Elemental Unity

by Maddy Edwards

  If this had been a laughing matter, I would have pointed out to Lisabelle that most paranormals already thought she was emotionally unstable, even with Sip’s emotional support, which was now gone.

  This wasn’t a laughing matter.

  Rake’s own expression twisted. “Don’t you dare say that. Sip was not your fault. She was targeted because she was good. President Yeast is not. Therefore get Sip out of the way. Simple. You had nothing to do with it. Beyond that, what does Lough say?”

  Lisabelle’s eyes narrowed to the knife blades she collected. “I haven’t asked his opinion on such things.”

  “Much better to just talk to rock and then smash it just in case,” said Rake.

  “Much,” Lisabelle agreed.

  “So, talking to Lough is out of the question?” Rake asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said.

  “He must be doing something important if you’re willing to risk your friendship with Lanca over it,” said Rake

  I was getting nervous. Rake was pushing Lisabelle. Her tattoos were moving at a faster rate underneath the skin I could see, and her back was straightening. The burly vampire had better watch out, or he’d have his ass handed to him on a flowing black platter.

  The hellhounds were even paying more attention than they had been a moment before.

  “When Charlotte and I were at Public, Lough’s life was in danger. I made a decision all those years ago about it. About him. Charlotte supported it. I think she still does. That’s all you need to know,” said Lisabelle.

  “Might as well have spoken Italian for all I understood that,” Rake grumbled. “But fine. I won’t be hearing about Lough or what he’s doing. At least not yet.”

  After a few beat of silence Lisabelle said, “Sounds like you understood me perfectly.”

  “What about you, Ricky? Looking forward to school?” Rake asked. He had clearly given up talking work with Lisabelle.

  “Kind of,” I said. “I’m looking forward to seeing my friends. As for classes . . . I don’t really care.”

  “You never did. Much to Charlotte’s dismay,” said Lisabelle.

  All the objects on the Counter Wheel were at Public. That’s what I cared about! The darkness premier’s eyes slid to me as if I’d shouted at her. She kept her expression neutral.

  “Keegan getting along all right?” asked Rake.

  “He’s happier now that he’s built his treehouse in the woods,” I said.

  “I’m sure he is. Speaking of your friends, there are two darkness mages at Public, right? You’re friends with both of them?”

  Without looking at Lisabelle I said, “Eighellie is a good friend. I’m not sure what to make of Ostelle yet.”

  “Nice that they’re allowed to attend, I suppose,” said Rake, picking at one long nail.

  “Isn’t it?” I agreed.

  “Nice of me, don’t you mean? I think I should get credit for that,” said Lisabelle.

  “It’s just good that you haven’t killed off any darkness mages who could succeed you,” said Rake. “Some powerful rulers do that, so that only they can rule.”

  Lisabelle’s grin was suddenly feral as she leaned forward. “I keep them all around so that no one has to wonder who is the most powerful. Don’t forget it.”

  Chapter Four

  The next morning I awoke to a blanket of smoke outside. It was as if a million fires were burning, but somehow we were in no danger. To my extreme sadness, the fires didn’t have anything to do with a huge breakfast being cooked.

  Lisabelle didn’t just have the old, crabby vampire working for her. There was another assistant in the stronghold as well. He was so pleased that Lisabelle had a guest, he told me his name and everything.

  Allistair looked at me as I entered. He was short and squat, with gray skin and wide cheeks. His head was so oddly shaped that I wondered if he needed specially sized shirts to fit over it. He had so many piercings, his skin had taken on a metallic hue. I wondered if he was a darkness mage. Of indeterminate age, he was the first paranormal I’d seen in a long time who wasn’t at all afraid of the premier of darkness.

  He and the old vampire who had greeted me must have a hell of a time together, I thought. As Sip had proved for years, dealing with Lisabelle wasn’t easy at the best of times, and I had a feeling that the past few months with her had been a long way from the best of times.

