The Paragon Element (Book 1)

by Jeff Hale

  “You’re not keeping me here. Not while he’s still out there.” I fought to move again and pain shot through every inch of me. I collapsed, trying to catch my breath… trying to breathe at all, the urge to scream held back from lack of oxygen. Oh, shit. Just how bad is it?

  “How long?” I asked through clenched teeth once I caught my breath. I needed to know how much of a head start that sorcerer had in getting away from me.

  “You really don’t…” Raven started.

  “How long?!” I growled again, louder this time, wincing.

  “Um, weeks. Well, a month really,” she finally said, frowning at me.

  “One month?!” It had been late January when I faced Serena’s killer. Now it was February, almost March.

  “Well, yeah. And don’t worry. MAGE knows you’re here. They agreed it was best not to move you, and well, your school was notified that you were extremely sick. Pneumonia. Your friends know I’m taking care of you. Nina and Dave came by, but they haven’t… haven’t seen you. I couldn’t let that…”

  “Wait. Why not?”

  “Well it’s just that…”

  “Just get me a mirror.” I lifted a hand to look at it, fighting the agony the movement caused. It was completely bandaged except the fingertips; those were burn scarred, and still missing patches of skin. A ginger search of my head found that it was mostly bandaged as well. I could only imagine that most of me was in similar shape. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “Nevermind, just forget it.”

  “The good news is he says that as long as you rest for another few days, that you’ll be right as rain. Well, those were his words anyway. Says you’ll be causing the girls to swoon again. Look, I couldn’t care less, Aerick. If you look all burned for the rest your life, so be it. I’ll still be here. Okay?” Raven said as she sat back down on the bed next to me.

  “Who said?” I asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “He did,” she said as she pointed past my immediate field of vision, directly to the left of the head of the bed. There was a shuffling sound, like someone standing up straight from a leaning position. Raven gave me an odd smile, patted my hand, then left the room.

  “Greetings, Aerick Kerensky,” a male voice said as he moved into my line of sight.

  He was tall and slender, his carriage one of confidence bred from having enough power to take care of oneself, and then some. His face was lined under short cropped dark brown hair, putting him somewhere in his early forties, but some part of me knew that he was older, much older. Grey eyes scrutinized me from behind wire rimmed spectacles. He was wearing a light blue button up shirt and casual slacks instead of robes, but I recognized him immediately.

  “You! You were in my dream. It was you!” I said, hissing through my teeth in pain as I tried to sit up again. I saw the man raise his hand and I couldn’t move.

  “You must rest. And yes, that was me you saw,” he said as he smiled down at me, almost paternally.

  “Who are you? I mean, I know you’re Mer—”

  “I have gone by many names and titles, lad. Merlin, The Wise One, The Ancient One. It matters not. Just call me Merle, it better fits in this day and age.” A light chuckle broke his lips.

  I tried to push myself up again, the pain forgotten, but found that I still couldn’t move. I thought things over. It was always said that Merlin would return. In those days the world would end as the Barrier fell.

  “You’re the reason the Barrier is failing!” I exclaimed.

  “Somewhat. You are not yet ready to understand. You must observe a few things for yourself before you can fully comprehend. For now, rest, and heal. When you are ready, try and resume your normal life, but for now, forget about your love’s killer. You will face him again, but you are nowhere near ready yet. You need to make some self-revelations first.

  “Raven knows of what I speak. We had plenty of time to talk while you were recuperating. And don’t give her a hard time. She doesn’t have the patience for it.” He winked at me and turned to leave, stopping for just a moment. “Oh, and one last thing. Let MAGE believe you are still on the case, and while you’re at it, explore some things from your more mundane life. Some clues to your self-enlightenment just might be found there. And by the way, I do mean it when I say that you are in no shape to face Serena’s murderer. He would kill you in the condition you’re in. You know you aren’t ready, and you will know when you are.” And then he was gone and I was able to move again.

  A few minutes later Raven came back in and sat next to me on the bed and, taking my hand, she smiled down at me. Fatigue hit me again and I faded out, then back in, then out again. Sometimes, I was awake for hours, other times only minutes. The good news was that I didn’t dream anymore, and the time I spent awake I analyzed those dreams I had had.

  I knew what the dream with Serena meant. I had accepted the part of myself that wasn’t entirely human. It always worried me that normal people would look at the fact that I had these powers and mark me as something different, something bad. The fact that I killed as part of my occupation also weighed on my soul, but I had to accept it as doing something for the greater good. In a way it was self-sacrifice. My own portion of humanity in order to save lives. Some of what Raven had said before the fight must have hit me harder than I thought.

  But now I realized that Serena would have accepted me no matter what. She wouldn’t have been as base or petty to throw away someone she truly loved because they weren’t perfectly good like her. In fact, she would more than likely try and save said person from themselves.

  Then my thoughts turned to the Barrier and what Merlin being here meant. History portrayed him as a benevolent man. His visit with me just now reinforced that. So then why would he want the Barrier to fall? I had a lot of unanswered questions, and I needed to talk to Merlin, or Merle, again before too long to get some of those questions answered, although he somehow thought I would come by them on my own.

