Elements of Desire

by C. M. Stunich

  "Well now you're spinning around," I snickered, referring to the smash hit that had made those hot pants too damn famous in the first place.

  "ST," Reg panted, flapping his little dragon wings to get closer to me. "I just killed Arnie! Like … Terminator Arnie!"

  "Do you think he'll be back?" I teased, and Reg chuckled. I loved that he always got my jokes.

  "No, but I think we need to go after Francesca and Baron. This won’t stop until they're dealt with and we're starting to run out of steam." He had a good point. There was a lot of magic flying around my front lawn and of course, we couldn't keep it up forever. I was also going to need to explain this to any humans who happened to notice what was going on which didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. Good thing we didn’t live in a gated community, huh? The HOA fees would be killer … Five hundred dollar fine for melted wax on the grass, please!

  "You're right," I nodded. "Francesca first. She's the one in charge here."

  "Agreed," Reg nodded back to me, his dragon whiskers twitching.

  The two of us turned to look for the Seelie Queen while our, ah, my husbands and Reg's compeers battled on around us. We spotted her standing under a large tree in my backyard where some of the fighting had spilled over to, and I smirked when I realized she was practically standing on Kuntemopharn's grave.

  Now that could be of serious use right there!

  Just as I was about to reach into the ground and reanimate the putrid, half-rotted corpse of Kuntemopharn, I spotted someone sneaking up behind Francesca with a sharp dagger raised. Was that … Olivia Newton John?

  Sure enough, Sandy from Grease was creeping out from behind the tree and as we watched, wide-eyed, she plunged her dagger straight into Francesca's back so deeply it protruded out the front.

  "Holy shit," Shane exclaimed, coming to a skidding halt beside us and staring at the scene under the tree, his silver-blue tail flicking in confusion.

  Green blood poured from the hole in the Seelie Queen's chest, and she dropped to the ground, gasping like a fish out of water.

  "Baron is my Honey Boo," Olivia-with-the-drooping-eye snarled at the dying queen, jabbing her in the face with a wax finger. "He's mine and you've had your dirty hands all over him." The Olivia replica made a motion like she was spitting on Francesca, but of course, wax figures didn't have saliva, did they? Then again, I didn't think they could talk or, you know, stab people, either.

  "My love!" Baron cried out, leaping to his feet from where he'd been obediently crouched to watch the battle. Instead of flying at Francesca's dying form, he threw himself at Olivia and began passionately tongue-kissing her right there over his other lover’s bleeding corpse.

  "What the actual fuck?" I whispered to my guys, shifting back to human form when I realized none of the mannequins were attacking us any longer. It seemed like without Baron and Francesca, they were lacking guidance, and just froze where they stood. Like a macabre Madame Tussauds in my garden.

  "You're free now, love," Baron announced to his waxy lover when they finally came up for air … wait, did wax chicks need air? Ugh, this was hurting my brain. "Come quick, let's depart before any fae catch wind of this. You can live out your days as a real woman now that the bitch is dead!" His hands roamed all over Olivia’s body and cupped her wax boobs. "And what a woman, too." He punctuated this with a playful animal growl and Olivia giggled. “That’ll teach her”—Baron scowled down at the dead fae queen—“that BDSM relationships require love, trust, respect, and consent. This isn’t some sick, perverted Fifty Shades of Grey nonsense. Barbaric.”

  "I'm gonna be sick," Reg announced, curling his lip in disgust as we watched Baron and Olivia Newton John run hand-in-hand toward a Volvo parked on the street, then drive off into the sunrise.

  "Well, shit," Billy muttered, wiping a hand over his sweaty forehead and kicking the Seelie Queen's body with the toe of his boot. "Now what?"

  That was a really great question: now what, indeed? My lawn was littered with piles of melted wax, and frozen statues of celebs holding weapons, and I had a dead faery under my oak tree with a big ol’ pool of green blood underneath her.

  "Well," Shane started, scratching at his stubble and frowning. "We still need to continue with the plan of freeing the petrified elementals, and then getting them to help us squash CUM, rescue Britt and Siobhan and …" He paused like he was trying to remember if there was anything else. "Oh, and deal with your bio parents, Ari. Then I reckon we might be due a holiday? Maybe some baby making?" He winked at me and I glared.

