Fury of Earth

by Kat Adams

  FURY OF EARTH

  THE ACADEMY OF ELEMENTS 4

  KAT ADAMS

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  More Adams Family

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  BRYAN GUNDERSON - EARTH

  There were certain things in life you could count on, at least for the most part. Some were a given: happiness. Sorrow. The occasional dark elemental wreaking havoc on the world. Others were things we put off until they could no longer be avoided: cleaning your dorm room. Papers worth half your grade.

  Death.

  It was the last one that kept me up at night. When I did find sleep, it woke me up in the middle of the night with a racing heart and sweaty palms. I wasn’t scared to die. The fear tightening my chest and making it hard to breathe at times wasn’t for me.

  It was for the crazy, beautiful redhead destined to save our world.

  When I’d first met Katy Reed, had those hazel eyes pull me in, those full lips taunt me to capture them with mine, I knew I was in trouble. Technically, I’d been off the market at the time, but that hadn’t stopped me from wanting her, craving her, and nearly going out of my mind because I couldn’t have her.

  I’d watched her bond with my three best friends. With Rob, their love was quick to ignite and explosive whenever they got near each other. Their element burned hotter through their bond and made them both crazy-powerful fire elementals. With Clay, their love was playful, light, and unpredictable. The element they shared was off the charts after they bonded, which made them both even stronger air elementals. With Leo, their love came easily, like they’d known each other since the beginning of time. Although water was her weakest element, when she and Leo were together, she was still a stronger water elemental than most.

  And then there was me. Katy and I shared the same primary element. I’d known it from the first time we’d been in the same room. I didn’t even have to touch her to feel her power, it was that strong, the pull to bond with her all that much harder to resist. Elementals who share a primary like we do are naturally drawn to each other.

  Like I needed any help in that department. When we’d bonded, united both our elements and our souls, it was an experience unlike anything I could have ever imagined. It was unlike anything any of us could have imagined.

  It was what transformed her into a quint. Once she’d bonded with four of the elements, the fifth element had emerged. Light, bright and powerful, came only to those elementals with enough control to contain it, and never combined with other powers.

  Until Katy.

  With the ability to control five elements, she was the most powerful elemental of our time.

  And then that sixth element had snuck in. Darkness. Cold, exact, heartless. It took everything she had to keep it in check. Even then, at times it still broke free. That was never a good thing and usually resulted in her trying to kill us.

  But I digress…

  I knew without a doubt she’d be the one to fulfill the prophecy. She had a strength within her few possessed. It wasn’t her ability to control all the elements, although that in itself made her the only one of our kind. It wasn’t her stepping into the role of the prophecy without hesitation before she knew about our world. It wasn’t even her ability to keep four headstrong guys on our toes as we did whatever it took to keep her safe, which proved to be harder than it originally sounded when we’d made the pact to protect the prophecy at any cost.

  No.

  It was her ability to selflessly disregard her own needs as she took on dark elemental after dark elemental, conquered insurmountable odds, and suffered devastating losses. The dark forces after her were far beyond anyone’s comprehension, even mine. Now those dark forces were closing in. I felt them, felt their power calling to me, to the darkness hiding somewhere in the deepest parts of my soul. It was getting harder and harder to resist, especially when the woman I’d fallen in love with had darkness in her too. We’d already bonded our earth elements, strengthening our control over the element, linking us together on another level, a metaphysical level. Our primary grounded us, stopped us from tapping into that darkness hovering just below the surface.

  But what if that wasn’t enough? What if we somehow bonded the darkness, made it even stronger? Would we be strong enough to resist the temptation of using our powers for personal gain and risk the wrath of the Council coming down on us? Or worse, spending the rest of our lives either locked up in Carcerem or our powers bound by an elemutus.

  Or would we both give in and turn to the dark side so many had already accused us of joining?

  My family’s history of darkness, everyone’s fears of me following in my granddad’s footsteps, kept me walking a tight path, never stepping one toe out of line. He’d done such terrible things: kidnapping and torturing Nelem children for his own amusement, wiping out entire families that spoke out against him, even killing my own father for standing up to him. I’d had to be extra careful, extra controlled, to prove I wasn’t dark. Time and time again.

  Now that Katy was on the verge of truly fulfilling the prophecy and defeating the dark forces once and for all, the pact her four guys had made years before, to protect the prophecy and love her until the very end, would be put to the test. Nothing could have prepared us for what we were about to face.

  The annihilation of our world.

  At the hands of the very woman we vowed to protect.

  1

  Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a fair maiden with the power to control the elements with her mind. To some, she was considered evil, a sorceress of dark magic. To others, she was the only one with the power to stop the true darkness from taking over the world.

  I snorted and tore the page from my sketch pad, tossing it into the trash to join the other wads of discarded drawings and doodles. After I finished planning out this week’s episode for the webcomic, I’d burn the evidence of whatever didn’t make the cut so no one could hold it against me. No way would I make the mistake of leaving any of my sketches around for others to find, others like Council members snooping in my room. Council members on a witch hunt to find something—anything—to label me as dark.

