Wrath of Wind

by Kat Adams

  He didn’t ask me not to bring it up as he shook his head back and forth as if trying to get away from the request. He didn’t deny knowing the answer as he cringed, the solution causing him physical pain. It surprised me when Clay placed his hand on Bryan’s shoulder and squeezed in reassurance. I’m pretty sure it shocked us all. “We got you, Bry. You aren’t going at this alone. We got you.”

  Leo stood next to Clay, resting his hand on Bryan’s other shoulder. “Talking about it doesn’t make you dark.”

  “Not here.” He finally lifted his gaze, settling it on Rob, who nodded in understanding and joined the rest of the group.

  “Let’s head to the cabin.” He hooked me around the waist and grasped Bryan’s wrist. Clay took hold of Leo’s arm while I grabbed his hand so all five of us touched.

  The void swallowed us, dropping us in the living room of the cabin. I noticed the window I’d broken by calling earth had been replaced. Rob checked the doors and windows. Although the cabin was heavily warded, there were other threats out there besides dark elementals, Nelem threats like hungry animals.

  Leo rested his hands on his knees and drew in deep breaths while Clay immediately took to the kitchen and checked the fridge. “What, no beer?”

  “I haven’t even moved in yet.” Rob disappeared down the hall to check the rest of the windows.

  “I’m doing a beer run. Something tells me we’re going to need it. Leo? Wanna come?”

  Leo shook his head slowly and brought up his hand, still doubled over. “I’m good.”

  Clay popped out.

  Bryan sank onto the couch, his head in his hands. I sat next to him and ran my hand across his shoulders. He rested up against me and released a shuddering sigh. I hated what this did to him and wished we didn’t need him to walk us through such painful memories. But, unfortunately, we did.

  Leo dragged a chair in from the kitchen, placing it on the other side of the low coffee table, leaving the tan chair that matched the couch for Clay. “You need more furniture,” he called out.

  “I need a paycheck first.” Rob returned to the living room and sat next to me on the couch. “I do like what’s here.” He brushed his hand over the soft suede material covering the arm. “Stace said it all comes with the cabin, so that’s cool.”

  “When did you tell them?” I asked Rob.

  “Clay figured it out at the hunt and told Leo while I stayed behind to help clean the scene.” He sat back, resting his head. “Turns out the new guy gets the shit work and yelled at by the commander of the patrol unit a lot.”

  “Brooks?”

  “Yep. He’s not much of a people person.”

  “Honey, I’m home!” Clay popped back into the kitchen, a case of beer under one arm, a paper sack in the other. He set them both on the table to free up his hands to tear into the cardboard case, freeing five cans and putting the rest in the fridge. He brought the beer and sack out to the coffee table. “I got us some munchies.”

  I ignored the beer and went right for the snacks, not realizing how hungry I was until he mentioned food. I hadn’t eaten anything since nearly chipping a tooth on overdone chicken strips at lunch. I tore open the beef jerky and got to work gnawing on the processed meat.

  Clay fell into the chair, cracking open a beer and guzzling a long, long drink. He released a resounding belch and smacked his lips as he wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand. “Ahhh.”

  “You’re a pig.” Leo swiped a beer and popped it open, taking a sip.

  Rob handed Bryan a beer, who accepted it without lifting his head and held it, unopened, in his hands. His shoulders rose and lowered with his breathing. No one made a sound as we all waited for him to explain. Even Clay lost his smile as he scooted forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “He was pure evil,” Bryan started in a low, tortured voice, his attention on the floor. I rested my hand on his leg and squeezed. His shoulders dropped more, so I removed my hand. He grabbed it and brought it back to his thigh, covering it with his. “He’d use forbidden calls to torture Nelem children just for fun. The fog was his trademark. It confused adult Nelems, left them disoriented while he took their kids.” He deflated and added in a whisper, “Just for fun.”

  We were all transfixed by his words as he continued trudging through this raw journey, thick with pain and despair. “He was earth and air like my dad, like me, and never stopped trying to force the other elements to answer his call. He ran the summits for several clans.”

