“You don’t think they’ll have people out in the woods?” Leigh, small and lithe, looked as if she could easily enjoy getting lost among the trees, Aira thought. She knew several earth elementals became park rangers, nature preserve managers, tied to the lands they walked. Just like air elementals had a propensity for avionics, and water elementals for fisheries and marine biology.
“Not many. They’ll be in closer to the safe house; they didn’t feel too worried about being discovered.” Dylan glanced from Leigh to Aira, and Aira could see that she wasn’t the only one in their party who was concerned about the possibility of being caught unawares. “Going to give us a head start going up, come in behind?” Aiden nodded.
“Aira can fly us up close to where they’ll be, we’ll get some cover from the local bird population.” Aira had discussed this part of their plan at length with Aiden the night before. Flying in the short distance would make the most sense; if they had to pair off instead of going in as a group, then Leigh was the natural one to make the hike, with Dylan with her. Once the two of them began tearing everything down, Aiden and Aira could come in and begin the actual attack.
“I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more going on,” Aira said, scrubbing at her face.
“Me either,” Dylan agreed. “Not to doubt your abilities, Leigh—but it seems like we found them too easily.”
“We’ll have to be on guard,” Aiden said, turning onto the tiny, two-lane road that led up the mountain. “I don’t like this either, but we’re going to have to go for it while they’re still organizing. I don’t want to have to deal with more attacks while we try to catch them all in one place.”
Aira nodded reluctantly. She knew very well that if the investigation dragged on, it would lose momentum. The elders would lose their sense of urgency—and every new elemental who was killed would make it seem easier to just dethrone Aira and put a stop to it.
Aiden pulled the car off of the road and into the trees. Aira climbed out of the passenger seat and watched with faint amusement as Leigh murmured a quick spell, convincing the trees, the underbrush, even a few rocks to move into place, concealing it from anyone who had ill designs.
“We’ll give you an hour,” Aiden told Dylan. “Get up there as quickly as you can manage, and we’ll meet you there.”
As they watched Dylan and Leigh head up along a winding, impossible-to-read trail, Aira looked at Aiden. “I don’t like waiting,” she said, sitting down on a fallen tree with a sigh.
“Normally I’d point out that there are some very good ways to pass the time,” Aiden said with a wry smile. “But somehow I don’t feel like getting devoured by mosquitoes and rolling into poison ivy right before a fight.”
“Not to mention that we’d start a lightning storm and there would go our element of surprise,” Aira added, echoing his wry grin.
“As soon as this is all over,” Aiden told her, reaching out and taking her hand firmly in his, “We are going away for a long time, and if there’s a major crisis among the elemental community they can deal with it their own damn selves.”
“I asked the elders whether they’d prefer me to micromanage the rulers’ council or if they’d rather I continue the next generation of our kind,” Aira told Aiden. “Never did get an answer on that one.”
“They’re just afraid of what our kids would be like.”
“No offense, Drew, but I’m a little afraid of what our kids would be like.”
“That’s not going to stop you though, is it?”
Aira smiled at the hopeful, concerned tone of Aiden’s voice.
“No, it won’t stop me for even a moment.”
The timer on Aira’s phone went off, and she turned to Aiden, taking a deep breath and standing quickly. They had managed a little light making out—almost out of boredom—but they’d stopped when it became clear they were both getting warmed up, full of lust and desire for each other; just before the lightning would have started up from the mingling of their energies.
“Time to go,” she said, feeling the tingling numbness that came along with the spike of adrenaline, the knowledge that they were about to head into a fight that they couldn’t entirely predict the outcome of.
The same adrenaline that made Aira jumpy seemed to invigorate her husband; Aiden’s bright eyes almost glowed, his skin dancing with a flicker of orange-red. She could feel his energy increasing, the fiery nature of his essence rising to meet the occasion. Aira could fight—she had become quite good at it—but she would never revel in it the way that Aiden did. Particularly when she wasn’t sure what was coming, it was difficult for her to be excited more than she was anxious.
“Fly us up there, she-hawk,” Aiden said. He closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her waist, giving her a quick kiss on the lips. Aira took a deep breath and summoned the wind, pulling it around her, under her, lifting them into the air. They would have to take a shallow trajectory—they would be barely above the trees—but by flight they would be far faster than even Leigh was on the ground. Aira felt the exhilarating thrill of their lift into the air and smiled to herself, closing her eyes for just a moment to focus her energies. She had to keep them aloft, keep them in the direction of the safe house, but she also needed to call on the local flying wildlife to provide their cover—to keep them secure. She let out a shriek, calling on the hawks in the area that she had sensed as they came onto the road. She whistled and warbled, calling on more reinforcements. Soon their progress was marked by birds of different sizes, flitting amongst the trees, responding to her call.
Aira felt a frisson of apprehension as she landed them less than a mile away from the safe house—far enough to make their approach, but near enough to catch up to where Dylan and Leigh would be. Ahead of them, as she touched down lightly on her feet, Aira heard the first sounds of alarm coming from the house—shouts and rumbles. She and Aiden jogged forward, depending on the directions and map that Leigh had made for them. The ground rolled and tumbled underfoot, and Aira felt—for a moment—as if she might not actually make it. There was the roar and crack of rocks tumbling and breaking, and she heard the gush of water—though she couldn’t determine what or where or how it was being directed.