  So for the past five or so months, I’d kept my head down, my attention laser focused on school, mastering the 3Cs (call, control, conceal) of my powers, and missing my quad squad so much, I could barely breathe.

  Rob Emmett, my tall, dark, hotheaded hottie of a fire elemental and the leader of the squad, had left me first. Well, he didn’t leave leave me. He’d left Clearwater Academy to work for the very governing body hell-bent on labeling me as dark. Fun twist there. We still saw each other, but not nearly as often as we used to.

  To add insult to injury, Leo Jackson, my blue-eyed babyface of a water elemental with wild blond curls, had joined Rob working for the Council as a hunter. Together, along with the members still left after the attack that’d cut their numbers in half, they patrolled the Pacific Northwest for clans of dark elementals, concentrating on Whidbey Island, where we lived.

  Clay Williams, my bearded, carefree air elemental with a mischievous green gaze
that danced wickedly whenever he smiled, had taken over for Lulu, the assistant to the headmaster and general mother hen of the academy. After she’d been sent to elemental prison for standing up to the Council, and me agreeing to some shit I didn’t want to talk about to get her and the others released, she resigned her position at Clearwater and went to live with her sister. I couldn’t blame her. If I had any relatives aside from my dad, who’d written me off the first chance he got, I just might have done the same thing.

  At least I still had Bryan Gunderson, my straitlaced monster of an earth elemental with shoulders that blocked out the sun, at the academy with me. He’d just started up his internship with the island’s alchemist this term, which I didn’t even know existed, and wanted a full year under his belt before requesting final tribunal to graduate from the academy.

  And then there was me. I still didn’t know how I’d gotten so lucky as to have four hot guys hawt for me. At 5’7” and with a little meat on my bones, I definitely wasn’t billboard material. My red hair was too long and untamable. My boring hazel eyes wouldn’t earn me a call from any number of cosmetic companies asking me to be their next mascara model.

  Yet I’d managed to snag the attention of four of the most attractive, most attentive guys on the planet. Now they were model material, every last one of them. Rob had a smolder about him that curled my toes even when we weren’t trying to eat each other’s faces. Clay was quick with a joke and always kept me laughing. Leo calmed me and taught me how to let shit go. The way Bryan looked at me, like I was the only girl on the planet, made me feel, well, like I was the only girl on the planet.

  I’d just finished sketching out the week’s webisode and tapped the end of the pencil on my chin as I deliberated the dialogue. The webcomic had turned lighter, almost silly with the shenanigans I put the characters through. With the state of our world, on the brink of a civil war between elemental sides, we could all use a little humor in our lives.

  I refused to write the civil war into the plot. Amethyst and Onyx had been at war for years and didn’t need something like that overshadowing their already dysfunctional relationship. Besides, I lived the reality of what that felt like and didn’t want to immortalize it in my webcomic.

  I spun in my desk chair, my arms dangling at my sides as I stared at a knot in the wood that made up the roof’s peak. The comic had suffered due to my inability to focus these past few months. Readers weren’t shy telling me all the things they hated about the webisodes. No doubt they’d hate this one too no matter what I did, so why not go for it?

  Shooting forward in the chair and catching myself before I jerked too far forward, I wheeled up to the desk and settled in. Okay, first panel: Amethyst doing a puzzle and eating pizza with Nigel Brandt, the handsome detective and sometimes love interest, when a knock at the door pulls their attention.

  “Are you expecting company, Amethyst?”

  “What company? You’re my only friend, Detective Brandt.”

  “I’ve told you to call me Nigel.”

  “Well, since we’ve had our tongues down each other’s throats already, I guess that warrants a first-name basis.”

  I moved to the next: The door crashes open, and Onyx stands there, a fireball in each hand.

  “Hello, Amethyst. Am I late to the party?”

  “I don’t recall inviting you, Onyx. Looks like I need to talk to my doorman about upping the pest control in the building. Why do you have your balls in your hands?”

  “So I can attack you with them.”

  “Eww, dude. Gross.”

  On to the final panel: Amethyst blocks the attack with an airfield, but one fireball gets through, setting the puzzle and pizza on fire. I drew angry eyes on my heroine and even made the gesture with my own eyes. The puzzle, I didn’t care so much about. The pizza was a tragic loss. And now I was hungry for pizza. Moving on…

  “This is why we can’t have nice things. Damn you, Onyx! I didn’t even get to finish my first piece.”

  “You won’t need it where you’re going. Prepare to die, Amethyst.”

  “You’re trying to kill me again. Must be a Tuesday.”

  “This time, I’ll succeed. This time, I brought my very own insurance policy.”

  I added a caption to the bottom of the last panel. What did Onyx bring to the party? Is it enough to defeat Amethyst? Find out in the next exciting webisode of The Elements.