  Rake had also stuck around until morning. Where he had ended up staying the night before I didn’t know. Maybe Lisabelle had another room with a lot of light. Dressed in a padded, studded jacket and thick black pants, he looked like nothing could possibly daunt him. But he had arrived in the dark of night, and the journey had terrified the huge vampire so much that he refused to leave until daylight.

  Lisabelle was mystified. But now morning had come, and we were outside preparing to see him off.

  The vampire had eaten a huge breakfast. “In case it’s my last meal. I might as well die full,” he said.

  Lisabelle’s servants were nowhere to be seen, but the hellhounds were everywhere.

  Rake turned to us. It turned out he’d driven here in his truck. He too hated to fly.

  “It’s you the paranormals are after,” he said to Lisabelle, a warning note in his voice. “They only care about getting the objects on the Counter Wheel so they can destroy you.” He paused, then added, probably uselessly, “And don’t do anything foolish.”

  “Do I ever?” Lisabelle smiled. From her expression, it seemed that she actually believed she never did anything foolish.

  “Promise,” Rake gritted out as gray dust blew into his hair.

  Lisabelle gave a big sigh. “Fine. I promise. Not to do anything stupid by my definition.”

  “That’s something, I guess,” the vampire muttered, not sounding the least bit convinced. Then he turned, got into his truck, and sped away.

  We stood in the courtyard watching the truck disappear.

  “I’m surprised he can drive that out of here,” I said.

  “Magic is required. Don’t tell him I helped,” said Lisabelle.

  After a while I started to wonder exactly how we were going to spend our day. I also wondered about Rake’s dire warning to the darkness premier.

  “What now?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “We could have meetings about what to do. I could wait for this approval or that. I’ve waited long enough. Dobrov thinks so too. I’m going to have a conference this morning with some old friends, and then I’m going to get going.”

  “To where?”

  “To find out what happened to Sip. Who did it and why. I have someone to speak with about it. He’s much sought after these days. At the moment I’m not exactly certain where he is, but that never lasts long.”

  Lough.

  She must be talking about Lough, but could she really trust him? Did she really know what he was involved in?

  We had all changed, but I was starting to worry that Lough had changed most of all.

  “I’m going with you. I have a couple of days. I want to help. Sip was Charlotte’s friend too. I know that if Charlotte didn’t have a little baby to deal with, she would be right there with you.”

  Lisabelle folded her arms over her chest. “You mean keeping me in line?”

  I swallowed. “You don’t need help staying in line.”

  Her mouth sliced into a smile. “How do you know? I rather think that I do. After Sip I may very well forget exactly what is right and exactly who is wrong. She used to remind me of those things.”

  She swallowed hard and I rather thought . . . No, Lisabelle would never cry.

  “Let’s go. To Golden Falls we go.” She swept past me.

  I almost felt sorry for whoever was still lurking at the former school.

  Almost.

  Chapter Five

  Later that afternoon, inside the castle, Lisabelle was staring off into space. When she did that, I always had the impression that she was contemplating the demise of her ene
my. It was never a good sign for her enemy.

  Rake had left long ago, having made Lisabelle promise not to do anything foolish. Yes, she had promised, but neither Rake nor I believed her. Rake had left anyway, giving me a significant look as he went. I had simply shrugged my shoulders.

  There was no managing Lisabelle Verlans, certainly not when she had stomped both feet onto the warpath and now appeared to be strolling down it. Soon her pace would turn to walking and eventually she would break into a run. It would be best if I found the objects before that happened.

  “Are you coming with me?” she asked. She had changed from staring into space to staring into the fire, but now she met my eyes. “Now that you know where we’re going.”

  “Yes. Do you want me to?” I asked.

  The idea that she wanted one thing more than another, other than to marinate in sarcasm and have her friend be alive, was a little silly. I asked anyway.