“Come on,” Aiden gasped, keeping pace with her.
Aira put on more speed, dodging the flying rocks and debris that fell across their path. She could see the fortified house up ahead, but not where Dylan and Leigh were stationed; it was impossible to tell where to direct her attacks.
“Where the hell are they?” she asked Aiden in a hoarse voice as she panted.
“Ahead!” Aiden yelled.
Aira ceased looking for the other half of their team and spotted the group of elementals coming out from behind the ramparts directly ahead. The earth-aligned members of the group began chanting, reaching down towards the mountain itself; Aira stopped in the midst of her run and raised her hands up, calling the wind to her direction and channeling a gust to knock them down. Aiden moved a few feet away from her and formed a ball of fire in his hands, throwing it at the renegades. Aira struggled to catch her breath and focus, evaluating the growing cadre of earth and fire elementals arranging themselves against her and Aiden; there were easily a dozen pouring out from behind the rampart.
“Dylan! Leigh! Where the hell are you?” Aira formed a bow between her hands, focusing her energy on the strength of it, the span perfect to her height. She reached into the air and directed her energy into creating an arrow, and then another, letting them fly at the elementals in front of them. Aiden formed and threw fireballs, cursing under his breath and grabbing at the ones that the fire element in front of them were casting their way.
She heard shouts, the rumbling of more earth moving, the unmistakable noises of battle; Aira knew that just as she and Aiden were working on the assailants in front of them, Dylan and Leigh would be fighting off those members of the group that had come to defend the safe house. They’d have to wait and see if
Dylan and Leigh could make it back to their direction; the stone ramparts were impregnable to Aiden’s fire, and impervious to her wind. Aira called the birds back to her and sent the predatory creatures after the elemental renegades, sending in a second wave of smaller birds as reinforcements.
“Let’s fry them,” Aiden suggested. Aira nodded, moving to close the distance between the two of them. She reached out and Aiden grabbed for her hand. It would be like the previous attack, she thought, taking a deep breath. Aira pulled Aiden’s energy through her, felt it crackling along her bones, through her nerves, before she directed it through her air focus, forming electricity in the palm of her hand. She took a deep breath and threw it towards the on-rushing team of elementals, aiming for the middle. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as the shockwave cracked the air, the electrical shock taking out the ones in the direct path while the sonic boom threw the others aside.
There were more shouts—the ground beneath Aira’s feet began to shudder and move, rolling and throwing her almost off-balance as she appraised the situation. More people were coming out of the safe house. She and Aiden would need Leigh’s and Dylan’s help to break down the walls surrounding the compound; it would be easier to get the renegades all at once instead of in waves.
“Get the other two!” she shouted to Aiden; Aira sent another crackling jolt of electric fury at the ones coming out from around the walls.
“Are you sure?” Aiden looked at her sharply.
“Fast as you can. We have to crack this egg to get at what’s inside.”
Aiden released her hand and Aira felt the fiery energy of his essence leaving her in a slow ebb. She shot off the last of the electricity that their combined powers created and focused once more on driving them back with wind, calling on the birds to lend her assistance. Aiden darted off in the direction of the other group of shouts, moving quickly amongst the trees at the edge of the clearing.
Time slowed down as Aira reacted, driving back attackers, shooting arrows made of her own essence at any that looked about to launch an attack through their abilities. She had no way of knowing how long Aiden had been away—no way to count the seconds or minutes. It was a matter of reacting only—throwing herself completely into the fight, fending off defenders and trying whatever she could to push at the structure surrounding the building.
She was so absorbed in her task that she heard nothing from behind her. Aira called again and again on the deepest of her reserves, murmuring spells to confuse, casting the wind this way and that. A passing fireball barely missed her, almost singeing her hair as she used a gust of wind to send it on its way. She had to re-direct the hawks who had come at her call to attack wolves that had been summoned by some of the other elementals, she had to keep sending the wind this way and that, bringing it up to gale force, almost forming a tornado—certainly a wind tunnel—that she used to bludgeon the defenses of the safe house, the people guarding it. How freaking many of you are there? She thought angrily, trying to take a count of both the fallen and those still moving, still coming forward to attack her. The ground shifted again underfoot, fires crackled and roared around her, and she thought idly that if they managed to complete the sting on the house without starting an enormous forest fire, the whole mountain would be lucky.
A glimmer of movement caught her eye and Aira glanced in her peripheral vision, expecting to see Aiden, Dylan, Leigh—one of her team come to help her into the building somehow, or at least take some of the effort off of her shoulders in taking down the elementals defending the building. Instead she caught a flash of blonde, the suggestion of tawny-peach skin, and ducked—realizing that it was from behind her, that the person wasn’t one of her allies, but another attacker.
“Fuck!” Aira darted to the side, torn between the very real threat of the people in front of her and the new person who had somehow managed to sneak up behind her.
