Elementally Priceless (2 page)

Lark

“LARK, I’M TELLING
 you, something weird is coming. No, more than weird. Dangerous.” The fairy fluttered around my head despite the fact my forge was going at full tilt, the coal fire within the belly of it red hot, and my work shop was cooking. He ruffled my long blonde hair with his passing, daring to dart low over my cleavage to get my attention. Of course he wouldn’t think of touching my sweat slicked skin, no matter how badly he craved salt. Even he wasn’t that brassy.

This was not the first doomsday prophecy my alcoholic little friend had given with a message of ‘bad shit on the horizon.’ A part of me was waiting for him to start singing “Bad moon rising.” For him, 70’s music from the human world was damn near prophetic.

He darted around my head, zigzagging and dodging sparks that spit out of the two foot by two foot home made metal forge as the material inside heated. Ten inches tall with a long white braid that fell to his heels, he had wings reminiscent of a monarch butterfly, all gold and black. Of course, he only hung out with me because his own people wouldn’t let him back in their fairy mound until he apologized for mooning the queen and pissing on her leg.

Yeah, he wasn’t exactly in their good books at the moment. I still didn’t know how he got away with his wings, let alone his head, intact. I knew the queen well, we’d worked together years ago. She was almost as hardened as me.

Almost.

Not that I had a much better reputation with my people. Nope, a couple of outcasts like us really didn’t have the room to point fingers and call names.

The nickname ‘the Destroyer’ didn’t exactly leave me with a lot of friends. And yes, I really did earn the name.

I rolled the hammer handle in my right hand, flipping it to the rounded edge. I worked the raw steel at a bright orange and the glow lit my workshop. “Fine. Something weird is coming, Tomasen.” I used his full name, knowing he hated it, as I held the steel with the tongs and brought the hammer down, thinning the material. Every once in a while I got the urge to make something specific. And for some reason, today it was a sword. Not for me, but someone else.

“You never listen to me,” Tom grumped, floating up to sit on a special perch I made him. Not iron, but silver. Just like the old tales, iron didn’t sit well with the delicate fairy folk. He tried to get me to make it out of gold.

I’d told him to kiss my ass.

“You’re always drunk, you little fairy shart. Hard to tell when you are actually giving advice, or just deep in your cups.” I didn’t take my eyes from the task at hand. Not a good idea to get distracted when dealing with thousands of degrees of heat and heavy tools. The burns on my arms proved that was a poor idea even on a good day.

I didn’t want to admit to him that I actually agreed with his assessment. The winds had shifted, and even here in Death Valley, things could change the world around us. The beauty of being an elemental connected to the Earth was that I sensed those changes long before they happened. Right now, the Earth whispered someone important was coming my way.

Someone I needed to meet and who needed to meet me. Interesting. The last time I’d gotten this wave of certainty had been over twenty years ago and it landed me on the outs with my people. Not that I cared, they were a bunch of twats with sticks up their asses, who the hell wanted to fit in with that?

Gritting my teeth, I shoved the steel back into the forge to get the heat up.

“Wait, I see it on your face! You know I’m right.” Tom flew higher, his wings catching an updraft from the forge. His bug eyes sparkled, knowing he caught me. I let out a sigh and finally nodded.

“Yes, someone, or several someone’s are coming our way. I don’t know who, but She has given me the heads up.” We didn’t use the Earth’s real name, it was considered sacrilege, and though the humans thought her name was Gaia, it wasn’t her true name. She didn’t mind, though, as long as we respected her.

“Sweet. I was right!” He thrust a hand into the air and floated down to stand on top of my head. His feet dug into my scalp, tiny toes tipped with claws that I wasn’t particularly fond of.

“Get the hell off my head.” I flicked my tongs toward him, as my senses tingled around me. I cloaked myself in a swath of darkness that hid my face and identity from those who would do me harm. It slid over me a split second before a new voice broke the air.

“An elemental swatting at one of those they are assigned to protect? That seems a tad ironic, doesn’t it?” The deep rumble of a voice I knew and had hoped I would never deal with again curled around me. I kept my back straight, anger flaring along my synapses. Even though I knew he couldn’t see me, the real me, I hated to face him. The camouflage on me looked like a heavy cloak, one that hid my blonde hair, womanly shape and even muffled my voice. My eyes, though, I knew they would glow through. One green, the other amber; they were all this interloper would see. Hell, with my current task of hammering out steel, he likely didn’t even know I was a girl.

Fine by me.

“I’ll do whatever I want on my own grounds, demon.”

He laughed and I pulled the hot steal out, smashing it with far more force than I needed to. The metal bulged out in a very poor spot, wrecking my first attempt at the sword completely.

