Braving the Elements

by K. F. Breene

  "That you know of."

  "Oh no, I've catalogued your bitch side. You are an explosive, wild, unpredictable bitch, but if I avoid the triggers, I'm good."

  "You still manage to surprise me."

  "As long as I don't turn you on, I don't care."

  We entered the dining hall. Five steps in and people started to notice the difference in me. Wide eyes turned to stare, sticking to me as if I was a ghost. By the time I had breakfast on my plate, the whole place was silent.

  “This is awkward,” Charles whispered, his head down.

  “Yes, Charles, this is awkward. Thank you for pointing it out.”

  A gasp went around the fifty or so spectators. I glanced up to find Stefan entering the room, three people at his back. Face stern, his eyes locked on me, his body heading over in a calm, measured pace. People’s eyes darted back and forth between us, ample entertainment.

  When he reached me, he put his hand on my cheek. Then, surprising me, leaned down to kiss my lips. “Good evening, beautiful. I felt your embarrassment, so I figured you were here. I’m trying to lessen the…discomfiture.”

  “Not helping,” Charles muttered, making himself as small as possible. He wouldn’t look at Stefan.

  “Did you come to me last night with the intention to mark me?” I asked quietly, allowing Stefan to lead me to a table in the middle of the dining hall. He was openly staking his claim, which helped cement that the mark had to do with his feelings for me, and not his professional interest.

  “No, I did not. I wasn’t thinking at all, actually. Nothing had been planned out. We can talk about it more later, though, without prying ears and judgment. I try to keep personal business behind closed doors. For now, I want to enjoy eating with you. Sitting with you. What’s your first class today?”

  “Elements. Then weaponry—I’m getting a sword today. Most of the class is terrified. Then charms and spells. Why don’t you have to chant when you do a charm?”

  “More advanced and powerful magic users can will the magic without having to form it with words.” He shook his head, his eyes never looking away from my face. The world could be on fire, but as he sat there, speaking with me, he wouldn’t have noticed. I had his sole attention. “You have the weekend off from charms and spells. Go back Monday. I’m sending someone to shadow Darla.”

  “Ordinarily I would say ‘butt out,’ but in light of this mark thing you gave me, I think I’ll nod to that. I don’t feel like dying today.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. My job has always been to protect you.”

  “Yeah, okay, that gives me a soft spot and all, but this is a little heavy for morning chatter.”

  “Evening chatter, I think you mean.” His dark eyes sparkled, but in his role, he didn’t show humor, so he kept his face impassive.

  “Right. Okay, I’m off. Thanks for strangely sitting at the table, staring at me and not eating, but I gotta go.”

  He shook his head, a smile almost breaking free that time. “I’ll see you in the morning. Unless you need something. Call me or come to me anytime for any reason.”

  “So, if I called you up, pulled you out of a meeting, and asked that you provide me with a teddy bear as big as my body with a black and gold bowtie around its neck—you know, symbolizing our combined power—you would comply?”

  He stared at me a minute, still ignoring the world around him, probably trying to process the strange woman he’d tied himself to. Finally he said, “My duty, in that case, would be to ensure your mental welfare hadn’t taken a shit.”

  “Potty mouth!” I glanced around us, noticing that people had restarted their daily lives, but constantly glanced at us, wondering what would happen next. “Can I touch you?”

  He answered by putting a hand gently to my jaw and giving me a light kiss on the lips. “Will you dine with me in the morning? Every morning? As our last stop before bed?”

  I winked, trying to stay casual, but did a happy dance on the inside. “Maybe.”

  The very corners of his lips tugged as he shook his head. As he walked away, I swore I heard, “Complicating…” before his words got lost in the noise.

  “Well, at least now he’s in a good mood.” Charles put his plate in the dirty dish tray. “And he got us off the hook with Darla. Thank the gods for their mercy! I’ll be half dead by then and really wasn’t looking forward to going.”

  “How many gods do you guys worship?”

  Charles did a double take as we made our way to Jessiah. “Talk about one-eighty?”

