Fire: The Elementals Book One

by Gilbert, L. B.

  The stranger looked like a model. That wasn’t actually that unusual for Toulouse. Diana refocused and tried a little harder to shut him out when she realized something. She didn’t have to expend any effort to ignore his presence…because he wasn’t there.

  Her heart raced. Adrenaline surged, quickening to anger as reality settled in. The man wasn’t there to her Elemental senses because he was masked by a spell similar to the one concealing Catherine’s body. But he was visible to her human eyes, as solid as the other people around him. Except there was nothing real about the man she was seeing. The handsome face was a glamour. This was a member of the circle.

  Even ghosts, or those echoes of energy people called ghosts, had a signature she could detect. But this man didn’t. Averting her gaze, Diana pretended to be lost in thought as she contemplated her own image and the ceiling above.

  She was taxing her control, making sure she didn’t show any signs of recognition. As a redhead with a temper to match, she had spent quite a long time learning to master her facial expressions, first in foster care and then well into her training. Now, if she chose, her discipline was on par with her supernatural abilities. She no longer betrayed her every emotion with a flush of anger, but it was a near thing this time. Tamping down the swirl of violence inside her, she took a deep, steadying breath.

  The young man kept shifting his body weight until she looked up at him. When she made eye contact, he gave her a flirtatious smile and then wandered away to look at the rest of the church. He turned back to glance at her several times.

  Great. The pattern holds.

  If any predator in a ten-mile radius got a good look at her, then her job was half done. But in this case, she couldn’t afford to lure this guy to a dark and eventually very hot alleyway. Not until she’d found Katie. Her best shot would be to follow him.

  Avoiding further eye contact, she willed him to give up trying to get her attention and go home. It would be a piece of work to blend in now that he’d noticed her, but she had to try. The other option was to make nice with the piece of shit in the hopes he would lead her to Katie.

  Hopefully this was faster, with the added bonus that she wouldn’t lose her cool and toast the freaky little fucker too soon.

  Diana turned her back on the guy to examine the rest of the church, but it was a little empty and bare compared to some of its counterparts in town. After a few temper-releasing deep breaths, she walked past the man that wasn’t there without a glance. He waited a minute before following her out, but she’d taken the opportunity his hesitation provided to hide behind a crowd of teenage school kids outside. After a few minutes of looking for her, he gave up and took a left towards Rue Pargaminières.

  Diana followed her mark in and out of the shifting crowds as he arrived at the Capitole, the central square in town adjoining city hall. The main plaza was surrounded by city hall on one side and shops, hotels, and restaurants on the other three. In good weather, it was always crowded. Today there was a farmer’s market and there were people handing out pamphlets under red tents.

  The well-dressed man cut across the square and through the walkway that led through the city hall’s courtyard and out the other side. It exited next to the old Donjon, which now served as the town’s tourism office instead of a dungeon.

  The building was practically vibrating with the residual energy of former residents, enough to catch the attention of her mark. He stared at the building for a long moment, confirming her suspicion that he was a real practitioner. For anyone with a moderate amount of talent, that building would be screaming at them.

  The mark made his way back into the heart of Carmes, away from the Capitole down the Rue Alsace Lorraine. Chic shops lined both sides of the street, but he didn’t stop at any of the high-end men’s stores. He kept on going until he came to a large brick building, something that was probably once a cathedral. Moving inside, Diana followed unobtrusively, that little something extra she used to shield herself from notice working overtime.

  A desk and a list of prices and hours made the new purpose of the building clear. It was a museum, Le Musee d’Augustins. She stayed behind the mark, who didn’t turn around as he made his way through the galleries and into a central cloister. A columned arcade with a low border surrounded a sunlit inner courtyard garden. One side of the covered walk was lined with gargoyles. He spent the largest amount of time there, loitering in the hot summer sun of the courtyard while the covered walkways around it were in shadow that seemed to deepen the longer he loitered.

  What are you up to?

  Diana stood behind a glass gallery door that separated the courtyard from an inner gallery. This place housed many historical artifacts as well as some paintings. But the mark didn’t seem to be casing the place for a theft. He was sitting in the courtyard, staring aimlessly.

  She leaned closer. His lips were moving. He was casting a spell.

  A normal bystander wouldn’t notice how much deeper the shadows were around the gargoyles, how much substance it seemed to have. They would attribute the hazy darkness to the contrast created by the bright sunlight. But it was different to her eyes, creeping from statue to statue like fog, pulsing as though it had a heartbeat.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Alec said from somewhere behind her.

  She jumped and turned around. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he’d found her again, but she’d been focused on her mark.

  “I think he’s impressing himself with his new skills. And he’s getting ready for something later.”

  “He’s definitely one of the circle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How are you sure?”

  “Because he’s not there.”

  Alec turned to her, wrinkling his brow and then turned back to the man himself. The confusion fell away as recognition dawned. “You’re right. I should be able to hear his heartbeat or breathing from here. There’s nothing.”

