Elemental Light (Paranormal Public Book 9) (29 page)

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that a lot of the Nocturns are not all bad,” said Keller. “Like Malle. She’s been ripped apart, but my parents didn’t realize how far she’d gone. They didn’t want to believe paranormals could fight other paranormals.”

“There’s no more highly respected family of fallen angels than the Eriksons,” I argued. I knew there were others, like the Marks, who mattered a great deal, but Keller’s family was as important as any. Now maybe more so.

“It’s your parents’ job to know what’s happening,” I pointed out. “It was their job not to send you into danger, but they did it anyway. Malle is evil. I don’t care what happened to her family, her brother, in her early  years, it doesn’t justify what she’s done. Nothing will.”

What I couldn’t bring myself to articulate was that there had been so many shocking attacks against my life at this point that I was buckling under their weight. My parents had died, and so had my stepfather, but then more disasters had piled on top of those. I couldn’t even go to college  and try to have a normal paranormal life, whatever that meant, because of Cynthia Malle.

“From the beginning,” I said, “she’s been steering a course for me that I never asked for or wanted. When you ruin so many other lives, I don’t care what’s happened to you in the past. Some things are unforgivable.”

“She’s not the one giving the orders,” said Keller. “She gets orders. Lisabelle’s also more powerful than Malle is now, but I suppose you know that.”

“I know she’s not the one giving the orders,” I said. “Do you know who is?”

“It’s a very closely guarded secret,” said Keller. “I’ve tried to find out, but I’m pretty sure that if I ever succeeded, I’d be killed.”

“She’s attacked every safe haven I’ve ever had,” I went on shrilly, “including you, and you did nothing to stop it. You left. Now Lanca’s trying to get Locke back, Risper’s dead, Lisabelle’s with darkness, the Circle is broken, and for all I know President Caid’s dead. We’re here, about to be overrun, with the only power left to us the Mirror Arcane, and here you are wanting to talk about love.”

I glared at him. I was officially overly tired. A bit of sleep had only made me hungry for more rest, but there was no break in sight. As tears started to fill my eyes I tilted my head back slightly, trying to keep them from spilling down my cheeks, but it was useless. Hot water poured down my cheeks, blurring the image of my ex-boyfriend.

Keller threw up his hands. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I can be on your side without being next to you. Truth be told, I never thought you needed me very much. With every challenge that’s come your way you’ve been brilliant. I didn’t want to fight without you, but I had to make a choice, and I thought it was better to keep fighting next to Malle.”

I stopped and blinked several times, replaying in my mind what he had just said. He made  as if to speak, but I put a hand up to stop him. He looked half bemused and half desperate as I tried to take it in. He had told me that he still loved me. I’d been drooping under the weight of his turning to darkness, but he hadn’t. The ring on his finger, still not black, proved as much.

“Why isn’t your ring black?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, a hint of a smile playing over his lips.

Then he smirked, looking very much like the old Keller.

“Because I’m just an intern,” he said. “I can’t be trusted, although I’m sure that will change soon.”

I nodded. Zervos had said the same thing. Whatever rollout of power Malle was planning, it was going to happen quickly. We weren’t even at a stalemate anymore. We were losing. If I were being honest, I’d have had to admit that we’d been losing for a while.

I was so busy thinking about when and how the tide had turned so severely in favor of darkness, without my even grasping it, that I didn’t realize how close Keller was to me until it was too late to react.

I remembered his hungry eyes, his desperate step forward, his soft murmuring “I think I love you” again, before his mouth crashed down warmly on mine.

It wasn’t a gentle kiss. Since we had parted in my dreams I had imagined every kind, covered every scenario. We had kissed hotly, desperately, but only when the dust had settled on a war neither of us wanted to fight.

But not even in my dreams had the kiss felt like this. My whole body tingled, and fires burst wherever we touched. His right hand came around my waist so that the crook of his elbow touched my spine, and I felt the strong muscles in his arm contract and pull me close, nestling me against his hips. His left arm wrapped around the other way and held me more firmly. I might have just imagined it, but I was pretty sure I felt his mouth curve upward in a smile.

All thinking stopped. I flung my arms around his neck, trapping his mouth against mine.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, because I had no intention of unclenching my arms from their hold on him. I just kept pulling him closer, and he did the same to me.

Keller’s lips were gentle given the desperation of his touch. He kissed and caressed my face, letting his left arm come up to rest against my hot cheek. I knew he felt the tears there, but neither of us cared anymore.

When we broke apart it was only to separate our lips. We stayed melted together at every other point. With my face less than an inch from Keller’s, I refused to open my eyes.

“If you don’t mind,” said Keller, “I’ll stay on your side.”

“I don’t want you by my side,” I said softly, and I felt his body quake slightly. “I want you right here in front of me, where I can keep an eye on you.”

I opened an eye and saw him looking at me, a spark of amusement brightening his blue eyes out of the dimly lit reaches of my room.

“Whatever you say, boss,” he said. Then he grinned for a moment before dipping his lips once more to mine.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Keller didn’t stay long after that. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and I was supposed to be resting. We didn’t talk about the next Black Ring Ceremony at all. When I started to sway gently in his arms, he decided it was time to go. I tried to say something cute about how I swayed at his touch, but it just made me sound crazy. Still, it warmed my insides that he left chuckling.

We hadn’t resolved much of anything, except that I was still in love with him
. . . duh. He waited for me to take a quick shower, and before he left he tucked me into bed, all the while making jokes about the sorry state of my room.

“Really, people would think you weren’t here to clean, or you have other things on your mind.”

My body was so tired I didn’t even stay awake long enough to watch him fly out the window. My eyes had already closed. As had become my custom since war had been declared, I dreamed.