  Maybe I should just go back to business as usual. I deserved a bit of a break after almost dying, so a few nice relaxing days of normal everyday life were definitely in order. Once I got well enough to breathe without wincing in pain that was.

  A few days later, Raven thought I was well enough to get up, move around and, blessedly, take a shower. The day she told me this, she was wearing a violet colored, see-through slip that left very little to the imagination and made me wonder as to her motives.

  The water, even at lukewarm temperatures, burned like a small sun had enveloped my body. It was all I could do to stay in long enough to get clean, and that took too long as far as I was concerned. All the dead skin had decided to peel and flake off while I was in there, and by the time I was done it looked like a snake had molted in the bottom of the shower. At least my hair managed to stay intact, even if it was a bit frayed.

  Clean and partially refreshed, I headed into the main part of the house. It was a comfortable three bedroom home, the kind I could see a family living in, not a fae. I had spent all my time in the back of the house, in the master bedroom at the end of the hall that also led to the second bedroom and another bathroom.

  The second bedroom had been turned into a make-shift dojo, with several mats on the floor and racks of all sorts of weaponry. There were a few cabinets which I guessed held more weapons and the room seemed bigger than it rightfully should have based on the floor plan. I suspected that it was extra-dimensional in some way.

  The living room opened up off the right side of the hallway, also a helluva a lot bigger than it should have been, while the left hand wall held another door that I peeked into briefly to see a small spare bedroom. The far wall also had a door near where the two walls met and I figured it must lead to a garage. The ceiling in the living room was high and vaulted, the trend continuing into the kitchen. After checking my surroundings out a bit, I sat carefully on the leather sofa, which was, you guessed it, dark purple in color, and turned on the TV.

  The six o’clock news was on, which surprised me.
It didn’t seem that late in the day. I watched the usual reports of violence, political promises, and weather predictions. I always laugh when I see the weather predictions. One ornery air sorcerer could screw up the meteorologist community for weeks. Towards the middle of the program a story caught my interest, and not in a good way.

  “In other news today, several strange reports have been flooding into police precincts across the city of bizarre events happening,” the news anchor stated. “From sightings of strange beings, to people disappearing in plain sight, it seems that the police would have their hands full. The police, however, have a theory on the weird happenings. The statement they have released instructs everyone to drink bottled water only, because they believe that the water source for the city has been tampered with somehow. They believe that a drug cartel they have been hounding has somehow managed to contaminate the water with the drug known as LSD. More on this as it develops.”

  I stared, slack-jawed, at the TV as Raven walked into the front door. She had the mail in her hands, along with a newspaper and had thrown some jeans on under the slip. She held up the paper and I saw the headlines stating what I had just seen on the news. They must have rushed the story to get it into today’s late copy of the paper.

  “So what are we going to do?” she asked as she tossed the mail and paper on the small table next to the door. She started to unbutton her jeans and kick her shoes off. I just shook my head and tried not to look.

  “We’re going to let the MAGE spin artists do their job, and I’m going to take it easy like you and Merle want me too,” I said, letting myself sink deeper into the couch, finally a bit comfortable after days of pain.

  “Good, glad to hear it. You have school work to catch up on, want me to bring it to you?”

  “No.” Fuck schoolwork. It could wait, if I did it at all.

  “Too bad, you go back to school tomorrow, and you need to be caught up.”

  “I hate you, you know that right?” I tossed a glare her way.

  She shrugged. “That red haired girl has been asking around quite a bit by the way.”

  “She’s still here?” I would have figured Kat would have been long gone by now, back home to Washington.

  “Something about negotiations taking longer than her dad expected.”

  “So what’s with the room?” I gestured offhandedly around.

  “Oh, I used some fae magic to extend it extra-dimensionally. You like it?” She smiled.

  “Yeah. And speaking of fae magic…”

  “You remember, don’t you?” The smile turned into a frown.

  “I remember seeing something so beautiful that I could feel my heart break from the sight of it.” A black angel, that’s what I remembered.

  “That was… that was me without my visage shape up.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A fae’s visage shape is what they look like when they appear as human. It’s why I look the way I do right now. We can change our visage shape whenever and however we want. I could be any woman you want me to be. So long as I was a woman. We can’t change our gender with it, so no worries about you thinking that I’m actually a male fae that you’ve had a thing for.” She grinned and stuck the tip of her tongue out at me. “This is how I like to appear though, it’s a visage shape I created on my own, and so it’s as much me as my true Aetheric shape is. I knew that most men would find it extremely attractive and it appealed to me and the image I wanted to project.”

  “Can I see it again? Your Aetheric shape?”

  “No! Sorry. I mean no, you can’t, and it could possibly kill you. It’s hard to explain, but any mortal who has seen my Aetheric shape has died. The fact that you survived was probably because you were in shock to begin with so your brain scrambled a lot of what it saw.”

  “Oh, well, maybe next time I nearly get killed I can see it again.”