  “No, you mentioned gods. That didn’t come out of nowhere!”

  Charles ignored me, staring at his sexual nemesis, who waited under a tree monitoring our approach with an uncustomary grim face. “Why’s he dressed all commando, I wonder?”

  Jessiah’s eyes widened when we got closer, probably noticing whatever mark he could see or smell that I couldn’t. His face went white as he stepped forward. “Hi. I wanted to get deeper into the woods today to surround ourselves with dirt. Follow me.”

  Charles looked around with his customary loathing. “We’re surrounded by dirt right here. That’s what the brown stuff is called.”

  I elbowed him, following after Jessiah’s quick steps. “You would do better if you kept an open mind.”

  “I would do better with better teaching. Where the hell are we going?”

  “Given the nature of Sasha’s mark,” Jessiah answered even though the question had been mostly rhetorical, “I figure it’s best if we wander even farther. People will catch a whiff and come to investigate otherwise.”

  “How good is the smell you people have?” I wondered quietly.

  Charles looked behind them. “Not so good that we have to go all the way—”

  A surge of magic cut Charles off and had my bones vibrating. My limbs banded together with glowing orange light and my draw from the elements snapped. As I fell to the ground, stunned and completely bewildered, I noticed Charles encased in a long box of the same orangey glow. A protective spell. The kind he had a helluva time breaking loose from.

  Fuck.

  Eight pairs of boots crunched the earth, stepping toward us in a surrounding circle. By my head stood one more, the pair I recognized. Traitor!

  “Sasha, use your magic!” Charles commanded in a rage-filled, gruff voice I’d never heard before.

  “I can’t—the source is cut off somehow. What’s going on?” I cried.

  “Get her up. Leave him, let’s go.” The speaker used a honeyed voice I almost recognized.

  “Reach for that source, Sasha. You can do it! Break through,” Charles yelled.

  “You want me to leave him, sir?” another speaker asked. “Won’t he tell the others?”

  “He won’t be able to get out of that spell. Not without the counter, and Jessiah assures me he doesn’t know it. Plus, he’s hard to kill—I don’t want men dying trying to manage it when he inevitably gets that one chance. We leave him. We don’t need him.”

  A blindfold went around my head before I could see any faces but one. Jessiah’s. Satisfied and smirking. He’d sold me out.

  *****

  Stefan sat with his top council, going over the territory breaches and logistics, when a shot of pure panic bled through the link. He sat up straight, focusing on that feeling. Panic, pain, fear, and betrayal, intensifying.

  “Boss?”

  Stefan held up his hand to Jameson, silencing the other man. “Something is…” He stood slowly, the feelings going on and on, not changing to embarrassment like normal when Sasha made a mistake in class. The fear escalated, if anything.

  A blast of pain, then emptiness. Sasha had lost consciousness through some sort of trauma.

  “She’s been taken!”

  Fear gripped him in an icy hand, squeezing his heart and making it difficult to breathe. Counting to ten, he let the bonfire of rage warm him back up. Whoever dared take his female would die a gruesome death.

  “Sasha?” Jameson asked, r
ising. His eyes stared at Stefan’s arms. “It’s true then, she can wield black. And you’ve taken her blood.”

  Stefan glanced down quickly, mind still whirling. His tattoos were white with only a faint gold, his power stepped up a notch because of the power he’d ingested from Sasha. It felt good. He felt invincible. Except that someone had clutched him by the vitals by taking her.

  “We need all the intel we’ve got.” Stefan rushed out of the room, needing his leather and weapons. Every army man in the room flocked to his side. “She’ll be taken to Trek. He’ll probably want to bleed her, among other things.” White-hot rage filled his body, clenching his jaw. If anyone so much as laid a hand on her…

  “Can’t she break free? If she is that powerful?” Sturg asked, a battle-honed man with a great many years under his belt. He specialized in the sword and attack spells.

  “She is untrained. Largely untrained. Darla did next to nothing and Charles didn’t trust…” Jessiah was the instructor for elements. That’s where Sasha should be right now. With Jessiah. That maggot.

