The Elementals Collection

by L. B. Gilbert

  And perhaps they had, but Katie was still here in Toulouse. Or at least that’s the sense Diana got whenever she tried to pinpoint the little girl’s location. She’d showered and changed, but neither she nor Alec tried to sleep. They were close to the end, and she could feel time running out.

  She was still pacing the room, fingering the toy duck in her hand, when Alec knocked.

  “Any luck?” he asked, sitting on the bed with a handful of papers.

  “She’s still here, somewhere in town. Not sure where. It’s like I can feel her nearby, but without a fixed direction, so it’s like she’s everywhere. And nowhere. The feeling is faint and blinks out. I’m starting to get a headache,” she said, rubbing her forehead again.

  “Well, I might have a few leads. They’ll want a base of operations similar to ours but more private if possible. I think we can safely restrict things to the higher end of the price range. This is a list of some recent high end rentals that might be where they are holed up,” he said, extending a sheet of paper with some addresses. “I’ve got men watching them all. Fortunately, this town isn’t that big. Unfortunately, it’s a vacation spot for Brits and other refugees from the cold, so there are a lot of rentals to check out.”

  “Well, I’m still not sure about the specifics, but I’ll go with your gut on this one,” she mumbled as she scanned the addresses. “We don’t have much else to go on.”

  “Thanks?” Alec asked with pursed lips.

  She threw him an apologetic glance before turning back to the list. “Most of these are pretty close by,” she said after a minute, handing the papers back.

  “If my people spot any likely candidates coming in or out, they’ll call us immediately. We should rest while we can,” he said, standing. “I’m having a tray sent up, a cold repas you can eat at your leisure. In the meantime, I think we should rest, or you can talk to the other Elementals again. . .”

  “I’m not sure that would help. If they knew something, they would have gotten in touch. It’s just us now. Look, I’m going to take a walk and pass by some of these places. I might be able to get something by proximity,” she said, grabbing her jacket and her phone.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, rising from the bed.

  “No,” she said, turning to him and screwing one eye closed. “I want to be able to focus, and having you around is a little distracting.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he asked with a hint of a smile, his first since earlier that evening.

  Diana paused in the act of putting on her jacket. “I don’t know,” she said honestly before walking away.

  Toulouse was a livable city. Paris was nice to visit, but living there would be harder. More isolating and anonymous. Toulouse was smaller, with a welcoming, open vibe, at least on the surface.

  Diana didn’t ever live in any of the cities she visited. Maybe if she and Alec really tried to partner up, then she would pick one to stay in, kind of like a home base.

  No, that wouldn’t work. Serin was obligated to try because of her situation, but it wasn’t practical for the rest of them. They moved around too much. Diana had never once thought about it before she met Alec. She didn’t want to question why she was thinking about it now.

  She walked through Carmes, one of the oldest quarters in the city. The area boasted a number of historical apartment buildings and probably the highest concentration of restaurants and bars from the looks of it. Alec probably knew which ones were the best.

  Sighing, Diana passed several high-end patisseries. Distractedly, she cut through a parking structure and was surprised to find herself in a gourmet market. The parking level’s were restricted to the upper stories, but the ground floor was filled with shoppers browsing stalls and deli cases.

  Putting in her earphones to discourage conversations, she took a good look around. She had stumbled on a Marché that sold everything from gourmet meat and seafood to fruits and nuts and oils. Rabbits were laid out alongside ducks and pots of Foie Gras. Turning left, she found a high-end cheese counter laden with things she couldn’t identify or pronounce. Behind it, a counter sold bottles of wine.

  Diana made a complete circuit of the market, discreetly checking out what few little girls were present with adults. Most of the people didn’t have kids. This was a place for chic couples to shop, not so much a place to grab mac and cheese for little ones. If the French ate mac and cheese…

  She headed out the other exit of the market, past more fruit stalls and some sort of modern art/flower shop. Blending into the crowded cobblestone street on the right, she let herself be propelled past full bars and cafes that catered to the well-dressed and attractive natives. The town definitely had an above average percentage of good-looking people compared to other places she had been. Alec fit right in.

  As Diana wandered through narrow cobblestone streets interspersed with broader paved avenues, she studied every face that passed. It seemed too early for the density of the crowd, until she stopped in front of a jewelry store with watches in the window and realized it was almost noon. And it was a Saturday. People were taking advantage of the good weather to shop for things they weren’t able to get during the workweek and wouldn’t be able to get on Sunday when most of the shops were closed.

  She skirted to the edge of the crowds and ended up on the boulevard running alongside the Garonne. Stopping to sit on a low stone wall with a view of the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in town, Diana let her mind go blank while fixing her gaze on the arches and the vaguely lion-like cutouts in the stonework.

  It was a trick she’d learned during her training when she’d initially had trouble tracking a perpetrator. Smaller shifts in the balance were easier to detect when her mind was silent and she was staring off into space.

  It had become unnecessary after the first few months. With practice, her skill set had sharpened rapidly, and she was now considered the best tracker of the four Elementals. But nothing of this case had been typical, so she reached into her reserves for the focus needed to quiet her mind.

  She was still watching the slow water flow toward her through the arches under the bridge a half hour later when she felt something. Closing her eyes again, she reached out with the extra sense to a familiar signature.

  Katie. She could feel the little girl somewhere nearby. But there was something off. Since she wasn’t supposed to be feeling Katie at all given her youth, Diana couldn’t pinpoint what was different.

  Scrambling off the wall, she walked towards the crowds moving to the center of town. The crowd thickened at Quai de la Dauraude, where the concrete banked down to a picnic area and a playground set crawling with children. She took a good long look at every little girl below, but Katie wasn’t there.

  The tug she felt on her senses began to fade. Maybe Katie was somewhere in the shifting crowd and was being led away. On alert, Diana picked the most likely direction and followed it like a predator who’d scented prey.

  In a few streets, she was completely lost. She could barely feel anything anymore. A crushing sense of disappointment descended. Whirling around, she tried to get her bearings, but her pulse was racing and she couldn’t calm down

  Dammit, I lost it!

  Walking in a wide circle, she tried in vain to recapture the signal. Tired and frustrated, she stopped short in front a brick wall. Backing away to figure out where she was, Diana found herself looking up at a huge brick Gothic church.

  Les Jacobins was built in the thirteenth century by a group of Dominican brethren, according to the poster at the door. It also housed the remains of Thomas Aquinas under the altar in the center of the church.

  The energy coming from the building itself confused her senses, increasing the buzzing in the back of her brain like static. Some places with a lot of history tended to do that. The best option was to absorb it and let her senses adjust to the level of background noise, much the same way a person’s hearing acclimated to a noisy restaurant.

  The church was mostly empty
space with a very high ceiling held up by large pillars. At the base of one of the pillars was a rounded wooden platform with a mirror, so visitor’s necks wouldn’t cramp when looking at the palm-shaped vaulted ceiling high above. She walked around it, avoiding eye contact with the few tourists milling nearby.

  Diana stilled, ignoring her surroundings as she let her mind empty again. Most of the tourists wandered away, except for one young man opposite her across the mirrored base. He appeared lost in thought and was too well-dressed to be a tourist. His suit was new and fit like a glove.

  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—o
ne 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 hissed, 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.”