  “It’s the best masking spell I’ve ever seen on a practitioner. It doesn’t just cloak their magic, their very presence is undetectable. They could break into all sorts of places with that. All they have to do is add a block to being recorded on security cameras and avoid any guards,” she continued, moving away from the glass doors as she saw the mark shift toward them.

  With studied casualness, she wandered to a display at the far end of the room, Alec at her heels. He leaned in closer to her ear. “Why not go completely invisible?”

  Diana narrowed her eyes and considered. “Might be too costly in terms of spell power. Plus then he’d have to keep dodging everyone in the street, and they’re crowded these days.”

  She glanced over their shoulder. “Don’t engage and don’t let him know you looked outside in time to see the fog,” she added in a low voice.

  The mark entered the room. His eyes lit up when he saw her, but they dimmed almost immediately when the tall and well-built vampire moved next to her.

  Alec’s presence was imposing. He almost crackled with a power, and he wasn’t bothering to try and hide it. If anything, he was doing his best to throw his weight around.

  In fact, he might be trying to look taller.

  The nothing man had enough talent to perceive Alec’s true nature, despite the fact the sun was still high in the sky. He also didn’t miss the possessive hand Alec put on her waist. His eyes still passed covetously over Diana, but a little dismissively now, probably guessing she was a blood concubine—one that belonged to a powerful enough vampire to put her out of his reach. He wandered about the room a bit longer, making sure they didn’t get near the courtyard door while his spell was active. Eventually, with more than one envious glance at Diana, he left.

  She started to follow him when Alec stopped her with a restraining hand.

  “Let my men follow him. You’ll not be able to blend in. He’s already taken too much notice of you. Not that I blame him,” he said, looking her up and down.

  Diana’s scowl was fierce. “He won’t see me,” she his
sed, watching her mark disappear around the corner.

  “Or he will, and he’ll wonder what is going on. If he suspects what you are, he’ll bolt. It’s bad enough that he saw you with me. We’re lucky that he didn’t seem to recognize me.”

  “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “But don’t let them lose him,” she ordered. “He’ll be hell to track down again.”

  Alec got on the phone to his men, who’d been waiting outside. He described the mark’s clothing and finished with, “Let Dmitri take the lead. He’ll be able to spot him by what’s not there, no breath, heartbeat, or smell. Keep him in visual at all times but make sure he doesn’t catch on to you.” He hung up and turned to Diana.

  “Is Dmitri a local vamp?” she asked, wiping her hands on her shirt.

  “A Were actually. Keeps a place here. He’s Russian born and for hire to the right people,” he said.

  One red eyebrow twitched. “And he’s willing to work for you?”

  “He’s more friend than employee, though I will be compensating him for his time.”

  This time, Diana’s eyebrow went up all the way. Weres were notoriously anti-vamp and vice versa. Communications between the two groups only occurred at the highest levels—through ruling councils. They did not work together unless major apocalyptic events were going down.

  And individuals from the two races were not friends. Ever.

  “A Daywalker who’s friends with Weres. . .” Diana said. “You sure as hell don’t want to be like all the other good little children of the night.”

  Alec ducked his head, turning away to hide a wry smile. “I don’t dislike Weres. There are a few in academia with whom I’ve corresponded with over work.”

  “I guess a liberal education breaks down more barriers than anyone realizes. But this Dmitri doesn’t sound like a scholar.”

  “He’s not one. He has the mind for it, but not the patience. His is a colorful story. Maybe he’ll tell it to you one day,” he said, stopping short.

  They had moved back across the room to the glass doors. The pulsing fog had dissipated, but not in the way Diana had expected.

  “It’s gone,” Alec frowned.

  “No, it isn’t,” she replied, taking his hand and allowing him to see.

  Below them, the vapor had seeped into the ground, becoming a network of threaded goo. Passersby did not notice anything as they walked over it. Diana and Alec moved outside to take a closer look.

  “I can see it,” he whispered, amazed.

  “Unless I let go of your hand,” she said in a flat tone—though she was secretly pleased by his delight.

  “This is incredible. Do your sisters have this ability to share what they see too?”

  Only with very specific people.

  “Sometimes,” she answered noncommittally.

  He squatted to get a better look, holding tight to her hand. “It looks like a slime mold. A huge one.”

  “A what?” Diana asked.

  “It’s a microorganism that can grow quite large. Like a fungus. They often look like this, but smaller. Some even move and pulse like that,” he continued, pointing to a nearby section which appeared to be throbbing as it crawled deeper into the soil.

  “Eww.”

  Slime and mold were not her department. That was Gia’s thing. The Earth Elemental would have known all about slime molds. She loved all sorts of gross earth-related crawly things from rhizobia to centipedes.

  “Don’t touch it,” Diana told Alec as he shifted closer to one of the edges creeping toward them in the courtyard.

  “Don’t you want to take a sample?” he asked.

  She wrinkled her nose at his irrepressible curiosity. “I’m not a scientist. And I don’t want that shit to know we noticed it. It may have a memory, so don’t touch. It looks like a distorted lattice charm,” she said, edging them both away from it.

