Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public) (31 page)

I risked a look behind us and
gasped.

“Not demons,” I murmured,
stunned.

Dragons were flying toward us.
Lots of dragons. I remembered them from last semester. Faeries had brought them
to Public. Those ones hadn’t been very big, but I wondered. . . .

Golden Falls had also been forced
to pay attention. Lisabelle was the only one who hadn’t noticed.

“They need cover to land,” said
Lough. “We do want them to land, don’t we?”

I didn’t even think about it.
“Yes,” I cried. “Lisabelle!” The darkness mage, who had ignored everything up
to that moment, turned at the sound of my call. When our eyes locked I pointed
to the sky. She glanced up and saw the dragons and nodded.

“Uh oh,” said Lough. “What is she
going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’d
duck if I were you.”

We all got down as Lisabelle drew
her power in. “We should help her,” said Lough. I nodded. Staying as low as possible,
because the Enforcement Officers had started to throw darts of hot gold through
the air that exploded on contact, we reached our friend. She had climbed out of
her crater and now stood at its edge, blasting anything that came near her, and
a few things that didn’t.

Just as we reached her I saw
flashes of white. There were faeries coming out into the courtyard from all
sorts of strange places, appearing out of hidden doors that opened out of the
grass, and jumping from windows. Their white, undernourished bodies pelted
toward us.

“We have to give them cover,
too,” I cried to Lough. Lisabelle saw what we were doing and fell back behind
us to concentrate on helping the dragons land safely.

Lough and I started to spin a
dream. He created a wall of white ghosts while I called to the earth. Lisabelle
had already helped me, she had split it open. Now it desperately wanted to
close back up again, and wouldn’t it be nice if it closed up with some
Enforcement officers along the way?

I felt sweat trickle down the
side of my cheek and brushed it away. I didn’t even want to think about how
long it was going to take me to recover from this.

Duchess Leonie and Rake came to
stand with us.

“Anything we can do?” the burly
vampire asked.

I pointed to Lisabelle. “Help her
with the dragons.” He gave a curt nod and turned around.

Duchess Leonie, her wispy hair
standing up at the ends, had finally started to look tired. She said, “Dacer
told me you were something to behold. I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe it until
just now.”

 I warmed at the compliment, but
I didn’t have time to think about it. I had never called to so much earth
before.

I felt the ground start to roll
and shake under me and I put more of my focus into it.

“Step back,” I murmured, but
Dacer’s mother already had.

Everything became a blur. The
ghosts, the shots of gold, the rings of black, my friends and my enemies.
Everything closed off to the single point of earth I was trying to close. It
had created a line in the sand in front of us, protecting us from attack. While
I dealt with the face to face attack, Lough dealt with the attacks from a
distance, his and Trafton’s dreams keeping assailants in the air away from us.
I didn’t want to think about the injuries. Was Evan okay? Sip? Where was
Zervos? It didn’t matter. The faeries had to get to us and the dragons had to
land.

“Charlotte!” Lisabelle’s voice
penetrated my fog. “Charlotte. Stop. You did it.”

“I just have to close,” I
muttered. I’d never gone so deeply into my magic before. I couldn’t see. I was
lost in power and memory. That close a connection to my core had never happened
before. In my altered state I saw my mom’s wooden box, the one I couldn’t open.
I had decided to send it back to Public. I had asked Keller to do it, because I
didn’t want it anywhere near the Happiness Enforcement Officers. It was the
last favor Keller had done for me. Now the box was in my mind’s eye, but when I
remembered it I could see the design on the otherwise plain cover.

It was the outline of a thistle.
Only deep in my power could I see the thistle, as the box sat without me in
Astra. I didn’t know what it was, and at the moment I couldn’t remember the
importance of the thistle. I just knew I had to remember.

“Charlotte, come on,” Lisabelle
said. “You did it.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes. She was
right. The earth was perfectly smooth, like the first day we had come out and
feasted. There was no sign of a crack, or of any kind of upheaval.