This time in the dream, I was missing something vital, of that much I was sure, but what it was I had no idea. Sip was still busy in the archives, lost to discovering a way to save Lisabelle from irreversible darkness. Lanca was desperate to save Locke, while our loss at the Circle had threatened to destroy our last threads of hope. Professor Dacer was trying to hold the outpost of Astra together, but it was like a single log floating in an ocean of fire, about to be consumed by burning. No one wins with ashes.

“Mom?” I asked. A figure was walking away from me, head up. Mist swirled like steam from a hot bath, flowing over the smooth floor and walls. The figure continued to walk away, but I had no idea where it was headed. I struggled to follow, but my feet felt heavy. The water’s cool flow did not extend to dream interlopers.

“I can’t keep up,” I whispered. I moved forward again, but the figure did not slow down. I tried to make out the color of the hood, but it was impossible. All I knew was that everything was a different shade of dark blue, but the floor was smoothly polished black marble.

“Mom?” I called again. “Mom? Is this another dream?”

A prickle of danger ran like sweat down the back of my neck and I looked around, but there was just an expansive mist.

“What’s happening?” I whispered.

With a scream I saw a massive black form dart down from the invisible sky overhead. A hybrid, of what I wasn’t sure, soared and fell toward the figure I was chasing. The hybrid had massive black wings that looked like they’d been crushed by a boulder, torn from the shoulders of some animal, and shoved onto a hellhound. I felt sick just looking at it.

“Watch out!” I screamed, but the figure did not appear to hear me. It just kept moving away.

The hybrid was about to make impact when the hood suddenly turned. I screamed again, but it was useless. I was still too far away. At the very last second the figure dropped low, simply bending its knees. The hybrid, awkward with wings, flew past and slammed through the mist, disappearing for a split second. I heard a horrible screech and felt my stomach lurch. Quickly the figure sprang up again and kept moving forward.

I shuddered as the hybrid came back around. Without knowing who the hooded figure was, I could never know if it could fight off darkness, but I had a bad feeling about what I was seeing.

Suddenly the hooded figure spun around and I could just make out a long straight nose, a sprinkling of freckles, and floppy brown hair.

When I saw his face I knew with a certainty who he was, in exactly the same way that I knew my name was Charlotte, I loved Keller, and I was sleeping in Astra.

“Asher?” I whispered. His wild eyes landed on me for a split second before darting to the oncoming hybrid.

A stunning variety of emotions piled into me right on top of each other. I was still warm from Keller’s kiss, but here was my father, a hooded figure leading somewhere unknown. I knew he was my father with a clarity I had never felt before. The same clarity told me he was dead, so where was I?

My father wore no ring and no crown, so that any powers he had in this dream state were muted. Realizing that he needed my help, I raised my hand. The hybrid didn’t see me, so the pulse of blue fire I shot at him took him by surprise. It slammed into his body just under his left wing as he raised it to pump through the air.

“Run!” I yelled, but my father stood rooted to the spot. The hybrid spun away, but quickly righted itself. It was like it was just learning how to use its wings, and it had a fast learning curve. I darted forward and ducked behind a tall stone that had appeared out of nowhere. Wet grass was under my foot and knee as I waited for the hybrid’s next attack. Its body had consumed the fire I had sent its way as if it was nothing.

I glanced again at my father, and he was smiling at me sadly.

“Beautiful girl,” is what I think his mouth said, but I was too far away to hear.

“Dad,” I whispered. “Dad
. . .” He smiled at me one last time before pointing. I turned to see what he was pointing at and realized where we were.

The hybrid loomed in front of me, and with a cry I fell backward just as I sent another jet of fire racing toward it. This time the fire knocked the hybrid off course enough so that it slammed into the stone I had crouched behind. With a sickening thud I felt the stone rock forward and back, and then a blast of heat from a body. The hybrid attacked again, but this time I was ready for the heat. I grabbed it as it slammed toward me and pulled it, as if I was yanking a chain. Again I threw the hybrid off balance. Scrambling to my feet I darted around the gravestone, curling the fiery rope around and around. The hybrid tried to rise, but its legs didn’t work as well as its wings. Once the fire was firmly in place I pulled one last time. The head of the former hellhound hit hard against the stone, and then it lay still.

“Dad?” I cried, looking frantically around for my father. He had led me to a cemetery, of all places.

“Dad?” I yelled again.

He was nowhere to be seen.

My hands scrabbled in the damp earth. I pushed myself to my feet and frantically searched the graveyard for the figure I had seen, but he was nowhere to be found. I glanced down at the hybrid and saw that the creature had finished shaking and gasping and now lay still, a thin curl of smoke rising from its torso and one wing twitching strangely. All I wanted to do was get as far away from Doblan’s creation as possible.

“I can’t believe darkness is going that far,” I muttered as I started to search the cemetery for my dad.

Many of the graves were fresh, and several had flowers laid near them, but a quick glance in each direction told me that I was the only one in the cemetery.

The nearest grave with flowers, a bunch of pink and yellow roses, read, “Astra Love, Elizabeth Gulligan,” below a symbol that looked a lot like a heart and a fern entwined. Next to that grave was one that said, “Astra Love John Gulligan,” so it seemed that this section of the graveyard might be just for elementals.

A hissing noise behind me made me spin around. The hybrid was disintegrating before my eyes, and more smoke and fumes were rising into the air. Wrinkling my nose, I moved further away from the Astra graves. As I walked, I read more headstones. All the letters were clear, because there wasn’t a single grave that looked to be more than ten years old. Most of the people buried here were adults, but I saw several children’s birth dates too.

Now, with even the dead body of the hybrid I had killed having disappeared before my eyes, I was truly alone.