Logan laughed. “You’re seriously more concerned about meeting my mom than seeing the weapon that rendered you impotent?”
Ouch. “I’m not impotent.”
She muttered something about not being able to get his wolf up, and he huffed and snatched her phone out of her hand. “So this is it?”
The photo was of a classic Chinese silk painting. It looked like something straight out of a museum. Logan’s mom had this hanging in her house?
The figure depicted a fierce-looking woman in full battle dress. “I’ve seen ancient depictions of warriors in similar poses, but none of a female before,” he said, fascinated. “Is this some long-lost ancestor?”
“Yes, she’s the founder of my family line. And you’ve probably seen many females in this kind of painting and not known it.”
Hmm. The stylized figure could have passed for male if he didn’t know any better. He supposed the reverse was true—many of the male figures could be women. Weren’t Chinese lines matrilineal? There must be hordes of notable women hidden in their history, especially among the Supernaturals.
“That’s true,” he admitted, zooming in on the staff the warrior woman was holding. The ornate dragon head was depicted in much better detail than the drawing that appeared in the dirt by the porch.
It looked more like a sea serpent than a dragon as he knew it from TV shows and movies. The little creature stared at him malevolently from the top of the staff, its jewel-green eyes unblinking and cold. He half expected the thing to start hissing at him.
“If the serpent on the caduceus staff was evil, it would look like this,” he said with a frown.
Logan snatched the phone out of his hand. “It is not evil. It’s majestic and noble,” she lectured.
“Noble?”
He made a face at the picture. Nope. If he saw something like that in the barn, he’d go for the shovel so he could cut its head off. The headpiece wasn’t very big either. How could that thing strip a wolf?
“Do you know how it works?” he asked her.
“Not a clue. I always thought the staff was just a bo weapon, and that the head was ornamental. And I’ve memorized every story about Feng Po Po’s battles. Some of the legends even mention the staff, but in a general way—a “she struck out with her staff and smote her enemy” kind of thing. No actual details and no mention of stripping an enemy of their magic.”
“Fuck,” he said, grunting. “So even though we know what it is, you don’t know how it works?”
She shrugged, tucking her hair back in a big bun. “We have to find the staff first. There’s not a lot known about it.”
We. Warmth shot through him. “Any ideas on how to do that?” he asked, keeping it casual. At the very least, she wasn’t mad at him anymore.
“Give me a minute. Who are those people?”
Connell sat up and craned his neck. A few cars had pulled up in front of the house. Some more wolves had gathered to see Sammy now that he was up.
“More of Sammy’s family. The one in the blue jacket is Bishop, his dad.”
Logan looked up from her phone. “I should talk to him.”
Connell shrugged dismissively. “Don’t bother. I already did, at his house. He doesn’t know anything, but I pity the poor fucker who messed with his kid. Dad was worried he was going to start in on the Averys again, but that didn’t happen.”
“Who are the Averys?
“A shifter family upstate. Bishop opposed them joining the clan during unification. Lots of Hatfield and McCoy like history between his family and theirs, but other than driving to their town and driving around he left them alone.”
“Do you think they’re involved?”
“Ten or twenty years ago, I might have. They used to be pretty insular, but these days they interact a lot more. Some of them have even married outside their clan. After checking them out, Bishop went back scouring the woods to try to track any strangers in the area.”
“So if he gave the green light the Averys are okay?”
He shrugged. “Something like that. And I still think it’s a witch. This is some sort of black magic shit. Truthfully, if Bishop finds the bastard before me, I won’t mind that much because the asshole will die screaming.”
“Charming,” Logan muttered absently. “Can you check and see if he’s found something new?”
“I can, but I think he’d be moving faster if he had.” Bishop and the others had walked into the house unhurriedly. They had probably just come to check on Sammy. “What are you going to do?” he asked.
Logan stood up on the roof. “I have an idea, now that I know what we’re dealing with.”
She scanned the sky. The wind picked up and swirled around her, whipping her hair in a circular motion. It was like a living thing, surrounding and caressing her in a way that was almost sensual.
Or I just think that because I’m horny as fuck. Connell smirked. He always would be around her.
The wind unwrapped itself from around Logan’s lithe body and moved away. It may have been his imagination, but he could almost see a ripple of that Logan-scented air rushing away.
“What was that?”
“A message.”
He waited for more. Eventually, Logan pursed her lips and continued. “I was confirming the weapon for Gia, so she can narrow her research to that one. We may have more information on it buried in the archives.”
“What archives?”
Logan reached down, indicating he should get up. He took her hand and let her help him stand, the move effortless for her. “I’ll tell you all about it later. I have to go check something out. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
Connell tensed. “Where are you going?”
“To our safe house,” she said. “It’s not far. I need to look something up.”
He frowned. “Can’t you just ask your wind friends for the answer?”
Her smile was crooked. “I wish it was that simple.”
Wasn’t it? “How is it complicated?”