  "No babies!" I snarled. "But what about all of this?" I waved my hand around to the aftermath of our battle and George grinned.

  "I've got this!" he announced, shifting back into dragon form and using his earth magic to open the ground below the dead faery's body. Within moments, she was buried alongside Kuntemopharn and the ground looked totally undisturbed once more. Even the grass was back in place! It was actually a really handy trick if we were going to keep ending up with corpses in the garden.

  "We can deal with these wax dolls after we finish the war," Shane decided, "for now, they can just scare away any cats that want to piss on our lawn."

  "Our lawn?" I murmured, following him back into the house with the guys close behind me.

  "You know it, Sugarplum," he grinned, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me close. "Our lawn."

  "I think I like the sound of that," I grinned, feeling a warm fuzzy emotion in my belly, like love or something. What? I was never great with emotions! But I was pretty sure that was love I was feeling.

  Now we just needed to save my friends and kill my parents, and then all would be right in the world!

  There was really no time to waste, what with Britt’s and Siobhan's heads practically on the chopping block, so Reg and I only took a short nap to recharge before setting out on our mission to obtain bodily fluids from the missing elemental chicks. It sounded creepy, sure, but it was the only way to un-petrify their quints, sexts, and septs.

  "You've really gotten the hang of this, Sugar Tits," Reg complimented me as we re-materialized inside the warehouse that I'd once been held prisoner in. Just as he had predicted, all the drain pipes had been tightly sealed, but no one had considered window condensation. All it took to get us in was a tiny droplet of water and we'd found our way inside. Not that it wasn’t creepy as fuck to condense down into the size of a droplet. I was going to need some serious therapy after that.

  "Thanks," I beamed at the compliment. "It feels easier this time." I smiled fondly at my new tattoos. I'd really only been without them for less than an hour, but it was long enough to make me appreciate how much I loved them.

  "Let's go find these spirit chicks," Reg said, taking my hand in his and leading the way quietly down the corridor. From memory, the dungeon situation was underground, so we needed to find some stairs or something.

  Just as we turned a corner, the sound of voices coming towards us made me freeze and clutch at Reg's fingers tightly. It was one of the bio moms talking to Rachel, the Chaos Queen, but they hadn't seen us yet. Acting on instinct, I turned us both purple translucent and we dropped straight through the floor and into the room below.

  Conveniently, the room we dropped into was the one that housed some seriously upset looking elemental girls.

  How did I know they were elementals? I didn't. It was a guess. But seriously, who else would CUM and the Bios have locked up in the basement?

  One of the girls screamed when Reg and I rematerialized, and her friend clapped a hand over her mouth to shut her up. Actually on second thought, these were women, not girls. Each of them was bonded to her own quint, sext or sept and were probably all way older than me if Joan's youthful appearance was any indication.

  "Uh, captive spirit elementals?" Reg double checked, and the girls—women—nodded. "Cool, so firstly hi, I'm Reg and this is Arizona—"

  "We know who she is," one of the ladies snapped, giving me a glare that could melt ice, "She's the reas
on we're in this mess. COCS should have drowned you at birth, you abomination."

  "Whoa!" I held my hands up defensively. "That was harsh. We've never met before, lady, and you know nothing about me!"

  "My name's Alyssa not lady, and we know everything we need to know about you." She flipped her orange-red hair over her shoulder and gave me a defiant stare. "We know its your parents who are keeping us here, planning on draining us of our magic just so they can kill you. And all because you are an impossibility that should never have been born. You, Arizona Darling are a load your moms should have swallowed."

  "Way harsh," Reg murmured, then stage-whispered to me, "let's not save this bitch, yeah?"

  "Save us?" She snorted in disgust. "Newsflash, dipshits. We're wearing spirit collars made by your parents." She cast another derisive glance at me, then flickered her eyes back to Reg. "All our magic has been frozen and we can't leave this room or our heads will explode."

  Now that she mentioned it, all of the women in the room were wearing sparkly purple collars with … was that a little dog bone tag hanging off them?!

