“The Hunters have a creed. They believe that Lisabelle Verlans is the root cause of the problem, because Lisabelle harnesses the demons of power. Hellhounds and demons, each type, are thought to be very dangerous. It doesn’t matter to either them or you if they die, because more will rise to take the place of the dead. Their one goal is the spreading of night. Lisabelle, as the ringleader of that teeming and scary band, is thought to bear the blame for concentrating the paranormal world’s fear. There is nothing she can do about it.
“The Hunters see no difference between a vampire wanting to defend the paranormals, and a pixie. Darkness calls to darkness – so the saying goes – and so we answer the call with might and power. If the Quest government won’t protect the paranormals, then we must do it ourselves, so the Hunters believe. Or at least that’s what they like to think they believe. In truth, they are simply happy to cause hurt and pain if it means they get what they want, which is the very opposite of good.
“The ancient artifacts are not just a way of preserving the sacred histories. More, they are a way of keeping them alive today. Of course, the ultimate prize is the set of artifacts on the Counter Wheel.”
“The last, ominous notion of the Darkness Hunters is one connected with Lisabelle Verlans. They are gathering as many artifacts as possible, and they aren’t looking to destroy them. At first it was thought that the artifacts weren’t a major concern, but with the destruction of so much power over the last five years, it has become clear to Lisabelle that they are in fact the only topic worth thinking about, at least if she wants to survive.
“The root of the issue here is the artifacts: Who possesses them, and what is known about their abilities? As with the powers of paranormals themselves, did those abilities evolve over time? Or are they constant?
“I believe that at this moment the Hunters are suffering from an identity crisis,” said the thin man standing at the lectern. For a split second he stopped speaking and blinked several times. The pause was long enough to make several paranormals shift and exchange looks. Professor Fussfus had gone very pale in the face, as if he had seen a ghost.
“The Hunters did not set out to do so much damage. They thought that gathering the artifacts and turning other paranormals to their side would be easy, but in fact it was not. Once they realized that other paranormals, such as President Quest, were not simply going to lie down and agree to whatever they wanted, including the death of the all-powerful darkness premier, they were forced to change tactics. Those tactics turned into the deadly ones that we now are now seeing. I fear there will be more bloodshed as they go about their dangerous mission of finding the Golden Rod and destroying darkness once and for all.”
Professor Fussfus’s lecture wasn’t long. In fact, it was surprisingly short, so short that it appeared to confuse Charlotte. Professor Fussfus tried to depart the lectern the moment he was finished, prompting Charlotte to raise her eyebrows and say, calmly, “Oh, the plan was to take time for a few questions.”
“Ah, right, of course,” said the professor. “Apologies. Questions it is.” His body continued to twitch in the direction of the exit, but he made no move to leave again.
Eighellie hurried up to the microphone, cutting off a couple of other students in order to get there first. She was making no secret of the fact that she was determined to speak. “Isn’t it true that if Lisabelle Verlans were to disappear, it would create a vacuum of sorts and could potentially lead to more problems rather than fewer?” Her questions created a cascade of murmurs throughout the hall; clearly she had touched a nerve. I looked around to see heads shaking and students muttering. To my surprise, many of the paranormals were casting glances my way.
The thin paranormal on the stage paused before answering the student, but while he waited he nodded his head slightly, as if to himself. Meanwhile, his comb over never moved.
“It is true, but it is simpler to hate than not,” he said. Eighellie was clearly about to ask another question, but Fussfus held up his hands and said, “I’m sorry, but I must depart. All the best to all of you. Thank you again SO much for having me.” He hurried away from the lectern and stepped quickly down the stairs, not even pausing to speak with Charlotte, who was clearly confused. There had been a line of several paranormals behind Eighellie, but none of them looked like they cared very much that they hadn’t been able to ask their questions. Most of the students started slowly filing out, although some milled around in the aisles. Charlotte said something to Professor Penny, then disappeared from the hall.