Logan took a deep breath and exhaled, as if trying to find the words to explain her relationship to the air spirits. “You know how some kids have imaginary friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I had those voices as mine.”
So she heard them even before she became an Elemental. “And so they told you stuff. It must have been hard to keep a secret around you.”
“It did annoy my parents that I always knew where they hid my birthday presents—especially when one of the voices swore up and down they had bought me a pony… and they hadn’t.”
Connell laughed.
“It’s funny now, but when they told me to jump off the roof because I could fly, it wasn’t all that hilarious.”
He frowned. “But you can fly.”
“I couldn’t back then.”
His head drew back. “Well, fuck. So the voices can’t be trusted.”
“Some of them can, some of the time. It’s a bitch deciding which and when. Especially since most of them fade over time. Just when I think I’ve gotten one figured out, it grows quiet. And they rarely return once they go silent. New ones appear in cycles I can’t identify. They are useful, but only to a point.”
“So they haven’t whispered the name of our enemy in your ear yet?” he asked, growing serious.
“They’ve been whispering names non-stop, including yours, your father and sister, and Mary fucking Poppins. The few voices I would trust on this matter are quiet. I don’t think they can see things clearly when they’re not near me. Gia thinks they feed off our energy and become strong enough to focus in our vicinity. But some distance away, and they lose that focus and become distracted. I’m not sure if that’s right, but it’s a better explanation than some others I’ve heard.”
All right, so the wind talkers weren’t reliable. “I still don’t think you should go anywhere on your own.” His reluctance to let her leave was instinctive, but the reasons why it was justified were starting to multiply.
And now they had identified the weapon responsible for stripping him. And lo and behold, it was something tied to her. Not Gia or one of the other two Elementals. It was Logan, his mate.
What if he and the pack had never been a target? What if this was about her? What if it had been all along?
Discomfited, he scanned around them, half-expecting the chimney to have sprouted eyes. The shadows behind the trees at the forest line seemed deeper and the chill in the air was a little colder. But there was no way anyone could see them up on the roof.
“It’s fine,” she assured him. “No one knows where the safe house is except for my sisters and me.”
“And their mates, right?” he asked, glowering. What if one of his counterparts was the asshole behind this?
“Jordan and Alec are all right. This isn’t one of them, so you can stand down,” Logan said.
Belatedly, he realized he was crowding her, unconsciously trying to occupy the space around her—not just next to her, but above her as well.
“Then how did the weapon get here? Someone you trust could have lifted it from one of your safe houses.”
Logan shook her head. “Something like this wouldn’t have been out in the open at one of our places. It’s a historical artifact. It would have been in the archive or with the family it descended from—unless the line died out. In which case, the thing could have gone out into the world and been picked up by God knows who.”
“So it’s not from your family line? Then why do you have a picture of it at your mom’s house?”
“I am related to Feng Po Po. But she lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago. The staff might have been passed on to another branch of my family, one that isn’t around anymore. Even Elementals don’t always have a direct line to all these artifacts. They get inherited the same way everything else does. We do pick them up when we find them, but the families they belong to are allowed to keep their artifacts—so long as they’re not using them to do harm.”
Connell digested that in silence. He still had a bad feeling about this, and no matter how strong and smart Logan was, he wasn’t going to stop trying to protect her.
“And you’re sure about the other mates?”
Logan rolled her eyes. “Jordan and Serin have been together forever. He’s from her community. As for Alec, he worships the ground Diana walks on. Besides, they’re nowhere near here and…” She trailed off.
“And what?”
Logan muttered something and looked away.
“And what?”
Logan gave him a loose one-shouldered shrug. “I said Alec is a pretty good guy, for a vampire…”
Connell’s eyes widened. “A vampire?” he shouted.
His sprite gave him the evil eye. “Stop screaming like a fishwife. He’s fine. Alec’s a professor, and he loves my sister. And trust me—he wouldn’t step a toe out of line around her. He’d be toast if he did.”
Connell was so thrown by her naïveté that he was almost dizzy. “Logan, you can’t trust any bloodsucker, no matter what he does for a living.”
“Says the werewolf,” she shot back. “And I mean it. Alec is an all right dude for a vamp. Not to mention he is in Australia with his mate right now.”
Did she say toast earlier? “Diana is the Fire Elemental?”
Logan grinned. “Ironic, isn’t it?” Her smiled dropped away. “You know, I could have been halfway to the safe house by now.”
He closed his eyes, giving in. “Give me your phone,” he said, snatching it away without waiting for her to hand it to him.
Punching in his number, he gave himself a call. “If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming after you. Call me when you get there.”
With an air of resigned patience, she took the phone back before dematerializing before his eyes. He could feel her presence dancing away in the wind and sighed heavily. Fishing his own phone out of his pocket, he saved Logan’s number under the contact listing Mine.
26
When he went downstairs, he found a subdued group of wolves. They were scattered around watching Sammy and another cub who had come to visit play in the living room.
