DAMAGED - A Bad Boy Romance (49 page)

Dion walked back into the store and told the two clerks he was done outside. He knew the owner would be here soon enough. The threat the nymphs would have presented to him was over for the time being, but there was the issue of what to do about his friends who would be swooning over their collective girlfriends in a few days. He needed to figure out some way the nymphs could visit the guys they had chosen without much trouble.

Lilly and the rest of his friends were still sitting on the bench when he emerged from the store. He went over and sat beside her, the rest of the group starring at him in confusion.

“I just saw two guys from that group you brought in here leave,” Lilly said to him. “Each with one of the nymph elementals. What did you do in there to cause this to happen?”

“Naiads,” Dirce said, still cuddled up to Dennis. “It’s the term we use for ourselves.”

“Okay then, I just saw two of your sister Naiads walk out of the pool store hand-in-hand with two of the guys Dion took back there.” She looked back at Dion. “What did you do?”

“I introduced them. I figured if it worked so well for Dennis, it might work out just as well for a group of guys I knew that had no luck with the girls in the school. Plenty of guys who just sit around mopping over their lack of love. Time to cure the problem.”

“What’s going to happen when they find out they’re not human?” Emily asked.

Dion turned to Dennis. “You figured it out right away, didn’t you?”

“Yes. When you have a vision of swimming with her at the bottom of the sea, you realize that you’re in a very different place.”

“And it’s not a problem, is it? I mean, you do understand that, for all practical purposes, she’ll never age, don’t you?”

Dirce leaned onto Dennis chest and looked up at him with her sea green eyes. “No, I can’t say that it is a problem right now.”

Dion turned back to Emily. “There is your answer.”

“You’re still going to have a problem with finding a place for them all,” Lilly said. “Where are you going to find a body of water around here large enough for them all? Plus, how are they going to be able to see these guys every day? Don’t they get addicted to each other or something?”

“They are bonded to each other,” Dion said. “The elemental…” He noticed a glare from Dirce. “Ahem, I mean Naiad, has made the choice and the guy accepted her. So yes, they’ll need each other every day. But I’m sure we can find some way to get the entire clan into school in these last few months.”

The moment he quit speaking another group of Naiads and chess club guys walked out of the store and headed into the mall. This time one of the guys stopped to thank him.

He walked over to Dion and pumped his hand. “Dion,” he said. “I don’t know how to thank you. I’ve never been so happy in all my life. She wants to see the hobby shop on the other side of the mall, can you believe it? Oh, by the way, this is Arethusa.” He was standing with a black-haired girl who was on the tall side with curly hair. Her eyes were a deep purple.

“We’ve met,” Dion laughed.

“And you want to know what the best part of it is?”

“What?”

“She wants to play chess. She claims she played a few games years ago, and would like to take it back up again. Can you believe it?”

“I had a shipwrecked sailor show me how,” Arethusa explained. “A few of us have played it over the years when we get bored. We used shells and stones for the pieces.”

Chapter 9

The bus let Gabriel off in front of the mall. He paid the driver, stepped outside it to look at the magnificent glass aviary over the front, and took a deep breath. This place was impressive. Whoever built it had sunk a lot of cash into the project just to keep it going.

He was told years ago that it would never be finished when the local politicians tried to hold the project up. There were all kinds of ways they could do it when the right pressure was applied.

He dusted off his sea jacket and looked around at the entrance. Definitely an improvement over the malls and shopping centers on the coast. Whoever designed this one had a specific image in their head and wanted to see it realized before them. Gabriel stood there and watched families enter and exit through the doors. Although the location of the mall wasn’t the best, it was built near an interstate, which should take care of the need for traffic to get to and from it.

He wondered if anyone suspected the real reason for the mall. How many of these shoppers knew it was built over the abyss. There were enough sensitive people around here; surely, some of them would pick up the emanations from what lay beneath. He didn’t notice anyone show signs of the second sight as they left the mall, but it was still early in the day for the effects to be obvious. Give the right person a few hours in this mall and they would start to have all kinds of personal issues. In fact, the mall was built over the larges ethereal power source in this world. But none of the shoppers appeared to know it. It was probably best they didn’t.

He pushed the second set of glass doors open and walked inside. Good, the environment was carefully controlled. He turned and saw a ghoul cleaner in a hurry to push the trash out the door. The cleaner seemed to be anxious to get out of the mall, but he was on the wrong side, so it only made sense. Gabriel looked up and saw some of the air sylphs skating around near the supports of the structure. They weren’t supposed to be on this side either, but at least the ghouls had a legitimate reason to be here. As he watched the doors open, one of the air elementals shot out both glass doors and was soon outside.