“Is she going to yell at Fussfus for running away?” Keegan asked. “I bet she doesn’t yell often, but when she does it’s scary.”
“I don’t remember the last time Charlotte yelled,” I said. “She hated to yell at me. If she ever did, she’d always creep back later feeling all guilty.”
“And you’re amused by that? You’re a horrible brother,” said Keegan with a shake of his head.
I ignored him. “Eighellie’s coming back,” I pointed out. “She’s the only paranormal in this entire place who looks disappointed.” Indeed, Eighellie immediately expressed her frustration at not getting more of her burning questions answered.
“Hey, that was awesome,” she said breathlessly. “I wish he had stuck around. I wanted to ask him about my parents.”
“Why would he know anything about your parents?” Keegan asked.
“Their movements at the time are well documented, but obviously something went wrong. They shouldn’t have been discovered the way they were. Anyway, your sister is awesome,” she said, turning to me. “Sad it doesn’t run in the family.”
“Ha, that was funny,” I said. “Come on, let’s go find her.”
We waited in the back hallway for a while, but Charlotte didn’t reappear. After glancing down the hallway repeatedly, hoping that this time she’d be coming toward us, I commented on the obvious: “They’re taking a really long time, aren’t they?”
“Where are they?” Keegan asked.
“Charlotte said that each speaker had his or her own dressing room of sorts, so I imagine that’s where Fussfus went, and she must have followed him there,” I said. All the other students and professors had by this time disappeared.
A vague sense of unease settled over me when my sister didn’t reappear.
After a while, I heard a door slam, and then yelling. I darted forward with Eighellie and Keegan close behind me.
Down at the other end of the hallway Charlotte came racing toward us. “Should you be running like that?”
“Oh, hush, and go find Keller. Or any fallen angel. Something’s happened to Professor Fussfus! He’s been attacked.”
Professor Fussfus was in a coma from which he couldn’t be awakened. Right after the lecture was over he had hurried away as if he had somewhere to be and wanted to leave quickly; we had all seen him go. When Charlotte went to thank him for his talk and perhaps find out why he had stopped so abruptly, she found him unconscious on the floor. He’d been hit over the head, and what was worse, whatever had hit him had been laced with an agent meant to kill him. Slowly. Luckily the fallen angels had banded together to save his life, but in order to do so they had been forced to induce a coma. No one was sure if he would come out of it intact, or if he’d be able to identify his attacker even if he did.
I stayed with Charlotte to comfort her. Her upset was punctuated by anger at the fact that her lecture series had been ruined by yet more violence almost before it began.
“This is awful,” said Charlotte. “First the TPs went missing and now this. Obviously I want Professor Fussfus to be alright, but even if that happens, the lecture series is dead in the water.” She looked around blankly, her eyes filled with sadness. “Public’s reputation was already hanging by a thread,” she groaned as she hid her face in her hands.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked. She was in her and Keller’s sitting room, which was in a house on the Astra grounds but luckily not in Astra Dorm. She lik
ed the cottage better, she said; leave the dorm to the young. They had gone for a rustic warmth that felt very homey and comfortable. I knew the TPs were missing, but I hadn’t realized that she knew it too.
“Damnit! I shouldn’t have said that,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I already knew.”
“You did? How?” She asked suspiciously.
When I didn’t answer immediately, she threw up her hands. “You listened in on someone’s conversation, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. “Ricky! You know that’s not right,” she chided me.
“Yeah, sorry,” I mumbled.
“Anyway yeah, they’re missing,” she said. “Dobrov is trying to track down whether it was just a clerical error or what, but it’s likely that they were specifically stolen, for who knows what reason. Why anyone would want to sneak onto the campus of a university that gets its guest speakers heads bashed in I’ll never know.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said. “Someone would have bashed that guy’s head in sooner or later.”
“Thanks, I feel infinitely better now,” she said.
