The Elementals Collection

by L. B. Gilbert

  Diana chest tightened, but she ignored it and sighed loudly. “I’ve been doing this alone for a long time. And this thing,” she said, pointing to the greasy ashes, “had it coming.”

  “That’s kind of obvious,” Alec said, glancing at the grisly objects in the room. “I’m not here to defend him or to criticize what you do. I only wanted to make sure no one surprised you or something. I’m sure you can take down entire armies, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about you.”

  Diana shifted her weight, hands on hips, staring Alec down. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”

  He smiled that little boy smile. “Accept it and let me be your back-up.”

  Diana gave him an incredulous and puzzled look. “I don’t need your help. We don’t have back-up. None of us do, and Serin has a full-time man. He doesn’t tag along after her, worrying about her and getting in her way.”

  “Then he must not love her,” Alec said slowly.

  “Of course he does,” she snapped, but for a second, doubt crossed her mind.

  She had wondered that herself. “Anyway, this isn’t about them.”

  And it certainly wasn’t about love. “We need to get out of here. It’s almost dawn,” she said ducking out of the storage unit.

  He followed her, noting that she didn’t bother to close the door. “You’re going to leave everything here?” he asked, looking back at the gaping door and ashes on the floor.

  “The police will be notified sooner this way,” she said, leading him away from the grisly little gallery.

  “And you’re simply going to let them find everything?”

  He frowned in the direction of the now-distant storage unit as they reached the fence and climbed outside.

  “Yeah, maybe they’ll be enough to tie his victims to him. The families might get some closure. If the victims have been missed that is. Not everyone is.”

  “I don’t know that finding out what really happened to them would be a comfort. Especially if they never really connect the ashes to him and no one realizes he’s dead,” Alec said.

  “It’s the best we can do. The job is simply to restore the balance, nothing more,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said with feeling in his voice as he trailed her to her bike.

  “Why? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t spend all the time it would take to check on each and every victim’s family. We have to be satisfied with the fact that there will be less victims in the future,” she said, echoing Gia and Serin more than herself.

  “I’m still sorry. It’s not easy, what you do. It must be emotionally draining.”

  He reached out as if to take her arm but stopped himself before making contact.

  Diana shrugged. “Sometimes it is, other times it’s. . .energizing.”

  Before he’d shown up, she’d still been riding that high. Although now his presence was starting to make her wonder about things she hadn’t really thought about before. Like how an outsider would feel about her job. She had a hard enough time deciphering her own feelings sometimes.

  “I can see that. You get to turn monsters into toast. It must be satisfying. I simply think you could use some help is all.”

  Diana climbed onto her bike. “I did let you help. You got more of those fig things, didn’t you?” she asked in a chipper tone, wondering why his solicitude was sweet now, instead of aggravating.

  “Of course I did. You really liked them,” he said, as if no other outcome was possible.

  “Then stop with the Boy Wonder act and follow me to the airfield,” she said, pulling on her helmet and starting her bike.

  “Sure thing, Batman,” he said, heading for his car.

  16

  Alec arrived at the airfield in record time—mainly because he was trying not to lose Diana in front of him.

  She drove like a maniac. Another reason to fear for her safety, even if she was fireproof. Would it make a difference if she hit the pavement? Maybe she could make a cushion from a fire’s drafts. It was the first thing he asked her when he finally caught up with her at the edge of the airfield.

  “Is this the way you always are?” Diana asked with a furrowed brow.

  “What way is that?” he asked, exasperated.

  Being so concerned for someone else was tiring, and the fact she didn’t need or appreciate that concern was starting to grate on his nerves.

  “So geeky and analytical. Kind of doesn’t go with the whole crown prince of darkness image,” she said with genuine curiosity.

  “Well. . .I don’t mind the last part much. And yes. I’m a scholar. I ask questions,” he said with the tiniest hint of pride.

  “So I’ve gathered,” Diana said drily. “Well, Boy Wonder, which one is your plane?”

  “It’s in the private hangar on the left,” he said, trying not to be annoyed at being reduced to sidekick status.

  When Diana saw the plane, she rounded on him. “I thought you said this thing was small!”

  “It’s the smallest Gulfstream that can still fly long distance, and it’s been modified for a single pilot. Go ahead and get comfortable. I have to log a flight plan and make sure we’re fueled up.”

  “We don’t really know where we’re going yet,” Diana said.

  “I did a little more digging before I found you tonight. I have a pretty good idea of where we should be heading, a suspicion you’ll need to confirm once we are in the air.” He pulled the ladder up to the door and then hurried away.

  When Alec got back from the hangar office, he found Diana inside the jet, peeking into the cockpit and examining the comfortable leather chairs.

  “Have you ever been in a private jet?” he asked, watching her open and close drawers.

  “A charter here and there, but not a nice one like this,” she said, poking around the well-stocked bar cabinet next to his seat. “It’s usually easier to get a lift from Logan than to get on a plane.”

  “Logan?”

  “The Air Elemental,” she said.