He looked around for Bishop, only to be told that he’d already left to keep his search going in the woods. Nothing had been found so far. No one asked him for an update, so he didn’t give one—not in front of everyone.
Connell wasn’t ready for everyone to know they’d identified the weapon or that it was one that had belonged to a legendary Elemental. There was only one person he could trust, aside from his father, who wouldn’t fly off the handle and accuse Logan of being behind the attacks.
Mara was leaning against the back wall, away from the others. She too was watching the children play, but it was obvious her mind was elsewhere.
She didn’t see him until he was right in front of her. With one of those silent communications innate to siblings, he gestured for them to find a more private place to talk.
“You’d think everyone would be a little happier to see Sammy up and around,” he observed once they were outside on the porch.
Mara didn’t answer right away. She was still staring at the tree line when she answered. “I think the pack is trying to come to terms with a cub who can’t shift. No one quite knows what to do.”
Pivoting, she turned to face him. “And they are worried about what to do about you. How can you be the pack’s enforcer if you don’t get your wolf back?”
It was a question he’d been avoiding asking himself. “There’s always Malcolm,” he said quietly.
Her face darkened, and Connell ached with sympathy. Malcolm moving up in the hierarchy would be excruciating for Mara now—even more than it already was. The pack’s enforcer was second only to the chief, and he was always around. Not to mention that Mara couldn’t move away from home until she took a mate—not unless their dad bought that she’d gone on another “mercy mission” with the UN.
“He isn’t as well liked as you are,” she pointed out. “You’ve always been more popular, the star athlete and a war hero to boot. And being the chief’s son bought you a lot of goodwill. Malcolm doesn’t have that kind of built-in support. Other wolves will challenge him to get that number-two spot. It’s inevitable.”
Connell hadn’t thought of it before, but she was right. Their father was the hero who had unified the packs and stopped decades of constant bloodshed. It was only natural that he and Mara had inadvertently absorbed some of his popularity. “It’s too bad you can’t serve as enforcer.” He sighed.
His sister rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “If you were enforcer, no male would challenge you—they would just try to mate with you.”
Mara’s mouth curled. “Ugh.”
“It’s true,” he said with a laugh.
The pack’s sexist double standard would work in her favor. A male was hard wired to protect the females in the pack. Plus, if someone put some thumbscrews to him, he would admit that Mara was kind of pretty. The only reason she had such a lousy love life was because she was too alpha for most of the Weres in these parts.
Plus, only a rogue male would challenge a female. But the likelihood of that happening was low so long as his father was still around. In the meantime, Mara would take apart anyone who threatened them. As a fighter, she was ruthless, even more so than he was. But few people were aware of that…
The sad truth was that as a woman, Mara couldn’t be the pack enforcer. Her position in the pack would be determined by her mate’s status. If her future mate was a beta or lower, it wouldn’t matter that her innate nature was alpha. By pack law, she would be whatever her husband was. It wasn’t fair, but some traditions were too deeply engrained to change.
If only his likely successor hadn’t been such an idiot…“Where is Malcolm? Didn’t he co
me back with Bishop?”
After Connell’s search party had found the site of Sammy’s attack, Malcolm had gone back out with the others to help Bishop hunt down the culprit. But they were rotating out regularly and he’d expected the Were to check in before now.
“No, I haven’t seen him since he came in with you.”
“So…did you two talk?” he pried.
“Briefly.”
“And did you guys patch things up?”
Mara glared at him. “There was nothing between us to patch up. And I can’t believe you’ve already forgiven him. He slept with your almost mate.”
Connell shrugged with wry acceptance. “I think he did me a favor,” he said, but he immediately wanted to punch himself in the face when Mara blinked rapidly and looked away.
Way to put your paw in your mouth. Connell sighed, trying to find the right words to fix this awful situation for her. In the long run, Mara was better off forgiving Malcolm. He didn’t want her ending up with some weak-ass beta.
Poor stupid, horny Malcolm. He’d screwed the pooch on this one. Literally.
“What about Logan?” Mara asked, changing the subject. “Where’s she gone off to?”
Connell could see he was going to have to give his sister more time. “Did you see those symbols in the dirt?” he asked.
They were still there, but indistinct now as the wind slowly erased them.
“Yeah, everyone saw them,” she replied. “Bishop was excited that there might be a break in the case, but Dad told him not to get his hopes up. The weapon could have been any one of those depicted or something else entirely. A spell even.”
“Well…” He took a look around to make sure they were alone. “It’s not a spell. It’s definitely one of those weapons. Logan recognized it.”
“How?”
“I’ll let you know soon. She went to check something out. I think we’re getting closer.”
Mara sighed. “I hope so, although it doesn’t feel like we are.”
“Knowing what’s responsible is a step forward,” he pointed out.
“But it doesn’t tell us how to find the asshole behind this.”
Air: The Elementals Book Two Page 17