He continued to walk through the main concourse of the mall. Everything was tinted a nice blue in this section. He stopped and looked at one of the reflecting pools toward the entrance and wondered where the water elementals were inside it. As he waited, the water stirred and a small column of water rose up and then back down again. There it was, one of the smaller ones. Since this place was dedicated to them, they had to be here. It wouldn’t make sense for the mall to have this section and not to have any elementals present. Again, he wondered how many people could see them. It wasn’t a gift many people inherited, but the average person could learn to recognize them with some basic training. It wasn’t that hard.

He thought about removing his cap, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. People no longer took their hats off when they walked indoors these days. As a matter of fact, few people wore hats anymore. He could remember when a person of respect wouldn't step outside without a hat. Now, you hardly saw anyone who wore them.

He stopped by a place which sold fish in aquariums supplies and looked into the windows. They had a nice selection of colorful tropical fish, but what else did they have in there? Gabriel knew that not every part of this mall was open to the public. There were stores for all kinds of supernaturals in the mall. Stores which appeared to be closed from the front, but which had another entrance in the back. Some of these stores had no doors. He wondered how the mall builder had gotten that one through the building code.

It had been a long trip from Atlantic City. Gabriel couldn’t remember the last time he was this far inland. It had to be years ago. He didn’t like to be too far from the sea or any bodies of water. At least there were some creeks and streams near-by. They couldn’t have built the mall inside a desert, as the lack of water would have made the construction impossible. But he would have preferred a shorter trip. It might’ve helped if he had a driver’s license. And no way was he going to risk a flight to the location. He wasn’t sure if the people behind the mall knew about him, but he also had no clue about the extent of their powers. It would be too easy for them to bring down an air flight.

Just last week he’d been on his boat in the Atlantic. The water was rough that day, but he didn’t mind. He took a group of fishermen out to an isolated spot and let them cast their lines. They hadn’t cost much and he speculated the real reason they were out there was to talk about sports and drink. He took a lot of them out that way. Guys with impressive fishing tackle who had no clue how to use it. He spent half of the trip showing the best way to catch. It wasn’t what he was paid to do, but there was no reason to just leave them to their own devices.

So here he was, just about, as far as you could get from an ocean. It was a strange place for an old sea dog to find himself.

He was about to ask someone where he could find the pool store when he noticed the girl in the tracksuit walking with the slightly overweight young man in his direction. He stopped and looked at the swim team logo on her top as they went past. He couldn’t tell what their conversation was about, but it had something to do with the game of chess. This struck him as odd, so he watched them continue on their way down the concourse. Why would two young people of such dissimilar appearances be walking together unless there was some other reason? He waited for them to pass and thought about following them to see where they went. If she had a swim team logo on her, it was likely the young lady would know something about the pool store he needed to find.

Gabriel watched where they headed and was ready to turn directions when he saw a similar couple who walked in his direction. He put his hands in the pockets of his black jacket and pretended to look at a display of newspapers on a stand. This time the girl who wore the tracksuit was a few inches shorter than the guy, but she was still as beautiful as the last one. The guy with her, on the other hand, had last year’s outfit on and thick glasses. She seemed as enamored of him as he was of her. He couldn’t tell what they were talking about just now.

He was ready to put it off as coincidence, when a third couple walked in his direction. This girl possessed hair so blond he thought it might be white. He watched them pass him by. This time he was able to listen in and hear what they were talking about. It sounded like the upcoming prom. They were asking each other questions about their backgrounds, so they couldn’t have been in any kind of relation very long. He looked back the way they’d come. Each couple had walked from the same direction. Perhaps he should head in that location.

“You sing on that rock every night?” he heard the young man ask the blond as the moved away from him.

And then it hit him: the girls were all water elementals. If these boys, hardly a one of them who looked like the type who would normally be with such a girl, were with them, it meant the water nymphs and had placed a glamor on them. What the heck was going on in this mall? He needed to find the pool store as fast as he could.

Gabriel turned and headed in the general direction the couples had originated. When he was halfway down the concourse, he noticed two more mismatched pairs. These had walked out into the main mall from a side hall and he decided to see what was there. Gabriel pulled his cap down over his grey hair and made a slight turn, his steps silent, as they were lost in the sounds of the other shoppers.

At the far end of the hall was the pool store, his destination. But coming in his direction were three more couples, which consisted of very happy young men, paired with very beautiful water elementals. They were of different racial features, but he knew the nymphs took on the form of the sailors they encountered over the years. Did any of these boys have any idea what they were in love with? He needed to find out. It had to have something with the pool storeowner, Salacia. He hadn’t seen her in years and this was the entire reason for his trip. Where was she?