  “Get people out to the woods,” Stefan barked, forging into the equipment room. “Jessiah organized this, I’d bet anything. Find his trail. It’ll lead to her. Organize the troops and the magic throwers. They’ll take her to a secure location, especially once they identify the mark on her. We go in hard and hot, killing anyone we run into.”

  A chorus of battle-hardened men chirped, “Yes, Boss.”

  Today was a good day to spill some blood.

  Chapter 8

  It felt like a jackhammer banged around in my head as I came to. My surroundings swam into focus—two groups of men standing around in a modern room decorated in gobs of money. Unlike the mansion, which did classic refinement in its sleep, this place tried to keep up with the times, having no idea what that actually meant. Strange looking chairs and couches, some without backs, many without arms, crouched around the space, uncomfortable looking and spindly. Loud paintings hung on the walls, blasting the eye with colors a four-year-old wouldn’t put together. The rug, some sort of new age shag thing, didn’t match with one piece of décor.

  It looked like someone took acid then decorated this room.

  “Ah, she is awake. Wonderful.”

  That voice…where did I know it?

  A man swam into focus, tall and lithe. He approached me with a graceful, aristocratic saunter.

  Andris, the man who had tried to take Jared in the past. Lovely.

  “And, we meet again.” His gaze scanned my body. “And, not hurt too much, I trust? My minions can be rather rough, but we did need you unconscious.”

  I stood in the middle of the room, hands and legs still clamped to my body with an orange glow. In the corner rested a cage, human height. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where I was going next.

  “You can resist my pheromones. Interesting. I had heard that, of course, but didn’t believe it. Such a rare trait for a human. And a magic wielder, however terrible…my, my, Stefan does unearth the modern marvels, does he not?”

  “Is this a monologue, or did you expect some input?” I asked in a gruff voice, strained with the magic roped around my neck. It attached me to a pole. Through the link, I felt Stefan, fear eating away at him like acid, but trying to mask the vulnerability with boiled rage and vengeance. He knew, then.

  “It’s just that, without accepting the pheromones, you might not have a wonderful time of it. I’m not sure what the White Mage plans to do with you, but you are too pretty to waste.”

  “A dose of foreshadowing from an excelled storyteller. What a treat. Say, listen, how about you transfer me over to that cage now. My feet hurt. I want to sit down.”

  A smile erupted onto his face. “What fun. A human with spirit. The screamers do get tiring. The White Mage will be along shortly.”

  “Goodie.” I slouched against the magic, letting the pole take my weight. It wasn’t the most comfortable of arrangements, but it was better than some things I could think of. And given that this situation was so far messed up, fear could potentially drag me under and cause Stefan unneeded stress (which would road block his effectiveness at a rescue), I had to focus on only the most positive of circumstances.

  A cage and sitting down was it. My life had really taken a turn from cramming for a mid-term.

  As people murmured around me, I randomly thought of my rape whistle. While it wouldn’t help right at the moment, it had been a trusty sidekick to my independent battles thus far. I felt a little underprepared without it.

  Loving support pushed through the link, forcing a tear from my eye. Stefan knew I was awake and he used our shared connection to speak to me, to remind me I wasn’t alone.

  Steeling my courage, I focused on that damn blockage cutting off my magic. If I could just reach my magic, I could at least get free. Then, with an arsenal of pointy objects and my illustrious butt pucker, I could turn this whole place into a giant, angry garden while I made a run for it. I didn’t know many useful spells, but I did know some damaging, hard to clean-up ones. Plus, I could make almost anything explode.

  I tried to suck in magic through that block. It felt like trying to suck a thick milkshake through a tiny straw. I tried to punch at it, shake it, suck harder. Nothing.

  Just then, the double door at the far end of the spacious room swung open. A progression walked through—a short, thin man at the head wearing a white, velvet cape. His pale eyes, almost anemic, swept the room, landing on me and sticking. His neck glowed like a flashlight, the skin a solid mass of colorless tattoos so as not to mar the brilliant, pure light. He didn’t look like much, except his magic, but those eyes had my stomach crawling.

