Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) (16 page)

Lisabelle snorted. “Because
paranormals are controlling, and the more power they have over stuff that is
none of their business the better.”

“Wait,” I said. “You said each
paranormal type?”

Everyone paused to look at me,
instantly realizing where I was headed.

“No one told me I could test
Lanca,” I said, frowning. “Most of the time they just ignore the elementals,
but I’m not sure I should be ignored this time.”

“Why would you want to test
Lanca? Don’t you think she’s competent?” Lough asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “But
what if other paranormals don’t? I could be the voice that supports her instead
of the voice that tears her down. I am elemental. They can’t acknowledge that
fact only when it’s convenient for them.”

“I only acknowledge stuff that’s
convenient for me all the time,” said Lisabelle.

“And look how many friends you
have,” Sip drawled.

“They still consider the elementals
to be dormant,” said Dobrov. “You will not be testing her.”

I pushed away from the table. “I
want to talk to Keller. I’ll see everyone at lunch.”

I headed for the ladder and
scurried down.

“Do you know how to get back to
your room?” Lough called out from above.

“I’m not going back yet,” I said.
I glanced up at the ledge where Keller had been, but it was empty now and the
ladder was back in place, so I made a beeline for the doors and pushed them
open. The dark hallway was empty. It was almost eerie how few other paranormals
I had seen.

“Don’t forget we have opening
ceremonies tonight,” Sip called. “We’re watching, not participating, but I bet
the outfits will be fab! Don’t make me late because you’re busy smoochy
smoochying.”

I sincerely hoped one of the
people at the table, probably Lisabelle, would give Sip a lot of crap for using
the term smoochy, but I didn’t want to wait and find out.

I wanted to find Keller.

I now missed him whenever I
wasn’t with him, which had been for all of Christmas break. I had expected him
to greet me upon my arrival at Locke, but that had not happened. Our brief
conversation on the road after attack had only made me all the more sure I had
to see him. And after the non-encounter at the start of breakfast, I was sure of
it. I had to see him now.

My ring helped me. He was several
stories below me, and I used my sense of him to choose which turns to take. It
wasn’t a perfect method, and it would only work if I was already physically
close and emotionally connected with the paranormal I was trying to find. Even
then, that paranormal had to know enough to be open to my searching.

I took heart that Keller was open
to my coming.

I turned left and then left
again. Confronted with a steep staircase that I knew we hadn’t climbed earlier,
I hurried down it anyway. The walls on either side almost brushed my shoulders,
and I could barely see the steps in front of me.

The stairs continued and
continued, and I felt cold air hitting my face the further I went into the
earth. My breakfast felt heavy in my belly and I realized that wandering off by
myself in a vampire den might have not been the best idea. I blinked several
times, trying to adjust to the light.

The only sound around me was the
fall of my footsteps on the stone steps.

I glanced behind me, my unease
growing with each step. All I saw was blackness.

Maybe wandering alone through
Vampire Locke was not the best idea.

Sighing, I kept going. After a
few more turns I came to another corridor. My sense of Keller was stronger now,
but the passage was also narrower.

What was he doing down here, so
far off the main paths I had been on since I arrived?

Somewhere to my left I heard the
scrape of stone against stone and up ahead I thought I saw a door opening.

It was the only warning I had before
something hard and cold slammed into the back of my head.

The last thing I remembered was
the world turning sideways as I stumbled and fell. Then everything faded to
black.

I came awake slowly. My first
awareness was that my head hurt with a dull rhythmic throbbing, like the
tapping of a branch against a windowpane in the wind.. My second was that my
left cheek was cushioned on something much softer than anything I had seen so
far at Vampire Locke. I faintly smelled vanilla. I missed Keller. Something,
someone, was stroking my hair and talking softly to me in a voice I knew.

“Keller!” I exclaimed, and tried
to lift my head from his lap. He rested his hand on my shoulder to still me. It
was the gentlest of touches, and despite my throbbing head I found myself
smiling. It helped that the pain in my head was quickly lessening.

Moving only my eyes, I looked up
at my boyfriend. From this angle his strong nose was softened and the laugh
crinkles around his eyes were more visible as he looked down on me. His wide
mouth was open in a smile, and a strand of black hair flopped over his
forehead. My fingers itched to push it back out of the way, but I stayed still,
enjoying the view.

“Hi,” he murmured, his eyes soft
and warm. “Are you okay?” The throbbing in my head was nearly gone, and I
realized that Keller had waited until I was awake to heal me. If a patient
wasn’t at death’s door it was the polite thing to ask before you healed
someone. Not because they might not want it (although that was always a
possibility), but because it was an invasion into someone else’s body, their
most treasured possession.

“Hello in there? Are you okay? I
didn’t think you had a concussion, but I can check again.” Keller peered
worriedly at me, his blue eyes filled with concern. I coughed a little and
rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, sorry, I’m fine.” My face
flushed. And apparently I was also too busy staring at how gorgeous my
boyfriend was to actually bother to talk to him. And just think, girls are
usually the ones who complain that guys only care about looks. Lisabelle would
surely snort if she knew I had such thoughts, and truly, the idea that I was
with Keller because he was incredibly good-looking was just silly. Then again,
his good looks surely didn’t hurt.

“What happened?” I asked. It was
hard to care when I was in Keller’s arms. Everything felt right. Even the worry
line that had formed over Keller’s brow had disappeared.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I’m
pretty sure someone kidnapped me and threw me down here, but I can’t be sure. I
was walking back to my room alone, then I woke up here. There’s a nasty bump on
the back of my head, or at least there was before I healed it, so someone must
have attacked me. But I never had a warning and I have no idea who it was. When
I woke up you were here, unconscious.”