  “Oh,” Alec said, skipping a beat. “You can travel in another Elemental’s medium? That’s fascinating,” he said, downplaying his reaction as he sat to wait for the pilot.

  He wanted to ask a million more questions, but there were only so many he could safely ask before Diana clammed up. But if he was patient…

  “Yeah, but it’s not always convenient since we are sent in different directions most of the time,” she said finally, and Alec resisted the urge to punch the air in celebration before Diana continued. “Logan can cover a lot of ground, so I ask her for a lift every once in a while.” She waved toward the cockpit with a frown. “I hope you can make sense of all those little buttons and levers.”

  “I decided to contact a private pilot from an agency to fly us down. We haven’t gotten a whole lot of rest lately, and I personally don’t want to fly the plane tired. I took the liberty of filing a flight plan under a pseudonym.” He paused, working up the courage to drop another little bomb. “I told the agency they were flying a Mister and Missus Collins to New Orleans for a little R&R.”

  “Okay,” Diana murmured as she finally sat.

  “What?” he asked, stunned.

  An easy acquiescence wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

  “I said that’s okay. Pseudonyms are a good idea. And we could pass for a married couple if I’m a much younger trophy wife,” she teased unexpectedly. “Although we lack luggage.”

  “We don’t need it. Part of our cover states we have a house there. I can send out for anything we need.”

  “Do you have a house there? Is that why you picked New Orleans for a starting point?”

  “The coven has one, although they haven’t used it since those Anne Rice books got popular. Too cliché for them now. They rent it out. But since the staff would recognize me—and probably you by now, given how the grapevine works—I don’t think we should stay there. I actually have reason to believe J may be down there.”

  “Is he part of the su
pernatural bandwagon since the town got an image makeover?”

  “No, I think he might have been born there,” Alec said, crossing his legs.

  “Damn, I wanted to call him out for being a trend-following douchebag as well as an asshole.”

  Alec smiled. “You can go ahead regardless of what I think. You should kick the crap out of him simply for the name of his club.”

  “That was already my plan,” Diana finished as the pilot walked in. “I promised Logan.”

  The pilot greeted them very professionally and went to the cockpit. Within twenty minutes, they were underway. Alec let them climb to their cruising altitude before he resumed the subject of J again.

  “J is a mysterious character. I had Daniel dig up whatever he could on him. It wasn’t easy. J doesn’t let on about his origins at all, not even to his closest underlings. They’ve only known him for the past ten years or so. And he’s tight-lipped about his past. My hypothesis is that he works at maintaining a shady reputation intentionally. You know, cultivating a mystique to draw in customers of our kind. Or he really is a dark one, which is less likely or you would have known about him sooner.”

  Diana nodded. “So how did you come up with New Orleans?” she asked with a little yawn.

  He watched her get comfortable in her seat. “I followed the money. Tends to be the most reliable method of hunting people down, provided they have some, that is.”

  “A lot of the people I have to look for don’t.” She gestured to the cockpit. “Getting the pilot was a good idea,” she added in a sleepier tone. “I’ve been running on empty all today.”

  She shifted her seat to a nearly reclining position. Without a word, he handed her Tupperware, the requisitions from the club. When Diana opened it and revealed those figs, she let out a tiny little squeal before abruptly cutting it off. Alec hid his answering smile. She gobbled down most of the figs as well as some of the other choice tidbits in the box and fell asleep with the last fig in hand.

  From across the aisle, Alec watched Diana sleep. She was curled up in the large leather chair like a child. He wanted to take the fig before she smeared it all over herself but instead waited till she dropped it on the floor before he bent to pick it up.

  You don’t suddenly wake someone armed with a flamethrower, he thought dryly before reaching for his bag and pulling out his computer. Sleep would be a good idea, but the side effect of the day-walking ritual was an unfortunate state of wakefulness. He could keep going for days but still became tired.

  Although tired was not the right term for it exactly. It was more like being in Technicolor and then slowly fading into black and white. Determined to test his limits, he once went as long as a week before he’d started to feel thin and stretched. The feeling had been so unnerving that he’d terminated his little self-experimentation after that.

  Potentially, he could go longer than a week. If things kept up like they were, he might make it past that.

  He looked back up at Diana. She was sound asleep. While they were on a case, it would probably be best to stay awake when she was asleep. Someone had to watch over her. Even if she was the last person who needed it.

  The flight was too short to get a real restful sleep, but Diana still felt loads better when she woke during the landing at yet another private airfield.

  “Sorry, I should have woken you earlier to make sure we were headed in the right direction,” Alec said from across the aisle.

  “It’s okay. We’re close,” Diana replied in a slightly hoarse sleepy voice. “He’s in this city somewhere or just outside of it.”

  She fingered the totem in her pocket. It was pulsing in waves, connecting to the animal part in the back of her brain, giving her a direction to follow. According to Gia, their parietal cortex was unique, enhanced, and likely responsible for their tracking ability. Magic and biology intertwined. In normal humans, that part of the brain was responsible for a sense of direction, or the lack of one.