“But Dobrov doesn’t know who took the TPs?” I asked.
“Didn’t whoever you listened in on tell you?” she demanded.
“Hey, Sis, remember when you said I was an adult, and you didn’t have to worry about me, and I’d be free to make my own mistakes?”
“No,” she said.
“Right, well, maybe you should remind yourself. Trust me, it’s all under control,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” she retorted. “I’ll let you know if anything changes with Fussfus.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She sighed and stood up. “Sip’s going to be SO mad.”
Chapter Nineteen
After the latest round of trouble, my friends decided it was time to camp out in Astra Dorm. Not that they thought I shouldn’t be alone, but that they wanted to be as far away from as many of our fellow classmates as possible. Astra was perfect for that.
“You have all these bedrooms, I might as well take advantage of one,” said Eighellie. “Not that Airlee isn’t cool and all, but I’ll be honest, it’s not this cool.”
“If she gets to stay, so do I,” said Keegan. “You like me better anyway.”
“Of course he likes you better,” said Eighellie. “You eat and play video games, it’s not exactly a taxing friendship.”
“No need to be hostile,” Keegan muttered. “So where’s my room?”
It was oddly comforting to wake up the next morning and know that my friends were already there. I didn’t have to go to the dining hall to see them, or to Airlee, which I hardly ever did anyhow. Now they were in the next room over. Keegan’s bedroom door was closed, but the room where I had put Eighellie down the hall was open and empty.
I wondered vaguely if she had already left for the day, but I decided to check the sitting rooms just in case.
“What are you doing?” I asked. I had found her in the fire sitting room, in the exact same spot next to the fire that she had occupied the night before when she’d announced that she had decided to become an overnight guest at Astra. Only now the fire was burned out and the room felt empty and cold. Eighellie had a blanket over her thin shoulders, her blond hair scraping against it, and she held a mug in both hands. There were papers strewn all around her.
“Now, this is unorganized,” I said. I regretted the lame joke the instant she met my eyes. They were rimmed with red as if she’d been forgetting to blink, and her face was pale.
“You’re freezing aren’t you?” I asked, watching her shiver.
“N-no, is it cold in here?” she asked.
Without bothering to answer, I went to the fire and lighted it. A kettle hung over the flames, and luckily it didn’t take long to warm up.
Feeling better about myself for having warmed the place up, I turned back to my friend.
“Give me your mug,” I said. She reached it out to me and I took it, then dumped burning hot liquid into it. The table in front of her, which she had dragged over when the side table next to her chair had proven to be too small, was now totally covered in papers. I pushed them aside to make room for the mug and set it down, then fished around for tea. “It has to be here somewhere,” I muttered.
“You don’t have to do this, you know, I can take care of myself. Besides, I know I’m annoying,” said Eighellie regretfully. “I was going to go to the dining hall and grab something, but I didn’t want to leave my papers.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her. Although a bit of color had come back into her cheeks once I lit the fire, she still looked a little pathetic sitting there with her shoulders drooping and the blanket pulled tightly around her.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’re only trying to help, and so am I.”
The next thing to take care of was breakfast. I went to the kitchen and rummaged around for some food. There was a tin of muffins in the fridge, so I grabbed a few muffins and cut up some cheese and put it on some bread. Shaking my head at how bad I was at this, I put all of it on a tray and went back to the sitting room.
Astra Dorm was cold in the mornings. Sometimes the fire power lapsed at night, and when the fires went out the cold set in. Astra had a mind of its own, that was for sure. The magic inside the elemental apex was ancient and powerful.
Now I regretted not paying any attention to the fires, especially since it didn’t look like Eighellie had gotten any sleep.
“I leave you alone for two minutes and you get working again,” I said, shaking my head at my friend once I was back in the sitting room with her. Eighellie had picked up her pen and was bent over the table, writing more notes. She glanced up at me and grinned. “I just had an important thought about the Hunters.”