He trailed off, his lips
tightening into a thin white line. “I thought you were . . . I” He stopped and
I patted his hand, not wanting him to worry.

“I’m fine,” I murmured, stroking
his arm. “Lisabelle has knocked me harder on the head than this.”

“Yeah, but she didn’t do it
intentionally,” he muttered. “Just the force of her personality.”

I laughed and shrugged, which I
was now able to do without pain.

“So, someone kidnapped us both
and stuck us down here. Why?” I asked, getting down to business. “Thinking like
a kidnapper is not exactly my forte.”

“I have no idea,” said Keller.
“Here I was thinking everyone wanted to keep us separate, but someone has stuck
us together. Locked us in together, in fact.”

“We’re locked in?” I asked,
twisting and trying to see. I should have felt afraid, but so much had happened
to me recently that it was hard for me to worry when a demon wasn’t staring me
in the face.

“I don’t know,” he said, his arm
tightening protectively around me. “I think so, but I didn’t check. I was too
worried about you.”

“Well, let’s look then,” I said,
starting to rise. Keller placed both of his warm hands on my shoulders,
stilling me for the second time. I stopped all movement, acutely aware of
everywhere we touched. My head now rested on his crossed ankles as his stomach
pressed against me. His fingers put the barest pressure on my shoulder bones
and I didn’t want to move for fear I would disturb him. I was also very aware
of the view he had of my body as I was sprawled out in front of him.

I remembered to breathe just in
time.

Then he leaned down.

I knew he was about to kiss me.
We had been together long enough that I recognized the slight part of his lips,
his eyes fluttering closed, and the slight flush of his cheeks just before our
lips touched, which I was sure was mirrored on my own.

Then I couldn’t see anything,
because I closed my eyes and watched stars burst behind my eyelids. It was like
this every time he kissed me. I was sure it would never change.

I forgot everything else, the
knocked head, the attack, the locked door, and Lanca. His hands gently touched
my cheeks, the softest caress. I smiled while I kissed him, deepening our
contact. I moved both my hands to run my fingers through his soft, full hair,
luxuriating in touching him.

Finally he pulled away, and I
made a noise in protest that sounded like a plane propeller breaking. Not very
attractive. My face flamed scarlet again.

He chuckled. “I missed you too,
but let’s get out of here before whoever attacked but didn’t kill us comes back
to finish the job.”

Grumbling, I let him carefully
disentangle us and help me to my feet.

Once we were both standing,
Keller placed one hand protectively on my hip.

“You okay? No dizziness?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Sheesh.
You’re worse than Sip.”

“If I’m Sip that would make you
Lisabelle,” he teased. “Think about that for a few minutes.”

I playfully shoved his shoulder.
I didn’t know how I could be so silly at a time like this, or, now that I saw
where we were, how we could have taken the time out to kiss instead of getting
out of there. It was like a black underground jungle. We were in a tiny open
space, but all around us were grasping black tendrils, like the slimy legs of
an octopus or the roots of an ancient tree. The vines were so thick I couldn’t
even see a wall or a door. It was like we were outside, except that the ground
under us was old concrete. We were still in the mountain somewhere, held
prisoner by an implacable foe: nature.

All too late I remembered feeling
like I was being watched back at Sip’s, and wondered if there was a connection.
I couldn’t be sure.

“Wow,” I breathed. “No wonder you
didn’t look for a door.”

Above us somewhere there was a
faint light. I couldn’t see where it was coming from and it kept flickering,
like a wall sconce blown around in wind.

Keller nodded, squinting. “We
still have our rings, which is something. I think whoever did this tried to
take mine off, because my finger was red and welted after I woke up. But
luckily they failed.”

My brow puckered. That must tell
us something about our attacker, but at that moment I wasn’t sure what.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“There’s a ceremony tonight, and I don’t want everyone to worry. Can you sense
any of them?”

He nodded curtly. “Whatever these
plants are, they dampen magic of all kinds. I can’t feel anything, which
doesn’t make any sense, because we’re still definitely at Locke.”

I nodded and started toward the
nearest vine. It was as wide as an old tree trunk. “How did we get in here?”

“I think our kidnapper brought us
through some vines and then put the vines back,” said Keller, following me.
“That way the exit is hidden and the vines are too big for us to try and guess
which direction we came from.”

“It was definitely a he,” I said,
thinking of the scrape and the heavy step I had heard before I was knocked out.
“Unless it was a very strong woman.”

“She might have used magic,” said
Keller thoughtfully.

We tried everything. We each used
what magic we still could, which was very basic spells.

“What is this stuff?” I asked,
doubling over and coughing. I had tried to set the plants, or tendrils, or
whatever, on fire, and instead a massive smoke bomb had gone off right in front
of me.

Keller came over and put his hand
on my back until my coughing subsided.

“I don’t know,” he said, wiping
his brow. “There are all kinds of plants with magical properties that I know
nothing about. I wanted to take a class on it, but my family keeps insisting I
take classes on paranormal foreign policy.”

“What do they think you’ll do
with classes in paranormal foreign policy?” I asked, wiping my eyes. The smoke
had made tears drip down my cheeks and my face flush.

“They think I’m going to do great
things,” he said, in a tone more bitter than I had ever heard him use before.

“You will,” I said, smiling.
“Just maybe not the things they expect.”