emily off to everyone she knew. She could at last prove to the neighbors that her son was normal. From there she would try to find other ways to involve Emily in whatever machinations his mother could cook up.

  The only thing that could stop her was Emily herself. From his brief peek into her soul, Sean knew Emily wouldn’t sit by idly and allow herself to be manipulated. Her mother had done it to Emily’s father and tried to use Emily to get what she wanted. Emily resisted and had a bulletproof shield against anyone who tried to exploit her. Sean worried Emily would tell his mother in clear terms what she thought of her mental manipulation. Then it would be a battle of the will over who was stronger. The problem was, he still lived at home and would be caught in between.

  Emily watched Dion go over his map too. It seemed like any other map until you looked at it close and discovered it was printed on papyrus and hand-drawn. Then you would notice the different symbols and stores in the mall map that weren’t supposed to exist in the normal world. She looked across at Sean and wondered if he could stand up to his mother. She’d put her own mother in place, why couldn’t he? They both had fathers who were good providers for their families, but allowed themselves to be used by their wives. Her father had to have known why his wife was out every night and what she was up to back then. His father had to have known why the children wanted nothing to do with their mother when they reached a certain age. Did love make someone so blind they became stupid? It was the only excuse she could see. She didn’t want love on unlimited terms. No one really did. If you loved someone, it was forever, she felt, but you had to have limits and reasons. You need boundaries and expectations. Perhaps their fathers had none of these.

  At least Sean dressed better today. She needed to work with him on that, but at the same time, she couldn’t let him think she was the reason for his change of wardrobe. He needed to learn these things himself.

  “I just can’t figure this map out today,” Dion told his friends. “It won’t talk to me or tell me where to find the Grandmaster. Usually the place they can be found shows up rapidly on the map and is highlighted. Not today. I think it might have something to do with it being near the sylphs from yesterday. Anytime it gets close to an elemental, it begins to act funny. The elementals interfere with it somehow.”

  “Did you look and see if the swimsuit store is on the map?” Lilly asked. “That bikini team is still over there pulling the crowds into the place.”

  “No, it’s not highlighted and it’s over here on the map.” He touched the map.

  When he touched it, there was a sudden glow from it. They all looked at it and tried to find the light’s location, but it was gone the moment Dion raised his hand. Dion put his finger down on the map again and one of the stores glowed. He removed his hand and the indicated store went dark again.

  “You touch the map,” he said to Emily.

  Emily placed one manicured nail, coated with a glitter nail polish, on the map, but the store didn’t glow. “Guess it only works when you do it,” she said.

  Dion put his finger back on the map and looked for the source of the glow. The map was illuminated and he could see the reason for it. There was one store that shone brightly among all the others marked. He leaned over and read it.

  “The Wild Wet World of Wonder?” he said aloud. “What on earth is this place? Have any of you ever heard of it before? The name sounds right, I will give it that.”

  “You don’t watch TV much, do you?
” Emily asked him. “That place runs ads all the time. You can’t turn on the tube without hearing some jingle about pool season.”

  “You have me there,” Dion told her. “I don’t watch a lot of TV and I wouldn’t know of anything from the commercials. I like to get the news from the papers. In the evening after it had a chance to settle down a bit. The local paper only comes out once a week.”

  “You sound like my dad,” Sean said. “But he reads the city paper in the morning. After he grumbles a bit he gets into the car and heads off to work. I look at it when he’s done, but only when he’s finished. I try to keep it from my mom because if she finds an advice column which agrees with her, I’ll have to listen to her read it aloud.

  “Beats finding a clipping next to the cereal bowel,” Emily said. “My dad’s quiet and it’s how he likes to leave his comments.”

  Dion was busy looking at the map. The guideline didn’t trace out the best way to the store this time, which meant it was safe to go there without any interference from them. This could all change in a moment. The security guards didn’t appear anywhere either, so they had to be in the middle of some kind of plan. What it was, he was certain to find out soon enough.

  The map showed a much bigger location than he’d ever seen before. This store was huge and took up enough space for three or four storefronts. He traced the outline with his finger and noticed it extended out into the parking lot. There had to be some kind of protective barrier around it from the way it was placed on the map. Inside the exterior perimeter of the store was a selection of circles and ovals. He turned to his friends.

  “Alright,” Dion began. “Can someone please tell me what this place sells?”

  “Swimming pools,” Lilly said. “My parents were going to put one in a few years ago, but they decided the insurance was too much. I guess it scares insurance agents if they think some kid might drown on your property. So they decided not to put one in and we continued going to the local pool, even if the membership fees kept going up.”

  “So that is what these circles and ovals represent,” Dion spoke up. “They must be display models of some kind. Then why does it have so much space inside?”

  “Filters, chemical supplies, floatation devices, the rest,” Sean pointed out. “My dad thought about one too and I’m glad he didn’t get one. I knew a family who had one and the maintenance is a mess on those things. If you don’t keep up with them, they turn into a swamp with algae growing on the bottom and worse. They came back from vacation and found all kinds of aquatic bugs in the pool. It was a mess.”

  “It must take quite a few people to run this operation,” Dion said. “Anyone ever been inside it?

  “I have,” Emily said. “Last year, a guy I was with wanted to see the hot tubs they sell.”

  “Frank?” Sean asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, him.”

  “We went in and looked around for a while,” Emily tried to ignore Sean. “But I don’t think there was anything that he was interested in. He’s an older guy I knew through one of my friends back at school and he started to make me uncomfortable, so I had him take him take me home.” She gave Sean a ‘there satisfied?’ look and continued.