“The Hunters?” With my sister so upset and Fussfus fighting for his life, I had sort of forgotten about them, and I hadn’t thought Eighellie would have paid any attention to them in any case.
“Yeah, I’ve been tracking them,” she said proudly. “When I have time. I thought it would be a useful mental exercise.” She paused, then took a big bite of cheese and sighed with pleasure. “When Keegan gets his butt out of bed I’ll be sure to tell you both all about it!” She grinned and got back to writing.
To while the time away until Keegan woke up, I grabbed a book from one of the shelves and started to read. It was pretty boring, a tome about colonial plant farming, but I didn’t have to read it for long, because Keegan wandered in not ten minutes after I sat down. He was wearing brown slippers, baggy cotton pants, and a hooded sweatshirt.
“Yikes, it’s hot in here,” he cried, unzipping the sweatshirt. Underneath it he had on a white t-shirt.
Eighellie gave him a quizzical look. “You didn’t want to bother to get dressed?”
“What would I do that for? I’m not going anywhere this morning,” Keegan said, shaking his head. “I like the simple pleasures, and not having to put on cold, stiff jeans before it’s absolutely necessary is one of them.” Eighellie couldn’t seem to find anything to argue with there, so she just nodded.
“Yum! Breakfast!” Keegan was eyeing the crumbs of her muffin. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and hurried away toward the kitchen.
“If you’re going to the kitchen, I want another muffin,” she cried after him.
Keegan returned with the whole tin of muffins and a platter of butter. He tossed a muffin to me and I caught it, with only a few crumbs flying around and landing on the rug.
“Thanks,” I said.
Keegan sat down, then looked sadly at the solid butter he had in his hand.
Eighellie suddenly threw off her blanket, strode over to Keegan, seized the butter out of his hand, walked over to the fire, and held it there for a second while Keegan’s mouth hung open. Then she returned it to him, slightly melted.
“Problem solved,” she said. Then she sat back down, taking her slow sweet time
arranging the blanket over her shoulders again.
“Thanks,” said Keegan, clearly taken aback by Eighellie’s brusque efficiency in the face of silly banter.
“Eat so I can start talking,” said the girl, pointing a pen menacingly at him. Keegan got to work buttering the muffin.
“What are you going to be talking about?” Keegan asked as he slathered butter on one half of his breakfast. “There’s been a lot going on recently.”
“Hunters,” said Eighellie grimly. “All roads lead to Hunters.”
“So, you aren’t in the camp of paranormals who think everything is Lisabelle Verlans’s fault?” I asked, feeling relieved. Sometimes Eighellie was hard to read, and whenever Keegan went on a rant about Lisabelle and how she wasn’t the problem, I mean, she was a problem but just not the one we had been discussing, Eighellie didn’t say anything. It was clear that there was a whole lot that some paranormals believed to be Sipythia Quest’s fault, but what wasn’t her fault was definitely Lisabelle’s.
Still, Eighellie’s obsession with her parents’ death and with the question of whether the deaths had been linked to artifacts, and therefore Hunters, meant that she had now discovered something interesting. There was a good chance that her curiosity about the Hunters was turning out to be more than a mental exercise.
“I’m not,” she said. “In fact, I think it’s pretty idiotic. Let me outline my points. I wrote them down somewhere.” She started fishing through the scattered papers until she found what she was looking for.
“So, Hunters, you want to tell us about them, but we already know,” said Keegan when he had finished his first muffin. He sat up straighter in his chair, looking at Eighellie’s plate, where there was one piece of cheese left. Slowly and deliberately she picked it up, smiled at him, and popped it into her mouth. He sank back in disappointment while I chuckled to myself. Eighellie, for all she was clearly a nerd, didn’t know how to take anything lying down, while Keegan had probably never seen a real girl up this close before. To be fair, I barely had either, my sister’s older and powerful friends not counting.
Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) Page 14