  I frowned, so Rob explained. “When dark elementals meet, it’s called a summit.”

  I knew what it was, just not that Bryan’s grandfather had been the grand poohbah of dark elementals before Alec. Probably generations before Alec. “How’d the patrol beat him?”

  He released a ragged sigh and brought up his head, revealing shining eyes, swollen and rimmed in red. It broke my heart. Burning tears pricked my own gaze. “He was so focused on torturing someone that he didn’t see the patrol until they were on top of him.”

  “Another Nelem?”

  “No. My father. He wouldn’t accept the fact my dad didn’t want that life for me and brought him in front of the summit as an example, using call after forbidden call to force him to declare his allegiance to the dark side. He never did, not even in his last breath.”

  I gasped as all feeling drained from my body. I hated my mother for leaving us and hated my father for letting her. Never once would I have ever imagined her torturing my dad into pledging his allegiance. “How do you know all this?” Please don’t say…

  “I was there.”

  I closed my eyes against the news, holding back the tears. What kind of monster did something like that to his own kid? In front of his own grandkid? And I thought Alec was maniacal. He didn’t hold a twisted candle to Bryan’s grandfather.

  “How do we beat the fog?” I didn’t want him to have to remember anything else about that man or the night his father had been murdered.

  “You don’t.”

  “Montana did,” Clay pointed out, crushing the can and reaching for the beer I didn’t grab. “She had the trees act like giant fans when we were up at the Point, and tonight, she created a very cool tornado to shoot the fog straight up. I tried using air, but it didn’t work. With Montana, it did.”

  I stared at my palm, at where the dull throb remained even after the cut had disappeared. And it clicked. Fucking fucker fucks. It totally clicked. The freezing pain. The way the coldness continued to consume me, to control me. How the wards reacted when I slipped my hand through the protective barrier. It wasn’t dark magic that Spencer had forced into me. It was darkness itself. Darkness now coursing through my veins like a vise, squeezing me and cutting off my circulation. My elements were trying to fight the intrusion because I was trying to fight the intrusion. Fighting it did no good and only allowed the darkness to spread, overpowering my other calls just as light had when it’d first come to me.

  Well, that was just goddamn craptastically peachy. As if being a quint didn’t make me enough of a freak. Why not add another element?

  I thought about that. Why not add another element? They balanced each other out. Yin and yang. I needed to embrace the darkness, which was a frightening thought considering how awesome I reacted when the coldness took over. But if I learned to call it, to control it, to conceal it… I’d be a true supreme elemental.

  Once I mastered the 3Cs of my latest element—darkness.

  “I have darkness in me.” Admitting it didn’t scare me as much as it probably should have. Then again, now that I had the power to control six elements—yeah, that’s not crazy scary to think about—I’d use it to my advantage. To my world’s advantage. “I have darkness in me!”

  “No, you don’t.” Clay relaxed in the chair, scratching his beard as he assessed me with a brooding green gaze, which didn’t fit his otherwise relaxed, soft features. Brooding was Rob’s look, not Clay’s. “Why would you say that?”

  “If you w
ere dark,” Leo jumped in, “you wouldn’t be able to get past the wards at the academy.”

  “Or at this place.” Rob glanced around the cabin. “Stace warded the shit out of it.”

  “I’m not dark,” I corrected and dropped the empty package of beef jerky onto the coffee table. “I have darkness. Big diff.”

  And now that I understood that, it was like a suffocating weight lifted. I drew in a deep breath, resolving myself to the fact I had the power to control six elements. This day just kept getting better and better.

  “No more beer for you.” Clay moved his can away from me.

  “I haven’t had any.”

  He held it toward me in offering. “Then maybe you need one.”

  “Don’t you guys get it? I can call on the darkness, get it to answer me.” They all blinked at me in disbelief. “Look, I’ll prove it.”