Gabriel felt a familiar tingle when he walked past the bench where several young people sat. He stopped and felt something strange come over him. It was powerful, this pulse of energy. No one he’d ever met before had such a strong sense of elemental ability. He stopped walking and let it sink into him. The power originated from one of the kids on that bench. Impossible. It took years for most people to achieve a fraction of this level of background energy. It could only mean one thing: there was a natural elemental manipulator next to him and he was on his way to obtaining all the necessary powers to achieve mastery over the fifth element.

Which one could it be? He faced them and tried to decide. They were talking about something among themselves. It couldn’t be the girl it the tracksuit, she was another elemental. There it was, he could feel it. It had to be the tall boy, the one with the long jet-black hair. Gabriel looked at him again and felt the power this kid commanded. It was stronger than anything he’d ever sensed from a mortal human before. He needed to talk to him. His presence here had something to do with those nymph girl and human boy combinations he saw walking through the mall.

“Hello,” he said as he walked up to the group. “None of you know me. I’m Captain Gabriel Briah. I need to speak with the one who’s an element worker. I think that would be you, son?” He faced Dion. “Am I correct?’

Dion stared at him for a moment before he made his answer. “That’s right. I am an elemental worker and my name is Dion.” He introduced his friends and then returned to the captain. “I don’t get a sensation of an elemental worker from you, although this place makes it hard to tell much of anything. Are you with the mall?”

“No, I’m trying to find the owner of the pool store, Salacia Delphi. Is she in there?”

“I’m waiting for her to get back too. I’m told she will be here in the next hour or two. The people working there tell me she is a little abstract on her sense of time.”

“So why do you need to see her?” Dion asked the captain.

“We used to be married.” The captain let it sink into the group for a few minutes.

“So, you’re also an elemental worker?” Dion asked.

“No, I’m from Mt. Olympus.”

Dion was stunned. He’d never met an immortal before. This was the first time he even knew about one coming down to the level of humanity. But the man didn’t appear to be one of them. He looked old and beaten, not the sort of person you would expect to spend the afternoon talking with Zeus over the nature of storms and should reality be extended to the seventh dimension. He was at least sixty and sported a white beard and hair on his head to match. Dion assumed these beings were too busy at their lever to be concerned with the affairs of mortal men. He knew they did marry humans every now and then, but it was considered very rare. The captain was clothed in an old sea coat with matching black cap on his head. Hardly the person you would expect to cast lighting down from the sky. However, Dion did know that these beings liked to assume human form on occasion and visit this world.

“You don’t look like someone from Mt. Olympus,” Dion told him. “I would have expected a toga and a crown of light.”

“That is the expensive method,” the captain responded. “You watch too many Hollywood movies. If I could round up that much power on short notice, I wouldn’t need anyone to track my ex-wife. I’ve had to come here personally to find her. Do you know her?”

“No,” I’m here to get my third elemental power. My parents are imprisoned in the tower in the center of the mall. I need all four elemental powers so I can qualify for the fifth and get them out.”

“With the fifth, you couldn’t be stopped. It explains why all the elemental grandmasters are here inside the mall. Someone did everything they could to bring them here where they could be watched.”

“Do you know anything about the mall?” Dion questioned him again. It seemed this man might have some information he needed.

“Not much. I know it was built over the entrance to the abyss. I still can’t figure out why someone would do that. Best to leave these gates closed. Is there something I should know about this mall that I don’t?”

“My uncle built it. Or at least his company built it. He is the major stockholder in the company, which owns it. He’s also a fifth elemental worker, but one who learned the fifth without the other four.”

“Ah,” the captain said. “Him I’ve heard about. This would explain all the elementals I see around here. Those lovely young women walking with the guys their age, is that your doing?”

“Yes it is. Dennis here was glamoured by Appias and I thought if she likes him, the rest of her sisters should be introduced to some friends of mine. It solved a lot of problems.”

“Or create them. You do realize they’re all bonded now, don’t you?”

“Yes, I knew it would happen when I introduced the entire group.”

“So are you going to cut them loose when you get the full water power?”

“I don’t think so. We should be able to work something out for them. There are a number of lakes around here.”

“Not really a good idea,” the captain explained. “It never works when a mortal loves someone who isn’t. The next time I get back to Olympus, I’ll see if Zeus is in the mood to grant some mortality. He doesn’t do that very often.”

The captain thought about it some more. Another plan might be to grant the boys immortality, but that had even worse side effects. It was bad enough aging while your wife stayed young forever, worse to see everyone you know grow old and die while you remained.