  "What's with the tags?" I started to ask, then waved my hand. "Forget it, I don't care. Just, everyone spit into this cup would you?" Reg whipped up a magic cup made out of ice—we were naked, had to be to go spirit and osmosis (probably using that term wrong, but whatever) our way through the window—out to the spirit chicks.

  Dickheads or not, we needed them on our side in this war.

  "Like, totally eww. Why do you want our spit, you psycho? And what the hell shape cup is that? Looks like it has a dick on it." The redhead, Alyssa, seemed to be in charge and was doing all the talking for the group.

  "It's not a dick,” I grumbled. "It's fashioned after a spill-free wine glass, for when you want to drink while lying down." The looks I received from the captive elementals said they either thought I was full of shit, or that I had a drinking problem. Or both. "Whatever. Do you want to save your dudes or not?"

  "This can save them?" One girl—woman—spoke up in a tentative voice. "How? They were all petrified by the basilisks."

  "The cure to basilisk petrification is bodily fluids from a loved one. We don't really have the time or resources to take a sample from each of you individually and then take down physical descriptions to identify each of your harems, so we figure, everyone spits in this cup and then we paint a bit of the mix on every stone dude." I shrugged. "It's the best we could come up with, unless someone is making better suggestions?"

  "Why spit?" another spirit asked, frowning at the sippy cup that Reg still held out to them.

  I raised an eyebrow at her. "Unless there’s another bodily fluid you'd like to provide?" She shook her head rapidly, so I grabbed the cup from Reg and tossed it to her. "I didn't think so. Now get hocking."

  They all eyed us warily, but the promise of rescuing their husbands must have been too enticing, as one by one they hocked up gobs of saliva and spit them into the ice cup before handing it back to us.

  "Now what?" the snotty bitch called Alyssa demanded, folding her arms over her chest.

  "Now we go un-petrify your husbands and bring them back to fight against CUM and get you all out of those pretty dog collars." Reg flicked the little bone-shaped tag on Alyssa's collar and she snarled at him … like a dog might.

  "Wait, you're just going to leave us here?!" she screeched, and Reg grabbed hold of my hand so I could make us sparkly purple translucent once more.

  "Ciao now!" I gave Alyssa a sarcastic little finger wave before Reg and I melted our way back up through the ceiling and over to that window with condensation on it. My new mastery of these powers was really helpful!

  Reg and I rode the water droplets out of the building, then used the vapors in the air to get a healthy distance away from the warehouse before we turned dragon again.

  "Good work, ST," he complimented me as he fluffed his little watery dragon wings. "Let's get to the sewer and smear some spit on those rock-hard COCS."

  I snorted a dragon-y laugh when I realized he was right. Some of the frozen elementals were bound to be a part of COCS. Maybe not its head, but certainly part of the meat of it.

  Luckily, or ... coincidentally? The warehouse where the girls had been held was actually not that far from the entrance to the sewer where some sixty odd elemental dudes were frozen in stone, like freaking Medusa had paid a visit to town.

  Actually, maybe Medusa was a basilisk? It'd make sense. Hmm, something to ask the guys when the war was over.

  Reg and I flew as far as we could in dragon form, then switched back to human before reaching a more populated area. Not that we didn't already have enough to deal with, having just engaged in a magical battle on my lawn. But really, we were in no mood to make any new shimmers by letting humans see us in dragon form.

  Hell, that was how I'd landed in this mess to begin with! Not that I'd change it for the world. Despite the fact that deep down, I shared Dustin's skepticism of soul mates, it really did feel like fate.

  "Smokey," Warden exclaimed as we turned into the alleyway, "thank fucking Vegemite, you're okay. I was as worried as a fuckin’ cat with a koala.”

  Letting him wrap me in a tight hug, I chuckled at his cursing. "Australia really seems to have rubbed off on you, Warden."

  "Yeah, well, what can I say? There's a certain piece of Australia that I don't mind rubbing on me whenever she likes." Warden waggled his eyebrows at me and I snorted a laugh.