  “If it’s a lattice charm, why does it look like this?” he asked.

  A normal lattice charm was a protection spell practitioners cast over an area to watch who came and went without the limitation posed by a physical ward. When done properly, it could be quite sophisticated. Lattice spells required great talent and were frequently used to spy. More than one shady government contracted with practitioners skilled in latticework to spy on their enemies. But this one was different, more advanced and yet crude at the same time.

  “A real lattice spell wouldn’t look like this. It’s been modified,” she said.

  “It’s working itself into the ground,” he noted.

  “Yeah. It’ll be gone from view soon. It probably doubles as a paratus charm,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “What is that?”

  “Some major magic requires a foundation—especially if it’s not a place of power. “

  She scanned around the gargoyle-lined courtyard. “They’re planning something here. Something big. The museum isn’t far from a small ley line, and its artifacts make it an attractive place to cast spells. But it’s not a true place of strength. It only looks like one. They’re enhancing the location for a larger spell to be cast here later. That’s probably why he was checking out the church earlier, too. I found him at Les Jacobins. He was probably finalizing a location. And this one would have more Gothic appeal to a new practitioner.” She gestured to the gargoyles.

  “How many parts can a spell have?” he asked.

  “Infinite, if you were inclined to waste all of your time on it,” she said.

  “Hmm,” he murmured as he returned his gaze to the swiftly disappearing network.

  Diana tugged on his collar. “People are starting to stare,” she whispered.

  “Oh, of course,” he said, rising slowly and brushing off his pants. “I clearly have more research to do. I don’t know enough about this type of spell.”

  She adjusted his shirt collar back into place. “I’d be pretty surprised if you did,” she said, murmuring quietly as tourists passed them. “Those types of multi-part spells are the most closely guarded magic. They’re complicated for a reason. I don’t know what they plan on doing, but it’s big. Only the most senior members of the seven families should even know about them, let alone be able to work them. Someone in this group has learned enough to innovate, but without out all the restrictions being raised in the family would impose.”

  “And you think a family member was helping them in some way?” Alec asked perceptively.

  She cocked her head to the side. “It makes sense. They have too much knowledge and not enough at the same time. Someone, and not necessarily a member of the same family, is feeding him or her information. Enough to do some serious damage, but without the training to know the rules or the finesse to pull some of these off the normal way.” She gestured to the distorted threads at their feet.

  Alec’s phone rang, and he whipped it out quickly for an update “My men have followed our suspect to an apartment building nearby. Looks expensive, and there are wards all over it.”

  “Did they find Katie?” she asked hopefully.

  “There’s no sign of her yet. They’re still watching. What do you want to do?”

  Diana paced. “I want to watch him, but I get the feeling this is where we need to be. The energy here is darkening. It’s only a matter of time before the circle comes back to finish what they started. Just make sure your men call out right away if they find a little girl.”

  Alec nodded and went off to relay those instructions while Diana set up her own spells, taking the time to make sure they were undetectable to anyone but her own kind, at least under normal circumstances.

  She could only hope the circle wasn’t as skilled at detecting spells as they were in casting them. The witches would be paying close attention when they returned, so she left intact the spell the mark had cast. No doubt they would set more when the entire circle arrived.

  By the time Diana was done, the museum was empty and it was almost closing time. They vacated with the last stragglers and settled into an old fa
shioned stakeout. Alec had a van waiting around a corner and a shifting supply of men watching the different entrances to the building.

  It was only their constant updates that kept Diana in her seat, eating a cold crepe.

  “This is not the way I do things,” she muttered between bites.

  Alec threw her a commiserating glance. “I know you’re used to a little more action, but you know why you can’t do things the usual way.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just. . .hate this. I hate it a lot,” she said, shifting her booted feet up to the dash.

  “I’m right there with you,” he said, voice grim as he checked for texts from his men.

  In between, he took surreptitious glances at the long length of her legs, which were stretched out next to him.

  Diana swallowed her mounting sense of frustration and began to prepare. She lit a small flame and held the fire in her hands, trusting the tint in the windows to keep it hidden.

  She sent another message into the aether, telling the others what was happening and where. Then she let the flame go out.

  32

  It was after two in the morning. A prolonged shower and thunderstorm had emptied the streets. Diana usually loved the smell after rain, but this time she was insensible to anything but the cold center of anger in her core.

  The museum—a former Gothic convent—took up an entire city block along the usually busy Rue de Metz. The original compound around it had probably been much larger, but the encroaching city had cut it down to its central buildings. Apartments and shops had sprung up on all sides, making the museum an anachronism among its newer, less stately neighbors.

  Alec and Diana waited a few blocks down the street next to the van. They were parked next to the river, next to the Pont Neuf bridge while they waited for the circle to appear. Alec’s men had staked out all the entrances and were updating him every few minutes.

  Diana chafed at the wait. She’d never had to work with a team before. The few occasions she’d pulled a job with one of the other girls, they had done little beyond support, both technical and logistical. None of them had ever needed any real backup. When push came to shove, each Elemental had little need for additional muscle.