But Golden Falls was burning.

“Nice,” I said, swaying. “Gold
and fire look good together.”

“Yeah,” said my friend dryly.

“Lisabelle? Can you catch me.” I
collapsed in a heap, remembering nothing else.

I woke up several times, but I
kept fading in and out. I had the sensation that I was floating through spring
air. I saw deep white clouds and felt the warmth of a fire nearby. At some
point there was a conversation that went, “She has to go first. The rest of us
don’t matter. Did you see how Golden Falls treated her? There was a reason.” I
didn’t know who they were talking about. Maybe Lisabelle? Maybe me. I was too
tired to think about it.

“Charlotte,” came Lisabelle’s
voice. “You want to stay dreaming, that’s fine. Just don’t roll to your left or
your right.” I found myself smiling. Then I didn’t think about much at all.

I don’t remember my dreams.

I woke up on the cold ground. I
was definitely in the woods, and they felt familiar, but I wasn’t sure. I
looked up at the starry night, such a beautiful darkness.

“Lisabelle?” I asked, sitting up.
She was standing with two dragons and a faery. It was a very odd grouping. She
glanced over at me. Her face was white against the trees.

“Are we at Public?” My sounded
groggy and my mouth was dry and cakey.

“Close,” said the faery. It was
the same one who had taken care of Vanni. He came over. “We got you out of
Golden Falls. It was our contingency plan all semester. Unfortunately, we
underestimated how powerful the Golden Falls hatred for you was. Luckily, we
also underestimated how powerful you and your friends are.”

“Where are the rest of us?” I
gasped, glancing around. I saw lots of dragons. There were also faeries and
Public students. But some important faces were missing.

“Where’s everybody else?” I asked
again, when no one answered me. The faery and Lisabelle exchanged glances.

“We all got separated,” said
Lisabelle. “Flying together made us a target for demons and we couldn’t have
that.”

“We should go,” said the faery.
“We aren’t going to find out where the others are by staying here in the
woods.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,”
said Lisabelle, striding forward. “Thank you.”

“Keeping that one safe is thanks
enough,” said the faery. “We know goodness when we see it.” With a slight nod
he jumped onto one of the dragons, and they lifted off into the night, leaving
us alone near home. We were almost home. I shifted and pushed myself into a
standing position. I swayed, but waved Lisabelle off.

“I’m going to walk onto Public
grounds with my own two feet,” I said tiredly.

Lisabelle nodded, but she looked
upset. “What?” I demanded. “I don’t have the energy to work this out of you.
Just tell me.” I felt empty. Splitting up to escape obviously made sense, but I
wanted to see my friends. I had to see them to make sure they were okay. “Did
the faeries get Sip?”

Lisabelle took a shaky breath,
then shook her head once. It was a tiny movement, but it spoke volumes.

“What?” I gasped frantically.
“What? What? What?” I felt as if a clap of thunder had burst inside my chest
and my body was being pricked a million times over by lightening.

I fell to my knees and stared up
at Lisabelle.

“They took Sip. We also got word
that a dream giver is dead, but they didn’t know who. They just knew he was
around our age and he was dead.” Lisabelle stepped forward. I had never seen
that look on her face before. It was beyond pain. It was like she had settled
into grief and speaking of it only made it worse. She gripped my shoulders so
tightly I closed my eyes.

I felt like I’d been stabbed. Was
it Lough? Was Sip alive? In this pronged attack, the demons had left
devastation in their wake.

“Do not collapse,” she said, her
face white and inches from mine. “Do not. We know where all the objects on the
Wheel are, and Risper’s coming back. He’ll help. But this was a multi-pronged
attack, obviously long planned. They hit us in every direction they could think
of.”

“Lanca?” I asked my mind running
through all the paranormals I knew who weren’t at Public. It was a short list.