  "Come on, cheeseball. Let's get these elementals un-fossilized so we can take this war to CUM and slap them right in the face with it." I shrugged out of his embrace and headed to the manhole where Dustin and George waited. Shane and Billy had stayed back at the house to guard Nevada and Gemma.

  We still had no idea what to do with the two of them, but I was sure an idea would come to us sooner or later. If not then they were just useful to have taken off the game board. Without Nevada, Daniel lacked the strength of his full sept. That surely gave me—us—the upper-hand?

  "Did you bring paintbrushes?" I checked with Dustin and he gave a little half shrug.

  "Couldn’t find ‘em," he admitted, "so I brought these." In his clenched fist, he held up five toothbrushes and I recognized them as mine and the guys’ from the sink of my beautifully remodeled bathroom.

  "Ew." I wrinkled my nose. "You better be splurging on new toothbrushes for everyone when the shops open."

  Dusty chuckled and handed me mine. "After we win this war, little gobshite, I'll buy ye a dozen fecking toothbrushes. Fair deal?"

  "I only need one," I grumbled, following him down the manhole and into the darkness of the sewer below, past COCS guards who recognized Reg and let us move unmolested. Once Warden had joined us, he formed a glowing ball of electricity for us to see by and lead the way to the wide underground cavern where the sewer trolls had hosted their party before it all went to shit.

  As we entered the open space, a couple of sewer trolls scattered like rats, but one just glanced up at us then continued with what he was doing: urinating against the leg of one of our stone elementals.

  Charming.

  "Uh, mate? Do you mind not pissing on the statue?" Dustin asked the troll dude, but just got flipped off in response. We stood there and waited while the troll finished his piss, then waggled his flaccid green dick at us and stalked off into the shadows.

  "Well, that was educational," George murmured, watching the puddle of troll urine roll across the floor. It stank to high heaven too, which was saying a lot considering we were inside a sewer.

  "Alright, let's get this done." I took the ice cup full of saliva from Reg's hand and passed it to Warden. I had to give it to those girls; they'd worked up a decent amount of saliva for only ten or eleven people.

  Warden screwed the top off and we each dipped our toothbrushes into the soupy liquid. I had to fight not to vom at the sight, but whatever. It was for a good cause, right?

  Making our way through the room, we brushed spirit elemental mixed sal
iva over the foreheads of every stone dude we could find, and by the end we were scraping the dregs from my sippy cup. We'd really needed every last drop, after all.

  "How long does it take, again?" Reg asked as we stood there and none of the stone statues moved.

  "Not long?" I chewed my lip, remembering when Billy had turned to stone and I'd saved him with my tears. Oh my God, I just repeated that in my head and could it be anymore clichéd fairy-tale? Damn, if my life was a romance novel, that author must have been scraping the bottom of the sippy cup to come up with that pearler. "Maybe the spit was too diluted?"

  Just as I said this, there was a loud cracking noise from one of the stone dudes, and his skin started fading back to human, rather than, well, concrete.

  "Yes! It's working!" George whooped as more and more statues came to life as elementals who looked crazy confused.

  "What in bloody hell is going on here?" demanded one good-looking man with red-brown hair and a long hipster style beard. He was as Aussie as me!

  "You all got turned to stone by a bunch of basilisks," I informed him—them really, as the whole lot of them were crowding around and frowning like they wanted answers. "Now we need your help in fighting CUM to rescue your spirits."

  This caused an uproar, as they obviously hadn't noticed their chicks were missing. I mean, kind of fair enough given how many dudes were in the room. But how could you miss the fact that it was a total eggplant party, without a single avocado in sight? Other than my own, of course.

  I liked to think of avocados as a great vagina emoji when I was texting. It kinda looked like a green clit, don't you think?

  Anyway, Warden had to bark some obscenity I couldn't make out to shut them all up so I could continue.

  "Look, CUM has your spirits held captive. Daniel and his wives were planning on draining them, and you through them, at the full moon or some shit … err, probably on a Tuesday. So we need to rescue them before that happens. Also, CUM is trying to smother COCS, so we need to wash them down the drain before they kill our entire race." I paused when I finished and looked around at the stunned faces of the formerly stone elementals.