Turning to the side, to keep both directions in view, Aira directed a gale-force gust of wind towards the building while she struggled to find the new assailant. The woman appeared suddenly, fully in front of her: Seraphina Williams.
“Got separated from the pack, didn’t you?” Seraphina asked Aira tauntingly.
“The day I can’t take you on my own, Seraphina, is the day I end up dead.”
“You’re close,” Seraphina countered. “The day you can’t take us on your own is the day you lose your crown.” Another flicker of movement behind her; Aira turned quickly to capture whatever it was—but it was too late. A heavy, tingling, aching cold fell over her shoulders, draped over her head, dragging her inexorably to the ground. The howling wind died to a mere zephyr in an instant. Aira tried to move, but every limb was weighted; her mind was sluggish. Her vision was crisscrossed with a fine, dark grid, and abruptly she realized what had happened. Looking up as she struggled to remain conscious, she saw Seraphina’s triumphant smile. Annaliese came into view, standing over her as Aira fought to free herself of the thin links of lead that made up the net she was captured in.
“Sebastian has Aiden in the car,” Annaliese said. “Let’s haul her away, leave the other two for Hestia and Aidan to take care of.” Everything began to swim around her, and Aira’s vision darkened. She barely felt the world shifting underneath her as the two women lifted up the net to carry her away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DYLAN PACED BACK AND FORTH in the living room of Aira’s apartment, reeling in the aftermath of his most recent power surge. It had been two weeks since the assault on the safe house holding Aidan and Hestia—two weeks in which he had had no contact whatsoever with his brother or his sister-in-law.
“Two fucking weeks,” he muttered, picking up his bottle of beer and bringing it to his lips as he strode back and forth in front of the couch.
“We’ll find them soon,” Leigh said. “I’ve almost got a lock on them.”
Dylan groaned and closed his eyes. He shouldn’t have let Aiden follow through with the decision to approach the safe house separately. He should have insisted on them taking the safe house as a group—all together. Because he and Leigh had been separated from Aira and Aiden, they’d lost each other. Somehow, Dylan knew, Hestia and Aidan had coordinated an ambush with Annaliese and Seraphina. He knew who had his brother and his sister-in-law, but he had no idea where they were being held; he hadn’t been able to track them down in two weeks, and Leigh was straining at the limits of her ability to do it.
“They have to be moving around,” Dylan said, setting his beer down and throwing himself into a chair. “That’s the only explanation. The only way that either of us wouldn’t be able to find them is if they weren’t in a stable, single place.”
“Or the magic concealing them is stronger than either of us can penetrate on our own.”
It was a possibility that Dylan didn’t want to entertain; if the magic that the other two elementals were using was too strong for Leigh or Dylan to push past, then they had little chance of being able to fight them off.
It was small comfort to Dylan that he and Leigh had managed—with the help of the reinforcements that Aiden and Aira had called—to take the compound that had held and protected Hestia and Aidan, along with the elementals they had drawn to their cause. He had been thrilled when the last of the walls came down, when Leigh’s earthquakes had cracked the house itself, shaking its foundations and bringing it down onto the people inside. He hadn’t cared for an instant if the people within would be harmed; as far as he was concerned, it was turnabout, and absolutely fair play.
He could remember the fight itself—remember hearing Aira’s voice calling out to find out where he and Leigh were. They had chosen the weakest point in the walls surrounding the safe house—it made the most sense for both of them. Dylan’s growing power and the abundance of water in the area had given him abilities he had never tapped into before. At one point, Leigh had grabbed his hand, pulling him halfway onto the ground; with a rumble, Dylan had watched as the mountain above the compound shifted and
transformed into a landslide, crashing the walls that extended in a perimeter. After he realized that Aiden and Aira had both—somehow—been captured, Dylan had lashed the whole area with torrential rain, not stopping until the arrival of the bounty hunters who had come to back them up.
“We have to find them, Leigh,” Dylan said, resuming his pacing. He was normally patient—he was normally capable of thinking things through. But he could only imagine what was happening to his brother, and worse—what was happening to Aira. He had searched his scrying bowl time and again, pushed his awareness of their energies to the brink, trying to find them through the paths of water that crisscrossed the nation. He had sent his awareness of his brother’s fiery essence up and down rivers, hopping across lakes, flowing through swamps in search of the faintest glimmer. He cringed, remembering his piece of advice to Leigh the night of his brother’s wedding: as long as Aiden and Aira were together, they were unstoppable. It was impossible to know whether Leigh’s report had somehow gotten into her cousin’s hands, or if the elementals arrayed against them had figured it out on their own.
“There’s one thing we can do.” Leigh set her half-emptied glass of cider down on the table and looked up at Dylan, resignation in her eyes. Ever since the disappearance of his brother and sister-in-law, Dylan had avoided really thinking about her; he didn’t blame Leigh—if anyone shouldered the biggest burden of blame in the situation, it was Aiden, for insisting that they split into pairs. But in the rising panic he’d felt, Dylan had had no room in his mind for the earth elemental. They’d been forced by circumstance to spend their time together—Leigh wasn’t safe on her own, and Dylan wasn’t either; they were both targets for the last two elementals pitting themselves against the status quo.
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