  “I do believe I would appreciate the company. You have never been a bad sort to be around. To my surprise. Besides, you understand me. You at least understand that I will not tolerate being thwarted in my investigation. I plan to get to the bottom of who killed my friend. If you don’t like that, I suggest you stay out of my way,” she said.

  I nodded mutely. “Will do. When do we leave?” I asked.

  Somehow her answer surprised me, though it really shouldn’t have.

  “Tonight. We leave to get answers at Golden Falls tonight,” she said.

  Golden Falls University was once like Paranormal Public, a thriving place for young vampires, pixies, fallen angels, and all the rest to learn magic and history and . . . all the rest.

  Somehow along the way, the exalted halls had corroded and corrupted. Slowly at first, but inexorably, cracks had formed in the foundation. Into those cracks darkness had seeped, stayed, festered, clung.

  Then the darkness at Golden Falls had started to grow up and become sophisticated. Golden Falls had started to kill paranormals. They had chosen a side.

  Lisabelle wanted to make it as clear as she possibly could that the side they had chosen was the wrong one.

  Whatever darkness had once plagued Paranormal Public could now very likely be found at Golden Falls.

  The war had been one thing, but what happened afterward was another.

  Instead of embracing freedom and relinquishing evil, Golden Falls had only gotten worse. Thriving evil now lived there. A mixture of undead, vampires, and Hunters used Golden Falls as a base of operations.

  For all we knew, even a few pixies might have joined them.

  That much, at least, I had gathered from the newspaper. But I hadn’t spoken with anyone who had visited Golden Falls since the war. Everything I had heard was public knowledge.

  I had a feeling Lisabelle had an awful lot of knowledge that wasn’t public.

  “Are we going alone?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Great,” I muttered, my voice squeaking more than I’d have liked it to.

  Lisabelle didn’t appear to notice. She just kept gathering papers. She had the largest and most opulent office I have ever seen, with shining black furniture everywhere. A large fireplace kept the room uncomfortably warm.

  As I gazed around the space, I imagined my sister’s friend here, interrogating individuals who displeased her.

  “How many times has Dobrov visited?” I asked. Deadly to question the premier of darkness. Probably even more deadly to question Lisabelle. Oh well. I was pretty sure that if she wanted to kill me for insolence—or anything else—she would have done so by now.

  “A few,” said Lisabelle. “We have had much to discuss.” She grabbed the last of a stack of papers and stuffed them into an old black case. Then she turned to grab something from the back of her chair. What I had thought was simply an ornate design turned out to be a long, black leather coat. She put the coat on over her black dress.

  I glanced nervously at the door, sitting in front of which were several hellhounds, all of them watching their dark mistress with fascination.

  Lisabelle smiled. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

  Down long corridors, back through the black doors, we left the castle and stepped out into the inky night.

  What awaited us nearly took my breath away: outside the castle waited the army of hell. The moment the great doors opened, I could see hundreds upon hundreds of red eyes burning out at us from the darkness.

  I stumbled to a halt. Lisabelle kept moving, her sweeping figure cutting through the cold evening.

  A movement above my head alerted me that there was something in the sky. I couldn’t help but look up.

  The second I did, I wished I hadn’t.

  The sky swarmed with creatures, black birds with red eyes, thousands of them, all ready to answer their mistress’s every command.

  “Um, since when do you have so many crows?” I asked.

  “Something you need to learn, Ricky. I have armies. Also, we never reveal all of our secrets,” Lisabelle said.

  She was standing at the bottom of the large flagstone steps, the grizzled vampire having taken up a position next to her. He was bent over and hunched, and glaring at me as if I had just stepped on his foot.

  Given that I was a solid twenty feet away, I knew that that at least was not true.

  The fact that Lisabelle thought she had a right to tell me about life would have been funny if a cold sweat hadn’t just broken out across my brow. I hurried to catch up with her when I realized that a hellhound had come just a little too close to me for comfort.

  The ancient vampire glared in my direction. “Ricky Rollins, meet Zena,” said Lisabelle. “He is my indispensable assistant at the castle.”