  After uploading it and thinking it had to be the most boring webisode I’d ever written, I closed the laptop, stood, and stretched. If I didn’t have a test today in primary, I would crawl back under the covers and not come out until spring. February on the island brought gray, clouds, and more gray. Oh, and rain. Lots and lots of rain.

  Instead of building a fort out of blankets to stay inside and color in my sketches, I grabbed my coat to brave the elements. If I hurried, I’d have just enough time for a cup of glorious coffee from the dining hall before 3C started.

  It was, of course, pouring, so I pulled the hood over my head and hunkered down, hurrying out into the glorious and constant rain that was winter on the island.

  I wasn’t even halfway across the round of grass connecting the dorms, the ten-foot bronze statue of the academy’s founder dead center, moving a click every hour on the hour, when my least favorite person called my name.

  “Hey, new girl!”

  Well, at least her loving nickname for me.

  She’d never grasped the concept of my name, for whatever reason. Katy Reed. Three syllables. It wasn’t that hard. I moved to the shelter of the closest building and pressed against the cool side before removing my hood.

  “Hiya, Ness. How’s the weather up there?” In your high tower. I smiled sweetly when she glanced around, lifting her gaze to the gray clouds and frowning.

  “Up where?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re still weird.”

  Yes, I was. I knew it. She clearly knew it. I didn’t need to be reminded of it every time I did something out of the norm—which was pretty much whenever I opened my mouth.

  I’d come to the conclusion Vanessa Graves would never get my sense of humor, but that wouldn’t stop me from delivering backhanded zingers that would have her looking at me exactly the way she glared at me right now, her pretty blue eyes narrowed in on me as she thinned her lips.

  “To what do I owe the honor of this pleasantry?” I asked when she continued to stare at me like I had two heads. And where was her coat? It was forty degrees, raining, and she had nothing more than her school uniform covering her curves. I was born and raised in Montana, where it snowed nine months out of the year and the temps in the winter gave new meaning to freezing your nips off, so me being cold in forty degrees and rain said something.

  “My dad wants me to give you a message.” She crossed her arms and jutted out a hip, her normal stance. “Like I’m some sort of messenger service or something.”

  Definitely something. I continued holding the forced smile plastered to my face as I waited. As I studied her creamy complexion, observing how not a single dark hair dared step out of line from those long waves, maintaining my expression grew even harder. How did she do it? How did she make everything look as if it’d been custom created for her, from the uniform we were all forced to wear, to the weather that seemed to cater to her? Here I was shivering to stay warm, and the bitch didn’t even have the chills. I hated her, hated everything about her, from her flawless appearance in the creepy dude’s schoolgirl-fantasy uniform that made the rest of us look like we tried too hard, to her piercing blue eyes that matched her blazer, to the fact she didn’t so much as have a goose bump while I struggled to keep my teeth from chattering.

  “And that message would be?” I prodded when she didn’t offer it up. It had to be her water element keeping her from turning blue. Water elementals ran cool. That had to be it. It was either that or my original assumption that her heart was made of ice. It could go either way.

  “He wants you t
o meet him at DB on Friday.” She sighed and rolled her eyes as she added, “He wants us both there.”

  Why would Virgil Graves want to see me? And why at Deception Brewery? DB was one of the least popular among the plethora of microbreweries that’d popped up here on the island the past decade. It was a total dive. The owner happened to be an air elemental with the power to throw airfields up without effort and keep them in place while he tended to the Nelem patrons, giving elementals a place to convene in private. Non-elementals had no idea groups of elementals were among them as the airfield was the perfect shield. It was very cool.

  That wasn’t what made it a dive. DB was also a known hangout for dark elementals and was raided weekly to sweep out the riffraff. As of late, however, the Council—under the new and wildly different direction of Virgil Graves, the man who’d inherited the role after the head of the Council died during the attack at the school last fall—hadn’t raided DB once since he’d taken the reins.

  And now he wanted to meet there. Interesting.

  I whipped out my phone and texted the guys. They’d want to know this latest development. We’d all kept tabs on the random act of mindlessness since Graves had taken over the Council.

  “What are you doing?” Vanessa’s shrill voice pulled my attention. She was still here?

  I bounced my gaze to her, then to my phone, and back to her. Why was she just standing there? She wasn’t one to hang out for small talk, so my guard was immediately up. “Did you need something else?”

  There went that hip again, this time accompanied by a pouty lip sticking out so far, I expected a bird to land and shit on it, as my dad used to say. “Just because you’re the prophecy doesn’t give you the right to be rude.”

  She thought I was the rude one? Wow. Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You’re black. Out of the kindness of my heart, I put my phone away. Jesus, it was cold. The sooner I got some deliciously hot coffee in me, the sooner I’d thaw out. I fidgeted in place to get my blood moving faster. “What else did you need, Ness? You better go before you catch some of my weirdness. It’s contagious, you know.”