  “Anyway I think one of the sales clerks mentioned the place is only open six months out of the year, so they’ve just started up. They pay for the space all year around, but they shut down the facility in the fall and don’t reopen it until the spring because there aren’t enough indoor pools to justify keeping it open all year around. Or maybe they keep it open with a skeleton crew; I never did get the story straight. If you look at the front it’s not got a high profile even though it’s pretty big on the inside.”

  The spot on the map flashed again and Dion looked down at it. “It just gave me the name of the owner. I expect she’s still there.”

  “What is it?” Lilly asked him.

  “Salacia Delphi,” it says. "Anyone ever hear about her?”

  The table was silent. Dion didn’t read the news; they could tell if he didn’t know who she was. He was from out of town and it explained quite a bit. However, each of them had lived with the name for years. It was legendary around the town and they’d all heard it spat out or praised over the years.

  “She’s one of the rich ladies in town,” Lilly finally spoke up. “If you’ve lived around here long enough, you’d hear it every other day. She owns a lot of businesses. I guess the pool store fits right in if she’s the water elemental person you need to find.

  From what Dion learned, Salacia Delphi made an appearance one day from out of nowhere. She just showed up and rented a store to sell jewelry. This prospered and she got into the beverage business. She had the local market to herself after a few years. From there she branched out into restaurants and gas stations. Before long, she owned just about any business worth having in the town.

  She sat on several boards to directors for the town and managed to use her position to find out when any good government projects or opportunities were on the horizon. She always made sure her bids were in on time and she got them more often than not. Still, few people knew about her or where she’d come from.

  One theory had her as a gangster’s woman who used the money she inherited when a hit was carried out to finance her first business. Other people claimed she knew the dark arts and was able to talk to spirits and find out where buried treasures were located.

  She had a tie-in with the local powerboat racing team and sponsored their races every year. It was claimed she saved the life of a boat pilot one year when she managed to get him out of the water quickly after a collision. No one knew how she did it, but the man was seen to emerge from the boat before it sunk and was pulled across the lake. He came straight to her on the shore, but never remembered crawling out of the boat.

  “She bound an elemental to get him out, “Dion concluded when Lilly told him the story. “It would have been easy for her to do it, being a Grandmaster.

  “Someone told me she never calls the water truck in to fill up her own pool,” Sean said.

  “I’m told she wears blue all the time,” Emily added. “She once said it was her favorite color.

  “Her company is listed as ‘Queen of Water Cups,’ Sean said. “I had a friend who did yard work for her and he showed me the check she gave him.”

  “Settles it,” Dion said. “She has to be the woman we’re trying to find. Does anyone know if she wears anything with aquamarine on it?”

  “Never been that close to her,” Emily said. “She’s private and doesn’t leave the house very often from what I understand. She bought an old bank building and remodeled it. I think someone said she uses the vault for her own valuables.”

  “She might be keeping a really big elemental in there,” Dion said. “If she’s an elemental Grandmaster, she could easily do it. I’d be afraid of anything she needed a vault to lock up.”

  “What do you think it might be?” Lilly asked.

  “Hard to say. There are all kinds of things she wouldn’t want out in public when it comes to the water element. Elementals that can cause floods or freeze water. You unleash the wrong one and the town could find itself in the middle of a disaster. They’re nothing to mess with, especially if you don’t understand them.”

  “I think she’s Greek,” Emily said. “Someone told me he heard her speaking in Greek on the phone when she was at one of her businesses.”

  “The Elemental Grandmasters can come from anywhere,” Dion said. “They don’t have to be tied into any one country or land. I know one of the Air Grandmasters was from the Khalari.”

  “How long does it take to become a Grandmaster?” Sean asked. “Is it something you’re born into or do you have to train?”

  “Like everything else, some of us have a little bit more ability than others. I was given my ability when I was born, but it doesn’t mean I’ll always have it. Furthermore, everyone has some ability to control the elements, but most people don’t know and wouldn’t wan
t to put the work into acquiring it. So it’s a little bit of both. You can learn and you can be born with more than the next person can. But if you don’t work and develop what you have, it will soon be gone. There is no guarantee you will always have the ability. It’s why I train as hard as I do.”

  “I wish it was possible to just summon up a picture of her,” Lilly said, “and then we would know exactly what she looks like.”

  “That day has not yet come,” Dion said. “I can’t even conceive of that level of ability. I would think it would happen by technology before it would be something you could use an element to create.”

  Chapter 4

  Ohio had more than its fair share of backyard swimming pools. Much of the state spent the spring months paying for water trucks to come in and fill their backyard lakes. It was part of the local culture and nowhere was it more evident than the subdivisions outside the city of Scipio. An entire industry evolved around men who wanted to place small oceans behind their houses because it gave them status and the kids something to do in the summer months.

  The working class families would pay for above ground pools, in the hopes they could do the installation themselves. It was possible to do it, but it was no easy task to carry out.

  First of all, the ground had to be dug out in a radius much larger than the pool itself was going to occupy. Most of the time it was for maintenance, but some families liked the placement of crushed stone or small river pebbles around the pool to make it easier to work on the yard around it. Once the dirt was dug out, it needed to be transported somewhere. In some cases, the dirt could be hauled to the side of the house and dumped against it. If there were no better way to eliminate the dirt, it would need to be hauled out to a dumpsite. This was not too hard to do if you had children at home who were eager to get the pool up and become the talk of the neighborhood.