  I focused on the cold in my hand, on the pulsing that no longer ached now that I stopped fighting it. The faint yellow glow appeared just below the surface of my palm. I held it up to show the guys. This time, it didn’t hurt. This time, I didn’t feel the urge to destroy them. I had no desire to clear a path, terminate anyone in my way of taking over our world. I willed it to stop and, to my extreme relief, it did.

  “What…” Leo said.

  “The hell…” Rob added.

  “Was that?” Clay finished.

  “A sixth element.” Bryan took my hand, studying it as he ran his thumb across my palm. “I felt it the other night. It’s definitely darkness. My mom felt it too.” He regarded me. “It took a boost to your primary to give you enough juice to control it. Professor Layden figured that out.”

  “That’s why the cut healed. Spencer used air to push the darkness in since it’s the opposing element to my primary, so we needed a boost of my primary to close it up.”

  “No way, man,” Rob argued. “Darkness isn’t an element. It’s the absence of light.”

  “The opposite of light,” Bryan corrected. “Katy controls opposing elements. All opposing elements. It completes the balance.”

  “Out of balance.” I recalled Cressida’s message. “This is what Cressida meant. The dark elementals are enhancing the powers of young elementals through spells, just as we thought. Most are able to handle the surge. Some can’t, and the element they forced into the kid consumes them.”

  “Now you have the proof you need to expose that British bastard.” Rob rose and moved behind the couch to pace, something he did a lot lately.

  “I say good riddance.” Leo picked at the dirt under his nails. “I don’t like that guy.” We all looked at him. He shrugged when he realized how obvious his statement was.

  “Does that make Montana a sext?” Clay waggled his eyebrows. The rest of us groaned. “Oh, come on. That was funny.”

  “There’s no title for it.” Leo stood and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with the case of beer and helping himself to another. “Because there’s no such thing.”

  “And, up until last year, there was no such thing as a quint.” I grabbed a can and popped it open. “I disproved that theory and just blew another one right the hell out of the water.”

  “Why are you so okay with this?” Bryan stopped me from taking a drink, his concerned gaze searching my face. “You freaked out when you found out you were a quint last year.”

  “That was before I knew what it meant to be the prophecy.”

  “And that is?”

  “I have the power to fight the darkness, Bryan. Alec thinks the spell Spencer used on me weakened me. They have no idea it only made me stronger.”

  “I don’t know about that. They aren’t that clueless.”

  “Whose side are you on, bro?” Rob tensed. I didn’t like that look of suspicion washing over his expression. Our earth elemental wasn’t dark and never would be.

  Bryan brought his hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying don’t underestimate them. They don’t do things by accident.”

  That was a less than comforting thought. I stood and stretched. “On that note, there’s a bed calling my name.”

  “Heading back to the academy?” Leo set his beer on the coffee table.

  “Nope.” I glanced at them from over my shoulder. “I’m staying here tonight.”

  Clay jumped to his feet. “I call dibs on a bed. Preferably one where a very sexy, very naked redhead plans to sleep.” There went those eyebrows.

  “What about curfew?” Bryan asked.

  “We broke curfew by being in Montana’s room. Let it go, man. This is one bullshit rule you’ll just have to be okay with breaking.”

  22

  I woke curled up next to Clay, my head resting on his firm chest. Leo spooned behind me, his arms draped across my middle. They were both sound asleep, so I untangled from them and silently crept out of the room, swiping a shirt off the floor on my way out.

  As soon as I stepped into the hall, the glorious scent of coffee hit my senses. I padded into the kitchen, helping myself to a cup. Ahhh. There was nothing better than that initial sip of delicious java first thing in the morning.

  A shirtless Rob was already up and standing on the porch, his golden skin stretched across that beautiful mass of back muscle. Talk about delicious.

  Okay, so maybe there were a few things better than that initial sip of bean water.

  It creaked when I pushed open the screen door to join him outside. It was a little cold to be standing out here in nothing but a thin dress shirt and panties. I shuddered when the brisk morning air hit my exposed skin.