  “You’ve been caught,” he said as he approached. His voice was flimsy and squeaky.

  “Jesus, your genetics didn’t do you any favors, did they?” I blurted, past manners.

  My legs hurt, I was a prisoner, and being nice wouldn’t grant me any favors. Not with this lot. Best I could hope for was triggering anger that might help me push past that blockage.

  He regarded me as a mathematician regards an equation. “You reek of that upstart. Disgusting.” He took a large step back.

  “He has marked her,” Andris helped.

  “Can it be removed? Or can I supplant it with my own? I might like to keep her for a while, put her with my maiden stock,” the White Mage fired back, still analyzing me.

  “It cannot be removed, but I’m not sure if you can supplant it. You can try, but you would have to give her your blood.”

  The White Mage recoiled. “That just won’t do. Has she proven her power level?”

  “Jessiah has said—“

  “Who?” The White Mage looked back at his second in charge, his hands crossing over his shiny, satin coated chest.

  “The boy who delivered her. He said the rumor is that she can wield black, but he has only ever seen her use red.”

  “Black?” The White Mage laughed. “That is a myth, my dear friend. I have been seeking to push into black since I learned I held white. I’ve bled countless bodies dry, one after the other, and I only reach the color you see. If she could wield a power that strong, she would not be held like she is. No, that ingrate Boss of theirs most likely spread that rumor, trying to frighten us. Still, red power and a pretty face…we can use her. I just don’t know why we went to all this trouble to get her.”

  Andris’s eyebrows rumbled in confusion. “The Boss has marked her, which is reason enough.”

  He was doubting himself, he must be. I’d used black on him when he was fighting Stefan, bands of magic making him drop his sword, but it’d all been so hectic. In the face of the White Mage’s distain, and the fact this whole group of people thought black magic was one big myth, especially from a human, Andris wasn’t so sure. It was a small stroke of luck. I hoped.

  The White Mage thought a second. “Yes, I supposed it is. No doubt he will try to save her. He’s always been a little too…noble. Too bad he will never find her
until it is too late. Or have they figured out this stronghold?”

  “We’ve been using it for months, and continue to do so—no, he doesn’t know this place exists. Your magic obscures it.”

  “Good, yes. I had wondered. A huge draw to keep it updated, but worth it, I think.”

  “What are your plans for her?”

  The White Mage’s gaze slid down my body. He shrugged, “Bleed her like the others, I suppose. She’s no good for fun with that awful stench of his. Keep her here until I’m ready for her. I want to make a few more Dulcha, then I’ll use her to refill.”

  “And what of Jessiah? He has been promised a high position for delivering her.”

  The White Mage turned back. “Who?”

  “The boy we spoke of.”

  “Oh.” Arms still crossed over his chest, the White Mage tapped his chin. “Is he any good?”

  “Fare with the elements, but no real use other than knowledge.”

  “Power?”

  “Not much.”

  Those pale eyes stared into Andris, all the calm calculation flaying away, showing a ruthless killer with complete disregard for human life. I shivered as he said, “He has no power, no real skill, and you waste my time asking what to do with him? Get rid of him, skin him and drain his blood; I don’t care.”

  “I’ll give him to the men, sir. He’s pretty.”

  “Fine, whatever. Take care of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As soon as the White Mage left, hazel eyes turned to me. “I need some information.”

  “No surprise there,” I muttered in a dry voice.

  “I need to know the layout of the mansion. The layout of the grounds. How the Boss operates. Small trifles like that. Give me that information, and I won’t let the men rape you mercilessly waiting for the White Mage to be ready for you.”

  “Oh, how sweet of you. And to think, I thought you were an asshole this whole time. Well, bad news. I’m lost in that place most of the time, so you’re asking the wrong girl.”

  He stalked closer, his body brimming with malice. “You want me to dole you out, then, is that it? My guards aren’t generally easy with the enemy.”