“What Faci said was true. They
attacked Vampire Locke,” said Lisabelle. Her eyes burned with a reddish light.
“Vital and Lanca showed them why it’s a bad idea to attack the Blood Throne. At
least at first.”

“Good for Lanca,” I whispered.
“Wait, is she. . . ?” I couldn’t say it.

“We don’t know where she is now,”
said Lisabelle, her lower lip trembling.

“What if it was Lough?” My whole
body ached at the thought, and the lightning pinpricks broke into flames. “The
dream giver who was killed. . . .”

“It wasn’t,” said Lisabelle
fiercely. “It just wasn’t.”

“Now what?” I asked. Questions
were jumbling in on themselves.

The paranormals were scattered
and broken. They had Keller, they might have Lough, and they had Sip. The
dragons had saved us, and every member of Golden Falls had tried to kill us. We
were at war, and both our leaders, mere college students, weren’t there. President
Caid was useless.

“Now we go back to Public,” said
Lisabelle gravely. “We get as many paranormals as we can and we kill them all.”

“Sip isn’t here,” I said, my
voice breaking, “so I feel it’s my duty to tell you that you’re a bloodthirsty
savage sometimes. And I like it. This particular time I like it a lot.”

“I was sort of hoping that
without Sip here I’d get a reprieve from comments like that,” said Lisabelle
quietly. There were tears in her eyes. I’d never seen such a thing before.

We headed back. It was slow
going. My body felt like it had been pummeled and for all of Lisabelle’s
strength she obviously walked under a great burden.

But there was one more ambush.

“Wait,” I said. “Where are we? We
are just outside Public, right?” We were in a black forest, in a clearing.
Lisabelle hadn’t taken us back to our college. Why? The faeries? The dragons? I
turned to my friend. She looked like one big shadow in the darkness.
“Lisabelle?” I asked uncertainly.

“You’re safe,” she said, her eyes
filled with sadness. “I would never harm you. We are close to Public.”

“I know that,” I said shakily.
“But you said we were going to Public, and we aren’t there.”

“We’re in the woods outside it,”
she said. “You’re going to go the rest of the way on your own. Just after we
finish talking.”

“Talking about what?” I asked. I
felt sick. “Lisabelle, I really need to see Oliva and Dacer. We really need to
see them. Caid should be there by now. For all he doesn’t do anything he’s
still the president. All the senior paranormals are probably gathering at
Public. It’s the safest place. How are we going to get Sip back if we aren’t
there?”

Lisabelle slowly shook her head.
“They can’t get Sip back. They don’t have the power to get hostages back from
the demons.”

I took a step forward. Lisabelle
took a step back. I halted.

“You’re scaring me,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. I had
never seen Lisabelle beaten down before. I desperately wanted to help her, but
I didn’t know how. “This is about Sip.”

“What do you mean?” My voice was
breaking as I stared at my friend. I didn’t want her to continue. I was afraid
of what she might say, but then again she had to. She had to finish what she
had started.

She let out a long sigh. “I mean
that you’ll be okay. I promise you’ll be okay. You’re the strongest elemental
I’ve ever known.”

“Lisabelle, I’m the only
elemental you’ve ever known,” I said desperately.

Lisabelle waved her hand. “Take
care of Sip, okay?” I knew she was crying. I just couldn’t see it, but I knew
she was.

“Why don’t you take care of her?”
I cried, frantically reaching for her. “What have you done?”

“I’m doing what I can,” she said,
her voice breaking. “Right here and right now I’m doing what I can. I have my
limitations, Charlotte. This is what I can do, so I’m doing it. Please
understand.”

Lisabelle stopped. Her right
hand, her wand arm, gripped into a fist. I held my breath. “Charlotte?” her
voice was very quiet and I couldn’t read the expression on her face. “You know
that saying? Darkness calls to darkness?” Everyone knew that saying. Lisabelle
knew I had heard it at least a hundred times.