  Rob pulled me into his arms, kissing me warmly. “Good morning, beautiful.”

  “Morning.” I could get used to this, waking in a tangled mass of limbs, fresh coffee already made, a morning kiss. I set the coffee on the railing and wrapped my arms around his neck, really kissing him. Our tongues danced slow and lazy, enjoying each other’s company.

  But then the kiss changed, shifting from a greeting to an exploration. It heated me from the inside out, liquifying my core and drenching my lady bits. Rob reached under the shirt and ran his hand up and down my back, sending chills across my skin.

  That was nothing compared to what his other hand was doing. He dipped his fingers below the elastic waistband of my panties, immediately striking gold when he brushed across my eager clit. My knees wobbled. He pulled me closer, holding me upright as he increased his assault.

  I kissed him harder, whimpering into his mouth. He upped the pace of his impromptu finger massage. Not wanting him to feel left out—well, parts of him, anyway—I reached inside his shorts and wrapped my fingers around his impressive cock, stroking him in time with the way he stroked me.

  My climax built, the surge of pleasure driving me to stroke faster. He nipped at my earlobe, his whiskers scratching my cheek. “Jesus, Reed. Much more of that and I’ll have to take you—” He stopped in a hiss as my nails dug into his shoulder when the orgasm hit me. My knees buckled. He held me up and continued the attack on my clit, causing wave after wave to crash down.

  He grunted and stiffened as his release took over. Only after the surge of pleasure ebbed did I stop stroking and remove my hand from his shorts. He pulled back, and we stared at each other.

  And then we burst into a fit of the giggles.

  We were still laughing even after we cleaned up and dressed, fresh cups of coffee in our hands as we stood staring out at the forest surrounding the cabin. “It really is peaceful out here.”

  “When I’m not making you make those cute little noises.” He shot me a sideways look full of hidden meaning. “It was no secret what we were doing out here.”

  “You started it.” And he, indeed, finished it. Suddenly starving, I turned to go back inside and rummage through the fridge to make something for breakfast. “I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t have any food.” He followed me inside and into the kitchen. When a quick assessment of the fridge confirmed his statement, I took to the cabinets. All the canned goods were gross thing
s like peas and beets. Who the hell in their right mind ate beets, and canned ones at that?

  “You’re right. You don’t have any food. I guess I’ll eat at Clearwater. Speaking of, I should probably head back to get ready for classes. I’ll need to teach 3C today for Stace.” That sounded so weird to say. Me, a teacher. Who would have ever thought?

  “Aren’t you going to go to the Council about Spencer?”

  I’d had all night to think about how to approach this. I could go to Virgil Graves and risk him dismissing me again. I could go to Brenda and have her blame me for something else her Barbie bitch of a niece whined about. Stace was out of the question for obvious reasons, and I had no idea how Dean Carter would react if I told him the guy he’d had a hand in importing and currently resided in his school was dark.

  So I planned to have the Council come to me.

  “I’m going to put on a demonstration, invite the Council to watch the dynamic duo in action. Spencer loves to put on a show, so I’m going to give him a spotlight. I’m going to push him into attacking me in front of the Council.”

  “That sounds like a good way to get yourself killed, babe.” Leo walked into the kitchen and over to the coffee, pouring himself a cup before turning and leaning on the counter. His hair actually looked better in the morning than it usually did during the day, the wild curls tame, falling gently around his cute baby face and into his piercing blue eyes. He had on the same clothes as yesterday, the light shirt hugging his trim frame, the jeans hugging his fine ass.

  “I know what I’m doing.” It had to work. It just had to.

  “What are we talking about?” Clay joined us wearing only his dirty gray slacks. Now he looked more like what I’d expect someone to look like when they just woke up. Dark hair sticking up in crazy angles. Sleep holding his lids at half mass. His beard scraggly. He yawned as he shuffled over to the coffee pot and emptied it into a cup.

  “Reed’s suicide mission,” Rob growled, his dark glare on me. He set his square jaw and turned, shaking his head as he stormed out of the room.