  “Don’t even joke like that. I nearly lost you, and I was beside myself with worry the entire time.” She shook her head, as though trying to rid herself of the thought.

  “What happened, after he decided to fling me several football fields away?”

  “I panicked. I released an Aetheric explosion that should have dissolved his essence into the Aether. He survived and vanished somehow.”

  “Hmph. Tough bastard. I got him next time though. Whenever that happens to be.”

  “A long time from now, I hope. To be honest. He scared me. A lot.”

  “He killed Serena, and I will kill him for that. For now though, my skin and the rest of my organs hope he’s far away from here. Anyway, I’d probably better finish this.” I indicated the pile of books and papers in front of me. I managed to get it all done, spending a good portion of the evening to do so. Raven fixed me dinner and we watched a couple of movies before I turned in early. I had a long, pain filled day tomorrow.

  I awoke the next morning, surprised to find that a good portion of my wounds had healed completely and all the scar tissue was gone. The newer and healed skin was back to its normal color, although it still hurt like hell. I moved stiffly as I got out of bed and headed for the shower. The water didn’t sting near as much this time, which is to say it still felt like I was being attacked by a hive’s worth of wasps.

  I noticed that a good portion of my wardrobe had ended up here for some reason, but I wasn’t going to complain; I was actually glad for it. I dressed in a loose pair of black denim jeans and a loose, black button up shirt, which I left untucked. I was going very casual today, no need to have my own clothes causing me to double over in agony during school.

  When I looked in the mirror, I noticed that any signs of being burned were completely gone, including the crisped ends of my hair. I just looked like hell otherwise, which would go well with the pneumonia story. Raven had told me at some point when I was still abed that Merlin had cast some pretty hefty healing spells to save my life. Yet he was willing to extinguish every life on the planet by destroying the Barrier. Shaking my head, I headed out towards the main part of the house.

  “So, ready to get back to your life?” Raven asked while I gathered up the schoolwork.

  “Not really, but what choice do I have?” I asked as I headed out the door. “Oh, and thanks for letting me stay here while I got better.”

  “No problem,” she said.

  Everyone was happy to see me, and more than a few of my friends made comments that they thought that I should still be in bed. Classes went as normal, except that I noticed Kelly absent from Health class. I continued to practice magic in my own time anytime I got a free moment. It seemed that I was stumbling onto new abilities more and more these days. Like the healing ability I had somehow triggered in that fight with Nina. I kept trying to duplicate it, but only wound up searing my nervous system and internal organs with Aetheric energy, which sounds just as painful as it actually is, especially since I was still recovering from my wounds. I had to play up being sick over the next few days due to constantly coughing up blood.

  On one of the days, I managed to get my work done in my History class early, and as I headed out of the room, I saw Kat down the hall, coming out of her class as well.

  “You done early?” I called down the hall, coughing hard as I did so.

  “Yeah. You?” she called back, changing course to walk towards me.

  “Yeah.”

  “So I guess it’s just me and you, huh?” she said as we wandered down the hallway towards the courtyard area.

  “Yeah, guess so,” I replied, hands in my pockets, staring at my feet as we walked along. Looking at her would just cause temptations that I couldn’t afford.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, voice full of concern. “You look like you’re about to collapse.”

  “That’s about how I feel. This… pneumonia took a lot out of me.”

  “Here, let me help you.” She wrapped an arm around my waist to help support me, then took my right arm and put it across her shoulder. My hand ended up draped over her right breast,
but not touching, and I resisted the very strong urge to cop a free feel.

  “Thanks, but I’m not sure this is such a good idea…” Her body up next to mine was making me feel things for her again, things that I knew couldn’t lead anywhere.

  “Why not? I’m just helping you get to somewhere so you can sit.” She was taking slow steps so as not to jar me.

  “I just don’t want you thinking it’s more.”

  “It’s fine. We’re still friends, right?” She turned her head to look me in the eye.

  “Yeah. We are,” I said.

  “Well then, what’s the harm?”

  “Nothing, I guess. I just don’t want to… be close to you. It makes me feel…”

  Those sea-blue eyes of hers shimmered with wetness. “I know. I feel the same way,” she said softly, looking away.

  We got to one of the round stone picnic tables that sat in the courtyard area of the school, and Kat helped ease me down onto it. I about collapsed on the spot.

  “There we go. You really should be at home, resting,” she scolded. She was worried for me.

  “Nah, I needed to make sure I didn’t get too far behind in my school work.”

  “You don’t seem like the type that would fall behind no matter how long you were out.” She sat down next to me, watching me closely.

  “Says the obvious over-achiever.”

  “What? Me? An over-achiever? Whatever makes you say that?”

  “Besides the fact that you were done with your Calculus class early?” I rolled my eyes at her.

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  “I need another reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so,” she said, looking indignant, which just caused me to laugh, cough, then double over in pain. “Whoa, are you okay?” She put her hand on my back, rubbing gently.

  When I straightened back up there was blood on my hand.

  Kat let out a little gasp and stood abruptly. “Wait a second, I’ll go get some tissue.”