“Whoring piece of shit.” I threw it into the shallow tub of water I had for just such purposes, steam flaring up around the quickly cooling steel and turning the small room into a mini sauna. I forced myself to turn. He was a big bastard for a demon, imposing both in his bulging muscles, and the way his red irises took everything in and gave nothing back. This was not the first time he’d shown up on my doorstep. Behind him stood a trembling young girl, different than the last time he visited. Her long dark hair swirled down to her waist and her green eyes were full of fear. She mouthed something to me I barely made out.

Don’t help him.

My gut clenched and I wished for the thousandth time I didn’t have so many restrictions placed on me. That was the cost of my earlier years seeking out revenge on those who’d torn my life into pieces, of doing what I’d wanted and not being the good girl I was supposed to be. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

“What are you doing here, Orion?”

“Well, I have a little favor to ask. Since you are an elemental, you are supposed to be neutral, are you not?”

Goblin piss, this was not what I needed today. I kept my face smooth, though, controlled as was befitting my station.

“I am neutral.”

He grinned, and perhaps another woman would have swooned, but being an elemental gave me immunity to the charms of others. In particular, those who wanted to control or sway me. Not that the demon knew that. No one did.

I leaned back, putting my hip against my anvil and waited. He had no power over me, but he could hurt Tom if he so chose.

“There is a young woman coming your way. Someone I’d rather not deal with in a few years. Would you mind… waylaying her?”

Surprise arched through me. If he was saying what I thought, then this was about to get interesting. “Prophecies starting to bother you, demon boy?”

His lips thinned and the obvious frustration I gave him flickered in his eyes. “I’m taking precautions. Will you help me, Earth elemental?”

Now, there was the sticky part. Being neutral was all well and good, but it meant we had to sometimes pick sides. And we were supposed to pick the side of whoever came to us first. In other words, if you yelled ‘shotgun’ around an elemental, you’d get their help while your enemy would get annihilated. And yes, an elemental would know what ‘shotgun’ meant. While we’d been around for ages, we kept up with things. Or at least, I did.

My curiosity was beyond intrigued, but he didn’t know there was no way on Earth I was helping him. Besides, I was stuck here in Death Valley, forbidden to leave. Leaving wasn’t an option for me. Curious though, I strung him along. “You want her dead?”

His red eyes lit up, and I knew this was going to get ugly really fast. “That would be ideal. Perfect actually.”

With that, he turned and left, the young girl shaking and trembling when he put a hand on her shoulder. His fingers bit into her and she nodded, opening a cut in the air.

I sucked in a sharp breath as they walked through, disappearing.

“That can’t be good for the girl,” Tom said, flying to the doorway to peer out. “Crossing the veil that way, it takes pieces of your soul unless you are necromancer, isn’t that right?”

I nodded. “She should never have been taught how to do that.” Crossing the veil, the thin layer between the world of humans and supernaturals, could be deadly. Or at least not something taken lightly. I wasn’t surprised Orion had someone doing the dirty work for him. I felt bad for the girl, and as much as I itched to help her, I’d learned my lesson.

No interfering in the lives of humans or supernaturals. Particularly when demons were involved.

Not even when souls were on the line.

With a sharp exhale I held my hand over the dirt at my feet and called up another piece of iron ore. The ground obligingly gave a nice chunk, one free from any flaws or weak spots.

“Thank you.” I tipped my head to the dirt at my feet, touching my fingers to my lips.

Back in the shop, I started from scratch, bending and folding the metal, over and over.

I had a sword to build.

Rylee

WITH MY ARMS
 wrapped tightly around Caleb’s upper body, it would be really easy to think we were on a date. Yeah, if not for the conversation that had nearly derailed my entire salvage, I could easily believe we were on a date.

“What the heck is that?” He pointed at the handle of the blade strapped to my back and I gave it a glance like it was nothing.

“Just in case we run into trouble.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but apparently I wasn’t so good at making jokes. He paled and took a step back.

“Are you serious?”

“Look, just pretend I don’t have it, okay? I don’t like going anywhere without some way to take care of myself. Life of a girl on her own and all that shit.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask to frisk me. Then again, the idea of his hands wandering over my body wasn’t that bad of an idea, though it did turn up the temperature a few degrees.

I licked my lips. “Can we go?”

Reluctantly, he’d gotten on his bike, started it up, and then handed me a helmet.

We rode a few hours in silence. I Tracked Jonathan as we went, feeling his threads call to me, a beacon of hope. A part of me wondered how the kid was still alive. The missing person’s paper hadn’t said anything about it being one of the parents who’d taken him. Those cases I left alone. Then again, the paper—tucked into my shirt—hadn’t been exactly lovey dovey. Basic info and not much else.

I tapped Caleb on the shoulder and yelled into the wind, “Let’s get something to eat.”

He didn’t answer, just angled the bike toward the upcoming off ramp. Of course, being on a bike, I couldn’t look around much; certainly not behind us. Which would have been brilliant since we had a tail.

On our ass was the one and only Agent O’Shea. My personal stalker who had been trying to pin my sister’s murder on me since she’d gone missing.