  I nodded to the vampire and murmured a friendly hello. The vampire snapped his teeth at me. He only had his canines left. It was enough.

  “Tell me we’re riding brooms,” I groaned.

  “We are at that,” she said, handing me one and hopping astride another herself. Zena had been holding the brooms, but he relinquished them to her care, continuing to glare at me no matter what else was happening. Hellhounds and crows swirled more closely around us.

  I took a moment to catch my breath. The landscape I was currently in was stunning, vastly different from Paranormal Public or from anywhere else I had ever been. Lisabelle’s fortress was impenetrable.

  Paranormal gods help whoever decided to attack her here.

  I felt a whoosh of air. Lisabelle was airborne.

  I fumbled to catch up, kicking off into the ground and swinging my leg over my broom. It wasn’t until I was ten, then twenty feet off the ground that I realized we weren’t alone in the air.

  The crows had started to swirl around us. They hadn’t been outside the castle merely to see us off, they were going with us to Golden Falls.

  Lisabelle climbed higher and higher into the night sky. I followed along as best I could, the backs of my hands feeling the bite of cold night air, my eyes still trained on the ground. Far below us a mass of blackness had started to roll in the direction where we were headed.

  Midnight madness was coming our way. The hellhounds were on the move.

  Golden Falls was not as far away from the castle as the dwellers there probably wished it were.

  Lisabelle and I flew for about an hour, the hellhounds and crows keeping pace. Flashes of red all around me distracted me from flying at first, then I got used to the eyes of evil upon us.

  It was all I could do to keep my own eyes focused enough to track the dark figure in front of me.

  Riding a broom had never been a strong suit of mine. I did not enjoy flying. The few times I had done it, I had always done it poorly. It would seem that Lisabelle had improved her own abilities in recent times.

  As for me, though, I’ll be perfectly happy if I never get any better. That will help make it more likely that I don’t have to fly very often.

  As I flew, I wondered what my friends were up to. Keegan had wanted to come wit
h me to the castle, and I still thought he might be able to join me in a day or two. I’d send word home and let him know where I was, and he’d be torn between fear and morbid fascination. Ever since we’d met, he’d been fascinated by the Premier of All Darkness.

  Why my friend had a death wish I did not know.

  Meanwhile, Lisabelle and I continued to move through the night. Other than the red eyes and the moon, there were no other lights around us. Golden Falls was in an isolated area, so it was surrounded by darkness at the best of times. As we approached, I could detect no sign of inhabitation. If the school had sentries, they had left their posts this evening or were very good at hiding.

  Or maybe Lisabelle had killed them.

  The broom I was following finally slowed. The crows started to dive lower, toward the trees that surrounded the campus. They were going to join the help that was coming on the ground.

  “Are you ready?” Lisabelle asked me.

  I could barely see her face, but somehow I knew that her eyes were clear. For the first time since I had seen her the day before she looked almost excited, a feral sort of expression. I felt sorry for whomever she was planning to talk to on the ground.

  Then again, if it led to information about what had happened to Sip, maybe I didn’t.

  “Is there anything in particular you want me to do?” I asked.

  “You shouldn’t have to do much. Charlotte would never forgive me if I took you into a dangerous situation,” she said.

  “How is this not a dangerous situation?” I asked.

  “I brought over a thousand darkness creatures to protect you,” she said, sounding incredulous. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”

  “You didn’t bring all of them to protect me,” I said.

  “No, you’re right. I brought them to protect myself.” She rolled her eyes, then, with no further preliminaries, she shot toward the earth. I gasped at the speed with which she hurtled toward the ground.

  I followed after her at a slower pace. By the time I reached the hard earth she was already surrounded by hellhounds.

  The air at ground level was thick with crows, packed so closely that I had a hard time walking forward. They waited to part and make way for me until they were about to brush against my face. I had the clear impression that they enjoyed watching me flinch.