  They disembarked to find a town car waiting for them. “All this luxurious leather, and the polished wood accents do not go well with my badass image,” Diana announced as they settled inside, snuggling in the plush seat in spite of herself.

  Alec chuckled, seemingly delighted with her unexpected frankness.

  “Are you sure it’s wise to be laughing at me?” she asked with raised red eyebrow.

  “Of course not. That would be extremely stupid,” he said still smiling before lifting two drinks in her direction, one a cold gourmet coffee beverage and the other a bottled water. “If you’re still tired, we can head to a hotel. Or we can start our search now.”

  “It’s better to follow the trail while it’s hot or he may move on. I don’t want to have to chase him to another town and waste more time not hunting the circle directly.” She yawned and reached for the coffee.

  “Then where to, Batman?” he asked, pulling out a bottle of something dark.

  Probably blood, she thought wrinkling her nose.

  For his kind, bottled wasn’t the preferred way to drink, but it would do in a pinch. Someone of Alec’s status would have fresh daily, delivered in the form of a young and attractive woman.

  Diana felt her goodwill travel south several notches at the thought, so she shifted to professional mode. She pulled out J’s totem and focused her energy on it, pushing the vibrations that were J’s imprint and turning them outward, into a direction. She could feel the echo of a response from where J was hiding.

  “South of here, and a little east, Boy Wonder.”

  Alec’s lips flattened, but he didn’t say anything about her continued use of the nickname before relaying the directions to the chauffeur on the other side of the raised partition via an internal intercom system.

  The sun was rising in the sky as they pulled away and headed toward the city.

  17

  The Faubourg Marigny neighborhood hadn’t suffered as bad as some other neighborhoods in New Orleans after Katrina, but the house J was hiding in hadn’t been favorably situated.

  It was a shotgun row house with gingerbread molding in desperate need of a paint job. From the looks of it, the house had been affected by the storm more severely than others around it, or at least they had been repaired better.

  Alec peeked at the house from their position half a block down. “Not what I expected a successful club owner would choose as a hideout.”

  “You’d be surprised at how often someone being chased will go home,” Diana replied as she unbuckled her seatbelt and exited the car.

  He followed her out. “Any plan?”

  “Yeah, stay out of the way,” she called behind her.

  Alec gritted his teeth as he followed. Playing second fiddle was frustrating. A vampire of his age and social standing wasn’t accustomed to being a mere observer. In any other situation, he would have been heading this investigation, calling all the shots.

  But then you wouldn’t be with her. And he was wearing her down.

  Diana was getting accustomed to his presence, warming to him. He almost snorted aloud at that last thought, but she was getting farther ahead of him and he didn’t want her walking into that house alone because, as he could see from the street, she didn’t bother knocking on the door.

  She probably never does. Just walks right in like she owns the place, be it a palace or a shack. In seconds, Diana had the door opened. She moved inside, Alec hot on her heels.

  J had clearly not been expecting them because he didn’t even try to hide when they came inside.

  He was taller and more muscular than Alec had been expecting. Muscles bulged from behind a skintight designer t-shirt and loose shorts. He cast a surreptitious glance at Diana, to see if she was impressed with the overt display of masculinity, but he needn’t have bothered.

  She had stopped short a few feet of the frozen man and paused to examine her surroundings. The interior of the house had been completely redone. It didn’t reflect the worn look of the exterior.

  Diana spun
in a circle, examining the costly furnishings before running a white hand over a teak end table. Unlike the table in the Dover house, this one escaped getting a brand burned into its surface.

  J still hadn’t moved. Apparently, he’d decided on the ‘no sudden movement’ method of dealing with her.

  “Nice place, J. A little nicer than your club actually. Who lives here now?” she asked, lifting a picture frame from a nearby table. The photo was of a much younger J and an older woman with grey hair. “Your grandmother?”

  J turned to Alec, presumably for help. Alec rolled his eyes. Were they all going to do that?

  J finally turned to Diana. And unwisely chose to change the subject. “I don’t believe you are who you say you are.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you before, and therefore haven’t claimed to be anyone in particular,” she said, moving her hands to her hips.

  “They say you’re one of them. One of those freaky Elementals.”

  “Ooh, that makes me sound scary,” Diana said in a reasonable tone, cocking her head slightly in Alec’s direction.

  J continued his downward slide along the IQ ladder by choosing belligerence. “I don’t believe it. I don’t have to talk to you,” he hissed, his eyes darting to the side, eyeing the door before turning back to Diana and stepping close to tower over her and sneer.

  Alec waited to see what Diana would do. He was a little startled when she gave J a dazzling smile and lifted her hand, as if to stroke him lovingly. With her index finger, she drew a letter J on the center of his chest. The sizzling flesh that resulted was rather disconcerting, as was the faint, cooked pork smell.

  Ouch, he thought as J wised up and scrambled as far away from Diana as he could.

  “Now do you really want me to torch grandma’s house to prove you wrong?” she asked pleasantly.

  Wincing, J gave Diana a wide berth as he sat in the dining room that shared the living room area.

  “What do you want?” he asked grimacing, his hand hovering over the burn on his chest.